WEBINAR RECORDING: Selling is Selling? The Awesome Secrets with Edward Zia and David Coster

In November 2013 I was very lucky to be doing a joint webinar with my friend and Sales Mentor David Coster.  He is a very kind man who we both often have great discussions and debates (even though post my days in Military & Law Enforcement I actually started my career in Technical Selling and went into Marketing later on).

I used to be in Industrial Chemist and I wasn’t very good! But I was great at talking, so they put me out on the road selling Industrial Chemicals to massive awesome clients including QANTAS, Royal Australian Airforce and Boeing to name a few.  I started my Post-Graduate in Marketing part-time and after 9 / 11 (where the aviation industry shut down) I found more work as a full time Marketing Manager.

David is quite a strong minded man and when we debate, we often enter extreme forms of thinking to make it interesting. I tend to play “Extreme Marketing Manager who thinks Sales is whatever” and he plays “Extreme Sales Manager who thinks Marketing has no idea”.

Of course we don’t think that and I am the first to say that as a Small Business Owner and Entrepreneur it’s absolutely critical to know how to sell! Feel free to check out our webinar recording and transcript below of our webinar on the topic.

On a funny note, I just lost my voice here due to a cold and speaking all day – so it get’s very funny listening to me later on gasping for air and trying to get my sentences out.

I really hope you get something great out of it and of course if you want to learn more, make sure you check out the AWESOME MARKETING VAULT Online Course by yours truly.

Thank you and God Bless from Edward Zia – Marketing Mentor who lost his voice that day!

http://youtu.be/hQjMdoOXSYs

 

Transcript is right here for you use too:

Edward: Good evening and welcome everyone to our next Excellence Above Coaching webinar. This is Edward Zia and David Coster here. Say hello, David!

David: Hello everybody! Welcome, good to see so many of you here on a Thursday night when you could be shopping.

Edward: Now, we’ve got one hell of a turnout and guess what. I’ve lost my voice, so the funny thing is I can either yell or whisper. There’s no in-between, so laugh at my funny voice. So, I’ve been yelling too much. I’ve been with clients all day and I’ve got a little bit of a cold that turned worse on me, so I just want to say thank you guys. It is so good having you over here. Now, tonight I’m here with my good friend, David Coster. This webinar is being recorded and we’re here to talk to you tonight about the importance of selling and some top secrets. So, everyone’s making fun of me. Now everyone’s saying it’s great that Ed’s not to be talking.

So tonight we’re out for a great one. We’re here to give you some great content to help you out and of course, if you want to hire us, we love being hired. So say hello to the audience, David.

David: Hello again to the audience.

Edward: (Laughs).

David: No, it’s a great turnout. I’m really surprised.

Edward: Yeah, it’s great having you over here on a Thursday night. Now, a lot of you guys have been in our webinars before, so I want to go on, but you guys tell me it was the marketing mentor, love helping people between six and seven a year incomes and my friend, David … What do you do for a living David? Tell the audience.

David: Guys, I’m all about sales. I’m all about what happens after Ed’s done his job and getting maximum results out of the data that he brings you.

Edward: Well, very good and we’re definitely out for this one, so that’s me at the top left if you don’t know me. And here’s the big thing, this is what we’re doing tonight. During tonight’s webinar, I really want you to keep your mind open to the following things.

What … if you got really strong marketing and you got leads coming to you at all, do you really need to sell? It’s just a good devil’s advocate question we’re asking. It’s good to ask what are you selling and you’re also got to think about what you are selling. Are you selling face to face? Are you selling over the phone? And also have … are you selling a particular way and why have you chose that?

So, we’re here to not only teach you some great things, tell you what works, but also if you’ve got a few sacred cows, we’re here to slaughter them, chop them up and barbeque them, aren’t we David?

David: Absolutely.

Edward: (Laughs).

David: You know, and the … the big question is does one size fit all? Can you sell everything you do the one way or is it time to develop multiple channels?

Edward: Precisely. And of course, is there a better way of using your sales time? How you get more of it? And the thing is, is that with my buddy, David I’m obviously in marketing and business mentor. David’s a sales mentor and trainer and we’re very complementary in what we do. We have lacked a little bit, but it takes in what we offer the clients are totally different. I generally operate at a very uh strategic marketing, get things done, what’s happening in your business sort of angle and how do you intend to operate, David?

David: I’m very much on a day to day, take action, get out there and get the dollars in today kind of label.

Edward: Yeah, a great complement, sort of the strategic and tactical and a real marriage in terms of selling, so it’s great to have you all here. Whoa, I skipped one. Go back a little bit. Now the big focus of tonight is we want to give away powerful content. We love being hired as well, so feel free to hire us if you haven’t already (laughs). Uh David, do you like money, David?

David: I love money.

Edward: Yeah, we love it.

David: It makes one sells.

Edward: Exactly. We love money, but only if we do a great job, so feel free to hire us. And look, we’re here to answer your questions tonight, so be it that you’re new and watch the recording, feel free to email anyone of us. So, you’re here live. Please use us. You’ve got us a free consulting time. Hit us with many questions you have and get … when you run any questions in the chat box, put as much as detail as possible, so we know exactly what you’re asking, so we can exactly answer the question the way you want to be, uh answered.

David: Yup.

Edward: So, really good that way. And here’s the big thing. With all our webinars and the work that we do, we overwhelm you deliberately. You know, we like hitting up the clients of the kitchen sink and the reason is, is that I used to panic all the time and get overwhelmed all the time, so don’t worry about a thing. Just take one bite at a time and enjoy the block of chocolate.

And the big thing is that David and I have worked very hard. I’ve actually broken 20,000 consulting hours now which is quite scary and I’ve seen a lot of stuff and I work with hundreds of clients across town and imagine David, you’ve must of worked thousands of hours as a sales profession, haven’t you?

David: Directly with a bunch of them with clients, I’m probably at about 30,000 hours over the last 15 years.

Edward: Wow, there you go. He’s beaming out of the water, so it … it’s great and what we’re trying to do is obviously tell you the real stuff that means business for you. We’re not going to tell you everything. We’re going to give you as much as we can and at least set you in the right direction, so you can massively improve the sales in your business which is what we’re all about.

