 Thank you so much. No pressure. All right, well, welcome. All right, who here sells something? Okay, who here hates selling things? Okay, well, that's very very common and we're gonna talk about ways that we can kind of get over that hum And it may you may not love selling but we're gonna try to make it a lot less unpleasant Okay, so what is scarier than heights? Spiders, okay, what? What's scarier than spiders? Okay, so it's been said that public the fear of public speaking is Greater than the fear of dying Right, what's scarier than this? It's the fear of rejection right, I know we're all big grown-ups and We think that we're over that but honestly, there's a lot of us that we still Find that we resist or back away from what our true potential is because we're fear We're afraid of someone hurting our feelings. Okay And what do I know? About a fear of sales or about a fear of rejection. So I'll tell you a little bit about myself I've been selling since I was five years old Both of my parents are real estate agents and they used to practice their listing presentations with me And I got so good at doing them that their broker brought me in to do sales training when I was five He said if a five-year-old can do a perfect listing presentation, so can you I didn't know at the time He was shaming them, but I just thought it was me being awesome, right? They did give me ice cream I think that counts so So a couple of years later when I was in fourth grade my parents got divorced And I became a raging people pleaser and what is the one thing people pleasers fear more than anything else? Disappointing someone no hearing the word no because that means I haven't Met an expectation right so how did I reconcile my love of sales with my fear of rejection? Well, I learned But it's not about me Okay, and it's not about you So rejection is just a part of the sales process in fact if you're not getting rejected you're not selling enough Okay Think about that for a second. All right, so here's some numbers to maybe help get you a little bit more comfortable with that rejection 80% of consumers say no the first four times a salesperson talks to them Not the first four times a crappy salesperson talks to them any salesperson The best salesperson in the world gets told no Okay, this is has nothing to do with your self-worth It has nothing to do with your ability to sell if you're hearing no, okay It takes five calls to get a yes on average if you're calling, right? Not For the worst salesperson in the world. That's the average salesperson five calls 72% of cold calls end in rejection Okay, it's not you. This is just the this is just the game. The game is about collecting nose now When you've gone through the 80% the five calls the 72% of cold calls in a rejection And you're still not getting a yes One of the reasons might be It's not about you and you're making it about you. Okay, the number one reason for rejection is You're presenting your agenda and not solving a problem for the client So how do you achieve in our sales nirvana? Well first you have to get your mind right Okay It's all in your head all your fear all the projections that you have about other people all your inner Insecurities that you fear most about yourself that you're placing on other people That's all in your head. How many times raise your hand if you've gone to call somebody or make a connection And you said I don't really want to bother them Thank you for telling the truth Right, how do you know right or no matter what time of day it is? Well, it's 9 30. They probably just got to the office Well, it's 10 30. They're probably winding down for lunch. Well, it's 1 30. They probably just got back from lunch There's no good time of the day to call and bother somebody, right? But you don't know Because you're attempting to read their minds how many psychics are in here Me I was a psychic for two days. That's another story for another day But at even at then I can't tell what somebody is thinking about when I go to call them, right? I don't know. I'm trying to read their minds When you go to call someone One of the most powerful things you can do is operate non-judgmental self-observation You ever done this what this is is that you just Listen without judgment to yourself to your own self-talk and behavior and just observe it Okay, you go to call somebody or email somebody and you just observe your body behavior And what you're saying to yourself and if you say or you start saying negative things to yourself Just observe it and go that's interesting that I do that. Don't judge it Just remark it write it down and move on because what'll start happening is you'll start saying You'll start changing because you'll start realizing that you're sabotaging yourself Listen to yourself talk. Don't beat yourself up, but just observe it now Are you playing credit manager? Does anybody in here know what this means? Yeah, do you play credit manager? So I learned this this is very powerful learn this from an old sales manager of mine. I was selling pools I've sold everything. I've sold alarms pools life insurance Booze some things we can't say in mixed company I have sold just about everything but I was selling pools this one time and I went up to this house It was a ramshackle house and the guy Was walking around in his front yard. He was picking up some stuff out of the yard. He had overalls no shirt I can't remember if he had shoes on or not But for this story we're gonna say no and I called my manager. I said You sent me to the wrong place. This guy does not have enough money to buy $5,000 And there's a bug about grand pools and he said, how do you know? I was like, I know And he's like, no, you're playing credit manager and that's not your job Okay, he said in fact, I've been on the