How To Sell New Services (They Don’t Even Know They Need)

 

How to Upsell a Service to Existing or New Clients

 

Rob  00:00

Go ahead. You’re calling me ring. Hello.

Lane  00:01

Hey, Rob. I subscribe to your your text messages for your business. I think they’re great. Oh, cool. Yeah. Thank you. I love the coupons you send I’m there all the time.

Rob  00:13

Excellent.

Lane  00:13

But you know, I want to make sure you’re aware of something that you may not be aware of. Okay, so.

Rob  00:22

And that’s the hard part. Because once you get to that point, how do you go through that? Welcome back, everybody. The Slow Pitch Podcast, we’re kicking it off again, we got another topic to talk about. And hey, Lane, how are we doing over there?

Lane  00:46

Not bad,

Rob  00:47

right. It’s good. That’s good. I know, the other day you and I were talking and you got a new product that you’re selling over there? And what’s going on with that? What do you What are you guys doing?

Lane  00:57

It’s going pretty good. But I found that some people just don’t realize what’s coming.

Rob  01:01

Oh, interesting. Well, what do you mean by that? Maybe we should tell the listeners what you’re what you’re adding on. And we can see if we can figure that out.

Lane  01:08

The big thing is, you know, the couple of the big carriers at&t Mobile, or implementing a new system to combat text messages, spam, you know, you and I don’t like getting our email filled with spam. I don’t I don’t think either of us want to see that happen to our phones with text messaging, either. So there’s some new rules coming into to help prevent that.

Rob  01:26

Interesting. So that’s going to be a new sales thing that you’re gonna have to work through adds a whole new set of problems, isn’t it that you’re gonna have to try to fight against? How are you going to sell that?

Lane  01:34

Yeah, I’m, I’m hoping you have some insights for me, because I’m not 100%. Sure.

Rob  01:39

All right. Well, let’s work on that, then how do we get new buyers on something that we’re already trying to sell or adding on to a service? And you know what, sometimes they think they need it? Sometimes they don’t?

How do you get somebody to buy something even though you know they need it? Or they need to change? How are you going to do that? Let’s let’s get through that. If you’re new here, I’m Rob. And I’m Lane. And today we’re going to talk about inspiring people to buy. So let’s get started.

V/O  02:04

This is The Slow Pitch Podcast.

Rob  02:08

Lane you’ve ever you’ve probably never gotten a call from somebody that’s trying to sell you something that you feel like you don’t need it at all.

Lane  02:14

Never

Rob  02:15

No. Yeah. So I’m sure. And then they they try to tell you this is really something you really need. This is this is a problem you don’t even know is there. You need to get this thing because it’s going to fix that problem.  Absolutely.  Yeah.

And that makes you want to buy, doesn’t it?  Never.  No, never. Today, I think it’s really important that we kind of get through, here’s what you should do to structure a sales call or a message and plan ahead a little bit so that you can actually get people to understand what your product is, without having to try to sell it so hard.

I mean, most people when they get a call that somebody is telling you, this is what you need, that doesn’t work very well. So how do you how do you work your way around that? And what are the questions you should be asking and how you position yourself to get the sale, rather than feeling like you’re never going to get the sale because you’re constantly in this uphill battle.

I think it’s important that we kind of get into the meat of this here. So Lane, I don’t know how you’re going to start the conversation, like who you selling this to.

Lane  03:10

It’s useful services for many small businesses, you know, restaurants, doctors, offices, accountants, you know, everyone’s got a slightly different use cases and how it could be beneficial for their business and for their customers.

For me, I look at it two different ways, one for someone that thinking about using text messaging, but they’re not already and the other is for anyone that is using text messaging, but they may not be aware of the changes that are coming down the road.

Rob  03:36

Alright, let’s assume that you’re going to be talking to somebody that is already using text messages, they’re already using them don’t even realize what’s coming, because you said there’s gonna be some changes.

Describe to me a little more detail, not a lot, but just a little bit of detail about what some of the changes how they can infect me, if I’m running text messages already to promote, how would that affect me? And I don’t even know it, how would that affect me?

