Ep. 357 How to Sell in a Tough Market

Are you highly skilled, experienced, and passionate about your work, but still struggling to get fully booked with the right clients? In this refreshingly honest episode, Anna Lundberg unpacks why even top experts find it tough to thrive in today’s challenging market. Discover why this isn’t the time to wait for things to improve, but to sharpen your positioning, messaging, and visibility to stand out – even now. Tune in to reframe your strategy and uncover the real keys to business growth in uncertain times.

Key moments:

[00:00] Introduction and market reality check

[03:21] The real reasons you’re not booked out

[04:10] Why offers must be short-term and results-focused

[10:31] How positioning makes or breaks perceived value

[13:36] Visibility: Beyond word of mouth to a client pathway

[16:06] Questions to audit your own positioning and messaging

[17:57] Stop settling for less and build towards the business you want

[18:47] Invitation to the Business Accelerator Programme and closing thoughts

Resources mentioned:

• Business Accelerator Programme: Next cohort opens in September for an October start. Apply now at: onestepoutside.com/accelerate

How to sell in a tough market

This episode is for you if you’re highly qualified, experienced and great at what you do, but your business results don’t reflect that, you’re not consistently booked out with the right clients and you’re starting to wonder, what am I missing? And yes, we are in a tougher market with budget cuts, DEI initiatives being scaled back and uncertainty in the public and international sectors. But this is not about waiting for things to improve. It’s about positioning yourself so the right clients choose you. Even, or perhaps especially now, Foreigning Success, the podcast that helps you build a profitable business as an independent expert, one that works for you and your lifestyle. I’m your host, Ella Lundberg, former corporate insider turned business mentor, executive coach and mum of two. Whether you’re a solopreneur, a coach, speaker, consultant, I’m here to guide you in creating a business that gives you freedom, flexibility and the fulfilment you’re looking for, ready to redefine success and build a business that you love.

Let’s get started. Okay, let’s be honest here. 2025 has been a more challenging market for many of us, but then what year isn’t right? We think back to Covid, which my goodness, is already five years ago. There have been financial crises over the years, but if we’re anchoring in this reality right now, decision makers, it feels like, have been taking longer to commit. Budgets are being scrutinised and yes, some sectors are pull back. So look, without going into the political economic context, which is by no means my expertise, international trade has been unsettled again. You know, there were the Trump tariffs creating ripple effects in global supply chains and making some organisations cautious about big investments. Lots of redundancies being made in organisational restructuring.

Corporate priorities are shifting. You know, high profile DEI cuts have affected people as companies consolidate budgets, which often means training, coaching and non essential. Although we believe they’re essential, projects are under more pressure to prove their value. And of course, for those of you in the public and public sector and international organisations, they’re freezing or delaying new projects and again, especially anything seen as discretionary. So yes, it is harder to get attention right now. To be fully honest, the first couple of months this year were the hardest I’ve had in 10 plus years being in business. Part of that was the market, part of that was me. So I’m holding my hands up there and you might feel like people are saying not now more than they used to.

But the good news and the reality is that clients are still investing. Often they’re investing more. They’re investing in trusted experts who are solving urgent, tangible problems. It’s just that the margin for vague messaging or unfocused offers is shrinking. Anyone can sell in a good market, but it gets harder to do so when the market is tougher. And so if you’re great at what you do, but you’re not consistently booked, it’s not just the market, it’s about how you’re showing up. And I’m saying this, you know, gently, not to call you out or judge you. And again, I’ve been through this myself and I’m sure I will again, but it’s just doubling down and making sure that we’re really clear on how we communicate the value we bring, whether our offers feel like a safe, obvious yes to the right clients.

Okay, so let’s look at why you’re not booked out. And of course there can be different reasons for this, but I want to highlight three here in particular in this context. And the first one is that your offers aren’t clear or compelling enough. Especially important in a tough market where decision makers are more risk averse. And in fact, I’d go further to say it’s not just that they’re not clear or compelling enough. We’re passionate about this long term impact. And I’ve had this feedback, even reading between the lines and more explicitly. And when we’re talking about empathetic human first leadership, the future of work, people planet and profit, sustainability, climate change, neurodiversity, these are topics that are so, so important.

