Episode 183: Katrina Sawa – Maximizing Sales Through Systematized Customer Journey and Strategic Networking

Katrina Sawa  00:02

Your website should be the hub of your business, everything should come and then through your website because you can create all kinds of little pages for people to land on, not just to opt-in for something but then where do you take them next? 

And then where do you want them to go next? And where do you want them to go next and each step of the way, you could be building more reports and relationships with them. And granted, it’s one way until they actually come and talk to you.

Intro 00:29

Welcome to the Making Sales Social Podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing and business join Brynne Tillman and me Bob woods. As we each bring you the best tips and strategies. Our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show.

Brynne Tillman  00:54

Hello and Welcome back to Making Sales Social. I’m excited about my guest today Katrina Sawa who is an international award-winning speaker 12-time international best-selling author already produced 20 books and counting. And she’s known as the Jumpstart Your Business coach, because she helps entrepreneurs make a lot of money doing what they love. 

Katrina is passionate about finding the holes and opportunities for business owners to monetize more of what they’re doing and systematize. You guys know how important that is and automate more so that they can work less and make more money and hopefully help even more people. Katrina hosts an active mastermind group with highly motivated entrepreneurs who want more, as well as numerous training events, speaking summits, and online giveaways to help others get a jump start fast. 

Katrina lives in Northern California – love how beautiful Northern California is. I’ll have to visit Sunday with her husband, Jason, stepdaughter Riley and their loving dog Luna. She loves entertaining, cooking, wine tasting perfect Northern California for wine tasting, that’s for sure, and speaking to groups of all sizes on how to make fast cash with consistent revenue generation strategies. Katrina, welcome to making sales social.

Katrina Sawa  02:25

Yay. Thanks for having me.

Brynne Tillman  02:28

Oh, so excited. Now, before we jump into what you do to help people monetize better and have a more balanced life, let’s add love to ask you. The one question we ask all our guests, which is what does making sales social mean to you?

Katrina Sawa  02:46

Well, of course, you could go the social media route and I don’t know. I don’t feel like we get a lot of sales off of social unless you’re doing ads and stuff. So I think, personally, it’s the relationship that you’re building with the person, people that you’re talking to. So personally, I think it’s relationships. I’m all about relationship marketing. And I’ve been doing this for years. So, that’s what I would say. 

Brynne Tillman  03:11

That’s great. So in a little defense, we teach people how to start relationships using social. So I love your answer. Mostly, we really actually find that finding those people on social is a great way to start a report. But I love that you’re talking about relationships, because that’s really what it’s about. It’s a People to People thing.

Katrina Sawa  03:32

Yeah, well, you really have to have a good strategy to do social media and get people. So many people just kind of blurt stuff out there. And so that’s not the strategy. You know, you need someone like yourself to show them exactly how to do that effectively.

Brynne Tillman  03:49

Oh, well, thank you. Yeah, most people are out there doing random acts of social.

Katrina Sawa  03:53

They are, and it’s not seeing you’re not seeing the results and so.

Brynne Tillman  03:57

Yeah, So I love that you’re going into the direction of purpose, Right? That’s what I’m hearing you say like when you do this, and you talk a lot about how you systematize your business and automate some things which you can’t automate relationships, but you can automate some things to start those relationships. So, talk a little bit about how systematizing your business works and why you go into that direction. 

Katrina Sawa  04:23

Well, when you’re talking about sales, right, we have a customer journey that we take people through. And so they either get to know us online, or someone refers to them and or they might get on our email newsletter or watch our emails and stuff like that, but then you can automate a lot of things that they’re gonna get to know like, and trust you faster. 

I can’t even tell you how many times I look at someone’s website and they don’t have any videos of themselves. So, videos are the number one thing that you could do to add a deeper connection and an immediate, like, trust connect factor. 

So, if you’re not doing videos not only on social media, but on almost every page of your website, you literally should have a video. I mean, I don’t know how many videos I have on my website. But it’s ridiculous. Because I want to talk to you every single step of the way. Right? So that’s the main thing, I think.  

Brynne Tillman  05:23

Yeah, I love that and you know, we truly believe that video is the way to connect human to human. So let’s talk a little bit. Now, you know, we’ve got this connection with folks, what are we doing to systematize our process so that we can work less and make more money?

Katrina Sawa  05:42

Well, a lot of it, again, has to do with your website, and in my mind, your website should be the hub of your business, everything should come in through your website, because you can create all kinds of little pages for people to land on, not just to opt-in for something. 

