14: Rapid Fire Actionable Sales Tips

what's up everybody happy monday let's make it happen mondays uh hopefully you guys had a great weekend um and an awesome mother's day by the way uh happy mother's day uh to all you mothers if you're listening and uh to all those you have mothers hopefully you treated them well this weekend my wife uh we actually had a great weekend um my wife was actually super busy last week she was traveling quite a bit so she came home and didn't want to do anything so we sat and watched movies all weekend which was awesome because i needed the downtime too but um so yeah that was our uh that was our weekend which was nice it was my kind of uh my kind of mother's day so anyways um but today with make it happen mondays i figured um as always just ask questions right hit me up on um on facebook so i can answer whatever questions that you have but as usual kind of the long tail of this the the the views after the fact are huge and so uh whereas kind of the people chiming in right now might not be a might not be a ton but for those of you who do please ask questions that's why we're here that's why i'm here to help um but today i figured i would just go through a rapid fire bunch of sales tips and nuggets and ideas for y'all to think about and things that you can do today that um that'll make a difference hopefully that'll made a difference for me because that's the way i've looked at sales training for a long time just to kind of get some context here you know i early in my career when i was starting my first company i was i was looking for the answer and and i was looking to say okay there's got to be somebody out there that um you know there's methodologies right there's sandler there's miller hyman there's all these sales trainings out there that okay so they got the answer and i would go to these trainings and i would try to say okay let me listen to absolutely everything that they have to offer here and i would always walk out of there with a nugget or two but like the whole thing just seemed like a pretty excessive it seemed like out of an entire day for instance they could have probably just cut that down to about an hour and just cut to the tips and the nuggets and and i would have gotten more out of it actually if they had done it that way same thing with books and shit like that on sales it's you know you have this 200 page book and you read the whole thing and you get one nugget oh that's what i should put in a subject line it's like i have a hard time with that because i just think we need to cut through the bullshit and cut through the fluff and so that's why a while back probably four or five years ago and you can still go check this out by the way i started um an app called sales from the streets so sales from the streets go on the app exchange you can download it there it's free and the whole idea was was crowdsource sales training you know nuggets and tips from everybody out there because you know you've all gone through the trainings you've all read the books we and we all pick our nuggets and tips and out of those so instead of having to go through a full day of training or read an entire book why can't i just get that nugget from you and that's what that concept of sales from the streets is so if you go on there's probably about 100 plus tips on there um i didn't put a lot of focus on it after the fact and so it's just kind of sat there doing nothing i'm probably gonna have to decommission it soon here just because of focal point standpoint but go check it out let me know what you think um but really my whole mindset with sales is is about getting to the damn point and some nuggets and tips and things that you can do today and not some big long theory or process about sales so with that ask your questions but i'm just going to start firing off as some as many of the actionable tips that i can possibly share with you in the next i don't know 25 minutes or so and so hopefully um those of you who are listening can start to do stuff today and those of you going to watch this after the fact uh can get a ton of value out of this session here and if you do all i'll ask is that you make a comment or two on the post and then uh and share it out there just to try to help me build up this following um and also last point here uh i'm going to be starting to light up instagram here pretty soon uh same handle as my twitter and snapchat john m is and michael barrows but instagram i'm going to start screwing around with because i'm taking a vacation i'm going to be talking about this next week i'm taking a vacation starting the 24th and i'm not coming back till the 9th and i'm going to be this is going to be one of those vacations where leave me alone i don't want to talk to anybody but i will be doing some snapchat and instagram stuff and mainly instagram because it's going to be in italy it's going to be beautiful out there so that's a perfect way to i think start off our instagram uh approach here with everything else all right so anyways let's dive right into the tips okay um first and foremost i'm going to share my favorites uh my my absolute favorite is when first of all my least favorite thing for anybody to say out there is touching base and checking in if you've been following me for a while now you know that um let's see hold on um so the way to get rid of that is to start every single one of your conversations off with this phrase the reason for my call is all right finish that sentence because if you cannot finish that sentence you should not be making the phone call right it gives you a lot more confidence and there's a psychological component to it as well uh here's another tip go read the book