Are you posting consistently on LinkedIn or Instagram but still struggling to turn your audience into paying clients? This episode is for independent experts who want to move beyond random content and start building relationships that actually lead to business – without feeling pushy or “salesy.” Anna Lundberg shares hard-won sales insights and practical steps for converting interest into income in a way that feels authentic, human, and strategic.

Key moments:

[00:00] Introduction: The struggle to convert content into clients

[03:06] Why marketing isn’t enough and the role of sales

[06:04] Selling as serving: mindset shift for business owners

[08:09] Moving beyond the traditional sales funnel: relationship-building and trust

[11:13] Building a simple, effective sales system (not just fancy CRMs)

[14:35] Designing a process that fits your business and personality

[15:44] The importance of momentum moves to ensure consistent client flow

[16:29] Taking control: Outreach, follow-up, and not just relying on referrals

[17:55] About Anna’s Business Accelerator and closing remarks

Resources mentioned:

• Book a consultation call
• The Business Accelerator: Learn more and join the waitlist
• Connect with Anna Lundberg: Get in touch on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Sales vs marketing

This episode is for you if you have been posting regularly, maybe on LinkedIn, maybe Instagram, but you’re struggling to convert that into paying clients. You’re avoiding salesy language like the plague. But you also need your business to grow. So if you want a more human, more strategic way to turn that interest into income, then listen up. Welcome to Reimagining 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, Ellen 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, we’re talking sales and I never thought I would talk about sales, to be honest. I, I was going to say I grew up as a marketer. That’s not quite the case, but my very first job was in brand management, we called it, at the big corporate consumer giant, Procter and Gamble, really known for its marketing. It’s sort of the inventor almost of, to some extent, I think I’m a bit biassed maybe, but you know, incredible brands building for the consumer and effective marketing. And so marketing is my natural space. It’s my safe space.

I create content, I build a brand. That’s what I do. Whether it’s the business brand, obviously things like the website to do, websites as well, work with web agencies and so on, you know, graphics. I’m not a graphic designer, let’s be honest. But, you know, sort of understanding kind of how things should look. I don’t know, even, you know, copy newsletters, stuff like that kind of comes naturally to me. Personal branding, obviously, core part of what my work is. However, as it turns out, first of all, marketing yourself is very different to marketing, let’s say this beautiful perfume over here with lots of celebrities around it and so on.

Secondly, marketing is different to sales. Again, in my corporate work, I, we were the brand management team, there was a PR team, there was a sales team and we did not, you know, get involved in those conversations. We created this amazing thing and then someone else went off and sold it. Tada. And those are the days. And to some extent, and this is something I’ve actually experienced myself, you know, I started, well, initially I was doing digital marketing consultancy and then When I started my own business, it was relatively early days for online business, as we used to call it then. Now it’s all online really. At the time it was perfectly okay to let content do both sales and marketing.

So I think, you know, at least the online business culture made it seem like that was possible, that content could do both. And as I said from my personal experience, my marketing did generate sales. So I think for a long time I didn’t quite grasp, and I’m admitting this openly here, a bit of vulnerability and that there was something I was missing there. Right. Yes, I did have clients and thank goodness and thank you to them for trusting me, who came early on, having seen a few posts or something and said, I want to work with you, but I didn’t have any kind of sales process, you know, it wasn’t even on my mind, I didn’t even think about it. And I have friends, you know, from my marketing days who are much more sales oriented. I’ve got a friend who is the founder of a really successful startup and he started in sales. You know, I’ve totally come full circle to recognising the value of sales and recognising that I’ve underestimated its importance.