phone with this guy and this guy's not buying a pool This guy's got a young wife. He's buying seeing his wife in a bikini for the rest of the summer Now go in there and give that man what he wants Okay, right because I was playing credit manager almost taught myself out of a deal Are you thinking about more? What's in it for you than it's what's in it for the client? Nobody has ever sat out in their car before going in to do a sales conversation with somebody Sweating bullets because they were afraid they couldn't solve someone's problem Okay, when you're feeling that anxiety and when you're feeling that fear and you're feeling that resistance to go and have a sales Conversation, it's not because you don't have the solution that they've been looking for It's because you're focusing on what you need to get out of it But if you put that aside and it takes practice But if you can put that aside Then you can go in and really focus on the other person With power Are you having enough sales conversations? Right Are you doing this enough that you're comfortable? Or are you doing it just enough to survive? Okay Repetition do you think the person at the drive-through at McDonald's when they upsell you on your fries? Do you think they have sales fear? No, why because they do it 700 times a day. Do you want fries with that? Do you want fries with that? Do you want fries with that? Right? So if you make more chances to interact with clients you have more chances to Have more closing conversations even if you know it's not going to go anywhere You're exercising that muscle and you can gain comfort and repetition Okay, anybody like McDonald's fries? Wait till you see this Okay, all that selling that you hate That's not your job Your job is to provide solutions To problems Hopefully not problems. This guy's solving, right? What makes really easy to get really good at solving problems is defining who you're solving problems for Okay, it's not everybody in the known universe And the more you can get clear about who your target market is The easier it's going to be for you to solve their problems and the more power you're going to have behind you And in your heart when you know that you can solve a problem for somebody because you've done it. Yes Absolutely. I'm gonna we're gonna have a robust question and answer session at the end They don't need a salesman Or a saleswoman They need a trusted guide. They need a trusted advisor to walk with them and give them advice now Is there a difference between selling a website and being a trusted advisor? Yes, you can yes, you can't what you can't do is sell websites and be a trusted advisor And I mean you can obviously make a sale and that's the point But you can't go in with my if my job is to go in and sell you on a website That's not going to elevate the conversation the way that I come in to find a solution for what you need Right. Those are different conversations Let me make sure this is a new clicker for me. Okay, so Start to get to know them as their trusted advisor What do they need? Where's their pain point? Right, what what's really keeping them up at night? And if you can start a conversation From really what's important to them that you can get a lot further Um and and start I want to tell you about my biggest referral partner I have Now my biggest referral partner has sent me a lot of work over the years And he has a lot of business and everybody knows that he's got a lot of work Okay, and people have been coming at him for years trying to get his business Okay, and they come at him with I want to get some of those referrals When I met him I said, what's your biggest pain point? And he said I hate content and I said in my head me too Right, but I can do content and I said why don't you let me take that off your hands? And so I started doing a little trust building with him and then one day he said, you know, I've got all these referrals I could send you Right because it wasn't about me. It was about solving his problem Find out what they like about folks. They don't buy from Okay, if you don't know where to start a sales conversation Ask them about who they've done business with in the past Was there something you didn't like from the people you didn't do business with? I went to talk to this gentleman and All he could talk about Was all the people he had already met with about this project He had met with six other web agencies and he hated them all And I said well, what was the commonality? What did you not like about them? He said they don't know how to hustle and they don't know how to communicate Okay, well that's interesting And I said well, have you ever done business with anybody you did like because he was kind of cranky and that was questionable And he said yes dozens. So what was the commonality? What did you like about them? And he said they knew how to hustle and they knew how to communicate What do you think I talked about for the next 20 minutes Hustling and communicating and that's what I was selling him because he wasn't buying a website. He was buying hustle and communication right So you listen what they say when they get agitated if you walk into a conversation And it's there are just irate. Okay, that could be a red flag But that could be an opportunity to recover a really great project And then you can talk their language to them Bending your story to their concerns Right and be ready with a solution to their problem That they just told you about right? Not the website The solution to their pain Or not the logo or the branding or the content, right? You want to solve their problem so A lot of Bad feelings negative feelings about sales comes from our own experience with salespeople Okay, who's had a really bad experience with a salesperson? today Yesterday right