How Smart Sellers Thrive in Market Chaos

Rob  00:00

The world is on fire. I know I feel it, you probably feel it too. And guess what? Your potential clients probably feel it too. If they’re feeling it, they’re probably having a hard time making decisions. And if that’s the case, you’re probably stuck.

Rob  00:14

So in this episode, I’m going to give you three tangible ways that you can free up that pipeline and make things start to flow again. Let’s get started.

V/O  00:23

You’re listening to the slow pitch podcast, a podcast about selling less and closing more. So this stems from a client that I was working with.

Rob  00:33

Business was kind of slow. Things started to really slow down. His anxiety started to really creep up. He was telling me that he was having a hard time sleeping. He was becoming very worried. He was just just the anxiety. Was just building and building and building. He lost sleep. He couldn’t focus all the things that come with it, right?

Rob  00:53

And when we started to talk through his pipeline, what we found was that some of the people in the pipeline really didn’t belong there. Now I’m not saying that your pipeline is that way, but let’s walk through this just in case. So what I did is I started asking some questions, and we started to realize that it wasn’t really number one full enough.

Rob  01:11

So my first question to you is your pipeline full enough? Answer in the comments below, if you think your pipeline is full enough. Second, we found that some of the leads inside of his pipeline probably shouldn’t be there. And what that means is they were clients or potential clients, that he’d been working on and trying to communicate with and trying to reach out and trying to keep them moving, and they just ignored them.

Rob  01:34

They just didn’t answer. They didn’t show up, they didn’t they didn’t have anything to say to them, right? And it was one of those, they ghosted them. And that’s really frustrating, and I know what that feels like, because it feels like, because it’s happened to me before, too.

Rob  01:44

So we started to ask some questions about those. We also found that some of the clients didn’t really have the pain that they should. In other words, he wasn’t asking deep enough questions, questions that would get him the pain that he know he needed to have in order to actually sell the product that he was selling, and because of that, they were not moving forward. They were not taking the next steps.

Rob  02:07

What we also found was that he had some people on the list just because they made him feel good. And here’s what I mean by that. They made him feel good because he had a full list of people to work on. The reality is they weren’t answering him.

Rob  02:21

He thought he couldn’t let him go, because he was afraid that they were not going to do any, they weren’t going to do anything, they were going to close and all that. Guess what? They already made the decision. They’ve already ghosted him, they’ve already left him. They’re not going to come around anymore, and that’s okay. He just didn’t realize it. He didn’t use that to his advantage, and I’ll tell you what he should have been doing.

Rob  02:39

So here’s what we did. We took a few minutes and we sat down, we started working through this pipeline and deciding that some of these people didn’t belong. So let’s get into the actions that we need to do. All right, so first thing, first, obviously, let’s go through the list. Let’s get rid of and eliminate the people that you haven’t talked to.

Rob  02:55

They haven’t responded for 3, 4, 5, 6… whether it’s weeks, months, whatever the right appropriate number of time is for your selling cycle. So if you take a selling cycle and it’s six months and you haven’t heard anything for 567, months, and they should be closed by now, those are the ones you need to get rid of.

Rob  03:13

Just take them off the list, put them in a separate list, and you can reach out in a different way later. Next, let’s take a look at who are your existing clients that you love to work with. So with him, what we did is we created a list of all the clients that he thought were really good clients, clients that he thought were fantastic, great people to work with, all that kind of stuff.

Rob  03:33

We started write down those traits, and then we started to figure out, okay, this is the list of people that are clients that I had before that I’m not actually currently working with now. So we created a list of 20 existing clients that he had worked with before but aren’t doing anything with now.

Rob  03:49

Second, we made a list of 10 referral sources. These are sources of of income that have come his way before, or types of businesses that would be able to refer him business. And maybe could have gone either way, right? They could have referred back to him. He could have referred back to them. It could have been a two way street, but either way, there was a referral source.

Rob  04:09

We created a list of 10 of those. And the next thing we did was we created a list of 20 people that, let’s call it, we’ve had an interaction, whether it was a networking thing, it was an event, some sort of a way that I’ve come into contact with somebody, right? That’s the kind of person that you want to have on this last 20 list.

