The Commission Code for Success
Does your gross revenue come from commissions, fees, and other types of 1099 MISC income? If you answered yes, then the Commission Code for Success is a podcast created specifically with you in mind. Each episode is designed to deliver a concept or idea that will help you increase your revenue and have more time to enjoy it.
If you are an employee on 100% commission or an independent contractor you are a business owner when it comes to how you go about doing your daily work. The mindset of a business owner puts you in exactly the right spot to maximize your revenue and maximize the impact you have with your clients and customers.
The Commission Code is the library of knowledge and the set of skills you need to grow your business and reach your desires. Please join us and our guests at The Commission Code Podcast! I look forward to seeing you there, I'm your host, Morris Sims.
The Commission Code for Success
The Power of Authentic Email Marketing
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They have a pain point, you can solve the pain point or help them move farther from it through your offer, and so you owe it to them to tell them how you can help them. And I think a lot of times when we're nervous about sales, it's because we're all wrapped up in ourselves and we're forgetting about the other person. Like, we're here to actually help this person. It's our job to sell them into this thing so that you can actually help them. And I think when we can get out of our own heads and out of our own way, it makes it a whole lot easier, a whole lot more effective and it actually feels good and your people are excited to buy from you.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Commission Code Podcast. We're here to help you overcome the challenges that most of us face in our business. From time to time, you know things like feeling like you're on a plateau and you just can't seem to grow your business. Or maybe feeling overwhelmed, just trying to make ends meet and yet it seems like you're always working. Or maybe you've done quite well for a while while, but now nothing seems to be working anymore. Well, we want to help you solve those problems and many more. Our objective is to provide you with practical solutions so you can grow your business and have more time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Speaker 2:My name is Morris Sims and I'm going to be your host for this show. I've spent years okay, decades really in the corporate world teaching business owners how to increase their revenue and use professional sales processes and run their business more effectively and efficiently. I started my own consulting and training business about seven years ago, I guess, and I'm helping my clients do just exactly that Get more revenue, increase their revenue and have more time to enjoy the fruits of their labor. But I got to tell you I'm having more fun than ever helping people build successful businesses. So, with all that said, let's get on with today's episode of the Commission Code for your Success. Allison Hardy is our guest today, and I am so excited to have Allison here. We've worked together in the past, so I know that she is just a magical expert and one that's going to bring some great, great ideas to you here today on the Commission Code for your Success. So, allison, welcome to the show. So glad you're here.
Speaker 1:Hey Morris, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Allison is an email automation and funnel expert. She is an email marketing expert as far as I'm concerned. She's helped me and so many others in this area, so I wanted her to come to share with you today the magic of email marketing. But I guess, Allison, I don't know where should we start.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Maybe we should talk about what email marketing actually is.
Speaker 2:Sounds good. What is email marketing Allison?
Speaker 1:Email marketing is a way to pop into a space that someone has control over in a way that is heart-centered, in a way that is guaranteed to be delivered and in a way that is designed for conversions, designed for sales, that is designed for conversions, designed for sales. And what I mean by when that set like the space that someone has control over, I mean that the person who's receiving your email has had some sort of contact with you. You're not just like randomly popping into people's inboxes. Right, they've done something where they have said, yes, I want to hear more from you.
Speaker 2:So they have opted in, if you will.
Speaker 1:Yes, they have opted in. They said I think this person could potentially help me. I want to hear more from this person.
Speaker 2:So, allison, there are, you know, 15 people on my email list and my contacts. How do I get started?
