Selling Without Being Salesy: The Kind Way to Sell.

here's the big lesson that I learned when you get to a certain level in your life and you're working on projects north of $200,000 you have to understand something the clients can hire anybody in the entire world so your level of competition has completely changed if you're using a minor league strategy to play in the Major League it's counterintuitive that if you just keep doing what you're doing today that you'll just keep growing but eventually you hit a ceiling or a wall what got you here won't get you there so I needed to learn something to different and what he taught me allowed me to double my business in one year what's up beautiful people the video you're about to watch is my presentation that I just did here at rgd design thinkers it's called Natural Born seller to tap into your natural gift to influence and persuade people all right hi everybody so happy to be here I feel like I did something wrong and I was sent to jail because it's been like four or five years since I've been here I'm so happy to be here a couple different things number one is I just realized something and that I've been doing something wrong all my life I've been saying Toronto and the tea is silent it's so I'm supposed to come out here and say hello Tana is that right okay you learn something new every day okay some points there uh I'm going to jump right into my my presentation here and hopefully we'll have some time for some Q&A the first thing I wanted to share with you is I have this observation this observation is that when we talk about sales we tend to think that if you're big boisterous extroverted energy then you do sales and if I know my people most designers are introverts just by a show of hands how many people self-identify as introverts okay all right and everybody else what are you doing here because it's not real right so here's the problem the problem I see is that the the extroverts are gregarious they're Social Butterflies they have The Gift of Gab you know what I'm talking about they can walk into to room full of strangers and strike up a conversation and feel like family right away and I'm outside in the window looking out in the cold like how do I do that cuz I can't and and they're they're Charming they draw people to them and they seem to get all the glory and this is a struggle I think a lot of creative people deal with because you're in the back room you're doing the work the good work and you don't get the reward I'd like to change that and perhaps one of some of the most famous sales people are people on this list but I want to draw your attention to one person in particular Jordan bord he's the The Wolf of Wall Street you guys have you seen that movie Leo DiCaprio Wolf of Wall Street and so he's doing all these aggressive things and manipulation and and selling a lot of junk bonds and so we kind of have this impression that you have to be like this to do this so what about all of us what are we supposed to do and I'm here to try to empower creative people to make a a living doing what it is they love so we kind of have to entertain this idea of sales and I'm not talking about just selling your idea selling your vision I'm talking about sales like sitting in front of a client and be able to do a business transaction with them so if I were to ask you all how do you feel about salespeople what kind of image would come up to your mind maybe they're very aggressive manipulative and we have that classic used car salesperson vibe that we get from them and I don't know if you've ever been the victim or had sit through a times share sales pitch I have it's horrific so don't go for the free breakfast Nothing in life is free okay and I almost bought a Time sh I didn't want so you get this really icky feeling about it and so if we walk around we have this impression that to sell is to be like a snake well then we're not going to want to do it or we're going to have a bad attitude towards doing it that feels fair right if you hate doing something you're not going to get good at it so I think what we do is we need to have an alternative to Mr Jordan Belfor The Wolf of Wall Street one where it's more permission based where you're actually giving or creating value to others that feels in alignment with who we are that's led by curiosity and given in the spirit of generosity that sounds a lot more pable right but that's probably not the image that you have of a salesperson so I'm going to help to reframe sales for you today so that you have a healthier relationship with idea of sales I'm getting messed up I'm stand over here okay so couple things you need to know number one sales is change management have you heard of it described this way change management okay so I'm going to hopefully make a case for this concept here so another way of looking at change management is somebody wants something and can't get it this could be your client wanting a customer your customer wanting a certain result and you helping them to figure out what that looks like and how to get it so you just have to ask yourself two questions what do they want and what's getting in their way and because we're in a room full of designers I made a graphic for you much simpler okay so just three parts just remember these three parts number one is there's a current state where you are today and then there's a desired future state so all of you I'm going to make this assumption that you're here today and you've given up some of your free time given up some of your resources and the