influence by robert cialdini c-i-a-l-d-i-n-i it talks about the power of giving people reasons it's not a book on sales by the way it's a book on psychology and why we do the things the way that we do them and in there it talks about giving people reasons and when you give people reasons they are more accepting for what you're about to tell them and by the way it gets to the point which leads to effectively another tip here which is there is a big difference between being direct and being rude all right fine line but huge difference we got to be as direct as possible without being rude the reason for my call is being very direct in my opinion not being rude um and again going back to being direct i think we need to do a very good job a better job at setting expectations so here's another tip i think expectation setting is absolutely critical in everything that we do um so from an expectation setting standpoint uh i want to set expect that's why i use my one of my favorite tips is a shared agenda to confirm and control meetings so you and i have a meeting coming up today tomorrow instead of sending you an email today saying hey are we still on for tomorrow and getting the inevitable sorry john we need to restart schedule here what i can do is well what i do do is i send you an email saying hey i'm looking forward to our meeting tomorrow and i get in order to get the most out of our time together here i put together a brief agenda could you please do me a favor and email me back to let me know if it's all accurate and if i missed anything and in there i usually put about three bullet points about what i want to talk about not nothing too specific just pretty basic but just to guide the conversation and then i leave three bullet points blank effectively telling you fill in the blanks if i get that email back from you with those blanks filled in obviously i'm in for a great meeting if i don't that's okay because the morning of the meeting i update the meeting invitation with the agenda in there so i don't put the agenda in the original invite right because nobody ever looks at that but i update the meeting of a meeting invite with the agenda in there the morning of so you get picked ping for me the night before you get ping for me the morning of so you you know i'm coming and then if you you know even if you don't respond to it i still use it to guide the conversation because you ever walked into a meeting with a mental agenda of how you want to see something go and about five minutes in they ask you that random ass question that takes you down the rabbit hole for the next 45 minutes without an agenda you better be pretty damn smooth to be able to pull that one back on track with an agenda you don't have to be smooth at all so you start hey thanks so much for your time today i really appreciate it by the way here's a small nugget too don't ask them is this still a good time when somebody picks up the phone for a scheduled call don't say is this still a good time why would you give them that out right but what you can say is do we still have 30 minutes do you have a hard stop at one o'clock because if you do that all right that means i do want to know that because that means your brain's moving in a different direction around 150 155 so you start going back to the agenda thanks so much for your time today i appreciate do we still have 30 minutes here do you have a hard stop at one o'clock fantastic you know what i sent out the agenda yesterday i'm sure you probably didn't get a chance to take a look at it but i just want to make sure that we get the most out of our time together here here's a few things i want to make sure that we cover what else would you like to make sure we add here and then they add it whatever and then you start mowing through the agenda and then when that random question comes up you can actually say hey you know what that's a great question would you mind if we got through our original agenda here that we both agreed upon and if there's time left at the end of the presentation i'll be happy to address that my experience is 60 70 percent of the time yeah you know what john let's stay on track the other 30 40 percent of the time if whatever they just brought up is more important than what you were there to talk about they'll tell you right so that that's small i have it as a as a template in outlook i use outlook so it was a template in outlook the the signature file it's called shared agenda i send that out for every meeting so there's two main tips right and going back to staying on the thread of expectation setting on the back end of a meeting this is my absolute favorite this is one of my other absolute favorite tips which is i call the summary email so what you do is after you and i have a conversation okay say you're trying to sell to me it's not that i'm lying to you okay it's just that as soon as we get off the phone here my boss comes in and changes my priorities or your competition comes in and starts talking to me about something totally different and so now two or three weeks later you could be selling something that's completely irrelevant at this point and for you to remind me what we talked about two or three weeks ago i barely remember what i said five minutes ago forget about five days ago right so but if you have in writing now you have something to hold me accountable all right so now the way it works is this again and by the way you have to let them know this one is coming if you don't let them know this one's coming it's the response rates drop through the floor but you say hey thanks so much for your time today i appreciate it this is kind of closing out the meeting right thanks so much for your time i