But then where do you take them next? And then where do you want them to go next? And where do you want them to go next, and each step of the way, you could be building more reports and relationships with them and granted, it’s one way until they actually come and talk to you. But there’s so much that can be done with the webpages, the videos, the buttons and the opt-in boxes, and the little things that can make the journey easier for many people make it hard for people to engage and do stuff.

And like putting your opt in box on the very bottom of your website, or not having a big ol button and just like linkings I can’t even tell you how many times I see words that are supposed to be linked. But there’s no underline, it’s not blue. It’s like the same color fonts as their websites, because they’re trying to be cute, and matchy matchy will stop it, make it easy, make it a blue underlined link. I mean, those are the little things I see that can make a big difference, you will be surprised.

Brynne Tillman  06:58

I couldn’t agree more. That customer journey. One of the things we always say whenever we have a new landing page or whatever it is, you know, go through this and you know it, was there any point where you had to hesitate about what to do next? If not, let’s figure out what we mean. Exactly. So I love that. I love that. So, how do you use this to jumpstart a business like you’re talking about, you know, kind of getting out there faster? 

Katrina Sawa  07:26

Well, because when you start going marketing, you want to turn the marketing hose on and all the different areas right and drive traffic back to your website. Ideally, not just have them, you know, hanging out on social, let’s get them on the list, right and get them somewhere into the next step. 

But when you do that, and you don’t have your website ready to take all those opt-ins or to really have that person take a bunch of next steps, then you’re just wasting your time. So, we have to do the setup of the business, the structure, the pages, the processes, the auto emails, all that kind of stuff before you turn on the marketing hose. And then of course, where are you marketing? 

So, there’s 20 different marketing strategies that I teach, because there’s so many different options. I mean, social media is just one thing. And there’s multiple different ways to do social media. So I mean, I love the speaking and networking route. So I talked about picking a lane, pick a lane or you do love social media, great, spend about 80% of your time there and 10 or 20% of your time on networking, speaking. 

I love networking and speaking so I spend 80% of my time there and about 20% of my time is social.

Brynne Tillman  08:40

I love it. So how do you get started in networking speaking? Do you go to your local chamber of commerce? Like what do you do to help folks jump start their networking and speaking?

Katrina Sawa  08:52

It depends where and what kind of business they have? Well, you have. I mean, when I first started my business, I was considering myself a marketing consultant. So, I would do the marketing for people that were 20 to 21 years ago. 

Right? And yeah, all I knew about was my local area. So, I went to the chambers and I actually joined four different chambers of commerce locally, because there’s a bunch of them locally, for chamber leads groups and a women’s group that was local. And that’s all I did was networking and following up like 15 events a month and following up like crazy. 

You have to be good at the follow up. And then I would get enough clients and then you know, move on but then three years into the business is when I learned Oh, I can do stuff online and so I had to you just don’t know what you don’t know. 

Right? So yeah, I mean the local area today. I don’t network in the chambers at all because most generally speaking the chambers are not thinking big enough for where I am in my business now. But for a local handyman or a massage therapist. Yes, they are perfect because those are the local people that are going to hire you. Right?

Brynne Tillman  10:00

So most of the people that are listening right now are professional sales account managers, bigger complex deals, or even sales leaders. So how would you take networking to that next level for them?

Katrina Sawa  10:19

Yeah. So I mean, if you’re already well established in your business, you’re not going to go to your local networking group and be like, Hey, I’m looking for clients, you know, you’re not going to do that necessarily. So it’s more deeper networking, maybe with private messaging on LinkedIn, and connecting or looking for referral sources and joint venture partners and that kind of thing. 

So it might be reaching out directly, I call it direct marketing with the types of people who can either be good referral sources or ideal clients for you. You might not be hanging out in your local networking group, but there might be associations that might have good value for you to network in. It’s different for everybody. I think. 

I mean, I’m still 22 years in my business. I’m still networking like crazy, mostly women, business organizations, not that I don’t work with men, but they don’t usually like to be told what to do. I like to tell people what, to get more money coming in.

Brynne Tillman  11:19

So, talk to me a little bit about systematizing. The follow up, what do you do so because you said that it really comes down to follow up, follow up, follow up? What do you do to create a system to make sure you’re doing that? 

Katrina Sawa  11:29

Well, Right? Well follow up is more than just email. And most people just do email, right? It used to be and some people would pick up the phone, if you’re a sales professional then you’re used to picking up the phone. Hopefully, that’s how it works. Right? So phone and email is good. But the next step of that is going back to direct mail. 

