 My name is John Hornsby, and I'm happy to be here today. I have a company called John Hornsby Creative. I'm not a web designer. I'm probably one of the least web-savvy people in this building right now. My background is more in print design, art and illustration, environmental design, scenic art production. I did a lot of signs and graphics, special events, design, and things like that. You will get a copy of the slide deck at the end, so if you want to take notes, you can, but the slides have a lot of information in them, so you probably don't really need to take notes if you don't want to. And I do want to have it be somewhat interactive. And so first, if I could just get a show of hands, like who is here because they self-identify as being an introvert. That's okay. It's pretty much everybody. There's no surprise there. What about designers? How many people in here are designers? All right, okay. What about like developers? All right. What, anything else? Is somebody in here that doesn't fit into one of those? Sales. Who here is in sales? Okay. You all should have your hands up because everybody's in sales. Even though we may not realize it or like it or want to admit it. I'm hoping that today I'll be able to help empower and elevate you all to get out and engage more in the world. If you happen to catch Cody's talk or Aisha's talk or Judy, there's some similarities there, but I have some unique content as well, so I think it dovetails nicely. If you're interested in this, definitely go check out the videos of their talks too. I already did that. Who's here? Okay. You can mentally in your mind pick which of these avatars you identify with as being part of your personality. So, quick overview. Just gonna go over a little bit who I am and how to think about sales and customer service. Gonna talk about the stages of a sales cycle, a little bit about what to do when, some common challenges and solutions, understanding personal styles and there may be some time for Q and A. I'm gonna try and move through kinda quick cause I probably tried to fit too much in. So I just wanna talk a little bit about that the moments of anticipation of when something is about to happen and we're scared and nervous. This happens a lot and for most of my life, in moments like the one up to and including right now were a source of the sort of paralyzing anxiety for me. There's like an actual like physiological response where I would just be so nervous and afraid that I couldn't take that next step. And for me, basically fear was like this chasm that I just couldn't cross. I could see what was on the other side of it and there were things over there I wanted but I was just too scared to cross that pit in front of me. And I just wanna talk about fear for a moment in that at a certain point I got to where I realized that I was just letting so many professional opportunities slip me by, chances at relationships, intimacy, all these things that were there for the taking if I would just reach out and take them but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. At a certain point, I looked at myself like something has to change here, what can I do about it? And fear is like, I sort of think of it as like I'm walking through life and there's kind of like this monster on my back of fear and it's with me wherever I go and sometimes it's small and little and I don't even notice it's there and then I go to do something and it kind of reaches out in front of me and says, stop, don't do that. And you can't ever really get rid of it. Like there's no overcoming fear. It's not like this battle of good versus evil and somehow good wins in the end and like the bad guy goes away. It's there for the journey and you have to learn to be with it and you have to learn to take it out and really look at it and examine what it is that's holding you back. And most of the things that we avoid doing is because that's painful and uncomfortable and we don't want to be uncomfortable. And our fear can control us to a point where it's not allowing us to live the lives that we want to live. It's not allowing us to really bring out our true authentic self. So I just want to encourage you to like make a commitment to yourself to really like take that out and sit with it and look at it and it's uncomfortable and but if you honestly sit there and look at it you can start to identify and name the things that you're afraid of. You know for me I have this need to be in control and I'm afraid of situations where I'm not in control. And so something like sales was as far for my comfort zone as I could get because it's like this wall card situation. It's one thing to like sit around with my friends and talk but to like go meet a stranger and try and talk to them about some product or service. There's like all of these things that I don't have control over and that scare me. The other thing is just I was insecure. I have insecurity. You know if I really want to like dig down through the onion layers I there's some part of me that thinks maybe I don't deserve to be loved and until you really start bringing that stuff out and looking at it you can't really move through it. You know you can't put it down and leave it. You have to learn to take it with you and move through it. And so I want to talk about I'm not going to tell you too much about like my accomplishments and so forth. What I've done I want to talk to you more about like who I am. So you know back in the day I didn't understand how to connect. I didn't fit in really with any of my peer groups. I was kind of a self isolating loner. I didn't enjoy large group events. Unless I had a job to do I just need to be busy. If you gave me something to do then you know I have a purpose. I have something else to do and I don't have to talk to people necessarily. So usually you know I often still get involved in events like this and have a job to do. So I've learned to leverage my needs and my fears to propel myself outside of my comfort zone. Like I'm doing right now. You know I have a job to do here and it's a job that would have terrified me 20 years ago but over