If your marketing is not converting, the problem is probably not your content. Kate Toon, author of Six Figures in Sales, on the shift that actually moves money.
What’s happening: Australian digital business educator and author Kate Toon argues that most small business owners have invested heavily in building visibility and almost nothing in learning how to sell.
You are posting on LinkedIn. You are writing the newsletter. You are even doing the pointing dances on Instagram Reels. You are showing up exactly the way the internet told you to. And the likes are there. The comments are warm. The personal brand is looking polished.
But the bank account tells a different story. Kate Toon has a name for what is happening. She calls it the visibility trap, and she argues it has been quietly costing small business owners for more than a decade.
“Over the last decade, we’ve been spoon-fed this fluffy, woo-woo lie that if we just build an audience, the money will magically roll in,” she writes. “We have become brilliant at building awareness, but we are absolutely terrified of asking for the sale.”
The fear, Toon argues, comes from a deep association between selling and manipulation. Sales conjures images of pressure tactics, hidden fees and smooth-talking operators. So instead of selling, small business owners hide. They bury their prices. They make potential clients jump through discovery calls. They make their products incredibly hard to buy.
“The real reason your marketing isn’t converting is that you’ve been taught how to market, but you’ve never been taught how to sell,” she writes.
From the shed to the bookshop
Toon is not speaking theoretically. She built a million-dollar digital business selling her SEO course, The Recipe for SEO Success, while working from a shed in her backyard. More recently, in what she describes as a plot twist she did not see coming, she bought a bricks-and-mortar bookshop in her hometown.
The lesson she draws from both experiences is the same. “Whether you are selling a six-month business mastermind, an online template, or a paperback novel, visibility without a clear path to purchase is just expensive noise,” she writes.
The shift she is describing is not about becoming more aggressive or adopting high-pressure tactics. It is about recognising that the audience already built represents people who are interested in what you do, and that the only thing standing between interest and revenue is clarity and confidence.
How to actually sell without the sleaze
Toon outlines four practical changes that move a business from visibility to conversion. The first is productising services. Selling vague blocks of time puts the burden of decision-making on the customer. Packaging skills into clear, priced offers with defined scope removes that friction and makes buying straightforward.
The second is showing prices. Toon is direct on this point. “If they can’t see what you charge, they will assume they can’t afford you and simply click away.” Her recommended approach is a three-tier pricing structure, a lower-cost entry option, a mid-price option that is the primary offering, and a premium tier, displayed clearly on the website.
The third is building what she calls a tube of joy, a deliberate sequence that moves a potential customer from awareness to interest to desire to action. Without that structure, attention dissipates without converting.
The fourth is writing a dedicated sales page. Not a landing page that collects leads, but a page that does one thing: sells. It explains the benefits, addresses objections, provides social proof and ends with a clear call to action.
“Selling isn’t about forcing people to buy things they don’t want,” Toon writes. “It’s about confidently offering a solution to someone who is actively looking for it.”
For small business owners who have done the hard work of building an audience, the practical question is not how to reach more people. It is whether the people already paying attention can actually find a clear, easy, confident way to buy.
Kate Toon is the author of Six Figures in Sales. katetoon.com
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