And here’s the big thing, sales and marketing and business, it’s mostly an art, not a science. You’re gonna to make mistakes and this is the thing I say to everyone on our web class. If you make … if you made mistakes, now is my invitation for you to forgive yourself. Don’t worry about what’s happened behind you. Now is the new moment at a new chance for you to totally change your life and go take it to the next level. You got anything to say on that topic, David?

David: Absolutely. Look, I started off in sales with probably the worst sales call you’ve ever had and two years later, I topped the profession in my area. So, it is possible to recover from any mistake and learn and that’s the main thing is to start where you are today. We … We’ve got a plan. Don’t be afraid to ask questions that are off topic. If that’s what you need tonight, we’ll answer the questions as they come up.

Edward: Exactly and well put. Couldn’t put it better myself and that’s the thing about successful marketing is small business. Small business marketing and definition is making up is as more awesome in helping people sell more stuff and also making sure your voice works the whole webinar.

David: (Laughs).

Edward: (Laughs) So, I’m really trying hard here. And what we always say in marketing and sales is think about tonight. Make notes tonight and what you learned from this webinar, make notes and decide to try something new in your business tomorrow. And we also say test and measure. You might come up with three ideas from this webinar and two of them are crap, but one of them can make you a lot of money, so it’s all test and measure. Come up with great ideas. Test on the market. If you don’t get results, stop using it. If you get results, do more of it and back up the truck and fill up your boots. That’s really the market driven way of doing things.

And here’s the big thing. You guys know me. You know the things that I do. My friend David Coster here, I took this photo of David with my iPad. I think David, because you lost a lot of weight since then, haven’t you? You’ve lost about 20 kilos, haven’t you?

David: I’ve been … been working hard to lose it. I recommend that as a way of going and carrots. I cannot say enough about carrots.

Edward: Oh, Jose complimenting David’s pic. Thank you, Jose. What a lovely man – do you love Jose?

David: I do.

Edward: Ha ha ha, thank you Jose. Yeah and uh like David in the range of point of view, I actually met David a few years ago. Actually, don’t laugh, I actually did a course of life coaching and um …

David: So did I.

Edward: Yeah, even though … even though I’m a business marketing guy and David and I met and we just clicked off. We remained friends and over time David’s been an amazing corporate salesman and what I liked about David is that even if the sky is blue, David will ask why and disagree with you. He’s a natural contrarian. I know, I know he sort of messes with my head all the times, but what I always say to people is I like people which in a nice professional way always challenge the status quo. They’re always asking questions. They’re always trying to understand the mechanism.

I think it’s really good having … being negative is not recommended. I don’t like negative people, but being critical is being … is positive … being positively critical is an amazing skill and it really helps people in that way. So, I think from that point of view, David’s good and has some very, very good practical skills. And before I let David take over and drink some hot tea to resurrect my voice is that here’s my take on personal selling.

In my … after my days in the government, I actually worked for a few years doing industrial sales before I went marketing full time when I was about 24. So I only spent a few years in full time sales and then I was in marketing and one of the big things that I learned was that when I was in the industrial game especially, I knew sales people that would make over 30, 300K a year as employees and they didn’t even have a degree.

It was one of the most amazing things. I think my personal selling is that personal selling is an amazing well … well paid profession. I … when I was um … so when I was 23, this is like I don’t know, 12 years ago, I was earning like 70K a year plus the company car when I was like 23, because I was selling. It was just amazing and my wage actually dropped for a sure while. We went marketing until it picked up again.

And the big thing is that sales is an art form. You may never say is … there’s are some scientific principles, but it’s definitely an art form. Would you agree with that, David?

David: Absolutely.

Edward: Why is it an art form, David and not a science?

David: The main thing with it is, is you need to know a lot. It’s an interaction between your sales knowledge, who you are as a person, who the customer is as a person, and what it is you’re selling. And with that complexity, you just need to be an artist about it, so you can’t go in with the set script, a set mindset. Otherwise, you’ll have a call very similar to my first and if you don’t mind it, I’ll just … I’ll just explain that to everybody.

Edward: Tell the story, yeah.

David: Fantastic. So guys, I … I got my first sales job here in Australia working on phones and I had sold myself to the employers as somebody really good. So you can imagine when my … my first call comes. Um, the whole room got silent. And I pick up the phone and I go, “Hi, is John Smith there?” And his secretary answered the phone and goes, “No.”

At this point, I haven’t prepared anything for the secretary, so the words that come out of my mouth were, “Hibit the … he … he … he… uh uh.” And I forgot all English, immediately hung up the phone and sat there and thought, I need to rethink what I’m doing. That was my first sales call. A year later, I was earning twice what my manager was earning.

Edward: Wow and that’s amazing and I … I’m looking forward to David telling a story verse in the webinar. The big thing is, is that as we tell our stories and share our experiences, please don’t just listen to what we say and take this Gospel but use it to challenge your own thinking and use it to stimulate ideas and a really good outcome is write one to three actions that you’re going to take as a result of this webinar tonight. So learning for the sake of learning is not going to help you. Learn something new and apply it tomorrow and that will give you a great return on the time that you’re investing with us tonight.

Okay and we love seeing people get results whether you pass money or not, we love seeing people getting results. Now, my marketing take on personal selling and also in my business, this is the way I personally look at it and David’s going to look at it very differently, so David and I are going to give different and at times purely, purely, purely conflicting views.

Now, I got a few questions coming. We’re going to answer them in a second. I’m just going to go through a few of these few points. When it comes to personal selling, to me it’s about connecting to people of integrity. It’s about selling an awesome product. It’s about people. It’s about being straight up with people, telling people the facts, the good, bad, and the ugly, so people can take in all the facts and make a decision to circumstances.

And my view is if I’m selling something, let’s say it’s my own consulting services, well let’s say, I’m advising a client on how to sell, I’m all about, you know, I want the client to know everything, the good and the bad of the product and the costs straight up. So, now you know what’s good. And when I advise clients too, I advise the same thing. You got an office works. If you buy a pen, you know how much it’s going to cost you. You know exactly what it takes and Transparency integrity is a big part of selling.

