The real reason nobody's buying from you

I was feeling a little panicky this morning because I couldn’t think of any good ideas for my next newsletter.

“Sht,” I thought to myself, “is this thing cooked already? Did I really run out of ideas this fast??”

Then I got this text from my friend Lessa Raebiger, and I instantly felt better: it’s a great topic that I definitely need to cover!

So let’s do it.

What is the “friendzone”?

Very simply, it’s when you’re getting lots of attention (likes, comments, DMs, etc) but nobody’s buying. They want to be your friend, but they don’t want to be your customer.

And it should go without saying that friends are awesome!

But you can’t pay the mortgage with friendship, so this is a real problem— especially if they’re also filling up your calendar with calls that go nowhere.

Most common cause: an audience of PEERS, not BUYERS

For example, those people who get 100 comments on every post— and then you look closer and realize they’re a LinkedIn ghostwriters whose audience is other LinkedIn ghostwriters.

It’s way too easy to end up here by accident, so let’s talk about how to avoid it (or get yourself out of the friendzone if you’re there).

It’s really all about setting expectations:

Post about your offer

When you do this, you’re telling your audience that you’re here to do business. That doesn’t mean you’re unfriendly or anything, it just sets the expectation that you’re here to make money.

(picture the kids who hang out at a skate shop for 6 hours and never buy anything)

These posts will almost always get low engagement, but that’s fine. The content funnel exists for a reason— not every post or video is intended to get high engagement:

→ Top of funnel: get new followers

→ Middle of funnel: build relationships with your existing followers

→ Bottom of funnel: get them to take action (eg, book a call)

If everything you post is fluffy, top of funnel stuff and you never tell them you’re here to do business, can you blame them for treating you like a friend?

Learn to read their intentions ASAP

I’ve probably had 20,000 DM conversations with people over the years. When I was really active on Instagram I would get 20-50 a day and I replied to all of them.

So I’ve gotten pretty damn good at reading intentions in a couple DMs, which carries over to LinkedIn too:

I can usually tell within a couple DMs if someone’s actually a legit lead (meaning, they might buy from me) vs a tirekicker/fan (just wants to “pick my brain” aka waste my time).

My favorite way of doing this is a very simple question: “Can you tell me what your goals are?”

If their answer is something clear and specific like “Get 2-3x more users for our product by this time next year,” that’s perfect.

If it’s vague or unfocused like “Well I’m not really sure what I want to do yet… I’m trying to decide between being a painter and starting an AI company,” that’s a huge red flag.

This is not a serious prospect, this is a 6 year-old who wants to be an astronaut today and a ballerina tomorrow.

Set boundaries

Here’s the hard part for a lot of people: do not let the tirekickers and fans waste your time.

Have a “fk you, pay me” link where they can pay you for an hour of your time. Send this to anyone who seems like they’re a tirekicker or fan who just wants to chat.

(this is the one I use)

Make it a high enough rate that even if they’re annoying, you’ll still be cool with it (“That guy was weird as hell, but whatever… he paid me $400”).

To be clear, I *am* totally down for free calls with peers. But PEERS is the key word here— not random people who want to “pick my brain.”

For example that’s how I met Lessa, and I try to talk with a few new people every week just to make new friends.

I love meeting new people and bouncing ideas around, because that’s an equal exchange of value.

But I’m NOT down with answering free questions for an hour from someone who should have paid me.

Add people to build the exact audience you want

Don’t just wait around and hope the perfect audience comes along. Go build it yourself!

1. Find your ideal customers

You want to get as a specific as possible, eg “CMOs of B2B SaaS companies in the USA.” We’re going for quality over quantity here.

You can do this with regular (free) LinkedIn’s search features, or pay for Sales Navigator if you want better filters, saved searches, etc.

Shoutout to Liam Darmody for showing me how to make the most of Sales Navigator btw. It’s worth every penny IMO.

2. Send a handful (3-10) connection requests every day

If 30-50% of them accept, that’s 2-5 new people per day— that adds up fast! And people who are 1st connections are much more likely to see your content, so that means you’ll get your content in front of them immediately.

So if you’ve accidentally built up an audience of peers that want to hang out and chat but don’t want to buy from you, here’s how you can rebuild it into the exact audience you wish you had!

—

PS - Here’s the part where I try to sell you something.

I can help you:

→ Define your positioning to immediately stand out from the crowd

→ Figure out your content strategy for LinkedIn or YouTube

→ Create offers that sell (I’ve sold millions in courses)

If you want to talk about the options for working together, reply to this email or just set up a call here!