Convert A Review Into More Sales – 3 Steps To More Sales.

Rob  00:00

So what does that do once you’ve got all that information?

Lane  00:02

Now you have the map to how to satisfy this client.

Rob  00:06

Yeah.  All right, welcome back, everybody to The Slow Pitch. And if you are new here, my name is Rob and…

Lane  00:21

I am Lane.

Rob  00:22

Hey Lane, how are we doing?

Lane  00:24

Fantastic, Rob, how about yourself.

Rob  00:26

I’m doing well, I’m doing well. It’s been crazy busy. But I’m glad to be here with you and talking about this.

Lane  00:32

Likewise.

Rob  00:33

For those. For those of you listening, I do want to make sure that I say to everybody, if you haven’t listened to the other episodes, first of all, shame on you. But second, it’s okay. Not every episode builds on each other you can each one is independent most of the time, so don’t worry about that part. What we do try to do is in the in the website on TheSlowPitch.com. We’ve tried to put links to other episodes that kind of relate. So if you want to if you like this one, then you might see that there’s a link in the podcast show notes that might show you where you could go find out some more information or something similar. So that may be the case in this one as well. So with that, what are we talking about today, Lane,

Lane  01:11

Well, Rob, I’ve got a little bit of a problem. So we’ve got a client that we’re we started working with him about five months ago, it was a six month contract. So you know, we’re about a month out. I’m trying to figure out how to kind of reengage with the client and try to get a renewal going.

Rob  01:25

Ah, gotcha. So you’re saying you’ve done the work? You’re almost done? How do we get some more work out of them?

Lane  01:30

That’s it. That’s it?

Rob  01:31

Is there more work to be had?

Lane  01:32

Oh, there’s a lot more work that can be done.

Rob  01:34

So in this episode, we’re going to talk about how to retain a client after you’ve done the work.

V/O  01:42

This is The Slow Pitch Podcast.

Rob  01:45

Alright, Lane. So let’s get started here with this. Let’s figure out you’ve done the work. You’ve worked to get five out of the six months.

Lane  01:53

Yep.

Rob  01:54

Kind of tell me how have you done? Like, are you in good shape? Like, are they happy with you? Are they like mad at you? Like what’s worse? Is that No, no,

Lane  02:03

No, no, nope. No complaints about the work being done. No one No, no crazy calls of expressing anger or anything. So as far as I can tell, everything’s going great.

Rob  02:15

No news is good news is what you’re saying? Right?

Lane  02:16

No news is good news.

Rob  02:18

All right, good. That’s probably how most people would run it. And that’s probably normal and would feel comfortable with that. And that’s good. That’s because if they have a complaint, that’s pretty good thing. Do you know if they’re looking for somebody to do more work? Or do you think maybe, hey, they don’t even realize

Lane  02:33

They’re not… So they’re not looking for anybody… I’ve not heard anyone else say anything. So I just assumed they maybe don’t realize renewals coming up.

Rob  02:40

Okay. And do you? Do you feel like they would be happy to work some more with you? Or do you think if they decided they wanted to do some more work, they might love for somebody else?

 

Lane  02:47

I have no reason to believe they wouldn’t have me do keep working on…

Rob  02:51

Ok, so, uh, no news is good news sometimes. And then sometimes it’s not. So let’s, I think part of the challenge I run into, and this is a little bit in a, you know, for those of you listening, you know, if you’re new in sales, this is one piece of the puzzle that in this whole sales process. So there’s a part of getting a new sale, right? But then there’s also the, how do you maintain or reengage or re get rehired if you will. And this could be for the business owner, this could be for people working in the business. There’s other things with it, this all applies. But this is not a brand new sale, this is somebody you’ve had a little bit of a relationship with or enough of a relationship with. And now it’s time to figure out how do we get them engaged to restart up again, because you know, you’re going to finish this project. So that said, something pops into my head. And I can tell you about a little bit of an experience that I had with at one time. But to me, this pops into my head is something that I kind of look at as kind of like a kind of a customer experience worksheet that I like to work through with clients that I’ve done some work with over the course of some time. If it’s a one and done job, it’s not as effective. But if you’ve built a bit of a relationship, six months contract is a good time frame. Anything longer than that really good for this. So this tool that I like to use, or this worksheet is one of those things that is very simple. It’s a little bit counterintuitive, and it’s something that not very many people do. So you probably want to hear about this, don’t you Lane, you kind of

Lane  04:11

Come on Rob. Tell me more about this.

