by Nancy Calabrese | May 10, 2023 | Podcast
About Brandon Leibowitz: Brandon Leibowitz, the Founder of SEO Optimizers, a Digital Marketing Agency that focuses on helping small and medium-sized businesses get more online traffic, which in turn converts into clients, sales, leads, etc. Brandon got his start in digital marketing in 2007 after graduating from college with a degree in Business Marketing. In his first job, he handled the marketing aspects of an e-commerce website. In 2008, he realized that most businesses would need a website to stay competitive in the future. Having a website is only one piece of the puzzle. Ultimately, they need someone to help market their website to bring in traffic that will, in turn, convert to clients. And this was the beginning of starting his own company. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Brandon.
In this episode, Nancy and Brandon discuss the following:
- Why is SEO so important as it relates to sales?
- Is there any way SEO can drive prospects that are within your target audience?
- Brandon’s unique idea makes him different and sets him apart.
- How does Brandon optimize his website for conversions?
- How important is video marketing these days? Brandon’s experience in this.
- An interesting story for the audience.
- Something, in particular, you would want me to spotlight?
- How do you get Google to trust you?
- Fun fact about Brandon.
- What SEO strategies are recommended in 2023, and how are they different perhaps in the past years?
- How long in your experience does it take for SEO to really start working?
- “Keeping a positive attitude and mindset is what will drive success”, why is this important to Brandon?
- Is the SEO industry agnostic or does it work more in certain industries than others?
- Something that is true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
- What are backlinks? And how do you get those backlinks on the other sites?
- How can my people reach you?
Key Takeaways:
- SEO is all about just doing keyword research, figuring out what keywords people search for, and then incorporating those into your website.
- You want to make sure that all your printed information is at the top of your page, so ensure that whenever someone gets to your website, all the important information is at the very top, so they don’t have to scroll down because the majority of people don’t scroll down on a website.
- Video is good because people’s attention spans are short.
- If you can have a presence on YouTube or any of these video platforms, that’s going to really help build trust.
- Making sure that you’re targeting the right keywords and then writing them for those keywords can change your business.
- You have to build trust with Google and with people when you’re doing digital marketing.
- The more websites that talk about you, the more trust Google is going to give to you.
- Once you get to that first page of Google, you’re pushing someone off that first page and they’re not going to be happy about that.
- They’re doing something right and if you can incorporate what’s correct into your own website, that’s going to make Google trust you in a similar way.
- SEO is pretty much industry agnostic, but the less competition, the quicker it’s going to result in more rankings.
- You don’t need to be everywhere. You just need to be in front of where your audience is looking for you.
- Backlinks are clickable links from other websites that point to yours.
- It’s not immediate, so if you’re looking for immediate results, paid ads are going to get you that immediate traction, but SEO is a more long-term play, where you build it up and build it up and build that trust up over time.
- You just got to keep showing Google that you’re relevant and trustworthy, and once they start trusting you, they’re going to start ranking you, but you must build that trust up because Google just doesn’t rank anybody without your trust.
“SEO is a way to bring in traffic. So, when people search on Google, there are ads at the top. Those are all paid ads, but right below the paid ads are the organic results. And SEO is about getting you in those organic results, so you get that free traffic. So, when people search on Google for your keywords, you show up and you capture that free traffic. So, they go to your website, and hopefully on your website, you could convince them to become a sale, lead, phone call, email, whatever that conversion goal is.” – BRANDON
“Traffic is just half the battle. And once you get people to your website, how do you get them to convert? And that’s where I try to figure out what we do to your website to make it optimized for people. That way they become a lead, a sale, or a phone call because a lot of people just focus on getting traffic, but they don’t focus on what happens after that traffic gets to my website. How do I make sure that they actually stay on my website, that they go from a visitor to actual, a lead or a sale? And that’s how I try to focus on that. ” – BRANDON
“If you don’t have that positive mindset then you get distracted and frustrated because SEO does take time. It’s not immediate So if you’re expecting immediate results, then you got run paid ads but for SEO It’s more of a long-term strategy where over time you’re going to build yourself up build your credibility and trust up and that’s going to just bring in more traffic, but it’s all about patience with it because it is not immediate unfortunately.” – BRANDON
Connect with Brandon Leibowitz:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, everyone. It’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today. And it always starts with the human conversation. Today, we’re speaking with Brandon Leibowitz, the founder of SEO Optimizers, a digital marketing agency that focuses on helping small and medium-sized businesses get more online traffic, which in turn converts into clients, sales, leads, and more. In his first job, he handled the marketing aspects of an e-commerce website. In 2008, Brandon realized that most businesses would need a website to stay competitive in the future. Having a website is only one piece of the puzzle. Ultimately, they need someone to help market their website to bring in traffic that will in turn convert into clients. And this was the beginning of starting his own company. And in one of his interviews, Brandon said that keeping a positive attitude and mindset is what drives success. And I totally agree. Welcome to the show, Brandon. [1:27]
Brandon Leibowitz: Thanks for having me on.
Nancy Calabrese: So, as I told you before we jumped on, I know very little about the world of SEO. And why is it so important as it relates to sales? [1:44]
Brandon Leibowitz: SEO is a way to bring in traffic. So, when people search on Google, there’s ads at the top. Those are all paid ads, but right below the paid ads are the organic results. And SEO is about getting you in those organic results so you get that free traffic. So, when people search on Google for your keywords, that you show up and you capture that free traffic. So, they go to your website and hopefully on your website, you could convince them to become a sale, lead, phone call, email, whatever that conversion goal is. [2:14]
Nancy Calabrese: Is there any way SEO can drive prospects that are within your target audience? How do you go about doing that?
