Why am I not making sales? A business coach’s honest answer

How many sales haven’t you made this year because you were waiting for everything to line up first?

I’m asking because I’ve done exactly that. I’m a business coach, I plan beautifully, and I’ve missed a lot of my own sales targets this year. The sales windows were in the diary, and then life barged in and had other ideas. 🫣

Here’s what I’ve worked out about why, and what I’m doing about it.

TL;DR: if this is you too:

1. Work out whether it’s fear or capacity getting in the way. (Mine was capacity.)
2. Stop waiting for more time or the perfect plan. Put a date in the diary for something you’re selling and tell people about it, out loud, now.
3. Make it easy to repeat. Schedule the content so it goes out without you needing the capacity or the energy on the day.

In my experience, when someone isn’t showing up to sell, it’s down to either fear or lack of capacity. Fear is a whole other post, so I’ll park it for another day. Honestly, looking at the year I’ve had, mine is definitely capacity.

Capacity isn’t just the hours in your day

Capacity is the time you’ve got, but it isn’t that black and white, because the real question is what else you’re managing. What other plates are you spinning? And how much of the time you’ve got can you, or should you, give to your business, vs everything else? It’s a finite number of hours with a very complicated life wrangled into them.

For me, limited capacity is frustrating because I love what I do. While I’m doing all the other stuff, the little voice in my head is chattering away about all the cool things I want to do in my business, and I'm worried my laptop is about to divorce me for neglect. (We were on a break, I swear 😆.)

My capacity has taken a real hit over the last 12 months. With two out of three children at high school now, I’d expected to be done with school runs. But the reality of being a SEND parent is that they need more help than I’d expected. I find myself dropping my eldest off at 8:30, taking my second in at 10 o’clock, and picking her up again at lunchtime because she's on a reduced timetable. And it’s not always as simple as dropping them off. Some days we sit in the car for 20 minutes, holding hands, waiting for that elusive moment of strength when they feel able to walk through the door. On top of that there are meetings with the SEND team, emails, phone calls and extra support outside school to coordinate.

What really pisses me off

Even when I do get time in front of my laptop, the energy doesn’t always show up, because so much of mine has gone to everything except my business. So what’s left has its own ideas about my to-do list. (FFS).

Then there’s the stop-start. Three trips to school a day means I never get a clear stretch, and with an ADHD brain getting back into a task after every interruption is a job in itself.

I love a plan, and I’d planned this year beautifully. Right now I’m feeling disappointed, if I’m honest, because I’ve missed so many of my own deadlines. I know my business could be further on than it is, and I haven’t brought in many new clients this year. The upside is that I love working with my clients in Elevated and my one-to-one clients, and because I haven’t taken on many new ones, they get my close, detailed attention.

Thank f*** I did this ...

Looking back, three decisions at the start of the year are the reason I’m still standing:

• I deliberately simplified the business. I archived or closed the offers that didn’t make strategic sense, because they weren’t easy to sell or I couldn’t repeat the selling process.
• I got clear on EXACTLY who I’m talking to and what I’m saying. Wherever I show up, I’m talking to the same people about the same stuff, consistently.
• I took a really hard look at the promises I make. I checked how I support my clients to be sure they’ll get great results and make money.* I want every offer to make a real difference and work in the simplest way possible for them, because they live lives a lot like mine and they can’t and don’t want to faff about either.

*That’s what THE RUNWAY is for. I could see what was missing for lots of my clients, in terms of simplifying their own businesses and making more money more easily, so I built something smaller and simpler to do exactly that. The people going through it are getting great results.

Right. Time to smash those sales targets.

All of this chaos feels like my new normal, and I don’t want to faff about any longer. So what am I going to do about it?

I’ve had a lightbulb moment. The real reason I missed those sales windows isn’t only the school runs. It’s that I didn’t talk about what I was selling. I kept everything firmly under the radar (not intentionally).

Here’s the diagnosis. When my energy and capacity are at an all-time low, the last thing I want to do is show up on social media, go to networking events and promote things. I slip back into being the most helpful coach in the world to the clients I already have, and the visible bit, the bit that brings new people in, waits.

The fix is a no-brainer

It’s the whole premise of THE RUNWAY: not only do I teach people how to create a really simple funnel that works, I’ve got one myself (well, duh!), so I already have everything in place to attract new people, nurture them, help them get to know me, and invite them to work together. The final step over the line is the bit I keep dodging: being consistently visible, on socials and with my email list, telling people how I can help.

So I’ve given myself a kick up the bum, got my planner out, and I’m scheduling the content to go out without needing me to remember, have capacity, or do battle with my energy rollercoaster.

Gosh, this feels like coaching myself, doesn’t it? Writing this post has been a bit of self-diagnosis, to be honest.

If your time looks like mine, stop waiting

At the end of a recent coaching call, we talked about how many sales we haven’t made this year because we were waiting ...

• Waiting for more time (which may not come).
• Waiting to plan everything in the right order.
• Waiting for it all to be created perfectly, or for a bigger email list, or for a time of year that doesn’t clash with school holidays, because “there’s no point doing it now”.

Stop waiting for more time. JFDI.

On that coaching call I gave us all a challenge (me included). What I said was: stop waiting and JFDI. It’s okay to try something messy and imperfect, in fact it’s flipping brilliant to do it.

So here’s me practising what I preach

Telling people about what I’m selling is the bit I missed, so I’m not going to skip it here.

But the crucial thing isn’t only showing up. It’s knowing what to say, and not sounding predictable, generic or (let’s be honest) a bit boring. If you’re not saying the right thing, or not saying it in the right way, people scroll straight past you. And I don’t know about you, but getting scrolled past is not what I’m here for. (I’ve written about why “overwhelmed” and friends get ignored.)

... most of us talk about our work starting from what WE know about the problem and how we could help. What actually works is starting from where your dream client is before they decide to work with you: what they're thinking, feeling and doing right now. So, how do you know what to say?

That’s what Pre-Flight Week is for. It’s module 1 of THE RUNWAY, hosted by me as a 'done-with-you experience' over five days, online, from Monday 2nd November. It’s for coaches and service-based business owners who’ve already sold their expertise, are doing everything they’re supposed to be doing, and are wondering why it isn’t working.

By Friday you’ll have:

• Clarity on what to say about your one offer, so you can stop changing direction
• Two specific moments that make your dream client realise they need help, the kind of thing that stops someone scrolling
• Real words and situations to draw on, instead of generic descriptions and jargon
• One clear sentence that says what your offer changes for people

That gives the marketing you’re already doing a much better chance of connecting with the people you want to reach, with less second-guessing and less time asking ChatGPT for yet another version. And you can use it for literally everything, from posts and networking to sales pages, newsletters and how you deliver your service, so it keeps paying off after the week is over.

You’re not doing it alone: there are live calls, co-working and personal feedback from me, plus my Pre-Flight Check, the AI coach I built to support my clients.

*Use this fee as a credit that towards any of my programmes if you buy within six months.