Rob  04:15

Alright, so the way this works, and I’m assuming you haven’t done anything in the beginning of your contract, where you would ask them questions about what’s really important in their in in doing the work like, hey, if we were to rate ourselves now in the very beginning, at the end, what would that look like? You haven’t done any like that? Yeah,

Lane  04:33

No, I hadn’t even thought of doing that.

Rob  04:36

Ok, so this this worksheet, here’s how it works. What I like to do is sit down and say, Okay, let’s talk about what’s important to you, before we even get started. Now, that may sound weird, like what’s important to you? So let me kind of explain what I mean by that. Some clients want to have a vendor or a partner in their business. As a supporting vendor. Let’s say that is more focused on keeping expenses under control and not racking up a bill. Or sometimes they’re looking for a vendor that is really looking for them to be able to understand the business really well, and use that information to improve whatever work they’re doing already. So if you’re doing for example, let’s say you’re doing websites, and you’re creating websites, how’s the creative process doing? And how does it support the whole process that you need behind the scenes for that business? So if a business needs to have leads coming in, or needs to have a database that’s important, does the does the vendor know or understand how and what they’re going to need on behind the scenes, so that they can use that information and create what’s needed for the client? Does that make sense?

Lane  05:44

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Rob  05:45

All right. And sometimes they just need, like, I want to be, I want to have something that’s gonna answer my call, when I call, that’s it, that’s really, really important to me, because my vendor before didn’t call me back right away, they would take three days to call me back. So maybe that’s something that’s really important. So what I did is I created a list of most common things that people say, hey, I need help with from my vendor to do this correctly, or I need them to execute this flawlessly. So sometimes it’s the how they work and behave in behind the scenes, sometimes it’s the how productive they are in their work. So you know, like, all these things are really different for each client. So I create a list of those. And you know, maybe there’s ten of them, maybe there’s eight of them, that’s most common in your business. And then there’s some just general business ones that are very, very specific to your business. But But generally, in any business, there’s also some that are out there that are that are just the same for anybody that business, I like to have them take a look at that list, I’d create a little description behind it and say, here’s what this means just so we’re on the same page. But now let’s, let’s think about this list, which of these this is again, in the beginning of our contract, which of these are really, really important to you as we move forward and start working together. And so if they say to me, I need something that’s really responsive, I need somebody that’s going to be able to answer the call when I call them not maybe wait three days, I need to have somebody call me back within, let’s say, two hours. Now, Lane, if you have a client that says I need somebody to call me back in two hours.

Lane  07:13

Yeah, that’s

Rob  07:14

How does that?

Lane  07:15

Yeah, same day, no problem. Two hours, sometimes that might be kind of tough.

Rob  07:19

Okay. So if that comes up, now you have a choice you just started, you may have their deposit and signed contract, is this going to set a precedence and as somebody you want to work with? So there’s one avenue, the other avenue is, which is more important? So that’s the first thing that comes to my mind is, do I want to work with this person? But more important, is this your negotiation there? So and by negotiation, I just mean, when you get somebody saying that they want to do this two hour response time, your response can just simply be a boy, I can appreciate that. I mean, I’m assuming you’ve been burned before, by that, what, tell me about that, and you start to learn more why they’re thinking that way. And then you learn it, somebody took three days. And you can say, Well, okay, our, our general practice is, you know, within reason, the same day, so if you call me at the end of the day, it might be first thing the next morning, but if you call me, you know, 9, 10, 11 o’clock in the morning, I’m gonna be back in an hour or two. And it might be the at the end of the day, but that’s generally what we tend to run, or it’s usually within 24 hours, whatever your general is, and and then you talk about it, Is this acceptable for you? Because if it’s not, we need to talk about it now, rather than when the when your hair is on fire, and you want to, you want to talk to me.

Lane  08:26

So this is this is interesting, Rob. So we’re, you’re really saying to start having this satisfaction worksheet immediately after you sign the contract, basically?

