How to Sell on Social [Ep #174]

On today’s episode, yes. We are talking about social selling. Please listen to this, don’t roll your eyes, don’t change that channel. This is probably the most important episode you can listen to while we are getting ready to embark on a brand new business here. Stay tuned. 

Hello everyone! Welcome to another episode of the profitable practice podcast. This is kind of an extension of the last episode we made on how your business is going to thrive in 2021 and what that looks like. And that was coming from an interview I did with Megan Walker. And it’s been something that I have still been reflecting on even weeks later. As to how I am not showing up for my business. And how we need to change our business so we will also thrive to become a half a million dollar clinic or clinics, I should say in 2021. That is the business goal, we were lucky and so fortunate to have exceeded our revenue for what we wanted to achieve this year. Just slightly over last year can all considering. And I am ready to ramp things up, I just placed my last tire into the Oclo office that I run as a Brick and Mortar. And I am as of January, officially out of doing the one on one consultations. And even just knowing that has revived my energy for the business. And it is really cemented ‘okay what is my role as the CEO? What is that I need to be doing while I have my team members doing the stuff that I am good at, but don’t want to do.’ So it’s not that I am not good at consultations, it’s not that I’m not great at talking with people, I am. But it doesn’t feel anymore, it doesn’t excite me anymore and I needed to get out of that role as quickly as I could. So the universe delivered in literally 48 hours and we now have our completed team to take over all of the Brick and Mortar offices and I can now run basically the marketing to fill up their schedules. That is my goal or that is my role, I should say. So that’s where today’s conversation comes, is talking about social selling. And talking about the love of all things social media. 

I had a meeting with one of our elite implementer level members that’s where we actually do the work for you. You hire my team, we do your graphics, your emails, email sequences. We set up your Facebook Ads, we do all of those clicky work because of what I like to say. And that was the final phase that she needed to go into. We created her four programs so now she can offer something online as well as an upgrade to work with her in the office. And so now it’s just all about selling and filling up those funnels as they say. And social media is and I think will now always be that place where you need to be showing up. And feel you, as I say that you’re just like ‘Oh my God, eyes-rolling. I hate social media, I don’t want to look fake. I don’t know how to like, I don’t even know how to pose. I don’t have the cup of time to do it.’ All those things. I was there, trust me. I totally understand the want to barf in your mouth feeling that comes when people say ‘you need to show up more on social media.’ But if you really need to take a step back, and you look at the people that you want to be, the people you aspire to become in your business, the people you are following, why you are following them. What you are really doing is you should be looking at how often they are showing up? How often are they going live? How often are they posting? What is the quality of their post? Why is it that you’re following this individual? And a huge reason why you’re also buying what they are selling or enrolling on to their email list, or whatever the case may be. Is because of the relationship that they’re cultivating with you every single day on social media. That is where businesses need to go and will be going in 2021 and beyond. That is just how it is. And as much as you want to resist it, as much as you don’t like it, as much as it is not in your wheelhouse? 

You have 2 options here, one is you can totally fill up your organic booking machine, which requires more effort on your part to go live, post live, make videos, do the Instagram reels and I’ll come back to that shortly. Do all of those things organically to hopefully get rich. Or you can fill up your Facebook booking funnel, or your Facebook booking machine and start paying for those posts to get a greater reach. To be shown to more people, for your videos to get all those likes and shares more than your organic does. So it’s one or the other, and if you’re really so inclined, it’s both. But we won’t talk about both, because I know for some people, mentally getting around for social media, to begin with is crazy and that’s for I say ‘just work on your organic sort of live stream, live posting machine to get those bookings in.’ Other people are like ‘I don’t have that kind of time, I just want to make maybe one new post per week, one new video per week, and then I’ll put that into my Facebook Ad funnel and just let it get more engagement that way.’ That is the strategy that we’ve been doing all year; running engagement Ads with all of our lives that we do every week, plunking them in every single week it just goes out there. And that’s where we’re getting thousands of views on our videos because we’re spending money to achieve that. Because every time we do something organically, it’s usually maybe one or two hundred max or when we put maybe even a dollar a day behind it, we get into a thousand very quickly. And it just expands our reach which keeps just top of mind, that’s the way I think about it. So it’s totally worth the investment in my mind. 

