12 Skills You Need to Close More Sales (Part 1)

Brandon Welch 0:00
I’m gonna get this. You want me to drop a beat while you’re doing this? Drop a beat. Nate the camera guys catch this. This might be the intro. So people go with what they know, and you want to be the one they know, so you’re the one with whom they go.

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I’m here with Caleb, polka dot, Agee

Caleb Agee 0:26
if you’re listening to the audio, that’s a reference to

Brandon Welch 0:30
neatest little white polka dots on this green shirt here. He wears it so well, I don’t know

Caleb Agee 0:34
how crisp the video comes out. Might just be a blur for you, but turn it up to 4k

Brandon Welch 0:38
because you need to see these polka dots. Oh my gosh. This is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions to help you eliminate waste and advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream. Lots of big dream energy going on here this week, yeah, we had a big moment this week. Big. Big moment one of our legacy, foundational clients, who came to us with a big dream nine years ago. Yep, husband and wife, couple who have just this cool little medical clinic.

Caleb Agee 1:06
It was, it was going fine, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t thriving. It wasn’t abundant. At that point,

Brandon Welch 1:12
they needed, they needed more of a certain type of business, and they needed to grow much faster than they were to get to their goal that was going to allow them to achieve their big dreams, which is, you know, retiring, retiring from that business. And this week we got fired, because

Caleb Agee 1:29
let’s give it, give it slow clap. It’s kind of weird when you only have two

Brandon Welch 1:32
they retired, yeah, I don’t know. Come on, eight, the camera guy, yeah, they retired early with enough gas in the tank to travel the world doing all the things they want to do. They got

Caleb Agee 1:41
kids on the East Coast. They’re going to travel. Gonna travel around, yes, oh man. And

Brandon Welch 1:45
every month for the last nine years, we have brought them, you know, in our building, and we’ve talked about goals, dreams, how they’re trending, and it’s just so, so, so cool. It’s the coolest thing we do. It’s why we exist to help small businesses like you and like Bill and Julie, achieve the big dream faster. Do more with less, and enjoy it while you’re doing it. Yeah, they we have this new flag called the big dream flag, and we’re taking pictures with our big dreamers that we work with, one on one. And it was just so cool to take that picture and wish them the best next chapter in their life, because they did it such a they made the money they need to make. They made the impact they needed to make in their business, and now they’re done. So cool. So that’s bill and Julie. Hey, real quick, big dream note, if nobody’s asking you what the big dream is, you need to spend some time around people who ask you what the big dream is. You need to be going back to that monthly at least, right? Yeah. We get caught up in this work. We get caught up in this sales, we get caught up in KPIs and economy and politics, and it’s just life is too short. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 2:53
maybe just making payroll next week is slowing you down. But, yeah, man, you got to look up

Brandon Welch 2:59
that horizon. Yeah. So what? What big dreamers are reaching out to us this week, and how can we help them? Yeah.

Caleb Agee 3:05
So today’s question from comes from Paul, and he leads a sales team at an awesome organization, and he says, Brandon, that’s your name. Brandon, I lead a sales team for a B to B organization, we are looking for fresh ideas to improve our cold calling game and close rate. What can you share from your experience in sales? Love it.

Brandon Welch 3:34
Thank you. Paul. Great question. And did you know I have experience in sales? I actually, do? You do? Dude, I found Caleb that is in the sales world. That’s totally another story. But hey,

Caleb Agee 3:44
I met him as a sales person, sales guy looking and we’re still hanging out. So that tells you something about at least the kind of sales person he was.