Brandon Leibowitz: You put the right keywords on your website so that when people search for you, that you show up in those searches. So, it’s all about just doing keyword research, figuring out what keywords people search for, and then incorporating those into your website. That way when people are searching for your product or service, that you pop up and that you’re able to capture that traffic and bring them into your website. [2:44]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, so, you know, I want to share your unique idea that is different and sets you apart. What would you say that is?
Brandon Leibowitz: I focus on the whole cycle where not just focusing on getting you traffic, but making sure that traffic converts into sales, leads, phone calls. Traffic is just half the battle. And once you get people to your website, how do you get them to convert? And that’s where I try to figure out what do we do to your website to make it optimized for people? That way they become a lead, a sale or a phone call, because a lot of people just focus on getting traffic, but they don’t focus on what happens after that traffic gets to my website. How do I make sure that they actually stay on my website, that they go from a visitor to actual, a lead or a sale. And that’s how I try to focus on that. [3:30],
Nancy Calabrese: So how do you optimize your website for conversions?
Brandon Leibowitz: You want to make sure that all your printed information is at the top of your page, so making sure that whenever someone gets to your website, all the important information is at the very top, so they don’t have to scroll down because the majority of people don’t scroll down on a website. So, you want to make sure that you have your call to action at the top of your website. You want to make sure you have the value proposition, maybe some bullet points or a video or something where it’s easy for people to kind of quickly skim and understand what that page is about. Then lower it down and you can have more details. But initially the top, it’s called above the fold, whatever you see on the screen is above the fold. Once you start scrolling, that’s below the fold. So, above the fold, you want to make sure that there’s everything that needs to be there because the majority of the people will not scroll down and if you make them scroll down, then you’re already losing a majority of your traffic. So, have everything at the top of the page, make sure it’s easy to understand, offer value, talk about benefits, promote yourself and that’s going to really help out a lot. [4:30]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, so how important is video marketing these days? What’s been your experience? And video on a website?
Brandon Leibowitz: Well, video is good because people’s attention spans are short. So, instead of reading an article or blog, a video makes it so they could just sit there and it’s right off to them. And that works very, very well. People are going towards video. If you look at all social media, it’s really gone towards video nowadays. And if you can have a presence on YouTube or any of these video platforms, that’s going to really help build trust too. It puts a face behind the company. It shows that you’re a real business and that you’re a person that’s there to help out. [5:10]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. So, is there a story that the audience would find interesting?
Brandon Leibowitz: I’ve helped out lots of companies over the years, making sure that they show up on Google. So, worked with clients before where they weren’t showing up for any keywords. And then by going in and doing the things that Google wants to see, by putting keywords in the coding, and then building trust up from Google, that they started to rank for their keywords. And once they started ranking for their keywords, they saw their traffic just shoot up, and then they also saw sales, it’s kind of followed suit. So, making sure that you’re targeting the right keywords. and then write it for those keywords can change your business. Because I saw this one client where they sold automotive leases. [5:56]
Nancy Calabrese: And is there something in particular you would want me to spotlight?
Brandon Leibowitz: It would probably be that you have to build trust up with Google and with people when you’re doing digital marketing. So, it’s very important to get Google to trust you and also to get people to trust you because you need Google to trust you so they rank you for your keywords. But then once you rank for your keywords, you want to get people to trust you. That way they actually make a purchase off of your website. So, it’s kind of two-fold.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, but how do you get Google to trust you? [6:27]
Brandon Leibowitz: That’s by getting what are called back links, getting other websites to talk about you. The more websites that talk about you, the more trust Google is going to give to you. And then they look at those keywords on your website, but it doesn’t work the other way around. If you don’t build back links, Google is not going to trust you. A back link is a clickable link from another website that points to yours. So, let’s say you’re reading an article on the NewYorkTimes.com. And in there it says Brandon Liebowitz. If you click on that and it takes you to my website, then I’d be getting a back link from the NewYorkTimes.com. The more websites that talk about you, the more trust Google is going to give to you. [7:02]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay, so let’s just change it a bit. Tell me a fun fact about you.
Brandon Leibowitz: I like skateboarding when I’m not working.
Nancy Calabrese: Skateboarding?
Brandon Leibowitz: Yep.
Nancy Calabrese: Now I have never tried it; I don’t think I ever would. What’s the fascination with it? [7:22]
Brandon Leibowitz: Just the freedom that you get when you’re going down the hills or cruising around the streets and It’s just that freedom and it’s fun.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, I mean, believe me, I’m in a minority, but I’m just, I figured I’d go on it and hit my head and that would be the end of it.
Brandon Leibowitz: No, that’s not the freedom we want. We want the freedom of just the feeling of just going down a hill and just rolling down, feel the wind in your face and it’s a fun experience. [7:49]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. So what SEO strategies are recommended in 2023, and how are they different perhaps in the past years?
Brandon Leibowitz: They don’t really change too much for today. Google is just cleaning up spam for the most part. So, it really comes down to good content on your website, good quality backlinks. And now Google is looking at user experience, how people behave on your website. So, if people just go to your website and then hit that back button, that tells Google that maybe you’re not the most relevant and you shouldn’t be up there. So, user experience is very, very important nowadays, making sure that people stay on your website and don’t hit that back button, just like we were talking about earlier, how to keep people on your website because that’s a big part of Google’s algorithm nowadays that they’re really pushing. It’s called the user experience. [8:36]
Nancy Calabrese: How long in your experience does it take for SEO to really start working?