time I've learned how to get more and more outside of my comfort zone and become more comfortable being uncomfortable. So I still don't care much for small talk. I prefer meaningful deep honest conversations. I still don't care for sleazy fake personalities and I'm not here to convince you to adopt anything that is not true to you. But I do want to challenge you to think about is your sense of identity. You know I put up those little avatars earlier and maybe like oh I'm the wizard. I'm the hero. Is that really your best self? You know your sense of identity that you have created for yourself that we all do as we come up from childhood into adulthood. Be authentic to yourself but also look at where are you using that as almost more of a shield to hide behind to consider where you might be holding yourself back. Now what I'm trying to share here today is some of how I was able to find my true authentic self preferences by saying it's an ongoing process. It's not like I've arrived and I've totally conquered everything and all my problems are solved. But I've made a commitment to go on this journey and been working on it and continue to work on it. So I was able to find my true authentic self not that identity I was using as a shield to help evolve from being the introverted artist that I was to being a top performing salesperson in some different companies that I've worked at. I was able to grow from being this snarky lousy communicator to someone who was able to professionally negotiate and manage teams, navigate difficult transactions, difficult customer service situations and this is all done with help from a lot of mentors so definitely get out there and find people that you can connect with that can help you on this journey. But they can only sort of show you the way you have to be the one to walk through it. So in the past 20 years I've gone to being completely terrified of sales to being standing here today talking to you about it. So I believe that you can do this too in your own version of whatever that is. This may not be what you want to do but if you're in this room there's probably things that you want to do that you're not allowing yourself to do I would guess. So let's talk about sales and customer service in a dry clinical way. Sales is what you do between establishing contact with a potential client and closing a sale. In a more feeling visionary way, sales is the vehicle by which you and your team can share your unique gifts and talents with the world. Without sales you don't necessarily get the opportunity to do whatever your passion is, your work. If nobody's paying for it, it's hard to continue to be able to do that. So what I want to focus on is more how you think about what you do and the why behind what you do more so than specifically do ABC. Does that make sense? I didn't mention before but if you have questions at any time you just feel free to let me know. So there's a lot of different sales methodologies that exist out there and at the end I have a slide of resources and I list some of them and I encourage you to just go look at them and see what things might resonate with you. A lot of the negative stereotypes we have or what's associated with what I think of as a traditional sales. And you know, it's like the used cars salesman sort of mentality. What I've learned and focused on is more of a consultative style of selling. It's also called value added sales. And as a very important part of that customer service needs to be the cornerstone of the culture of the company that you work for. Whether you're one person or a team of a hundred in order for all this to really work, customer service is a really critical component that everyone in your organization needs to be on board with. So let's talk about some common myths of traditional sales. One is that there's a magic bullet sales program that you know, follow my program and you're gonna be a million dollar salesperson in six months. It just doesn't work that way. Good sales technique is the key to sales. That's a myth. One and done training is all it takes to succeed. That's a myth. And being liked is most important. Also not true. Here's what I've found to be some true facts of effective selling. That there is no magic bullet. Different situations require different scenarios. Different tools. So the more that you can learn about different skills and tools that you can sort of have at your disposal to use and when to use which tool where. You know, you got developers in the room. You got different tools and plugins that you use on your website. Your sales process is like that too. If you try and use some widget for something that is not the function it performs, it's not gonna work. Good sales technique does give you an edge. But what's more important really is how you're perceived because our perceptions define our realities and it doesn't, your technique is important but if your potential client doesn't perceive you as being the solution to their problem, it doesn't matter how good your sales technique is. Training and learning are an ongoing journey. It's great to come to a camp like this on the weekend and it's great to come to a talk like this but you're not gonna walk out of here and be magically transformed into a million dollar sales person by sitting in a room for an hour. That's gonna happen by you consistently working on it over time for your life. And being like is important but trust is really the cornerstone of sales and business. There's plenty of people that I'm friends with and I like them but I'm not gonna give them my money. And there's plenty of other people that I trust to do business with. I might not ask them to go out and have a beer tonight. So if you're a jerk, being like's important, you can't be like contankerous and unlikable but just being liked isn't gonna necessarily make you successful in sales. So let's talk a little bit about defining objections and overcoming them. In sales we talk about overcoming objections. That's basically you wanna identify what's in the way of closing a sale and whatever that is in the way that's an objection and it