All this to say that hopefully if you’re not quite on the sales bandwagon yet, I hope you can shortcut some of the mistakes and the long winding path I’ve taken to arrive at this realisation and recognise that you need to have visibility and conversion. I did a poll a while ago on LinkedIn asking, you know, what’s your biggest struggle with content? And of course there were many, but one of them was turning obviously those likes impressions, turning that interest into sales converting, as it were. And the language we use around sales, by the way, is a little bit off putting conversion, you know, lead magnets and tripwires and even just talking about a lead, it’s like a human being who potentially wants to work with you in a really important area of their life. You know, it’s quite off putting, but that is the terminology that’s there. So until we find better words, I guess we need to kind of stick with that. But I’m seeing kind of a renaissance of sales, I suppose, if ever it did go away, especially in B2B. Of course, selling to corporate is not really a marketing game as such and in really high trust services. So here’s the thing, people, especially corporate buyers, aren’t going to buy from a single Instagram post.

They’re not even going to buy from 100 Instagram posts usually or beautiful long sales page. You know, again, when I first started the. In fact, it’s probably got worse now. Reams and reams of pages and pages of these really long sales letters, almost sales pages, um, that you know, may well sell like a little course or something, but it’s not going to sell a big leadership development programme. It’s not going to sell even, you know, a one to one coaching package that’s costing, I don’t know, 5K or whatever. It’s just not going to happen from just a sales page and it’s not going to happen from just a post, in my opinion. You can disagree if you’d like. And there’s much more about relationships now.

So when we talk about sales and, and you know, this is maybe semantics, but a lot of us say, you know, let’s not think about sales, let’s think of serving. Because first of all, if you find the idea of sales off putting, remember that you have a business and if you don’t sell, you won’t have a business. Punto. Okay, first of all, secondly, selling and earning money is actually the purest form of helping someone in the case of a business. I’m going to caveat that because it means that they believe you can help them, you’re going to help them and they will get the solution they need. So it’s really important actually if we truly believe that we have something valuable to sell, and hopefully we do, because otherwise why are we even bothering then? You know, it’s doing you a disservice. If I, and I do believe that the accelerator is a great programme, obviously I want to first work out if you’re the right kind of client for that, if you’re at the right spot for it, if you have those needs, if you’d be a good fit, etc, etc, and if you have the, you know, financial capacity, time capacity to do it. But if I, if I answer yes to all those questions, if we agree it’s the right fit for you, then actually reminding you, helping you make that decision is helping you and having you join is the best possible way for me to support you.

There’s, of course there’s, I mean probably too much content I pumped out in all these podcast episodes and we’re webinars, you can watch and PDFs and whatever, but that just will never give you the same level of support as having one to one or at least small group mentoring and having the support of the group, having ongoing accountability, et cetera, et cetera. So again Selling is serving. It might sound a bit ridiculous but thinking of, first of all it’s necessary for you to have a business and secondly it is actually helping people but it is about relationships. And you know the funnel we used to have back in the day was awareness. They need to find out about you engagement. They need to kind of a consideration we called it. They need to begin to consider you as a possibility, then conversion. That’s the sales, the purchase.

And then we actually had advocacy. So you know, people obviously being ambassadors for you recommending, referring and possibly buying again. Now so many people have said, okay, it’s not a linear funnel anymore. I’ve seen someone say it’s a fairground. Somebody said it’s a. Yeah like a fun fair. A playground was another one. So similar one, there’s the marketing flywheel because it’s really, it’s sort of going around in a, in a circle and the main thing is I keep using the word tapestry so maybe I should coin the word there.

But it’s a tapestry of interactions with you when and, and I would encourage you to ask yourself this too. When you last bought from somebody, why did you buy from them? So for me, I joined Alex Mary’s mic drop speaking community because one person who lives down here in Dorset with me too, who I trusted recommended it. I’d seen him do a training on how to do a TED Talk I think in another programme I was in. And then there was a third touch point as well. So for me that triangulation of interactions was enough for me to go, okay, this is the moment. It just happened to be doors open at the time and I was like, yes, that’s for me, for me too. When clients come to me and I asked my accelerator members this recently. What happened? Well, this person recommended me.