Brandon Leibowitz: It depends on your keywords that you’re trying to rank for and how much SEO has been done to your website versus the competitors. So, it’s not really a one size fits all. It really depends on how much SEO you have done versus your competition, because we’re not trying to be Google, we’re just trying to be your competitors. I mean, you look at who your competitors are, how much SEO have they done, and how can we do a better job of it? So, on average, it takes about six months, but it could take more, it could take less. It really varies. It’s not really a one size fits all. [9:10]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, and I’m guessing that you really have to keep it up, right? Otherwise, you can lose your standing in SEO?
Brandon Leibowitz: You have to maintain those rankings because there’s only 10 spots on that first page of Google. Once you get to that first page of Google, you’re pushing someone off that first page and they’re not going to be happy about that. They’re going to look at everything that you’ve done. They’re going to look at your keywords. They’re going to look at your backlinks and try to outrank you by doing a better job of those backlinks and keywords, which is the way I rank websites is I look at who’s on that first page of Google, look at everything that they’ve done and try to incorporate what’s working onto my website or my client’s websites and that’s how to get Google to trust you in a similar way because if they’re ranked on that first page of Google for your keywords They’re doing something right and if you can incorporate what’s correct into your own website, that’s going to make Google to trust you in a similar way [10:00]
Nancy Calabrese: As I introduced you, I quoted you saying keeping a positive attitude and mindset is what will drive success. That obviously triggered me because I totally agree and that can be applied to anything that we do. But why is that important to you?
Brandon Leibowitz: If you don’t have that positive mindset then you get distracted and frustrated because SEO does take time. It’s not immediate So if you’re expecting immediate results, then you got run paid ads but for SEO It’s more of a long-term strategy where over time you’re going to build yourself up build your credibility and trust up and that’s going to just bring in more traffic, but it’s all about patience with it because it is not immediate unfortunately. [10:47]
Nancy Calabrese: Is SEO, I guess the purpose of SEO, is it industry agnostic or does it work more in certain industries than others?
Brandon Leibowitz: It’s pretty much industry agnostic, but the less competition, the quicker it’s going to result in more rankings. So, the less competition, the better off it’s going to be, but it works for pretty much any industry. It’s always going to be the same strategies. It’s just changing keywords around and changing little tweaks like that, backlinks around to make them more relevant to your niche, but for the most part, the strategies remain the same. [11:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. And so, I’m guessing that we have SEO in place, but what other channels do you see out there are important to increase, I guess, people coming to you rather than you going out?
Brandon Leibowitz: Well, you just got to know where your audience is and be in front of them at the right moment. You got to take a step back as a business owner and think, if I was looking for my product or service, where would I go? That’s where you need to be. You don’t need to be everywhere. You just need to be in front of where your audience is looking for you. So that’s where you just got to think. If I was looking for my product or service, would I be going on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn or Pinterest? Where would I be going? And that’s where you need to be. But it all works. Social media, email marketing, paid ad, SEO, they all work together to help you have a holistic digital marketing strategy. [12:22]
Nancy Calabrese: So, tell me or share with the audience and me something that is true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Brandon Leibowitz: What am I going to say? I’m not too sure. But a lot of business owners don’t know about backlinks. So, making sure that you build backlinks is very, very important. But I feel like most SEO people agree with me that it’s very important, but business owners might not know about it. So, trying to educate them about the benefits of why they need backlinks, how they’re important, how they rank websites, and how we get Google to trust you with those backlinks. [13:02]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure, so I’m going to ask you what are backlinks?
Brandon Leibowitz: Backlinks are clickable links from other websites that point to yours. So, let’s say you’re reading an article in The LATimes.com and in there it says Brandon Leibowitz and you click on that and it goes to my website I’d be getting a backlink from the LATimes.com. So, the more websites that talk about to you the more trust Google’s going to give to you and the higher they rank you. [13:25]
Nancy Calabrese: And how do you get those backlinks on the other sites?
Brandon Leibowitz: There’s tools that will show you your competitors’ backlinks. So, you can look at who your competitors are that are ranked on that first page of Google for your keywords and using tools like Ahrefs or Moz or SEMrush, you have to pay for them. They’ll show you all of your competitors’ website backlinks and then one by one you can start reaching out to those sites because if they’re linking out to your competitor, they would more than likely link out to you. You just got to get creative and figure out what do they do. Do they write an article? Do they do an interview? Did they give out a free product as a review? Or did they sponsor an event and you can pretty much see their exact strategy by using those tools. [14:04]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. Yeah. You know, as I said, going into this, I’m like a neophyte with SEO. So, that’s a good suggestion. And we’ll talk sidebar on that. I guess lastly, what is the one takeaway you would like to leave the audience with?