Lane  03:56

Yeah, so it kind of depends on the provider you’re using and how they’re sending your messages and what number you’re using, if you’re using your own what’s called a 10 digit long code, you and I would just consider that a regular phone number.

Okay, the the difference between that is, is the the 10 digit long code versus that five or six digit shortcode that we see some people using, those are really expensive. Some providers allow their customers to share those short codes to kind of keep the costs in check.

Rob  04:25

Ok, remember, we’re talking about how to sell new services… Alright, so just so I’m understanding and make sure that I got it. You’re saying that when I see somebody telling me to text 123452 this other number is a really short number. You’re talking about that kind of a thing, right?

You’re not saying texted to this long number that’s normal, a normal phone number, it’s texted to 777777. And that’s it. Like it doesn’t make any sense. You’re like, that’s not a phone number. Why am I texting it to that? That’s what you’re talking about?

Lane  04:49

Those are the shortcodes, correct.

Rob  04:50

Okay, these are the text programs that somebody might be using that you might be sharing with somebody else.

Lane  04:56

Yeah. That’s one of the more common uses of the shortcut. Where, you know, 20 businesses might be have the same shortcode. And it’s text Rob to 77778. And and then you can get messages just from Rob, I don’t know who 77778 is. So I don’t recommend anyone actually texting that because you never really know what you’re gonna get.

Rob  05:16

Right. So that’s a situation where in the future, you’re saying that a couple carriers are going to make that very difficult. And as a user, I don’t even know that’s going to happen necessarily. Right?

Lane  05:26

Right. So the, you know, AT&T and T Mobile, that that will actually be banned, not permitted any longer.

Rob  05:32

So also, if I’m a business, let’s say I’m a restaurant and I have a special, and I use that number, and I texted out to let people subscribe using that number. Now I send out texts via that number, some of these carriers are just not going to let that go through to their phone.

Lane  05:47

Yep, they’ll just filter it out. Consider it spam. The The other thing with 10 digit long code, so even if you’re using your own 10 digit long code, your You will now be required to register your business to that phone number, and the types of messages you send.

And they will determine based on your business and the message you send, what the risk factor is for you as a business. And that will affect how many messages a day you can send. But if you’re not registered, you’ll just be filtered. I mean, your your messages, you’ll be paying your provider to send a message that never gets delivered.

Rob  06:21

So if I’m that restaurant, and you called me and said, Hey, this is coming, how would you sell that? Like, how, what’s your approach? How would you do that?

Lane  06:30

If I know they’re using that shared shortcode, or they’re, you know, they’re using other services that that may not be aware of these filtering rules coming up, my goal is to try to educate them as to what it is that they may not buy from me. But at the end of the day, they still need to know what’s coming down the road.

Rob  06:45

Yeah. And you probably wouldn’t have a conversation that goes something along the lines of, Hey, this is coming up, and you need to really switch away because like, if you’re their competitor, this the seven digit code or whatever, this what, how many digits usually six, is it?

Lane  06:57

Five, sometimes six, yeah,

Rob  06:59

five, sometimes six digits. If if you’re calling them you, you would you say something like you, you don’t want to use that carrier or that person anymore. That company knew more to send out your text messages, because I know for a fact that they are not going to know this rule is coming up. Would you ever say that?

Lane  07:14

No, I would never approach it like that. I think that’s kind of kind of dirty. But I think if I if I can at least explain what’s coming and answer the questions that yes, we’re doing it the right way that maybe the the connection will be made?

Rob  07:28

Yeah. And so I asked that question, because a lot of people out there would actually approach it and say, you’re going to be in a problem here. If you don’t fix this, and you got to fix it. Now, before it becomes a problem. You don’t have your text going through. But is that how to sell new services?

And and so what Lane is saying is true, you need to educate a lot, you need to make sure that you don’t try to force somebody to make a decision to change the switch to do anything different.

