Is The “Black Box” Hurting Your Sales?

What’s up? Yuri here from Healthpreneur. Hope you’re having a great day.

I was just having a call with our sales team this morning, our enrollment coaches. And one of the things that I was sharing with them is something I call the black box phenomenon, and how this applies to you.

Have you ever wondered why somebody doesn’t enroll in your coaching program? If you speak to them on the phone or if they don’t buy something that you’re offering them.  I believe it’s largely based on what I’m about to share with you.

Fear and Uncertainty

So what is this black box phenomenon? Well, we have to understand the number one reason people don’t do anything, whether they think it’s good for them in the first place.

Actually, it’s kind of a combination of two things. Fear and uncertainty. And they actually are very, very closely related. Fear paralyzes people and holds us back. Very few people have the courage to move through fear. That’s why most businesses and most entrepreneurs don’t see the success that they want to see. They don’t recognize the pain of the process they’re about to embark on. And that fear, whether it’s fear of investing in something, fear of having a difficult conversation, fear of taking a risk, these are things that are going to hold you back every single time.

How To Sell Certainty

So the reason that a lot of people don’t enroll with you as a coach is coming back to fear and uncertainty. So here’s a little suggestion for you. When you’re sharing what you do with someone and you’re on the phone with them or even if you’re highlighting what you do on a web page, it’s really important that you let people know exactly what they’re about to get into.

Let me use the example of personal training. When you’re training clients. If you had a client enroll with you and you worked with them for 12 weeks and you gave them no sense of what they’re about to get into, they would be in for the shock of their life after the first workout, right? “Hey, you’re never going to feel soreness. Things are going to be great. You’re going to feel amazing after every single workout, it’s going to be awesome.” After the first workout, they’d be like, “What the …” Right? They can’t even move. Their muscles are sore.

So one of the best things you can do with prospects before you enroll them is you let them know exactly what they’re about to get into. “Hey, listen, I know we’re about to get started getting to work together and I just want to give you a bit of a game plan of what we’re going to do over the next 12 weeks. And just to let you know, you’re probably going to feel some soreness. There will be days where you don’t really feel like working out. But I’m going to be here with you to make sure you get it done. I just want to let you know that that’s part of the process. Is that okay?” So if you let people know what they’re about to get into, number one, they’re going to appreciate that, they’re going to thank you. And I think a lot of times we don’t do this because we’re afraid that we might repel people by sharing what it is we do with them. So one of the epiphanies I also had about this, literally yesterday, was like why don’t I shoot a demo video, like a behind the scenes look, inside our health business accelerator program. And so I did that and so that’s now part of our process in terms of our sequence with prospects.

Create A Fish Bowl

So going back to the black box. So if we think of fear and uncertainty as two big obstacles standing in people’s ways of doing something they know they want to do that’s going to be beneficial for them. The black box, think about it like this. Imagine I give you a box and I ask you to put your hand inside of that black box and you have no clue what’s inside. Would you put it inside? Well, this goes back to the Fear Factor days. Right? Remember that show Fear Factor? Joe Rogan is hosting it. You end up in a coffin full of spiders or something. That’s the black box phenomenon is you’re putting your hand into something that you have no idea what is going to happen as a result of that. Fear and uncertainty, right there, black box.

So instead of the black box, what we want to think about is how do we create a fish bowl for our clients? A fish bowl is transparent. You can put your hand in. You know exactly what you’re going to get out of it. You can see your hand. Nothing is fishy in there. Pun intended, I guess, right? If you’re going to put your hand into a fish bowl and there’s a shark in there, are you going to put your hand in? No. But if there’s nothing but water and maybe a little treasure chest, are you going to put your hand in? Sure, not a big deal.

So what I want to encourage you to think about is how can you demonstrate what it is you do to your prospects before they work with you? And what that’s going to do is that’s going to give them a lot more confidence and certainty that what they’re about to embark on is or is not right for them. And either way is fine because you don’t want the wrong people in your program anyways, right?

On the front end, if you can show them a behind the scenes look of if you have an online training portal, if you can give them a sense of what that looks like. If you can show them however you deliver your thing, give them a sense of the work. Show them the work. There’s actually a book I think called Show the Work. I think. I can’t remember who wrote it. But it’s about showing the work. Showing what people are about to embark on because it gives them more confidence and certainty and reduces their fear and uncertainty, which is going to kill your sales.

So does that make sense? If it does, let me know your thoughts below in the comments. And if you think this could help somebody else, share the video with them. If you’re watching this on YouTube, subscribe to the channel.

So remember, you want to avoid the black box and you want to get your clients into the fish bowl.