Brandon Leibowitz: Just to be patient with all this stuff, because SEO does take time. It’s not immediate, so if you’re looking for immediate results, paid ads are going to get you that immediate traction, but SEO is more long-term play, where you build it up and build it up and build that trust up over time. Google’s going to start ranking you higher and you’re going to start seeing that traffic come in more, but just be patient with it all. It takes time, and once you start getting Google to trust you, they’re going to get those rankings moving up really quickly. [14:51]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, I don’t know of anything that is a silver bullet. And I find, and I don’t know if this is you, but setting expectations is sometimes a challenge with clients, you know, just to allow it to happen. In our business, one call doesn’t necessarily lead to an appointment that leads to new business, right? It takes multiple attempts. I’m sensing with SEO you just have to keep feeding it with the right information to get it to a point where it is going to pay off. Is that kind of, correct? [15:29]
Brandon Leibowitz: Yep, you just got to keep showing Google that you’re relevant, trustworthy, and once they start trusting you, they’re going to start ranking you, but you got build that trust up because Google just doesn’t rank anybody without you trust. [15:40]
Nancy Calabrese: All right, folks, well, how can my people reach you?
Brandon Leibowitz: So, for anyone that wants to learn more, I create a special gift for them if they go to my website at SEOoptimizers.com. That’s SEOoptimizers.com forward slash gift and they can find that there along with my contact information and a bunch of classes I’ve done over the years I put up for free and also if they want to book some time on my calendar for a free website analysis, happy to check out their website from an SEO point of view and they can book some time on my calendar for free there as well. [16:12]
Nancy Calabrese: That’s awesome. And so first of all, I want to thank you for sharing your expertise. I know I’ve learned a lot. And people, take advantage of what Brandon has to offer. Reach out to him on his website. He’s got that free gift. And call him. He obviously is a world of knowledge in the world of SEO. So, everyone out there, thanks so much for listening. Brandon, again, thank you for joining me on the show and make it a great sales day.
Brandon Leibowitz: Thanks for having me on. [16:47]
by Nancy Calabrese | May 4, 2023 | Podcast
About Bryan Charleau: Bryan Charleau is the founder of Pitching Sales. He is a seasoned sales professional with over ten years of experience in the sales industry, ranging from software to construction. Through his experiences, he has learned countless lessons and gained first-hand knowledge of the challenges that sales professionals face when establishing themselves in this competitive field. Bryan’s first book, Pitching Sales, is filled with important and often overlooked information that can help to prepare you for the beginning stages of your career and to guide you through some of the unexpected situations you may find yourself in. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Bryan.
In this episode, Nancy and Bryan discuss the following:
- Bryan’s unique approach to sales.
- Why the word selling has such a bad rep?
- How did Bryan get into sales?
- Why Bryan felt compelled to write Pitching Sales and where it fits in the market.
- Why do people hate picking up the phone?
- Is there another story you want to share with the audience?
- Bryan’s view on the fact that experienced salespeople don’t pay attention to the activities.
- Does Bryan believe in scripts?
- What is the one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?
- How can my people find you?
Key Takeaways:
- Everybody’s had an experience that’s turned them off of sales, but they overlook the experiences where they bought something, where that salesperson was very helpful.
- I guess that stigma can sometimes come along with this profession.
- And one of the interesting things that go along the lines of hearing No is just having that mindset switch where you realize: “It’s okay to hear no”, “It’s okay to be rejected in this profession”.
- Whether you’ve made a sale or not doesn’t matter.
- That’s where most people start in this cold calling environment, and you have to get the proper mentality to move forward and make something to yourself, or else, you’re going to get frustrated, fizzle out, and you might get out of the profession.
- As long as you’re coming in with the proper mindset of saying, “Hey, if this person says no, it doesn’t matter whether you made a sale at the end of that day”, then you start hearing those yeses.
- Perfect scenarios very rarely exist. They should be looked at as a bonus, not as the norm.
- I do think it is important to have a guideline for those initial 3-6 months allowing that person to grow and integrate their own personality and own thoughts on the product or service or whatever it may be.
- Don’t fear that rejection. Don’t make that excuse to pick up the phone. You are getting further than the person beside you who picked it up once and made one sale and doesn’t know any better why they got it or how they got it.
- I know how hard this is to be, and I know that I just hate to see good sales professionals get turned off of the profession, and that’s kind of what I try to help people with.
“When you start to take that time and say: “This is a career that I want to look into. I’m going to do things outside of the office to prepare. I’m going to read books. I’m going to go to seminars, training courses, whatever it may be.” I think that’s a real shift in mindset. And when I look back about 10 years into my profession, I realize there wasn’t really anything that helped people in that first 3-6 months in getting off the ground because you see all these sale books on the perfect clothes and how to prospect and how to expedite your sales cycle, etc. Well, that’s great information if you know how to sell and you’re already in this profession, and you’re looking to go to the next level. But that doesn’t help you if you’re scared to pick up the phone.” – BRYAN
” We’ve grown up. And we’ve been conditioned to avoid hearing No when we’re asking for something. And that can wear on you. If you hear it continuously, it doesn’t matter what aspect of life, but if it’s determining your paycheck, it’s hard to hear it time and time and time again. And that just leads to you picking up that phone slower and slower the next time you hear it. And it can really start a dangerous cycle if it’s a profession that you’re really trying to get into.” – BRYAN
“And my favorite part about selling is you can never learn at all. There’s no end to the book. There’s just so much information and practice you can be doing just to get better and better.” – BRYAN
Connect with Bryan Charleau:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Bryan Charleau, founder of Pitching Sales. With his unique approach to sales, Bryan has developed a reputation for helping businesses increase their bottom line and build strong lasting customer relationships. And whether you’re a seasoned sales professional or just starting out, Bryan’s insights and expertise are sure to be invaluable. His first book, Pitching Sales, is filled with important and often overlooked information that can help to prepare you for the beginning stages of your career and guide you through some of the most unexpected situations you may find yourself in. So, if you’re considering a life in sales as we have, looking for guidance in your sales career, or questioning if sales is right for you, let Pitching Sales be your mentor and Bryan your confidant. So, let’s dive into today’s discussion with Bryan. Welcome to the show! [1:34]
Bryan Charleau: Well, thanks for having me, Nancy. I really appreciate it.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, believe it or not, my computer just went off. I don’t know, my phone just went off. Can you believe that, Bryan? We were talking about that right at the end.
