I'm Closing $27K on Sales Calls... Here's Why I'd Still Choose DM Sales | Ep 15

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This week, I'm closing $27,000 in high ticket sales from sales calls...and I still prefer closing inside the DMs.

Yep. Both can work. But they're not interchangeable.

In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on when I choose sales calls, when I refuse them, why DM sales are still my favorite way to sell, and exactly what qualifies someone for each.

You'll also hear what it actually looks like behind the scenes when you're selling bigger retainers, larger proposals, multiple decision-makers, and high-level clients.

If you've been wondering whether you should focus on sales calls or DM sales to get more clients, this episode will help you decide.

Inside this episode:

• Why I'm currently closing $27K in high ticket sales from sales calls—and why that isn't my default
• The real reason I still prefer DM sales for most clients
• When a sales call actually makes sense (and when it absolutely doesn't)
• The differences between selling in the DMs versus on a call
• The three qualifying questions I ask before I ever make an offer
• Why voice notes are non-negotiable if you want to close more sales in the DMs
• How my offer posts, FAQ posts, and client stories shorten the sales process and save hours every week
• The deadline strategy that helps prospects make decisions without chasing them
• What scaling into larger clients actually looks like behind the scenes
• Where my best lead generation is coming from right now

My biggest takeaway:

You don't need to do business the way everyone else says you should.

Decide from the beginning whether your sales process is built around DM sales or sales calls, then create content that supports that process from start to finish. Your offer content should answer questions before prospects even ask them, making it easier to close more qualified leads and get more clients without spending all day selling.

Your action step:

Go make your Instagram Stories.

Start three DM conversations.

Practice asking:

• What's your specific goal?
• What's your timeline?
• What's your budget?

Then guide them to your offer content instead of rewriting the same answers over and over.

Efficiency wins.

Ready to sell more in the DMs?

If you're struggling to start conversations in the DMs or convert leads into clients, DM me "Episode 15" on Instagram, and I'll personally send you feedback on what's happening in your sales process.

👉 https://www.instagram.com/alyssalmoorhead/

And if you're listening while the Skip the Sales Call Challenge is still running, come join us!

Our next live call is Tuesday, July 21 at 12:00 PM MST, where I'll walk you through exactly how to close more clients without relying on traditional sales calls.

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If this episode helped you...

Share it with another business owner who's trying to decide between DM sales and sales calls, and leave a review so more entrepreneurs can find the show.

