Most businesses don’t stall before the sale, they stall after it. In today’s episode, Lori continues the Client Journey Series with two stages that determine whether trust strengthens or disappears: Convert and Experience. Convert is not about convincing someone to buy. It’s about stabilizing the decision, setting clear expectations, and helping a new client feel steady enough to move forward without second-guessing.
Then Lori breaks down why Experience is not what you deliver, it’s how your clients feel while working with you. When communication is clear and progress is acknowledged, clients feel safe, confident, and capable. When it’s not, even strong results can feel disappointing. You’ll also hear how these stages shift across the four business phases (Figure It Out, Work It Out, Rock It Out, Boss It Out) so you can design a process that creates momentum, referrals, and repeat business.
What You’ll Learn
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How to turn the post-sale moment into a trust-building orientation that prevents hesitation and drop-off
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How to design a client experience that reduces friction and increases retention and referrals
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How Convert and Experience should evolve based on your current stage of business growth
Schedule your Profitable Path Blueprint call. If you’re considering working together and want to see if it’s a fit, book a Profitable Path Blueprint Call. It’s a simple, no-pressure conversation to decide whether working together makes sense.
Resources:
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- **00:00:00 | Businesses Stall After the Sale**
- **00:00:46 | Client Journey Series Context and Where to Start**
- **00:02:14 | The Yes Is the Starting Point**
- **00:04:05 | Convert: Commitment and Orientation**
- **00:07:48 | Conversion by Business Stage (Figure It Out to Boss It Out)**
- **00:15:07 | Experience: How Clients Feel While Working With You**
- **00:19:36 | Why Experience Shapes Behavior (Real-World Examples)**
- **00:22:04 | Audit the Experience: Clarity, Support, and Ease**
- **00:23:30 | Continuity: Closure and Next Steps Drive Referrals**
- **00:29:01 | Reflection Questions + Profitable Path Blueprint Call**
### 00:00:00 | Businesses Stall After the Sale
Businesses don’t stall before the sale.
They stall after it.
What happens next is what decides whether a business moves forward or keeps starting over.
### 00:00:16 | Client Journey Series Context and Where to Start
Welcome to the Midlife Business Academy.
I’m Lori Lyons, marketing strategist, business coach, and accidental techie.
After years of running a successful website design agency, I’m now building the business of my dreams and helping other midlife entrepreneurs do the same.
From strategy to marketing to mindset, we cover what really matters when you’re growing a business that fits your life.
Let’s get started.
Welcome back to the Midlife Business Academy.
If you’re done spinning your wheels, done starting over, and ready to build real momentum in your business, you’re in the right place.
I’m Lori Lyons, and today we’re continuing our client journey series with the next two stages, convert and experience.
But before we go any further, a quick note.
If you haven’t listened to the beginning of the series, do yourself a favor and go back and start at episode 312.
This is where I introduce the foundations, the true framework for where all this work actually begins.
The true framework will lay the groundwork for everything we’re talking about here and in the next few episodes.
It helps you trim what’s getting in the way, refine what’s already working.
It up-levels your standards and expands only when your business is ready.
Because without that foundation, the client journey can just feel like another thing to manage instead of a system that will create momentum for you.
Starting there will give you the context that you need, so this series does what it’s supposed to do.
Then come back here after you’ve listened to episode 316 and you’ll hear everything differently.
So go back and start at the beginning. Start with episode 312.
All right.
### 00:02:14 | The Yes Is the Starting Point
So up to this point, we’ve walked through discover, connect, engage, and invite.
People find you, they recognize themselves, they engage, and then they step into a decision call.
That’s what every one of us wait for. That yes. That yes, I’m going to be working with them.
And yes, all of that has come together.
And yes, or it could be, yes, I finally have a client. For some of you, it just really kind of depends on where you are in your business.
But here’s what most of us learn the hard way.
The yes is not the finish line. In fact, it’s actually the starting point of where the real work begins. Fooled you, huh?
One of the biggest misunderstandings that we have in business is believing that the sale equals success. And it doesn’t.
A sale is simply a commitment to begin.
When someone says yes, they’re not just purchasing something from you, a product or service. They’re placing their trust in you.
They’re choosing you and your process over whatever else they’ve tried before or whoever else they’ve talked to.