Brandon Welch 3:53
So if you are leading a sales team, or if you are a salesperson, we wrote this episode completely for you. We are going to load you up with tactics and things you can do for next steps, ideas for building relationships and influence of the people that you need to win over. Yeah. And really, this is kind of going back to some basics. But also for some people, they’ve been living in a really, I call it a fairy tale world of sales this last 4567,

Caleb Agee 4:24
years. Yeah, definitely. The last four, I would say definitely, yeah, it’s been, it’s been a little bit easier to get those sales when people there was a little bit of an economy boost and a personal check writing boost coming from Uncle Sam, a little bit and that,

Brandon Welch 4:43
unless you were in hospitality or something, there’s was just utterly shut down. Everybody had money. People were bored and they needed to buy stuff to make them feel less bored and better, and maybe even, uh, distracted, can I say yeah? And so now, you know, interest rates economy, it’s no secret. Things are harder, yeah. And so the tactics we want to talk about will get you over that hump, but talk a little bit about what’s going on in the current sales environment, yeah.

Caleb Agee 5:08
So we’ve got some stats we’ve pulled for you, because I think it’s really, really important to understand where you’re coming from. So salespeople I’m talking to you, hopefully this these stats only some of them relate to you. 44% of salespeople give up after one follow up,

Brandon Welch 5:31
one follow up. I know some that give up before the first.

Caleb Agee 5:37
The average salesperson only makes two attempts to reach a prospect, so if they don’t answer two times, that was a dead that was a bad lead. Yeah, leads are bad. That’s not necessarily true. So 80% of sales require five follow up phone calls after the meeting.

Brandon Welch 5:53
80% after the after, after you’ve presented, five follow up phone calls. Five follow up phone calls. I know so many sales people that just try to get the yes or no on the appointment, and they consider themselves a failure if they didn’t get it, yeah, yeah, that’s not it. You’re like, half you’re like, halfway through, you’re only

Caleb Agee 6:09
Yep. So research shows, excuse me, research shows that 35 to 50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. Even further, if you follow up with web leads within five minutes, you are nine times more likely to convert them. Wow, first one usually wins. So important

Brandon Welch 6:27
for so many of our customers, because when you’re, especially if you’re doing search engine marketing or something, where somebody’s literally at the finish line, yeah, they’re probably hitting you up and two or three others, yeah. So you gotta, you gotta hit with the irons hot, right? Yes.

Caleb Agee 6:39
Um, after a presentation, 63 of it. 63% of attendees remember stories. 63% only 5% remember statistics.

Brandon Welch 6:52
Maybe you should tell a story about that statistic.

Caleb Agee 6:53
Some more people. That’s probably why I didn’t remember very much. Stories, yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Think

Brandon Welch 6:57
about it. Nobody wants to sit and listen to information that they weren’t thinking about, but you have to take them through a story journey and that that bonds that information to your brain, right?

Caleb Agee 7:07
Yes, it takes an average of eight cold calls to first reach a prospect. Eight, eight times just to get them. Yeah, the first time. Wednesday. This is an interesting one, Wednesday and Thursday, between four and 5pm are the best times to prospect. So wow, people must be a little bit more open to that in the middle of the week, but that is statistically

Brandon Welch 7:32
the best time. Probably. They’re done with their early week chaos. They’re probably not in weekend mode yet, and they’re probably a little bit worn out of doing tasks, so they’re a little more maybe, maybe open to a distraction at the end of the distraction, yeah, you be that distraction, right? 92% of all customer

Caleb Agee 7:47
interactions happen over the phone. This is a big one. A lot of people Gen Z’s following up, I would say, Man, even the millennials, I think, I think this is definitely a generational thing. There’s more comfort, I think, using picking up a phone, as far as maybe the older generations, but definitely Gen Z millennials, they’re having a little bit of trouble. They want to text, email, store,

Brandon Welch 8:11
Snapchat, or whatever. Yeah, what do you do? Nate the camera guy. But this, just this, this relational conversation at banter has been subdued with, you know, the younger generation, yeah, which is why I think some of them are struggling in the sales world. I know a ton of sales managers that are really struggling with how to get Gen ZS and millennials, younger folk, in the sales process. So, yep, so 92% should happen on the phone. So, yep.

Caleb Agee 8:42
Last Lee, continuous training gives 50% higher net sales per sales person.