appreciate it um there's some next steps and action items here before i go ahead and do that though i'm just going to briefly summarize what i was able to gain from our conversation i'm going to send it over to you in a quick email right after this call would you do me a favor and just take a look at it and and email me back to let me know if it's all accurate and if i missed anything so again you have to let them know it's coming then once you get off the phone take all your notes and scrub them up and do not write a book here all right this is not your chance to you know reiterate your value proposition or talk about how great your company is this is purely to confirm what you heard from them so it reads is and again i have a template notebook for this thanks so much for your time i really appreciate it today below is a brief summary of what i was able to gain from our conversation could you do me a favor and email me back to let me know if it's all accurate and if i missed anything your current situation is this your timelines this your priorities are this here's the competition that we're looking at your um uh the process is this you know the five six seven bullet points there you know mainly timeline and priorities those are the two key factors right and then you send it over to them and you say you try to get that yes john that's accurate because now once you have that now you can be direct with your follow-up and not pushy or rude so for instance say they say yes to that and you have a next step on friday and friday comes and goes and lo and behold they don't show up right well instead of monday touching base checking in so you know the weekend went type of bullshit you just take that email fire it back to them and say hey what's the best way to get 15 minutes back on your calendar so we can reset expectations based on what we both agreed upon here again nice professional way all right and this also ties to going over somebody's head without pissing them off all right there's another challenge so here's another tip for you i'm a big fan of the top down approach all right going after the executive when i'm prospecting getting referred down and then spending my time there because it's just way easier to go back up if you need to after you've come down than it is to start at the bottom and go all the way up i'm not saying bottom up is is not valid and it doesn't work it's just a lot easier to go top down so with that top down approach you know you go after said executive or whoever say who you know who can i have a conversation with and then you have that so say sarah's the executive and sarah refers you to jim and you have this really good conversation with jim now what you do is you summarize that hey jim thanks so much for your time brief i'm going to briefly summarize our conversation and by the way now you don't even have to ask to go back up to sarah if you don't want to this is a courtesy call hey you know what jim since sarah was the one who referred me to you in the first place i'm just going to keep her up to date on this conversation cool hey sarah thanks so much for your referral jim i really appreciate it hey we had a really good conversation here's a few things that we talked about anything you'd like to add from an executive standpoint right so it's a nice professional way of going back up and keeping sarah up to date on the conversation and then if sarah goes dark on you or i'm sorry if jim goes dark on you which i think is one of the hardest things to do in sales is getting somebody to to respond when they've gone dark but if he does now you just can go back up to say sarah and say hey sarah i'm not sure what happened to jim i hope that hopefully everything's okay um but based on your priorities and your timeline i thought i'd reach out to you just make sure that we still moved in the right direction so you know what would you suggest i do so it's a nice easy way of going back up over somebody's head without pissing them off okay another small tip on that one is when somebody is not responsive to you specifically somebody below the power line going over their head just because they're not responsive just be careful with that right because ideally you need to separate the conversation here you know if you're having tactical uh features and functions execution oriented conversations here you have to have a different reason for reaching out to the executive level here because otherwise you're going to piss off both people but if if jim's gone dark on you for whatever reason and you're trying to reconnect and get jim to call you back there's two tips for you to try to get somebody who's gone dark on you uh to come back and at least respond first one is i call up jim and i leave a voicemail and again sounding concerned that everything's okay because i've done it before where i've ripped into that person and they were in the hospital or some problem with their family and i'm the asshole so instead of that hey jim you know what uh i haven't heard back from you about a couple weeks here based on what we talked about and and since you know your priorities and your timeline you outlined here in this summary email are pretty aggressive you know if i don't hear back from you within about 24 hours i'm just i'm gonna go ahead and give sarah a call just to make sure that things stay on track here so effectively what you're doing a jim is you're letting him know that you're going to go over his head and you're giving him a warning and you give him about 24 hours usually i get a super high response rate on that one uh you know what john sorry i've been busy whatever the other thing to do here is and this is um this is a tip to get somebody