can be a simple thing like how much does it cost. The questions, they're not necessarily like, objections sounds somewhat confrontational but it's basically what information do they need to feel comfortable agreeing to purchase whatever you are selling. And it's not necessarily technical information. It could be emotional information and it might be about your company. It might be about your product or service or it might be about you personally. But before you can even get to that we have to get past the general things that people don't like about sales people. So here's where I wanna like get some interaction here make sure you're alive. So give me some things that you don't like about sales people, anybody. Pressure. Pressure, don't like pressure, what else? Talk about themselves too much. Talk about themselves too much. Cologne. What is it? Cologne. Cologne. Cologne. Offensive odors, okay. That's, that could be a problem in Asheville from the other spectrum too. What was that? Don't listen. Don't listen. So that's, there's no big surprises here. Here's 10 common ones. They don't listen. They talk too much. They don't actually know what they're talking about. They don't follow up. They just outright lie. They don't understand my needs. They refuse to take no for an answer. Lack of authenticity. They've got that sleazy, smarmy, used car salesman. Hey, how you doing? What kind of thing? Lack of genuine interest in me. And a lack of passion about what they're doing. If they're like, well, here's, I've got this thing. You wanna buy it? Maybe, yeah. It doesn't get me too excited about wanting to do business with them. So interesting to statistic, only 13% of customers believe a salesperson can understand their needs. That's pretty abysmal outlook for being in sales. Okay, so different questions, slightly different. Tell me, give me some things that you don't like about the idea of you being a salesperson. Not being knowledgeable enough. That's a big one. Afraid to talk about the money part? Yeah, okay. That's a big one. That's, I struggle with that a lot. You seem like you had something to say. Just feeling fake. Feeling fake, feeling fake. That you'll provide an insufficient, right? You're not actually gonna fix their problem. Your solution's not good enough. Come off too pushy. You get upset meeting them. You get nervous or like angry? Nervous to shoot in there. Okay, okay. Interesting. So, hmm. What do you think's going on there? Interversion. Interversion. I feel like maybe they're gonna look down on you because they're maybe think they're better than you in a suit and you're showing up not in a suit, I presume. Right, you just. I can get past it. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Professor on the stage. Uh-huh, okay. It's interesting you said that because we'll get to that in a minute. So, here's some common answers to that question. I'm not a people person. I'm not extroverted. Don't like confrontation. I feel fake. I don't know what to say or do. Not qualified, educated enough. If I don't believe in what I'm selling. Too busy. Nobody said that, but that comes up a lot too. That's more of an excuse than a version, but not good enough. Maybe my product's not good enough. Maybe I'm not good enough. Maybe I'm not deserving of fear of success, fear of rejection. These are all things that come into play in our own objections. And if we can't get past our own objections, how are we gonna get past the customers? So, 55% of the people making their living in sales don't have the right skills to be successful. So, think about that for a second. More than half the people that work in sales don't actually have the skills to be able to do it. And so, let's take a closer look at that. Here's my first tip. If you look like a salesperson, it's game over. All those things we just listed, everybody's got those in their mind. And if you show up, if you're my customer, to sort of turn that around, if you're my customer and I show up to you in a suit, I imagine that's probably also gonna be a disconnect. You're not even gonna come in my office. Yeah, so, I was here yesterday and looking around like, this is the first time I've ever given a presentation in a T-shirt, because normally I'm like talking to like business people and so you dress up a little more. But for this crowd, they take T-shirts the way to go. I don't want to intimidate people and feel like I don't, I can't relate. On that same note, it's not, I'm not being inauthentic or just ingenuous to wear a T-shirt or wear a suit. Like I own both and I'm not so attached to my uniform that I wear as part of my identity that I feel like I'm compromising myself to dress for the occasion. So instead of being a salesperson, we need to become a trusted consultant. So let's look at how these differ. Consultative sales differently from traditional sales. With consultative sales, we're really convincing someone in the increased value of our product and service rather than focusing on features and benefits, which is what traditional sales focuses on. We have this product, it does ABCD, it's 10 times faster than the competitor, that sort of thing. With consultative sales, we don't really use the features and benefits as the lever. We try not to appear as a sales rep or operate as a sales rep, but as a consultant. And I mentioned like how I'm dressed, but this is really more about how we behave and interact. And you're really incorporating yourself and throughout this when I say you, I might mean you personally or your team, your company, but you're incorporating that into the value of your product. You gave a talk yesterday is that people show, your customers when you polled them, they chose to work with you because of your team. So, of course you also have to have a good product and service, but what really sells people is you. And the beauty of this is that if you want to, if you have like more like a boutique agency or something and you want to be able to charge more money, this is how you do it. Otherwise, the other alternative is like the race to the bottom on pricing and you don't want to do that. So