Brandon Welch 8:49
I think we’re doing sales training right now, aren’t we, yeah. So you can count this 50% higher net look for a 50% take that to the bank, yeah. So that’s the current state of sales. Basically, people are, I would say missing out on two big things, commitment and consistency. And even in what’s what’s kind of unique about that is that the sales person that we all think of, this charismatic, outgoing, social, extroverted person, probably doesn’t tend to be the most organized person. That’s usually a inverse scale. And so I think the big challenge is what people who aren’t scared of sales, people who like that spark and that relationship building, are not the ones that are naturally wired to have this consistency. And yeah, that’s maybe necessarily commitment to long term Yeah, and that’s not saying anything bad about them. It’s just the more bubbly a person tends to be, the less organized they tend to be, because they get their energy from that

Caleb Agee 9:43
real world, more of a social interaction than it is like a system, system interaction.

Brandon Welch 9:49
So if you can combine both, you really have something, and you are prepared to, I think, compete and come out on top with today’s customer, because the the other side of that is the human being. Things actually need more commitment and time than ever, because we’re a little freaked out about what’s happening with the economy. We’re a little smarter than we have been in the past. We can do a lot of the research on our own for most products, yep. So we don’t need you to be a information expert type person as much as we used to. And the whole transactional economy of like, everything from Amazon to e commerce is like, if we can do it without a salesperson, we will. But the things we really need guidance and advice on, it’s hard to find, it’s hard to find somebody we trust. So yep, it’s, it’s harder to get people’s trust these days. So yes, so I’m gonna talk about 13 things we can do to build that trust and to increase the impact of your interactions with your people, because nothing matters in sales. If we just back up to this, nothing really matters if we don’t connect with the human and offer them a better life. That’s the moment at which somebody buys is if they’ve been connected with us, they trust us, and they believe we have a better life for them, and so doing that as a matter of commitment and consistency to an outcome, hopefully holistically, for the customer. Yeah, and the first thing I want to talk about this is tactic number one is called the milk route. Now I’m talking to Paul as if he’s a B to B sales guy. And so anybody who’s out there who’s in a cold call game, whether you’re selling media or whether you’re selling a B to B product, you know it. Services come to mind, places where you gotta go get, yeah, insurance for sure, places where you gotta go get in the door and get somebody to even have a conversation with you. The milk route is your friend. But even if you’re somebody who’s getting, like, inbound leads from a website or something. This principle will serve you in the milk route. Think of the old days you got your milk on the same date, right? Usually the same time. Maybe I would like to our generation. Maybe the swans man come to

Caleb Agee 11:53
your house. He didn’t come to my house. My neighbors would always get ice cream

Brandon Welch 11:56
silver milk bars. That’s

Caleb Agee 11:58
good stuff. You know, are they still out?