I’ve got a few great questions. We got uh, from uh, Murich. Murich’s asking what is your take on party plans. Now, I’m going to have a shot at this and get David’s interpretation. It depends what you’re saying. I assume you’re asking from the point of view as selling and that’s the most you label marketing selling top of things. Now personally, I think multi-level marketing concepts can be very good. I’m not going to have a shot at the industry.

But when it comes to the selling of, let’s say some of the party plans, the criticism that I make is that they lack integrity, I think the products are great, but some of the people selling lack integrity because they grossly exaggerate commercial returns possible. Okay. And you know, you have people that say you know, you can earn six figure income by the end of the year and it’s like … it … it just doesn’t stack up that way, you know. Maybe one out of a thousand might, but it really happens to me.

They’re not being upfront. They’re giving you a false expectation. What’s your answer, David?

David: Murich, my major thing with party planning is that it comes down to the product being solved, so uh, two examples that I … I like to use, one is the candle market and the other is Tupperware. Now with the candle market, it’s a luxury item. It’s not used by everybody every day. So I … and so with the regards to products like that, the luxury items I tend to find that they put a lot of effort in for a low return.

Other items like your Tupperware where everybody uses it every day and it’s uh, uh a good quality product better than what is in the supermarket in a lot of cases, then I can see the value in it, because they’re always bringing out new solutions that meet a new demand. So when microwaves first came out, Tupperware were the first people to have microwavable plastic uh containers.

So to me, it’s … if you’re ret and you’re earning lots and lots of uh, commission directly from selling and … and doing a party plan and people are coming back, so you’re holding multiple parties with similar people, it’s a good business. If you’re finding that you’re struggling to get parties and the business is kind of rebuilding your network, oh, I would question if you put into it from a sales perspective and then look to maybe go as a professional network or rather than a professional product seller.

Edward: Yeah, exactly. And … and we’re going to jump out of selling for the moment and talk more, probably more about finance. Because at the end of the day, you can be really, really good at selling, but your product is crap and it’s not suited to the market or there’s something wrong if you service or let’s say your company is a bad reputation.

Alternatively you could have a great product and you’re not selling it correctly and you’re missing the mark, so we’re talking more about personal selling today, but there’s a whole business behind it. So selling is, oh, it’s an important function, but it’s just one function of a company. Okay. So, there’s a lot of other things to consider, so you know, um, I hope that answered your question, but feel free to keep them coming through.

David: Yup.

Edward: And here’s the thing that I like about David Coster’s take. There’s a lot of things that I like about David and the thing is I’ll say it straight up, I actually don’t agree with everything that David says.

David: (Laughs).

Edward: David said some stuff which I just think is plainly wrong and incorrect.

David: (Laughs).

Edward: And I’ve got plenty of examples to prove it. David equally speaking also has plenty of examples to justify why he’s correct. Okay. Um, and but the … David is … is an ethical kind man and to me, even though I don’t agree with him on everything, to me the fact that we have two different points of view and we come together and we discuss it very professionally, to me, both heights are understanding, so that’s why tonight, we’re going to really give you those two perspectives. And of course, please send us questions and more questions make our jobs much better.

So you know without further ado, I want to give it away to David Coster, so David Coster, the floor is yours. Yeah (claps).

David: Fantastic. Thank you very much Ed. Guys, I’d … I’d like to start with saying a difference between um, marketing selling from my point of view and I’m sure I’m going to get Ed to jump in at some point. Um for me, the cutoff point is what we call leads. Your marketer, if he’s doing his job right, you’re getting lots and lots of people walking up to your door having a look at what you’re doing. And that’s where I start calling my lead. A salesperson will take over at that point. Now in marketing, they will … you’ll talk to your marketer. Your marketer will say look we’ll get these people in. You’ll get in one in ten buying.

A salesperson will look at those ten people coming in and go, there are two people who are almost ready to buy but they have questions. They’re not going to ask if I don’t approach them. And my job as a salesperson has always been to approach the other nine people who haven’t handed money over the counter and just talk to them. Have a conversation and find out what it is that’s holding them back. Now, the idealistic two which gives you a much bit of return on your marketing dollar.

Edward: Yeah, I don’t think it’s a very good take. You know, it’s um, there is … (laughs) …

David: (Laughs).

Edward: Now on a side note, Connie, a friend of mine … she’s goes ha ha, there’s something wrong with my … finds it’s just Ed’s breaking voice. Yeah, I know. I’ve got a … I’ve got a really bad cold and I could barely, so that’s funny. I’m gonna sound like a side bull of something but … yeah look, my take on that one is um, yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. I think you know, uh, uh, when you sort of div … marketing sales overlap quite a bit, but just by the professions for the moment.

You know, marketing is generally about image, pricing, and brand and getting people as excited as possible (laughs) uh when they rock up and of course, selling is to me, at least in this context is that either that telephone or even email or face to face interaction which gets people from interested to actually converting and um, you know, and I’m … what I’ve seen is that and this is … more talking in the retail to be a marketing manager, a medium-sized bakery café franchise. And what would happen was that I could come with the best promotion ever, but the staff didn’t endorse it, it would just tip over and then the … and the operations will blame me which was just great. So yeah there’s always a bit of a tension between sales and marketing companies, isn’t it, David?

David: Yeah, absolutely. You know, we’ll have marketers do an amazing promotion and if you see that the sales staff don’t get in behind it and go up and ask the questions, it will fold flat. But equally the sales staff will be signed with one marketing campaign done for a particular reason and the … the marketing people will go off on a completely different track. The two have different responsibilities and there’s a bit of clash eye grip because we both see the customers.

Edward: Yeah and what makes it interesting is in a small business, in a big company you have a sales department, a marketing department, usual and … and … and quite often, usually marketing either reports to sales or in some companies sales reports to marketing or both just report to the CEO and they both have equal political power.

David: (Laughs).