Because if you do that the automatic inclination for somebody receiving that it’s going to be I don’t believe you, and therefore I’m doing nothing or thank you for the information, get off my phone, and I’m going to talk to somebody else, because they don’t like that approach necessarily. So it is the right way to do it. How would you start the call?

I mean, if you’re going to call somebody, how would you start that whole conversation? But what what would that go like you if you’re calling me right now. And again, if you’re listening, think about how you would approach a call.

How you would tell somebody this is an issue that’s coming up that you’re gonna run into you don’t even know it’s gonna be a problem. Lane, go ahead. You’re calling me ring, ring… Hello.

Lane  08:32

Hey, Rob. I subscribe to your your text messages for your business. I think they’re great. Oh, cool.

Rob  08:39

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah,

Lane  08:40

I love the coupons. You send I’m there all the time. Excellent. But you know, I want to make sure you’re, you’re aware of something that you may not be aware of. Okay, so. [long pause]

Rob  08:52

And that’s the hard part. Because once you get to that point, how do you go through that, but honestly, there is nothing wrong with a little stumble and a little struggle in the beginning of a phone call, particularly a cold call, because it buys two things.

One, it gets their attention to what makes them want to listen, and they want to go what is what is this person trying to tell me that sounds like it’s pretty serious. It’s it’s kind of one of those situations where there’s a natural inclination to listen. You might want to start selling new services, but it’s not time yet.

If somebody is struggling, you stop and you listen, have you ever been to a play or to a show where somebody’s like, particularly with kids, not so much the professionals, but when there’s kids, and they’re up on stage, and they’re going going through their lives, and all of a sudden little Jimmy or whoever just stops and just like stares into the audience and everybody’s like holding their breath.

It’s the same type of thing with a cold call. And it’s same type of thing with this type of call too. So there is nothing wrong with stumbling and struggling. That’s actually a good thing. And the cool part is, is if you’ve been doing this a long time, you know that it works, but you might have forgotten that it’s effective. So don’t worry about doing something like that. Now, you’ve stumbled now what? Well, I totally meant to do that, Rob. So that’s what I thought.

Lane  10:10

Well, I totally meant to do that, Rob. Thanks for giving away the secret. I guess at that point, that’s where I, I probably need to craft my message a little bit more. But…

Rob  10:19

Right, so I think one of the things that you’ll want to do next is before the call is have your bullet points of what you want to talk about. Let’s get into how to sell new services. Remember the 30-second sales pitch that we did a while back and another episode, we explain the issue in the form of their problem or their pain, I think you might have to say something on the lines to get her attention.

Have you ever run into a situation when you’re texting these things out? Or these coupons out? Where you have a little lower response rate? Not as many people reply as normal? And they may say, yeah, every once in a while, what would happen if that lower response rate not only happens every once in a while, but the entire response rate dropped by 50? To 70%?

Would that be an issue? Are you still would be okay, with 50% of them being successful in the rest of them? Not? So in other words, if you got 100 text messages that came back that actually were normally redeemed, and now it dropped from the 100 to 50 being redeemed, would that be okay? And what would their response be?

Lane  11:20

Possibly, it would probably be well, I wouldn’t like that very much that they’re not likely to have the return on their investment of sending those text messages isn’t going to be as high as it was.

Rob  11:29

Right. And so if they said to you, well, that wouldn’t be a very good return on my investment, then you would say, Yeah, I would imagine, oh, boy, is that something we should talk about for a minute? Remember, we’re talking about how to sell new services.

Because that’s, that’s potentially what’s going to be happening in this industry coming soon? I don’t know if you know that or not? You probably didn’t, maybe you didn’t know that you did you know that already.

Because then you want to always want to put them in a position of being smarter than you being better than you without being like submissive, if you will, to them. You’re an equal, but you want them to think that they’re in control of the conversation, right?

So by asking that question, they’re going to be like, you know, I kind of read, they’re gonna, they’re gonna, if they lie, they’re gonna say, I kind of I kind of saw something like that about that. I don’t remember what it was Tell me, but they don’t know. But they’re asking you to tell them? Or they’re gonna say, I have no idea. They’ll be honest. I had no, I know, what do you mean?