But I implore you to drop the negative vibes, drop the negative stories about social media, and get into a place where you just have to embrace it as part of running your business. And so, if you are doing Instagram I know a lot of you are, I see your posts even working with my team members I see what they want to write and I immediately know where it becomes such a challenge. This is again coming from an underprepared misled practitioner that I am always talking about. About how when we graduate, we are forced to graduate wearing our lab coat, being a professional, not saying anything wrong. Our regulatory board scared out the Jesus of us, we don’t even want to show up on social media in case we get flagged or caught saying something that, you know- that’s a whole another story. I’m not even going to go down that rabbit hole with you. And so when we graduate and we have this sort of professional, very stoic personality about us. And then we go online and try to expand that to that masses, well no one is going to resonate with you. And so, if when you are going on social media, your platform is to talk about how such and such an herb. Had this double-blind randomized zeebo study done that proved that it was just as good as the pharmaceutical option. That’s cool and maybe people will share that, but it isn’t going to get people booking with you. Whether virtual or in the office, it’s still the same outcome. Where people are going to start to connect with you is if you drop that professionalism, if you drop that lab coat. I am a health and wellness practitioner before etc. and start to humanize yourself. I almost said dehumanize and it’s not the right word. You need to humanize yourself, you need to talk to those people as if it was your best friend that you were having coffee for or with. And I know you’ve heard this before, I know you’ve heard this from so many people that you’re listening to and there’s a reason why it is being repeated is that it is still working. 

So when I go live, again, because the other question is what I even talk about on a daily basis, what do I even share? I currently don’t auto-schedule a ton of my really important posts, those are more written in the moment when I’m feeling it, when I’m having a piece of inspiration. I’ll go live when I’m ready or post something. We do auto-schedule a lot of our more standard posts; it is talking about digestion or hormones or thyroid. But the ones that land the most and the ones that we consistently see getting bookings in within like an hour of actually posting are the scenes of videos that we do of me going into the infrared sauna, or someone getting acupuncture on or just showing our unpackaging our products being like ‘oh look at how many maximized detox tubs we just got in, I can’t wait to get everybody getting their detox this season. People love those, and then the other ones that I talk about are usually sharing an inspirational story about a patient that I saw that day. 

So this was the number one question that came up today and this is what I want to talk about. This was one of the blockers that one of our patients had today and this is what I wanted to talk about. This is one of the major outcomes someone has by going through our treatment plan or protocol and I wanted to share that with you. And so when I go live if I’m always talking about stories or examples of how our methodology being the gap protocol. How our team or how I am the authority on a particular taste and the outcome that people got and this was what the steps were that this person took. Because when I do that, the viewers now really resonate with that story and are like ‘oh I want that. I need that in my life, I’d seen people post that. I need that sauna in my life.’ And it immediately gets people into our dm’s or pms. 

Another great one is sharing lab work; how we analyze lab work and the difference between how we do lab work versus conventional doctors. People love that and again people are like ‘oh I need that lab test that makes so much sense what are my next steps.’ So you really need to be paying attention to what is it that when you post, when you share something that people really lean into. And here’s the problem; is a lot of times even with our MPP members and elite members they’ll say ‘well can you just give us templates and auto-schedule all of the posts for us.’ And I’m like ‘sure we can, that doesn’t mean that it’s going to do anything though.’ So it’s not about the act of just posting every single day to feel like ‘ok check that box, good.’ It’s really about doing it in a methodical way that also shows you ‘ok this is the topic that my audience likes, this is the stuff that everyone is leaning in to and they’re not leaning into this other stuff. 

You won’t know until you actually start experimenting with how you’re showing up on social media. And then the most important thing you need to be doing is at the end of the week, analyzing ‘ok what post really worked well, what didn’t? What did I get bookings right away with? Ok, cool.’ And it’s going to actually funnel you into a particular topic or topic idea or like a handful of topics and yes you’re going to feel like you are saying the same things all the time. But this is how you create brand awareness and this is how people start to remember you as the authority on a particular topic. And if you think about it, once you start becoming that authority, that’s when the word of mouth referrals really gets easy. That’s when colleagues will start to refer to you for a particular topic. And that is really when you are winning, and we talk all about how we create that methodology, your struggling avatar, your future paste heroes with regards to your business. And that’s where you can really lean in on ‘ok, now that people are really paying attention to me. How do I really show them the transformation?’ 

So the other thing that I would strongly recommend is planning on going live on your social media every single day. Now I personally find that my social media really doesn’t get looked at much on the weekend so I commit Monday to Friday I will go live on my Facebook page. And I don’t plan it, I don’t have a particular time so people can join me because it’s just too restricting, I can’t work that way. I need to be inspired, and when I’m inspired I go live. So this is what I would strongly recommend you also commit to doing. And for me, now that we finally figured out how to get my girls on to a decent sleep schedule with regards to bedtime. I don’t know why it took us to get this long to get them to sleep for a seven. I now have the rest to this evening which I never had before because we weren’t as disciplined as we are now. To spend 15 min. 20 min a half an hour, sometimes even 45 min. depending on the topic and how people are engaged with my audience. And not only is that going to help serve them, because a lot of the times it’s our patients that are showing up. A lot of the time its followers have yet become patients. I’m serving them on the off hours so they’re getting more value from me. But it’s also triggering the algorithm of Facebook or Instagram to promote my stuff more because they see that I am actually using their program properly. Like I’m showing up; I’m trying to engage, I’m trying to do all of the things. 

