Ep 194: The Private Invite System That Turns Past Clients Into Q4 Revenue

Welcome To Uncut Summer

0:01

Hey, hey, hey. This is Sarah Nawa Block, and you are listening to Tiny Marketing. This is the Uncut Summer series where you are getting the raw, unfiltered, unedited recordings from our interviews, webinars, and workshops. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ridiculousness Hi.

The Summer Slump Problem

0:22

Okay, let's picture this. It's July 8th today. Your inbox is silent. The CFO you had three meetings with and you thought you were about to close is now on a Greek island until August 19th. The CEO, on this other deal that you've been working on, they're in the Hamptons for a month. Even your warm referrals are getting autoresponder bounces. This is called the summer slump, and it kills more consulting businesses than any recession. It's three months where things can be kind of dry. But here's what nobody told you. Your next three clients in your inbox past clients, people who already paid you, already trust you, and already told you exactly what they need next. They just don't know you have an opening. One of my clients closed a 40,000 deal this way with one message. So today, I'm going to show you the system that turns your inbox history into Q4 revenue. In the next 17 minutes or so, you'll learn the three-step private invite system, how to audit your past client communications, find the exact offer they're already asking for, and send a private invite that converts better than you'd ever believe. So if you haven't met me before, hi, I'm Sara Noelle Block. I help solo consultants and fractional executives get booked out in around six months without LinkedIn burnout or the referral or bust pipeline that most of us are, relying on. My clients have closed $40,000 stalled deals with one message. They've 6x'd their revenue in 90 days and built wait lists that they could manage, so they could manage being booked out without burning out. And we're gonna talk about one of those systems that I help them with today. At the end, I'll share more about my 6 to 6K mini course boot camp. You can see it right here in the corner. You can scan that to get more information now. It is a longer form version of what we're talking about today, along with five other systems that you can deploy to get out of that sales slump that's killing your summer. But for now, let's just hang out and take notes. Before we get into the juice of it, a quick poll. I am not judging, trust me, because there have been periods of time where I have done nothing to, to do that, to reinvigorate. I relied on reoccurring revenue, which I love. I love reoccurring revenue. But I relied on that and not building a pipeline, so when a contract would end, have anything to fill it up. So I'm not judging because are because I had to learn them, and I had to build those systems for myself So most of you are about to find out that you have a bunch of hidden money hidden in your inbox and a few other places we're gonna talk about, that you didn't know that you had. What we're going to talk about today is, well, a strategy that will make this really, really easy for you, but also a few other ways that you can find those past clients and what would make the most sense so you can do this today. I want you to do this the second we get off this live stream. Got me? Okay.

Why New Outreach Backfires

4:11

So let's talk about the math that nobody does. So your default summer is typically post more on LinkedIn, and like me, you're getting hardly any reach right now anyway. Send more cold emails, and cold emails are really hard to convert. I have, converted from a cold email. I know some people are great at it, but I'm not. and a lot of times we're, we're doing that, and we're cranking up the new prospect outreach so we can build up a pipeline. But the reality of that is it takes about 90 days of effort in order to get those strategies to work and close and get the money actually in your, in your bank so you can spend it. So these strategies backfire because the people you want, they're gone. They're on vacation. Even your best pitch isn't being read. I mean, I'm... I have people that I'm super interested in working with, and I'll keep boomeranging their emails back to me because I just don't have the capacity to be able to respond to that email right now because my kids are in summer camp, and they have a weird schedule, or I'm going on vacation or whatever, something like that. But everyone else is in the same boat as me. Their schedule is weird in the summer. So those cold emails and new prospect outreaches, they're going to be ignored because they don't recognize you. Simple as that. Cold outreach in the summer has the worst open rates and the worst reply rates because of that, and you're chasing strangers when there's warm money that's sitting in your past client list. So let's look at this. Past clients are usually not done buying. They're done buying the one thing that they bought from you before, but they still have a next thing, and odds are they already told you what it is. So in some sort of transcript, gateway offer, proposal, you have the answers to what they need next. Summer is bad for new outreach, but it's the best time of the year to audit the work that you've done before. You finally have the bandwidth to actually go back through your CRM, your proposals, your call notes, your transcripts, your gateway offers, and look at what did they need next.

