Ep 190: Behind The Scenes Of A Sales Call Challenge That Actually Worked

Welcome And Who This Is For

Speaker 2 0:01

Welcome to the Tiny Marketing Podcast. I'm Sara Noel Block, and this show is made for solo consultants who wanna get booked out without burning out. If you've ever thought, "I just want this to feel easier," you're not alone. Around here, we focus on simple, sustainable growth that actually fits into your life, so growth feels doable instead of overwhelming.

Sarah Noel Block 0:22

Hey, quick note before we dive in this episode was originally recorded as a live stream. If you'd prefer to watch the video replay, you can head over to my YouTube channel. Now, let's get into it!

Speaker 3 0:34

Hello. Welcome everybody who is joining me today for the Three Days to Three Sales Calls Challenge debrief. You're going to get a little behind the scenes peek at what it took to launch this challenge, what the results were, um, what worked and what didn't work, what I would do differently next time. So for anybody who's new here, I am Sarah Nawa Block. I am the creator of Booked Out in Six, and I just ran

Challenge Debrief And Big Promise

Speaker 3 1:07

a challenge that lasted... The welcome sequence went out on Friday, and then the challenge was Monday through Wednesday, where all participants had the goal of booking three sales calls. So we're gonna get into all of that right now in case you are interested in either creating your own challenge or if you are just interested, maybe you were a participant in this challenge and you're like, "Wonder what it took to actually build that thing." So I'm going to share the results with the stage now, and here she is. So here's my behind the scenes on the Three Days to Three Sales Calls Challenge. I had 65 people who were registered for the challenge, and truly, I got lucky on that. Um, I did not do a ton of promotion on this, surprisingly. I just happened to have a lot of stages, we'll say, that I was speaking on the month prior to the challenge taking place. So I was speaking, which was already scheduled and not planned for this, in two or three different communities that would likely enjoy this challenge, so they got invitations. And then I just talked about it in the niche communities I'm in. I only sent out one email to my own email list, and I only sent out one LinkedIn post on this challenge. I did create a banner at the top. You know what? I'm gonna make this a little bit smaller so you can see me. Um, I did put a banner on the top of my LinkedIn that... with a QR code so people could register, so people could have registered that way. But the main way people came into this challenge was

How Registrations Happened With Minimal Promo

Speaker 3 3:12

through speaking in niche communities, and that was it. So of the 65 people who registered, 56 participated, and for the people who shared their results, they really did... we're gonna get in deeper in a second, but they really did book real sales calls, and a lot of them closed So let's get into it. We're gonna cover today, I'm gonna try and keep this tight, in like 15 minutes, is how I built it. So the timeline and tech stack I used, what worked really well, um, the features that I will definitely bring into my future challenges, what I should have done differently, so either gaps that came up or oops moments that, like, mistakes that I made on my end, and then the results. So those are the four things that I'm gonna get into today. If you are watching this live, please say hi in the chat. I can see your chat, so from where I am, so please say hi. Let me know you're here. So first is how I built it. Okay, now that we're gonna get into this, I'll make this, I'll make this bigger Okay, there we go Okay, so here was my challenge timeline. And, um, so on Friday, I sent out a welcome email with the premise of this challenge and some weekend prep that they can do ahead of it so that they're prepared to just start running come Monday. So I sent that out on Friday. On Monday was day one, and that is when we talked about referrals on repeat. Um, so for anybody who is watching this right now, and you're like, "Well, what was this challenge about anyway?" It was... The goal was to book three sales calls in three days. So on day one, I taught the referrals on repeat system. On day two, I taught the niche networker system, which you can see works well since this entire challenge was filled basically from that. And day three was fast cash. So this was, this was actually three systems in one. So in fast cash, I taught people how to close new sales from past clients. I taught them how to reinvigorate warm leads from the past that didn't convert, and I taught them how to close conversations,

