12 Skills You Need to Close More Sales (Part 2)

Brandon Welch 0:00
Because the thing here is that poor sales people talk about their product and its benefits, but amazing sales people talk about their customer in their life, and you want to be the one that talks about the customer in their life, right? Yes.

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I am back with Caleb Ichabod Agee, gosh, Caleb, we know his middle initial is i, and we’ve yet to figure out what his actual middle class. Yeah, I think I’d probably find on your tax documents or something. But hey, if you can guess what Caleb’s middle name is, we’ll send you a shirt, Caleb. I Agee. I don’t

Caleb Agee 0:43
know if I want people investigating me that much, but I guess we’ll go forward. Well, it’s out. So, yeah, it’s happening.

Brandon Welch 0:49
This is the place where we answer real life marketing questions so you can grow your business, eliminate waste and advertising and achieve the big dream. And we’re returning to the big dream question we had last week, which was all about closing more sales. We got into some really cool tactics. If you didn’t listen to the last week’s episode, you want to hit that pause button. Stop it right now. Get back, go back, get back in there. Check it out. And we’re going to jump right back in to part two of how to close more sales. Talk to you guys soon the spectacular.

Caleb Agee 1:24
Okay, this one’s wacky.

Brandon Welch 1:29
If there’s somebody that you really need to make an impression on, do something so generous, so over the top and unexpected, that they can’t help but just notice what a difference of a person you are, or a difference of a item. Yeah, I’ve done this in so many ways over the years. It’s probably my favorite one. It is expensive. It can be expensive. So I’m going to give you some very high cost ideas and some very also some very low cost ideas, but you’re making a big event that they didn’t see coming. I have landed helicopters in clients front yards and taken them to dinner, right? We’ve done all sorts of stuff with airplanes and helicopters and wacky like trips, because the nature of our business is that we like building relationships for long term. And even those, those things are really, really expensive in the long run. I wouldn’t trade them for anything, right? But what if your thing was because you know somebody, you can get them an inside experience at a really cool restaurant, or take them be the first person to take them to the restaurant when it has this grand opening, soft opening, soft Yeah. Or, what if you can get them sweet tickets to a Cardinals game or a chiefs game or a whatever game, right? What if you have concert tickets that you can hook them up with, or theme park tickets or think of something they would do with their family? And when you’re doing these things, you’re not trying to do them on the cheap. You’re not trying to say, Oh, haha, I gave you a couple tickets. You want to go over the top. You want to, you want to be the good tickets, right? Yeah. And then you want to hook them up with a gift card for after the experience, yeah. And you want to hook them up with the best tips, maybe the guide, maybe buy them the, spend the extra 40 or 50 bucks and send them with a, you know, a cool item, a cool backpack, or a cool something else, like a package, like you’re sending the whole experience to them, not just here’s some tickets, right? Yeah, go over the top. Maybe you’re making something over the top for them. Yeah. I had a client one time. I had my brother make something out of wood for them, put their logo on this sign for them. Maybe it’s just a really, really thoughtful gift, but when you’re stuck, or you just otherwise, really, you know what you want it is, it’s having some fun. Yeah, it may not even be that this is required to get the sale, but it’s a

Caleb Agee 3:55
little bit of and it’s also surprise and delight, right? We can. We’ve got, like, our coffee mugs. You kind of expect this the swag, and we have that as part of our part. We have shirts and pins and all of the standard things. And I think you should definitely have that because and make it higher quality so it’s good, but this is the stuff that makes them go, Huh, that’s weird, or Huh, that’s interesting. You kind of want them. You want that the first thing they say to go, you did, what effort you’re doing? What? What are you doing? We sent, we sent, like, 80 pies from a local, like, pie company that was awesome, to somebody’s office, an obscene amount of pies. It was it like they, I don’t remember how 300 people in the building, yeah, so picture, I can’t remember, we’ll say 50 pies. Picture, how, how much real estate on a table and floor and wherever else you have to stack it, 50 pies would take up. And we, we sent them all to this place. I think it took two drivers to get there. And then they’re like, you just bring. In, keep bringing it in, keep bringing it in. And they, they have to have this experience that goes and

Brandon Welch 5:04
now all of a sudden, you know, there’s probably, like, four or five decision makers. We work with this company now, all 300 of the others are going, Wow, you guys should never, like, not work with them again. Yeah? Like, you should. You’ve got, you got to keep those guys, the pie guys, yeah, that’s, that’s a really good

Caleb Agee 5:19
you could, you could do that at happy hour. Probably the sonic people wouldn’t like you very much, but you could do it at happy hour and get a bunch of $2 drinks. And if, what if you took 100 drinks to a big office? Absolutely, I bet they’d be surprised.

