Recording in progress.
Hello and welcome in today's episode, I'm really excited to talk about sales and give you the ultimate guide to selling as a registered dietitian. I'm going to share with you some tips and techniques and some common themes that I see with some of our clients. And you might know that as a registered dietitian, it can be challenging, right? To sell your services and grow your business.
However, there are some proven sales strategies that can help you achieve success. And they're what I teach our clients and what we follow ourselves. So I want to share some tips and techniques that you can use. I'm going to share five tips. So the first one might be obvious and you're probably already familiar with this tip.
You want to build relationships. Now, what I've noticed in working with thousands of dietitians is that this can feel uncomfortable. And I want to give you permission to work on your soft skills and focus on building relationships even before anything else, because that'll translate really well. As you grow your business.
Who. Keep in mind that people buy from people that they know like, and trust. Building relationships with your clients and with potential clients and even people in your connection and your community and your network is crucial to developing a successful business. And. Working on people trusting you, being an active listener, being a person of value, representing the field of dietetics. It all stems from building relationships.
I want to be a little more tactical and give you some bullet points. You want to build rapport. And that means that you're taking the time to establish a connection with your potential client, or again, if it's not your potential client yet, and you're just focusing on your relationship skills, you want to focus on connecting with people in general, get to know people and get to know what their needs are.
Practice listening actively when people are speaking. And demonstrate empathy and understanding. So if someone's going through a problem or an issue, You want to practice holding space with them and listening to them when they're talking about their struggles. And what that does is it teaches you how to build trust and credibility with your brand reputation. And that's essential for connecting with humans and you can translate those skills, even if you're not using them with a potential customer.
When you do have a potential customer. In front of, let's say in person or on zoom, you're going to have a better chance of making a sale. If they feel heard, if you're practicing empathy and if you are building rapport, The next step would be to be responsive. So you do want to respond pretty promptly when people are making an inquiry about working with you. And you also want to follow up with potential clients and show them that you value their business.
So that means if you have people reaching out, emailing, sending DMS. You don't have to respond to every second. Of course. But you might want to have a process in place when you're following up. On a regular basis. You want to address questions or concerns that people may have, and start to look at some themes and be available to provide support throughout that process.
And I was going to help people build that trust, even if they're not ready right now to purchase. The last point is you want to provide value. Now I know I say that a lot and I want to give you tactical examples. So focus on providing value to potential clients by offering a solution to their problems or concerns, which means that you need to understand what their problems or concerns are in the first place. So you want to share insights or resources that could be helpful to them.
Even if they don't directly lead to a sell because that's good practice in terms of being a person of value. So if you can approach conversations and context of how can I help you? What can I do to solve your problems? Or you allow a space where people are comfortable sharing what their problems are.
That means that you are on the road to developing better, more meaningful connections and relationships. And you want to demonstrate that you care about people and their success, and then that'll help you build a longer term relationship, a stronger relationship. That can lead to more sales in the future. And it can also lead to somebody wanting to refer to you and connect you with somebody else. So sales aren't always so direct in terms of you have somebody in front of you and you can sell them when you make an impression, a good impression, meaning that people feel that you listen and you care and their success is important, then they might be likely to send you to somebody else.
And that's how a lot of relationships are built is through referrals. At least at first, a lot of relationships start by referrals. And then you also want to think about identifying your target audience. I know you hear me say that a lot. So before you start selling your services, You need to know who you're selling them to.
When you're brand new and you're selling for the first time, the goal is to try to make any sale, but that's not sustainable because you want to have in mind a certain type of person that you're helping, because if you can tailor what you do in your sales pitch to that certain type of person, that's going to help a lot in terms of you coming up with systems and processes and fine tuning your, your skills.
And in order to help you be more clear about who your target audience is, you can do some market research, which I'm really big on. And that might help you, for example, look up demographics, psychographics and behavior patterns. For example, I know that there's a hundred thousand dietitians in America. I know from stats that 30,000 of them have a job. I know that less than 6% of dietitians own a business. So those information that I know about registered dietitians, and I would ask you what information do you know about people with diabetes type two people with gestational diabetes, people with.
Kidney issues, heart issues, et cetera. So whatever your area of expertise is or who you're intending to serve. I start thinking about some general statistics and get more clear about that target market, right? That target audience. And you can also develop ideal client, which is a fictitious character. Somebody, a person that doesn't exist, but they resemble somebody that you've either already worked with or that you want to work with.
And they can really help you. When you're looking at writing words to attract that client, you're looking at fine tuning your pitch to sell to that person. And you're looking at developing content, whether it be for your website, email marketing. Getting our social media. And you want that person that you're creating content for, to resonate with what you have to say.