Timeline And Daily Lessons Breakdown

Speaker 3 5:55

turn them into sales calls without being salesy. So yeah, that was day three. And then on Thursday, anybody who applied for bicked out, Booked Out in Six, they got a bonus day where I taught them six steps to keep a booked out business as a solo consultant. So only the applicants got access to that one. And then there's me here today. This is day five, and I am sharing the behind-the-scenes debrief of how exactly this worked. So this is my fifth live stream this week, and I'm spent. I have... My bags have bags at this point on under my eyes Um, okay, so the tech stack. This is the question I get most often when I'm having conversations about how to build something is, "What tech do I need?" So I used four tools, and I could have used less. I'll get into that later. So one was Squarespace. My sales page was on my website, which is on Squarespace, and then I had a checkout button, which led to Heartbeat. Heartbeat is where the checkout was through, but it also was the home to the community, the lesson hub, training replays, and then the checkout. All of my emails went through Flodesk, so the confirmation email, some anticipation emails on like, like, "Don't forget this challenge is happening." Um, and then three emails each day of the actual challenge. So there was an 8:00 AM email that went out that I would give the lesson. So they got the full lesson of what they were gonna learn today, that day in the live stream with a link to the live stream. That email was also in Heartbeat as a post in the community, so they can access it either way. And then there was an email that went out 10 minutes before the live stream so people remembered to join live. And during the live stream, I was doing a lot of Q&A and hot seats, as well as teaching. And then at the end of the day around 3:00 PM, I sent out the wrap-up email and showed them where they can get to their replays. I have to sneeze. If I sneeze, I'm sorry. Um, and then the live streams happened on StreamYard, which is what I'm using right now. Um, they were daily, and it was about 15-minute lesson and like 15 to 20 minutes doing Q&A and live revisions. Okay, I see more of you are on here now, so come say hi. Say hi in the chat. Okay. Part two is what worked really well, so the features that I am going to have in every challenge since then. So one thing that worked really well is the challenge itself. So many people enjoyed it and talked about it that I got a lot of people raising their hands saying, "Please let me know when the next challenge happens." So that was another thing that worked really well. Um, now let's get into the things that I actually wrote about. The topic was the big, was a big winner. So, mm, people want to make money. You have a business, you want to make money. So the fact that my topic and what I was teaching was how to book sales calls, that was a, a winner. I taught three systems consultants can use, and they can repeat these. They can use them over and over again, it's not just theory, and actually book sales calls. So that was incredibly helpful is that people were interested in the topic. The next thing that worked well is the structure. I just told you, but I sent three emails every day, plus I posted to the community. We had a lot of engagement in that community, which I think helped a lot and showed like... gave everybody motivation. Um, the daily lives, I'm gonna get into like exactly what those l- like numbers look like, but the daily lives were really beneficial and had a ton of engagement, a ton of comments. My participants were freaking amazing. They were all over it. Um, so the structure of this challenge led to really high engagement, which I was ecstatic about. Challenge bingo was another thing that was really fun and engaging with the audience.