Brandon Welch 5:32
Um, one thing I did one time, or actually do this quite a bit. If you see your prospect out and about and they’re at restaurant, yeah, dude, you got to pick up that ticket. Do it. You’re buying that ticket. I don’t care if it’s $200 dinner. $100 dinner, you’re doing it right? Yeah, I think you can spend up to a third of what that customer’s worth to you, and you’re not being irresponsible. Janet is cringing right now. She’s going, oh gosh, but our budget for loving on our prospects and our people and our customers is just probably way higher than any company of our size, but

Caleb Agee 6:09
it makes our retention rate is probably way higher than a company of as long as we and our close rates are probably way higher than so it’s, it’s,

Brandon Welch 6:19
I think It’s not going to say this. None of that is that that truly comes from our heart, wanting to, you know, just enjoy experiences with these people. Be generous. Generosity. Yeah? And it’s not for like, the badge of being generous. It’s like, dude, that is fun. Yeah, if your work can be about that. If our work can be about making good things happen for people and enjoying life with people, yeah? Then they feel better. We feel better. The world is better, right? Yeah. So pull a spectacular don’t try to go to this. You know, get out of bean counting mode for just a second. Just go. What would I have to do to blow their dad gum mind

Caleb Agee 7:03
and and I think we’re where I go with even just client retention and close rates and all of that. If you do need it to show up on a spreadsheet for somebody, you can usually say there’s a result. You You won’t be able to feel it. She’ll tell you there’s a result. Yeah, it happens.

Brandon Welch 7:19
So love you. Janet, okay, these next ones are fairly quick, straightforward, the birthday, dude, don’t forget your prospect’s birthday. It’s, it’s the era of Facebook, and I would suggest even so, the Facebook comment is a minimum. And by the way, when you’re wishing them happy birthday on Facebook, don’t say happy birthday with the standard two emojis that are auto suggested for you, pick some different emojis, do an obscene amount of emojis, and then put a sense about what you admire about them. You have such a beautiful family, or I hope you have a wonderful day. You’re one of the coolest people I know. Or you’ll know what’s appropriate. And there’s obviously boundaries you don’t want to get creepy. But if you’ve been talking with this person, and there’s something you genuinely admire about genuinely admire about their business or their home or their family or something, say that stand out, right? Use the extra words so that can be done in three minutes a day. Make sure everybody who’s in and in anywhere in your sales process, what’s your happy birthday and happy anniversary for that matter? And happy work bursary. LinkedIn is really good about the work bursaries. This next one is called the power question. Spend some time developing some questions that they probably haven’t heard from anybody else. They certainly probably haven’t heard from somebody who’s trying to sell them something like you are. One of my favorite examples is a question we ask pretty much every client before they get in our door. And that’s, it’s one year from now, your life and your business or everything you’d hope they’d be what had to happen to make that true? Yeah, and that just takes people have to go, wow, I always asked me that in a while or ever, right? That’s also a demonstration of empathy and delight, because that is a question about them and their outcomes. Yeah, and what they’re really trying to make happen? We get caught up in business, and we don’t do that. And the more you’re saying, what would you do if you had a magic one? What’s the first thing you change about your home? It’s the first thing you change about your business. What’s the first thing you change about your payroll equation, what’s the first thing you change about your family dynamics with money? What’s the first thing you change about your automobile? What’s the first thing you change about your marriage? Whatever it is, right? Whatever is quasi your subject matter. Take them to a deeper question, and ask a question that demands some space and contemplation, yeah, and you will be a bigger part of their success equation. Yep. There’s a really great book that I read early on in my career called Power questions, and it has something like 330 different questions you can ask, and they’re all just really, you know, insightful. Because the thing here is that poor sales people. They talk about their product and its benefits, but amazing sales people talk about their customer in their life, and you want to be the one that talks about the customer in their life, right? Yes, that’s the Maven method, right? Needs, pains, hopes, fears, how are you going to solve it? What? How’s life going to be better? Okay, this one’s this next one comes from my grandpa one time, called the best salesman in America. He built a company from nothing to well over $20 million he was a cabinet salesman, and then turned cabinet shop owner, and I got the life altering experience of getting to go on the road with him when I was young and watch him be a superstar salesperson, but nobody ever felt like he was selling them something. Getting his Cadillac. Grandma would pack us a pale lunch, and we drive up all the way through Missouri, and he would go from contractor to contractor to contractor, whether they were his customer or not. And his one of his tactics, he told me, once he goes, Now, watch what I’m going to do here. He said, I’m going to get him to say yes three times before anything else ever comes out of their mouth. And so he’d start the conversation and say, if you can get him saying yes about anything, could be the weather, could be the Cardinals. Cardinals are killing it, aren’t they? Or, man, the Cardinals suck, don’t they? Or, man, it’s a nice day in it, or, Man, it’s cold as hell in it, yeah. Or we’re blessed to live in this country, or just anything. It was three yeses, and that, before you ever talk about the business or why you’re there or what you’re doing, three yeses, that emotional momentum Yes, you want to get to the nodding, nod, Yes, yep. And that’s kind of an old Dale Carnegie thing, except for in a more genuine way. Just ask them questions. They can say yes to nice day, yes. How about the referral? So if you’ve got somebody you’re in the middle of the sales equation with, and you can get, let’s say that you know somebody that needs what they do, and you can get them buying from them. If you’re the connector between your prospect and somebody else who needs what they do, yeah, that puts you at a whole different level of partnership. Yeah, if it’s somebody you’re selling, like B to C directly consumer with, maybe you can buy Girl Scout cookies from. Maybe you can buy whatever their kids are selling. Maybe you can sponsor their football team, yeah, maybe you can donate to a charity that they are part of, become their customer, and you’ll be in a different level of partnership with them, which is that’s kind of two tactics combined into one, refer a customer or become the customer, but buy something from them, that art of that law of reciprocation, happens. And then let’s talk about the math. So this gets more into the consistency phase, I bet. And all these statistics Caleb shared before we got started today, I bet you would find that the average sale that’s anything of high value. That’s not a, you know, commoditized type thing. Probably takes between 10 and 20 touch points. When I was in media selling advertising door to door. Basically it was like 17. Wow, was my average. So what you want to do is look back at your sales history, or take if you’re brand new to this, take somebody who’s been doing it longer than you, and just say, Can you lay out all the touch points of an average sale for me? And I bet you’ll get to like that, 1015, 20 mark, yeah. And so instead of getting discouraged, and instead of going, oh, man, that was a bad interaction, you’re realizing, Oh, that was one of the 20 I need to do. Need to do. And that’s, you know, my next one needs to be better, or I just need to do more inputs. Yeah, I’ve put this seed in the ground, and I need to come back daily and water it. So the math here is, you’re going, Okay, if I know it takes an average of 17 points of contact, and I’ve got 50 prospects I need to sell this year. That’s 850 tasks I need to do. Well, that’s 20 tasks, if I can do 20 per day, on average, every 42 days I’m going to get a new client. Sounds pretty good. And you just start to look at it as a process, yeah? And a sequential I haven’t put in enough fertilizer, water, sunlight, or otherwise love, and I’m waiting for this little crop to spit up out of the ground. And think of it as a mathematic, sequential thing? Yeah,

