The Design Business Show 159: Relationship-Driven Sales with Dr. Nadia Brown

Director : Melissa Burkheimer | October 4, 2021
Check out episode 159 of The Design Business Show with Dr. Nadia Brown to learn all about relationship-driven sales!

Dr. Nadia holds a doctoral degree in Organizational Leadership and is passionate about helping women become more authentic, confident leaders who take charge of their careers.

She is a sales strategist, consultant, trainer, and founder of The Doyenne Agency. A sales agency that works with business owners, companies, and corporations to multiply revenue and awaken the consistent closer within your sales team using the Consistent Sales Method™. Nadia helps women learn to play the career game in business to advance their careers and professions.

When it comes to sales, women come to her timid and shaky about going after the money – they leave her strategic, strong, emboldened and most importantly, paid.

Nadia brings over fifteen years of leadership experience, powerful conversations, achieving goals, and respect for people to develop a comprehensive sales process to increase closing rates and satisfied client retention. As a result, Nadia’s clients have seen tremendous results, such as raising their rates, decreasing their refund requests, and doubling or tripling their annual revenues, including helping clients increase their yearly revenue by 800%.

Here’s what we covered on the episode:

Dr. Nadia’s Journey + The Doyenne Agency

  • How Dr. Nadia and I were connected by our mutual friend, Noemi, who helps connect guests with podcast hosts
  • Dr. Nadia shares that she started out in a corporate IT job where she did client support, training, projects management, but not sales
  • When Dr. Nadia started her own business, she wasn’t focused on sales which took a toll on her business but then shares she became committed to learning how to do the sales part of the business so she wouldn’t be in tough situations anymore
  • 4 years ago, they launched the sales agency with the vision of helping other service providers avoid the situations Dr. Nadia found herself in when first starting out and she tells us, you can sell in a way that feels good and makes money
  • Originally, Dr. Nadia felt a lot of shame before they launched the agency because she was helping women and promoting girl power, but behind the scenes, she felt like a hot mess; she realized she needed to practice what she was preaching
  • After Dr. Nadia had that tough conversation with herself, she actually went and got a job which allowed her to pay for obligations and gave her time to do sales training so she could figure out the best way to do sales for her
  • Dr. Nadia shares the meaning behind the name of her agency, The Doyenne Agency
  • In the past, Dr. Nadia explains that they acted as their clients’ sales department and were having those sales conversations for them, but after last year they took a step back from that and focused on back of room sales and sales training

How to Approach Relationship-Driven Sales

  • The most common mistakes Dr. Nadia sees is people not having a sales process or not qualifying their leads along the way
  • How onboarding plays a big role in your sales process and how Dr. Nadia has seen sales fall apart because of the onboarding process
  • The #1 secret to relationship-driven sales Dr. Nadia says is to actually focus on building relationships and to create a sales process that works for you
  • A book that helped Dr. Nadia grasp the need for relationships in sales is, “The Referal of a Lifetime” by Tim Templeton 
  • Some things Dr. Nadia does to make sure relationship building is present in her business is sending regular newsletter communication, sending items through the mail, and scheduling in her calendar to have one on one time to build or maintain a relationship
  • If you have extended the sales opportunity and for whatever reason, that person doesn’t move forward, you have to have an open conversation and ask if it’s the right time for them, if there’s a better way for you to work together, and ask how they’d like to keep in contact with you
  • A great way to stay connected with people is to send a quick message, a tool I utilize is Voxer, which is a voice messaging app – Dr. Nadia likes emails for making connections and says to make sure you put in your schedule times to reach out
  • We talk about connecting with others in a way that honors your boundaries and is genuine

Then & Now in Dr. Nadia’s Business + The Convert Lab

  • When Dr. Nadia first launched the sales agency, their primary offer was sales support on a monthly retainer of only $500 with a higher commission rate, now a monthly retainer would be about $1,500 with a lower commission rate
  • Dr. Nadia explains what the Convert Lab is, the steps involved with each phase of the lab, and says they’ve started offering 4 months of post-lab support
  • When people hire the agency for sales support it’s typically for an event, where they’re doing back of room service or it’s ongoing and Nadia says those people are usually at the 6-figure mark in their business and no longer have the capacity
  • People who come to the labs are those who want to do the sales themselves and make sure their sales process is solid
  • Dr. Nadia further explains that the lab is a $7,500 group that you get for at least 4 months and says they try to run it every other month
  • Dr. Nadia’s team includes, operations support, social media support, a sales team, and admin support
  • How having a solid sales system to support you and maintain consistent revenue in your business will go a long way
  • Check out The Doyenne Agency website, and take their new quiz called, Discover Your Sales Blindspot

Links mentioned:

The Doyenne Agency Website

The Referral of a Lifetime by Tim Templeton 

The Convert Lab

Discover Your Sales Blindspot Quiz 

 

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