But they’re long term, they’re big problems or issues to tackle and they’re not necessarily immediately translated into something that companies in particular care about. Right? They care about the profit, the money effectively. And they might care about their prestige or, you know, pr. They care about productivity, things like retention, those kinds of things. Right. So I had this conversation with a, with a colleague and she works, as I said, in People Planet profit. And it’s all around how it’s not just about profit. It’s really important to also think about people and planets.

But we talked about actually in the short term, she needs to lean with profit, lead with profit, because that’s what the businesses need right now. If you don’t have money, if you don’t have the profit there, then it feels like too much of a stretch to then invest in long term sustainability. We might think it’s important and we believe it’s important, but it isn’t a burning issue that’s sort of on the table right now and that’s an important distinction. Right, so. So the first reason why you’re not getting as many sales as you want is that your offers aren’t clear or compelling enough. Now, I’ve Talked there about B2B offers, right, which is almost more important in a way to. To couch in the terms of what they’re buying. They’re buying the.

The profitability, the productivity, their reputation, their retention, all these numbers. Right? Reducing attrition, maybe leadership pipelines and things like that. That’s what they care about, engagement. Yes, but, you know, we need to be a bit careful with this kind of fluffy language. What does that really mean? We. I use this kind of language all the time. But. But do we actually know what that means? And are we just going, guess it’s yes, or are we actually, you know, going, no, let’s put this into terms of what’s happening right now on the ground, as it were.

So that’s B2B, but B2C the same. And I think we fall into that problem in particular when we’re coaches because all of our beautiful elevator pictures and headlines in the past, written by ourselves now, often with the help of ChatGPT or equivalent, are saying things like clarity, purpose and confidence. Probably three Cs would be better, right? Clarity, community, confidence. Maybe my programme offers or it’s going to help you thrive, not survive. And we’re going to address your limiting beliefs and reframe your mindset and all these things. We’re talking in these terms of coaching language that, yes, maybe more and more people have woken up to. But a thought I had, by the way, and this comes into number two, which is about positioning. But imagine you’re in a directory with all other coaches, let’s say, in your space.

If you said those things, you would just sound exactly the same as others, right? Oh, I help you focus on your goals and address your mindset and get, you know. Okay, but why you? That’s what matters, right? What. What result are you actually delivering? And again, coaching, yes, it is a little bit more intangible and subjective, but ultimately there’s a reason why I’m investing my money, especially when it’s my own money, not the company’s money. And it comes from a place of trust and credibility and that relationship and sense that you understand my problems, you understand the, like, micro moments of how this shows up in my life, exactly what’s going on. And therefore I trust that you can also solve my problem. Okay, so whether it’s B2B. And you’re a little bit too enamoured by your mission, your crusade. On the one hand, rather than putting it in terms that an HR leader or general manager or chief people officer, whatever it is, whoever you’re working with, will buy, you’re talking about those soft, very important for us, but slightly too kind of long term intangible, meaningful but not immediately short term impactful.

Also, as a sort of reassuring piece here, I’m not saying abandon your mission because that’s a really important why for the work you do, but that’s not necessarily the thing you lead with in, let’s say an outreach email. And the good news is that if you come in through the door of, oh, I’ll run a time management session for you, or oh, I’ll help you fix your meetings, or I’ll help you with, you know, yeah, disengage leaders, blah blah, blah, then once you’re there, you can sow the seed. You can seed your bigger mission and they’ll love what you’re doing. And you can then sell on the series of workshops, the coaching, the bigger consulting project, whatever that is. And like, hey, look, now that we fixed the profit thing, we can invest in long term growth and sustainability. So again, B2B, don’t be too enamoured with your crusade, your mission. And in fact Alex Merry, who’s the speaking coach who we had on earlier in the year and he runs the programme Microdrop, he talks about, you have a message for meaning and a message for money. And that’s hard to reconcile sometimes.

But it’s important we know our why the big picture. And that’s great for thought leadership and keynote talks and things like that. But if we’re wanting to have the sales conversation we need to be getting down and dirty with, okay, what are the problems they’re actually experiencing and how can I help solve them in the short term? And again then on the B2C side, really thinking about, okay, but they’re struggling with this. They’re feeling like this. They’re worried about that it’s showing up in this way. Not all this fluffy language about living your best and most fulfilled life. Think about, try to take a step back and get someone, get someone who’s super cynical and anti coaching to read your stuff and rip it apart. In fact, you can probably ask AI to do that, right? Pretend that you don’t believe in coaching.