Edward: But quite often in a small business, it’s you. You’re the salesman and the marketer and you just have to suck it, you know, and … and … and that’s the humor of it. Um, so yeah, so now really good David. I think it’s going great and get your questions through.

David: Fantastic. Okay, so this is my take on selling. As Ed said, yeah, it’s about values. Yeah. So you know, it’s about the values you have as a person and you have as a … as a business. So, what is it that you do the best? How do you see yourself in terms of are you all about the money and the deal, because we’ve all seen businesses that are out there. Are you always about the lowest price? Are you about community spirit? Um, are you about making sure that it’s a win-win situation with you and your customer at every time.

Now obviously are endorsed having the best values, the ones that create a win-win for you and your … your customer, um and look towards long term profitable business, because as a salesperson, one thing I learned um, particularly selling over the phone as I did for a long time very rarely does the company make money off my first sale. The cost of me calling at all of those people or contacting all of those people to get that first sale on a call basis would generally be more than the company got back on that first sale, so if we didn’t create a relationship in ongoing business, the company would have gone broke.

Edward: Yeah and that’s a very good interpretation, because um, what we say marketing is all about lifetime value. So if you’ll, let’s say um, like in my business on average, people stay with me for about a year. So let’s say I’m charging someone $400 bucks a month. If I get him as a client, man, that’s like $400 bucks. What’s really important in selling is considering that lifetime value and also as you do a good job and you deliver a great product that’s honest, you get referrals from that person too, so it’s great to really keep that idea.

David: And you can sort of say how a good sales thing will reinforce what marketing is all about and it’s important that you keep yourselves staying in line with your values at all time. Now although, I said it’s about flexibility, you’ve um, heard my first sales call and that was definitely not about flexibility. I was not prepared for anything other than a straight line conversation. So, you’ll see a lot of people and you’ll be the same like I was when I started out, you’ll have a script and that script will be very tight initially, but what you’ll find over time is you’ll throw the script away, because you know what you’re benefits are.

You know the key points that you have to mention on a call, but you prepare to let the customer drive the conversation more and more. And the more you do that, the more they engage. So, it’s a journey. Don’t worry about the fact that you know, you’ll sit beside someone, I’ll pick up the phone and have this amazing conversation about standing in front of the client. Up front, you will get there, but you do have to do the miles to practice. And that’s when the mindset comes in, because as you’re making calls, as you’re seeing people, you’ll hear the word no more than you’ll hear the word yes. It’s just the fact of business and one of the things we always say in sales is every single no you get is one step closer to that yes and you just have to do the yards.

Edward: Yeah, very … very well put. And I couldn’t agree with you more and I’ve got no voice. So yeah, you got the next line all right, ha ha ha.

David: (Laughs) Fantastic. Okay. So, this is how I base myself success in my sales training. Um, there were four key box that I always thought mattered. Your product will serve as what it is you’re doing and it differs. We’ll go through a couple of slides to explain that a bit later. Your knowledge and your experience; now, I don’t know, some of you have been selling and marketing for a number of years and you’ve got some good strategies in place already and you may just be looking for that little extra edge.

Some of you may be starting out and looking for, I guess, the words to be able to look and uh, build that knowledge and experience around. And that’s where most people stop with their sales training. They … they get a script. They know their product and they go out. But if you really want to get good, the bottom two boxes really count. You have to know your customer and by that, I mean um, your customer has a personality. They’re human being. Some uh, like myself, very high energy, very driven, um but very focused. So when they come in to see you, there’re not interested in talking about you know, their weekend, they’re interested in about the technical aspects of the … the inquiry.

Others like Ed are a bit more social and so Ed would relish a conversation that built a connection um, at every stage. And so, sorry Ed …

Edward: Yeah and I think that’s a really good insight and um, one question that we got. It was from Sebastian actually. What would be a professional way to keep in touch with a client when you close the job? I think it’s a great question. It comes down to knowing your product, knowing your customer, and um, personally, what I think when it comes to you know, contact the customers, use that as a great. It depends on the job might be … you might check in every couple of months, a month after the job. Use sales versus having it checked six months later and that way you might get more work or referral. Uh, what do you think, David?

David: Yeah, I think it’s a fantastic question uh, Sebastian. It ties in exactly what we’re saying know your customer, because you know, I use four basic personality types. There are possibly … possibly more and there are different ways in looking at them, but if you know your customer, you’ll choose the way of keeping in touch with them that’s appropriate. Support it. Invite him out for a coffee chat is a great way of doing it.

For me, keeping me up to date with what’s going on in the business, so yeah, we’ve … maybe we’ve arranged to build a boat together for example. Yeah, and what you can then do is keep me up to date with where the progress of the boat is because that’s what interests me. With the other two, you know, it’ll be about family and relationships or just more technical aspects and making sure they are aware of what’s happening.

So different personality types will have different ways to keep in touch, but that’s the idea. Um, and the fourth box is all about you. Now the same way that your customers and personality and natural things so do you. The deal with that is knowing yourself allows you to re … to realize how you naturally will react to certain personality types. Myself being very driven, focused, and high energy, I naturally have a difficulty understanding the people who are more relaxed and family orientated. Um, you know, so when I run across someone who’s talking about their children, about a relaxing barbeque on the weekend, and um, organizing family events, I have to put extra effort in with that customer more so than I would with others.

Edward: And beautiful inside and I’ve lost my voice (laughs).

David: Fantastic. So what is the time Ed? It is now … it is now 7:30 and this is the officially the day show. So Ed … Ed, we may not be hearing from him again. So, what happens as you start with the targets you have looking for um, how much income you need to run the business. Now, you’ve got an accountant I’m sure with them. You’ve already been discussing what you need in the business in terms of you know, you’ve got costs, you’ve got things that you need to run a business. You’ve got things in your own personal life.

That side of things gives you a target for the income you need. Some of it will come in through natural marketing and now you’re going to have the fun part. The actual part of approaching this to customers and getting some more money out of them. And I like to look at it a number of ways. You have hot leads. These are people you’ve done business with before. They are amazing. Um, and most people I know don’t go back to them. They don’t build that relationship and so they do one unique piece of business and they haven’t started talking to them about the nicks and what you can do for them before the first of it is finished. And yet, these people know you, they love you, and they trust you with their money and life.