And that trust in the beginning is very fragile.
Convert and experience are the stages where trust is either reinforced or it goes away.
If it’s handled well, it leads to retention, referrals, and return business.
Handled poorly, it creates one-time clients and constantly chasing.
For business owners in the work it out, rock it out stages, this is where your sustainable growth lives.
### 00:04:05 | Convert: Commitment and Orientation
Converting isn’t about convincing someone to buy. You’ve already done all that work.
They’ve already found out who you are. They’ve learned a little bit about you. They know what your process is.
You’ve talked to them about what the outcomes are.
Convert is actually about the commitment.
It’s the moment where somebody says, yes, I’m going to make a decision to do this differently.
I’m going to make a decision to look at things differently.
I’m going to make a decision to move my business forward in a different way.
And they’re choosing you to do that. Your thinking, your structure, your way of working, which means that convert deserves intention.
And it’s where many times a lot of us will feel rushed.
You get the yes, you get the deposit, you send a contract or vice versa, depending on what your process is, you celebrate, and then you go to the next one.
But this moment should actually be about orientation.
It’s about helping someone land in the decision they just made and feel steady enough to move forward.
You want to take this opportunity to say you made the excellent right decision in choosing me and my work.
And the best way to do that is through the orientation just after the commitment.
Because a lot of times business owners, when they start to work with you, underestimate what a yes feels like.
They start having second thoughts. They start second guessing.
How many times have you gotten a call that says, oh, you know, I’ve changed my mind, or I just don’t think I can do this, or I just don’t have the time for this.
It’s not that they don’t have the time. They’re second guessing their decision.
So you want to make sure to reinforce that they made the right decision.
It comes with hope. You’ve gotten rid of the uncertainty.
You’re reinforcing that they did the right thing and that it’s going to work for them.
In a lot of my clients, they will give some kind of a guarantee that this is going to deliver what it says it’s going to deliver. Could be a good place to put it.
The convert stage exists to stabilize the moment that they start to have second doubts.
You’re not going to hype them. You’re not going to give them promises.
You’re going to give them grounded commitment. You’re going to give them grounded leadership that they made the right decision.
And when you acknowledge the decision, I want you to outline what’s going to happen next.
Set the expectations clearly.
And then when they know what’s going to happen next, it replaces uncertainty with confidence.
In many of the programs that I’ve been in, the minute I put the deposit down, within minutes, I will get a confirmation e-mail and it’s telling me what’s going to be the next step.
Sometimes that next step is, here’s a video to watch, and then our next call will be in two weeks.
And that’s okay. The expectation has been set.
I’m not wondering what’s going to happen next.
And that gives me confidence that the work is going to actually begin.
And it gives me confidence in the decision that I’ve made.
### 00:07:48 | Conversion by Business Stage (Figure It Out to Boss It Out)
As we’ve talked about throughout the series, I love the four stages of business: the figure it out, work it out, rock it out, and boss it out.
And like everything else that we’ve talked about, conversion and experience look very different depending upon the stage that you’re in.
And this is where a lot of frustration will show up for my clients.
You’re trying to build conversion systems that belong to a stage that your clients aren’t actually in yet.
Or you focus on scaling the sale without strengthening the orientation.
Both of these create friction, and both of these slow momentum.
Sometimes they need time to settle in to the decision and the commitment that they’ve made.
They need to receive it and say, okay, I’m ready. This is what’s going to happen.
So let’s talk about each stage.
At the figure it out stage, conversion is usually personal.
This is the business owners that are typically under 100K.
Conversion happens through relationships, referrals, familiarity, proximity to people. Eyes to eyes, nose to nose.
You’re not doing Facebook ads.
Your job here is not to automate or overcomplicate the process.
People are coming to you and buying from you because they trust you, not because you’ve taken them through a funnel.
Your job is to keep the conversion simple, clear, and professional so that it’s not confusing and you’re not breaking the trust that’s established.
This means clear next steps, simple pricing, straightforward agreements.
You don’t need a 25-page contract.
A smooth handoff from yes to the getting started, and that can be a simple e-mail.
When this stage is rushed or sloppy, people will hesitate.
They second guess it, not because they don’t want to work with you, but because the experience doesn’t match the trust that brought them there in the first place.