You’re not a softie, you don’t do any internal work ever. You know, what would be the terms in which you might put this offer and it might go too far that way, but it’s just to challenge yourself, to really go specific. So, number one reason why you’re not booked out, your offers aren’t clear or compelling enough. So they’re not clear enough. I don’t even know what you’re delivering. I’ve certainly been there. Not compelling enough because you’re too long term, it’s too crusade y. The second one that I hinted at there was your positioning.

Your positioning doesn’t reflect your expertise. So, look, especially budget conscious clients are going to choose a person who feels like the safest, clearest bet. And I think a lot of us, maybe women in particular in this case, downplay our expertise and experience. I had Mira, who’s a colleague who’s in the programme I’m in, who shared that, you know, she’d been chief people officer with budgets of goodness knows, I can’t remember what she said, and managing however many thousands of people. And she used to just kind of mumble that, oh, I work in the people space. Right, which is doing us a disservice and it’s not getting us to where we want to be. We might think, oh, I’ve just started this business, I’m relatively new, or you’ve pivoted into a new area. No, you’ve got decades of experience and expertise.

I’m sure if you’re anything like me, you’ve done a gazillion courses, you have all the certifications, you know, whatever your imposter syndrome and lack of confidence tries to tell you, you know, that you’re great at what you do, you have the tangible certifications and accolades and so on, as well as the experiences, the knowledge, the confidence, the frameworks that you know will help the people organisations you’re going to work with. So that position needs to come across. It’s not, oh, I’ve just qualified as a coach in this area. No, I’ve been helping people with this since 19, whatever year. Right. Maybe that’s too long back, but, you know, for the last two decades, I’ve been passionate about blah, blah, blah, don’t lie. But by all means, at least be accurate and paint the picture to demonstrate your expertise, you need to be coming across confident. I know that.

As much as I now wisely have realised that the most confident people who tell me exactly what I need to do don’t actually have the answer. It’s very easy to believe that. Right. And if I say to you on a sales call, yeah, the, the problems you have These are the exact problems we fix in Accelerator. This is how I help Sarah, Jenny, Joe, John, whatever this is. You know, we got them from A to B. I. I’m confidently saying this is what we’re going to work on.

We’re going to work on designing an intentional business model for you, authentic marketing and sales that really feels good to you, and put in place some simple systems and processes to support you. This is how we do it. This is how much it costs. Boom. Rather than, oh, okay, yeah, well, we could do some coaching. And, yeah, we’re like a. Maybe I could run a workshop or. You know, I’m not making fun of anyone here because I, again, I’ve been there.

But. But if we want to build a real business, it’s not a hobby, it’s not a side hustle, it’s not dabbling anymore. And if we believe we have something to offer and want to change the world in whatever small and big way, we have to position ourselves in a way that allows us to do that. And I think a lot of us are playing too small, downplaying our expertise and experience, not wanting to brag, not wanting to be too pushy. And in doing so, we’re just getting lost in the noise. So the second reason there is that your positioning doesn’t reflect your expertise. And then finally, it’s your visibility. It’s inconsistent or maybe even misdirected.

In particular, in a slower market, we can’t rely on random referrals. As much as I love word of mouth, and I’ve had some really random ones recently where people have been referred by people I don’t even know, which is great news for me. It’s not something I can count on. You know, I had several of those last month. Before that, maybe I had none. Next month I might have a few more. Who knows? You need a really clear, intentional client pathway. You need to know where you’re posting, where you’re showing up, how you’re doing.

So what’s the message? What are you trying to achieve? You know, who are you trying to speak to with what message, at what time? These are the things we need to get super, super clear and not just get on the content, hamster wheel, LinkedIn, or even worse for most of us, Instagram, just chasing that algorithm. And I had lots of episodes on this last month, maybe even two months ago now on, on that. And. And so if we’re. And I say being inconsistent or misdirected because that’s important, because I could be posting every day and yet it’s just noise. It’s all kind of vanilla chat GPT stuff. And I’m not saying don’t use AI because I absolutely do. But we want to be clear who we’re trying to speak to.