Bryan Charleau: That’s the beauty of timing.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh my God. So, why don’t we start with your unique approach to sales? What’s unique about it?
Bryan Charleau: Well, I think one of the things that I’ve tried to hone in on, especially, I guess, early in my training career, was trying to fill the gap on people new to the profession. I really think that it’s overlooked, given the stresses that come with it. [2:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Bryan Charleau: And I know we were talking a little bit before, but when you start getting into cold calling, and you start getting into these unfamiliar environments that people are generally thrown into, undertrained, thrown into the fire a little bit, and then expected to come up with results. It can be stressful, it can be scary, you know, downright, it can turn people off of the profession, which is too bad because I think it’s an incredible profession to be a part of. But that first three to six, six months to a year is really a tough time for these sales reps that are coming in. I really wanted to provide something to help them get through it and get out to the other side where they feel much more comfortable. And that’s kind of the approach I took here. [3:05]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, you know, sales is that you mentioned the word selling and we immediately think of used car salesmen, right?
Bryan Charleau: Mm-hmm.
Nancy Calabrese: And it gets such a bad rap. Why do you think that is?
Bryan Charleau: Well, I think because those are the ones that stick out to you throughout your lifetime growing up. It doesn’t really matter what age you are, but everybody’s had an experience that’s turned them off of sales. And they overlook the experiences where they bought something, where that salesperson was very helpful. The person was knowledgeable. The person, you know, maybe they had an idea of what they were looking for and they said person got to know them a little bit better. Say: “Hey, you know what? This one actually might be a better fit for you”. They remember the snake oil salesman or the used car person who sold them a clunky car or whatever the case is and those true good sales professionals they don’t notice, and I think that’s what gets overshadowed with that. I guess that stigma can sometimes come along with this profession. [4:12]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I mean, selling is just about communicating, right? Communication. And so how did you get into sales?
Bryan Charleau: Well, I started funny enough, I talk about it in my book there. My first sales job was selling car wax to people filling their gas tanks at gas stations. I had to Yeah, I had to go up. It was the middle of summer. I was in between like; I think I was second-year university and I was needed some extra money. So, I took this job and I had to wait for people to start pumping gas, approach them, come up to them, you know, introduce myself, you know, gain enough trust with them to allow them to do a demo for their kind of talk about the, the benefits of this wax and try to close them before they went on their way with the rest of the day. So, it was a real thrown into the mix in trying to learn sales at an escalated pace because your sales cycle was about five to six minutes. [5:19]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh my God. I mean, and talk about that. You have a very short window to close the deal.
Bryan Charleau: Yeah. And, and kind of what we were saying too, is, is that like, and it was a commission only too. So, it’s not as if I was, you know, I could sit around and collect 10-12 bucks an hour, only thrown out a couple of demonstrations, I had to approach every single person that came up there and trying to make 100 bucks a day doing this. So, there was no, there’s no being shy or timid. And I was just like, okay, let’s see how it goes. [5:53]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, awesome. Your story is better than mine, by the way. I love it. So, in a market with so many sales and business books out there, why did you feel compelled to write Pitching Sales? And where do you feel it fits in the market? [6:12]
Bryan Charleau: Well, that was the biggest thing. So, not so much with this job, but my next job right out of university, which was in essentially a call center, selling sports hospitality packages to major companies for them to entertain their top, you know, reps, their top customers, whatever it may be. All cold calls all day, just you and your phone, essentially. And moving forward into a couple of jobs after that. I had started to really try to take this profession seriously. And when I did so and to me, a sales job turns into a sales profession. [6:53]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Bryan Charleau: When you start to take that time and say, this is a career that I want to look into, I’m going to do things outside of the office to prepare. I’m going to read books. I’m going to go to seminars, training courses, whatever it may be. I think that’s a real shift in mindset. And when I look back about 10 years into my profession, I realized there wasn’t really anything that helped people in that first, you know, three to six months in getting off the ground because you see all these sale books on like the perfect clothes and how to prospect and how to, you know, expedite your sales cycle and all these things. Well, that’s great information if you know how to sell and you’re already in this profession and you’re looking to go to the next level. That doesn’t help you if you’re scared to pick up the phone. [7:44]
Nancy Calabrese: All right.
Bryan Charleau: What good is the best closing method in the world if you’re not getting through to prospects?
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So why do people hate picking up the phone?
Bryan Charleau: Because they hate, everybody hates rejection on the surface level. Everybody hates being told no. And we’ve grown up. And we’ve been conditioned to avoid hearing no when we’re asking for something. And that can wear on you. If you hear it continuously, it doesn’t matter what aspect of life, but if it’s determining your paycheck, it’s hard to hear it time and time and time again. [8:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Bryan Charleau: And that just leads to you picking up that phone slower and slower the next time after you hear it. And it can really start a dangerous cycle if it’s a profession that you’re really trying to get into.
Nancy Calabrese: Right, right. So, I know that you shared a story earlier, but is there another story you want to share with the audience?
