Building a Sales Process You Believe In

Watch the Episode on YouTube

Sales doesn’t have to feel slimy or stressful. In fact, when you treat it as service, selling becomes a natural extension of helping people.

In this episode, Carly and Joe break down the planning side of sales for solopreneurs, from understanding levels of touch to qualifying leads and nailing your quick pitch.

If the thought of selling makes you cringe, this conversation will help you rethink the process and build a sales plan that actually feels good.

Important Questions Answered In This Episode

How can solopreneurs approach sales without feeling sleazy?
By reframing sales as service. Instead of trying to push a product, focus on finding people who have problems you can genuinely solve. When you approach conversations with the goal of helping rather than selling, it becomes natural, authentic, and far less intimidating, even for introverts.

What does “level of touch” mean in sales planning?
The level of touch refers to how much interaction you have with a potential customer. High-touch sales involve more personal engagement, like coaching calls or consultations, while low-touch or no-touch sales rely on things like websites, emails, or quick transactions for lower-priced products. Solopreneurs need to match their sales process to both their offering and the time they can realistically invest.

Why is qualifying leads so important?
Not every prospect is worth your time. By qualifying leads, making sure they have a problem you can solve, the authority to make a decision, and the budget to buy, you avoid wasting hours chasing “tire kickers.” A simple system for filtering leads upfront saves time, energy, and frustration later on.

So, if you are lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, or are having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even just lonely running a company of one, click here to check out LifeStarr Intro!  

Episode Transcript

Carly Ries: Selling doesn't have to feel sleazy. It can actually feel good. And in this episode of the aspiring solopreneur, we share how to plan your sales process in a way that serves your customers while keeping your business profitable. From understanding touch in sales and how much of it you really need to crafting a crystal clear elevator pitch to qualifying leads so you don't waste time on tire kickers, this conversation breaks down the essentials of building a sales process you'll actually want to use. Plus, we reveal why even a mediocre contract is better than no contract at all.

So if you've ever dreaded sales like me, this episode will help you see it in a whole new light. You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for anyone on the solo business journey, whether you're just joined with the idea, taking your first bold step, or have been running your own show for years and want to keep growing, refining, and thriving. I'm Carly Ries, and along with my cohost, Joe Rando, we're your guides through the crazy but awesome world of being a company of one. As part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all things solar premiership, we help people design businesses that align with their life's ambition so they can work to live, not live to work. If you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the place for you.

But if you want real world insights from industry experts, lessons from the successes and stumbles of fellow solopreneurs, and practical strategies for building and sustaining a business you love, you're in the right spot. Because flying to a business doesn't mean you're alone. No matter where you are on your journey, we've got your back. Joe, we are back with another in person episode from in inbound because we are together in person. We are obviously batching our content this week because we have very limited time.

Always batch the content and take advantage of the time you have together because it's so limited. It's nine years in the making that we have three days together. So we're making the most of it. But in last episode, we continued our discussion on the Solopreneur Success Cycle, which our new book, Solopreneur Business for Dummies basically covers. And we talked about marketing strategy a couple of days ago.

Today, we wanna talk about the sales process, specifically in the planning phase. This is not the implementation. This is the planning phase. What do you have to say about that?

Joe Rando: Well, I think before you start planning how you're gonna sell, and there's only so much we can get into, because this is a big topic, and we'll try to keep it to seven, eight minutes. But the first thing just to know before you start is that, sales doesn't have to be sleazy. And in fact, it really shouldn't be sleazy. You are in a position of trying to help people. And so there are a couple of issues there.

You have to have something that will help them. So if they have a problem that you don't solve and you try to sell them your product, well, that's just sleazy by definition. So you have to find people that have the pain points that you solve. And then you have to go in and truly earnestly help them.

But once you do that now selling isn't sleazy, it's service, right? You're, serving people, you're helping people. And starting with that perspective can help you build out a sales process that you feel comfortable with, that you feel good about, and that you're gonna be able to execute in a way that feels good and that you can be effective at. Even if you don't see yourself as a salesperson, you can be an introvert, Some really good salespeople are introverts. It's just, a matter of having that process of understanding what you can do to help people and then going in and discovering, what their needs are and showing how you could help if you can.

So that's the first thing. Any thoughts on that?

Carly Ries: No. I mean, I am allergic to selling in the past because of the whole, reputation that sales, like car salesman and all that have. But this approach, when I started taking this approach, it's like instant zen for people that don't like sales.

Joe Rando: And I think the next thing is that you have to think about your sales process in terms of something called touch. And what touch means is just how much interaction are you gonna have with your potential customer? And it really depends on your business, So if you are, a high price life coach, you probably have what we call a high touch sale, You're probably in a position of having to spend some time talking with them, maybe do an introductory call kind of thing, spend twenty minutes, half an hour with them to get comfortable that you can help them and that they need what you're offering, because they're gonna be investing a lot of money going forward.

Now, if you're selling a $25 dog toy on Etsy, you're not gonna have any touch. That's no touch sale where now they're basically looking at your product and they're deciding whether they wanna put it in their shopping cart and buy it. And then in between there is a low touch sale, right? That's something that's usually priced more in between. And you are maybe doing emailing with them, you know, something like that.

You're not spending a lot of time because you can't afford to, You can't afford to spend a lot of time closing a $100 sale or something. So you have to think about your product and how much time you can invest and develop your sales process around the level of touch that you can afford to do and that you need to do for your business. And if you have a business that's at a low price point, but requires high touch, probably wanna rethink that.