Brandon Welch 12:03
I saw someone in traffic the other day. So the principle here is that people, business owners in particular, are going to be creatures of habit, and so you want to set yourself up on a schedule to where, if you catch them today, say it’s Tuesday at 4pm you’re probably going to catch him next Tuesday at 4pm Yeah, I learned this from one of the best sales guys and best leaders and best managers I’ve ever had. He was actually my boss, Brian McDonough, and he trained me to go on a milk route where I was on this part of town. You know, typical salesperson is just they follow the energy and they jump from here to here to here to here, yeah, and then, just because you’ve got a hot lead there, and you’re running here, and then you kind of do what you feel like doing, and then you’ve just had a great sales day. So you, you know, Jack around one afternoon, and don’t get back, you know, to your other prospects. But if you keep yourself in a schedule and say, I’m going to see Nate the camera guy every day or every Tuesday. At this time, I’m going to at least stop by and make sure he see me. The principle there is that you want the same person getting the same amount of nurturing from you equally. Now, different prospects are going to be at different places in the pipeline. Some are going to be hot and ready to buy. Some are going to be months away, yeah, but the only way to get consistent results is to have consistent inputs. I adapted this quote, actually, from Craig Groeschel. He was talking about leaders, but I’m going to translate to salespeople. Great salespeople do consistently what average salespeople do occasionally, and the roller coaster of sales is that we get, you know, big commission checks. And then show me, show me a salesperson who’s had a great month, and then I’ll show you a salesperson who’s about to have a horrible month, because they ride that momentum, and it just it’s not motivating, and they’re following an emotional equation instead of a logical, strategic equation. So what you want to do is have consistent inputs, I’m going to say weekly for just about every sales profession I can think of. And if you happen to get that person on the phone today, could probably get them on the phone that that same time next week. Kind of learn their habits. When I was in sales, took 17 points of contact before I got the opportunity, yeah, and so I could sporadically do those 17 points of contact. Points of contact and get sporadic results, or I could have my my 50 people I was working on my 50 prospects, and every week, make an input, and that momentum snowballs. And one day they’re going to wake up, they’re going to be frustrated with their current situation or their current provider, and they’re gonna go, Caleb, that’s the one I thought, think of first and feel the best about right? Yep, I’m gonna, they’re gonna, it’s gonna pop in their mind, and because you had that frequency, you’re gonna be there. So run the milk route. Consistent inputs every week. Yeah, right?

Caleb Agee 14:54
Realtors, by the way, this was so powerful for you. Yeah, we worked with a lot of shout out to. Our buddy, Chris, he knows consistency

Brandon Welch 15:03
and commitment. Yeah, yeah. Show, you know, realtors, when houses are selling, they’re getting the big fat checks. They’re going to the lake on Thursdays and Fridays,

Caleb Agee 15:10
uh huh uh or

Brandon Welch 15:13
when it comes time to, you know, work a little harder. They just haven’t. They don’t have that momentum. And so it feels like it’s not, instead of it taking weeks for them to build that up, it takes months and maybe even the better part of a year. So don’t stop putting those consistent inputs in. That would be my number one piece of advice. That’s great. So these next two tactics are called the news drop. And saw this, thought of you Same, same kind of thing, what you want to do? Because, especially for things that take. They have a longer sales cycle. And I’m even talking to some of my home improvement guys here, maybe even some of our attorneys. Not everybody’s gonna make a decision in the first week or two, right? Sometimes the consideration cycle is weeks and months. And within this milk route mentality we just talked about, you don’t wanna show up every time going, are you ready to buy? You ready to buy? I’m just following up. Are you ready to you know, take next step. What you want to do instead is demonstrate the value of a partner by bringing things that don’t necessarily have to do with the sale. Yes, the news drop is, you’re always coming with good news or interesting news, right? Yeah. I personally use Google News Alerts and Flipboard. It’s an app, and you can just subscribe to their industry, subscribe to things they’re interested in, or maybe even things from your industry. If you’re in more of a retail driven environment where you’re always sharing cool things. This could be your email list. This could be something you literally drop into their business, or drop in the mail to them and saying, Hey, did you see this? Six ideas for making your home more valuable? Or, for me, I was, I was learning the industries of my clients. So if it was hospitality, I would have some article on the summer trends coming up for hospitality. Or I would have like, how to get you know number one rated on on trout. What’s the developer? Yelper, but the other one was TripAdvisor, Trip Advisor. I was like, wanted to say home advisor, but it’s TripAdvisor. And so if you’re in sales, go to Google News Alerts and put in your prospects industry and just have it send you news every day or every week. You always have something interesting to say. Same sort of thing with the saw this. Thought of you tactic. This is tactic number three. You are studying your customer, your prospect. What is their humor? What’s their lifestyle? What are their hobbies? What are they doing their free time? What makes them laugh, cry or get angry? Are they old, young? Are they active outdoors? Are they an enthusiast for Harley Davidsons? Are they a artistic type person, and same you can use the same like Flipboard or social media tags and just find stuff that’s interesting and keep a folder, and once in a while, drop a saw this thought of you. Example I used in the presentation last time was, if the guy’s a Porsche lover dude, find some wicked cool picture of a Porsche hugging a corner on a back road and send it to him, right? Yeah, maybe they’re wine enthusiasts. Maybe they love wine. So you’re going to download the vivid app, and somewhere in conversation, you’re going to learn what kind of wine they like, and then you’re going to study that, put that wine in there and find five others that are like it, and maybe drop them off a bottle or something, right? Maybe they’re parents. Maybe they’re into mom and dad type stuff. Maybe they’re baseball coaches for their kids teams, and you’re going to send them, you know, some crazy video of some home run that some kid did someone right on YouTube. Try to build these extra connections, because people will go with what they know, and when you’re the one they know, you’re the one with which they’ll go. So with who they’ll go, should say with whom they’ll go. I made that up on the fly. It’s pretty I love it. People go with what they know. I’m gonna get this. You want me