And if you're ready to build a sales system that brings in qualified leads, simplifies your lead generation, and helps you consistently get more clients, come hang out with me on Instagram. That's where all the good sales conversations start.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What I would say to you all is you need to decide ideally from the jump, do I want to close people in the DMs or do I want to book a sales call? If your Instagram stories and your Instagram DMs aren't bringing you 16k hot and steamy leads, and you're not exactly at the sales goal you want to be at for this quarter, I've got you. Hey sales friends, I'm Alyssa, your cheap sales gal. I've been in business for 11 years, and I currently run a done for you lead generation and lead management agency with Instagram DMs. I'm about to show you guys all of the juicy sales things on Instagram, Instagram stories to get new leads, and closing sales in the DMs and with sales calls. So let's get into all of the juicy details. Hey guys, welcome back to the DM Sales Gal. I almost forgot to say that this time. Um this week has been hard, so I'm doing the best that I can. Uh we got some really serious medical news for one of my family members yesterday, and it's it's really serious. It's as serious as serious could be, and it's been incredibly hard to concentrate. And I'm in one of those periods where I mean this morning I was like literally sobbing into my keyboard, like there was nothing funny about it. My cat was worried about me and like crying about it more than usual. Um, and then you know, it's one of those periods where life is life and it's distracting, and you're crying into your keyboard and trying to take care of yourself, and then I work for a few hours and I'm okay. So, anyways, just sharing that because I know everyone thinks that I'm like I don't know what do you guys think. I know everyone thinks that I'm a sales baddie and a sales genius and a sales wizard. What did one of my clients, Ariana, did you call me a sales hummingbird, I think, because I was like, or a bumblebee, because I was always hopping around. Well, let me tell you, when your family is in like grave medical danger, you don't want to be doing lots of selling. Um, because they're like obviously, but like I run a sales agency. So, anyways, luckily I have an incredible team that can do the majority of the work when I can't. But yeah, just saying that I'm a human being, and if you guys have ever felt like not selling, I get it. And uh now I'm in a place where I feel like it, but there was a whole day where I didn't. So, anyways, okay, we're gonna be talking about the namesake of this episode, which is uh that I'm closing $27,000 from sales calls right now. It is two calls, and there have been others too, but a couple of the ones that we're closing are our double lead gen offer, where basically like they're getting our standard offer, but twice as much volume of leads. So we have one of those. Um, we've had a couple of those, we've had a couple of those for three months, but we have one of those, and then we have another one that would be the same amount or more times six months. So it'd be 3,000 to 4,500 a month times six months, which is our new offer, and there's more that we're working on closing too, but specifically gonna focus on like what's happening right now. Right now, and I really want to go into briefly, this will not be a long episode. You guys have been asking me to make them even shorter, so I'm working on it. Um, but I want to go into briefly why I prefer DM closing most of the time. But there are instances where it is not gonna get it, it's not gonna cut it. So I did a bunch of math this morning and we'll finish mathing tomorrow when Zoe, my CRO, and I meet for our H1 check-in, reviewing all of the numbers from the first half of the year. We're gonna look at revenue, we're gonna look at how it increased, decreased, by what offers, the retention rate, the spend, the profit, all of the fun, juicy shit. But it it really matters. If anybody wants to check in on that, like please come chat with me about it. But most of what I've sold, even in the last four-ish weeks of what we're closing is over $40,000, and I would say like 80 to 90% of the individual clients, if not the total sales, are coming from DM sales. I'll give you guys all the numbers in the next episode. That's the one that I'm planning next. I just need to get it all fine-tuned with Zoe. But most of the volume of sales, like the majority of clients that sign, close through the DMs, but some of them close through sales calls. The ones that close through the DMs actually never ask for a sales call. I'm also quite vocal about my preferences of closing. Not even preferences. I will close this way unless this. This is where we close sales. Nobody ever like wrote a business playbook that we all had to follow, thank goodness, saying you have to do sales calls. I know traditional sales culture perpetuates that shit, but and I'm great at a sales call, obviously. I'm like fantastic. People love me, and they know that a lot of the time that there is no other option. We're it, and I'm not gonna necessarily negotiate on the price. You can either do less for less money or more for more money, and we can work with you or not, and we don't need you. Which is a big selling point. Once people find out, like, we're in high demand. I wanted to take four new clients each month. It's funny now, it's nuts. I work my ass off this year though, to be able to work less now. And when I say work less, I wouldn't say I've gotten my hours down necessarily yet, which is why I'm in the office at 6.53 p.m. and I haven't gone outside yet. But I am just doing marketing, including podcast in Lee Gen, and like answering questions from the team and the clients, so it's not so bad. I'm okay. But, anyways, most of the year we have not done sales calls and just done DM sales. And like, yes, that's my