Bryan Charleau: Well, I think the funniest thing that came to me was when I was in the second job, the one that was at a university where this was like, you know, you’re showing up in a suit and tie, coming to the office every morning type of thing. And one of the interesting things and it goes along the lines of hearing no and just having that mindset switch where you realized it’s okay to hear no, it’s okay to be rejected in this profession. As you move on that person’s realizing that that person has, forgotten about you by the time they finish hanging up the phone, they’re going to go on about their day. And it’s up to you to decide if you’re going to let that linger in your day, or if you’re going to move on with yours and create something out of it because the next person is an entirely different person in an entirely different situation. And that is the mentality that you have to have to be successful in a world of cold calling as you’re trying to really set your roots in this profession because you know that’s where everybody as good as it is as sales is and can be and can get. That’s where most people start in this cold calling environment and you have to get the proper mentality to move forward and make something to yourself or else, you’re going to get frustrated, fizzle out, and you might, you know, get out of the profession. That’s honestly, it’s too bad. [10:26]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. You know, it’s funny because when I got my start in sales, it took me, you know, between six to nine months to really get my mojo going. People don’t realize and even, tell me if I’m wrong, experienced salespeople, if they make a switch to another, you know, company or a career, it still takes time to develop the as I said mojo, is that your experience generally?
Bryan Charleau: Yes, 100%. And the biggest, biggest thing I can tell a new salesperson, and sometimes it blows their mind a little bit, is the process is more important than the sale itself. And what I mean by that is, are you fearing rejection every day that you come into the office? If the answer’s no, then you’re off to a better start. Whether you’ve made a sale or not doesn’t matter. You know, when you look up a prospect and you’re about to call him, are you making an excuse for them already before you do? Are you going to, I call it a case, do you have the what ifs? What if he’s busy? What if he can’t afford it? What if he doesn’t like it? What if he hangs up on me? You can put a what if in front of any excuse that you want. And guess what? It’s not going to go anywhere. [11:47]
Nancy Calabrese: Right, right. So, you know, I take a no is it not now? That’s it.
Bryan Charleau: Yeah, yeah, that’s all it is.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. And then, yay, I’m getting closer to my yes, right?
Bryan Charleau: 100% and as long as you’re coming in with the proper mindset of saying, hey, if this person says no, it doesn’t matter whether you made a sale at the end of that day. And you’re new to sales does it helps? Don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t matter because you’re further ahead than your numbers might say because you’re not worried about picking up the phone and that will eventually translate into positivity, better conversations, more prospects on the phone. And then you start hearing those yeses after that word. [12:33]
Nancy Calabrese: I totally agree with you. And at the end of the day, what I always focus on, and I’ve got years in the business in selling, is what are the activities I can control, right? We cannot control at the time of the call how that prospect is feeling and what their needs are. And I find that some salespeople, especially experienced salespeople, they don’t pay attention to the activities. What do you say about that? [13:09]
Bryan Charleau: Yeah, and I think that that’s you have to condition it all of it’s such a mental mindset sale, it doesn’t matter if your day one walk into an office or if you’re 20 years into doing this. The process is the same, you’re better at it by the end of it. But if you don’t follow it, it doesn’t matter if you keep trying to manipulate the scenario to make it a perfect, whether it’s like, well, I know this person is going to be around it. you start to try to massage the scenario into something that is the best case. It doesn’t work that way. And then you start to see numbers fall off. You start to see that these perfect scenarios very rarely exist. They should be looked at as a bonus, not as the norm. And you have to get back to knocking on people’s doors, picking up the phone, and just re-engaging with the process that got you to where you are. starts in the early days. And if you can really drive that habitual mindset, you’re gonna keep having that success five years, 10 years, 20 years, doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, doesn’t matter if you change to a whole new industry, different service, anything, the process remains the same and that will always be the case in sales. [14:33]
Nancy Calabrese: And that’s what’s the beauty of sales is if you have your methodology down, the conversation may change based on what you’re selling. But in essence, you’re saying the same thing, but to different people, right?
Bryan Charleau: Yep. Yep. And you’re going to learn.
Nancy Calabrese: Do you believe in scripts?
Bryan Charleau: I like to I like to go by having a guideline. I think early, I think early it is important because there needs to be some structure for somebody that’s just coming into the profession to just say, hey, pick up the phone and do your best. It’s a, you know, a method for failure. [15:14]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Bryan Charleau: But I do think it is important to have a guideline for those initial three to six months allowing that person to grow and integrate their own personality and their own thoughts on the product or service or whatever it may be. Once they’ve gotten used to that, and they’ve and they’ve shown that they don’t they’ll pick up the phone, they should they show that they don’t fear rejection. That’s when you start to let the shackles off a little bit and let them grow into their own salesperson. [15:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Now, interestingly, I very much believe in scripts. And my feeling on scripts is, after a certain period of time, the script is internalized, right? So, you can just spew it out without having to look at one. But the value of having a script, to me, is that at least gets you in the door. And the real challenge in selling is when you hear the objections. Right? How are we going to overcome these objections? So, we pretty much script everything, but they don’t read it, you know? They act it out.
Bryan Charleau: That’s what I kind of look at the difference between a script and a guideline or some structure to it is if that person’s struggling to stay focused or stay on topic or get some points that need to be said, they need to have that in front of them. And that’s good for a lot of people. And then when you turn it into something that you said is internalized, now they’re going on. They’re becoming more conversational with the people because they had this structure to lean on. And I fully agree with that. You can’t just let people into the, into the wild thinking that they’re going to come up with the best things to say when they’re, they just don’t have that experience to know that. [17:13]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you can’t wing it.