Caleb Agee 14:22
I think an important part of that with the points of contact is having a clear prospect list, especially if you’re in B to B. I think even B to C that that you know which leads you should be continuing to nurture the ones that have that are true seeds in the ground. You want to pay attention to those and then put in those tasks so that your efforts are focused, not sporadic. They’re consistent, like we’re we keep talking about, and then you are on track to get those those new clients and close those deals Absolutely.

Brandon Welch 14:50
So yes, exactly what Caleb just said, consistency and commitment, by the way, do the best? Do. Strongest marriages come from wham bam date then go to Vegas and get married. Not usually, not usually, I would say that that’s what the average sales person expects as a wham bam went to Vegas and got married. Real relationships are developed with courtship, yeah, and so just look at that is your mission, and this stuff’s gonna come naturally. Yeah, I don’t care what you’re selling, that’s the truth. So the next one is called the reasonable next step. See what I did there. This actually is the last tactic, and it’s packed with a lot of ideas for you. So no matter what you’re selling, or no matter where you think you are in the pecking order or the timeline, you should always have a reasonable next step in your mind about what you’re going to do. Yep, and we tend to think of it sales. People tend to think of, oh, gosh, I’m going to get the lead, I’m going to go out and I’m going to sell them, I’m going to be done. And it’s like, that doesn’t really happen that way. And using the Vegas example, I don’t think that it should. So you have, you should have a list of your top prospects you’re working this is new and old prospects in one column, and the other column is, what’s your next step? Yeah, and I’m going to give you some steps, or some things you can throw in there. This will apply to both B to B and B to C. I call the Fast Five. What you should be doing if you’re in any sort of B to B sales environment, the pop in where you meet them face to face the first time is number one. You email them a thank you. Later that afternoon, it’s great to talk with you. Here’s my contact, all that stuff. Then you’re within a day or two, you’re gonna invite to connect with them on LinkedIn, maybe Facebook, if it’s appropriate, maybe Facebook or Instagram. Then you’re gonna send them a handwritten note. That’s point number four, Dude, can we just talk about handwritten notes for a second? Yeah, if you’re doing that with any sort of consistency, you are a rare and authentic human being. And write a note, drop it in the mail. They’re getting it within a week. And already, what we’ve done before we do this, next step is we’ve turned a random sales interaction. We think about the people we meet in business every day, it’s dozens, if not hundreds, into an authentic I had to think about that person four times in a very short amount of time, and that none of those were pushy or anything like that. I had to see them, though I had they had to pop in my mind. I had to get them out of my mind. And the fifth one we’re going to call going to call and invite him to lunch, or that next meeting, right? Was the Fast Five. Pop in email, thanks, LinkedIn, connect, handwritten note, call, invite to lunch. Yeah, you can work that like clockwork. If you’re a salesperson and you will automatically stand out. You will automatically be more authentic. You will be four times ahead of the average person who just expected, oh, I’m going to go out and talk to people and see what happens. Yeah, makes sense? Yes. So after the Fast Five, this is what you’re doing in weeks two through 52 you’re going sequentially through these tactics and when the you can determine which what’s appropriate at the right time. But I’m just gonna throw some out there. Comment on something they posted on LinkedIn or social media that’s awesome, or a emoji or a Like button. I saw this thought of you email. We just talked about that earlier. Yeah? Saw something you thought of them the Harley Davidson, the cool thing that they’re into pop in to see the inside, champion with a treat, that coffee, that sonic drink that ice cream? Yeah, heck. Buy the whole office ice cream. Yeah?

