What's up, rock stars? If you sit down on a Monday morning knowing that you need to market your business this week and make some sales, but you're not exactly sure what you should be doing to actually generate those sales, then pull up a seat for this short episode because today I'm gonna break down the five marketing and sales activities that I believe every solopreneur should be doing every single week, including where to find new leads, who to follow up with, how often to make offers, and the simple 30-minute sales sprint that you can use when you don't know where to start And at the end, I'm gonna give you my weekly marketing and sales checklist so you can print it out, you can stick it next to your desk and stop reinventing your marketing plan every Monday morning. Hey there. Welcome to the Mindset to Market podcast, your go-to space for practical tools and solutions to the everyday challenges of being a creative and soulful entrepreneur living in a material world. I'm your host, Deborah Smith, a holistic business coach and marketing strategist with 17 years of experience. I help my clients bust through mindset blocks and learn daily marketing practices that balance personal wellness with financial growth and impact. I'm here to offer you support with creativity, mindset, practical how-tos, and getting into imperfect, messy action so you can experience daily breakthroughs as you grow. If you're a purpose-driven entrepreneur building an online business, you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Welcome back or welcome to the show. This is the Mindset to Market podcast and today's a shorty, but what I wanna do is get hyper-focused to answer one of the simplest and in my opinion, most important questions that I hear from solopreneurs which is, what should I actually be doing every week to make sales? So I polled my audience over the summer, including active and former clients. For the solopreneur who's actively selling an offer, meaning you have something to sell, you understand what it is that you do and you have a rough container in which to exchange goods and services for people's money and time. And that's whether this is coaching, consulting, it could be a DFY service or a group program or even a product-based offer. So it's across all of those different variables. Over 80% of the people that I spoke to said that this was their weekly pain point which was just knowing what to do each week to make sales. Now mind you, these are women who are typically two to four years into business. They're not new to entrepreneurship. They have either established some type of brand and offer plus a system to support it, right? Or they're in the process of getting all that stuff set up now and they're building the foundations of their recurring revenue system. That's what I help my clients with so it's-- A- a- all of my clients are somewhere in that pool. And their number one challenge is what should I be doing in today's marketplace to generate actual sales? And so I think a lot of us sit down on Monday morning knowing we need to market our businesses, but that's about as specific as the plan gets and then you open up all the apps and you start to ponder, okay, should I start by posting on Instagram? If I do, is it a reel or a carousel? Uh, I haven't emailed my list in a week or two, so maybe I should do that. But I really like the short-form threads content that's working really well. Should I be on threads? Maybe I should update my lead magnet. My website could probably use a few tweaks. "Oh man, this fall should I launch something new?" Like, these questions go through everyone's head in this online marketing world. So before you know it, you've spent three hours in Canva, you're changing the headline on your website. You haven't actually taken a single step to talk to a potential client. And so if that sounds familiar, here's what I want you to know. Marketing your business and developing your business are not exactly the same thing, although there's a lot of overlap. So ... And if you're a coach, a consultant, a wellness professional, a healer, a creative, or other expertise-based, purpose-driven solopreneur, you do need both things happening. So you need a way to get visible and bring new people into your world, and you need to stay connected to those people who are already there by following up. And then at some point, you need to actually ask people to buy something from you, and that's the part that people tend to get i- hit a wall around. So I wanna give you a simple weekly rhythm for this, and I created a free printable checklist to go with this episode. It's called What Should I Be Doing to Make Sales? Your Weekly Marketing and Sales Checklist. I'm trying to hit the nail as on the head as possible here. , So I'll tell you how to grab that at the end. The link is in my show notes. You can go get it right now if you're dying to get your hands on it. But even if you're out walking the dog or driving around, I want you to hear these five things because you can start using them this week. You can even probably start using them while you're on the walk with your dog and driving the car. Okay, so here's the five things that are in this checklist, the five steps to your weekly marketing sales rhythm. Number one, very simply, you have to generate new leads. So every single week, I want you to ask, "How are new potential clients coming into my world? What are the entry points? What are the ways that they can find me?" And, "I'm posting on Instagram," is not necessarily the answer, right? Because social media is absolutely a fantastic source of leads, but your entire lead generation strategy cannot be just posting something and hoping the algorithm drops it in front of the right person. Lead generation takes a lot of different forms, right? So this can look like reaching out to people that you genuinely would like to connect with, asking a client or a colleague for an introduction. This could be pitching yourself to podcasts. This could be attending an in-person networking event or a virtual networking event. There's so many of them. This could be starting conversations with people who are engaging with your content. This could be reaching out to a potential collaboration partner and just creating strategic content designed to reach