Speaker 1:How do you get started? You get started by sending them an email saying hey, I'm more of Sims. I help people do X, y and Z here's something that you might find helpful and share a piece of valuable information with them. What that does is it gets them to start to know, like and trust you, and you can send them a series of those emails and then maybe at some point, you start to be like hey, by the way. You can send them a series of those emails and then maybe at some point, you start to be like hey, by the way, I can help you do this, book a call with me or learn more about my offer here.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of times people don't want to be salesy. I think that's a big concern for a lot of folks who sell things for a living. But the fact of the matter is that by selling, you're actually serving people because you're giving them the solution to their problems or you're helping them to be like hey, I can help you find the solution to your problem. And so you can start to you know, seed your offer throughout these emails and then you could send them just like normal pitch emails that are like hey, buy my thing or book a call here.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to be you know this like out of the bat, like buy, buy, buy. For me it can be done in a very simple, strategic, heart-centered way that feels good for you and you as a person.
Speaker 2:And it feels good to them too. I mean, I'm a big proponent of adding value in everything that we do with marketing and trying to reach out to people, be it a social post or an email or whatever. It needs to add value to the reader more than anything else. And then they should say somewhere down the road we're going to say, oh yeah, by the way, I'm doing this summit, or I've got this course, or I'm would love to be able to help you with this, that and the other. Click here and kind of go from there with it, so that it's not really email sales, it's not an advertising, it's not a big electronic billboard, right?
Speaker 1:No, they have a pain point. You can solve the pain point or help them move farther from it through your offer, and so you owe it to them to tell them how you can help them. And I think a lot of times when we're nervous about sales, it's because we're all wrapped up in ourselves and we're forgetting about the other person. We're here to actually help this person. It's our job to sell them into this thing so that you can actually help them. And I think when we can get out of our own heads and out of our own way, it makes it a whole lot easier, a whole lot more effective and it actually feels good and your people are excited to buy from you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I always like buying something if I think it's going to help me do better in what I'm doing or help me solve a problem of some kind, even if I didn't know the problem existed until I got the email or the advertisement somehow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I tend to believe, or I tend to teach, that the difference there is the difference between a professional salesperson and an amateur. An amateur is hey, I've got this blue widget. Don't you want to buy a blue widget? I've got a case of them in my trunk. How many do you want? And that's the amateur. But the professional is. Let me find out what you need, what your problem is, and maybe I might have a way to help you solve that problem. Would you agree?
Speaker 1:yeah, absolutely, and I think that a lot of us have been sold to in amateur ways you know, that is amateur salesperson example.
Speaker 1:You used um and I think that it really holds a lot of us back because it just makes us feel icky, right, and it makes us want to move away from that in like the fastest way possible. But then we bring that into what we're doing and it influences how we show up. So I love what you said. Like hey, like this might be helpful to you, but let me learn more about you and see if it actually is a good fit, Because I think that's a really great reframe and a way to approach sales in a way that works and doesn't make you feel like a sleazy slime bag.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that's true. We don't want to feel icky, that's a definite no. It's amazing and so many of the times you see stuff and it is icky and it is, you know, unprofessional, and you just have to push that aside and think that's not me, that's not what I do, that's not what I want to do, so I'm not going to do it, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you like, you actually care about your people right, you take care of them, you deliver on what you say you're going to do and you're not that person Like, you're not that mindset. You don't have those skills. You have better skills and I think that a lot of times, you really need to separate yourself from that.
Speaker 2:So, allison, you tell us a little bit about what all you do. I mean, I started off by saying you're an email marketing expert, and I think you are, but tell us how you do that. What do you do for your clients? How does this work?
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, so I teach a system inside of my membership called emails that sell. That is basically like an email marketing ecosystem.
Speaker 1:We call this in the industry, an email funnel and what it is. They are nurtured for about 90 days. So for 90 days they are getting a curated series of emails from you that develop the no-lake and trust factor, show your expertise teaches them something, gets them to think about something different, and then, over a series of email sequences and time, they are then pitched and invited to join into whatever the thing is that you're selling. So that's an automated way to sell your thing, whatever it is, through email marketing. Now the other side of this is I have a lot of people who are like I don't want to learn that, I don't want to do that, I don't have time, space, brain space, I don't want to do it. So then the other side of this is I do that work for people, so I will write that email funnel for that email ecosystem, email funnel for people also. It just depends on the level of support that they need.