as a consultant, we have to methodically flush out the implied needs and then formulate a solution that fits those needs. And you have to be willing to walk away if it's not a fit, if it's not, if your solution isn't the right solution, move on. So I just want to take a moment to talk about ethical integrity because that's what sort, one of the like obstacles, we sort of associate sales with like maybe taking advantage of people selling them something they don't need. So what I've promoted when I'm training sales teams is don't do that. You want to identify when it's a win-win between the seller and buyer. So if your development is making a product that's excellent and you have excellent support and service and then you identify the right customers that are a fit for that, then it's a win-win. We're not trying to sell to people who aren't really our customers. So if you do that, then you can use, with the right tools, you can overcome most objections. And if it's a win-win, it's the ethically right thing to do. You're not taking advantage of something. You're actually helping them to realize that you are solving their problem. So not all objections should be overcome and not every sale should be closed. We should identify when it's a win-win and when it isn't. And if it isn't, we need to have ways of identifying that as soon as possible. So we're not wasting a bunch of time and energy and then learn to conceive or walk away gracefully and move on to the next potential client that is a good fit. So stages of the sale cycle, we're gonna go through these and this is in list form, but it is a cycle. And it's the stages of the sales cycle also or the stages of the customer service cycle and when you launch and when you follow up on the back end and so these are listed out as sort of like steps on a path, but at the same time realize that not every step is necessarily linear and that this is sort of a cycle of continuing relationship. So the very first thing, when you first meet that person, forget about selling. That's not what you're trying to do yet. We're trying to bond, build bonding and rapport. We're trying to build a relationship. We're trying to make a connection. Later, if we identify that they are a good fit for us and we're a good fit for them, then we're gonna try and sell them something, but we're not doing that right now. So when you make that first contact with a customer, don't even try to sell them anything. You wanna focus on building like and trust. Don't focus on your quota and this is where things get hard for salespeople because a lot of times you might have a quota, you have to, somebody's leaning on you to make, whether it's yourself, like I have my own business and every five minutes my five year old daughter is walking up to me and saying, I'm hungry. So I need to be bringing in some money. But if that's what I'm focusing on, that's gonna lead me to do things like be pushy and so forth. So you have to build in this little bit of discipline to not let that fear be the driving factor on every step. So look the part, don't look like a sales rep and whatever that is. Today I decided to wear a t-shirt. When I go and meet with executives, I have fallen nicer pants and a button down shirt. I'm looking the part for what that need is. Practive active listening and feeling feedback. You have to be sincere and you can't fake that. The swarmy thing is like people trying to fake it, you just have to cultivate it. Avoid typical small talk. You can just ask people about their business. Yes ma'am. Well, so I mean this is one what I was about to say is get them talking about themselves. So I wanna, and as introverts we have an advantage here, right, because like I could stand up here and probably have a staring contest with you for an hour and win if I wanted to. And we could all just sit here silently. That is actually a valuable tool that you can use to extract information and to create that bonding experience because people like to talk about themselves. So if you just start asking them, don't worry about selling, just start asking them about their business or the family or whatever, but business is gonna give you information that's gonna help with the selling part. And you get them talking about themselves and we'll get into this a little more. There are like little magic phrases and things that I use, one of them I'll tell you now, is just tell me more. Somebody starts talking and then they stop. Okay, well you told me you're having trouble with this problem on your website, it's not loading fast enough. Tell me more about that. And just get them talking and listen and then demonstrate that you've listened by like repeating back to them, not parroting, but like in a different way. So what I'm hearing is that you're losing money because your website's loading too slow. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, okay, well tell me more about that. If you don't do this effectively, you won't be able to ask hard questions and make hard calls later. This steps the most important because later inevitably something's gonna come up that's gonna be a problem in your process and if you haven't made a good bond at the beginning, you're not gonna be able to push back or tell them something that they don't wanna hear. But if you do a good job on this, I could say all kinds of, and the next stage is, I could say all kinds of things down the road that I would never be able to say, like you can to a friend. Sometimes a friend might tell you, you're acting like an idiot, what are you thinking? You can't do that to a customer, but you kinda can if you do all this stuff right. And it takes practice and I've lost my screen. There we go, okay. So a couple more things on that. So you build trust by making promises and then suddenly drawing attention to the fact that you've made a promise. So you don't wanna make promises that you can't keep, but some people take that to not making promises at all. And so it helps to build trust when you sort of create scenarios where you can make a promise and then keep it. So find little ways to promise things that