to respond back to you after they've gone dark and it's and it replaces the the bullshit email of the you know stuck under a rock you know the breakup email which is you know one two or three are you really interested you're just super busy right now you're uh not interested you want me to leave you alone or three you're stuck under a rock or getting eaten by an alligator or some bullshit thing there or whatever um that worked three four years ago it's not working anymore right because it's gotten overplayed a replacement for that one and this will get overplayed in the next few years here but the way it works is this get that summary email somebody and say friday you're supposed to have a follow-up meeting friday comes and goes and lo and behold nobody shows up well then monday take that summary email reply all to it hey not sure what happened here um not sure what happened on friday when you want to reconnect you know you do your typical you know follow-up right not sure if you're still interested hey is this something you whatever do that probably four or five times over the course of a committed follow-up by the way and this is not just a you know yeah just a brief little send me information conversation this is like it had some substance to it so after the fourth or fifth email maybe after a week or two of of that committed date being missed by them and no response you take that same email and keep replying all to it by the way because you got you want to show them that you've come after them four or five times reply to all to it the fifth time erase the original subject line and all you put in the original subject line is did i lose you that's it so did i lose you question mark and then when they open up the email the only thing that they see in their email is that there's no you don't try to write anything it's just your subject line and the other five emails that you've tried to send them i get about a 90 response rate on that one and i get at least two or three emails a week from rep saying john check this out i just got clients gone dark on me forever and they finally responded using the approach really appreciate it so use that one up now before it gets overplayed that's one of my favorites and it leads to another tip of mine which is um a defined next step i think the most important thing you can get at any stage of the sales process is a defined next step scheduled on the calendar and what the the way i leverage this is it's actually based off of something else in that book called influence by robert c aldini which is called the rule of reciprocity and the rule of reciprocity is all about how as human beings we're all bound even driven to repay debts right so if somebody asks you for something there's a fleeting moment that they actually feel obligated to give you something in return and if you ask for it right then and there and it may and it's easy i'm certain that and it makes sense it's usually pretty easy for them to give you so let's talk about a defined next step so for instance when somebody says send me information a get for send me information is a scheduled call on the calendar to review that information and so this is the way first of all small sidebar tip on send me information what when why what information would you like to see when would you like to see it and why for people who are genuinely genuinely interested in information those are hard those are actually legit questions to answer and that should be pretty easy for those that are not very interested in your information those are very hard questions to answer so after i go through the what when why process then i say great happy to send over that information when do you want to schedule a brief 15 minute call so we can follow up on that information and see if it makes sense for us to take that take the next steps next week when next week uh friday's good what and now this is what you do you say okay great you know what why don't you actually you know what you got your calendar in front of you and you got to say it with a really nice tone of voice right so hey you got your calendar in front of you and then shut up wait for it there'll be that little awkward pause where they realize that you got them and because if they say no to everybody's got their calendar in front of you right in front of them when they're on the phone so if they say no to that they are blatantly lying to your face and if you ever do that to a vp of sales by the way you'll probably you'll actually hear the smirk on the other end of the phone being like damn i wish my reps would do this shit right so um so so try to pin them down for that defined next step even if it has to be like a month or two out because at least it's on the calendar and it gives you a chance okay by the way here's another small nugget as it relates to that which is i'll let people know for instance look so that was for send me information scheduled follow-up call another one is a scheduled define next step is defining a next step and getting a defined next step on the calendar for a decision so for instance you say you're sending them references and they they wanted references fantastic i put decision meetings on people's calendars so they say uh we're gonna make a decision by friday we'll get back to you fantastic what time do you want to talk on friday friday afternoon we'll probably get back to you hey you know what why don't we just throw something on the calendar now so i can get a yes or a no from you either way by the way i say that i want to let them know it's a hundred percent okay for me to for you to tell me no so why don't we throw something on the calendar so i can get a yes or no from you either way