Speaker 2:And I will be totally honest and transparent. Allison has written such a funnel and such a set of emails for me, and they were absolutely fantastic. Thank you very much. By the way, the other piece of email marketing that I think folks tend to struggle with is the whole idea of building their email list, and there are all sorts of things out there that tell you oh, I'm going to teach you how to build your email list. Oh, use this as a lead magnet. We need to define what that is, but you need to do this. And'm going to teach you how to build your email list. Oh, use this as a lead magnet. We need to define what that is, but you need to do this and you need to do that, and you can build your email list and you'll have thousands and thousands of people on your email list, and I don't know that any of those really work all that great, but the key is you've got to do something to build your email list. How do you look at that?
Speaker 1:What's your thought about building an email list? Yeah, I think all of those ways of building your email list work. Like I think everything works, right, everything in the world works. That's why it exists. But you have to land on what works best for you, what gets you the results in the time frame that you want. So, like, for me, just my personal business I run Facebook and Instagram ads, I do organic Instagram, I have a podcast and I host bundles, so these are like curated um resources from other people around a specific theme. So like, for example, right now I am getting ready to launch a bundle called emails that make bank bundle and it's just a set of 30 resources from other people and people can get access to all of them for a very short amount of time and what that does is it grows my email list really, really quickly. But then, like, that's like a ton of work, right. But then I couple that with Facebook and Instagram ads because those are consistent. I know I'm going to get 25 people on my email list today and that feels good for me, right? So I think, like it really matters Like I'm saying all that to say this I think that it matters who you are and how you want to run your business.
Speaker 1:I know some people that are like I will never touch Facebook ads for as long as I breathe air. I hate them. I, they're the bane of my existence. Okay, cool, great, I hate them. They're the bane of my existence. Okay, cool, great, that's fine.
Speaker 1:Some people that's their opinion and that's fine. Other people are like I am never going to show up on social media, ever, and that's fine, but you still have to grow your email list. That's pretty much a non-negotiable at this point. So what is it for you? Is it that you have a blog and you push it to Pinterest and you'd have a really hardy SEO? Um, you know strategy and like that's getting you results. That's great, everything works. It's just a matter of like, again, what works for you, and sometimes you've got to try it all to figure out what works for you, right? So, like, sometimes you'll try something out and you're like this stinks, I never want to do this ever again in my entire life, and that's fine. You now know that and you can move on and try something else. But I think, like you have to really unfortunately, try a bunch of things sometimes and like see what happens with it.
Speaker 2:Would you share with us just what are the biggest concerns or objections I hear about Facebook ads and social media ads of all kind. It's just so expensive and I don't get anything out of it. How much should you spend what are we talking about here to do Facebook ads? Is it, you know, a hundred bucks or a thousand bucks a month, or what? What does it take?
Speaker 1:I think it really depends on the person and where you're at. So I started running my own ads in like 2000, when they first came out, in 2015, 2016, sometimes around there and at first I was only spending $5 a day and it was because I didn't have enough. I didn't have the cashflow number one, but number two. I didn't know if, like my stuff worked. So like my thought was like, okay, I have this lead magnet, I think it's good, but like I don't have enough people in my audience to tell me if it's good or not. So could I just run ads to kind of like do market research and like get results. So that was kind of like the first step. And then the second step was like, okay, now that, like the lead magnet is doing. Okay, How's that funnel working? Like, how does the step after that working? Is it working and what does that look like?
Speaker 1:So as soon as I started to get traction there, I was like, okay, I could spend more. And there were times where I was spending you know, $300 a day. If I was like in the middle of like a big launch, there were days and weeks where I would spend $5 or none at all, and that's okay too. Now I have gotten to the point where I outsource that, so I don't really manage that for myself anymore, because I'm at the point where I know it's going to convert at X dollars and I know my funnel is going to convert at whatever percentage point I know, and so I feel comfortable spending money on someone who can run those ads more effectively for me and take that off the plate.