Your posts kept coming up in my feed. I joined your personal branding workshop, you know, and then we had that call and then they went off and thought about it and so on. Right. So maybe it’s frustratingly slow and especially if it’s a big dramatic life change then it could be that it takes some time. But that’s why it’s so important to, to have a kind of nurturing and follow up process. There is an element of tracking in there too. Right. Because if you have conversations with people and then forget all about them when then it is time for them to buy, you’re not going to be top of mind at all.

They’re going to be working with somebody else unfortunately. So again it’s an act of helping them I know it’s a shift, but I would almost think like, until they tell you to go and f off, you have the permission, if they raise their hand to say, I’m interested, to keep following up until they tell you, like, no. If they say, no, not now, next time maybe, then obviously you can check in for next time. And if they say, never, never again, I’m unsubscribing, don’t talk to me then, please respect that. But I think for most of us, for most of you, you can be a little bit more, dare I say it, pushy than you are. Okay? But it’s a mindset shift. It’s not a push, it’s a kindness. Okay? It’s not manipulation, it’s matchmaking.

It’s being curious, it’s understanding. Oh, is this the right person? Would this be helpful for them? Which programme would be helpful? Right. We’re guiding them and ourselves through a decision making process. And I think that curiosity really helps because it means if we’re on a call, whether you call a discovery call or a sales call or whatever, then I can just take the pressure off and I’m just trying to uncover, okay, what are you struggling with? What are your goals? How might I help you? Can I help you? What support are you looking for? What program’s right. And then actually, no, I don’t think this is the right thing for you. Or maybe you’d be better served doing something else. It’s too early, it’s too late, whatever. And that curiosity just takes the pressure off.

So, look, you need a sales system, I guess is the point, and I hesitate to use that word because it doesn’t need to be a hugely expensive, complex CRM, Customer relationship management software. I used one and it was far too complex. I’ve gone back to basics. I had Excel sheets in the past, you know, but you need some, first of all, understanding of. Yes, it’s not linear anymore. However, this helps you think of the stages. How will people discover you? How will they kind of experience your work and how you then have the conversation where they’re going to be able to say yes to buying. So people discovering you, that might be often it’s, you know, yes, maybe social media posts, networking, conference, speaking, speaking on someone else’s podcast, you know, getting in front of new audiences is how people will discover you.

How will they experience my work? Well, for me, I really love to run like a webinar. I’ve done five day, three day sessions. I mean, not full day, but, you know, half an hour, an Hour, whatever it is, workshops, webinars, obviously you’ve got hours and hours of podcasts to listen to, so that’s another way. And, and you might do a smaller thing like I just ran a recalibration sprint before I did the accelerator programme. So instead of joining for 12 months, you might do, you know, a four or five week programme where you might buy a course or buy my book or something. Right. So there’s a way to experience my work. My successful founder friend says in his B2B world that, oh, it doesn’t even matter if they watch the webinar, I just want their data.

And that’s sort of a different approach which is more volume driven for me. I want you to join. Obviously people are busy and they might watch the recording, but the best way for me to both give you value and help you see that I can give you value is for you to join the workshop and to actually workshop stuff with me. It’s for me to get a feel for you as much as it is for you to get a feel for me. So number one, have those stages in your, in, you know, mapped out, I suppose, like an ecosystem. How will they discover you, how will they experience your work? And how will they then say yes to buying? It’s often a one to one call with, with coaching. Usually, you know, and if it’s accelerator, I’ve got an application just to make sure it’s the right fit. So we’ll have a call before I then say, hey, here’s the link to buy or not.

And same to one to one coaching. I wouldn’t take on like a client for like a 6 month, 12 month engagement if we haven’t had a chat. Same for B2B. If I’m doing executive coaching, I have then a call the often HR person who is hiring me and then a second confidential one with the individual to make sure that there’s a fit. The difference is with corporate, usually you’re sending a formal proposal and then they’re signing off on it and then of course there’s invoices and so on. Whereas for me, at least in my B2C there’s a payment link that you buy kind of up front with your credit card and then, you know, we work together and so there are some differences but basically it’s still the same. It’s sort of having conversations, it’s experiencing the work, it’s maybe having referral, which gives some credibility and so on, you know, and yeah, and building on that. And if it’s a no not now, then maybe it’s later and you follow up and so on.