things you have to get done on that to-do list because you want to achieve something there's a result that you want to achieve that's fair right and so then you go buy a ticket to achieve that result so if organizations like this understand you really well what they need to do is communicate to you the desired future state that you're interested in so some of you want to network some of you want to connect with people you've not seen in a really long time some of you just want to escape the house and get out but some of you want to learn something that you can walk away with today that you can apply today and tomorrow to change your life so we know this that if there's a current state and a desired future State there's something that's getting in the way so if you want to be more effective in your skills of persuasion or helping clients achieve that you have to identify what's the obstacle or the challenge that's getting in the way that's clear right there's no obstacle then there's no friction they're already in the desired future state number two you have to understand this that people know this already you know this as well that only by spending money will the problem go away I give you a really basic example if you need to make a flyer and you don't have a printer you know you have to go to a print shop and have it done if whatever reason your plumbing explodes at your house in an really inconvenient time and I guess there's no convenient time you know that the only way you can do this is either you know how to fix it or you have to call somebody to come to your place and fix it we have to spend money to make a problem go away so it doesn't feel so gross and people already know this when they're reaching out to you now this is a critical piece of information how much they spend is proportionate to the size of the problem relative to the person who's buying not to you but to them so what you want to do is you want to start looking for big problems to solve as it relate to the potential buyer of whatever it is that you do small problems small budget big problems big budget number three when a prospect reaches out when they call you when they shoot you an email when they slip in your DM you are already qualified so many of us feel like oh how do I prove myself to them what do I need to say the fact that they're taking out time from their day to reach out to you means they've seen enough already so you don't need to sell them at all so at the beginning of the conversation you have goodwi and everything that you do afterwards is either going to erode or build on that will to build or diminish trust keep this in mind number four and I think this is something that once you realize is realize this it takes a lot of pressure off your back and that not all clients or not all prospects or clients they have at least three options that I'm aware of they can hire you of course that's a preferred option they can hire someone else or they can do nothing at all so when I started out my career as an entrepreneur trying to build a design practice I always felt that there was only one option anybody ever feel this like you must hire me that's a lot of pressure to feel to have on that call so you're bringing a lot of nervous energy and it's going to affect the way you talk the way you behave and the way that you listen so when you realize this is great because your job on that call in that meeting is to help them understand their problem and get clarity about what they need to do so they can make the best decision for themselves I know you can hire someone else so let's have a conversation about what your needs are to see if there's a potential good fit and if there is one that might warrant another conversation and sometimes the best thing you could tell them is I don't think you need to do anything at all so we don't want to sell what we want to do is we want to help the clients align or we decline align with their goals with their resources with their outcomes and get them over their challenges or to say this is not a good fit not a good fit you don't have a real problem or you don't have a problem I can solve so we're going to make this shift we're going to go from being self-centered talking about what it is that we do how beautiful that we how how beautiful the things we make are and the equipment that we use or our process we want to shift away from us to focus on on the clients so we have to have an attitude or a mindset of serving others we we use this word in two areas that I can think of usually in church and usually in the military thank you for your service we're willing to do something put someone else's needs ahead of ours number two is we want to shift away from giving advice or advising people what to do and what we want to do is get really good at asking questions beautiful open-ended questions which we'll dig into more a little bit later we want to shift away from talking and listening more and you could use you could play this game whoever asks more questions wins whoever asks more questions is in control of the relationship think about that and then just listen the next thing we need to do is when the clients tell us about the last bad experience they had with a creative what we need to do is we need to look at that and feel that with them and empathize with what they're going through we have to empathize in that they have a lot of other problems that they're dealing with not just the one that we want them to focus on and this is how we build meaningful connection with people and the last part