If you’re starting a side hustle, you can’t avoid sales.

Today, in 10 minutes or less, you'll learn:

• Sales Principles

• Anatomy of the Sale

• Lead Qualification 101

• Discovery Calls 101

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🤝 Sales 101 for Side Hustlers

As a builder, I hated selling.

When I started my career coaching service, I felt awkward and imposter syndrome getting on my first discovery calls.

After 20+ calls, I started feeling more comfortable.

After 50+ calls, I gained more confidence to sell 4-figure coaching packages. (and later, 5-figure consulting deals).

I know I’m not alone in feeling this way.

Side hustles are on the rise as a vehicle to pursue interests, diversify income, and gain more financial independence. Yet, the path to go from zero to launch is fraught with challenges.

To help side hustlers, I wrote these actionable newsletters:

• Defining your ideal client profile

• Designing your side hustle roadmap

• Building a content engine

This next edition will focus on another crucial topic:

Sales.

We’ll talk about this in context of service-based side hustles, e.g. coaching and consulting.

In this newsletter, I will deep dive into how to go from lead to sale in your service-based side hustle—including qualifying leads, leading discovery calls, and handling common objections.

Sales Principles

Before we jump into tactics, let’s go over a few key principles:

• People do business with people they know, like, and trust. If you break down any successful sale, these actions are at the heart of it.

• Sales happens at EVERY client touchpoint. This took me a while to learn, but after hearing from clients that they were ready to buy after reading my reviews and content, now I’m a big believer. Each interaction with your client is an opportunity to help your clients know, like, and trust you.

• Build trust before asking for the purchase. Most people make the mistake of thinking sales as just calls. This misses an entire bucket of opportunities you have to resonate with clients, respond to their concerns, and build trust before jumping on a call.

Alright, now let’s break down the components of your sales.

Anatomy of the Sale

Here’s three parts of your sale:

• Lead Qualification. Before getting on any call, qualify. Qualification helps you identify which clients are most likely to buy your offer.

• Discovery Calls. The goal here is to deepen trust, show the path forward for clients, and yes—prompt them to pull the trigger on your offer.

• Objection Handling. Did you think you’d avoid conflict? If you want to close sales, prepare yourself to address the most common objections and concerns along the way.

Each of these components goes deep. Like really deep. So to prevent this newsletter from turning into a totem, I’ll focus on just the essentials.

Lead Qualification 101

Previously, we showed you how to build a content engine to generate leads. Now what happens when your potential clients arrive from your growth channels to your website?

Why Qualification?

A mistake that many side hustlers make is they start pushing people to sign up for a discovery call with them immediately.

As a result, they’re overwhelmed with calls. But conversion is low. Most potential clients seem to be “window shopping” instead of having earnest intent to try your service.

That’s why it’s important to assess your clients’ fit with your services BEFORE the discovery call.

The goal of qualification is to identify which clients are most likely to buy your offer (or which offer is the right fit). This helps you prioritize your limited time and energy on the right clients.

How to Use BANT to Qualify

Now let’s talk about execution. BANT is a qualification framework used by many sales professionals. It works for our side hustles too.

BANT stands for:

• Budget: How much is your potential client willing and able to spend?

• Authority: Who makes the ultimate decision?

• Need: Does the potential client have a burning need for your service?

• Timeline: How much time does your potential client need to make a purchasing decision?

You can apply BANT to all client touchpoints from your copywriting to your discovery call booking forms.

• For example, if you are writing articles, then share stories about the deep pains that your previous clients came to you with and how you worked together to help them overcome their obstacles. This is an implicit form of Need Qualification.

• If you have a discovery call booking form, then you can ask upfront if your potential client is willing to invest $X to achieve Y outcomes in your program. This is a form of Budget Qualification.

Try incorporating BANT into your growth engine, then reply to this email with how it goes. I’d be curious to hear how you use it!

Discovery Calls 101