It’s no secret I’m a little obsessed with systems—especially the sales and evergreen varieties. But one of the things I'm especially a fan of is a monthly sales system. It's the inspiration behind my longest standing program, The $10K Monthly Content System (formally known as Your Content, Your Empire).
And the biggest reason comes to down to this: It’s impossible for you to be everywhere at all times. And when you’re available to sell something and when your audience is ready to buy something might not always be on the page. Plus—there’s so much heavy lifting that a well-designed sales automation can do for you that will let you avoid reinventing the wheel every time you make a sale, dropping the ball with follow-ups and give you an opportunity to measure, tweak and optimize the process for better conversions.
And this isn’t just applicable to evergreen sales systems either.
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A few years ago, I ran the same live workshop for 6 months straight. Going into it, I believed that my audience would get bored, I'd get bored, or it would just lose effectiveness over time.
I’m happy to admit I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only was it my highest converting “sales” event ever, but it also got better and better each time I ran it, solicited feedback, and implemented the tweaks. I learned firsthand the power of a great REPEATABLE sales system, and I don’t want you to miss out on all it could do for you.
Keep reading to learn why sales goals are out, sales systems are in, and how you can start creating and optimizing your own sales system.
What’s the Difference Between a Monthly Sales System and Sales Goals?
Sales goals and sales systems have some fundamental differences, but they also have similarities. If you’re having trouble distinguishing between the two, know you’re not the only one. Let’s break them down.
Sales goals sound like this: “I want to hit $10K this month with X product or in X launch”.
This illustrates the binary nature of sales goals—you either hit 'em or you don't. Unfortunately, this sets you up for failure more often than success, as it doesn't leave room for milestones or a gradual build-up to your success.
Sales systems sound like this: “I want to hit $10K a month from my X funnel for X offer” OR “I want to hit $10K a month from running monthly workshops”.
Sales systems are set up to be flexible and repeatable, which gives you an opportunity to measure and reflect regularly and optimize the process for increasingly better results. They also provide an opportunity to streamline the system rather than creating new systems (new events/new funnels/new promotions) from scratch all the time.
So while the different phraseology is an important difference between a system versus a goal, it isn’t just that. There’s also a difference in the approaches too. With a sales goal, the focus is more on the end result and the ways in which you try to get there might be different every time. One time it might be a challenge, the next it might be an affiliate push. But with a system, the focus is on the process—especially on making it repeatable and measurable so you can avoid starting from scratch every single time.
And the most freeing part of taking a systems- instead of a goal-based approach: perfection isn’t required here.
That's the great thing about sales systems: they aren’t set in stone. You can go back and tweak your system anytime. What's most important is laying your sales system foundation so you can continue to make improvements.
Phase 1: Pick an Offer and Get it Sale-Ready
Ready to shift from sales goals to sales systems? The first step is to pick a single offer or offer suite (core offer + lead-in offer or upsell/downsell or add-ons) and get it ready to sell.
This means making sure all the supporting pieces are ready, including:
- Onboarding tools
- Salespage
- Thank-you page
- Sales messaging and graphics
- Checkout process (don’t forget to test it!)
Because we're systems-focused (not one-and-done launch-focused), this means you can let up on the need for these items to be flawless. Start with what you have and then go through running, measuring, and tweaking. It’s normal to update bits and pieces of the sales collateral as you go.
Phase 2: Choose a Sales Method
Once your offer is sales-ready, it's time to pick a sales method. The key is repeatability, so this might be a completely automated funnel OR it could be events you run every so often (monthly, quarterly or bimonthly). A live event could be a signature challenge, webinar, workshop, or something else entirely.
Once you've decided the method you want to build a system around first, it's time to prep the materials:
- For an automated funnel: Create the lead magnet, sign-up system, thank-you page offer(s), follow-up sequence, etc.
- For a repeatable event: Gather the event content, event promotion content, the follow-up sales sequence and promotion, the event sign-up system, etc.
Just like with getting your sales collateral ready in the previous phase, this isn't about getting it perfect. Start running the system because you'll get far better intel from the results than you will from obsessing over achieving perfection (which can truly be paralyzing)! Good enough is great for now.
Phase 3: Document Your Monthly Sales System
Once everything is ready to go (you have a sales-ready offer and a sales method created), it's time to run it.
The first time you run your system, approach it like you're an investigative journalist and document EVERYTHING.
- What steps do you take to promote it?
- What steps do you take to run it?
- What steps do you take to measure it?
Every little step that goes into the process you want to capture because it will help you make informed improvements when you’re ready.
Phase 4: Run, Measure, Tweak, Repeat
Once you're finished running your system for the first time, the most important step is to measure your results.
Track things like:
- How many people entered the funnel or signed up for the event?
- What happened after that in terms of clicks/sales/inquiries/engagement?
- What feedback did you get?
Basically map out your entire sales flow – from invitation to event sign-up to offer and measure what happens at each of the steps. How many people move on to the next step? And what was the drop-off?
Use this info to come up with a list of 3-5 things you're going to change up the next time you run it. While you're at it, get one step ahead and schedule the next time you're going to run it too.
Monthly Sales Systems Set You Up For Success
A great sales system beats sales goals every time.
Pick an offer (and get it sale-ready), choose a sales method, run your sales system and document everything. Lastly, run, measure, tweak—rinse and repeat. You can run this an infinite amount of times. The more you run your system, the more opportunities you'll have to tweak your way into something great (and scalable)
Perhaps most importantly, make room for celebration—no matter how big or how small. Every sale, every improvement, and every step forward is a win.
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