is instead of selling we want to summarize so we want to serve we want to ask listen empathize and summarize and that happens to be This Acronym of sales we're going to reframe it have the mindset of service we're going to ask more questions and the cousin asking questions is listening we want to empathize and we want to summarize and if you do this and you you follow this exact framework you'll never have to sell again or at least you won't have to sell in the way that feels super salesy um I was really attracted to this book written by Zoe chance and the book is called influence is your superpower and so Zoe posits this idea that we all have this natural ability to influence people pre- language when you wanted to be fed as a baby you know what to do when your diaper was dirty you KN you knew what to do so in a way then we're all natural born sellers and we have to tap back into the energy and maybe set a different example of what it means to sell so that the world doesn't feel like it's so icky and gross and before I continue on I have a little confession to make I'm not a sales trainer I'm not a sales expert I haven't received any formal sales trending in fact I used to hate selling I hated it and I want to do something here I I want to dispel this this idea that's been perpetuated throughout design schools in that if your work is good enough you won't need to sell how many people have heard this how many people have said this how many people believe this because there's a lot of you out there so what happens is if we believe this then we never acquire the skills that we need to acquire to flourish as a business to have a conversation with business owners and will always be regulated to the person who works on the box nothing wrong with that I think there's a lot to love about that but that should be by choice not by default so I'm going to tell you in a little bit about how I shifted away from hating cells to actually loving it and feeling really good about it and I'm I'm a bit of a sales nerd and I only use the word nerd because it allows me to steal a joke from Don McMillan and I'll share it with you Don McMillan is a really a true nerd he's a comedian that uses graphs and vend diagrams so I'm going to show it to you right now right so he says that to be order to be considered a nerd you have to have three things you have to be really smart you have to know what you're talking about okay to be a nerd you have to be socially awkward I see all of you okay we'll just look down at each other it's all good and you have to be really obsessed about certain things that's what is required to be a nerd and I am a sales nerd okay so then he asked this questions like what if you're really smart and obsessed what does that make you that makes you a a geek and what if you're really smart and you're socially awkward well that would just make you a dork so you know we can all figure out who's who in this room in a little bit okay so then the big question is what if you're obsessed and socially awkward that would just make you a stalker see how he makes use of this beautiful diagram so this is kind of where we all net out you'll have to figure out whether you're nerd geek dork or a stalker it's okay if you are one or the other I won't judge you so then you might be sitting there asking yourself well if he doesn't know anything he's not an expert he's not been trained why am I here teaching you or talking about sales well because I think it's a critical skill for for you to have that's going to take you to the next level and My Story begins here it's like I started my design firm in 1995 and in 2002 something seismic changes my life everything is different from this point I meet my first and only business coach he since passed away his name is Kier McLaren and Kier asked me about my sales process and to give you some context back when I was working I'm like five uh six years into my business at this point and I'm getting to a certain point and I'm feeling really good about how it is that I I'm able to do what I do so he's like so what's the problem then I said here I feel like I'm hitting a financial ceiling that every job where we bid above $200,000 our win rate drops down to about one in every five jobs it was horrible because it was extremely demoralizing I just felt like I was throwing stuff at the wall and nothing was working and it was just really bad for the morale for the team and everybody and it turns out I had been been doing everything wrong everything wrong and I was just like shocked when he told me Chris how this is how you've learned how to do sales yeah because no one ever taught me so here's the big lesson that I learned he said that when you get to a certain level in your life and you're working on projects north of $200,000 you have to understand something the clients can hire anybody in the entire world they can literally hire anybody from the UK from Canada from Asia so your level of competition has completely changed you know that right I'm said no I didn't so he said you're using a minor league strategy to play in the Major League I was like whoa I oh my gosh okay so it's counterintuitive that if you just keep doing what you're doing today that you'll just keep growing but eventually you'll hit a ceiling or a wall so what you what got you here won't get you there so I needed to learn something totally different and what he taught me allowed me to double my business in one year so in 2002 we're doing 2 million plus in Revenue gross revenue not in profit and this is what it looks like