The Three Step Private Invite

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The work cold outreach prevents you from doing in Q2, you can do now Okay, so let's get into the three-step private invite system. I just did this a couple weeks ago, and this is what inspired this. A private, invitation is a personalized offer to a past client based on what they already told you that they need. So you're not guessing, you're not offering some fits-all thing. The need is documented in your past communications already. They're just connecting the dots and handing them the solution. So let's walk through the three steps that you would need to do first. First, you want to audit. So go through your past proposals, your gateway offer notes, and your discovery call recordings, even meeting transcripts with your past clients. Two, you want to identify. You want to find the exact thing that they need next. It's already there. You don't have to guess. So for anybody who's watching today and you have deployed my gateway offer strategy, this is a great example of that. You can go through the document you created during your gateway offer session, and you'll have what they need to do now, but you'll also have what they need to do next. So you know what to approach them with next because you interviewed all of the stakeholders within that organization. You know exactly where they are and where they're going and what they need now. Okay, let's talk about three, the invitation. You want to send a personalized invitation, not a pitch, that references their own words. Their own words that you'll find from the transcripts, from your calls, from your notes. So why does this convert when cold outreach can't? One, you're not guessing. You're confirming what they already said. They are the ones who told you that this is the thing that they need to work on next. Or you built out a strategy, so you obviously know what is the next thing that they need to do on their roadmap. Past clients already crossed the trust threshold with you. There's no who is this person objection. There's no I don't have time to bring on another vendor objection. They already know you. They already trust you. You're already in their system, so this is just an invitation to the next thing that would that would help them in reaching their goal. The private invitation framing positions you as remembering them instead of chasing them. That's a huge thing. You are sending a private invite that shows that you remember what they were going through. You have created a custom next step for them, and you're just offering them to take that next step. They might not know that you have availability, that you are still offering that kind of offer. They're heads down doing their own work stuff, and they're not thinking about this until you bring it up, "Hey, this is the next thing that you wanted to work on. Now is the time." And then internal precedent exists. They're already justified in spending money with you because they've already spent money with you. So that's why the private invitation works so well for consultants. And even when you're doing retainers, it can work because you completed that retainer, but you know what they're going to be doing next. What is their next focus?

One Message Forty Thousand Dollars

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Okay. So a tech consultant that I work with had a 40,000 deal that was silent for an entire year The client had gotten busy, Instead, he went back through his discovery call notes, found the specific transformation they talked about, and sent one message referencing it. Three weeks later, they signed a contract for a $40,000 deal. It was one message, and it was from his own past conversation with the client that they were able to do that. So this is not a scalable play. This isn't a mass marketing play. This is very custom, this is very personalized, and it works really, really well. So where do you need to look? Let's get into, like, the audit playbook Okay, so let's walk through the four places to mine.