preference. It's also in my content. So, like, it's not just that people ask me about it, it's you know that I'm vocal about my sales signing process. So I even took my sales call link down from my bio, I think maybe. So they know that we're gonna close in the DMs and they don't even ask otherwise. Unless the reason that I did these two couple of them with sales calls is almost always client one we have, client two we have, client three that is signed, client four that's coming in, they're all either multiple co-founders or a board, or something acting as a board. They're not corporate, but like they're they have a board of advisors basically. They have fractionals or a board or call it what you will. But all of these clients usually have co-founders or a board, and they're usually above, I'd say 250, 500k to a million in annual revenue. So it makes sense. They want to get everybody that they need to on one call and talk about all the details, get a fairly large proposal, and then go from there. So, talking about closing from sales calls, but I prefer DMs. Just so we know, these lead sources of these two that are closing, one came, a couple of them came from a couple of memberships that I'm in, and most of my leads out right now are closing through threads. And most of them closing through threads are closing through the DMs, unless they're much bigger clients. And when I say bigger, I'm saying, if you guys don't know and you haven't looked at my Instagram, there's a new offer post up for July, which I do at the beginning of each month, and I just refresh the same goddamn template and add some new shit into it. So there's a new post up on the top of my Instagram about the offer, which is now not three months at $1,500 a month, but six months at $1,500 a month plus 15% commission. So that's up there as well as the FAQ's post as well. Um, but the bigger clients that are doing sales calls are now doing double that standard offer. So rather than $1,500 a month times six months with 15% commission, they're doing $3,000 to $4,500 a month times six months with 15% commission. Which honestly, if you guys have followed me for this year, let me be really clear because I don't. How do I say this without sounding like a fucking douchebag? Um, I've gotten to the point where I can like veritably say that I'm a leader in my industry. Not that I couldn't before, not that I didn't know people looked up to me, but people quote me, which is fucking weird. I mean, it's really nice, but it's novel for me to get used to. And second, people are watching me, and like, you know, my incoming team and the really, really smart ones that are really senior in their career will say things like, I wanted to watch how you move. And now there's more than my team watching how I move. So that's a preface. This is going to be as professional as it can be. I love our big clients. I love it so much. I mean, the accounts are crazy, the proposals get wild, I get to bring all my fucking team and friends into these accounts. One client that we worked with was like, oh lord, it was me, my then five-person, now six people person sale team, five sales team members, me, my CRO, her assistant underneath her, my client John, who does email marketing, my these are past clients, my past client Ashley, who does ads, and like two or three other people. So by making this massive proposal for a massive client, I got to bring like I got to effectively pay like 10 of my colleagues and friends. So that I love it. And then we all got to work together on it and smash it because we literally put together like a fractional board, like a fractional team of everything that they would possibly need. So I love working with their big clients. The part that I don't love and why I said that I was focusing mostly on selling people, selling to people at 10 to 15k months, is not because I like the people better. I love all of you. But people that are scaling to 10 to 15k months do not need quite as much legwork for us to all figure out the details. Which means we don't have to do one, two, or three sales calls, we don't have to make four or five plus iterations of a proposal, we don't have to edit a contract three or four times, we don't have to change the names to the maiden names and change the LLC to the DBA. Like, it just gets its next level of business. It just gets to be bigger business. And I love these clients. I love my clients at all sizes. I love our clients, whatever their fucking retainer is. What I'm not a massive fan of personally is doing multiple iterations of the sales calls and then doing multiple iterations of proposals and contracts. And I have a team helping with most of this, and I love those clients. But once we like get to figure it out, whether it's a yes or a no, it's awesome. But everything in between is honestly a lot of work for everybody, and it's needed. I just needed a little break from it for a little fucking while. So I say all this so that you guys can see behind the scenes of what it takes to sign these larger clients versus our like middle client, like our standard uh most common plan at this point, which was the 1500 a month times three and is now 1500 a month times six plus commission. People are like, you didn't mention commission. I feel like you gotta mention it every single time I ever talk about my offer, but there's commission. So don't hear it any other way. So that's a little bit about behind the scenes of this year wrestling back and forth with like we can take these big clients, we can take clients for 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 7,000 a month for three, four, six months. It's just an enormous amount of effort on everyone's part, including the client, and it's a big deal, and they're making a big important investment. I was just really tired and moving across the country. So now we're doing both. And as I said, a lot of those leads came from threads that have signed into clients, some of