Speaker 1:So, all that to say, I would not start spending a ton of money on ads. I wouldn't do bite-sized chunks unless you have a chunk of change to spend and you're totally cool with wasting it and some people are, and that's fine because you get tons of data from Facebook ads. So if you're like, okay, this is a huge data test, great, go for it. But if you don't have that resource available to you, start small and run them yourselves and learn how to do it.
Speaker 2:Because with Facebook ads can't you target a particular area or a group of people, or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, like an example, my husband's a pastor and so for Easter and Christmas and like any big events they're hosting every year, he targets like a specific zip code, the zip code around the church that he pastors at. And so, yeah, it allows him to get in front of new people. And they did a survey on Easter, like how many people came in? Like how did you find us? Like, cause Easter, there's so many more people right the normal. So like, how'd you find this friends? How did you find us? Like, cause Easter, there's so many more people right the normal. So like, how'd you find this friends? Facebook ads where where'd you come from? And like 20% of the new people, that 20% of the people that filled out that form, were like I saw you through a Facebook ad and like that's really cool, like that's really awesome.
Speaker 1:I feel like that's a really good ROI. Um, so yeah, you can get really specific in your targeting. You can target like I used to work with mom entrepreneurs that was kind of my thing for a while I would target mom of toddlers and that really got me a very good qualified audience for that season of my business. Now, sometimes I will go a little bit broader. So I'll say now anyone interested in digital marketing and it gets you a bigger audience, but sometimes not as good of a quality of lead. So you have to know, like the targeting, and understand who came from where, so that you can track the effectiveness of your ads. Because leads are great but if they're not converting into buying clients, they're like just taking up space on your email list.
Speaker 2:Clients that are like just taking up space on your email list, and it all comes back down to identifying and defining exactly what your ideal client, prospect, customer, whatever you want to call it your ideal for that particular person is right.
Speaker 1:I mean, defining that more clearly seems to be a key to making all this work. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really important, with Facebook and Instagram ads too, for that matter to have a very specific targeted audience, because otherwise, number one, you're going to waste just a ton of money. Or, number two, your ads won't like, nobody will be paying attention to them. It's like when you're too broad, right, when you're too broad, you you speak. When you speak to everyone, you're speaking to no one. So people are scrolling and if they don't, like you know, the job of your ad is to stop the scroll.
Speaker 1:So think about people's mindset. When they're scrolling on Instagram. Like, they're probably not like seeking out anything in particular, but your message has to be compelling enough. Your image has to be eye-catching enough to stop their scroll and for them to be like. Oh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:So, like, I love this earring brand. I love it. It's my favorite earrings in the whole wide world. Um, I I find that as soon as I click on their account on Instagram, I will then get pushed other earring accounts and I know it's because that's the targeting that they are using and that's fine, but you better believe every single time a really cool pair of earrings pops up, I'm like, oh, tell me more. And so like I click and that's telling the algorithm that I want to know more. And so now I get like all these earring ads which is fine, I'm totally for it but like it's captivating enough to get me to stop what I'm doing in my day and to window shop some earrings online. So like just thinking about how people consume and like how you consume as a person can be really helpful in designing your ads and targeting your people.
Speaker 2:So do you like the single post earrings or the danglies or the hoops or what? What's your favorite?
Speaker 1:I like them all. I'm mostly interested. I'm an equal opportunity earring lover. My daughter is seven and she doesn't like the kind that like poke. You like the standard post. She likes the screw on post now because they don't poke you with that.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm mostly shopping for these days. Very good, very good, I love it. I love it. We had, we had a huge argument in my family back some 35 years ago and my daughter was about that age and she was going to get her ears pierced, and I said no, no, no, no, not going to do that. No, don't let her do that. No. I came home one day we were visiting grandparents and look, daddy, I got my ears pierced, and ever since then I've been waiting for something like that to happen so that I could do that with my grandkids and make her mother go the way I did. But anyway, it's my earring story for the day.