you can deliver on. It could be as simple as like, after this meeting, I'm gonna go back to my desk, I'm gonna send you an email, recap in what we talked about. And then when I send that email first, after I say hey Joe or whatever, my first words are, as promised, here's that follow-up email. And it's just subtly showing them that he said, he made a promise, he kept it. That's like one drop in the trust bucket. We wanna fill up that bucket. When something goes wrong, that's like a drop in the no trust bucket. I don't know about this one. And in any situation, we're like putting things in both of those buckets. And we wanna get that trust bucket full and the other one fuller than the mistake bucket. I have this thing, I don't remember where I got this from, but avoid mutual mystifications. Does anybody wanna guess what a mutual mystification is? Yeah, essentially, yeah, it's where neither of you know exactly what you're talking about. And we all use these all the time. For example, simple ones, I'll call you later. Wins later. In the customer's mind, later might be 10 minutes. In my mind, later might be 10 days. And if I told the customer, I'll call you later about this and they're thinking 10 minutes and I'm thinking 10 days. When I call them in five days, they're gonna be like, what the hell took you so long? And I'm thinking everything's great. So there's lots of things that come up like that that we don't really think about. We just kinda take for granted. So you wanna start thinking about those and avoiding them. And this is red flags and processes a lot. We get mutual mystifications from our clients a lot. Good one is when maybe I'll talk to a client and we get to the point where I'm gonna send them a proposal. And they say, okay, send over your proposal. If it looks good, me and my partner sign off on it, send it back. Well, what does looks good mean? I have ideas of what it might mean. I need to know what they think looks good means. And you're not gonna know unless you ask. What does looks good mean to you? Tell me more. You get to. You wanna communicate. You wanna over communicate. And there's something that I call communicating info when I have no info. And that's basically given them a follow up even if you don't have anything to report. Sometimes we tend to wait. Like, okay, I'll get back to you later. Or I'll get back to you as soon as I find out. I need to talk to my developer and find out about implementing that functionality you want in your website. As soon as I hear back from them, I'll let you know. Well, as soon as I hear back from them is one of those mutual mystifications. And then if it takes however long to get an answer, the customers like irate level may be going up, up, up because they thought you were gonna get back to them in 30 minutes and it's been days. So instead you might say, let me find out about that. I'll give you a call tomorrow at one o'clock and let you know where I'm at. And then if you don't have an answer, give them a call at like 1255, not 105, and say, hey, we talked yesterday. I told you I was gonna give you a call. Unfortunately, I still don't have the answer, but I want you to know I'm working on it. So let me give you a call. If I don't hear something sooner, I'll give you a call back this time tomorrow. Now you're setting clear expectations. There's no mutual mystifications and you're communicating, even though you might not have the answer, it's just more things in that trust bucket. And then you have to learn to ask the questions that you fear the answer of. And maybe just as simple as who else are you considering to work with on this project instead of us? Why would you choose to work with them instead of me? Things like that that you kind of are afraid to ask because the answer might be rejection. You have to learn to start asking those questions. There's a, one of the things I think of is like, if you feel it, say it, like you kind of kind of get this gut feeling that maybe there's, I don't know, this has happened to me where I've kind of like, no, like somehow in my gut, I know there's something going on, I'm probably not gonna get this job, but I just like keep hoping that maybe it's gonna work out. So when you feel that, just say it. Now, how you say it's important. And one of the things, again, just to build trust and make you appear like a consultant instead of a salesperson. At the first meeting, I might say something like, once we get through this, is it okay if I say that I can't help you? Cause then I'm not trying to, I don't seem like I'm trying to sell them something. And if it's not the right fit, I may say, okay, well, you know what, maybe you should, here's another person that I know and trust that's gonna be a better fit. I think you should go call them. But if we kind of lead with that, is it okay if I say I can't help you? That helps sort of break down that barrier of like, okay, well this person's not trying to shove something down my throat. So we wanna establish upfront agreements which is setting those clear expectations. So, you know, before every meeting, make sure you're clear on time and place. What's the purpose of the meeting? What's the client's agenda? What's your agenda? What would a successful outcome look like? A lot of times if I go and meet with a client, you know, once we do the initial small talk stuff, I might say, so, you know, what do you wanna get out of this meeting today? What would you like to walk away with at the end of this meeting? So now I have, we're eliminating some of those mutual mystifications of like, where you might end up walking away from a meeting and being like, I'm not really sure how that went or worse like, I think it went really great but it actually is not. So be clear on these things. And then we wanna work to uncover issues and concerns and this is where things can get kinda tricky and so even if you've done a good job on this trust thing, customers are still not gonna wanna give you all the information that you really need to be able to determine what's a good solution for them. You kinda have to be able to pull it out of them