them came from paid memberships, some of them came from my Instagram stories collabs, some of them came from just Instagram, etc. And what I would say to you all, and I'm gonna try to cap this at 15 minutes, so we got like three minutes left. What I would say three to five, what I would say to you all is you need to decide ideally from the jump, do I want to close people in the DMs or do I want to book a sales call? You're gonna go through similar qualifying process in each, but how long it takes, how much time, energy, and detail is needed in each message, how thorough the responses are, that depends. If you guys are looking to get into DM sales and you're used to sales calls, you might not. It's different. You're not gonna be used to it. Because if you think of the hour format that you're on a sales call, and my sales calls where they're gonna close, go to an hour. I don't they go to an hour and I'm like, and that's the set time and that's how much they book for. But if you think of like an hour of you and me sitting on the same room, but on the same Google Meet room talking, we have an hour, we straight talk back and forth, we answer all the shit. Voice notes are asynchronous. So when I'm in the DMs, I'm always using voice notes to close a sale. Every single time, period, always, forever. Always. Don't try to do it without it. You're like, you're missing your hands, like you're not using like one of the most important tools available to you, besides lead tracking. And there's a million other episodes on that. But for the actual process in there with the DM, you should be using voice notes. But think that if your sales call was an hour, you might need to send voice notes seven plus times. You might need to send seven, eight, ten voice notes across a few days or a week or two weeks, each of them being, you know, two, three, five minutes cumulatively in a set of messages, the messages you send at one time, because I might send two voice notes at the same time with different topics, but it's going to be more messages probably than you've usually sent, because you're replacing a sales call and you need to use voice notes for efficiency, or are you gonna be in there all damn day writing a fucking book you ain't getting paid for, which I'm not about it. When I write my book, subtle hint. When I write my first book later this year, once it gets cold in Denver and it's not over a hundred degrees some days, I'll be getting paid for it. For sure. So don't write a book in the DMs trying to sell somebody when you don't get paid. Use voice notes also. So it's gonna be different. The core pieces you want to go over when we're seeing if this is a lead or not is what's their goal and can you help with it? And are they interested in that help? These are qualifiers. This is not my full sales BM sales process. Again, you guys know this. There's another episode for that. Um, it's like in the first five or six, I think. But qualifiers, I want to know, can I help with someone's specific goal? So, not, I want to make more sales, but you know, I won't call them out yet until I announce my clients. But if they tell me I want to go to 40k to 100k in six months, 60k is a significant jump in MRR, and also it's gonna take a lot of work to get there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I need to know their specific goal. And yours is not probably going to be how many sales they want to make, but I need to know the specifics. Not, I need ops help. What specific areas? Is it your founder tasks? Is it team tasks? Is it onboarding? Is it lead management? Like, what are we talking about? That's goal number one. And can you help with that specific goal? Goal number two, what's their priority urgency to get there? I and I would ask them that. Like, okay, I understand that you're looking to do A, B, and C things within this goal. How soon are you looking to solve that problem? Or how soon are you looking to start work on this? Depending on what the offer is. I would go with like, how soon are you looking to make progress on this and see what they say? And they're gonna know about when they need help. I want it as soon as possible, or I'm thinking August next month, or I'm thinking, what quarter is it? Later in Q3. Good lord, the year is going by so fast. So, what their specific goal is, how soon they want to get there in their budget. Once you know that, your if you're closing in the DMs, then your offer post and your FAQs post, and again, mine are at the top of my feed as an example, those should cover a lot of the questions that they have between I have this goal, I want to solve it in August, this is my budget. Tell me about the offer, tell me about people that you've helped. Well, I have this question. I have these 92 questions also. Then you best go look at the fucking carousel that I put 35 questions in and it's not done yet. There's so many questions I have to do a split carousel and do two. But if they're interested and you're gonna close in the DMs or if they're gonna do a sales call, you need to have that content up because it's gonna save you hours, days, weeks, volume, like just fucking everything. If you have the offer post up, the FAQs post up, and then right now I would decide between a client story or when to work with me, not ways to work with me, when to work with me for which specific offer that you're selling. I know you guys have nine offers, three offers, whatever. I would tell you to focus on one and then have offer upsell, downsell as like the side note. We can't sell people three things at the same time. It's too fucking confusing. Like I've been in business 11 years, just that's my point of view on it. Unless you have a complex bundle and 97 freebies, and then I'll send you to Sally and she'll set you up. But in the meantime, I would get their specific goals. I would get when is their priority timeline to start work on this and when do they want to make progress on it. And I would