Caleb Agee 18:53
to drop a beat while you’re doing this? Drop

Brandon Welch 18:54
a beat. Nate the camera. Guys catch this. This might be the intro. So people go with what they know, and you want to be the one they know, so you’re the one with whom they go. Nailed it. Boom, boom, on a roll. So saw this. Thought of you. The statement I have here. It’s 2023. You’ve got all these tools, and you have zero excuses to be to not be interesting. So be interesting,

Caleb Agee 19:21
yeah, yeah. I think, I think it’s all about we’re gonna keep bringing it back to this empathy. You’re not being interesting for your own sake. You’re being interesting for their sake. So what do they like? What do they want thought of you? And when we keep bringing it back there, that is the trick. Yep.

Brandon Welch 19:40
If you’re an in home sales. I’m looking around, and let’s just say they gave me the chance to give my home improvement pitch or whatever. I’m looking around. We

Caleb Agee 19:48
live in Missouri. You see a chiefs flag on the wall. Exactly. You’re gonna say, hey, homes is, you know, can’t believe Travis Kelce is legs been acting up. What are we gonna do about that? Yeah, my

Brandon Welch 19:59
follow. Female I’m dropping a go chiefs or a Patrick mahomes meme, yep. Maybe they’ve got that classic car in the garage. You saw I’m connecting with them on that, just this relational stuff. Maybe they got a certain type of dog, like people are crazy about their breed of dog. Maybe you’re doing something like that. Maybe dropping them a meme or a text or something like that. So the saw this thought of you thoughtful relationship building, get excited about their things, and that will reciprocate into trust and relationship. And you know what? Honestly, friendship. Yeah, I’ve become friends with so many of my prospects and clients over the years, just because this is, this is the stuff that builds relationships inside and outside of business, right? Yeah, for sure. So, third, sorry, fourth, this is called the inside champion. Number one thing I think people do wrong in B to B sales is they think, Oh, who’s the decision maker? I gotta get the decision maker. Well, the truth is, the first decision maker is the person who lets you have access to the decision maker, which is the gatekeeper, yeah. So B to B sales, that could be, you know, their chief of staff. That could be the office person, probably the office coordinator. Nobody gets through our freaking door without talking to Riley, yep, and she’s like a pro, and she knows her filter is highly tuned, yeah, or through the phone, yeah, right. You’re selling insurance. She can smell it. You best not come through our front door. Oh, man, she’ll take you down. But there’s some ways to win over that inside champion. And don’t look at them as like somebody you got to get through. Look at them as somebody you also want to bring in make them feel important, because they are important. And something I used to do, I figure out what he or she liked to drink, or, you know what, sonic drink, or ice cream flavor, or maybe coffee. And soon as I learned that I was never shown up without a coffee in hand. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how I met Caleb Agee.

Caleb Agee 21:54
Make me seem pretty cheap, I guess. Yeah,

Brandon Welch 21:55
he was a cheap date. Yeah, I don’t know coffee was expensive back, yeah, for me those days like four and a half dollar Starbucks. I ain’t seen my payback yet,

Caleb Agee 22:05
easy there.