Rob  04:27

What we did is he said, All right, these are people that have met at different events. These are business cards that I’ve collected. Probably not going to buy from me, but that’s okay, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. Let’s go back to the first 20, the first 20 clients that you’ve worked with before, what we told him to do was we took a look at that list, and what we wanted him to do is set up as many coffee or lunch meetings as possible with those individuals. Here’s what it does.

Rob  04:55

It takes that person reconnects you and in that lunch, in that coffee, and get an update. How are things going? What’s been new, what’s been changed, all that kind of stuff, right? Let’s have a conversation about how they’re doing, and maybe they’re gonna tell you, man, we’re struggling, and that’s okay. You’re getting a read on the environment right now.

Rob  05:13

The second thing you’re gonna do is, before you leave that meeting, the question you’re gonna ask is, Listen, I know it’s not gonna be you gonna we’re not gonna we’re not gonna work together right now, because you guys are in the middle of something, or whatever that might be.

Rob  05:24

But what I would like to know is, do you know anybody else, whether it’s a vendor, somebody that’s another business partner that you’ve worked with, or person that you know in other businesses that surround you, somebody that might like what we’ve done with you, or could use our services even remotely, even just an introduction for me to just say hey and you know how I am, I’m not going to push them into a sale, just going to introduce myself, talk briefly.

Rob  05:47

I don’t suppose there’ll be somebody you’d be able to introduce me to any types of conversation like that. That’s how you’re going to close that lunch meeting. And guess what? When he did some of that weeks later, referrals started to come in from some of those individuals.

Rob  06:00

And the reason why was he rehab a retouch point, right? And then he started to have that conversation about how they’re doing, and then he asked for that referral, and that referral started to come in. Next was the 10 referral sources that he has. So he obviously has a lot of referral sources, so they were somewhat on that, let’s call it previous customer list, so some of those overlap for him, but for you, maybe it’s a list of 10 different people, companies, organizations, ones that would refer business to you that you would then be able to ask that same type of question.

Rob  06:35

First, how are things going? What do you guys look for in referrals? Who would you like to have a referral? Write them down. Make sure you get a list of people that you can introduce to them to help them first second. Share with them what you do, what you need and what kind of referral you would like.

Rob  06:52

Describe that perfect client that we talked about in that first 20 group of people that we wanted you to meet me with. We had him take that list, create that description of his ideal client, and that’s his description of people to his referral sources. Those individuals were then able to find people on their list, and we had some referrals come in from those individuals.

Rob  07:13

In addition to he was able to give some referrals to them that I think is critical, and here’s why, when you give somebody a referral. And I’ve talked about this before on the show, when you give somebody a referral, they feel not obligated, but in the back of their head, there’s a piece of their brain that says, gosh, I should do something for them too, and they will try to find a referral for you.

Rob  07:34

It’s maybe short lived. It may be for the next week or two, and it starts to fade out. That’s why it’s really important for referral sources, if you can start to have coffee meetings once a quarter, once a week, once a month, whatever that makes sense for you. Finally, the last list of people, the 20 people that you met, or what have you for him, what we did is we had him go through that list and start arranging some coffee meetings for him.

Rob  07:58

Those were people that he had an interaction with, some sort of an event that he went to, whatever, and that’s okay. And what he did was he had a meeting with several of these individuals, same type of thing, right? So you’re just asking how you can help them. Who do you want to be introduced to? And then they will eventually ask you, what are you looking for?

Rob  08:16

That kind of thing. In return, it’s the same conversation as everything else, but it’s going to be less pressure. Okay? It’s not, I shouldn’t say less pressure, because the first two groups, you’re not going to try to pressure either, but they already know you. They you feel comfortable. They feel comfortable this group, they don’t feel comfortable with you. And the reason they don’t feel comfortable with you is, oh, boy, he’s trying to pitch me.

Rob  08:36

He’s trying to sell me. No, that’s not what you’re trying to do. Okay? This needs to come across this way. I want you to focus that message of who you’re looking for when you talk about your business. I want you to frame it in such a way that is framed around pain points that you help other people with. And so here’s what I mean.