Bryan Charleau: No, no, absolutely not.
Nancy Calabrese: Winging is hard work. It’s sloppy.
Bryan Charleau: Absolutely not.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. You know what? Last question, because we’re running out of time, and you and I, I’m sure, both agree we could go on and on.
Bryan Charleau: Absolutely. We’re just scratching the surface.
Nancy Calabrese: I know! What is one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Bryan Charleau: Well, I guess it would depend on where that person is within there, um, in their sales career. I would say if you are just starting out, if you are looking at this profession, you’re unsure of whether it’s for you, you’re here looking for help and guidelines because you’re struggling or don’t know. Listen to that, what we were talking about. Listen to that. Just get over picking up the phone. Like even if the person said you hear a no a hundred times if you pick up that phone just as quickly on the 99th call as you did the first one you are doing fine you are doing great you are going to get better don’t fear that rejection don’t make that excuse to pick up the phone you are getting further than the person beside you who picked it up once and made one sale and doesn’t know any better of why they got it or how they got it. and then for the person that is maybe a couple years in they’re seeing some success they look at this as a really good profession to be in. I always say, once you change your mindset from a job to a career in sales, you are going to go to the next level. And what I mean by that is saying, hey, this is the career and I’m going to go all in. That’s when you start picking up books. That’s when you start listening to audiobooks on your drive home or your commute home. That’s when you start looking up if there are any seminars in your city if there’s any extra training that you can do. And once you flipped that mindset, this is what I wanna do for the rest of my life. Doesn’t matter what capacity, but I want to do this. You are now a sales professional and you will see yourself expedite. Exponentially. It’s unbelievable. That mindset changes. [19:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh my God. Yeah, you and I both speak the same language. How can my people find you?
Bryan Charleau: Well, there are a few ways. Well, first and foremost, and I think that this is even though it’s geared towards people starting the profession, I think there’s information in there that any season sales professional can lean on. And that’s just with my book, pitching sales, a complete guide to becoming a sales professional. That’s on Amazon, Audible, and all that. But I also have my landing page, which is pitchingsalesconsulting.com. They can reach out there. Like I’m just here to help people. Like I know how hard this is to be and I know that I just hate to see good sales professionals get turned off of the profession and that’s kind of what I try to help people with. Get them over that hump. [20:13]
Nancy Calabrese: All right, so we’re gonna start calling you Coach Bryan.
Bryan Charleau: That works for me. I love it.
Nancy Calabrese: That’s awesome. So, listen folks, he’s great. Go get the book, go reach out to him. Have a friendly conversation. Selling is, I think selling is freeing. And if you really want to enter into a career that gives you so much freedom and satisfaction, take it up with Bryan. And Bryan, I hope you’re going to come back to the show.
Bryan Charleau: Absolutely. Anytime. Like I said, I can, I just love talking about this stuff with the people who have the same type of passion for it because like you said, it is freeing. It’s a wonderful profession to be in. And my favorite part about selling is you can never learn at all. There’s no end to the book. There’s just so much information and practice you can be doing just to get better and better. [21:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, I love it. And so, everyone, make it an awesome sales day out there, and we’ll see you next time.
by Nancy Calabrese | Apr 26, 2023 | Podcast
About Donnie Boivin: Donnie Boivin is the CEO of Success Champions. This online community gives you back your time while connecting you with other business owners looking to scale and grow their businesses. Donnie created the Badass Business Summit helping businesses unleash, be seen, and sell. And has appeared on hundreds of podcasts, spoken on hundreds of stages, and is going bigger with his message daily. Also, he is the Host of Growth Mode Podcasts, which gives you all the insights you need to know while building your business. Donnie is one of the leading global minds on sales, business development, and business growth. He is the first person to make sales and business development relatable and human. Donnie is a community builder at heart — he builds champions. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Donnie.
In this episode, Nancy and Donnie discuss the following:
- How did Donnie get into podcasting?
- Story of three profitable companies that all started because of a podcast.
- Donnie’s purpose in life is to get as many people to freedom as possible. What does he mean by that? And why is that?
- Why do so many people struggle with building a business?
- What is the Badass Business Summit all about?
- Is any particular facet of the business that seems to be more common than others?
- Success Champion Networking: How did Donnie come up with that idea? And what happens when you belong to it?
- Criteria for picking and choosing the players in the community.
- How many people are included per group?
- A fun fact about Donnie.
- Something that you know is true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
- What is the one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?
- How can my people find you?
Key Takeaways:
- I was interviewing from the perspective of and trying to learn how other people found success.
- Badass Business Summit is designed to bring in expert speakers on very specific operational mindsets, marketing, and sales perspectives to teach workshop style, so you’re working on it at the summit. So, by the time you leave, it’s already functioning in your business.
- Networking needs to be a portion of your business development strategy, not the entirety of it.
- If you can sell and then network, and you can bring your clients back to the network, and you get a group full of people doing that – amazing things happen.
- I had no choice but to learn things and screw up things along the way.
- I realized that many people like me were struggling to build a business.
- I will share everything I screwed up and how we fixed it, and I will help people in those dark places scrambling to figure out how to build their businesses.
- In this moment of time that we’re in, the only thing you need to focus on is your personal brand.
