The best DM strategy to get clients in 2026

Use this DM strategy to book clients straight from your direct messages (without being pushy or manipulative). In this episode, you'll hear parts of the framework I use to regularly close thousands of dollars of sales via Instagram DMs.

We'll focus on Instagram marketing, but you can use this sales strategy anywhere. 

You'll use real marketing psychology combined with compassion for your leads to make sales --meaning-- what you gain from this episode will work anywhere (emails, sales calls, in-person conversations).

Save this episode so next time a chit chat starts up in your DMs with a warm lead, so you have the best sales strategy in your pocket.

✨Tap here to watch a FREE masterclass on “How To Get Clients From Instagram (without wasting hours glued to your phone)"

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Tap here to get your free Posts That Sell Template (This caption got us 10 sales calls in 3 hours)

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🎉 Tap here to work with Jenna inside Magic Marketing Machine (or MMM+)!

https://www.magicmarketingmachine.com

Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

Jenna Harding (00:00)
The other day I was typing away in my direct messages on Instagram and someone said to me, Jenna, this is the weirdest sales conversation I've ever been a part of. I thought that was hilarious because I was not looking at it like a sales conversation. I wasn't trying to sell her anything. As a matter of fact, the offer that I thought would be best for her, I don't have available right now.

Here's where the confusion came in. She was expecting to be sold to and my intention when I'm having a conversation with a small business owner is to figure out what they need to get what they want.

It's not to make as much money as humanly possible. Like it's truly to get them what they need. So I'm listening to figure out and try and hear what my leads want. And that's really important. Today we're gonna talk about selling in the DMs on Instagram. And just to be clear, I'm not gonna talk about like cold selling approaches, like hunting people down and messaging them when they didn't really ask for it.

I'm talking about having the sales conversation once the conversation's already started, you're DMing with someone you could apply this to your email marketing. You could even apply it to having a one-on-one conversation with someone, a sales conversation. But the thing about the DMs, is it is a beautiful place to practice, because you get time to come up with your response. A lot of people,

teach how to sell during sales calls, but that's really a high pressure situation because you need to come up with what to say right away. And then you find yourself saying too much, shoving your foot in your mouth, saying things that the person doesn't care about at all. And then the conversation is difficult to continue.

If you're learning how to sell and you value doing it with integrity and not just using slimy tactics, DMs are really a perfect playground for that because you have time to be thoughtful as well as intentional and strategic with what you're saying.

I was actually just invited into two communities to talk about this, to talk about selling in the DMs. And there was a time when I would have considered myself not really qualified

But then I realized, hey, I sell hundreds of thousands of dollars in programs every year and...

A huge portion of those sales are happening from my direct messages.

So, I might actually have more authority to talk about this than most people.

There are of course people out there where their entire job is to be a closer or an ad setter or whatever. to find people, to direct message and close there. But that's not exactly how it happens for me.

Typically, I'm talking to people who already follow me. They probably already have a freebie. They maybe already have a mini course and now they have a couple of questions before they're ready to jump into one of my main offers. So let's look at this like we're talking to warm leads.

And like I said, the first thing I do and that you're gonna do when you talk to these people is to figure out what it is they want, what it is they need.

It sounds simple, but two things are gonna happen when you figure out what it is they want. The first thing is you're gonna ask yourself, can I actually get this to them? Is this a result that working with me will provide?

It's simple, it's straightforward, and it truly is step one. Can you get them what they want? You might know that they need something else. you might look at this person and be like, you know, what you really need is this, but that does not matter in this moment. What matters most is you figure out why they're reaching out to you and what it is they want, because they're focused on. That is what they're most willing to pay for.

Picture this, imagine you walked into a dress store, you walk into this dress store, you're like, hey, I'm looking for a cocktail dress, I have this really fancy event to go to. and they said to you,

Sure, sure, we have dresses, but also those sneakers you're wearing are so ugly and so gross. Can I please just walk you over here toward our sneaker section? Because I am an expert and I can see your sneakers and I know you need new ones. Now, how are you gonna feel? Firstly, you might be like, yeah, okay. That person might make a few sales that way. Like, okay, well, I am embarrassed. my sneakers do suck. But they came in here for a cocktail dress and the expert...