Tech Stack And Daily Email Flow

Speaker 3 10:34

So I built a interactive kind of app sort of thing on my website that was challenge bingo. So as long as you were opening the challenge bingo in your browser, it saved your settings, and it's gamified taking action. So you can click a square if you responded to someone's post. You could click a square if you sent out your first 15 messages. Um, it rewarded action and not just attendance. It did reward attendance also, but not just attendance The live stream was incredibly active. We had a pop-in chat. Um, we did real-time edits and Q&A which drove a lot of momentum, and people who were on those live streams and sending me their work, and I was revising them live, a lot of them took those revisions that I suggested and put them in the community afterwards to get, like, a second round of looks. So we had a lot of momentum from that. The next was the three-day timeframe. Any longer, and I think we would have lost momentum. I would not do a challenge longer than three days after this one. One, it took a lot of energy. It took a lot of energy. It was consuming my life for those three days. But on top of that, you can see that there was a little bit of a dip in engagement with each of those days. So a lot of times people are doing five-day challenges, and I'm thinking by day five there's, like, three people hanging on by a prayer, um, on those five-day challenges, where we still had really high engagement on day three and beyond. People are still commenting right now. The challenge is coming down in 45 minutes. People are in there right now. Um, and then the real attendee results was another thing that really landed. So we promised from this challenge three calls booked. That was our goal for this, and not only did everybody who shared their results get those three calls, um, a lot of them also closed deals during those three days, which is so impressive. So they were able to get those calls booked, they were able to have those calls, and they were able to close it during those three days, which was freaking amazing. Now, if you have any questions about the things that I'm talking about right now, put them in the chat, 'cause I'm gonna get into the chat as soon as I'm done with this. So don't be shy and don't wait. Challenge bingo. This was the engagement engine. I didn't realize how... Like, I thought it would be fun, that's why I built it, but I didn't realize how excited people would get about it So people were filling it out, they were screenshotting it, they were posting it. Um, the bingo card, it was all over the community. It was a lot of fun. So it rewarded action, not just attendance. Um, the prizes made it, like, the engagement worth it for people. Um, sharing it publicly, you had to share a screenshot in the community in order to, like, be entered into the prizes, so it created this social accountability. Um, the visual progress is a dopamine hit. So that's another

What Drove Engagement And Results

Speaker 3 14:15

thing is they were able to get this satisfying little green check mark whenever they accomplished something. And it was easy to add prizes mid-challenge, which I ended up needing to because I had originally only chosen, like, I was gonna have one winner, but then after I saw how engaging it was, I was like, "I need to add more prizes." So I loved it, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna use that challenge bingo card. I'm gonna do it again. Um, another win was the community stayed really loud. So I use Heartbeat, which is a community platform, and the threads were active every single day. People were cheering each other on. Uh, you could see right here, s- these are just some of the quotes from the posts, but people were getting real wins and excited for each other, which is... Like, it creates momentum when you're doing something together and you're moving through a process, you're winning together. This one came from one of my clients who didn't do the challenge, and she's like, "Oh, no. I... The FOMO is killing me." Oops, a little overlap there. Um, so these are what I should have done, but I didn't. So these are my mistakes These are four things that I would fix. A lot of them are surrounding email. Um, first though, I pitched my offer too late. So throughout this challenge, people were super engaged, but I didn't even talk, I didn't even mention what I do, or who I do it for, or what Booked Out in 6 is until day two, and it was just, like, a little 10-second nothing. Um, and I didn't actually prompt anyone to apply for Booked Out in 6 until the last day, so people had to scramble at the... to apply at the very end of the challenge when engagement was already lower than day one in order to get access to the bonus training the next day. So that was dumb on my part. Um, next time, I'm going to mention the offer in all of the lead-up to the challenge, and at least just touch on it, tease the offer in each of the livestreams. Um, two, I did double the work when I didn't need to, and I learned midday, uh, midway through day two that I could have sent my posts as emails, um, so it would've d- done double duty. But instead, what I was doing is I was drafting everything in Flodesk and then copy and pasting it as a post into Heartbeat afterwards. I didn't have to do that it turned out, so I was wasting time. I could have just posted it or scheduled it to post in Heartbeat and had it send as an email in addition. I didn't know, though Um, another thing that I did that was stupid is, well, Zapier. So because I didn't know that I could send those emails through Heartbeat, I had eddi- I had set up a Zap. So everybody who signed up for the challenge got Zapped on over to Flodesk so that they could get the emails for the challenge, but not everyone made it through. I don't know, maybe it was like the event trigger that I picked in Zap, but not everyone made it through, so I ended up doing an export right before the challenge began just to pick up anybody that might have been missed. And when I did that, I messed up the filter, so this is where I, I screwed up. I messed up the filter on the export, and I ended up exporting two groups, so the challenge participants, but also the people who attend my consultant's mastermind. So then they also got the welcome to the challenge email, which was dumb 'cause they were not in the challenge. They were not participating. So those are the mistakes I made during the challenge. Oops. Even someone who's been doing it for 20 years makes mistakes. Oh, well. The results. Attendee wins and then my conversion numbers. So let's get into registration. Um, 65 people registered for the challenge, and anyone who popped in a little bit later, I explained this at the top, but how I filled those seats was just... I mean, part of it was luck. I had already been scheduled to speak in a couple different communities, and I offered them a discount to join, and I talked about it in niche communities. Then