get their budget. Once you have that, I would say, okay, well, if you're interested, I'd love to share the details with you. Check out this post on my offer and this post on FAQs and let me know any questions. That's gonna trim down how long it takes to sell, how many people you can sell at once, how quickly you can sign all of them, how much time and energy is involved in each conversation. Like, just trust me. Uh, I had a like past colleague and membership member come to our skip the sales call challenge today, which I was supposed to mention at the beginning, but instead I mentioned that my dad's cancer has returned. So you can see where my priorities are, you know, between like dad and uh Instagram stories and DM sales challenge, but it matters. I love it. We're excited about it, it's awesome. And one of my uh membership members, colleagues, she used to work together with me. We love her, Deborah, showed up to the call, and I didn't know that she was gonna get to come until like an hour before, and she was talking about how she and her clients have used this formula with the offer, with the FAQs, with the client stories, everything that's in my sales content recipe, which is another episode about carousels, but it can be repurposed to other hypes of content, emails, reels, stories, etc. And she was saying that it like flawlessly worked and sold out her client's program. So that's not my words, that's Deborah's. Through Instagram stories, her client sold out her program. Okay, what else was I gonna tell you guys? So yeah, goals, urgency to get there, budget. Then we can show them your offers post, your FAQ's post, a client's story. You don't have to send those all at once. You could say, could I share some details on my offer? If they say yes, you could send a couple minute voice note and say, check out this post. It really lays out the information nice and visually, and then let me know what you think. Then they're gonna ask you questions. And you can say, guess what? I have another one. I'm gonna send you another post that answers a bunch of questions, and then come back and let me know any follow-ups. If they ask for a client story, then you could send in your carousel on your client story. See how it works. I'm like really an efficiency girl. I have no shame about it. I won't say I want to work smarter, not harder. I just want to fucking work less. Anything that's gonna make me more money while I work less, all about it. All day, every day. And then what else was I going to say? Oh, a really important one that I almost left out. After they have all the details, give them a deadline. So, based on Molly's goal to get a new client by the end of August, we would need to get started about six weeks before then. Four to six weeks. It could be four to eight weeks. But Molly, if you want to get a new client by the end of August, really we want to have at least six weeks together, which would mean that our next available start date to fit that would be July 13th. If you want that date, I would need to know within one to two business days. If you're not able to do that, that's totally fine. These would be my next availability, and we could talk about those over the next few days. But I ain't waiting for anybody. Please hear me, like write that down. I'm not fucking waiting for anybody. I want to help all the people that I can and want to help. I am over three and a half years sober. It's like 3.7. I'm over three and a half years sober, which means for a decade before that I was not sober. I wasted so much time. It I sobbed about it for, you know, days and months on an asynchronous basis, but I don't have time to waste. I want to help the people that want me. I want people to make a decision at their own time, and I need to know what that time looks like. So if you want to hit your goal by the end of August, I need six weeks to get us there, period. Not not five, not four, six. If you want to hit this goal by the end of August, we're gonna need six weeks. Six weeks is on this date. Our next availability is this date, I would need to know within two to three business days at the max. If they can't accommodate that, then they can come back and tell you, you know, when they do have time. Like if they're like, no, I can't make a decision within two to three days, I'm going camping. Okay, if you are interested in that spot, can you let me know what your next soonest availability is to get back to me? I'll wait to hear from you. If not, I'll check back in on that day. I'm not gonna chase you. I wanna know what your decision timeline process looks like. I deserve to know that. Because I've invested my time and energy in you too. That's it. We didn't make it to 15 minutes, guys, but um, you know, here's progress, right? Alright, I love you guys. Thank you for listening and taking notes. Thank you for fucking doing the work. Like, Laura, who's listening, so many of you all, Kayla, who's been watching the pod, my new client. Thank you guys for listening. Thank you for thinking about it and thinking critically and asking questions and doing it. And you guys do so well. I told her client Danisha this too, like, and I told Awana this today. Like, after you guys do stories like three times and I review them, you're really fucking good at it. Like, don't underestimate yourself. You you all are I'm 34 on three days. I didn't say that yet. Happy birthday to me. Uh I'm 34 in three days. I've been talking for a fucking long time. You guys, as long as you're speaking, you can do stories and you can have a DM sales combo or you can close on a sales call, but you can do this, and you all do it so much better than you think you do. I'm like, you're fucking great at this. And you're like, really? I'm like, yes. Period. I'm an expert. Yes, you are. Okay, go make some stories, go talk to three people on the DMs, report back, salute, happy 4th of July, happy 10th of July for my birthday, and I'll talk to you guys soon.