In the work it out phase, and this is where many of you are right now, you’re not winging it anymore, but you’re still doing a lot of improvising.
I know when I was in the stage of my business, I kept adjusting and tweaking and changing and moving, and I was doing it about every two weeks because I was impatient. It wasn’t working. I was improvising.
But people are paying closer attention here.
They want to understand exactly what they’re saying yes to.
They want to know what happens next and how they’ll be supported.
This is somebody that’s probably new to you, and you need to reinforce that decision.
Let them know how they’re going to be supported.
When that’s unclear, they start to have hesitation. This is where you get a lot of hesitation in this stage.
So this is where it really matters to be clear.
You want clear offers, a clear scope, set a firm scope of your project, clear expectations, clear onboarding.
Again, you can start with an e-mail, but what’s going to be the next step? What’s going to happen next?
A lot of this is rinse and repeat. You’re not recreating this for every client.
You’re doing this with a system because when those pieces are missing, even someone that’s excited to work with you will pause.
They’ll start to overthink the decision and wonder if they made the right decision.
And it has nothing to do with the price and everything to do with the experience so far.
In the rock it out stage, conversions should feel consistent and predictable, not just for your clients, but for you.
You’ve got this down. You are rocking it. You can do this with your eyes closed, in your sleep.
It’s running smoothly and your clients expect your systems to run smoothly because they assume you’ve done this before, and you have.
They want to feel like their yes fits into something that’s already established.
Every conversion should feel like a continuation, not a reset.
The conversion flows into an agreement, the agreement flows into onboarding, and onboarding flows into delivery. It’s flowing.
And when the conversion is dialed in at this level, your clients will feel confident before they even start.
And that confidence will carry over into the experience itself.
And it directly impacts their results, your referrals, and repeat work that you do with those clients.
At the boss it out stage, that higher level, conversion often happens a lot of times without you being directly involved.
You may have coaches that work with you, you may have systems that work on autopilot.
People already know your work, your reputation, your results, and they’re part of the community. They arrive pre-sold.
But that only works when the experience has been intentionally designed at the earlier stages.
At this level, the conversion is less about persuasion and more about alignment.
Systems will handle your logistics. Your teams will handle your delivery.
Your role is to protect the client and to protect the experience.
Because when conversion and experience are aligned at this stage, holy moly, momentum compounds.
Clients come in prepared, expectations are met, results are shared, and the business grows without constant personal effort. Your constant personal effort.
And your clients’ businesses grow. They establish relationships and a community with the other owners within your programs.
### 00:15:07 | Experience: How Clients Feel While Working With You
Now, let’s talk about experience, because this is where a lot of my clients, when we go back and we audit their client journey, we find that they’re losing momentum and they don’t even realize it.
Experience isn’t what you deliver. It’s how someone feels when they’re working with you.
You know the old Maya Angelou famous quote. People may not remember what you said. People forget what you did, but they will never forget how they made you feel.
And this is so true in the experience stage.
It’s not how pretty your PDFs are. It’s not how professional the videos are.
It’s that your clients are seen, your clients feel understood, they feel supported, they don’t feel rushed, they don’t feel managed.
Those emotional cues can shape their entire experience, many times more than the outcome itself.
This is why two different people can get similar results from the same program, and they walk away with very different stories.
One feels empowered and eager to continue, and the other one maybe not so much.
I was in a conference not too long ago and ran into one of the members of a business coaching group that I was in.
We didn’t know each other real well, but we knew of each other and we had talked some.
I had a decent experience. I wouldn’t refer it, not because of the experience I had or didn’t have, but because basically I want my clients to work with me.
But her comment was, yeah, I still have PTSD from that coaching program.
And it’s like, whoa, that’s a very different experience than what I had. Tell me more.
She just felt very not seen and not heard all throughout the program.
And this was a very high ticket program, and she was in there for two years.
There was a lot of money invested, and to come out the other side feeling like you have PTSD, that is not how we want our clients to feel.
So she was very relieved when it was over.
And it was never about the content. It was the emotions that she had layered throughout that whole process.
She could have had a great business, but if she felt strung out and wrung out, it wasn’t going to matter. She was going to end up resenting that.
So here’s the important part about experience.
You’re designing that emotional experience whether you’re aware of it or not.