Rob  08:34

Yes.

 

Lane  08:34

And and so we’re really going to learn the more of the client’s expectations ahead of time before it’s too late for us to do anything about it.

Rob  08:43

Wouldn’t you want to know this before you start working with them?

Lane  08:47

Yeah, absolutely. This totally makes sense.

Rob  08:50

And some and sometimes just, you know, put into perspective, sometimes they’re easy and stupid things. Like somebody’s saying they want to be, you get a response in two hours. That may sound reasonable in their world, because they have a small business, let’s say, but if they’re a huge business, and they need that, and they’re paying for it, maybe you can do that. Maybe you can assign somebody.

Lane  09:07

Yeah, yeah.

Rob  09:08

So for example, I have, we have a client that’s that we’re about ready to take on, they have asked for one particular contact on our end, who’s going to manage the project, right? Totally acceptable. We want that because we want the same thing on their side. So our conversation was no problem. We have one person that will be assigned to your project, they’re going to do all the all the stuff is gonna go back and forth through them. That’s one piece. Conversely, we’d like to have on your side, one person. So now we’ve opened that conversation up, right? And they’re like, oh, oh, definitely. That’s a good idea. Yeah, we need to do that. Because otherwise there’s too many too many hands in there. So this is all these let’s set the expectations because during your sale will happen is during sales you end up let’s let’s put it this way. How many salespeople out there over promise? Oh, yeah, yeah. That’s a mistake. First of all, you should never over promise. But if you do or have, this is a good way to kind of kind of correct a little bit as you go. So maybe you didn’t say outright, we were so responsive, or were the most responsive in the world, you didn’t say that outright, but they implied or thought, you’re really responsive, and this is yours, you’re smaller, you can do this, you. So now you have the chance to say, well, you know, here’s our response rate time, and this is usual, this is normal, this is average. And if we’re outside of that, that’s very unusual. And that means there’s something going on, and we have to deal with that. But we will get back to you. Now you’ve having that conversation ahead of time. So when it does happen, now you have at least an expectation set up for them. And more importantly, let’s say they wanted a two hour window, and you said it’s going to be a same day, at best, right, or the next morning, and you still miss that in that conversation. Now you could even say, now let’s pretend, let’s pretend we miss it. Let’s say you call us at nine o’clock in the morning, and I don’t get back to you until 10 o’clock the next day. What’s gonna happen? Yeah, that’s a valid conversation. Listen, it, it may not ever happen. But in six months, I can’t imagine that there’s not going to be something going on that something goes crazy. We just got to deal with it. And, you know, XYZ company, another company has this going on, you have this going on, this other company has something going on. And we’re trying to deal with all three, but we can’t answer the phone until we’ve got something resolved in some areas. So maybe that’s the conversation you’re having all these points do. And point to for you is if you have this understanding of what is important to them before you start working, it’s so much easier to re-sign a contract later, when you do the next step. And it’s when you do the next step. So let’s say you have your list of things that people might want to talk about and say that this is important to them. So do they do they get your business really well? Do they get it? You know, that’s something that somebody might say, being responsive is another one that we talked about. So there’s a whole bunch of them that could be there. During that conversation, the beginning, ask them, what’s your top three? What’s your top four? What’s your top five? What are the most important ones out of this list? Or if I missed one, and you’ve got something more important than anything on here? What is that? Let’s talk about that, put it down here. And it usually takes them a minute to figure that out. And, you know, they’ll read through them all. They’ll think about it. And it’s probably going to be based on something that happened just recently in their lives and their business and their whatever. But once you get through them thinking all of that they’re going to give you four or five, three, whatever it is really important points that are going to make or break whether or not they’re going to work with you again, or whether or not they’re happy, right? Yeah. Then after that, now, I want you to wait them, I want you to tell me how important is this, if number one item is quick response within a certain amount of time, and they say this is the number one priority, then they should rank that as a score of let’s say, 10. 10 out of 10. Right? If they have another one, that’s you know, I need them to understand that we have to follow specific rules in the industry. And you have to know that information as a vendor. And you need to follow those rules as well, that’s going to be one of those things that’s gonna be really high priority, but maybe not a 10. Maybe it’s a nine, because they’re, they’re really the last step for that right or that eight, whatever that might be. So have them weight it,  like these are the this is the level of importance. You can do a one through five, you could do one through 10. But make them wait that so that they you can see which one’s the most important. So what does that do once you’ve got all that information?