Rob  08:56

If you’re talking to a potential client, you’re going to say stuff like the types of individuals or the types of owners that we’ve worked with before, they have this problem. They don’t have enough time when they they are struggling along this line, or they are frustrated because their competition is doing this better. Whatever that might be.

Rob  09:19

That’s the messaging that you’re going to incorporate into your conversation with those individuals that don’t really know you that well. It’s about the conversation more than about asking for the referral, but it’s planting seeds. I don’t suppose you know anybody that has this types of problems that’s the kind of come across that you’re going to have. It’s not going to be a pressure situation at all.

Rob  09:42

None of these should be, but they certainly should be more relaxed. With this one, these type of people are the third kind of level, if you will. They’re not the ones that are going to be they’re not going to give you the immediate feedback. They’re not going to give you the referrals right away. But over time, if you continue to do these types of things, you’ll.

Rob  10:00

Get some of them to come out of it. So back to the client. What he did is we set goals that first batch of 20 people. We set that as a goal to start to line up meetings and finish calling all 20 of them in the first week, and then the next week is those 10 other referral sources calling them and lining up meetings during that week.

Rob  10:20

Now, the meeting itself could be in different weeks in the future. I know everybody’s schedule is a little bit different, so you can’t just say, hey, I need to meet with you this week. That’s not, oh, that’s not going to work. It just doesn’t. So what you want to do is you want to start to line those things up so that over the course of several weeks, you’ve got a ton of different meetings you’re going to have.

Rob  10:38

Now these numbers may be high for you. Maybe you only need to do this with five, three and five. Maybe it’s 15 and 10 and five, whatever that might be. But think about your biggest source of referrals should be from your existing clients. That’s the easiest layup. Let’s say, right? That’s the easiest one you should be able to get. So let’s start there. And those are the most interesting conversations, because usually during that conversation, you’ll end up hearing something along the lines of, yeah, I need to do this again with you, or I want to, want to talk to you about that.

Rob  11:09

We need to reconnect about that again, because I want to redo so sometimes they give you more business just by doing that. So it’s, it’s an easy layup, if you will. The second batch of people, the referral sources, they’re good, returning and continuous sources of income, if you do it and execute it, right? And by that, I mean do the job for them and the referred person.

Rob  11:27

You work them correctly, and you do things correctly, they feel comfortable giving you more business, right? So all of those things are to say, go through those steps with those individuals. And I don’t care how chaotic or how crazy this world is, it’s going to be so much easier when you have people that you work with and have these simple conversations, they feel comfortable.

Rob  11:50

You put them at ease, and they feel comfortable giving me, giving you those referrals, and for that client, that’s one of the things he experienced. He found that after that weeks of of conversations and meetings and starting to set things up. Referrals started to come in. Leads started to pile up in his in his pipeline. And guess what?

Rob  12:08

There were people that he had left in his pipeline that he realized they aren’t going to go anywhere. I need to take them out now and sort he started taking them out and replacing them with the new stuff that he had. He had more confidence. That was the other thing that was really interesting, over time, confidence came up because he was doing things. The moral of the story, to me is, action creates results. I don’t care what you do.

Rob  12:33

When you’re anxious, you just wallow in it. Everybody does. It’s hard to take action. I always think back to 2020, when covid kind of came out, right? All of a sudden, everybody was mortified of what to do. I don’t know what to do with my business. And those that decided, let’s just do the basics of having conversations with people. Let’s talk to people. Let’s manage that relationship.

Rob  12:53

They survived, and they survived very, very well. So take that advice. Now, do that now you’re in covid, quote, unquote. Again, things are a little chaotic out in the world. People are a little scared, not sure what to do, what to invest in. That’s okay. Reassure them, have the conversation so when it’s time, and they’ll know when it’s time, and so will you when they start calling you.

Rob  13:15

So remember next time when you start to feel that anxious peace, start ripping out those 20 names and let’s go. Let’s make those calls. All right. If you found this to be helpful, you know what to do. Like and Subscribe. There’s more content coming on this kind of stuff until next time. Remember slow down and you’ll close more.

V/O  13:29

Thank you for listening to The Slow Pitch. Do you have a question about sales call or text your question at 608-708-SLOW. That’s 608-708-7569. Or you can email them to Questions@TheSlowPitch.com. Slow Down and Close More.