I was given an opportunity to speak to a group of women entrepreneurs. My first – ever – presentation. I spent most of my
life avoiding public speaking. Avoiding it like the plague. It was my greatest fear.

Yet I knew that I needed to push myself out of my comfort zone if I was going to make it as a business owner. I knew the statistics were not optimistic, 50% of women entrepreneurs don’t make it past the first five years – and this was year one. From what I experienced growing up at home with both of my parents owning their own business, I knew the entrepreneurial journey was hard. I had to work fast.

I had to work fast because I had a lot of issues and personal challenges getting in my way and sabotaging my ability to be successful. I had to get over my issues about networking, sales, and public speaking. I knew that if I didn’t figure all this stuff out, I’d be in big trouble. I was living on my own, recently divorced. My father has just died from a long battle with cancer. I was reinventing my life… again… with nobody to fall back on. I had to make this work. I didn’t have a choice. If I wanted to step into my greater purpose and share my story with the world, the time had come.

I ignorantly thought that all I had to do was show up, do my thing, and I would start getting clients. At the time, I didn’t really understand the concept of inviting people to work with me.

I spent hours putting together my first ever presentation to that group of women entrepreneurs. It took me hours to write all of the content for my speech, which was some of my best stuff. Innovative concepts that weren’t yet being talked about in the mainstream: a new paradigm of marketing from the inside out. I was so excited to share my story with the world and to begin making an impact on the women around me while increasing my revenue.

In the days leading up to my presentation, I began to gather more and more courage and confidence about ‘coming out’ for the first time – the first time speaking publicly, out of choice. And from a woman who has struggled with speaking for decades, this was a momentous occasion for me.

The room was packed.

I delivered an inspiring, powerful presentation to a sold out room of women eager to hear my message. It felt good to finally step into this more authentic version of myself that was just waiting to be birthed. I received some of the most heartfelt feedback and testimonials after my presentation was finished. Some of them told me that they appreciated my courage in sharing my story, learned new marketing perspectives, and resonated with the message. Yet, out of the sold out crowd in the room, do you want to know how many clients I got?

None. Zilch. Nada.

I was heartbroken.

I didn’t get it.

Was my message not compelling enough? Did they not resonate with it? Am I not smart enough? They said it was helpful; the feedback was positive.

So, what happened?

What happened was that I didn’t invite them to learn more about what I offer. I didn’t give them a reason to find out more about how I could help them.

I took them to the edge — and then I left them hanging.

The mistakes that I made early on in my own journey as an entrepreneur, are not uncommon. I see this all the time with the women that I coach. I learned that it’s not enough to be brilliant at what I do. I also had to learn the tools, skills and best practices of how to actually convert my marketing activities into inquiries, consultations, and new clients.

Here are three critical ways to make sure that your visibility, converts.

1. Each marketing activity should have a call to action that invites your prospect into a next step with you.
2. The invitation needs to be compelling enough to take action on from the standpoint of the person you are inviting.
3. The offer needs to be of value to the person you are offering it to, based on what they deem to be of value not what you think is valuable to them.

If I had known that there were steps and proven strategies for converting my marketing into sales, I could have grown my business much faster, with much less pain and suffering along the way. I could have made more money, so that I could pay myself sooner. I could have avoided some very costly mistakes and the self-doubt and frustration that I felt each time I did something that didn’t quite work the way that I had hoped. I could have served more people, inspired more lives, ignited more people into their own transformation.

Over the past five years, I have packaged all of my learnings into what I now teach in my business development coaching program so that my clients can benefit from my experience without having to go through it themselves. It’s a proven-system, which borrows from traditional business fundamentals (taught in business school) coupled with my real-world ‘in-the-trenches’ experience on my journey to building a six-figure business. If you are tired of slow growth, or no growth in your business and you want a shortcut to fast-track your ability to get more clients and grow your business with more ease and confidence, contact me for a 45 minute ‘get acquainted’ call. I’m a master at diagnosing why you’re not getting the results you want, and I will lay out a plan for you  so that you know exactly what you need to do in order to achieve your business goals. And if you want help and support on the ‘how-to’ of getting it done, I’ll tell you how I can help you do that too.