here so we're doing about $2.2 million and in course of one year I think it was three conversations three coaching sessions I had with Kier that allowed us to almost double our Revenue to $3.9 million never look back it increased our close rate from 20% to 75% to a point in which I felt like I there's no job I cannot close if it's a legitimate buyer who has a need and a problem and they're legitimate considering multiple options put me on a call with them I would close that job so I'm going to circle back now I'm going to tell you five stories and hopefully you'll get some you there will be some learnings here for you number one is OES OES is this amazing fishing lodge on the other side of Canada it's on the West Central Coast of Canada and I went there and it's this beautiful thing you fly in this remote fish fing location where there's more trees than people and all of civilization disappears and it's wonderful thing I love to do this and I meet the general manager that's him his his name is Ernie I like to think of him as a Canadian Crocodile Dundee complete with a Bowe knife it's the knife is right there behind his hand by the way okay and this is where you spend all this time and towards the end of our trip it's like a 4-day fishing trip where we literally live on that Lodge never touch feet on ground again for 4 days one of my fishing buddies somebody had just met a guy named Jeff says Chris with all that you know how to do with design and marketing and all that you know how to do I bet you Oles could really use you right now I'm like yeah he goes did you ever think about talking to them and this is me pre-learning how to do sales I'm like yeah but I don't know what to say he goes yeah I'm gonna go talk to him I'm going to get you the gig and we'll work together and so he goes into the lodge it's the last day we're waiting for our plane to come in he goes into the lodge he sits down I can can only see from the outside very much like the introvert way to do things looking through the window I'm like what is he doing they talk there's some nodding I'm like oh shoot and I started to get upset at myself I like if I had the courage and the skills I wouldn't have to have Jeffrey go in there and talk to Ernie for me so that he can take most of the money and pay me something is that can you touch a sore spot here everybody so he comes out he looks at me I'm like and he's like and what I'm like and so did you get it he goes no what did he say he goes I didn't know how to ask him I'm like some people all talk right okay so here's the thing I went back into that room and I sat down with Ernie and I knew time is drawing close here because I I feel like the engine of the airplanes come I could hear it roaring in the distance I'm like shoot now's your moment this is it so I asked Ernie something he said Ernie I love being here this is an incredible place you must be booked solid all the time and then Ernie pauses and he looks at me he goes actually that's not the case our season's getting shorter season getting shorter because it's not fishable he goes no because there are fewer people booking fishing trips and he told me something he says our clientele are literally dying CU they're all older and eventually they die and they don't have a way to attract young people so they can't replenish their clientele and then this is I saw an opening and it was like the skies had parted my gosh a wonderful place I love it and they're getting fewer and fewer clients so I told Ernie this thing I said Ernie I don't know if you know this but in the outside world the real world I work in marketing and design I would love to help you does this warrant an additional conversation he goes Chris I'd love to talk to you so we exchanged information and eventually a year later I wind up doing a bunch of projects for them including a video marketing ads everything so the learning from this story is that you have to have the courage just to ask you have to have a conversation with a person and that's all it is just to have a conversation to find out something that they want help with there's the current state our seasons are getting shorter clients are literally dying so I don't know what to do I've done too many things and nothing seems to be working and once you find that paino you can ask for an additional meeting or for the sale make sense if you're enjoying this video I just want to ask you to hit like make a comment and possibly hit subscribe so what I would love for you to do tonight tomorrow whatever it is that you have an opportunity to learn to ask questions with the intention of just learning about what it is that somebody's trying to accomplish and find out what is holding them back it could be a mental state it could be a tool or resource and just try to serve them to get in the practice of learning how to do sales the correct way and you need to do this in practice before you actually stand in front of a real client because when you stand in front of a real client you have all the The Habit you've had and you'll try to pitch and sell and you'll forget everything we talked about today is that clear okay please try to do that and you'll start to see there's a whole new way of doing this and all of a sudden you'll start to become the most interesting person to the person you're talking to because you know what people love they love attention it's all about me so give them more attention and see what happens so don't pitch and don't sell Story number two have you guys read this book The win without pitching Manifesto if