and we don't have to play chase i literally say that word so we don't have to play chase letting you know we're going to play chase all right and you know so if you don't show up on friday which you probably aren't going to as far as you just telling me you're going to get back to me on friday well then what do we do i i call you on monday i send you an email i email you i social stock i send you an email i follow up right because that's my job and i stock the shit out of you because that is my job and you're going to avoid you're going to delete you're going to avoid you're going to delete the problem is is my motivation to put money in my pocket's way stronger than yours is to avoid me so eventually i'm going to get through so and it's going to be weird so can we just do this the easy look we can do this the easy way or the hard way the easy way is we throw something on the calendar and if it needs to be rescheduled we can't the hard way is we play chase you choose all right now i don't go through that whole dialogue with the client but hey all i say is hey why don't we just throw something on the counter now so we don't have to play chase use that one um some other ones here uh meetings all right we're talking about meetings and having those meetings have a structured way of how you take your notes i know this one sounds simple but it makes a huge difference so two two nuggets on this one one is develop your checklist for your meetings what are all the things that you need to do prior to a meeting and put it together in a checklist um that you need to do to put yourself in the best position possible to be successful during that call so for instance some of the things are on my checklist is literally have a you know cut and paste the about us i use evernote to take all my notes um and so one of the things is i cut and paste the about us of their website into my notes right there so i can just look up immediately obviously the people who you're meeting with in the um and their titles and their background should be on your checklist uh any recent news and events from the client is on mine an agenda for the call is on mine goals for the call which i'm going to talk about in a minute how important goal setting is and then um any specific use cases or case studies i can bring to the table so that is my core checklist that i go through which leads into my notes and how i take notes i take a very structured approach of how i take my notes you know it's always in the same format so i can just kind of go through and fill it out the way i want to fill it out and i can bounce around but it helps highlight the things i know i need to get all right so make sure you know so do a structure a template for how you take your notes by the way if you're pinning all this stuff together you have an agenda on the front end you have a structured way that you take your notes throughout and then you have a summary email that flows right from that so now you got this nice tight little process of how you're going to manage meetings and and show how you differentiate yourself right and here's actually here's a tip on that the way you know a lot of our products and services are being commoditized in so many ways um and we can keep fighting the fight the value fight those type of things right um which please do please keep you know showing value but i also know that you can differentiate yourself purely based on the way that you manage the sales process so how professional you are and how you manage helps you stand out over the competition so the preparation you go walking into it that the structure that you have in that meeting the defined next steps and everything else i've gotten a lot of business just purely based on that alone right so elevate your game on on your process you know your company probably has one but put together one of your own that shows that you know what you're talking about and kind of fits into your workflow okay um let's talk about what else uh let's see oh messaging here's one how to come up with messaging easiest way to come up with messaging and your your number one differentiator by the way uh whoever's listening to this you know when you are prospecting it's really hard to um differentiate yourself right because everybody kind of sounds the same it's like oh we're the leading provider of and blah blah blah whatever and that's you know that's kind of a numbers game you're gonna have to play the numbers game with that approach and just try to trip over somebody that that has your need right then and there but um having a reason and coming up with messaging that resonates the easiest way to do that your number one differentiator is your customers your customers and and not just your customers the results you drive for your customers and that's how we create attention grabbers so instead of elevator pitches which are horrible in so many ways attention grabbers what can you say in the first five to fifteen seconds of a conversation to get somebody to go all right tell me more how do you do that the easiest way to do that is to look at the bottom of a case study and look at the result you drove for that client and turn that into an attention grabber so now i can say hey we showed this company in your industry how to drive these type of results i'd love to have a conversation with you about it that's what i call your attention grabber it's the easiest way to come up with them if you can have some metrics in there fantastic if not then just try to make it sound impactful for what you did for them and try to stay away from words or phrases like on average our clients see a 30 increase or up to a 50 percent no no no no we showed this client in