A Discovery Call Hack with Jayne Havens
In today’s episode of Becoming a Sleep Consultant, I’m sharing one of my favorite “sleep consulting hacks” that has made a huge impact on my business. Whether you’re an experienced sleep consultant or just considering this career path, this quick tip will be invaluable for growing your client base and making your consultations more effective. I’ll walk you through the exact process I use for booking and converting discovery calls into paying clients. Plus, I’ll share a recent example of how setting boundaries and asking the right questions helps ensure the best outcomes for both my clients and me. Spoiler alert, the client booked! discovery call hack Natalie Annillo
Links: Discovery Call Hack
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Transcript:Discovery Call Hack
Intro: Welcome to Becoming a Sleep Consultant! I’m your host Jayne Havens, a certified sleep consultant and founder of both Snooze Fest by Jayne Havens and Center for Pediatric Sleep Management.
On this podcast, I’ll be discussing the business side of sleep consulting. You’ll have an insider’s view on launching, growing, and even scaling a sleep consulting business. This is not a podcast about sleep training. This is a podcast about business building and entrepreneurship.
Jayne Havens: Today’s podcast episode is going to be short and sweet. I am going to be covering what I like to call a sleep consulting hack. This is something that I have really perfected in my business, and I thought I would share it with all of you. For those of you who are already sleep consultants, I think you’re going to find this to be really, really helpful and valuable information. And for those of you who are not yet sleep consultants, I hope that you will file this somewhere in the back of your brain. And one day, when you decide to get certified and decide to get a business up and running, I hope you’ll be able to pull this back to the front and put it into action.
So I thought I would run you through my process for booking discovery calls and converting discovery calls to paying clients. So I have a link. I use a company called Acuity, which is sort of like an app or an online program that syncs with your online calendar and allows people to book phone calls, or Zoom calls, or whatever kind of calls you like. But for my free 15-minute discovery call that I offer to prospective clients, they sign up online and they get directed to just a 15-minute phone call slot.
When I first started, I wasn’t really pre-qualifying these leads. I would just get on calls with them. Some of them were ready to start working with a sleep consultant, but a lot of them weren’t. A lot of them were just sort of maybe looking for 15 minutes of free advice. And I found that I really needed to figure out a system to pre-qualify my leads a little bit better and then also convert to paying clients a little bit better. Right? Because that’s how your business grows.
What I started to do is, I started to ask some better questions on that little form that they would fill out before they signed up for the free15-minute call. I would say that the most important questions that I’m asking them right now are: number one, are you ready to hire a sleep consultant? Their two choices are — it’s a drop-down menu — they can click “I’m just exploring options right now,” or they can click, “If we seem like a good fit for working together, then I am ready.” I love this drop-down question because, really, it allows them to commit to themselves and commit to the process before they’d even hired me.
The next thing I asked them is, I asked them to check a little box that says that they’ve reviewed my services and pricing at thesnoozefest.com/services. I want to make sure, before they even get on a call with me, that they know what I charge. They know what my services look like, and they’re entirely okay with all of that. They just want to get onto a phone call and make sure that we get along and that we jive and that we’re a good fit for working together.
Now, I would say the third and most important thing that I asked them to do on this little questionnaire is, I ask them to agree that both parents will attend the phone call. The reason I do this is because I really, truly believe that both parents need to be on the same page when it comes to starting sleep training. Both parents need to be on the same page when it comes to making a significant investment in getting support through sleep training.
Honestly, it protects me as well. Because I want to make sure that I speak with both parents; I get along with both of them. Both of them are kind and respectful towards me. If I get a bad feeling from either parent on this phone call, then it’s just as much my right to say, “You know what? I don’t think it’s a good fit,” the same way it’s their right to say, “I don’t think it’s a good fit.” So I have started requiring that parents commit to being on this call together. Of course, if I’m speaking with a single parent, that is not applicable, and that’s totally okay.
So I want to tell you a story. Something that happened today, a situation that I’m sort of really proud of, I’m really pleased with the way this all went down. Somebody hopped onto my calendar for a call tomorrow. And when she was filling out the questionnaire, in that box where I asked her to agree to have her spouse on the call, instead of writing ‘I agree,’ she just wrote that it was just going to be her on the call and that her spouse was really busy with work, and he wasn’t going to be able to make it.