The expert is gonna feel this desire, this pull to sell them those sneakers because they can see the sneakers and they're like, I could just fix those. If I could just get my hands on those sneakers. But you need to listen. This is a sales setting. You need to listen to what this person came to you for. They're here for the dress, sell them the dress. You can talk to them about the sneakers. You can address the sneakers at a later moment. But if they're here for the dress,

please sell them the dress. Now, let me give you a real life example.

I went to a business slash mindset coach because I was having a very specific challenge. I'm not holding out on you and not telling you what the challenges I can't remember. I can't remember, but I've used this antidote before, so I know that there was a really specific challenge. Let's say I was having an upper limit mindset problem. Okay. Say that was it. So I talked to her. She's like, okay, what do you need? Why are you here? She gets super clear.

on the problem I am aware of that I have called her to seek a solution for she gets super clear on it She tells me yes, Jenna. We can work on that. Here's how I think that we could work on that best She sells me a package that was several thousand dollars. I'm like, you know what? Yeah, I was hoping that I could just do like a one and done I was hoping there'd be a shortcut here, but I do respect your opinion. I think you're right

this package is what's going to be best for me. Okay, great. So I'm already in my head. like, I had a problem. She has a solution. This is how much the solution costs. I'm in, right in my head. And then she proceeded to tell me with this package, I also get this. I also get that I'm going to be sent this and that and blah, blah, blah, and all these irrelevant things. And in my head in that moment, I went, whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe I don't want this. This is not what I needed.

I came here for bread and eggs. Why are you selling me an ice cream cake?

You see what I mean?

Instead of thinking about yourself as the person who's selling right now, think of yourself as the person who's buying. What are they here for? What's in their head? What do they know? What do they want?

What do they need you to say?

to make them go, finally, relief and answer without overwhelming them.

Now, once you know what their goal is, you're gonna wanna restate it to them. You're gonna wanna restate it in slightly different language. This is happening for two reasons. And listen, I don't like slimy sales. If you've listened to this podcast, you know that I don't like slimy sales, but the slimy sales tactics all originally derived from

effective communication. We're not doing this because it's going to like psychologically trick them. We're doing this because this is how you talk to someone and get them into the right room if that room is right for them, you know? get them buying from your business if that business is right for them.

So we're gonna restate back to them what they said they wanted. And it's not usually as simple as a dress or a website or my wedding planned. Like usually they're gonna have given you a little bit more information. You're gonna restate this back at them. Now they have the opportunity to go, yes, I see that you understand me perfect. Or no, that's not what I said.

And you know what, sometimes it is gonna be what they said, but once they hear it back, all of us do this. Once we hear it back, go, no, that's not quite it. That's not quite what I meant to say, right? Or maybe you were wrong and maybe you heard them wrong, but we gotta get on the same page, because you are only selling them a solution if it's actually the solution they walked in here for today. Let me tell you another story. One time,

I needed one thing and I interviewed so many people to give me this one thing. Am I willing to give you details on this one? Sure I am. I was running my agency and I had like a million plates spinning in the air at all times and most of my project management was happening like on paper or in my head and I needed an operations manager to come in, look at our pipeline and organize it into project management software and

I have this thing where I am so bad at putting tasks in order. I don't know where this came from. I remember when I was in my early 20s, I had all these really like high pressure tasks to do all over Toronto. And I called my friend and I was like, I need to pick up this, but then I need to drop off this at there at this time. And then I need to be here at this time. And she goes, yeah, okay, no sweat. I want you to go to A, then B, then C, then D. Sound good? And I was like, my God, how'd you do that? Like I've always been mad at it.

putting tasks in order. So when it came to put the social media deadlines for multiple writers, multiple creatives, all of these people into project management software, like my brain just like would not compute. So I was interviewing all these operations people like, someone please just build out my Asana? That's the project management software I still use. It's just like clip up or anything like that.

So I talked to this person, they came highly recommended to me and she's like, yes, okay, here's the package you need. She knew exactly what I needed. She was good at sales. like, I'm sure she said it back to me. She tells me what I need. I'm like, perfect, yeah, here's my money. And then week goes by after week after week. At one point she sent me, here's a breakdown of your profitability and where you should be focusing on in your business. And I was like, what? I never.