the people who are beyond the audience that you already have, right? We need to be connecting with new people. It does not have to be complicated. In fact, this stuff is m- more simple than we make it. But every single week, you should be able to answer the question, "What am I deliberately doing to bring new potential clients into my world to help them learn about my business?" So that's number one is just lead generation. It's not negotiable. You gotta do it. All right, number two, nurture and stay visible. So a lot of times you hear visibility as its own whole strategy, and nurturing is sort of a behind-the-scenes strategy because it's stuff that you can do with automations. But here's the basic idea here. You've got people in your world now. You've generated these leads, these people who are interested in your business. What are you gonna do with them? So because most people aren't gonna see just, an Instagram post and then immediately click your link , and drop three grand, right? Most people need time. That does happen, but most of us need some time to understand what you do. We wanna understand exactly the problem that you solve and hear your point of view on it, see how you think. We wanna develop trust. And so this is where your content actually really matters, right? This is where the email list and the nurturing and the stories that you tell really matter because they fill in those gaps and help us develop an idea of whether or not we're gonna click. But here's the distinction I want to make. So the goal is not to feed the content machine with more and more and more stuff. It's just to nurture specific potential buyers. So instead of starting out your week thinking, "What should I post this week?" Ask a different question. I want you to ask, "What does my ideal client need to understand this week to move one step closer to working with me?" Then your content is really clearly directed to that ideal client instead of just the general internet, right? So this could be sharing client stories. This could be teaching a new way to think about something. It could be challenging a misconception, maybe sharing something personal about you that helps people understand why you do this work, maybe you're just answering questions that people ask you all the time. So this is a completely different way to approach content creation, right? When you get so clear that you're just talking to that ideal client and sharing things that can help them take a step in your direction, then it becomes a lot easier. All right, number three, follow up. This is a big one because sometimes we're just so focused on finding more people and, getting them into our pipeline, that we ignore the people who have already raised their hands and said they were interested. So these people slip through the cracks of the system, and that's a real problem. So we've gotta look at the people who are actively seeking support or asking questions and understand those people are interested in what we do. So this is somebody who asked about working with you maybe three months ago. Somebody who attended a workshop last year, maybe it's somebody who downloaded a free resource, but you never really connected with them. You can just tap in and say, "Hey, we never had a chance to meet. How's it going?" This could be someone who told you, "I definitely wanna do this, but I can't do it right now." So check back in. Is now a good time? Can I help you make this decision? If it's someone who had a discovery call with you and then sort of ghosted or disappeared, there's no harm in reaching out and saying, "Hey, I haven't heard from you. How's it going?" And this also could be somebody who worked with you in the past. They've already hired you, and maybe they need your help again, or they've just evolved and they have new problems to solve. Those are all good leads. And if you're not following up and keeping track of them, then you're potentially leaving some of your easiest sales sitting untouched while you're over on Instagram trying to find strangers, right? So we wanna make sure that following up is a consistent part of the plan. And again, this doesn't mean, you know, uh, reaching out and saying, "Hey, are you ready to buy something from me?" That's-- that would be inappropriate. But this could simply mean just reopening the conversation or the relationship and just checking in, right? Just sending something relevant to them, asking how that thing is going that, you know, they told you that they, they were working on. Letting them know that you're teaching something new that made you think of them. And just keep it leaned back and, and full of curiosity and, and an honest desire to help, and these outreaches are not weird. So just every week ask yourself, "Who already knows me that I should reconnect with?" It's a huge source of leads and often, like I said, leads to easy sales. Okay, number four is make an actual offer. This is the fourth step on your checklist. I can't emphasize it enough. So many of my clients do all the things, and then they get right up to the threshold and then don't actually say in clear, plain English, you know, "Here is my offer. Here's how I can help you." So you can educate and inspire and nurture and, and make beautiful content and send amazing high-converting emails, meaning lots of people open them and read them and consume them. You could host a podcast for years like I have. But eventually you have to tell people, "Look, here's how I help you. This is what I'm offering. This is what I'm selling." And let them see if it's a good match for the work, you know, that they need done. And so- This week, what are you selling? I want you to be thinking actively about this. Can you answer that question immediately? And does your audience know what you're selling? Like, does your audience actually know what you sell? They might know you're a strategist. They might know you're an accountant. They might know you're, you know, uh, a feng shui expert or a, a psychotherapist, or they might know you have a health coaching program and do nutrition plans. But what are you actually selling? Can they step into a program with you? If so, when does it start and how much does it cost, right? So if that's not available readily for people, they're not thinking about buying from you