you haven't I highly encourage that you go pick up a copy of this book today I'm not affiliated with Blair ends in any way I've helped him sell lots of books he's Canadian as well read the book study the book then act on the book so I had this idea since there are 12 proclamations these manifestos that Blair has written I asked him on a social media audio room called Clubhouse hey why don't we do 12 nights of the win without pitching Manifesto each night we'll deconstruct one of the manifestos right he's like that's a lot of nights Chris I'm like you want to do this or no so we wind up doing these calls just out of curiosity was anybody in Clubhouse Live for any one of those calls okay there's like seven or eight people in there cool that's kind of the fate of Clubhouse anyways it's all right okay so with Blair what happening what was happening was he was describing a bunch of different things and we went into this roleplay mode where we asked people to pitch to a sales expert and Blair is kind of dry and a little cantankerous so I knew this is going to be this is comedy gold here as you get a bunch of awkward designers trying to pitch blare something and they tried and burned each and every single one of them and you know what I did in conversation I turned to Blair virtually and said hey Blair you know I noticed something I love the design of your books you use Mrs EES it's like this cloth covered book it feels so everything's so well designed and I've seen some of your presentations it feels different to me are you happy with the way that going he goes no what about the printed materials that support your workshops are you have he's like no I said is this a problem you'd like to have Sol because I think I might know people to help you he goes absolutely now my friends who were on the call knew exactly what was happening because they're signaling to me in the DM like dude you're selling him right now aren't you I'm like yes but don't say anything and Blair did not even know I was just pretending he was ready to buy a service for me and then what happened was we would end the conversation I told him and he he laughed he go see that's what sales sounds like it sounds like a conversation between two friends and that's what it's supposed to be like so what you want to do in a sales conversation is you want to manufacture problems you want to find something that already really care about so it was an observation notice I Ed neutral language lots of open-ended questions because I didn't want to lead him anywhere I didn't say I've seen your marketing materials and they suck I just said I noticed a difference between what I love and what you're doing now so I know many of you might do this especially if you're a little bit more aggressive you sliping the DMS and say hey look at your website I'm a big fan it sucks you want to hire me no you you're rude I'm just going to delete that and block you right now so when you have this conversation hopefully a problem surfaces that you can help them with and you can flow really seamlessly into a solution and propose something selling is conversational Story number three this is not what he really looks like but he looks a lot like this person if you know who I'm talking about you'll know in a second so I'm friends with a graphic designer who's turned into a fitness coach kind of looks like this okay and I noticed something he shifted his career from designing logos to just working out and he's very fit six-pack eight pack abs the whole bit and I noticed something he posted something on social media and says hey I have a resource that I want to give to three people if you need help with getting fit I was like I know you so I reached out to him on Facebook like hey I'm interested I need some help and then he dm'd me right back and he said are you serious or just curious yeah I'm really serious I'm trying to get that six-pack app I don't know if it's possible but I am really serious okay so he then scheduled a call with me and I was a little surprised because I thought I was going to get a free resource of what he said and I didn't know it but I stepped into a sales funnel and those of you who are hearing this story are like dude I could see it a mile away well to me I didn't cuz it felt conversational between two friends so we get on the phone we do a zoom call and he asked me why is getting fit really important to you I said well I need energy I want to be a positive role model for my kids and I'm vain I want to look good in the clothes that I have I'm just telling you the truth he goes okay well so he gets into this whole thing and he's he asked me one more question on a scale of 1 to 10 how important is getting fit to you I said it's eight and here's the thing that he did that wasn't I wasn't expecting he goes why is the score not lower why is it not a six or five I said well I I I just told you it's really important I believe in action and I want to make sure my kids have a positive role model to follow and I want to be able to do this for a really long time I'm 51 years old and I want to do this for another 10 years at least I know my energy is related to how fit I feel notice what he just did there he asked me to tell him what's important to me and he made me prove to him how important it was by asking me why isn't the score lower Tony Robbins talks about this is the the number one driving character or behavior for people is the need to be consistent with ourselves he didn't sell me anything he just kept asking me why is this so important why not do something