August 30, 2025 | Read online
This newsletter is going to be a “learning out loud” example of how I’m trying to build my business and what I’m learning along the way about how the B2C Sales experience is taking over the B2B sales experience.
Instead of breaking this newsletter up into the three sections, I’m going to explain what happened and where I’m at today with the goal of adding value and insights along the way. It’s a bit longer than usual, but I figured it’s a long weekend here in the US so sit back, grab your coffee and enjoy.
Disclaimer: this is also going to be a not-so-thinly vailed pitch for my new coaching program but that’s not the point. The learning lessons are.
As a Solopreneur (+ my COO, Meghan), I feel like one of those street juggling acts where people throw things in from the crowd and I have to integrate them into the mix without letting anything fall.
I do all my own sales (prospect, discover, negotiate, close), deliver all the training to my corporate clients, handle the account management, post and engage on all the social channels, write this newsletter, run my podcast, try to align my strategy with my big picture goals, try to sell my OnDemand Membership through my “Marketing” efforts and those are just my “Big Rocks” (in my business) as Stephen Covey would say.
I realized recently I was doing a lot of things, but none of them very well.
So, I decided to build a custom JB Sales Strategy GPT and put everything about my business into it to help me figure some stuff out and align it with my goals to move down to Costa Rica in 3 years after my daughter graduates from High School (I already have a house that I AirBnB if anyone is interested).
It was pretty clear that I needed alignment, focus and some help if I had a chance to reach those goals.
One of the glaring highlights that came out of a few of the strategy sessions with GPT was the ‘throw-spaghetti-up-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks’ approach I was taking to my “Marketing” efforts.
I have over 400k followers on LinkedIn, 30k downloads a month of my podcast, 20k newsletter subscribers, and around 10k followers/subscribers on both my YouTube and Instagram accounts.
NONE of them are coordinated or aligned. I’m also not driving any meaningful revenue from any of those channels outside of some sponsor dollars.
It was obvious I needed to fix this. The first step was to optimize each of my main social channels (Linkedin, YouTube, Instagram) so I looked around for some experts to help me out.
I’m going to focus on my experience with Instagram for the purposes of this newsletter because it highlights the main point about the B2C buying experience coming for B2B.
Since Instagram listens to everything and knows everything about me even without me saying anything, I saw a post/video from someone who was talking about an app (Passion.io) to help creators earn more revenue for their services.
The video was a high value video from the CEO and spoke directly to some of the challenges I was facing in my business and how the app could help.
The post brought me to their website where I saw some subscription options that you could use to create the app yourself and then a “do it for you” option. I clicked on the “do it for you” option, read the description and then clicked on the CTA to book a meeting to learn more.
It didn’t allow me to book until I filled out a qualification form to see if I was even qualified enough to meet with them.
Wait…what? I had to prove to them that I was worthy of meeting with them to give them my money? They were adding MORE friction to the sales process?
This approach made me want it even more. It wasn’t friction, it was efficiency and avoided both of us wasting time on something that might not have been a fit for either of us.
After I filled out the form, I got “approved”, and then it allowed me to book a meeting. I then was immediately transferred to a landing page with another video from the CEO. He thanked me for booking the meeting and then he went on to explain more about how the app works, what to expect on the upcoming call, gave some social proof and then created some urgency and exclusivity by explaining they only accept 10 “do it for you” customers a month so if I missed the meeting I wouldn’t have a chance to reschedule.
By the time I got on the phone with the sales rep I was ready to buy with an expectation of spending $10-20k for this.
The experience was so flawless and I was so impressed that I asked if I could pay them even more money to set up that flow for me and my On-Demand membership.
It wasn’t their expertise so I started looking around for vendors that could do it for me.
I came across David Muller from HighDay Media. His approach immediately resonated with me because he had a specific process that was focused on metrics, tracking and revenue, NOT any type of vanity metrics.
However, the one thing he said I needed to make this work was a “high ticket” item like a 1:1 coaching program.
I explained that I’ve never been able to offer 1:1 coaching because I could never justify the same sales process for a $5-10 B2C opportunity as I have for a $30k+ B2B opportunity and I’m just not set up to do it based on my schedule.
Not only was David an obvious expert in setting up the system in Instagram to drive meetings and sales for high-ticket coaching programs, he had also signed up for multiple ones himself so he knew what worked and what didn’t work and how they needed to be set up for mutual success.
As he and his team worked to optimize my Instagram page and help me create and edit content, we started to flesh out the details of how I could structure my coaching program to the point where I was comfortable in the value for both parties involved (me and whoever I would be coaching).
We kicked off the engagement strategy last week with someone on his team “selling” for me by engaging with my audience on Instagram and boosting some retargeting ads.
The results were almost immediate.
I had 5 meetings scheduled on my calendar in less than a week with 5 people who were interested in my JB Sales Elite program and expecting to pay $7000 for it.
It was the fastest turn-around to results I’ve ever seen of any initiative I’ve done in my 30 years in business.
Now, let’s compare this sales process we set up for my coaching program to the current B2B process we’re all used to.
There’s no comparison.
We’ve heard about the B2C influence on B2B buying for a while now but with AI, it’s going to happen for bigger and bigger ticket items.
With intent data and AI we can now identify people who are in the buying zone, send them truly engaging and valuable content, educate them to the point where it’s clear the solution is aligned with their needs, provide as much social proof as they need, digitally “qualify” them to make sure they’re a fit and then offer options for them to engage with experts who will have all the necessary information about them to be able to add immediate value to the conversation.
Do you see where the traditional low-value sales rep who asks BANT questions and drones through demos fits in this process? I know I don’t.
This is why we, as Sales professionals, need to level up fast. Otherwise we’re just glorified Marketers that get in the way.
I used to think that Sales reps didn’t need to know a lot about the product or service to be successful. That’s just not true any more.
Buyers are going to be so educated by the time they get to us that if we can’t add immediate value to the conversation, they won’t even stay on the phone with us.
We’ve all heard that stat of how buyers are 60-70% of the way through the sales process before they talk to us.
That stat has been way overused and misapplied to any type of sale which isn’t true. It was only relevant to inbound sales and people who are actively looking for our solution.
However, now I believe it’s going to apply to ALL types of Sales, both inbound and outbound.
The reason is that Marketing is going to get that much better with targeting and educating people through the buying process.
Even if a cold outbound e-mail (which I consider Marketing at this point, not Sales) does resonate with a buyer and they’re interested in setting up a meeting, they can use AI to get up to speed on the solution 10 minutes before the meeting and know more than most sales reps will, who are still going through the motions.
This is not an IF scenario, it’s WHEN, and that WHEN is coming faster than ever before.
#EvolveorDie
| How did I do with this edition? |
|
|
|
|