your industry how to do this and you fit that profile let's have that conversation okay which leads to another tip which is how to leave a voicemail when you're calling make sure you have a reason again the reason for my call is but then also make sure that when you're leaving a message there's some structure to it so the structure of our messages are you start with that powerful introduction then you give them the reason for your call which should be short and concise and concise and direct and then you tell them what you want call back you know referral something like that and last but not least you you leave your contact information at the end of voicemails you don't start with hi this is john barrows from j barrows consulting because 90 of people when they hear that they hang up because either i know you and i think i know you or i don't and i don't care and so what we do is we start with hey bill the reason for my call today is uh we've actually just shown this company in your industry how to drive these type of results and you fit a very similar profile to that i'd love to have a conversation could you call me back at 617-529-72 i'm not gonna get my full number out there um but uh if you call me back at that i'd appreciate by the way this is john barrows j barrows consulting 617-529 so what it does is it forces them to listen to the value proposition all right and so you might you know back it up and i didn't even know your company did that and the other thing there is if you screw up halfway through you can have you can hang up and they have no idea who you are all right so try that one out it's hard because it is so ingrained in us to say hi this is john barrows to make a you know hide this john barrows or j barrows consulting um but man once you break that it makes all the difference in the world so i'm gonna cut now um uh jared asked what cut down to a couple of questions here what's wrong with most elevator pitches uh historical elevator pitches they're way too long they're too general they're they're and usually they're all about us and they're just super cheesy right it's like i'm the leading we are the leading provider of xyz solutions and we help you go better faster cheaper whatever right and usually from a length standpoint they're more than you know they're way more than 30 seconds for the most part if you didn't take a breath whereas attention grabbers the goal there is to say something that'll get them to say tell me more and i'm gonna go back to some old school stuff here glengarry glen ross all right um if you haven't watched the movie glengarry glen ross don't watch the movie it's a depressing ass movie but go on youtube and watch the best eight minutes of alec baldwin's entire career and type in there and because you'll see in there he talks about abc always be closing but he also talks about aida and that is i looked it up that is the actual fundamental process of sales some guy by the name of eight uh st elmo lewis came up with it in 1898 he said these are the four mental stages we all need to go through before we buy something first something needs to get our attention then we have to be interested then we have to have a desire then we have to move to act so if you think of attention in today's world we have we literally have seconds to get someone's attention that's why the elevator pitch fails when making calls and outreach all right so try to be as specific as possible when talking about a component of your solution that aligns with the person that you're reaching out to and that's the best way to develop attention grabbers um connor what's up man uh what was your favorite attempt attention grabber in the msp sales i didn't have one man i had my elevator pitch and hopefully you guys have seen that one blasting out there where i go i have thrive networks outsourced it support um i didn't have this training i mean i took this training um but i didn't really zone in on that now i'm very zoned in on that messaging my now favorite would be something like well we showed this company in your industry how to you know reduce their infrastructure by xyz percentage and migrate to the cloud with no hassles and educate all their employees something like that that would be my attention grabber for these days if i was still in the msp world all right uh let's see i think i got one more here yeah don't sell meetings sell time okay when you ask for a meeting anybody's like oh you know that's an hour to them and it's usually not good so quantify what you're asking for i would actually avoid 15 minutes i know i keep saying it but it's a habit um 15 minutes has gotten a little bit overplayed so many people are asking for 15 so it's almost a trigger now to kind of really rise so i don't know ask for 20 ask for 30 ask for 10 i don't care just pick a different number but the key is quantifying what you're asking for when i say i'd like to meet with you you think oh hour waste of time if i say hey look i just need 10 minutes in time so i can ask you these questions quantify it all right um cool well that actually i only got through probably seven or eight of them which are those are my favorites but maybe we'll do another one of these sessions if you guys got some value out of this it is coming up on one o'clock i do have a meeting with a client they gotta jump on board here with now so look everybody make it a great week again try to make somebody smile today try to make a difference in somebody's life do sales the right way don't be douchey about it i always say this is the number one profession on the planet when done right it's the worst one done wrong all right so let's do it right let's make it happen make it a great week bye you