And at least you can answer that question, right? And if they say, Yeah, tell me, I don’t know. You could still tell them right. So yeah, you know, I thought you I thought I figured you probably didn’t know that already. Give them a little compliment, right. Nothing wrong with it. But but then tell them listen.

So one of the issues that we’re reading about is, it’s a couple carriers, and I, you know, you don’t know who all of your customers are, and what carriers they use. Right? So you’re using this number, and it’s being forced out to all the carriers, all the phone carriers, if, if the ones that are on let’s say, just as an example, at&t, it could be right, it could be whatever.

But if if those no longer worked very well, that would, that could be an issue. And the reason that could happen, it sounds like is they’re saying, Hey, we don’t want garbage on our phones. And so they’re kind of stopping people from pushing out coupons that they feel are not legitimate.

Now, yours obviously are, I’ve seen I get them, but they’re looking at it and saying you’re using the same five or six digit code that everybody else is using. And guess what this other Joe Blow down the street, his messages aren’t so cool, they’re not so good and not so legitimate.

And so this company, this carrier is going to say, therefore, none of them are and you may not get delivered through those folks on that particular carry. Is that good? Is that going to be an issue for you? I mean, maybe, maybe it’s not maybe you guys have such a great business? It doesn’t even matter.

I just want to make sure you knew in that conversation, how do you think they’re going to respond? They’re definitely going to be concerned about about how this is going to hit their business. Yeah. And if you hear them pausing and thinking you can tell they’re thinking, the easier the best question to ask them.

Next is, do you want to talk about that a little bit? Do you want to? How do you want to deal with that? And put that on them to see what they want to do? Because if they say to you next, yeah, yeah, we need to deal with that.

Because that’s, that’s where we get like, you know, 30 or 40% of our business right now. And if half of that drive, now we’re down, you know, there’s another like, 15% of our business that’s not going to be there. Or 20% that’s not No, I can’t do that.

I got rent to pay is bad enough already with a pandemic that we just went through? What am I supposed to do now? No, I’m not doing that. Help me? What do I do? And that’s really what you want. And that’s open the conversation what happens after they say that to you? Since we’re trying to sell new services, what do you think you should say next?

Lane  14:37

Well, I guess that really opens the door to I have a solution that that will help you with this and and can help you save those those messages in those those advertising dollars.

Rob  14:49

And that could be so depending on again, this is we’re just using this as an example or a scenario, right? If you’re in a in a business, where you have a one call And I get a sale. And that’s normal, whether you’re trying to cold call or not.

If that’s normal, then you could ask for that sale essentially, right? You could kind of work your way toward that. Like, should we talk about getting you signed up on something a little different.

But if your job or your business is more about building trust and longer term relationships, and so forth, then really what you’re looking to do is to create that next meeting, and you say, Listen, I when they ask you, hey, yeah, we let’s talk, your response might be if you’re trying to build long term relationships and say, oh, gosh, I, you know, we could go through this, we could spend about probably another 30 to 40 minutes talking about this and figuring out what the best Avenue is?

Can I recommend maybe, and maybe it’s not the good thing? Maybe it is, but would you be okay, if we just scheduled another time, because I didn’t mean to take up time right now, I don’t know that now’s a good time.

Anyway, I just called to find out, I got the text message A while back, and I thought I needed to call you should we set up another meeting, or another phone call an in person meeting, whatever that might be. So that we can talk through these things and see what some of the options are.

Really, your goal is to get a meeting, it’s not so much to make a sale in some of these cases, right? It’s a balance. If you’re a one and done. Yeah, ask for the sale, work your way through that next conversation, which is a we should talk about, there’s some options here that could prevent that from happening.

And that means quite simply not using the same five, six digit number that everybody else is using, rather, using your own dedicated one. Have you ever thought about doing that? And you want to talk about how to get that done? and work them to that next stage? Right? Or you’re going to be building a relationship and trying to get another call? Does that make sense?