Like that's great, cool way to over deliver, but you know what I want? The thing that I asked for that you told me that I was gonna get and by multiple weeks in, I do not like doing this. I had to ⁓ end the relationship. I was like, I need this to be over because it's been weeks and I still don't have what I came here for, which was a very simple ask. And you've given me all these other things that I did not want.

So uncomfortable. I hate conversations like that. But anyway, this was another experience where like being good at your sales conversations will improve your customer satisfaction. If you sell someone a bag of lies you're not getting the positive testimonial in the referral, right? you do your sales conversations with integrity and you sell with integrity and you find out why the person's here,

and you're very clear about how you're gonna deliver that thing, different story.

now I have a whole structure for this I'll be teaching it in these workshops or maybe I'll teach it inside my community too. I might as well if I've got it written. We do bonus trainings in Magic Marketing Machine. So we'll bring in guest experts or I'll just like cover a new topic and everybody can come anyway.

I'm already basically at time here, but if you can just change these two things, you're gonna close more leads in the DMs. So reiterate, one, find out what their goal is, and then two, restate that goal back at them.

your brain. Can my package, I'm about to sell this person, actually get them to that goal?

If yes, proceed. If not, this is not a match. End it now to protect your future selves.

then you're gonna go back and forth, right? We've got a few other steps in there. You've got to tell them about the offer. You've got to hear a little bit more about their challenges, how they learned, whatever. You've got to go back and forth. You have the rest of the structure of the sales call, but this is gonna surface again at the end, because at the end, you are going to reconfirm using their words.

what they said they wanted and reconfirm that this is gonna get them where they wanna go.

You're at the end of the conversation. You're like, alright, Melissa,

And you can be voice memo-ing people too. That's so valuable if you can be voice memo-ing them. All right, Melissa, you came to me today because you wanna get more followers on Instagram, but more importantly, you want those people actually booking your tarot readings with you. And in a perfect world in the next,

60 days, you would book a dozen more new clients, including having more repeat business from your past clients. Did I get that right? She's like, yes, I'll go perfect. I believe Magic Marketing Machine, is the move to get you there.

Not only have we had other tarot readers have success in the program, but you're gonna get my eyes on your sales content. So you're gonna know what to avoid, what to double down on.

I know you said that writing captions takes you a long time as well. You can also use post that sell templates where you're basically just filling out these formulaic templates. So they're not gonna stress you out like it does right now writing captions. And you're gonna get me and my team's eyes on your content before you post it.

Does that sound like what it's gonna take to get you booking those new clients? Perfect, all of that is true, actually. All of that is true. So like if this person had come to me with those very specific goals and the big problem of like writing captions takes too long, I've now told her that I can help her.

My program includes a whole bunch of other shit. There's so much in there. There's other things like maybe your problem is you feel like editing takes you too long. We have trainings to make editing go faster. Maybe you feel like you need validation on every idea and you wanna brainstorm with a coach and like.

have them double check your hooks because you suck at making hooks before you like, can give you that all of that's inside magic marketing machine. But I'm not going to overload Melissa in this moment with all of this other stuff. I'm going to focus on what she said to me and why she is here. And then I'm going to deliver the heck out of my program. And once she gets in there, she'll have access to all these other things too. And then we can take it even further, but that's not why she was here in the first place. So knowing about those things in this moment,

aren't necessarily gonna make her any more interested in purchasing. You with me? Okay, a couple things to think about. Take that, run with it, practice it. Like I said, DMs are such a great place to practice this stuff because you get to think before you talk or type.

but all of this will work everywhere. Like just like the stuff we teach in Magic Marketing Machine, like.

Instagram is the playground that I choose to teach this stuff for but it's all the same. It's gonna work in your email marketing. It's gonna work when you're talking to people. It's gonna work on your website, yada, yada, yada.

new episodes of Shinee New Clients drop every Monday. If you haven't followed me on Instagram, I'm at Jenna's page, J-E-N-N-A-S-P-A-I-G-E, and I'll see ya in the next one.