Selling like a Dude Part 1: The Theory
This is going to be fun, my friend. We’re going to take some leaps over the course of this series, and my sincere hope is that you’ll keep an open mind and create a "Selling Like A Dude" plan for your business.
Fair warning: We're going deep and talking dollars and hidden strategies that NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT.
It is worth your time to keep reading and soak this all in. I am holding nothing back.
You definitely want to get caffeinated first and read all the way through to Part 3 where we're going to figure out how to apply this framework to your biz ASAP, even if you're in the very beginning stages of your business.
If you want to skip ahead to Part 2 where we start talking strategy, CLICK HERE.
Back to reimagining what marketing and promoting our businesses even means.
For me, being successful means selling like a dude. (We’ll unpack that in a minute. Don’t lose your mind quite yet.)
For you, being successful might be something completely different, but keep an open mind, anyway, as we dive down the rabbit hole of re-defining sales and marketing strategy over the next few pages.
This series is going to be 3 parts:
- The Theory (this page)
- The Experiment (Part 2)
- The Results (Part 3)
I’m going to take you behind the scenes of what’s been working really well in my business lately, because it will completely contradict pretty much everything “the experts” are telling us to do, and I like to be polarizing and rebellious like that. ;) #Enneagram8
I also think it’s so valuable to share what’s working NOW because I’m always experimenting with new ideas and strategies in my laboratory, aka my recliner with laptop and coffee, and I want to be transparent about what’s getting actual results that can be quantified on my bank statement.
First, let’s rewind a few years and give some context.
When I started my online nutrition business in 2016, things were a bit different than they are right now. The internet was a bit less noisy, inboxes weren’t so full, and the concept of giving someone a free piece of content [ie: lead magnet] to introduce them to your work was still relatively innovative.
Can we agree that’s no longer the case?
It’s way harder to capture and maintain someone’s attention online, these days, because the interwebs are a very loud and distracting place to be. Not to mention it’s understood that a “freebie” is going to lead to emails that sell something.
That’s totally fine, by the way, it’s just not exactly a surprise that fewer and fewer people open every single email eagerly awaiting the next installment, and as a result, fewer and fewer sales happen if you aren’t making offers early and often. We’ll get to that.
It was a long time coming, but in early 2020 I really felt like it was time to shake things up in my business and completely eliminate the bullshit tasks that didn’t light me up.
I was so exhausted with the prevailing marketing narrative that we need to produce free content, more free content, and then a little extra free content to build rapport and trust and “like” so that maybe, just maybe, we can sell something someday.
It feels so graspy and needy and desperate.
It’s like all the “experts” have basically been saying we need to make people like us so we deserve to be paid for our expertise.
Ahem, Free facebook groups, I’m looking at you. ← OMG please don’t do this. Please.
Repeat after me: I will NOT create a free facebook group and tell myself it’s a good use of my time or expertise. I will not.
How many dudes do you know running free facebook groups and killing it in their business?
Zero. That’s how many I know. ZERO.
We’ll pull on that thread in a minute. Back to the content myth.
I already knew this content hamster wheel wasn’t going to work for me because #nosocialmedia is the name of my game.
(Instead, I have sold my products for years using automated email funnels, which is what I teach inside my Membership Magic program.)
To be honest, my funnels were still working, but I had a theory that they were more complicated and took longer to get to the sale than the market wanted.
I was feeling a nudge to try something new and lean into my strengths and intuition even more.
This is where things will likely get a little polarizing.
I told a business peer I respected what I was going to do [the experiment I’ll explain in Part 2], and she told me with a totally straight face,
“That only works for men.”
Wait. What?
It was such a ridiculous comment that I almost laughed, but then I realized she was totally right.
Just not for the reason she thought.
The health and wellness space I operate in, which you are likely a part of as well, is pretty much female dominated.
(Sorry, gents, but you’re not representin’ worth a shit up in here.)
And ladies, we have some issues when it comes to selling our life-changing products and services.
Here are the very well defined patterns I see in my business coaching membership that keep women playing small:
- Fear of judgement
- Fear of failure
- Fear of success
Sure, they come dressed up in all different outfits, but the root beliefs are the same.
- If I charge people for my services, they’ll think I’m too expensive so I should just do it for free. (fear of judgement)
- If I offer to charge people and no one buys, everyone will think I’m a failure so I better go get ____ certification first and then I’ll be ready. (fear of failure)
- If I make this business my full-time gig I’ll never have any time for my family and it will get too stressful so I better not actually do this. (fear of success)
See how awful this is?
Our best, most fantastic feminine traits to connect, help, nurture, teach, inspire, and heal are effectively working against our bank accounts.
And popular online marketing wisdom tell us we need to connect MORE with strangers on the internet, and give them more shit for free, woo them with our value for months and years because that’s the name of the game, and then if we’ve done a “good job” and made them like us, we might be worthy of being paid.
Read that again. I’ll wait.
Whereas “Selling like a dude” looks like this:
- Find strangers on the internet who are already trying to solve the problem we’re an expert at solving
- Tell them how we can help them solve it
- Then immediately tell them how to pay us money for that help.
- If they don’t want to invest, we find other people who do and focus on that group.
- The end.
Slightly different energy and intention, isn’t it?
In Part 2 of this series I’m going to explain exactly what I set out to do earlier this year that was 180 degrees different than any other female marketer in my inbox so you can see what this “Selling like a dude” strategy looks like.
I’m going to tell you all about this little experiment, along with the numbers and stats and method and all those goodies, so don't worry…we'll get to that.
But first I think we have to circle back for a minute and revisit this little conundrum us female entrepreneurs are in:
The Interwebs are full of potential clients who want to pay us money and are currently SEARCHING for our help but our internal wiring (compounded by societal beliefs, but that’s an entirely different conversation for another day) makes us overcomplicate selling to them.
Let’s stop overcomplicating it.
I want to help you start selling like a dude so you can impact way more people and have way more fun in your business.
Deal? Keep an open mind over the next few installments of this series where we break down the entire strategy and all the data.
If you want to see what this Experiment looked like, I'll meet you in Part 2 with all the details.