else and you got into the emotional part of it not the the datadriven part because he also knows that people buy based on emotions not on facts so by asking the right questions the clients will sell themselves this is what I mean to sell without being salesy it's the art of having conversation and asking big beautiful wonderful questions in service of other people Story number four is Carrie that's not her real name Carrie called me in a panic she goes Chris I'm just really tired and frustrated at what's happening and she told me that there was another designer who was in the same coaching Community as her who is ripping off her website her language and talking about doing brand strategy and every time she gets a conversation with a prospect what happens is she's underbid every single time at less than half of what she's proposing and she didn't know what else to do and it really affected her she was the primary bread winner for her family okay so they said krie if you see the problem more than once whose fault is it is it their fault or is it your fault if you see the problem more than once well of course it's her fault she hadn't changed her game at all so I gave her some clear instructions I said you know what I want you to do I want you to raise the objection first at the start of the call if you know every single time it's going to be about money say this before we get started I just want to let you know I'm most likely going to be the highest person who's going to bid on this is your primary decision based on how cheap it is or based on price and so I told her to do something flip the conversation take the power back tell the person they should talk to other people first and if they find out what they need there's no need to have this conversation with you at all and I said but before you let them go I want you to educate the client about what to look for what are the warning signs that somebody doesn't know what they're talking about she goes oh I could do that I said yeah yeah it's called Throwing Shade on your competition duh come on and then you end it with this super powerful move and say call me only if you don't feel fully confident in the options that you have here's the crazy thing Carrie gets a lot of sales calls so she got someone who called The Very NE this very same day and then she calls me back the next day she goes Chris you won't believe what happened I'm like what I did what you told me to do and they're not calling me back I'm like so what's a surprise I said just wait it out it may not work out who knows and then surprise surprise couple days later the same client reaches out and says you know what I asked them the questions they didn't give me good answers I don't feel good about this let's talk and in making this one change Carrie then went on for the next year to double her revenue and she said I've made more money in four four or five months than I have all of last year doing this one thing so sadly car and I stopped talking you're just too busy with work go figure okay last story I want to share with you is the most perfect sales pitch I've ever heard in my life and I want to share it with you okay all right so we usually work with sales reps and we wanted to try something different and this person I've never talked to would get on the phone and he goes Chris do you know what we do I'm like no he says can I have a few minutes to tell you what we do I'm like sure sure go ahead he goes what we do is we take away the pain point of what you're feeling let me make a wild guess here when you work with sales reps it takes too long to see results it could take three or four months before you find out if you're going to get any new leads and the way that sales reps work traditionally is they knock on doors they make calls you have no idea what they're doing how they're doing all you do is get a bill every month for the money that they're spending and you're paying them the retainer and then if you don't like what you get with them you have to start over and you're going to burn another another three months so what is this really costing you I'm like wow this was incredible and I don't know what he said after that but all I knew is we hired him because he spoke to me he touched on my pain points it felt like he was looking into my soul and this is the tool that you can use without getting into too much of the Gory details so if you can identify the top three pain points your clients have all the time try this one technique bring it up at the beginning say something like this whenever I speak to customers or clients just like you they usually tell me their top three biggest problems are and then fill in the blanks just try it and see what happens okay now what you want to do is if you don't have enough data don't do this if you've been in business for some time and you keep hearing certain things then then you can do it so don't guess be specific and if you're able to nail this it's an instant credibility Builder and then when you're done saying it ask this one question is that right and what you're looking for is that's right okay so a couple things you can do to prepare for this next sales call so here are things you may want to take a photograph of this you don't need to but ask yourself this question what pain does your client experience that's functional Financial or emotional just Workshop it with yourself you need to figure this stuff out and you should if you've been in business long enough you will know the answer to this question number two what negative outcomes