Caleb Agee 18:24
You want to get the attention. If they came in, they’re like, oh, Brandon’s not here today. Just no, I’m actually here to see you. I wanted to give you this coffee.

Brandon Welch 18:33
Oh my gosh, yes. How powerful would that be?

Caleb Agee 18:37
Powerful? Yeah, yes. So love it spectacular.

Brandon Welch 18:39
Yes. Drop off an article. We talked about that flip book and that Google news alert, you’re always having something relevant to their industry. Have you seen this? Have you heard about this? Drop off a book you’ve been reading. You think they would like, I just read this book better yet. Put a couple post it notes in it and say, I really think you like this part. This stuck out to me. What do you think invite them to a chamber event, a rotary meetup, or a BNI group as your guest, somewhere where you can bring them as your guest, add value to them, introduce them, talk about what I brag on them, awesome business owner they are, or, you know, and B to C, that could be heck. That could be inviting them to the baseball game. We have a minor league team in our town just giving them baseball tickets and inviting them out to your company night or whatever, birthday anniversary greetings to them and the inside champion, by the way, strategically run into them somewhere, you know they’ll be. This could get a little weird. Don’t respect the boundaries here, but if you know this guy is at this fundraiser and you need to get closer to that decision maker, yeah, buy the ticket and take go out on a date night and hopefully run to that guy at the fundraiser, right? Yeah, maybe it’s a high school football game or something like that, right? Yeah. I mind the boundaries there, but email them with an idea you have for them. I have an idea. I remember you said this, I’ve got an idea for you. Doesn’t have to be about your exact solution. We talked to awesome payroll company, and we were like, Hey, not everybody wants to talk about payroll all the time. But what if you said, Hey, I know that recruiting is really tough for you, so I’m going to send you this really great podcast called the Maven Marketing podcast. And they did a whole episode on recruiting. Yeah, right. Or you saw they got a bad review on Google, and say, Man, that that sucks. I hate when people do that. I read this really great thing on the Maven Marketing podcast. It’s how to respond to bad reviews, right? We’re

Caleb Agee 20:44
just trying to help you close sales. Let’s try to help these close sales. Yeah, that’s all we’re

Brandon Welch 20:48
doing. You know, I subscribe to the Maven Marketing podcast. I highly recommend you doing it, and I don’t leave reviews often for podcasts, but I had to go out of my way to do that on this one, because it’s so good. Oh, my connect them to a friend or prospect. Reach out and say, Hey, Caleb, I know you got Girl Scout cookies. Nate, somebody I really think needs a good hookup. I know you’ll take good care of them. Um, email them with a compliment or something you saw their people doing well, or their kids doing well, or maybe their kids a star athlete at the high school, and you email and say, congratulations, saw Nate do that slam dunk. Yeah, so proud of him. You’re such good parents. Good job. Nate the camera guy. Last quick idea here, tag them on social media. When you see somebody needing what they do, somebody’s going, I’m looking for a plumber. You’re going, I’m trying to sell a plumber right now my services. So I tag that plumber and say, These guys are awesome, right? You get attention that way. Okay, none of that will ever work for you if you’re doing it out of a manipulative heart. These are just ideas for you to step up and serve people in the way that human beings are designed to serve people, and hopefully that already exists in your mindset, yeah, hopefully you are already a go giver. Read that book if you haven’t, and these just brought some things to the service for you. But back up, what are we doing? We’re connecting with a human, offering them a better life, offering them a better life. Life is good when we do that. Yes, that’s what we have for you guys today. Anything else? No, we will be back here every week answering your real life marketing questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why

Caleb Agee 22:38
are just a fancy lie.

Brandon Welch 22:39
Go make some sales. We’ll talk to you soon.