because th- there's not a sale on the table. There's not an offer, I'm sorry, on the table. So ways that you can easily communicate this would be to send an email specifically about your offer, to share a client result and then tell people how they can get the same help from you, to personally invite somebody, like in a DM, who you already know is a great fit and who would benefit. Answering objections is another great way to help people start to make a decision, right? You can do that with your content, like overturning objections through the storytelling that you do, and of course, talking about what's actually included and giving people a very clear next step. So making offers is part of your marketing, right? You're not bothering people by letting them know how they can work with you. They get to decide all on their own. They're adults, and if they need your help, now they have information to help them make that decision. So we've gotta make clear offers. All right. Last but definitely not least is number five, tracking and reviewing your sales system. So this might be the least sexy thing on your business to-do list, but it is by far, in a way, one of the biggest differences between randomly marketing and actually developing a, a system behind your business. So where are your leads right now? Where are they in the pipeline of your sales system? Do you actually know? Are they in your Instagram DMs, your inbox after an email? Are they scribbled in your notebook? Are you just, trying to remember who you met and why they said they were-- wanted to chat with you? Do you have a spreadsheet that you haven't opened since March? So e- every single week you should know who are the new leads coming in, who are your warmest prospects, who needs a follow-up, what sales conversations are you having this week? Have you made offers to people that you need to follow up on? Did anything sell? And most importantly, where did all of those people come from, right? We really wanna track our entry points because if your last three clients came through referrals, but you're spending 80% of your time making reels, that's really useful information because you should be spending more time supporting your affiliate and peer connections that will refer people to you because you're making good money there. So if one email generates three sales conversations and your last 14 Instagram posts generated, like, crickets and maybe a couple hundred viewers, that's really useful information, right? I'm not saying don't use social media, but I'm trying to point out when you track your data, you, you know exactly where to put your marketing focus and what tasks are gonna move the needle for your business. So this is not data for the sake of data. We want information so we can stop guessing, and we get that once we start tracking. So it's really important that we track and review our weekly sales activities. So let's put the five together. Every week you're gonna generate new leads. You're gonna nurture and stay visible to the leads that already exist. You're gonna follow up with appropriate people, make offers where appropriate, and track and review all of that so that you're keeping track and don't have to remember. And that's it. Those are the five steps. And if you're sitting there thinking, "Deborah, this sounds great, but I don't have six hours a day to market and sell my business. I'm too busy actually working." Well, girlfriend, neither do I, and I just want you to know that there is a solution. So here's where I want you to start. Like anything else we do in business, take one baby step. We never get to that big, fully realized vision or the dream where it's all working and everything is clicking and the automations are working and the lead magnet's working and the sales messaging is selling. That is where we're headed, but if you're just getting started really understanding how to sell and market your business, here is a 30-minute sales sprint that you can do So it's, it's pretty simple. I just want you to set a timer for 30 minutes. Mm. And we're gonna break it down like this: 10 minutes, you're gonna work on generating leads. For 10 minutes, you're gonna follow up with the warm people that are already in your world and check in with them, leave them a message. And then five minutes, I want you to make one invitation or offer to somebody, and five minutes, update your lead tracker. And the updating of your lead tracker can be done on a daily basis. It really only takes five minutes. I do it twice a week, just for reference. Now, I have another tip for you, and that is to close Canva. And I'm serious. I don't want you redesigning anything, researching strategies, changing brand colors, deciding suddenly that you need a new funnel. During this 30-minute sales sprint, you're not doing business development whatsoever. You're focused on sales. Sales has a certain mindset and energy to it, and if you get distracted by design stuff or by procrastocreating or by thinking something that you have created is not good enough, it's just gonna knock you out of the energy that you need to be confident and make that offer or follow up with people. So when you're in the sales sprint, stay in the sales sprint. Do not, do not divert your attention to creative or design tasks. But make a note. Something bothered you. We're gonna find things inside of our marketing, you know, assets that make us cringe a little bit. Absolutely make a note. Come back to it later when you're doing business development tasks. Remember, we sorted those into a different column. They use a different energy, a different focus, a different, , part of your brain. All right. So if you do that consistently, that 30-minute sales sprint, you're gonna learn a lot about where your sales process is actually working and where it is not. And I promise you, it will get easier. All right. Now that you've got those five steps clear and you can grab that checklist to use and follow, this is where we get to a bigger problem that has to be addressed because these five activities to sell your offer, they don't happen in isolation, right? Let's say you're generating leads. Where are those people going? Are you getting them onto an email list? If so, what happens after they join? Is there a good nurture sequence in place to