So the more specific you can become the better in terms of your ability to connect, build relationships and identify who you're talking to. Otherwise, you don't really resonate with people. If you are creating a very generic message that. Anybody could use. All right. So people want to feel seen and heard.
So, I'm not saying that you have to start with a super fine tuned message, but you want to go towards that direction and thinking about how your message can be more clear for the type of person or the problem that you're solving. Right. For example, diabetes and. A1C or it could be sports performance or it could be child growth.
You also want to use social media and I'm sure that doesn't come to any surprise and social media is a powerful tool for promoting your business and building relationships. So one of the things I think is downplayed from social media is that it's just a tool where you can connect with more people.
And that's how I got my start is I genuinely built relationships with dietitians around the world and talk to them. About what they were doing to make money and apply their degree in a way that felt meaningful. And building those relationships in building those relationships, I was able to support sales because people knew that I was coaching and then I created a course and then grew from there, but it all started.
Or I built those relationships and genuinely found dietitians through hashtags and conversations and talk to them. And had conversations saying w you know, what's going on. Who are you up to? Are you enjoying your work? Do you feel satisfied? What opportunities have you started or created or do you want to create.
And then that's the same when it, when it comes to you and using social media to build relationships. And of course you can always use platforms like Instagram and Facebook to showcase your expertise and reach new audiences. Which is, which is great. So you can build. Build trust. Talk about things that behind the scenes you can share tips and tricks and tactics. Talk about misinformation.
That's all true. And that's all what a lot of dietitians asked me about is what exactly to post on social media. But what I wish I got asked more is how do I build meaningful relationships where people feel heard and seen when I show up on social media, because that's the true secret ingredient to building a strong brand where you have lasting relationships and people that want to refer you to other people, right?
They want to feel heard and understood. If you want to build a strong online presence and a, that means that you are using platforms online to showcase your products or services and build brand awareness. And if you're not sure yet on your products or services, you can start with building brand awareness.
You can share engaging content that resonates with your target audience and you can focus on using hashtags that might be specific to your population, right? Diabetes, things of that nature, or even location-based, if you are trying to attract people, let's say in California, if you're not necessarily trying to attract people in California.
You would think about other targeted keywords that people might be searching related to your niche? And then of course engaging with your followers. So responding to comments and messages should be part of your regular routine. I'm not saying to do it all throughout the day, every day, but you do want to be responding and engaging with people. And then the last point would be making better content because you can't make better content until you make any content.
And you do content regularly. So my, my thing is having dietitians. You know, part of my framework is pecan to not for the first 30 days, then put content out for the second 30 days, then make sure you're consistent the last 30 days. And then you've got a three months of consistency and you can't build on your content strategy until you've been consistent with putting content out.
So I find that. dietitians often want to optimize their strategy with content, but they're not consistent in the first place. So it feels messy and uncomfortable to put content out. That might not be clear, but the only way you get better is if you just start in perfectly. That can mean pictures of you that can mean generic quotes. I've got a lot of templates in our membership that I give you. Once you have access, once you join our membership. And so that can help you get started, even if you're feeling stuck.
But you, you really want to just focus on checking the box by being consistent before you look at your analytics and identify some patterns and trends and, and content strategy. That's a little bit more advanced. And then the fourth point fourth to last point. And I can't wait until it gets to the last point. Cause that's my favorite.
But the fourth point when it comes to a guide for sales, with registered dietitians. I would be to improve your confidence. And I know that we all struggle with this. We feel sales is pushy or heart-centered practitioners, so it can feel really awkward to focus on profitability. Which is ironic because any business that's successful, it makes money.
But it's just something we have to learn. So being confident in your services and feeling comfortable, feeling that you really have value to bring is important and believing in yourself and your abilities can happen. Once you practice affirmations, surround yourself by like-minded people and spend time and effort building your skills and in doing so.
I recommend communicating, learning how to communicate the benefits of your services clearly to potential clients. And to go back to that first point, if you. Practice that with people who might not even be ideal clients. And then once you do get ideal clients in front of you, you'll have a better chance of talking about the benefits of your services, because it's something that will be common to you. Something that you'll have done naturally. So it's just about practice.
And my first bullet point with improving your confidence would be preparation. I think that helps so much. So the best way to boost your confidence when you're interacting with people for sales is to be prepared. And that can mean researching. As I mentioned earlier, about some general statistics about your audience or understanding the particular person's need and challenges.
Even rehearsing your pitcher presentation. Those are all important components. For you to improve your skills and the more prepared you are, the more confident you'll feel. I remember when I was teaching and speaking about nutrition to health care practitioners, and I would absolutely practice and it made me feel more confident and it was easier for me to go on social media and show my face because it's something I had been doing, even though I hadn't been doing it for dietitians.