Now, if lives are so not in your bag, which I know for a lot of people it creates a tremendous amount of anxiety to think about going live. Then commit to uploading a prerecorded video. But here is the other thing about social media, is that social media rewards 15 to 30-second clips. So even if you can go on and say something relatively insightful for one minute you will actually win over feeling obligated to go live before 10, 15, 20 min. And that’s why I was saying the behind the scene stuff, doing a quick video of what your supplement dispensary looks like even for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, I just recorded my screen and showed are full script account, our online store, what the email looks like so that they knew what the benefits were. I didn’t like doing fancy-dancy filming, it’s just literally recording my laptop and then just post those. But the point is you have to be committed and unwaveringly so as if it was a meeting for your business. And that’s where we’re really trying to get you to start performing from. It’s from a place where you have these binary tasks that no longer become a struggle, that no longer are difficult they just are. 

And going on social media every single day at least 5 days a week is one of those binary tasks that if you don’t do it, you cannot be expecting your business to grow as quickly as you want to. There are of course exceptions to the rule, but if you’re like most of the people who I know that I’m talking to you are not that exception yet. You haven’t built your business up to become that exception. Even at multiple six figures, we are still going live all of the time. We are still paying for Facebook Ads and sending out emails. If you look at a lot of the other people in the industry that have high six figures even in seven-figure businesses they are doing the same. So if you don’t have that monetary amount yet that you are happy with, then you’re probably not performing like a high six-figure, seven-figure person. Even if your goal was just to reach your first six figures, you still need to act like a six-figure business owner. And you’re talking to one right now and I’m sure that you are following a lot as well. And you just have to be emulating what it is that they’re doing. They actually work harder as they build more money not last. They just do it smarter, and they start to delegate. Right? So they started to hire people on their team to do all the things to which is exactly what we did. 

Now, the one little asterisk that I’m going to put on this entire conversation is going back to that 15-second window of opportunity that people love with regards to social media. And that is right now you are on Instagram, Instagram reels are crushing with regards to organic reach. So we have been trying to do a reel maybe three times a week, again I’m just splicing random things together either taking one or two-second video clips of things in my office and putting them together in a reel. The last reel I did was actually had my daughter’s rehearsal a few lines to get people to join me in with regards to helping them grow their social media marketing so I put out a reel looking for five practitioners, who want help with this, dm me and actually had the girls do it. And within half a day it reached over a thousand views, and I can really look at the metrics very quickly and say ‘ok this video did really well, because of this, this video did not do very well.’ And I kind of know what the content is that people are looking for, what the graphics are that people are looking for. But regardless of posting, over even going live on an Instagram reel. Instagram reels are the big thing that Instagram is rewarding right now. So if you can carve out, and I know it’s not going to be 15 seconds, if you can carve out 5-10 mins sometimes to make that 15-second reel, it will actually benefit you. And again what’s nice about the reels is unlike a story or live that it goes away, it stays stored either on your tiles or in your Instagram reel section and people can watch it all the time. And with regards to the health industry, there are so many things you can do with the reel, especially if it’s like a quick recipe or again showing as supplements or talking about the pain point that people have at certain things it just crashes and you need to be doing that. 

So I’m going to ask you now do you need help figuring out how your social media strategy is going to go? Do you need help understanding how social media fits into getting people to book into your office? Because that’s another piece that we won’t talk about today but this is now falling into that business essential piece. Where we start systemizing and automating and funneling people down a particular way or pathway to land into our practice. Again, it doesn’t matter whether it’s virtual or in the office. The same rules apply. And so if you just don’t know ‘ok what am I actually funneling my social media people to’, that is all going to be all part of the consultation. 

So I strongly encourage you number 1 to reach out to me on Instagram, just send me a quick message being like ‘hey, I need some help. What it’s going to look like to do that.’ If you want to learn more about our three-step framework to merging your business online which again talks about the elements that you need to be considering when it comes to social media and building out a program and putting those pieces together. I invite you to our 60 min. video training, it’s absolutely free that explains our three-step framework and you can go watch that. Any time when you want to the link will be on the show notes. And then of course if there’s anything else that I can do to support you, I just need to hear from you. 

So I always will reward those people that raise their hands and ask for help and are looking for more guidance as opposed to the people that are like ‘oh yeah, I should do that and never do it.’ So always be an action taker and if someone is offering something for free, you should always take them up on that. Because oftentimes whoever is working with them one on one or getting more one on one advice from them is usually very expensive. So when someone is saying here’s a free training where I talk about x,y, or z things go watch it. If someone is saying reach out to me via dm it’s usually pretty genuine. And I am the only person who checks those. So I look forward to seeing you in one of those two places and of course, I’m your biggest fan, and I only want amazing things for you. So commit to dropping the negative stories about social media, commit to stepping up in a better way for your business this year so that 2021 will be the best year you’ve experienced yet. I will see you next week on the next episode, I’m Andrea Maxim and I’m out.