some more than others. So we wanna kinda uncover what's really going on behind what they say is the problem because we all know a lot of times a customer might come in and state, you know, I'm here because I need this thing and you get talking to them and you realize, well, you know, like in my line of work, it might be like, oh, I need a logo and you get it to it like, okay, well, you need a logo, you need a website, you need branding, you need a marketing plan, you know, all these things but they're not gonna come in and reveal that necessarily. So what I like to do is like ask them like, what is the problem, essentially, I might not say it so bluntly as that but we wanna get to like, what is the problem that you're trying to solve? That's where I used to tell me more. So you ask them, go meet with the client and, you know, what do you wanna accomplish today? Well, start a new business and I need a logo. Okay, well, tell me more about that. Well, you know, I'm gonna be, my business is we're selling hot dogs on the side of the road and I've got, I'm gonna thinking that we'll like let people know on Facebook where we are every day and, you know, as they're talking, thinking, okay, logo, hot dogs stand by the side of the road, schedule on Facebook, so you're gonna let people know on Facebook where you're at every day, tell me more about that. Go through each item methodically and get them to tell you more and as you do that, you'll uncover more information that may be of use for you to understand a deeper understanding of their need and how you might be able to provide a solution. So then this is where we do kind of mess with their emotions a little bit, but it's further greater good. So I ask them things like, well, how long has this been an issue? Well, we need a problem instead of like I'm starting a business. Okay, my website's slow. How long has this been an issue? Well, it's been about six months or so. Oh, okay, what have you done about it? Well, I hired this one guy, but then he like took a bunch of money and never heard from him again and my site's not really any faster. Did it work? Obviously no. So what we're doing is we're kind of finding that pain and then we're just kind of poking at it a little to bring their attention to it to help them realize the value of a solution because a lot of times we tend to undervalue the solution. So you're kind of just having them relive the pain a little bit, not to like manipulate them in a bad way, but just to bring their awareness to the value of what you have to offer them. So I might ask them things like, well, what happens if you don't fix it? Well, I'm like losing like $10,000 a month. Okay, so now we know they're losing $10,000 a month. Surely it's not out of line to expect them to maybe pay $10,000 to fix that problem when they're losing that every month if they don't fix it. That's where we get to the money. You have to find out what the budget is and everybody has one, but no one wants to share it. Most of the time they say, I don't have a budget. So there's a couple of things I do there to try and get to that. Use what's called a start-stop to ask. So what that sounds like is, let's say so, okay, we know what we're talking about doing. How much money, what's your ideal budget for this project? Now before you answer, let me tell you why I'm asking. We can design a basic solution that'll do these three things and that might be $5,000 or we can have this premium solution that does all the bells and whistles and that's $20,000. Where do you think you might wanna be in that? And they might, at that point you can start to kind of, it's called bracketing to try and get them. So they might say, I don't have a budget and you might say, well, would you spend $20,000 on this? And if their jaw hits the floor, you know that that's out of range. And with like 10 to 15, does that seem like it's your comfort zone? You lead them like, well, how about this? How about that? And eventually they'll say, yeah, okay, well, we have 5,000 is really where I was thinking it would be. From there you might say, depending on what you have to offer, okay, well, we can do something for 5,000. It won't be as nice as what we could do for 7,500, but we can look at that. And usually you can get them to do something a little more than what they say if you are bringing value to it. You know, offer them what they asked for, but then maybe also have an upgrade that they might consider or might go for if it is really a value. Again, if it's not a good fit, don't do any of this stuff. Decision. So here we get to sort of making the decision. Here you wanna review everything that's been covered, gather your information at this point. Now we're at the point where we're really moving towards like selling. We're either gonna disqualify them, determine what you need to qualify them or qualify them. Qualification points are basically, am I talking to the right person? Does this person even have the authority to like sign on the contract? Or are they like a runner for someone else and I need to really be talking to them? How do we maybe try and get a seat at the table to talk to them? Do they have the budget? Once you have that budget talk, maybe it just doesn't work. You might have to say, I'm sorry, but you only have $2,000. I really can't do anything of value for less than five. So maybe here's some other options or if you've managed to rework your budget and figure out where that money might come from, I'd love to work with you. If not, might not be a good fit. And then viability is these are other factors, like timeline, there might be some sort of regulation compliance or something that could make it like the project isn't viable. Even if they have the budget and want to work with you, maybe they're trying to do something that's not legal or it just isn't allowed for some other reason. My background's in sign so it'd be permitting is where we'd run into that. Fulfillment presentation. So now you've got all the critical info you need. You've uncovered their pain, their budget parameters, access to who the decision makers are, then craft