Speaker 2:It makes sense, though. I mean, nowadays I'm trying to get back to business. If you can't understand, it seems like everywhere you turn. When I looked online for recently I bought shoes, I bought some new tennis shoes, and now I get all these ads for tennis shoes everywhere I look it's another ad for some new line of shoes. I didn't know there was this many people making shoes. Yeah, you know, it's just. It's incredible the way the technology works today, and if you get in there and get involved with it.
Speaker 2:It can help you, seems to me.
Speaker 1:It can be super helpful Borrowing people, like if we look at people's interests and you can get really, really specific on, like, what people are actually interested in, what they're clicking on. You can retarget things so, like, if someone lands on your landing page and doesn't opt in, you can retarget them with a different ad. You can create lookalike audiences, so you can upload your entire email list into Facebook and Instagram and they will create a separate list of about the same amount of people, if not more, that have similar habits as those people. So you can do some really cool stuff with targeting through Facebook and Instagram ads. Yeah, I mean, they're a huge asset in my business. I can honestly say like it's been a game changer for my business.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, that's number one. Number one thing to remember from this podcast is what we can do with that for sure. Let's get back to the email part, though, Allison. Okay, so I've got this email. I've got an email list. Let's say mine's about 200-300 people, something like that. I'm changing my direction in my business. What should my email first view look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so these people came onto your list when you were doing a different focus or a different ideal client, when you had a different focus Some of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what I would do is I would send an email out to the entire list and be like hey, we've got some cool things going on over here in my neck of the internet. Uh, we are shifting who we serve to this person. So if that's you, we're thrilled to have you. I hope you will pay attention because in the next couple of days, you're going to get something dripped out to you X, y and Z. You're going to learn, like my number one tip for whatever, or a three-part video series or something.
Speaker 1:Now if you're no longer, and then continue in the email If you're no longer, if that's not in alignment with you or you are, here's the unsubscribe button. I have loved getting to serve you over the past however many years or months or whatever. Thank you for being a part of my world. But I just want to be upfront with who I am going to be serving here on out, so that we can, you know, communicate effectively or whatever, and like give them. Like, give them the outs. Um, I had someone to do this the other day.
Speaker 1:She's like a coach for practitioners like brick and mortar practitioners and she's now going over into this like AI focus. So, like a very hard left turn, like almost like a one 80, I would argue and she sent an email. She was like no hard feelings, if this is not, you unsubscribe and we're good. I would do that, that's how I would think about it. And then to warm up that current list and to really serve them, give them some sort of valuable information over the next couple of emails Again, it could be a curated video series that you record. It could be, you know, like my number one tip for something, or try this, or like a hack, or just give them something so that they have something to look forward to. As you like. Launch this new direction or focus.
Speaker 2:Cause I think that's where many, many of our audience members may be is is in that position of okay, this sounds pretty good, I can start this now. I've got five people on my email list or whatever, and I can start this now. Where do I begin? And I guess it's a good idea where you could begin with something like that. Here I am, I exist and this is what I do. Would love for you to continue. We've got this coming out, but hey, if it's not you, that's okay. No hard feelings, click on subscribe and we'll go from there.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yeah, I had a fitness business prior to this business and I didn't do that and all of a sudden I had these people like respond to me, who were like who are you and why are you in my inbox. I'm like, oh yeah, I get it. I didn't think that through and like even like the same for my Instagram account. Like I didn't like start a new one or like even mention it. I just kind of like full force, cause that's how I move. Many times, yeah, it was just, it was weird for people. So, in order to not be weird, just tell them what's going on.
Speaker 2:Wow, that makes perfect sense, and it's something most folks don't even begin to think about.