Lane  13:23

Now you you have the map to how to satisfy this client? Yeah. Satisfied?

Rob  13:28

Yeah, and so you’re just you’re walking out of that meeting going, okay. Now I know what we need to do. And so if you have a team working for you, what should you do next?

Lane  13:36

Oh, share that information? Absolutely.

Rob  13:38

Absolutely. Because that that’s gonna make or break their satisfaction later on. Right? As you as you work together. So to me, that’s one step. That’s the first step is the first meeting. Now, if you didn’t have that meeting, when you started, because you’re five months into this, I’m assuming you didn’t do this, right?

Lane  13:53

No, no, I have not.

Rob  13:54

No, yeah…And that’s okay. That’s okay. So that’s normal, normal, most people don’t. So this is kind of an unusual way of doing things. But what happens is, is that if you haven’t done it, and you’re at month five, do it now, what’s wrong with doing it right now? Say, You know what, I forgot to do this. I had I, I just completely spaced it. I don’t know why we didn’t let’s do it.

Lane  14:12

Getting the information is better late than never.

Rob  14:14

Yeah. So now you let’s say you do that. Now. Now, you’ve got 30 days to kind of take a look to say, Did we do it? Or did we not. But here’s the cool part, you could at that five month spot, you can go to the next section at the same time, if you want it so they do the information, what’s important and the waiting, you could right after that, just go to the next step. If you did in the beginning, you would wait until it’s time. The next step is is take those same five things, four things, whatever they said was really important. Take the importance level of each one of those. So if they ranked at 10, or nine or whatever it is have those on a sheet of paper. And then what I want you to do is say we’ve talked about what’s important to you, how are we doing? Let’s look at the first one so the first one is and that whatever that is, let’s say it’s making sure that we’re on the same page and understanding your industry and the and the compliance rules that are out there. Let’s say, how do we do? And let’s say they say, it was really important. It wasn’t 10 out of 10. And so now you ask the question, okay, if we had to score us one star for five stars, what would you give us and have them write it down with you. So you write it down. And if they give you a five, you did really well, if you did three did poorly did average and in one is poor. And the hard part is, is number one, it’s going to be hard for them to be extremely honest, if they don’t feel comfortable. So you’re going to have to, in the beginning of this conversation, explain to them, alright, this is gonna be, it’s gonna be fun, and uncomfortable, sometimes at the same time, because fun, because we’re really making sure that we’re nailing all these things for you. But uncovered, because maybe we didn’t do a very good job. I’m not the kind of person that would tell people like this, that I’m not the kind of person that sends you a survey and says, Here, fill out the survey, because…

Lane  15:48

I was just about to ask that that, you know, it seems like a lot of people would just say, here’s this PDF, can you please, please fill this out and return it to me, but it really sounds like you’re saying, No, you want to be sitting face to face with the client, when you do this?

Rob  16:00

Absolutely. I would never email a survey or email this document to them to say, give me give me the score, because they’re gonna either they’re gonna not understand it. Or there’s so much valuable information you can pull from this meeting.

Lane  16:13

Yeah, you have an opportunity to ask a lot of questions, ask for clarification, things like that.

Rob  16:17

Yeah, that’s the key. And and now that you have that information, you can ask extra questions that can give you what you need to do. So you know whether or not you’re going to continue on.  I’m going to stop this conversation right now. If you’re finding value in any one of our episodes, we want you to share it with somebody else, just tell somebody, Hey, go listen to these cases has been good. Second, give us a review, tell us what you think. And the third thing, hit that subscribe button so that you always get updated, every time we release an episode.

Lane  16:44

We’d really appreciate it. Now back to the show.