Mistakes To Fix Next Time

Speaker 3 19:22

I had... I sent one email, coulda done more. I sent one LinkedIn post, definitely could have done more, and then I added it to my banner with a QR code so people could register that way. So most people were joining from the communities and me speaking within those communities, and then there were a couple people who joined the other ways. Um, of those 65 people who registered, 56 participated, which is pretty freaking good. So we had 86% activation. Um, and then the live stream views, let's talk about that for a second. Um, on day one, we had 60 views of the live stream which is kind of funny since 56 people actually participated, like they were in the community. Um, so I guess some people were probably just watching twice. On day two, it's not on here, but we had... Oh, no, it is. It's down a little bit lower. Um, on day two, we had 45 views, and then on day three, we had 35 views. So it's kinda normal if you've run a challenge before. You'd see, um, it's kind of normal to have a dip, a little dip each day. Your first day is always the biggest one, so I'd say this is pretty average. And then the wins. So 100% of the participants who shared their results booked three calls, um, and during those three days. And then 33% of the ones who booked those calls closed a sale during those three days. And 10%... Now, this one's just for me. 10% of the participants of this challenge applied for Booked Out in Six. Which, huh, I think that's... I mean, that's pretty average, honestly. So here's what I would tell you is topic is everything. Pick something that matters right now in this moment to get people interested and excited in your topic and your challenge. Right now, people are talking about slowing down, like sales are slowing down, so this topic was just of the moment, and they needed a little momentum to be able to get some clo- some sales calls on the books.

Numbers, Conversions, And Key Lessons

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Gamify actions that take place within your challenge. The bingo card was really great. Um, we had leadership boards, prize stacks. Rewarding action helps a lot. Next time, I would pitch from day one. I would pitch from before day one and just let them know, like, "I also can help you in other ways. You can get a whole... You can get six systems custom-built for you with me." I didn't do that. I waited until day three to talk about it. Um, I would keep it tight. Keep it to three days. It- that's the sweet spot where neither of you are losing momentum. And then if you, like, streamline your tech stack as much as possible. If I could go back, I would not have used Flodesk for my challenge emails, because some people were receiving the emails, some people weren't, because at one point they may have unsubscribed or something like that. I would've just done it all through Heartbeat. So those are my learnings, and if you want to build your own challenge or sales system, which is what this challenge was about, apply for Booked Out in 6. You can do that with the little QR code in the corner. Um, inside Booked Out in 6, we build a custom blueprint for you so you know exactly what you need to do, um, at each stage to be able to build a booked out business. We go through four-week sprints together one-on-one where we build out each of those pieces for you, so within six months you have a repeatable system. You have a playbook that you can just keep on doing And the other thing people love is that they are with me. You can DM me anytime, you can send me your docs. I'm in there, I'm revising, I'm... You're not in this alone. We're building a custom system based off of you.

How To Pitch Earlier And Streamline Tools

Speaker 3 24:04

Um, and if you apply now in June, I don't wanna forget this, but in June we're doing a live incubator where we're building a entry offer for you, an easy yes offer together that you are gonna launch and sell for summer. So it'll be a special summer offer that we're building out in June, and it's gonna be so much fun. All right, so apply there. Thank you guys so much for joining me today. If you're watching this, hi. And if you're listening to this, because this is gonna be Sunday's episode, hello also. And I will talk to you soon. Bye-ee.

Speaker 24:55

If this episode made things feel a little more doable, I'd love to help you take the next step with the Booked Out Blueprint. It's a practical, low-pressure session to clarify your offers, your marketing, and what actually moves the needle. You can book yours through the link in the show notes. You don't have to figure it out alone