Okay So what we want to do is we want to take some of these old tried and true classic sales techniques And we want to update them For the digital age and we want to do it with a little bit more style than these jokers have been doing. Okay Anybody ever seen a going out of business sign? Right has anybody ever seen that furniture store that's been going out of business for the last three years? Yeah, we all we all know that guy, right? All right, so updated for the digital age urgency Because that's really what that's about urgency and scarcity So one of the ways that I use urgency and scarcity is I'm booking up quickly I can only take on two more projects and I'd love one of those to be yours Okay Anybody remember and this might be dating myself a little bit anybody remember when you were kids and a salesman would come To the door your mom would open the door and he'd stick his foot in All right That was back in the day put the door because you can't close the door, right? Updated for the digital age trip wire product Because all you want to do is get them in the door, right? build some trust build some Um communication So maybe you can't maybe you can't sell them your big enchilada at the first first time But maybe you just need to sell them a bite Here's one What about now? Now What about now? updated for the digital age Continuing to demonstrate your prospects value Okay Maybe this is not. Hey, did you see that proposal? Maybe this is hey, I saw this and I thought of you Which one is building relationships and making about the client and which ones are making it about you All right, so if we all if we continually Turn the frame away from us and back on to the client We can we can just solve almost every situation we have Anybody ever heard this one? He who talks first loses Okay What this means is in a sales conversation Eventually there's going to become an awkward question Usually it's around money time position terms And you're going to want To fill the silence that follows with anything Because in that silence We project our own insecurities We try to read their mind. We try to play credit manager In that silence though Is where the money is And he who talks first loses Okay, if you talk first you're going to give up something you're going to give up money You're going to reduce your position Because all you have to do is wait for the client and in your in your mind you think the client is going I'm not going to spend that much money. This person's crazy. How am I going to get out of this room fast enough? More times than not that's not what they're thinking. They're thinking. How can I pull this off? How can I do? I really need to ask my wife or can I go ahead and do this? Or is she going to be really mad at me? Okay, is that worth it? I kind of think it is Okay, so you don't know what they're thinking But if you wait and let them work it out Your chances of having a positive outcome Are much are much greater Updated for the the digital age This one still works I want you to think about this there are probably Hundreds of thousands of dollars left on the table every year Because salespeople can't tolerate silence If you could take one thing from here, I would say learn to practice sitting in silence With your prospects and your work peers and your family members because if you can Reserve your speech and let the client speak first. I would get I would be willing to bet That you could make I'm gonna say at least five thousand more dollars next year This one thing what are some other old school selling techniques? What's that The what the puppy Oh, yeah, the free trial the puppy dog clothes right Updated for the digital age age free month Right What are some that have been are not so savory anybody? discounts bait and switch So discounts, what do you find unsavory about discounts? Yeah, and what does that tell the client? That you're worth half as much and you were overcharging them And every price is negotiable from here on out Mm-hmm What would the bait and switch we're gonna sell you this But we're gonna deliver you this So is that person gonna come back to you? Not likely not likely They won't refer you you're not gonna get recurring income and you're basically burning that opportunity So when you are trying to sell What's that what's the voice saying in your head? This is a bad one But I've got a prize for the brave person What's your what's what's the what's your brain saying to you? Yeah, and how true is that? Now yes, and there's a difference between pre-qualifying And playing credit manager, right? So you only want to talk to qualified prospects But once you're there ask yourself when you start saying he's not going to buy he's not going to do this He's not going to do that What's your agenda? Okay, so we want to always be questioning our own motivations Are you really concerned about his welfare about in this interaction? Or are you trying to let yourself off the hook from asking hard questions? Anybody else Said who else says things in their head when they go to closing conversation That's very interesting. How many people in here have had have gone all the way through the sales process and then not asked for the business What'd you do all that for? right So It's a fear of rejection when you when you don't ask Your your what you're saying is this amount of money is not worth my feelings getting hurt And if you say that out loud How do you feel about that? Right, but you have to say it out loud. You have to say I don't want to sell this seven thousand dollar project Because I don't want my feelings to get hurt But if you say that out loud you can see how absurd that looks, right? And when you're saying I'm afraid he won't close if I don't do this this and this But then you do those things and then you still