Rob  16:50

And so once you go through all that, you get the ratings. Now you can do some multiplication, or you can do some calculations to say, alright, this is really important. So it’s 10. And they scored us three or five or two, or whatever it is, and you multiply it out, you say, Okay, this is this is how this looks for us. And then you have the other ones. And you just keep doing that. And then you figure out what the average score is for yourself. So did you get your score 100 out of 100? Or do you score 50 out of 50, whatever that number is, however you want to do that. That’s really what you come out with? What you do next is there’s two things you can do with this next one is is if you’re at month five, your score looks really good. Now’s the time to say, wow. Yeah, it’s just on me, we’re kind of coming to the end of our agreement here. What do you want to do? Do you want to? Or we you want to end it? Or do we want to try to figure out what we need to do next, because we see some things but I want to make sure that you’re on the same page with us. If they’ve graded you really well. They’re open to that conversation. And they love giving you the feedback. If you’ve done well. They’re like, Yeah, we love you. This is great. Now, if you’ve done poorly, you’re probably going to get a No way. We don’t want to work with you at all, but at least you know, a month at a time, then day before?

Lane  17:54

Well, I would think that if you’ve scored poorly, you wouldn’t want to start that conversation of renewal right now. Maybe you say okay, I’ve got 30 days to write the ship before I go back and ask for that renewal.

Rob  18:06

Yeah, that’s the other option, you would wait a little bit, but the likelihood if you’ve gotten this on paper, and you’ve gotten this conversation going, and you can’t course correct fast enough. I don’t know how you’re gonna recover at that point, then we need to talk about, okay, how do we make sure that going forward, our image is protected, right? As the vendor so how do we fix this going back? Let’s look backwards. When we did this wrong? How can we correct that? Now? Is there anything we can do now to fix that? And sometimes they’re gonna, you know, say different things. Sometimes you’re gonna say, well, we want our money back. Well, that’s not gonna happen. Right? So, I mean, more than likely, I mean, there’s something new. So but but you know, if that’s your option, that’s your option. But what are some of your options in getting that corrected, and you can go back and fix those things. So it opens a whole conversation is the point. Here’s where I think this tool has become so powerful for me. I’ve had conversations, where we found out that somebody else was bidding on a job that we were having in the contract was coming to the end. And we didn’t know that they were going to do something else with somebody else or trying to find somebody else what they were doing understand any of that I did this, this, this worksheet with them. And they why I walked out of that room pretty much with the we’re gonna work with you again. And the reason that happened is because they gave us really good scores. And what they did is they said, We’ve never had anybody, any event any of our vendors, and this is the national company. We’ve never had any vendor ever go through this with us. They never score… Let us talk through this scoring thing. Usually we get an email that says how do we do and there’s a one to five or one to ten little checkmarks and that’s it. And that’s useless. We don’t feel like we’re giving them good feedback…we at least… have a conversation with you said okay, so what does that mean? Because well, we also learned part of our problem is we slowed you guys down. It’s not you that was slowing us down. There was us and they admitted that to me. So how how… That’s like gold, right? So now we Okay, so now if we’re going to work together again, they know they need to speed it up or they’re going to admit. And that’s what happened. We worked with them again, they did something and installed it again, they weren’t. That’s us. That’s our problem. Sorry, we’re working on it, we’ll come back to you shortly. And that’s what they did. Because they recognize that was their fault. And they knew that was going to be an issue later for them again, so they prevented that. The other way that this can be used, so Lane, if you if you were to say the size of this company, that you’re that they had this five months in, you’re about to hit the six month size of the company, is it really, really small? Or are there like 20, 30, 40 people there?

Lane  20:34

Yeah, there’s 20…30 it Okay, probably about 30 people.

Rob  20:36

Okay, so when you when you’ve got that many people, what’ll end up happening is, in this conversation, if you’re doing really well, you can say to that person, listen, I know that keeping the expenses in line were really important. And I know that there’s another area of the company that also could use some of our services. Is there any chance that they would want to? I mean, will you ever do an introduction to that? That division? Yeah, yeah, they’ve already rated you really well, on something that you really have done well, with, if it’s a large company, and has divisions in the group that you’re working with a smaller, but they can push you out to that’s happened, I’ve used this tool, sat down with a company, they had 3…4… 5 silos that they had in their company, and several people in each silo. And we were working with one. And in the conversation, we scored really well on certain things. They said, boy, is there any other section or the other division of this company that could they could use these same qualities and skills? And they went, you know, it’s funny, you say that this other division, they mentioned the division, the HR section, they actually have a need for that same thing. And they would love this. And I would say, I don’t suppose you’d like, introduce me to them, would you and they’re like, well, let’s go walk over there and talk to him. And that’s what happened.