When your communication is clear, your clients will feel safe.
When your expectations are set, your clients will feel confident.
When their progress is acknowledged, your clients are going to feel capable.
And when any of those things are missing, even strong results can give them PTSD on the other side if you’re not giving them strong results and showing them a great experience.
Experiences where emotions are either regulated or amplified.
And when clients feel steady, supported, and respected, they’re going to gain momentum.
When they feel uncertain or disconnected, all momentum will stop.
And it’s why the experience matters so much.
It’s not about adding more touch points or PDFs or videos or doing more work.
It’s about understanding the emotional impact of the work that you’re doing.
And this is true no matter what kind of coach or what kind of clients you have, especially with a one-to-one personal service.
### 00:19:36 | Why Experience Shapes Behavior (Real-World Examples)
So when we talk about user experience and customer experience, those have really become buzzwords lately.
We hear those terms all the time.
Entire businesses are built around customer experience. Teams are built around it.
Brands invest millions in making things easier, cleaner, clearer, and more intuitive because they know one thing that’s true: experience shapes behavior.
We’ve all changed our buying habits because of a poor experience.
We’ve stopped shopping at places that make returns difficult. Hello, Amazon.
Amazon has changed the whole scope of the way we feel about returns.
We cancel subscriptions that are confusing or frustrating.
I’ve canceled apps because they just do not provide a good customer experience. I can’t figure them out.
And I’m pretty technically savvy at figuring stuff out. Hello, website design.
I don’t want it confusing. I want it to be simple. I don’t want to have to think about it. I want a good user experience.
I’ve left businesses before. I’ve left full shopping carts before for businesses that don’t welcome my business.
I was at a Dollar Tree not too long ago looking for something. I did some impulse buying and the store was a mess.
There was stuff everywhere. There was seasonal stuff, clearance, boxes all over the place.
I couldn’t find anything.
And when I asked the manager to help me find something, I made a comment about I couldn’t find anything and I can’t get down the aisles because there’s so many boxes.
He says, yeah, I can’t find good help now.
That was my experience. So I left the shopping cart and I thought, I’ll go to the Dollar Tree that’s right around the corner from me that I do know has good help and I do know where things are and they do keep the store looking nice.
That was part of the experience of shopping in that Dollar Tree.
So how many times do you underestimate the experience that’s inside your own work?
### 00:22:04 | Audit the Experience: Clarity, Support, and Ease
What is the experience? I’ve talked a lot of times about having somebody double check and go back and look at something with you.
Have somebody go through your website, go through some of your programs, give them the programs, go through this with new eyes.
Tell me what the experience is.
Are the videos clear? Can you hear them? Is the sound good?
It doesn’t matter that they’re not professionally produced, but you do want to make sure the sound is good and that they are clear.
The slides are clear if you have slides on them.
Because this is going to help tell your clients that the experience, that this decision was a good one.
And it will give them trust in that decision.
Successful clients want to keep working with you, not because they need more help, but because they value how you think, how you guide them, and how the process feels.
Experience is where that desire takes root, and it’s where you quietly protect the yes that was already given and prepare for what you want to come next.
### 00:23:30 | Continuity: Closure and Next Steps Drive Referrals
So a strong client experience does three things.
It reinforces trust, it reduces friction, and it creates continuity.
It’s how you show that your work fits into the bigger arc of what they’re doing.
It’s not pitching the next thing. It’s not pushing an upsell.
It’s how you show up. It’s how you clearly communicate.
How present you are during the work. How you close the loop at the end.
What are the next steps?
Because when the experience is good, your clients will automatically start saying, what’s next?
Not because you’ve sold them on something, but because the relationship feels complete and they want to go to the next step.
How many times have you been on a really fun vacation with some really good friends and you’ve had a great time, and you want to go, so where’s our next trip?
You’re already planning your next trip before you leave that one.
So this is where we start seeding the future.
Experience should always be designed with continuity in mind.
It doesn’t mean that every client’s going to work with you forever.
It means honoring the relationship enough to leave the door open.
So you can recap progress and transformation.
Tell them where they’ve been. Show them where they’ve gone.
Show them where they are now. Show them where they can continue to go.
Acknowledge what’s changed in them.
Tell them what the next phase might look like. Paint that picture for them.