A lot of people have given up on direct mail because of social media. And I’m telling you, it still works. I still do it today, I still do direct mail and so then you have to think, Okay, what do I do on my website to get someone’s mailing address, Right?

So you get more contact these days, you want to get the full contact information, the phone number, the email, you got to do all the things plus the private message now on social media, whether it’s Facebook or LinkedIn, so you want to follow up in so many more different ways than it then back in the day, Right? 

Brynne Tillman  12:23

There’s just to systematize that, like, what do you do I meet them at an association. They’re a really good prospect, but they don’t know it. You know, we’ve had wonderful report building moments, I haven’t really started to talk about how I can help them. What would you do next?

Katrina Sawa  12:39

Well, I mean, there’s all kinds of ways to systematize getting the contact information into your CRM, if you’re talking about that, and pre-writing emails. So a lot of times I go to events, or have exhibitor booths, or speak at an event. And I’ll get like 100 different contacts. And so to automate, you can pass those off to an assistant number one, so you don’t have to enter all those because some people really think they have to do it. 

So, you have an assistant who enters them in, or their scanners that do certain things, too. But those aren’t always reliable and you know for one of the things we do, we build a page on my website, and it’s a hidden page, a back-end internal page, where my assistant goes to enter all that stuff. 

And so then she doesn’t have to just enter him in as a new contact, it actually gets tagged with the pre-written email that’s already ready to go. So, there are systems that you can do that way and utilize the…

Brynne Tillman  13:36

I love that, I think. And then do you put tasks in like we sent this email. Now go make a phone call.

Katrina Sawa  13:43

Depending on your CRM, and how complicated you know, you want it not complicated, but how intricate you want it to be. A lot of times, too, I mean, back in the day, I used to call every single person myself, that was when I was meeting, maybe 20 to 30 people a month or something like that. But now it’s more in the hundreds of people a month and as you know, it’s almost physically impossible to do that. 

So, there are places now where you can voice broadcast a message, and it does sound like you’re leaving someone a message, I mean, you’re not gonna be able to say “ Hi Brynne, I’m following up, you can say, Hey! I’m following up from the event. I just wanted to let you know this and maybe make sure you look in your spam or trash folder from my email ”  

You have to say that these days and so you save this voicemail, and you send it out to 1000 people or the hundreds of people that you’re meeting and you can send a voice. So, that’s more of a systematized approach, as long as you know how to say it in a way that it still sounds fairly personal. I say there’s nothing wrong with a voicemail blast like that, to reach more people faster. 

Brynne Tillman  14:51

You know, another line and you know, this is the biggest conversation we’re having around Chat GPT and automating things to sound like you and all those things. Where is the line but mean, everyone expects a mass email that like, there’s no, yeah, you inserted my name with a little field that had brackets and first right I know you did that. Right? 

We don’t expect that in the voicemail. How, where is the line between? Are we trying to fake them out by sitting making them think it was really us versus Hey, I’m sending this voicemail as a follow up to did I send an email, but make it real clear that it wasn’t 100%? Personal or is it okay to pretend a little.

Katrina Sawa  15:36 

I don’t know that I pretend I just don’t share that this is going out to the masses. I’m telling everybody you know, I think it depends on each person. They can do whatever you want. You know, you can say whatever you want. If you feel better about saying something like, “Hey, I didn’t have time to call everybody individually, I just wanted to make sure that you knew that.” You want to say that? Great.  

If you don’t want to say that. I don’t think it matters. I think if someone asked me and said, “Oh, I loved your message,” people would say thank you for calling me. I’m like, “Oh, well, technically, it was like a recording.”

But, you know, I don’t mind telling people because I’m all about efficiency and productivity to getting more done reaching more people as much as humanly possible, because that’s how you make more money if you have to get in front of more people. If you’re only talking to a dozen people every month, you’re not making that much money unless you’re selling something for $40,000. Right?

Brynne Tillman  16:32

You know, it’s interesting, because there’s this balance, right? There’s this balance between AI and automation and authenticity. And we’re always walking this fine line. Because we’re low, you know, we’re using ChatGPT to write content, you’re like, Well, isn’t it your own content? 

Well, yeah, I tell them to go look at all my past content, look at my voice and write content on this. And then what I’ve been doing lately is writing by ChatGPT edited by BrynneTillman. But at one point, I think, is it fair to take credit? And so that’s why I asked this question, because it’s an interesting fine line.