are your clients fearful of or trying to avoid number three this is the important one what objections or accusations might new clients raise with you most likely they're going to raise issues about experience um vertical expertise about price probably about timeline and about the size of your team it's usually one of those five things so what you want to do is you want to write them down and you want to start thinking about what the answer is going to be prepare for this so here's a quick reminder sales is is not convincing it's not persuading it's not manipulation selling is helping it's about being curious selling is learning selling is an act to [Music] generosity so that's a lot to remember in process so serve ask listen empathize and summarize I just want you to focus on the two key skills you don't need to know anything else if you can do the these two asking and listening listening you'll nail this thing so focus on these two things to me when you ask a really good question it's like magic you open the s's mind and there's a great book I don't know if you read it it's called the coaching habit and there's a framework in there that Michael bung here talks about I'll share the questions with you but I didn't realize this is an amazing sales coaching book it's not it's about something else but in it as I read it I'm like that's how I sell this is perfect number one he says be slower to give advice ask more questions be curious longer and here are the six or seven questions that he has and the ones that I highlighted for you is what's on your mind and then you keep asking and what else and what else and then you ask and what's the real challenge for you on a sales training call I did with my uh my group I literally just read the script and I didn't even respond to anything the other person said I just literally went down the list and like that was amazing Chris I'm like thank you I just read a script here's a script you can use it too it works so if you're terrible just literally read the script okay the next thing you need to know is if you ask because you don't listen the question is worthless and people do this all the time and you they'll do this later today with you they'll ask you a question about what how your life is going and then their eyes will be somewhere else they don't really care so you have to listen they're twins asking and listening so you want to do this thing that Kevin Dy talks about it's called Full value listening full value listening is whatever the other person says is the most important thing you've ever heard you have to listen with great attention to detail with what they're saying and to feel what they're feeling the mistake that I'm talking about here is when you ask a question they give you an answer the very next question should be a followup to the answer they gave you that's how you know you're listening and I see this happen all the time somebody asks a question you get an answer and then just ask a totally different question unrelated to the first question because then you feel like oh I think you're reading a script right now and unfortunately this is how most podcasters interview people they have 75 questions they literally just go from question to question and when they do this to me I'm bored out of my mind okay so there's a stack here you start with the current state when you're when you're listening like what what is going on right now in their life okay cool I get that what is the desired future state where would they like to go what kind of transformation what kind of result what kind of change do they want and what is standing in their way how would they measure success what is valuable to them if you can find out what this is you're going to do a great job at it and then when you hear all these things you're going to process it you're going to do something that Kevin refers to is playing back and summarizing and it's very important that you use the same words that they use if they say I'm really fatigued with this thing don't say you're really tired say fatigued you're using exact same language because language is important and it matters you change the word you change the meaning of it and then when you summarize all of this stuff you say did I miss anything is this correct it's an opportunity for you to learn new information and then nope I think you got it all here's how you close the sale you ask a hypothetical question we all love H asking hypo hypothetical questions an if then question so what I heard you say was blah blah BL blah so if you saw a solution that did this this and that in this time for this amount of money then you would be willing to move forward and you're waiting for an emphatic yes not a pregnant pause not a strained yes an emphatic yes when you get the emphatic yes you say I'll have a proposal to you by end of business day today I'll follow up with you tomorrow is that okay so you've gone through the problem you talked about the price you've gotten verbal agreement from them that this is how they want to move forward and you won't realize how powerful this is in terms of them committing to their own words and ideas that's the secret so I found this quote from Jeffrey gmer don't tell your customers something they don't know about you tell them something they don't know about them that's a big unlock asking great questions will give you an unfair legal competitive Advantage if you make a practice of this you'll start to see your close ratio go up the budgets go up and your friction go down so here's some quick here's some