Four Places To Mine For Clues

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one place to look is in your past proposals The phase two that you teased out but you never sold. Like, we're gonna complete this in milestone one, and then maybe you never even got to milestone two, which you have already kind of told them this is what you need to do next. The scope expansion that they declined with a not now, bring it up now. So if you were working with them on a specific project and they were like, "Ooh, I really wanna do this," and you said, "Okay, awesome. This is what it would cost." And they're like, "Okay, let's just pause that for now," now is the time to bring that up. Bring it up now. And the deliverable that you scoped where they only bought part of the project. So a lot of times you'll scope out a project that will be all-encompassing and fix their problem, but the client will be like, "Okay, but I only have the budget for this piece of it right now." Bring up the second piece now. The next place you wanna look is in past discovery calls. So if you aren't recording your discovery calls, record them. Record the transcripts. I use my transcripts for everything. I love using my transcripts for my sales calls. what do you use with your discovery calls? Any down the road comments, like, "Eventually we'll need to do this," or, "Probably a year from now we'll get to this project." Look for things like that. Budget objections that were, are really about timing. They didn't have the time, they were working on a big event or something like that. They couldn't do it at the time is the point. Bring it up now. provide it as a private invitation. And any problems that they mentioned but you didn't scope. Maybe that wasn't something that you did then. Maybe you didn't have the capacity. Maybe you've added team members. So if they brought up a problem that they have and you never scoped it, scope it now and send them a private invitation for it. The third place you wanna look is gateway offers or blueprints. So you wanna look at the bigger problem that your diagnostic surfaced. What else will they need? And then any recommendations that you put in that they didn't initially act on or decided, they, de-scoped it, pitch it now. And then last, our fourth one, is in past invoices. What did they buy? And what naturally comes next on their business journey. Sometimes there are projects that don't require a gateway offer or a proposal or whatever. It's maybe a power hour that they bought from you. That transcript and that invoice will give you a lot of information about what they might need next. So you could even go through those quick power hour calls that you've had that maybe cost $350 for somebody. Go through it and see what would they need next. And you can use AI for this too. Take those transcripts, throw them into AI, and that could help you a little bit with these longer things like proposals, gateway offers, discovery calls. discovery call transcripts or power hour transcripts, you'll probably wanna use AI to pull out what would make sense. Because, you know, those can be long. Okay.

The No Pressure Email Template

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let's talk about a template. So if you were to send out an email to... Okay, so, like, share a message like this: "Hey, name, I was reviewing the work we did together on specific thing earlier this year and remembered you mentioned..." Whatever they said. The... Paraphrase what they had said was the the next thing they'd need. "I have an opening this fall to help you tackle that. Want me to send a quick scope and price? No pressure either way." So this will be an easy way, a no-pressure way to re-engage them and remind them, "These are the exact words you said that you needed to do next, and I have an opening to do that." Then deliver the call to action inside.

Your Ten Client Audit Challenge

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Right now, I would love for you to open your CRM and actually take action on this. Pull up your top 10 past clients that you enjoyed working with. Obviously, you don't wanna pull up the ones you didn't. And find just one right now that fits the bill for this. Okay? I want you to go to your CRM, go to your proposal database, go to your folder with your gateway offers, and find... Just categorize your top 10 past clients that you're going to, in the future, use this messaging with. And today, I want you to find just one, and I want you to send the message, okay? Okay. So as you do that, I would love for you to run this this playbook all summer long and reinvigorate your sales If you take nothing else from this stream, do that one audit I talked about. Find one past client, send your message, and that alone could change the trajectory of your Q4.

Programs And Next Live Trainings

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But if you want this installed as a system, a quarterly rhythm so you're not scrambling every single summer, you should check out the Booked Out in 6. So Booked Out in 6, in our Fast Cash Mission, we go through... We have at least seven systems that you can pick and choose that would fit for you. But if you don't wanna do Booked Out in 6, which is a six-month program with me, Fast Cash Mission is mission number two, you can grab the 6 to 6K Challenge now. It's right there in the corner, and this is the cheap version. This will give you six systems that you can deploy one each day, and it will walk you through them with daily tasks and scripts you can use. But if you want me in your business helping you map out your pipeline strategy, start with the Booked Out Blueprint. It's 45 minutes, it's $750, and it applies to Booked Out in 6, so we will apply the credit to it within 14 days. So if you book the blueprint and then move into the mission, it basically drops that down into... from the cost of Booked Out in 6 for you. So I will send you all a link to that, but in the meantime, the 6 to 6K Challenge will drop you bite-sized things you could do for the next six days to reinvigorate your summer sales. And in the meantime, I'm gonna be here again in two weeks where we're gonna talk about how to convert connection calls into conversions. So we're gonna do that. And two weeks ago I put out a poll to see what else you want me to live stream about, and the one that won is the third door sales strategy. So I will teach that two weeks after that. So that's our next couple of setups. Until then, thank you for joining me, and I will see you in two weeks