Lane  21:51

That’s and that’s great.

Rob  21:52

Yeah, that’s how this tool works. That’s why this this worksheet is so important, because it has so many uses all over the place, we had a client that was coming to the other contract, we weren’t sure how this was going to do. And we weren’t, we knew that we from a service level was good. We just didn’t know how well performance metrics were doing on the other side, because we see some of it… was that their expectations, or whether other expectations that we didn’t know about. And so a full quarter before the end of our agreement, we sat down and did this. And in that quarter, they said, guys, just it’s 10s all across, but they give us top scores on all of them. And the reason they did they said, our numbers and our metrics, we expected to hit X. And in 12 months, we hit that number in 10. And it was like, Oh, that was a good thing. So that’s how this tool gets used. And he said, If you we finished that meeting in that conversation, he basically said, we need to renew and we need to know now how we can add this other division into. So that’s how that conversation went. So just know that this tool, this was worksheet that you can work through can be very, very powerful can be too powerful. Because sometimes you end up getting a little bit more work than you’re ready for. Trust me on that one. So any what what questions come up for you Lane, anything that you can think of that? Somebody might be wondering once we’ve had this conversation?

Lane  23:12

So Rob, is maybe not in this exact same format. But is there a way to cover this before the contract gets signed? You know, you brought up the the client that is expecting a response in two hours, that might be something that I would really want to know, before that order gets signed? Because if that’s really their expectation, either I need to decide if if I even want this contract, or maybe that’s going to impact the pricing

Rob  23:35

Yeah… So that’s a really good question. And it’s a very good question for somebody that’s newer, or a little bit of experience in sales. As you know, you don’t want to bring up anything you don’t have to in sales, right. So how do you do this. So what happens by doing this early, even, my recommendation is to do this after you’ve signed the contract. But before you really get too far into the work, that’s the best time because you’re setting expectations on both sides. And you can share it with the team, you can do all that stuff. That said, if you find that you are running into that problem, where it’s coming up a few times where, boy, response is an issue either on your final job before you finish it out, like you’ve been working with them for a while and responses an issue or early on where people are asking for better responses before you even started, then I would bring it up in your questions during your sales calls. So you would do that by saying something along the lines, and again, before your sale before your contract signed all that kind of stuff. You would say something like sometimes some of our clients have asked us about our response time. And I don’t know that I can’t imagine that being an issue for you. Would you like to talk about that? There’s two things that come up. One is they’re like, Well, what does that mean? What sounds good, right?

Lane  24:47

Exactly.

Rob  24:48

So what’s your answer gonna be? Yeah, I want to talk about that. Right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Then that’s perfect timing. Because if you’ve had this issue come up quite a few times because of either your competitors or you have had your own issues with it. Having that come up? Now is the time. So you say at seriously, they’re like, piqued interest, man, what’s going on? This sounds like a problem. Now you can say, usually we, you know, before I before I kind of get into that, what was your expectation? Like what what do you think good recent reasonable response time is

Lane  25:20

No, that’s that that let’s them come out and say this is this is what I think should be fair. And then you can you can still have that same conversation but yes,

Rob  25:27

Yeah, yes. So if they said then it’s should be 60 minutes in you’re like, oh 60 minutes. Wow. Okay. Like is in one hour, right? Yeah. Wow, wow. What if I can’t do that in 60 minutes? So then you start having those questions. Because, if you’re just like you’re meant just like you while you’re asking the question is, this is the time to have that out, right? This is the time to talk it out and decide what you want to work together or not. That is totally the right mentality until the right attitude and the way to approach it. But I would only do that if it’s an issue and it has come up a few times. That’s a problem. So if it’s not been a problem, and you’re always hitting your deadlines, and also are always hitting the response time, and you’re also running into where your competitors aren’t usually the issue, they are usually hitting their response times too. And if that’s not a problem for people, then, I wouldn’t bring it up, because it’s not so much an issue.