Even if it’s not right now, you can start seeding what that picture will look like.
You’re not selling the next step. You’re normalizing the progression.
And this matters to those of us that think in terms of seasons, not quick wins.
I worked with a health coach not too long ago who sold digital programs.
Her clients loved her work. They loved the things that she did for them.
She helped them with meal planning, but she also helped them with the mindset around losing weight and getting healthy.
Because if you’ve ever been heavy and you’ve lost a lot of weight, there’s a lot of mindset work that you have to do around that.
So they got really good results because it was a total package.
And they finished the program feeling much better than they started.
And then the course ended. There wasn’t anything to close it.
There was no acknowledgement of the transformation. There was no closing moment.
There was no clear sense of what came next. Everything just stopped. The relationship just stopped.
So her clients were satisfied, but they never really referred her.
And the issue was not the quality of the work. It wasn’t the results.
It was that there was no closure.
So we made one simple shift.
At the end of her program, she created a personalized wrap-up video.
In it, she talked about where the client had come from, where they have been, the journey that they’ve been on, the transformation that they’ve gone through.
And then she outlined the next natural steps for them.
There was no pressure. There was no sales pitch.
It was just, if you want to keep on, our next step is maintenance, and this is how you do it.
And that single addition, that video changed everything for her.
It took her about 10 minutes to do each one. She didn’t edit them. It was very simple.
And then within two months, her referrals tripled.
She went from no referrals to getting five to six a month. That made her business.
Because people are more likely to talk about an experience that feels complete, and they’re more likely to refer when they understand where the work is going to go next.
Closure creates confidence. Next steps create continuity.
### 00:29:01 | Reflection Questions + Profitable Path Blueprint Call
So let’s look at some reflection questions. Let’s go back and look at all of this.
I want you to ask yourselves, look at your program and how you guide your clients through the process.
What is their experience?
After they convert and after they say yes, what happens?
How do you reinforce their decision?
How do you close projects or engagements?
Do your clients leave feeling finished and supported, or unfinished and unsupported?
And is it easy to work with me?
That one’s a good one because that’s one that you can ask your clients.
Is it easy to work with me? How is it to get in touch with me?
I use a calendar system with my clients. I send them my calendar when it’s time for their calls, they book time on their calendar.
So there’s not a lot of going back and forth over who’s free and when. We book on the calendar.
Sometimes it happens occasionally that times don’t match up when they need to, and I’ll work with them individually and we’ll find a time.
But I want that to be part of the good experience of working with me.
But when you go back and you answer these questions and ask your clients what it feels like to work with you, that will go a long way in taking a look at what your convert and experience looks like to your clients.
Convert and experience aren’t just administrative phases. These are the relationship stages.
This is where the trust becomes visible and where your reputation is built quietly because experience will speak volumes.
And it’s where future opportunities for you are either created or they’re stopped.
So if you’re ready to strengthen this part of your client journey, the next step is a profitable path blueprint call.
This is a conversation to see if working together makes sense and to identify where your journey is supporting your growth, where it’s stalling, and what needs to shift next.
You can schedule that call at talkwithlori.com and come ready to choose your direction.
We’re not gonna circle options here. We’re gonna talk about where you need to go.
Now, you’ve heard me say it before, and I still believe it.
It’s never too late to build the business of your dreams.
But here’s what I know now. The dream evolves.
And when your business reflects who you are today, not who you used to be, everything starts to move with more ease.
Creating this work has reminded me that growth doesn’t come from doing more.
It comes from choosing differently and building with intention because momentum isn’t magic and it isn’t luck.
It’s built by design through the decisions you’re willing to make and the ones you’re finally willing to stop avoiding.
This is Lori Lyons and remember, the business of your dreams is closer than you think, but it won’t come from doing the same things louder.
It comes from choosing a smarter path forward. We’ll see you next time.
Thank you for joining me on the Midlife Business Academy.
If today’s episode made you think or made you feel or made you feel seen, share it with a fellow business owner who could use it too.
When you’re ready for more support, you’ll find the link to book your Profitable Path blueprint call in the show notes.
I’ll be back next week with more insight and strategy to help you build a business that truly fits your life and one of your dreams.
We’ll see you next time on the Midlife Business Academy.