your presentation and make sure it checks all of those boxes, deliver it to them and then actually ask them for the job. A lot of times we send out a proposal and then just kind of wait and hope. We don't want to ask because they might say no. So you need to ask for the job. You might say, is there any reason you wouldn't be willing to sign off on this proposal once I send it over? It's just another pass of like, are there any more objections in here that I haven't uncovered yet? Cause a lot of times those last minute sort of buyer's remorse ones come up, they're like about to sign and then they're like, if there's anything that you've missed, it's gonna start kind of niggling in their brain. So you want to try and counteract that buyer's remorse. You want to make sure all your questions and concerns are addressed. Make sure your proposal is a perfect fit. Invite them. And then a lot of times I'll add in there at that point when I send over the proposal, maybe just a little icing on the cake. You know, I always do my due diligence before I sign off on anything. I invite you. Here's a couple of names and numbers of some other people that we've worked with. I invite you to call them and ask them about their experience before you commit to working with us. Obviously, hopefully you've cultivated some of those and you've talked to them and said, do you mind if I use you as a referral to my customers even better if they're like prominent, you know, impressive clients that you can point to and say, you know, I can say, you know, I've got the marketing director at Man of Food Bank, I've done a bunch of work for them and here's Kara's number, give her a call if you wanna ask her about her experience working with me. Because I know she's gonna be a champion for me and she's gonna say, yeah, John's awesome, you should definitely do it. And then you got your customers selling for you instead of you. You can still lose it at this stage to the competition and that's again where I just ask them directly, are you talking to anyone else? Is there something about their proposal that you like better than ours? If so, maybe give us a chance to take a look at that. And then you wanna continue to set up those upfront agreements about what the next steps look like. So talk through them, what happens next? You know, here's the proposal. So what's gonna happen next? You just sign off on that, email it back to me, pay us our 50% deposit, then we're gonna schedule our kickoff meeting, we're gonna get together with the team, talk through developing the plan. From there we'll put together the timeline of what your project's gonna look like and work forward from there. So they can sort of envision themselves going through the process. There's not that, they also might have that fear I talked about at the beginning. When they're about to sign on the dotted line, well, I'm not really sure what's gonna happen next. I don't, giving up control of a part of my business. So you wanna alleviate all of their fear as well. And then of course at the back end, go back and ask for referrals. I didn't put it in the deck, but there's a statistic like, I believe it's like 44% of businesses say they would give referrals to you, but only 4% of us ask for them, or maybe it's 8%. So ask for referrals, close to the end of the project. Once they've signed off on things, you know they're happy. Obviously if something's gone wrong and they're not happy, you probably don't wanna ask them. But if things are good, you know that they're happy about working with you, then I go through these kind of questions with them. Are you happy how I handle this project? No matter what they say, I'll probably say, I'm not surprised. What could I've done differently? Because if they're happy, it sounds a little cocky, but hey, people like working with me. That's what I do. If they're not happy, I'm also not surprised because we've been through that process together and we both know that something went wrong. And so I'm not surprised to hear you're disappointed. Thank you for telling me. What would you have had me do differently? Whether I did good or bad, maybe there's something I could have done better. Would you mind sharing a testimonial that we can use in our marketing? Do you know anyone that might benefit from our services? And if so, do you mind making an introduction? Even better, like give me a name of a number is great, but for an introvert like me, find the ways to make it easier. If you will maybe take me out to coffee with your colleagues that also needs what I offer and help me make that introduction, that's a heck of a lot easier than cold calling them, even if they give me the number. So maybe they can make a warm introduction for you and make that easier as an introvert to then reach out. Okay, well, their friend is recommending them. It's easier to make that phone call then. So let's move on to, how am I on time? Because I know I'm trying to cramp too much in. Six minutes. Six minutes. All right, would you rather, I don't have time for it all. So would you rather go through how to handle an irate customer or would you rather look at identifying different personality types and how to deal with them? All right, so, and the slide deck's available so we won't be able to get to the last part but just go to everything's in there, you can just re-throw it. All right, handling irate customers. So here's how this goes. Real quick, I'll just share that I had a job, my wife and I, we did this mobile marketing tour where we were driving an RV around the country for a health insurance company and we were setting up, it was when Medicare part D was rolling out and we would go to different cities and we'd set up in Walmart parking lots. It's probably okay to say that I was at Walmart but I won't mention the insurance company and we set up Boost and basically it was kind of like come on in and learn about it and then there were insurance agents that came and we'd help bring people in. So I don't know about you all but who here loves their health insurance company? Anybody? So most of the people that came into that tent