Brandon Welch 22:07
So, yeah, Caleb was, well, more important than Caleb’s wife, his inside champion was working the desk at a client, and her name is Sierra, and she was awesome and lovely, but she’s tough to get in with because she’s all good at her job. She’s very good at her job, but I got in with coffee and Andy’s ice cream, right? And he’s frozen custard. So get that inside. Champion. Win them over, just as much as you’re trying to win over the decision maker that will serve you short and long term.

Caleb Agee 22:42
Fifth, one real quick, on the on the inside champion when you’re going in home sales, oh, your inside champion is everybody else, everybody else around the situation that you can influence. So, not in a creepy way, but, but yeah, yeah, there’s, there’s a way to do it. People being kind to their kids, a good example of being kind to their spouse, being kind to, you know, anyone else around the situation, and understanding that you are not trying to get to it. Like, let’s say in our office, you’re not trying to get to Brandon. And if you treat Riley the wrong way, guess what? You ain’t you get Riley out of luck. Because, yeah, it’s just not gonna happen. Same is true in the house, you know? And so we have a really good example of that in even in our TV ads, yes,

Brandon Welch 23:28
that we have, yeah. So sometimes, sometimes, like, we have a jingle that I have to tell you, I literally tried to make it sound like Sesame Street. I use, like, Nickelodeon type melodies. I wrote the jingle and did it all and and it worked, because these kids are walking around singing our clients jingle, absolute. You know, we even have videos of, like, total strangers emailing us, going, you’re never gonna believe this. My kid thinks you cannot wait for your commercial to come on TV. That’s the inside champion when that kid’s been singing absolute for, like, it’s absolute roofing. You can look it up for like, the last five years, and suddenly they have a roof leak. Who do you think they’re

Caleb Agee 24:08
gonna think of first? Yep, kids sing it this morning. So that’s just kidding. Another example.

Brandon Welch 24:12
So sometimes it’s the kids, sometimes, like we talked about, it’s the it’s the maybe it’s the dog, like, maybe bring a dog bone, and the dogs run around this dog toy or dog bone. Yeah, in the next four or five days, that person’s thinking about, Oh my gosh, this person built a connection with somebody who wasn’t me. My people like him, so therefore I like him in return. And it just feels good. Yep, really quick. Other example, I actually owned a window company at one time, and I was working a Home Show, and so I knew about the inside champion. And if you’ve ever been to, like a home show or like a convention, there’s 1000s and 1000s of people, and basically you only get to talk to the people that are really interested in buying and so I found the longest line in the whole place, and it was for the balloon clown. Hmm. And I’m like, of course. And all the parents, the deal is, you come with mom and dad to the Home show and we’ll let you get a balloon or, like, that’s, yeah, that’s the deal, right? Yep, it’s the unspoken deal, right? Uh huh. So I go to the balloon clown, and I said, hey, when you get a minute, come up here. And I gave him a couple 100 bucks. And I said, Well, you sit here for like, two hours, and he made balloons for my booth, and I was now the longest line in the whole home show, right? Boom, that was the inside champion. And I was giving kids free balloons and little face paint stuff and all that, and now, and by the way, I had them write the window company on the balloon. That impression lasts a long time. I wasn’t just trying to talk to mom and dad talk to the inside champion, right? So think about who else is influencing your person. All right. So here’s the deal. This episode was getting a little long. We made the executive decision to split it into two episodes. We have six more awesome tactics for you coming up next week, but go ahead and put the milk route the news drop the saw this. Thought of you, the inside champion to work for you this week. Let us know how it goes, and if you have any questions or thoughts on the sales process, drop them to us at Maven Monday, at frankon, maven.com There’s all sorts of good things waiting for you there. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll be back every week with real life marketing questions and answers, because marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lot. Have a great week.