So, one sales I would definitely go is if you’re already doing business with someone before you finish that job, start talking to them about the next thing. They will love you for it.

Edward: Yeah and I think it’s the thing and we even say as a marketer you know, if it going cold and building our relationships at work whereas if they’ve already got uh, uh, a relationship with you and your company, it’s a lot easier and much faster.

David: So using your hot leads is like bombing. So you need to pull out your list of existing customers and look at the last time you contacted them and the last time that you guys um, did business together. And then you need to contact them and always have a deal or reason for calling, but a lot of the time that’s just a superficial way of saying, hey I needed to touch base with you and rebuild that relationship.

The next … yes, there will be a recording. The next is obviously warm selling and that’s where people have contacted you with interest. So this is where your marketing has created results. Um, this is where um, you’ve got a lead off the website of a brochure or anything else, so they’re already interested in what you’re doing which is a great thing. Um, so from warm selling, you don’t have to put as much effort in to build the relationship they’re already talking.

And this is where the next part and it’s really about hunting, so it’s a different sort of behavior um, cold calling. And a lot of businesses when they talk to me about selling haven’t done anything with their hot leads and found and looked after them appropriately and they want to go straight to cold calling. I would advise against it. Get the hot leads going first. Get the money out of your marketing you’ve already done and then come and talk to me about cold calling, and be it, because that’s where you’ll put a lot of effort in for the smaller results.

Edward: Yeah and I really like the insight as well. Uh, okay, take over David (laughs).

David: (Laughs) Okay, Ed’s been doing really well. Tonight, he came in with only that much voice and he’s been using a product called Vocalized and it’s got him through this far. So as a salesman, I will tell you, Vocalized works. It’s a wonderful product.

Edward: What I’m trying to get out here which is important is that it’s always good to start those people that are most interested in you. And I always say as a marketer, you know, when you start people that are called, some you have to, but it’s always low return. The people that want you, you get much, much higher … a much higher return. It’s great stuff.

David: Yeah. I’m 100% with you there, Ed. And it’s about using the right tools, so if you’re going to cold call, we need to look at the right tool. You know, you got a few there and I’ll just pick a few. My favorite one is um, people in professions who want to do a sale or book an appointment in the first call and it’s like I want to do a whole sales pitch, get somebody involved over the phone and then sign them up as a client. And then in fact what I find works best for a lot of businesses um, particularly professions or service businesses is what’s called appointment setting.

It’s a really short call where you just go and you say, “Hi, do you have an interest for this product? Do you have an interest for this service? Great! We now need to have a chat? How about you come into my office or I come into yours. We’ll set an appointment”

And you call them before you go to make sure obviously that they’re there, but you don’t discuss or try and seek business or even price because you don’t want they want. You’re about to go out and have a relationship building meeting.

And for all of your services, your businesses, it’s really important you look at appointment settings um, first and it’s the simplest outbound call you can do. So, rather than trying to do the whole sales pitch and get everything that’s unique about you over the phone, you need to say, “Are you interested? Great. Come and meet me.”

Edward: Yes and I think it’s well um, very, very insight and to me it about breaking down the process and just doing one part at a time.

David: Mm-hmm (Affirmative). So other things that I’ve done. I’ll get to cold calling selling last because it’s the one that everybody really um, spends the most time doing, but they tend to forget powerful tools um, for customer connection such as surveys. Calling somebody up and asking for their opinion particularly if that number’s been with you before gives you a lot of feedback very quickly and it’s a powerful way of building uh, genuine concern with the … (laughs) genuine concern with your customer.

There’s a lot of concern for coordinating his voice here. I am going to keep working. Lead generation is a simple way of calling out and saying, again, are you interested? Can I have some details? Who’s the appropriate person to contact short sharp thing to do? And obviously, doing the competition and calling someone out with the idea of a competition, you can also link that into lead generation and surveys as well.

When we get into cold call selling, this is where you need to really put the effort and do the preparation, so I would get a sales leader in a sales team. I would get a brief from a customer. The person I had to do from a sales perspective was a brief apart to look for what was unique about that kind and we would say, these are the features of what they do. So this was actually things like um, they have credit card or reward points on the credit card, I’ll just use that. Everybody’s probably seen a credit card in their life.

That’s the feature. The advantage of a flight is you get to go somewhere you like within reason. The advantage of points is that you have a number of belches and things that you get for free for doing something you’re were going to do like spend money on groceries. The advantage to you as a customer which is a language I would then talk in is those reward points are flexible. You can choose them for travel. You can choose them for groceries. You can choose them for products. But all four doing what you’ve always done.

The benefit for the flight is you don’t always want … uh, you don’t always put money aside to get away. But with this flight on the credit card, you can guarantee you’re going to get one triple way to give yourself a break and that is important.

So, when you’re talking to customers in a cold selling business, you’re always talking in a language of what’s important to them and how it benefits them. Um, and we call that an FAB technique and it’s something we can teach and work with you. I might even put something together for people later, yeah?

And using these tools, you now have a bit of flexibility for how you’re going to approach it, so if you’re doing a direct product, I love cold calling. I’ve done a lot of it and sold a lot of products. I’ve done it for the you know, those wonderful advertisements on TV, editorials. I’ve done those. I’ve done credit cards. I’ve sold fridges. It’s been a lot of fun, but of course, style counts too.

Edward: And … and … and coming out from a … a marketing point of view, it’s all about having a great product, ha ha ha

David: Fantastic and Ed’s right. If you’ve got a rubbish product, you’re just not going to get the reputation to survive. Oh come on Ed, you can’t just get away with typing. They’ve got to hear it. Okay, but you know, if you don’t … if you don’t have a good product the first your marketing guy is going to tell you to go back, we’re not going to talk selling.

But here, style counts. Now people, everything’s about relationship based. A lot of you will hear about selling is what they call relationship basis. Let’s go out and make a friendship with someone. Get really close. And the market as we’ll talk about is a big thing. It’s not the only way. Although it is a main one we’re using at the moment. Now depending on your product, you may need to use a different way.