came in in an irate state. They were coming in because they were mad because their insurance company, it screwed them over in some way and I've dealt with a lot of health insurance issues and I don't like them. So first, just listen, let them get it out. Listen to the complaint. Don't ever argue with them. It's not gonna get you anywhere. Doesn't matter if you're right or wrong. And you need to really empathize with their experience and take their side. Never say I know how you feel because you don't and when people say that to me, it kind of just ticks me off. That's just me personally. You don't know how I feel but instead you can say things like I understand how that would upset you or I see how you can feel upset about that. If that happened to me, I would probably feel the same way. And you're letting them get it out and you're not being confrontational and you're allowing it to kind of diffuse and then you wanna show concern and an urgency to resolve the problem and you wanna assure, what I typically advocate is assure the customer that a solution is at hand but don't rush to just offer the solution that comes to mind because a couple of reasons. One, you wanna protect yourself and your company too and not necessarily give away the farm if you don't have to. And two, because you're gonna be having an emotional response to this and you're not gonna be taking this clearly either and when you hang up the phone, you're probably gonna be like, oh man I wish I had said this and said or why did I agree to do that? So I would promise to make it a priority to resolve the issue and then you might say something like, I understand your position, I definitely wanna make sure we get this resolved for you and I need to get with my team to make sure I can get the best resolution possible for ya. And I don't know exactly what that looks like yet but I can promise you that I'm gonna get this taken care of and we're gonna walk away friends. And then I always, whenever I give like a solution like this, I always kinda ask at the end like, well in this case I would ask them like, what does a fair resolution look like to you? Because again, it's a mutual misification thing. I might think that they need a full refund and give them everything back for them to be happy. I might think we need to give away the farm, they might only need an egg to make them happy. And I'm just assuming that they need this high level thing because I'm in this emotional state as well. So you find that out and then you go back to your team, whatever it is, I mean, maybe it's just you, maybe you have a team, maybe you have a boss. You're gonna make a promise, you need to make good on that promise and quickly. So go work with your team, find a reasonable solution that either matches the customer's request or is an acceptable compromise that you think they might agree to that maybe protects you a little bit. Because sometimes maybe you're like, well they're asking for this, but that's gonna be pretty painful for us to give them everything they're asking for. Have a compromise of what you would like it, the solution to look like, but then also have a plan B of what you're willing to go to if they still are not happy with what you're offering. So then call them back, thank them. Again, for bringing the issue to your attention and giving you the opportunity to resolve it because the term customer service opportunity, we probably hear that a lot, but it really is an opportunity. If you've done something wrong, the customer could not say anything and just go to your competition. If they're bringing it up to you and again, you've established this trust with them, it's because they want you, they want to come to a resolution with you, they don't necessarily want to go somewhere else yet, but if you don't handle it right, they're going to go somewhere else. So offer the resolution that you came up with and then I always ask them, does that sound fair to you? And you're going to get feedback. Either they're going to say, yeah, that'll work for me, thanks for, or they're going to be like, no, that's not what I want. I want blah, blah, blah. Okay, well, it's not satisfactory. You already have a plan B in your pocket, but I would not offer it right away either because the other thing is you don't want to make everything look too easy because it lowers the value and if you're going out of your way to resolve the problem, they're going to appreciate you that much more. So I might say, let me go back and I'll call you back in five minutes, come back with your plan B, you might have to repeat that process to get to a resolution. All right, I need to wrap up here. This is another thing that, this actually came up through like a parenting thing, I think, using with kids, but this is magical in any relationship. It's, I call it the magic four point apology and it's, you basically say that I'm sorry that whatever it is happened, I realized that it was wrong because name the pain that it calls them or the damage that it did to your relationship. In the future, instead, this is how we're gonna, I'm gonna handle this, what am I gonna do differently next time? And then the magic part is you ask them to forgive you and this will bring people to tears if you use it sometimes and probably not customers, but like I've made, I've had my kids use this when they've done like something like to a grownup and it's, it fixes it, it totally fixes it. Now of course, if you keep doing it, it's not gonna keep working, but something like that comes in handy. So I'm out of time, I'm sorry, I tried to put too much in, but all these slides are available, will be available on the website. So if you are interested in digging in a little deeper, you can go there and they should be available soon. And that's my information, I encourage anyone who wants to reach out and connect, happy to answer questions. I don't know if we have time to answer them now, but I'll be around. And I also have like stickers and postcards and things, I do illustration work too. So if anybody wants any of those, you can come up and get them. So thank you. Thank you.