Carly Ries: Well, and they're now saying that, the average buyer's journey, or buying cycle is like 11 touch points.

Joe Rando: Used to be Seven, right?

Carly Ries: Yeah. Now it's 11. It's extended. That's for both marketing and sales. You don't have to call these people 11 times to get ahold of them.

But through all of your efforts, I mean, that's a lot of touch points. So consider, do those need to be marketing if you don't want a lot of selling? Or does it need to be more on the sales side if you need to have that approach?

Joe Rando: And then the next one is, it's everybody's heard the term of the elevator pitch, and there's something related to that. But you wanna be able to kind of very quickly express what you do and who you do it for. You know, you should really get that out in like thirty seconds. I mean, it's funny to talk to some people and say, well, what do you do? And it's this five and a half minute explanation.

That just doesn't work. If you don't understand what you do and who you do it for in a way that can be expressed very quickly, you wanna go back to the drawing board and think through how you can explain that for lots of reasons. Number one, because you wanna be able to just tell people so that they will wanna buy from you, but also because you need to have that kind of crystal clear in your head. And, if you look at LifeStarr, you know, what do we, who do we help? We help one person businesses that wanna build businesses that serve their life's goals as opposed to trying to scale.

So, I mean, that was probably ten seconds and it's important. And it's just important to be able to do that. So I mean, at least I really feel that if you can't nail it quickly, you're probably, missing the boat on being able to sell your stuff effectively.

Carly Ries: I asked somebody, a couple weeks ago. Was like, oh, so what do you do? And they're like, oh, if I had a nickel. And I was like, well, what? I didn't know.

But, what do you do? And they had to have a joke because they couldn't properly explain it. And then I lost interest, and I still don't know what that person does.

Joe Rando: They don't know either, I think. So another one, and again, keeping it at a high level here, but something that a lot of people don't do, and it's very, I'll say expensive in terms of time and potential income. And that is people don't qualify their leads. They get somebody that shows interest and they say, oh, they've got interest and they just, keep chasing them or, spending time with them. But you have to understand whether this person, number one, has a problem you can solve.

Number two, has the authority to buy your product or service. Number three, has the budget to buy your product or service. And, if they don't have the authority to say, then you have to find out who does and and make sure that you get in front of that person somehow. This is obviously we're talking high touch sales here, but qualifying and some of this can be done without face to face phone calls. I see people using type forms and asking questions and getting answers to these questions that they can then just go in and scan, and decide whether this is somebody that makes sense to follow-up with.

And even with a lower touch sale, you can qualify people to make sure they're the right kind of people to spend time on. And it's really important because, I've seen a lot of, you know, I've been in a position of working with salespeople, managing salespeople, and the ones that chase the unqualified leads waste a lot of time and don't find much success, frankly.

Carly Ries: Yeah. It's a time lag. It takes time on the upfront to put together a system in place, but saves you so much time on the back end.

Joe Rando: Definitely. And, there are this subspecies of humans that are lovingly referred to as tire kickers. I remember at my last startup, we would have a trade show booth, and these people would come and hang around our booth for hours at a time every year, year after year, never bought a thing, but just taking up time and, we'd try to work around them and be polite, but, it's very strange, but, yes, those people are out there. So you wanna be on guard for that. And then the last thing that I'll talk about today, because again, there's a lot to this.

Carly Ries: Buy the book.

Joe Rando: Buy the Shameless plug. Yeah. But the last thing is the concept of contracts and statements of work, depending on your business. And there should always be a contract. Now, if it's a low touch sale, it may be, something you know, a link in your website, but, where people acknowledge, they check a box.

Yes. I understand, blah, blah, blah. If you're doing something more, bespoke or custom or, something where there are different things that you could do, if you have a more complex sale, Statement of work basically outlines, what you're gonna do, what they're going to do and come to an agreement about what you're gonna deliver, what they're gonna do to help you get what you need to deliver and timeframes. And even from, layout meeting times and frequencies and what happens if they don't deliver the stuff that you need from them on time that pushes out the due date. it's just, really important. Otherwise, you end up with a few things.

You end up with number one, potential misunderstanding about what they're actually getting. Number two, scope creep is a huge problem. All of a sudden you're doing x and now it's, X plus Y, and you're just doing a lot more than you budgeted for. And now you're losing money or making a lot less per hour on your efforts. so having a statement of work is really, really important. And, there's a lot more about that, on our website. in Lifestarr Central, if you join intro, you can get into LifeStarr Central and get stuff about that. I'm not sure if we have a podcast episode on statements.

Carly Ries: We do. Yeah.

Joe Rando: We do. Okay.

Carly Ries: We actually have a very recent one. I can link to that in the show notes.

Joe Rando: And, then, like I said, a good solid contract is important. Just something that they agree to that just outlines the payment terms and all the other stuff that's, limitations of liability, blah, blah, blah. You know, I like using lawyers for those things, but you can find, probably find something online. That's a good outline for what you do and then, edit it, modify it. the thing is mediocre contract is better than no contract.

So I would highly recommend that you you consider doing something there, have something in place that outlines the deal.

Carly Ries: I agree. Well, folks, that is all we have for you today. As always, leave that five star review. seriously, we so appreciate it. Share this episode with a friend and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, including YouTube.

And we will see you next time on The Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs.

Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.