🎧The WEALTHY COACH PODCAST with Kendra Perry

”Did I miss the deadline?” I get asked this all the time. If you run live promotions with deadlines, you'll get asked it too. Someone misses your cutoff, reaches out, and wants in. Do you take the money anyway, or do you stick to the deadline?

I've handled this a few different ways over the years. There was a time I was incredibly strict: miss the deadline, you don't get to buy. I've eased up on that, but my answer still depends on what I'm selling. For a live cohort with a real start date, I stay strict, because I need to know numbers and I don't think people should join a live course after it has started. For an evergreen program where the deadline is about a discount or a bonus going away, people can still enroll, but the discount and bonuses are gone.

In this episode I walk through why bending a deadline can feel unfair to the people who bought on time, why a late exception of days or weeks hurts your brand, and why ”we're reopening by popular demand” trains your audience to wait for the next chance. I also get into the times I say yes (a 24-hour grace period, and a bank blocking a payment before the deadline), the times I say no, a coach who took a late $3,000 client after a launch with no sales, and a woman I turned down who respected me more for it.

Questions I ask before I make the call:

• How late is it? Within a day, or a week later?
• Was there a real reason (forgot, tech issue, family emergency)?
• Would I be comfortable telling the people who bought on time that I made an exception?
• Was this person already in a sales conversation with me?

Takeaway: a deadline only works if your list believes it. Decide your rule before your next launch (grace period or not, how long, and for what reasons), apply it to everyone, tell people why the deadline exists, and if you hold the line, offer a next-round email or another option instead of slamming the door.

Leave the podcast a 5-star review: https://ratethispodcast.com/wealthy