resources for you people always ask for the book list there it is take a picture and I have a little scorecard for you and then I'm going to get off stage I can't believe I did this on time here we go here's your question scorecard every time you advise talk make an assumption you're ambiguous with your questions and you're being too assertive with your tone take away a point this is how you decrease trust and Goodwill and how you kill Rapport every time you ask a big beautiful smart specific question every time you listen intently and play back what you've heard every time you ask a question that is full of curiosity that's focused on the client's needs and not yours every time you're ask a clear question and you use the the late night FM DJ voice you get a point I don't have an FM DJ voice I'm horse it's cold I'm sorry thank you very much everybody that's my time we got time we have time for some questions yeah we have two minutes um folks you can send in some questions for Chris type quickly if you head to Instagram in the stories there's a question box but I have one already which is amazing so someone was fast what is a mistake that you've learned from when it comes from selling turning this on you I I'll tell you before I learned how to sell I did something terrible I thought it was my job to tell the clients what I think they should have and it did this amount own detriment so I'd get on the phone they would describe the brief and I'd start immediately pitching ideas we could do this we could shoot it with this camera and use these lenses and sequence it this way and like thanks they hang out the phone and I'm like I don't know why they never called me back I don't know what happened so it's making a lot of assumption and not being curious that's the biggest mistake do you sometimes think think that clients do need you to tell them what to do though I'm thinking about my own experiences yeah eventually but I try to make it as painful as possible for them for them to do all the talking and I will tell them this when I first learned how to ask these questions and the big sales unlock mystery thing it was like wow I tell them I'm going to talk to you I'm going to ask you lots of questions and it might be really uncomfortable but it's important for me to understand what your needs are What in inspires you what a win looks like where it's failed where you've succeeded so I can give you a solution that is tailored for you and they accept that so a 30- minute call turns into a 90-minute call and we're all exhausted and you will be exhausted if you're doing this correctly but here's the here's the beautiful thing about this is you only then propose one solution so back before I learned how to do this we would pitch and we would do 17 different ideas 17 different logos three different storyboards CU we don't know we had no idea so it's just a guessing game yeah what are you thinking about in your own business right now when it comes to selling well that's a good question I think I did my job right this is what he needed me to come out and do yeah I don't think I'm selling anymore what I do is I try to create content okay I know what it is okay here here's my strategy for selling make content so good give it all away for free as much as possible with no strings no funnels no email traps to guilt you into buying something that's it that's the secr there's a gentleman here who working backstage he goes hey I just had to say thank you to you for my friend who literally made a million dollars watching your content I'm like tell him to send me a check a million dollars she's like literally a million dollars I haven't seen the check yet I don't know not feeling so guilty Are there specific things about selling you are thinking about though you obviously think about this a lot beyond what you've presented what are you sort of rolling around in your mind I'm trying to sell you something yeah or even just the sort of like ethos about selling has anything changed in your thinking in the last little bit not changed but it's it continues to evolve and I think if I try to help whoever's in front of me all of you or you to the best of my ability the selling has begun it really has and here's the weird thing I'll just tell this and I realized we're out of time I just finished doing a workshop in Miami with no intention of selling them anything and all of a sudden people like I want to buy more from you like oh okay let me figure this thing out I was even trying that's that's the most beautiful part of this so if you help somebody so if I'm trying to sell you I would just really get into your whatever your business is is and I bet you I can figure something out with you and tell you something you didn't know and to that you'll start to feel an emotional connection with me right now I feel like it's a challenge I'm not doing it right my f DJ voice all right folks give it up for Chris one more time thank you

Channel: The Futur

Views: 241,076

Keywords: chris do, the futur, sales training, high ticket closer, sales techniques, sales questions, how to sell, sales skills, lead generation, buyers journey, conversational marketing, sales cadence, sales conversations, customer pain points, how to sell anything, how to get more leads, customer journey, audience persona, customer journey map, master persuader, the psychology of selling, communication skills, rgd conference, chris do rgd conference, chris do design thinkers

Id: B-NxAZiDkKo

Length: 42min 27sec (2547 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2023