Fear based on negative selling is a favorite of the insurance industry. The first thing they do is talk to you about the cost of losing your loved one. The cost of losing your house. What would happen to your children if you weren’t there to support them? Create the fear. Now, they can come in and give you a solution.

And that works very well on the insurance industry. You may have a product that requires it, so you may find as I do with accountants, fear a little bit of fear by selling is a great thing. Yeah, what happens if the Tax Office knocks on your door and you haven’t had your tax return done professionally?

Edward: Yeah, and even the world’s top religions often use that technique. Now what happens when you die? Where are you going to go? That sort of thing.

David: Oh, I hadn’t thought about that. Come here. Chat soon. Now okay. Reverse selling is … is exactly that. I go to you and I … I initially seem to offer it to you and as soon as you show any interest, I go, “Mmm, maybe it’s not for you.”

Ed, I’m sorry but you just can’t play that computer game tonight.

Edward: But I want it!

David: Exactly. But you know what, I don’t think you can afford it. The reality is that if you play that computer game tonight, your business is going to suffer a little.

Edward: I was playing it last night.

David: I get that. So you can see how this works. And there were all sorts of things. The trick is when you’re choosing the style for your sales prices is to make sure it’s congruent with your business values. So, there’s no point going negative selling if your … if your … one of your values is about win-win, because uh, with the negative selling technique, the customer may not always win.

Fantastic. Ed, if we could go to the next slide please? Fantastic. But we’ve done the sale, because obviously, we’ve got there. Now it’s all about not leaving money on the table and this is a part that businesses often fail on. They’ve got the initial sale. It’s got us $400 per … per hour. Sorry, I’m just borrowing it from earlier. Um, and now engaging him on a monthly basis, but what else could have happened? Well, it could’ve added on additional services for me.

As you do, I mean, I … I use the example of selling cameras here. I … I sold them for a while for a company in. You buy your base model camera and you can then add services on. We call it cross selling. I could add a case. I could add a tripod. I could add extra lenses and all of these increases the value of that one contact or I cannot sell a bigger camera with a bigger lens with a more megapixels. I’m not sure what they mean anymore, but they’re there. And then there’s an even bigger one with even more megapixels and a bigger lens. And it’s just goes on, so that’s your up selling and you can do both.

Edward: Would … would you like fries with that?

David: Oh my favorite up sells of all time. Unfortunately, McDonald’s have stopped that. “Would you like fries with that” was one of the most famous up sells. Now they included in the um … in the bundle and we’ll talk about bundles soon; the parabundling and I really think they should be going, “Would you like an apple pie with that” because I can’t think the last time anyone sold me an apple pie at McDonald’s.

And so to give you an idea when they did the “Would you like fries with that,” the average profit because of fries are ridiculously cheap to make, the average profit per sale from McDonald’s went up 25%. So the cost of the burger verses the profit on a burger is much smaller than it is on the fries, so you get your dollar fries and they would make a lot more money.

Edward: And even in cafes … I’ll type this one out.

David: (Laughs) Yeah, even in cafes. Fantastic, exactly. Selling the muffin, the cake can make a difference. One thing that I would like to say here and it’s one of my favorite up sells that people don’t realize in restaurants in on the wine menu. If you ever buy wine, most people will take the second least expensive. So if you’ve got three bottles you’ve given a choice of, you don’t want your date to think you’re cheap, so you don’t buy the cheapest bottle of wine. You buy the second cheapest and you know, the other one just looks really good on the menu and hardly selling.

What most people don’t realize is that restaurants hacking up on this now deliberately sell the cheapest wine in the second slot. So they make more profit of the second most expensive. How can small be better? Let’s go to the next line.

So obviously on the up sell and the cross sell one, the idea is to have extra services there, so um, when you’re doing your marketing, what other things naturally come with it? Ed? Sorry, if you want to type it in so good. But with your marketing, could you also do a uh, uh, sales training event? Could you also um, do a bit of training for people? Yeah, could you have a more involved marketing process? Could you then take over the marketing for a company, so that’s your up selling to the point where they just walk away and say it leave it all in my hands. So you can offer more hours or more consulting. But I’m always about offering assign hours and adding more in so you get more profit, because at the end of the day, if it’s always about hours, then you’ve only got a limited supply of those. We’ve got an unlimited supply of manuals. You’ve got an unlimited supply of CDs, DVDs and recordings such as this.

So when you’re looking at the extra products for your business, you do want the things that don’t involve too much more of your time. It’s about increasing profit rather than increasing effort. Fantastic.

So moving on to pipelines and planning your sales, because as you’ve seen with the previous two slides, you’ve got a range of techniques that can be taught you to earn selling and you’ve got a range of sales and combining them gives you a lot of options. And different sorts of sales will have different conversion rates, so when I’m cold calling and doing a simple product, one cold one sale. It’s a very simple pipeline. So a pipeline is the way in which the sale is constructed whereas an appointment setting, I had my first call and my first conversion rate on how many appointments per call I set.

So, if I make 100 calls and get 10 appointments, that’s a 10% conversion rate, but then the next step is poor Ed has to go out and speak to the client and he has that one hour coffee chat. And it might convert at 50%, so one in two of those, so now one in twenty of the people I called are moving onto the next process. And after that coffee chat and he’s converted and he’s got them in, after the first months of business, he may find that he’s got a 95% conversation rate. Now that’s great, but it does mean that you know, you’ve got to work backwards on your pipeline to plan your numbers so that you get the right result at the end.

And the pipelines is definitely about constructing based on who you’re selling to, what you’re selling, and the size of the sales, so for myself, if I’m selling a product at $10, I’m going to make a lot of those sales in a short time. If I’m selling houses at … as an investment option at $250,000 or half a million dollars, I may only do one or two of those a month.

Those differences mean that your pipelines need to be constructed differently and this is where you start to get control of your sales prices by having and knowing what you’re doing and each interaction with a customer, you can then group them into appropriate pipelines and you can then start to look at the profit based on each pipeline. You can start to look at um, the if it involved any pipeline and you can start to put your effort into the areas that make you the most money and that’s the same with product, services, accountants, lawyers, Edward?