I had been speaking in front of people, health allied health care practitioners for four years. So it was something I was comfortable with and it was easy for me to continue to. Talk online and to talk on video, just had to fine tune the messaging and the ideal client. Positive self-talk is really important. So another way to improve your confidence is to practice positive self-talk and that involves replacing some negative thoughts with positive ones and focusing on your strengths rather than your weaknesses. So for example, instead of thinking, I'm not good at sales, which I hear from almost every dietitian or I don't like sales, I'm not good at sales, et cetera.
You want to reframe your thoughts first, you want to identify what your unique thoughts are and then reframe them to, I'm a great communicator and I have a lot to offer my customers. The last bullet point would be for improving your confidence would be practice, practice, practice. So confidence comes from experience and the more that you practice interacting with people and making sales.
The more confident that you'll become. So I don't want you to be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone, try new approaches or techniques. And with time and practice, you'll develop the confidence that you need to succeed and make adjustments along the way. And it's all about practicing and getting this.
Just getting, testing those skills and getting some feedback with time. All right. The last point. The last and most important point that I want to talk about, it would be understanding people's needs. And this is truly the most important part about marketing. And it's also one of the more challenging ones.
Because it's going to require you to practice active, listening, to focus on your relationship skills and to think analytically. So you really have to combine your right brain and left brain on this one. So you want to conduct some market research. As I mentioned earlier, to identify your client's challenges and concerns, and then develop personalized solutions to address those specific needs.
Now it's not as simple as a template of oh, diabetes lowering, A1C plate method, whatever. Like it's not that simple there's nuance because people have diabetes. Beatty's there are different subgroups within type two diabetes. That you could serve. And so the more clear you are about disperse it as the person that you help.
Or that you intend to help do they want to lose weight and lower their A1C? Do they want to lower their A1C in a way that feels intuitive? Are you looking at a fat, positive approach? To A1C management for diabetes. So these nuances between understanding people's needs only become reality. After you have conversations with people inside of this demographic and you do so regularly. So I want to encourage you to understand people's needs by talking to them and being really open to having conversations regularly with people.
I'd say, if you want a number it's two to 10 people a week or entities, if we're talking about organizations and partnerships, et cetera, So, whether it's a human being, a person or a business entity, you want to find two to 10 of them a week and have conversations in doing so the idea is to first, you're getting comfortable with conversations. Secondly, of course you're adding value, but third and most importantly, you're learning the skills of identifying who within the two to 10 people a week or more closely related to the ideal client that you've already mapped out.
Right? You understand their demographics, pains, and dreams, and you want help that person. So you want. To find more people who have aligned with that ideal client profile. Right? Let's say, for example, just to give some context, maybe we're talking about A1C management for diabetes without talking about calories, right? Without a restrictive approach or some kind of.
Weight neutral approach to diabetes management. And that is a that's unique from. Straight weight loss with diabetes. So thinking about that approach. And finding people who resonate with that approach and learning how you can identify and solve their problems and thinking about the words that they use, that's only going to be made possible by having conversations with people regularly. So I want to encourage you to do that. And then you might be wondering, well, like how do I tactically do that?
That's where you practice that active listening, listening to what people are saying, asking clarifying questions. And letting people know that you care about them. Right. And even if they're not going to buy from you and they're not the right fit. You're practicing having this conversations. And then of course empathy. So you want to put yourself in somebody else's shoes to understand their emotions and their motivations and, and by doing so you can create a connection and as dietitians.
It's our job. Like our job is to create connections with people and, and have empathy for whatever situation they're in. Right. Not practicing judgment and bias, but really seeing how we can be a resource for them in whatever way that they need at that time. And then finally asking the right questions, which I think is one of the harder things to do because learning how to ask good relevant questions comes with time and experience. So it's it's can be challenging because at first you just want to ask any questions and then with fine tuning of your S of your soft skills, you'll learn how to ask more appropriate questions.
But what I can say, pulling this straight out of the motivational interviewing handbook, you want to ask open-ended questions and encourage your potential customer to share more about their challenges. And their goals and i can help you gain a deeper understanding of their needs and preferences so that you can tailor your sales pitch and even your sales messaging appropriately because if you're if you're missing the mark and you're not quite customizing your message based on what your ideal client wants and needs that's a tweak that can make or break your ability to make consistent sales in your, in your dietitian private practice Thank you so much for listening i hope this was helpful as a recap in today's episode we talked about point 1, building relationships point 2, identifying your target audience point 3, using social media point 4 improving your confidence and point 5. understanding people's needs