What’s the message? What’s the goal for us? What’s the next step they’re taking? Right. Just posting stuff for the sake of it is not going to get you anyway. And if anything, it’s going to just add to the noise. Right. And make you feel like you’re busy and doing all the things but not moving the needle. And that’s what we’re talking about next week in terms of, okay, how can we really make sure we’re focusing on the things that make a difference? But those are the three main reason, I think in this context, and I’d love for you to reflect on which of the three feels like if you’re going to put a critical eye on how you’ve been showing up, the reason why you might not be fulfilling your potential in terms of sales and business. So number one is your offers aren’t clear or compelling enough. Immediate short term impact.

Your positioning doesn’t reflect your expertise or your visibility is inconsistent or misdirected. So your offers, your positioning and your visibility, okay, so you need clarity, which starts with clarity on what you want, first of all. And then you can communicate that clarity to potential clients. Your positioning, which is really expressing that clarity to your prospects, to your audience. And yes, a consistent marketing and sales rhythm, a drumbeat to build trust, to establish that perceived value and credibility. These are the things that clients need more than ever in this kind of market. So, you know, if not now, then when will we do this? This is a great opportunity. We could just lean back and go, oh, it’s just the market.

Or no, we lean in and we will come out all the stronger for it. So if we can simplify our message, we can demonstrate that authority. We will get booked and booked as a loose term for however it is you’re selling or people are working with you, even in sectors that are under pressure. Okay, so a couple of questions I guess to ask yourself on this to find out where the gaps are. If a stranger landed on your profile or website today, would they know exactly who I help and how? The questions we need to answer are why this, why now? And why me? And again, this has happened to me recently. We can become so lost or enamoured in our websites or they’ve been around for so long that we miss something really obvious that someone who doesn’t quite get it, doesn’t know us very well, might go, hey, what’s this? Or this doesn’t say this. Or this doesn’t link or that doesn’t make sense. And that’s really painful feedback to get, but so, so valuable.

So if a stranger landed on my profile or website today, would they know exactly who I help and how? Why this, why now, why me? And let’s project. What would future you do? I think I’ve got a podcast episode on that from years ago. But if I were fully booked with my dream clients, let’s paint that picture. What would that look like? What would you be offering and how would you be talking about it? So you’re projecting yourself into the future and showing up in that way. I think maybe this is the secret reason number four, but I think part of the red thread through all of this is that we’re so weighed down by who we were and who we happen to have in front of us. You know, right now I’ve got clients who are not my ideal clients, but I’m saying yes to them just because they are there and they want to work with me. And I just want to need the money that’s not going to ladder up to the business that we want. And so how can we position ourselves for that higher level of client? The higher paid work, the stuff that I’m really passionate about, that will really make a difference.

The other people, you can still work with them if you want to, as long as they’re not distracting too much from your main stuff. But in terms of positioning and messaging, putting yourself out there, it needs to be at that higher level of where you’re building towards, because it takes time to build this positioning and trust and credibility. Right? So let’s steer the ship in that new direction sooner rather than later. And that will then build momentum and generate that kind of virtuous cycle over time. Okay, so to reassure you again, as ever, this is not about working harder. It’s not about chasing every client, and it’s also not about avoiding this and just giving up and going, hey, there’s no point, I’ll take a job, or worse, just continue suffering. It is about clarity, confidence, and consistency. And that is what we build inside my accelerator programme.

So if you do want to turn your expertise into a business that consistently attracts the clients that will help you design and live, I suppose experience, run that business that you really want to run, not just the one that you’ve kind of cobbled together up until now, then the first step is to book a call so we can look at, you know, where you are, you can tell me how your business is working at the moment, what’s missing and where do you feel the gap is of these different areas I’ve talked about. And then of course, if it is a fit, we can talk about whether it’s the accelerator programme or perhaps the. A shorter period of one to one support to go deeper could be the best fit for you. But I hope this is a good kind of reality check. It’s not you, but it also is. So it is a tougher market, but this is an opportunity as well as a challenge to identify the reasons of what’s not quite working and what could be stronger and then set ourselves up for this actually like a different level of success versus even what you had before the market got a bit tougher. So this is good news, everybody. Hopefully chat to you soon and look forward to seeing you next week. Bye for now.

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