Edward: Exactly. All are different.

David: Hmm, but also so are customers. You can group them and in that grouping, you then get efficiency so you can say I’m going to appointment to see these people. I’m going to cold call these people. These are the ones I must warm call every single week to touch base and keep that relationship going and these are the guys who are quite happy for me to call every month and by making sure that you … you then do it, you can pull it into your plan, you can plan your time efficiently and you can get maximum results at your sales times.

I haven’t done a slide for sales time, so do you mind if we just take a slide in? Sales times is something that every single business needs to do properly. If you do not do a set amount of sales time every week regardless of whether you’re busy or not, what will happen is you’ll get a uh, a delayed reaction. In the weeks in which you do sales, the weeks afterwards, you’ll get busier. When you get busy and you choose not to do sales or selling, you’ll find that you get less leads in the following weeks. So your business starts to look like the sea, very wavy.

If you’ve chosen to have control of your business, it means you need to dedicate a certain amount of sales time and a good time for your clients, so you don’t dictate when it’s a good time to sell, your clients do. And with that, that discipline of insisting that you do it no matter how busy you are, you will find that you have an even flow of business. You don’t panic anymore about whether or not your business is going to make you money.

Edward: A very good insight indeed. Can you guys just let you know, can you guys hear me whispering?

David: Please, please let Ed know if you can hear him whispering. He’s quite … quite impressed with that. So um, Ed, we’re now, as you said, bundling for business. Fantastic. Everyone can hear. They are quite amused, Ed.

Edward: Thank you everyone. I’m glad that you can hear me, so I’m going to sell like I’m whispering.

David: Fantastic. So on this slide you can see some businesses and you can see straight away it makes sense to bundle for some. Optus is a sensible one as they have broadband services, broadband TV and phone, all about communication, but it’s a great way of getting you into for that extra product.

I know most of us will have a home phone, maybe not so much anymore, but if you get a discount on your broadband, why not have one? If you also pick up internet TV with it, you see, it’s lots at and they get more money, more profit. So bundling for the idea of using services that are very strong to add additional services in where you may not be the strongest to lock out the competition works really well.

Edward: And this … this is also where we can build good channel partners and relationships and business. Did you want to speak a bit about that, David?

David: Okay. Not quite where it’s going, but we’ll go there. So hannel partners uh, really important as well, so it may or natural match being different ends of the spectrum. So we could work very well together. Having setting up all the strategy for the company and then getting me into take over the sales team and run to get the best results. As a group that would mean for the company that they then maximize the intern. Yes, Luke.

Coca-Cola doesn’t bundle at all despite their product. They will discount and that’s another option that you have with different, products and services. With products, a lot of the time people lead with discounts. And making it cheaper, particularly at their high end of consumables, but then you have things like that. Have you heard of that, Ed?

Edward: No, I haven’t.

David: Fantastic. What’s a something worth?

Edward: I don’t know about $3 bucks of something.

David: Fantastic. If you’re buying it at home, but what’s it worth to a trades person.

Edward: I have no idea.

David: Would you believe that I can sell the same something to a trade’s person in a particular package for ten times the cost I can sell it to you.

Edward: How does that work?

David: I sell it to him on the value, so when I sell it to him in … in a nice package, it looks better. It looks better and it looks high quality. Mostly based around the packaging, I don’t know which marketing guys order that, but the idea is that he’s going to be using that to build a house where I’m going to leave it sitting in the toolbox. To me, it’s worth $3. To him, if it … if it doesn’t do the job, he loses money, so it needs to be high quality and he’s prepared to pay for that.

Edward: This what comes down to, having a very good professional image that is strong brand so you look professional in premium and that helps your sales very nicely, doesn’t it David?

David: It does. You cannot do well in sales without a good marketer. It’s simple so you’ll find often if you don’t have a good … a good marketer, the salesperson will take over that role and con … you know, conversely if the sales team doesn’t do their job, the marketing person will push simply because we are … we are working together. Fantastic.

Other things that bundle well is obviously food. Oops, sorry. How are we going for time? Sorry, Ed. Good? Fantastic.

So, you know, you’ve got your services, whereas it’s said, they’re more about strategic alliances and bundling, although occasionally you can find part of a service that can be bundled like a product. So if I’m an accountant doing tax returns even and bank statement even though they have a service, they can be treated like a product if you market them properly. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you.

This is something I talked about at a … sorry, the ten minute chats in North Sydney recently and I feel quite strongly about this. At the moment, there’s a lot of people, marketers and others saying to us, should we give free advice? So the idea of getting a client in and sitting down and talking to them for an hour at a time and giving them a taste of our service.

Now it’s something that I believe that has value at certain points in time. If you’re the only person in the market who’s doing it, then it becomes a point of difference and a sales advantage. If everybody in the market is doing it, then it becomes something where others, are able to take advantage of that by dipping, so you’ll find a person who will come to you for advice and into the next person for advice and the next person. And by the time, if you use three free hours from three professionals which is obviously not getting paid for, they pretty much got the answer they wanted and … and move forward without engaging anyone.

So free advice is something I say look at the market. If everybody’s doing it, it’s time to stop and what you see with the market lead is now is that they’re choosing to say, “Look, I don’t mind giving you free advice on the basis that you engage me. So by all means come in and have a chat and I’ll give you some of my services.”

Now, I normally charge them out at $300, $400 an hour, but at the end of this, you choose not to engage to me, I’ll give you a discount, you just pay $50 and that’s a way of recovering some of the cost, but more important, people who aren’t serious, don’t come and that’s important to you because your time in this free advice situation is really important. You don’t want to be during the day where you do four hours of your time on free advice without a return.

Edward: So David, when it comes to selling your services, how do you make an intangible tangible when it comes to selling?

