Audio Post! - TAKING CONTROL OF THE CONVERSATION- SLAM Your Next Session Home!!

(posting this in the correct place, this time...)

Hi John,

"You need to stand for something." I absolutely agree! And you DO need to qualify your prospect!

I agree with everything you had to say here. If you as a salesperson are sloppy with your approach, and you don't have a consistent sales process, you will fail. "Your head must be In The Game!"

Your example about trying to sell a website to someone who wants a boat makes sense. This prospect needs to be quickly qualified in or out.

When we hear "You're the professional, you tell me," you need to make sure they aren't pumping you for a free education, which they will then disappear and find for the cheapest price. When I sell, I do it free of the price objection almost every time.

You made an excellent point about "wanting to be liked." Being liked is not a necessary factor for selling! This hope often blocks people from becoming good salespeople. Great salespeople are tough. Being tough means keeping on target, keeping on process, qualifying prospects in or out quickly, finding out their budget, and getting them to sign on the line and get started IF they qualify! Much of consultative selling is about asking the uncomfortable question. Pressure comes from having the prospect realize and acknowledge that they have a serious problem which you can solve.

I've seen a guy use a 3-minute egg timer. If he hasn't gotten into a good, qualified conversation with the prospect by the time the sand runs out, he politely ends the call and moves on to the next dial.

John, you and I are not far apart on what we expect in Sales. We differ only on our approach.

Loving your posts John even though I'm not a telemarketing man I can fully appreciate the valuable information you are willingly posting here. Thanks.

Rich

Ahh, I was just about to go out now I HAVE to listen to this first!

Thanks.

Fully valuable information. hope this make me more comfortable on my deals. highly appreciated.

You definitely want to qualify your prospect in or out as quickly as possible. It's much easier to work with people who are desperate for what you have to offer. They may not know what it is, just that they need a solution to their urgent problem, but you have that solution. Your questioning and qualifying skills can speed up your sales cycle.

We are not interested in solving ALL of our client's problems: just the ones we have expertise in. If you're stuck all day talking about problems that your prospect has which you can't solve, you're doing it wrong--no matter what selling methodology you're using.

Excellent post, I totally agree. I tend to use the word "direction" but that’s simply just my word. My saying is he who has direction has control.

However not having a since of direction will kill any deal. If one does not guide the conversation all the way to the close, and allows empty conversation, the close ratios will indeed be very low.

The person you described as just allowing any old subject to dominate the conversation, appears timid. In the words of Zigglar "Timid sales people raise skinny kids"

Thanks John, putting it on while I clean here in a bit. Much appreciated sir...

thanks John never realised you had a room full of telemarketers -to train - made me listen attentively and 7m raised - ill be listening again

thanks for the information - very generous

300 views WHOOO HOOOO! Im famous! lol

Where is the bath tub full of green m&ms..., oh and wheres my my water boy....?

What kind of venue is this anyway!?

Im calling my agent!

I am pumped about starting my business and have had a few sales thus far. If it wasn't for you John and many other people on this wonderful thread I wouldnt have done anything and would be still sitting on my butt still. And I hate to burst in on this lovely thread but I have a big concern. So let's say we make 2-3 sales a week offering various services to our customers for an entire year, may it be websites, mobile sites, SMS, SEO, Facebook, or whatever. You could be outsourcing or doing it all on your own. Well what do you do when you reach the point that you can't take on any more work because you have so many customers already? Even when outsourcing how do you keep track of every customers information, especially when they need updates periodically to their stuff? If you've reached a limit, assuming there is one, how do you keep building income for the next year with an already solid business plan? Maybe I'm over thinking this but I'd lime to quit my job and do this thing. But today on my drive it accured to me, well what do I do next year if this is working and i can't take on more work? Sure I'll set up some recurring income- but is that enough to survive on? I hope you guys understand what I'm asking here and would had started a thread if I was able to. Thanks in advance! Great inspiration right here!

@ Chrisnotes

Ill be honest with you... 100 customers equals about 10 customer service emails per day. So you spend an hour answering emails, and a couple of hours managing outsourcers.

In theory it seems hard, but in reality, all the pistons fire at different times, so you arent getting bombarded with CS every day from every customer.

After the initial first week you may not even hear anything from a customer all year, or maybe just once a month. There is an occasional one that will hit you up twice per week for the first month, but as they settle in the CS slows down.

Just make sure you have created a business model that supports you, and gives you extra money to run your business by designing it that way...

The biggest hurdle is building the residual, because in the beginning, everytime you stop selling it damns up your finances, but there is another side if you keep going.

Just watch the margins, and keep the fresh sales flowing so there isnt any financial downtime until you have the residual that will carry you through.

Know your financial goals... design your model, and then do things according to your design.

At 50 customers, I need to be bringing in this much, at 100 customers I need to be bringing in this much...

As long as there isnt financial struggle at that point you will be fine. Just watch your profit margin... Customer service down the road can be as easy as paying someone to work 20 hours per week for an hourly wage.

Designing websites will become cheaper too, as you will hire an hourly designer eventually instead of giving someone 30% of your earnings for something you could get done at 10% or less.

Sales people are the ones you will want to pay because they "create" income.

The more you grow, the more leverage you have.

As my friend David says, its easy to pay a guy 30% at the $20k level for a non income producing position... but when you get to 100k per month, and you dissect your pie, and you see that the BIGGEST chunk of it every month is going out to ANY single individual vendor... and your business needs those finances to grow... Thats too big. Its not even fair to you anymore, being the one who does everything else...You scale down cost in that area.

You will hire hourly people eventually when you get into bigger money.

Ps. Or you could just do like some of these other guys around here, or like findlaw.com and charge $1,000 per month, then you would have less customers to manage and would achieve fulltime residual income faster.

Wow, thank you so much! I'll keep trucking then!

As long as I can make money with them Michael Im good... It would be cooler if M&M's were the way of giving kudo's...I'll take a whole truckload please!

Thanks for the great post. Over the past few months I have learned how to do a lot of services for offline clients, but you have taught me to start with a single service and focus on that service at first. Then I can always up sell.

My problem is picking a service to start with. I have narrowed it down to website design with your report you posted, google places optimization, and Facebook pages.

Since there a lot of businesses in my area without a website, I think I am going to start there and try it for a week of cold calling and email.

Then, if I am getting results after 1 week, I will keep going until I get 100 web design clients with recurring hosting. Then I can up sell the most likely clients to other services.

Your thoughts?

Thanks again for the great advice. I really appreciate it. It has helped me get focused so that I can stop trying to learn everything, and focus on one thing at a time.

Thanks
Jason

I enjoy your informative posts and your free audio's like the one in this post. This information is purely sublime. I'ma have to put some of this into use.

Buuping this for all the guys starting cold calling today.

Free audio in the OP. Enjoy.

Its a little rougher than the usuall in some spots...lol But I think it will help.

Thank you, just listened to it. Very motivational