Lane  16:35

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

Rob  16:39

You’re welcome restaurant owner? That’s no problem.

V/O  16:45

Do you have a question about sales call or text your question at 608708? Slow, that’s 608787569. Or you can email them to questions at the slow pitch back calm. Now, back to the show.

Rob  17:05

To me, I think the most important part of any call or any meeting is how you position the issue and how you ask a questions. And the key to that is really keeping them in mind. So what is it that the potential buyer wants?

Is it going to cause problems for them? Is there going to cause of pain? We talked about pain one time before? And if that’s going to cause a pain or a problem, then you should probably deal with that at that time?

If it’s not, and they have no issues, they have zero interest, then? No worries, I didn’t think so. Get off the phone. Right. But if they do, then it’s probably time to ask a couple questions. And should we ask for another meeting?

And that’s the other question, will they survive? If they don’t have any of these issues? Yes. Like, for example, in this case, Lane, if they had their existing system? And they told you, I don’t think that’s going to impact me much at all. What do you do, then?

Lane  17:58

I think my answer would just be okay. That that’s great. I, I’m, I’m glad you don’t think that’s going to have an impact for you. But if some if down the road, you you find that you are seeing some problems, and you want to talk about it, feel free to give me a call.

Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. Or maybe maybe say, you know, you know, would you mind if I checked in with you in three or six months to see if, if everything’s still working well, for you?

Rob  18:20

Yeah, I think that’s the other way to do it. And then the other add on that I would add to that, it would be Hey, do you have an email address, I’ll email you my contact information. So you can reach out if you do if this thing starts to impact you, there’s some things that you can do pretty quickly to resolve the issue on a short term basis.

And then we build into this other side. So listen, I didn’t want to pretend that you had this problem at all, but I can, I can send you a quick email, you have all my contact. You can also check me out a little bit, but but I want to make sure that you this issue is coming up.

What if they tell you hey, I’m just gonna go back to the guy there the business that I work with now and and get this fixed? I’m going to deal with that with them.

Lane  18:59

Perfect. Okay, if you if you still if you still run into issues down the road, I’d still be happy to talk to you one.

Rob  19:04

Yeah. My guess would be they’d never tell you that they would just go do that. Right?

Lane  19:09

Yeah, most likely they’re gonna, their next call is gonna be to their provider and say, Hey, what’s this guy talking about?

Rob  19:13

Yes. And the other thing to know is by doing that, and there’s this is a double edged sword. By doing that, you’re, you’re making them question, how good of a provider they are, right? You’re making them think man didn’t even tell me this.

This is my own provider. I’m paying them and they didn’t even tell me. Yeah, the double edges. If you have clients and somebody is making this call on you, and you haven’t told your own clients, right, the same thing can happen to you. So be aware.

And there’s, there are tools and tactics that you can use to keep your clients educated so that you’re less likely to lose it to another provider of some form, whether that’s your own business style, whatever the type says you won’t lose it so easily.

I think to wrap all this up is I think I would recommend if you have a new product or new services, think about a new approach to what you’re doing. I think you need to write out what is it exactly that your product does for your potential clients, or your existing clients? Why do they need it? What do they need?

And then I think the other layer to this and we didn’t really get into this on this particular episode, Lane, is how do you know you’re talking to the right person? And I think that’s a critical component. We’ll get into that in another episode, but talking to the right person to make sure that they’re the decision maker, and not just the person that can say no.

And then also, how do you know that they need it? So make sure that you look at their business first, and then figure out does it even fit into their business? And then phrase everything so that your assumption is is that they’re all fine, but you just want to make sure right? So that’s kind of how I would wrap it up all nice and tidy.

But yeah, to me, I think there’s a lot to be said about keeping people informed of your own clients first, and then reaching out to those that you can help who are not being serviced later. And that’ll make a big difference for your bottom line. With that, we will see you next episode. See you later.

Lane  21:03

See you Rob.

V/O  21:05

Thank you for listening to the slow pitch. Slow down and close more