Lane  26:22

Okay, is there a way to use this when you’re not necessarily with a with a client, but outside of your direct client relationship?

Rob  26:30

Well, yeah, that yeah, that kind of reminds me of a another way to use this. Yes, this there is another way. Imagine you just started working with a client, you sit down, you go through all these items that they that they these are typical things that are people want to rate us on, good, bad or otherwise, in that conversation, they say these are the top five that they want to, they want to evaluate you on later. Okay, let’s say that the response time is one of those items, that’s really important. That might be and you know, you can do a really good job with that. That’s one of your, your points of really doing really well and executing. So either early on in your relationship, you could say to them, you know, that’s a common one that comes up. And we’ve had several times where that’s been an issue where they’ve bring up and it’s never been an issue for us as much as people think it would be. So I’m kind of curious, that’s a really important issue, that seems to be an important issue, particularly in my field, seems to be something that’s out there where people are struggling with. And I know this is kind of an odd question. But now that we have this as a ranking, and what’s going on, and what’s important to you, and we’re gonna share that with a team and make sure everybody’s working the same way that we’re supposed to be doing from a timeline standpoint. I’m just curious, you’ve got your top five things listed here. Can you think of anybody else, I don’t mean necessarily in this company, but outside of this company, of your vendors, or other friends that own businesses that around the neighborhood, or in this in the city that you would want to introduce us to because these are the same issues that they run into. And so it kind of becomes this open referral, slight referral, like you’re asking for, but you’re not really like, it’s an indirect referral request. Yeah, kinda like it just like, hey, you know, you might know somebody that has the same qualities that they’re looking for in a vendor, like us or a company like us, I don’t suppose you have anybody that you want to introduce us to. I mean, I’d be happy to talk to him too, just in case it ever comes up. Know that we’re here for that, right. And, at the end, when you’ve actually gotten good scores, listen, you ranked us really well, with response you… but you really did a really good job where we had to meet had some deadlines that we had to hit and we hit those, we ranked us really well with that just took us and so we were really good at basically being in line with what you needed in terms of executing correctly and fitting within your industry and all that kind of stuff and really understanding your business, we pretty much covered all areas of your business. I don’t know if you’ve scored us really well. Can you think of any other company that you guys have worked with vendors or, or sister companies that don’t compete with you guys that you know, somebody that you guys work with together in tandem or, or any other company owners that would want to have somebody like us to help them the same way we helped you guys, it’s just one more step to take to get a referral. And this is why I say this, this, this worksheet is so powerful, because there’s so many different ways you can go in it’s all based on what the customer or the client answers does and needs. Yep. And it’s the best position to be in that that’s what I love about it. It’s like you’re just reacting to what they need.

Lane  29:28

Right? Yeah, absolutely. It’s, it seems very powerful because they are telling you what is important to them. Yep. See, I see. So then you can take this and really grow the relationship in the business in a positive way.

Rob  29:40

Yep, totally. All right. Well, I hope that helps. I would recommend pulling this up going through this exercise with your your client at month five, and I would do the the beginning of it and the end of it, have them reach at the same time. And you know where you stand and more than likely if they they’re really happy. They’re gonna say, what else did you guys see that you want to do? You thought there was something else we could do? What else do you think? We should do and they’re gonna ask, and you’re gonna, you’re gonna have to ask him some questions back. Well, you know, there’s some things but you know, is there anything that comes to mind first for you? And then we can talk about what we see. Let them tell you first because if it’s their idea, that’s what they want. And it’s the same as yours. It’s perfect. The best position ever, so… Yep. All right, cool. Well, I hope that helps everybody else too. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us. It’s a very powerful worksheet that we like to use, and I strongly recommend it. Because what it will do is give you some insights that you didn’t even realize and it will help you grow your business top line and bottom line all the way around and your team is going to operate even better if you have a team working behind you. So So until next time.

Lane  30:40

See ya.

V/O  30:42

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. Slowed Down and Close More.

Rob  31:31

Thanks, as always, for listening today. If you like this podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate it. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at The Slow Pitch. We were mixed today as always by Johnny Polakis. And we were produced by High Gravity Studios, music credits and other notes are in the show notes section on TheSlowPitch.com And we’ll be back with another episode soon.