help them move down your pipeline? Does the messaging clearly communicate what you help people do? Is there a very obvious next step for them to take? It could be a low-ticket offer. It could be a consultation. It could be inviting them into, you know, something else that you're doing, a community or a, a webinar or some type of an event. What happens when someone becomes interested but isn't ready yet to buy? Is there a follow-up process? How do you move somebody from, "I just discovered this amazing human," to, "I've been listening to this amazing human," to, "I trust this amazing human," to, "You know what? I think this amazing human can help me"? How do I get to work with them? That's what we're looking to build here. That's the sales system. And so this is the distinction that I really want you to walk away with today. Doing your marketing activities, it's not the same as having an actual sales system. The overall system that you need in place includes an entry point all the way through to onboarding somebody into a program and then following up with them after they've already completed that program and y- going the next step with them, right? Because we want people that actually work with us to become raving fans, potentially affiliates. You know, those are your best spokespeople about your business. So sales begins all the way back before someone's ever met you and goes all the way through to the end of time when you've built a community of people who love and trust you. So a very common problem is that people keep themselves really busy marketing and creating interesting content and focused on doing lead gen and all those things, but they don't have a reliable mechanism in place to generate sales. So I see this happen all the time with solopreneurs. I went through this myself. It, it's very common. It's-- I think it's part of the growth process in learning sales. And what that looks like is you've got an Instagram account, a website, you've got a couple offers, and you've got-- probably got an email list at least set up and you've tried different things, webinars, lead magnets. You know, you've been networking. You're creating the social short-form video content like reels and TikToks, and maybe even you've run a few ads. And so the problem isn't necessarily that you're missing anything, it's just that your pieces aren't all flowing together in a seamless process. And so that's the conversation that I wanna keep having here on this podcast. When I looked at the data from these conversations over the summer and saw that 80% of people, despite what level they're at in their business, just think of weekly marketing and sales tasks as their biggest challenge, that told me a lot of information, right? That told me where to put my focus to help people specifically. So we are going to talk about it. I-- At risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm gonna create a lot of episodes to help with this throughout the fall. And reminder, go grab that free checklist. This is more than just a checklist. I put in some bulleted examples. I gave you some fill in the blanks so that you can actually really generate clear ideas for each of these steps and it's called What Should I Be Doing to Make More Sales? The Weekly Marketing and Sales Checklist. It's based on my own weekly system and it includes the five weekly activities that we all should be doing. I just covered them. Specific ideas for what to do under each one, so I did give you some, some data points and some bullets. Questions to help you choose your priorities, sift and sort and make decisions. Uh, and your 30-minute sales sprint and then a simple way to start identifying the gaps in your current sales process. So you can grab it for free at www.deborahcsmith.com/sales-checklist. So that's my full name, D-E-B-O-R-A-H, letter C, S-M-I-T-H, .com, forward slash, sales, dash, checklist. Go download it now, print it, stick it next to your desk, and then the next time that you sit down on a Monday morning wondering, "What the hell should I be doing to make sales this week?" Literally, you have a document called What Should I Be Doing to Make Sales, and a checklist to follow. Start there. It's a great place to start. And then once you've gotten those activities happening consistently, then the next question becomes, "Do I actually have a good system connecting all of this together?" And you can cross that bridge when you get to it. But if you would love to see how that whole system fits together as it relates to my business and the way that I coach my clients, then please join me for my free live masterclass. It's called the Solopreneur Sales System. I'm gonna show you how to connect the moving pieces of your marketing and sales into a simple recurring system designed to consistently attract, nurture, and convert those leads without making social media your entire business strategy and/or life. And it's designed to speak to people who are a one-woman or one-person operation at this point. So if you are a solopreneur, somebody who's still building your systems or have them in place but are looking for help with marketing and sales, then the Solopreneur Sales System is literally designed to speak to that, one-person operation. And if you happen to be listening to this in the future, don't worry because if you click that link, it should lead you to the wait list for the next one. This is a recurring class that I teach on a regular basis, so usually once every couple of months. And if you're listening to this in real time in September of 2026, the next one is on september 22nd at 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. The link is in the show notes. It is called the Solopreneur Sales System, and I'm excited to share this methodology with people who feel like they're struggling with marketing and sales. This is designed to help make that a much lighter lift. So join me for that masterclass. And that's all, my friends. It's time to get out there and really show the world what you have to offer, and I support you in doing that. If you love this episode, leave it a star rating down below. Give it a review. That would mean the world to me, and I look forward to seeing some of you in the masterclass. Grab that checklist and let's get to work. Until next week, may you be vibrant