don't ask for the sale Right Is this a self-worth issue? Right Do you really believe that you can solve their problem or are you setting yourself up on a pedestal and saying I'm so great, but I'm not really great. I'm pretending Right Right Right Right Absolutely. Can you help them? Because if you could when you start feeling that way And you say I'm not worthy and you start saying all those I'm not worthy Flip it back and say they are worthy of having this problem solved Right Because then it's not about you. You're merely serving your client And a servant is humble and it doesn't matter if the servant is up here Right, the servant doesn't have to pretend the servant only serves Right Anybody anybody else Yes Right But I can take that person and say look what you're looking for is probably about $4,000 outside and then spend that much Right Yes You're a business person business the purpose of a business is to make money So nobody is under any illusions that you're there as a volunteer Right and just because you have a servant heart Doesn't mean that you're not going to get paid and the more you get paid the more Value you can provide to more people Right Absolutely, absolutely. I recently had a gentleman He came to me and I qualified him and we were we were at the budget part of the qualification And he said he didn't have the budget for what his project needed And I said well, I'd like to introduce you to Shopify and when you're ready for professional design I would love to talk to you again. No, no, no, no, no I'm ready. And when when I'm ready, you're the person I want The takeaway clothes, right? But also it's not just a technique It's because I know my value And my ability to serve him and if I'm going to serve him at one third the price It reduces my ability to serve my other clients and my family Because that's who I'm serving most of all That's seriously Yes, in fact, I had a conversation with a gentleman last week who was struggling with this This very thing he went in he talked to a furniture Retail store and he came in with a budget of four thousand dollars and they said our budget is 20 You're too small. We don't want to deal with you Like right person, right? If they don't have the budget that That is a solution that they can use and then they might remember that Down the road, right, you know, they start growing their business and they or maybe they go through ways and they're just like You know, maybe this wasn't the right move and actually I do need help and then They can remember you down the road and not everybody needs custom design Not everybody needs to spend their entire operating budget on a website and then they have nothing left over There's been a lot of businesses go bankrupt that way And that's also a part of being an ethical provider is knowing When to turn a client down absolutely Absolutely Yeah, absolutely and and what has more credibility Someone who's going to take every dollar dangled from them or someone who's going to say no, there's another solution. Yes Here's my website and I have this on here because this uh fear of sales if you click that button You can get the slides for this. Um, if they're actually one set of slides for work camp atlanta, but they're the same ones And um, but you see this get started tab Okay, I have uh worksheets On there where it says What's your name? What's your project? Who's your competition? What does success look like to you? What's your budget? You know that they can fill out Before we even have a conversation now. Sometimes I will talk to just about anybody Until they tell me to shut up Um, and that is that is the truth So I don't always into conversation and send them to my worksheet Right, but once I've gotten a feel uh because I like to hear people's voice because you can tell a lot by someone's voice And there's been quite a few times someone's been on the phone with me And I say, you know what I can tell right now that I'm not the person to provide the solution to you But I know somebody who would be a great fit for you and I refer them on right But if we are then I can send it to my worksheet and they get a lot of that And it just makes it a better conversation And also never let a lead die And less that person you is a known sociopath Don't let a lead die because one man's trash is another man's treasure I had a lead come to me and this guy was a hot mess I mean Anxiety through the roof nitpicking everything and I just knew I mean just from our first conversation That I I was not going to be able to deal with him Right, but I had a friend who loves those type of clients because she's a therapist And she can she knows how to talk them through what they're going through And really work with him to see what his problem is and they have been together for two years and they're happy As clams So I'm a member of wp elevation and one of the things that they teach in that program is something called go wide and go deep Okay, and so I don't always follow this to the letter, but this is a really great framework. So you say You know Why why are you wanting this website or why are you wanting this logo? Why else Why else Of these which is most important and why is that and why is that you know It's just a framework. I sometimes go in as like tell me about the problems you're having Are you making as much money as you want to make? What do you think the problem is? Where's the bottleneck? Right, and really I I approach their business holistically when I go in because they may not need a website They may need to fire their marketing director right They may have a perfectly fine website, but the person doesn't know how to use it Right, so I want I want to position myself as a digital consultant That's that's my business model. So I go in and I'm just like