So I never do. And sorry to disappoint you, this is what you said, I never do. Templates, I don’t give you. Like these are the exact seven stages you need to follow and these are the steps. Because the thing is, you know, I’m different to you. Personality preferences, wise, energy, talent, skill, network. Your business is different, their business, your clients are different to mine, et cetera, et cetera. Right.

We’re here to design a process that’s going to fit your intentional business, your intentional business blueprint. You know, values first, human first, and you first. So it could include things like discovery and business development calls. You might run webinars, there might be sort of sample content that you have. You might do a free little or low cost audit of something. There might be a mini session and then, and this is the bit that I think you might be most uncomfortable with. You need to be doing follow up messages and reminders. Some of that’s automated with our email marketing, but some of it is also one to one, giving a nudge and saying, hey, I thought of you, I found this.

Or have you given this any more thought? And so on. Okay. And. And a concept I’ve introduced in the accelerator is this idea of momentum moves. I’m calling it Love a bit of illustration. Mentum moves, which is having a handful of tasks that you know you’re going to do every day ideally, but certainly every week that will get you to a sustainable inflow of clients. Right. So even if I’m sort of neck deep in delivery right now, I’m still doing some outreach.

I’m following up. I’m posting something, you know, and I have that list of what things you need to do and your momentum moves to really make sure that you will also have clients in a few weeks, a few months time. If you’re still, if you’re too busy in your delivery now and you abandon business development, that’s when we get that dangerous income roller coaster. Okay, so no, there’s no template and exact structure, but we’ll develop that if we were to work together to really make sure it fits for you. Because without any structure, you’re just kind of hoping and you have no control. Oh, I’m kind of relying on referrals, which is great, but I’m not really intentionally building that. One day somebody refers 10 people to me, the next day nobody refers me. And that makes it far too unstable.

So we need to focus on what we can control and One of the things we can control is outreach is posting, following up and so on. Right. Okay. So I hope this, this resonates and again that you can maybe skip over some of the mistakes I’ve made, understanding that yes, you do need to not just post and ghost as they say, but actually have conversations with people. And it’s not rocket science. Right. But you’d be surprised as to how many of us don’t do these things, have conversations, follow up, build those relationships and have a way to kind of nurture the conversation. I think there’s a stat that’s like 3% of people are ready to buy right now.

So if you talk to 100 people, only three of them are even at the point of needing the thing right now. So my goodness, if that’s the case, think of the number of people you need to talk to and kind of taking the pressure off this particular moment and trusting that they’ll come back as long as you sort of stay top of mind with them when they are ready. So we are now I was going to deep into, but we’ve kicked off this quarter for the business accelerator. Doors are closed at the moment, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that we’re doing in the asset, moving kind of beyond random performative content and starting to build a business that actually converts in a way that feels really good for you. And so if you do are interested in that, we’ll open again in a couple of months. You can apply for the waitlist at onestepoutside.com forward/accelerate, onestep outside. Com forward slash accelerate. Or of course you can always message me, we can have a chat.

I do do one to one work as well. But the accelerator is really the best container to get that community support and the structure, the rhythm, the cadence, the accountability that you need to make this work. Okay, see you next week. Bye for now. If you’re ready to grow a business that actually works, one that pays you well, protects your time and reflects what matters most, the business accelerator is for you. It’s a 12 month journey for independent experts who want strategic growth without burnout and without compromise. Apply or join the waitlist at onestepoutside.com/accelerate.

Building a strong personal brand is important, whether you’re a freelancer, an entrepreneur, or an employee. If you’d like help getting clear on what you want to stand for, mapping out how you can amplify that message, and stepping up as a true leader in your industry, get in touch. You can book a call at onestepoutside.com/call.

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The Outsiders Business Accelerator

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1:1 Coaching & Mentoring

If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring. onestepoutside.com/coaching