David: Fantastic. There’s a number of ways of … of doing it, so what it means by intangible. I have a service. I’m an accountant. Uh, I have a service on my sales advisor. It has a service. He’s a marketer. All of these things are extremely knowledge based, but it’s not a lot yet you should carry out with you. o the tangible is where you have a physical product and that’s what I recommend you have a report. Not in an email, but you actually print it out, put it in a folder, and send it to them. Something physical that they can show that they’ve got for the money they’ve spent.

So, what I’ve done with my clients is we have a meeting, I give them some advice. I actually have customizable documents that are then, say, oh we’ve talked about a particular sales prices. Great, I’ll add that in. I’ll put their name in the front. Put it up. Put it in a nice cover and I send it to them. They can now start adding that to their library. It makes my intangible advising service something that they have immediately available at all times. And I recommend that for anybody who’s in the intangibles.

For those of you who are selling tangible things, you’re immediately able to, give somebody something physical. And the funniest thing when I was cold calling was how quickly we got the … the tangible out to them, because you can imagine going home to your partner.

If you go home to your partner and you say, I’ve just spent $10,000 on an education course, your partner may have some questions. If you say I’ve spent $10,000 on an education course and look at the folders I’ve sent you and you’ve got four big binder folders, it’s a little harder for her to say something. And so, in the intangible industry having something to leave with the client or give the client very quickly after a meeting is a vital importance.

Edward: And also of course, it’s great to have very good sales material at the start to help you get the client that documents what you do. What do you think a good sales material, David?

David: Good sales material. Marketing people love it. As a salesperson, I like it only if the client has shown an interest. So it means I’ve got to have done my job first. These marketing material and marketing material is vital. It creates interest. It creates uh, uh a picture of what I’m about to represent and I … I would say nothing against marketing material. Sales material on the other hand while I’m explaining it, it’s good. I never leave it with a client unless they’ve shown solid interest or bought the sale.

There are too many sales people who have taken the easy pitch out and you go in with the sales material and the person says, just leave it with me. I’ll have a look at it later. And if the salesperson walks out and leaves with it, that they have not done their job, because your job as a salesperson is to get a client to say one of two words. Can you guess what they are, Ed? You don’t have to say it.

Edward: Yes or yes.

David: Yes or no. It doesn’t matter which one the client says. My job is the marketing’s done his. The client has made some interest. My job as a salesperson is to convert that interest into either solid results or right there when I’m talking to them disinterest. It doesn’t mean they won’t come back and buy, but if I walk out and the odds are still maybe, why did I go? And that’s … that’s one of the things I … I recommend in your sales. Getting a no doesn’t matter, because the no only applies to the tone. You asked that right there and then. It doesn’t mean they never want to do business with you. It doesn’t mean they don’t come back around. It just means right there and then they weren’t meant to say yes.

But if you don’t ask and don’t get the no, you’re going to miss out on some yes’s and that’s vital.

Edward: So, David how is selling over the phone and face to face different?

David: Well, it’s the level of communication. All the basic skills are the same, but when I’m standing in front of you, you can read my body language 100%. You can see my face. You can watch my hands. You can see whether I’m comfortable with what I’m saying or whether I’m distancing myself from it and you can judge my integrity.

Over the phone as you are on this webinar, you’ve only got my voice to judge, so as Ed’s watching them, my hands are waving around. I’m a very physical talker. I’m a very expressive talker. Face to face the client gets to see all of that and it’s a faster way to build trust. However, you know, it’s a time factor. The cost of getting in front of a customer has to be considered when you’re looking at how you sell. So, I’ll spend a lot of my time on the phone using my voice to portray that using the tone and the tone you are hearing now.

Again, sorry any questions you’ve got coming up as well. Let’s put it up there for you all. Please get them ready. We’ve just got one more slide, I’m ready to say, because we’re getting ready for the next three things you need to do. Hopefully out of this, you’ve got some questions that you need answered or you’ve got some new things that you’re considering doing.

Either way, I’m happy to receive questions by email. I’m happy to receive, feedback there. But the most important thing now is take action. Do something. Engage at customer. Drive to get a yes or no. Take action. Pick up that phone, get in front of a customer and make a difference. Take action. Set time for you to make sales on a regular basis. Fantastic.

Edward: Amazing. I’m going to sleep more. I don’t have a voice and what I want you to do is David’s actually going to read out the rest of the slides and he’s actually do the whole webinar please continue questions. Go David, David!

David: Woohoo! Fantastic. Guys, it’s now time. Thank you very much for listening to the webinar. It’s been my first one and it’s been really fun. Ed’s been waving, pointing signs, making faces, and I … I think he’s a champion for carrying on with the webinar with the voice he had, so um, Ed, thank you so much.

Edward: Thank you.

David: But now it’s time for you to sit back and have some time for yourself. Grab a cup of coffee. Grab a cup of coffee, tea, sit back, reflect on this. If you can’t think of a question now and it comes up later, by all means, send it through. We’re happy. Plot your next move. Get ready to do something different.

And then as it would say swing hard. Get in there with style and get back, engage in your customer. Make sure that whatever your next move is it’s ruthless and it’s a result. Thank you and make it happen your way. Remember your values are important. It’s not just a robotic script or sales process to get a result, it’s you that counts.

Fantastic. And this is a half sale. Ed loves being hard and I’m … I’m a salesperson. I just like getting sales, so you know, by all means. I’m a sales mentor um, so if you need a hand with personal selling, face to face, anything like that, I’m it. Give me a call. It’s a marketing mentor and as we’ve said, he is all about his sales, his tactic, his strategy, getting people in the door that are ready to do business with you. I’m here to help you convert them.

So contact me through excellenceabove.com.au and uh, myself through getthatsale@outlook.com. Very simple. Ed, again, I can’t say thank you enough. It’s been awesome and as my first webinar, what will happen guys is I … you’ll find that I will be running a series of sales webinars starting next year, so I’ll be getting some additional assistance for ways on how to run one myself. Please give me any feedback you’d like and more importantly, if you’ve got things you would like me to cover in webinars coming up, please let me know that as well.

Edward: Excellent guys, thank you. We can stop the recording! Thank you everyone!

David: (Laughs) Thank you guys. It’s been amazing and I appreciate you being here on a Thursday night. Look forward to talking with you also.