Speaker 1:No, you don't think about it, because you've also never done this before right, it's like a whole new thing and we're all navigating this basically like real time. So, yeah, you don't think about it.
Speaker 2:Wow, that makes perfect sense. That really does make perfect sense. In the time we have left, Allison, tell me the top couple of mistakes you see people make when it comes to email marketing. What are the top two or three things that come to mind? You're thinking, gee, if I could just get people not to do this it would help them so much. What do you think?
Speaker 1:One is like a very practical thing. It's like not being consistent. So with email marketing we have the ability to pre-schedule stuff. So like, if you have a like one day you were just on fire with creativity like knock out a bunch of emails and schedule them. There's nothing worse than when, like someone's like hey, I've got a three part video series for you and they drop the three videos maybe on Monday, tuesday, wednesday and then nothing. And then, like two weeks later they're like oh yeah, by the way, I'd like you to buy my thing. Like that doesn't work, but if you can bring people on a journey consistently, whatever consistency looks like for you, do that and show up in a consistent way because that allows you to stay top of mind. So maybe that's emailing once a week or twice a week or whatever that is for you. Just stick to that schedule because, again, it helps you stay top of mind and that's a really important marketing thing. And then the other thing is almost like being apologetic for sales.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest things I see when people come to me and they're like this is my funnel, this is my email marketing. Nobody's buying from it. The thing that I see is in those emails where you're asking people to buy or book a call or whatever that call to action is. It's like super wishy-washy. It's like if you think that this would serve you, cool click here. And it's like super wishy-washy. It's like if you think that this would serve you, cool click here. And it's like, buried at the bottom, and people, if you're not feeling confident in your offer, like they're not going to buy from you. If you're not feeling confident and like I can actually help you, then there's no way they're whipping out their hard-earned money and paying you to serve them Like that's never going to happen. So don't be apologetic for sale. Don't be apologetic when it comes to selling. If you have something that can help people.
Speaker 2:Tell them how you can help them, but not necessarily over the top. Mine's better than anybody else's out there. I'm the best thing since sliced bread you need to come see me because I'm wonderful.
Speaker 1:No, but like be clear, like, hey, I have three spots left. Here's the link to buy. You know things like that. Or I have, like you have 50% off for the next four days. Here's a link to learn more. You know? Like being clear with like what the expectations are. It's just like with kids being clear with what the expectations are, the timeline they have and what you want them to do.
Speaker 2:My wife was an elementary school teacher in the parochial schools for 30 years, and if there were two things she ever taught me, that was one.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It took me, you know, 40 years to learn it, but that was one and the other one was there are always logical consequences for anything you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So if you don't eat dinner, that's your opportunity, and the logical consequence is yeah, you're going to be hungry later on. Sorry, not that we would ever starve our children.
Speaker 1:But you get to lecture them while you're feeding their second dinner. That's right, you got it. You got it. Oh, that's super. That is super. You get to lecture them while you're feeding their second dinner and be like. This is why I said this on the first dinner.
Speaker 2:That's right, you got it. You got it. Oh, that's super. That is super. Allison, you have been absolutely fantastic today. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Commission Code for Success.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me. This is so fun.
Speaker 2:It's been a blast, absolutely been a blast, absolutely been a blast, and we got to do this again. Allison was so kind to help me in so many different ways. I'm doing another summit coming up here in the fall for the commission code and, allison, if you'd be on our summit, I would love that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that'd be super fun. Send me details.
Speaker 2:I will, I will, and until then, everybody out there, y'all, just have a great week. We'll see you again soon. Well, that does it for this episode of the Commission Code Podcast. This is the place where we want to help you find the commission code to success in your business. Remember, go to MorrisSimscom for more information and in the meantime, hey, have a great week, get out there and meet somebody new, and we'll see you again next time right here on the Commission Code. Best wishes. I'm Morris Sims, thank you.