Katrina Sawa  17:11

Yeah, I honestly, I haven’t used ChatGPT or any of those systems too much. I tried it once, and did a couple of articles and sent it out in my newsletter and said, “Hey, I tried this out. And here’s the couple articles that it wrote for me. What do you guys think?” And, you know, so I was being transparent with and showing them what came out of it and how they can use it. 

But I don’t have it yet. I just, I don’t think there’s a problem using it. Use it if you want to use it. I mean, there’s, I mean, the fastest way you can develop content, the better, frankly, and you know, not nobody’s gonna buy anything we have off any single article or blog. I mean, not one article or piece of content is not going to make or break your entire sales funnel. So, I don’t know.

Brynne Tillman  18:00

Yeah, it’s just the big debate right now, this whole AI thing. So when I hear voicemail, I’m intrigued, and I’m thinking my goodness, how easy is that? But you know, my spidey senses are like, is this fitting under gray hat, white hat? You know, like, where is that? And it’s just tiny.

Katrina Sawa  18:18

It’s still me, it’s still me talking, you know. And that’s true. Whenever I reach out, I just don’t have time to call and tell the same thing to every bird person, right? So an efficient way to get a message to people. 

And you know, I would say 90% of your emails are going into spam or trash. So, you have to reach out and find other ways to tell people to go look there and pull it out. Right and go check what you wrote. Right? So if you’re not doing that, I think you’re missing out on tons of people. I get really good open rates now because I’m doing that.

Brynne Tillman  18:55

Okay. I’m sold. And I liked it. You said like, if I had just been calling, I would have been saying the same thing anyway, I would. Right. Okay. So I’m in. Yeah, it’s just like the hot debate right now. But you sold me on that one I met, I think that’s awesome. All right. Well, this was great. Is there anything I didn’t ask you that I should have?

Katrina Sawa  19:16

Oh, gosh, I don’t know. One of the things I see all the time is people are settling and for not making enough money. And maybe they just don’t know what they don’t know. And don’t settle. I’m not, I don’t want you. If you haven’t even made $100,000 A year and your business, I don’t want you to have a goal of a million. 

That’s kind of an unrealistic expectation, Right? But I want you to stretch. I want people to stretch for a higher goal, and then figure out maybe what you’re selling, you could raise your rates. So, think about the money a little bit more and think about what your value is in your charging, and really kind of nudge it up. 

If you can, leave it up if you can. That’s the way you’re gonna make a lot more money faster. And I’m super passionate about that cause too many entrepreneurs are just not making enough money. And they’re working so hard. Yeah.

Brynne Tillman  20:04

I love that. And the way you can look at it is, you know, the more you’re out there, the more people you’re helping. So, if you really believe that what you’re doing is having an impact. You want more people, not just for the money, even for the impact. So a little bit of both. So, I love that. I heard a little rumor that you have some free training that you’re offering folks.

Katrina Sawa  20:28

I do. I have some lots of training. I mean, I’ve been doing this for many years. So like, I have one on what to do on your website, because I can’t even tell you how many people will listen to it and go, Oh, my God, I had no idea like I have 10 things I need to add to my website. 

So, there’s one on that there’s one of the eight secrets to consistent money making business. There’s a productivity checklist on my training page. That is so good. It’s like 43 things you want to do and you’re all in your productivity and your technology stuff. So yeah, I mean, you just go to the free training page, pick a couple things and…

Brynne Tillman  21:03

That’s jumpstart your biznow.com/free training.

Katrina Sawa  21:08

There’s a big quiz there, where you can find out what’s missing to really make you more money. I like to be a resource. I’m all about free first, then pay what are you gonna, you know, come experience some stuff for free. And then if you’re interested, let’s talk about earning the business and I love that.  

Brynne Tillman  21:25

Exactly. That’s great. Well, what a pleasure getting to know you, Katrina, thank you for all of your insights. I know so many of our folks are going to get a lot of likes, just great takeaways from on how to jumpstart their business to make it grow faster. So, thank you very much for being our guest.

Katrina Sawa  21:42

Thank you.

Brynne Tillman  21:43

So guys, when you’re out and about don’t forget to make your sales social.

Outro 21:50

Thanks for listening and join us again for more special guest instructors bringing you marketing, sales, training, and social selling strategies that will set you apart. Don’t forget to subscribe to get the latest episodes from the making sales social podcast, leave a review down below. Tell us what you think, what you learned and what you want to hear from us next. You can also listen to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Visit our website socialsaleslink.com For more information.