tell me your story And then usually if you listen and you're not thinking about how you can leverage what they tell you and you listen something to pop up and you just The pain will come up and then you poke it Right Oh That's sore. Let's let's see what's underneath there Especially if they start if they get very reactive talking about the last time they dealt with a digital professional Okay, my ideal client. I'm their third agency Okay, because they've grown they started off with somebody small then they did something else and now they've outgrown it But they've had they have some ideas about what went wrong along the way Right and they have some pain But if you start listening and you start and you really care about what they're saying There's gonna be some pain and then you could go let's talk about that Right But you have to feel confident In your and you can fake confidence But you have to at least present a confident demeanor that you care and that you can help them solve that And you can even say I might not be the person to solve it But I can point you in the right direction and that also solves their problem and lets you off the hook And it builds trust Okay, we only have a few more minutes anybody else have a question So I'll give you now but not in other words you're gonna get less service You tell me you can only afford less Then I'll give you less of a service Yes Yeah, absolutely Have you ever had anybody say they don't know what their budget is? I bet they don't I bet they know what their budget's not Right. Oh, you don't know what your budget is. Is it $50,000? No, I was thinking seven. Oh, okay. Well now we've now we've got a conversation Okay, she was saying about discounting and this lady said that one of the tactics she uses is to say Well, if you're but if you can't afford this, what's the number? What is the real number and let's see what we can do with that right? Correct, correct All right, anybody else Yes, yes, some of the most beautiful words in the English language is That's a great piece for phase two And it helps us and it helps the client Because the client may not can afford that and it helps us to keep scope creep Right if somebody keeps adding and adding and adding and you should always have in your contracts a defined scope, right? But they say well, I want to do this too. That's fantastic. That'd be great for phase two or I can't Afford this. Well, let's break it into phase one and phase two. Yes Yes, you have to educate them. You have to show them what's in it for them You have to explain your product because you're the professional and you've got that way by building your skill set And you didn't someone didn't just show up and hand it to you, right? So there's a lot of complexity in that and you have to be able to translate that to them So that they really understand what's happening Absolutely. Okay one more question. We're all done anybody Well, I'm very fortunate That um 85 percent of my business comes by referrals Okay, I do not that is very intentional So I spend 20 percent of my business week in community Okay, four days a week. I'm running my business hands on One day a week. I'm in community at least and sometimes it's usually Two to three hours a day. So I'm very active in the atlanta WordPress community. I I always Try to have lunch with somebody when I get a check. I'm taking somebody to lunch Right and that's great for building relationships because guess what people love lunch Right and So when if I'm wanting to get in a foot in a door if I'm wanting to meet somebody I one of my leads is I was like, I'd love to get to know more about your business and how I can encourage you Okay And really that's all I'm wanting is I'm wanting to meet somebody and see how I can encourage them because I don't do cold sales I mean I might in the future, but that's just not where I am right now I just want to meet people that I can encourage and then usually that develops into a referral at some point And referrals Are warm. They pay you more. They respect you more Right, that's where you want to end up now Obviously you want inbound as well because you don't want to be completely dependent on someone else's business model Or someone else referring you so you want to have a balance but referrals are the where the gold is Okay, so for If you don't live in the Atlanta area and you don't have a nutrient dense environment for wordpress like we do I bet you have a chamber of commerce. I bet you have a rotary club. I bet you have a b&i right and what you can do is Is you can just go to those go to those places and just make connections one-on-one connections, right? So hey, I'd love to know more about your business You want to go grab some coffee because I want to know what you do And also it's good if you want to find out who you can refer to that person Right. Oh, you're a plumber. I'd love to learn more about your business because everybody needs a plumber at some point Right And if you but it just always turning it back on them turning it back on them because then you're not bothering them in your head, right All you're doing is you're building relationships Oh, that should be everybody's framework Yeah Everybody's framework should be what you can do for them. And if you continue to do that, obviously you're going to want to monetize it appropriately Well, thank you so much guys um Thank you so much for coming and I'd love to chat with you later and um, please Uh, there if you want to spend 15 minutes or 30 minutes chatting with me go to book with april.com And I'd be more than happy to spend some time with you on the phone talking about whatever your sales fears are Because that's what my mission in life is to help you be able to sell more so you can take better care of your families. Okay