I think that if I were a brand-new sleep consultant, if I were more green in my career, I would have just let that slide, and I would have gotten onto the call with her. But I am in a new era in my business, and I am all about holding boundaries. And if I am going to give you 15 or 30 minutes of my time, I ask that you do it in a way that works for me and for my business. That’s just the way that it is. I think it’s entirely reasonable.
I saw that she scheduled a call for tomorrow, and what I did was I sent her a text. I said, “Hey there. This is Jayne Havens with Snooze Fest. Thank you so much for hopping onto my calendar for a call. I do actually require that both parents be on my calls as this ensures that I’m a good fit for you, but also that you guys are a good fit for me. Is there another time, maybe this evening or later this week, that would work for your spouse? I’m happy to work with everyone’s schedules. Please let me know.” Really proud of myself for doing that.
She replied back and she said — I’m going to read it to you. She said, “Hi, Jayne. Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately, my husband’s work schedule is very hard to work around. We’re trying to get on the books ASAP. It’ll likely be me in the sessions on my own and sharing with him the outcomes anyway. Is there any way we can make this work? I totally understand that you have these policies that you’ve figured out work for your business and also work for the families that you support. So I want to respect that.” I thought that was nice.
What I said to her is, I said that if he’s not going to be involved in the process, then of course, I’m happy to speak with you and work with you solo. I also said that if he is going to be involved in the process, I think he owes it to you and your child to be on the call. I told her I’ve had many situations where I could not properly identify barriers to success because I was not able to communicate with one of the parents before starting. This led to unsuccessful outcomes. That’s not good for my clients, and it’s not good for my business.
And you know what she said? She said, “Thanks so much. That’s actually really helpful. Let me talk with him and see what’s doable.” And within a few minutes, she circled back around and she asked if I had time to speak at 7 PM tonight. So of course, I said yes.
The reason I share this story with you is because had I not set this boundary and I had just spoken to her, I don’t think that I would have had her full commitment to the process. She just wanted to get on a quick call with me and learn a little bit about me and my business. But at the end of the day, after that call, she was going to have to have a conversation with her husband. Her husband didn’t have that conversation with me, so it was going to become a game of telephone. And what I know from experience is that when you play a game of telephone in your business, you don’t convert a lot of business. You just don’t.
And so I held my ground. And I didn’t just hold my ground so that I could make the sale. I want to make it clear that, of course, I’m trying to grow my business. I’m trying to convert these phone calls to paying customers. Of course, there’s no pretending that that’s not true. That being said, it is absolutely also true that I want to make sure that both of these parents are kind, respectful, engaged in the process, interested in committing to working on improving sleep for their child. And if I only have one parent on the call, there’s no way for me to know if that other parent is going to be a barrier to my success, if he’s going to make our jobs harder, if he’s going to — I don’t know. There’s so many different things that could happen.
What I’m realizing is that when I have both parents on board, I am able to be far more successful. I do it because it’s in my own best interest, and I do it because it’s in my client’s best interest. I think when I originally reached out to her, she probably didn’t love that I was setting this firm boundary. She was being respectful about the fact that I was setting this firm boundary in my business, but I don’t think she loved it. But once I could provide her with some context and the reason behind why I do what I do, she fully understood. And I think, ultimately, she has a greater respect for me and my business and hopefully my process.
I’m going to be speaking with her at seven o’clock tonight, and maybe I will leave it in the show notes whether or not they become paying customers or not. But I wanted to share this little hack with you. This is something that I most certainly did not have in place when I first started my business. But it’s been a total game changer. I hope, for those of you who are already practicing sleep consultants, you can take this little nugget of advice and put it into practice in your business, and I hope it leads to more clients for you.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, it would mean so much to me if you would rate, review, and subscribe. When you rate, review, and subscribe, this helps the podcast reach a greater audience. I am so grateful for your support.
If you would like to learn more about how you can become a certified sleep consultant, head over to my Facebook Group, Becoming a Sleep Consultant or to my website thecpsm.com. Thanks so much, and I hope you will tune in for the next episode.