“Quit focusing on the referrals and focus on whom you need to be introduced to, not from an in-client user, but from a place where their client base is your ideal client base and you guys can build this synergistic mutually beneficial relationship.” – DONNIE
“I think most people were like me, and we worked for somebody else for 20-plus years, and then we jumped out, and we wanted to start a business. And we don’t realize that somebody was telling us what to do during those times working for other people. And now you’re out on your own; nobody’s telling you what to do. And the second portion of that is when you work for other people; excuses are easy. If the business is down, you can blame marketing, sales, leads, the economy, and everything else. But as a business owner, you don’t get that choice to blame anybody. If the sales are down, go sell. Marketing sucks. Go fix marketing. You know, it’s whatever it is. And people have never actually looked at themselves in a mirror to see what they’re made of. And when business gets hard, they don’t want to face their own reality because they’re scared of whom they meet if they start looking inside. And so, I tell people, the greatest exercise in the world you can do is go to your mirror every night and say the words I’m proud of you. And whatever pops up that you’re not proud of is the thing you got to fix or do. It’s the greatest exercise I’ve found for me for self-discovery. ” – DONNIE
Connect with Donnie Boivin:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling. The podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Donnie Boivin, founder, and creator of Success Champion Networking, an online community that gives you back your time while connecting you with other business owners looking to scale and grow their businesses. He is the host of growth mode podcasts which gives you all insights you need to know while building your business. Donnie created the Badass business summit helping businesses unleash, be seen, and sell. And he’s appeared on hundreds of podcasts, spoken on hundreds of stages, and is going bigger with his message every day. Welcome to this show, Donnie. You know, podcasting and networking are some of my favorite topics, so this is going to be great. [1:16]
Donnie Boivin: Oh! Nancy, I’ve already enjoyed us hanging out a little bit before the show so I think we’re going to have a lot of fun.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, and yeah guys this guy’s a blast so yeah buckle your seatbelts, get ready for a ride! So, you know let’s just jump into how you got into podcasting. [1:36]
Donnie Boivin: It was actually a complete fluke. I was giving a keynote presentation in Fort War, Texas to a room of about 400. And this was April of 2017. And after my speech, a guy walked up to me and he’s like, hey, I love your energy. I love your story. Would you come to tell it on my podcast? And I said, What the hell is a podcast? And he explained to me, he’s like, Dude, it’s like news talk radio. He goes, I’ll bring you out to my studio. I’m like, Oh, I’m already in. I’ll do that. So, I went on a show. We had a blast, we laughed, we joked, and the show aired two days later, and this isn’t normal. I don’t want your listeners to hear this and be like, oh my God, I’m going to go get on the podcast right now. But two days after the show aired, one of his listeners reached out to me and became a client. And I went, wait, you can go on podcast and guest and people might listen and become clients? Hold my beer and watch this. So, I started going on a bunch of podcasts, and then I launched my first show then in May of 2018, five months later, that show became number 22 in the world. [2:41]
Nancy Calabrese: Awesome. Well, I am really appreciative that you wanted to be on my show and I’m going to walk away as I said earlier with a couple of nuggets, I’m sure. You said you built three profitable companies that all started because of a podcast. Tell us more about that. [3:01]
Donnie Boivin: So, my first year in business, I was under a non-compete and I couldn’t talk about sales, sales training anywhere in the US and potentially overseas. So, my business was in a really, really bad spot. I almost lost my farm; my wife’s car had gotten repossessed and she had to cash in her 401K to literally save our farm and get her car out of repossession.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
Donnie Boivin: And during that time, it happened to be the same time I found podcasting. And it was interesting that as I launched my show, it took off really fast. And I think it was because I was interviewing from the perspective of, I was trying to learn how other people found success. [3:42] And so, I was really just inquisitive about how they did it. And so, I was getting the pleasure of interviewing some of the biggest names in the world, I mean, household names that people would know. And I realized really quickly that I couldn’t have a shit show of a podcast by having these celebrities and household names come on there. So, it taught me how to develop processes. And then as the show grew, I had to bring on teams. So, it taught me how to hire and taught me the finance side of things. And then we launched our first company, which was a podcast production company, which led to a podcast consulting firm. And to a point where we were managing about 100 different podcasts. And that all came because, you know, we started down a path and it escalated rapidly, so I had no choice but to learn the things and screw up the things along the way. We’ve since set down that podcasting company just because it wasn’t the direction I wanted to go personally in business. So, we spun that off to another group, and they took it over from there. But ultimately, it taught me the mechanics of business, and then we took those mechanics and we escalated them into what you see now as our companies. [4:59]
Nancy Calabrese: I’ve read that you have one purpose in life and that is to get as many people to freedom as possible. What do you mean by that? And why is that?
Donnie Boivin: So, when my business was really in the dark, and it was a rough moment when you had to tell your wife that you’re about to lose everything, that’s humility at its finest. And it was interesting that I refused to let anybody know how bad the business was. It was just me and my wife. Nobody else knew how bad the business was. I thought if anybody knew how bad business was back in my first year, nobody would do business with me. Interestingly enough, I started sharing the things that I was screwing up in business, not how bad the business was, but the things that I was screwing up. And as I did that, more and more people were leaning in and started asking me questions about business and I would laugh. I’m like, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Don’t ask me questions. And, you know, but they kept asking questions. And what I realized is there were a lot of people that were like me struggling to build a business. So, I just made it my MO that I’m going to share everything thing that I screw up, how we fix it, and I’m going to help people who are in those dark places scrambling to figure out how to build their business, and I’m going to share all the details. So that’s why I’m going to give many people to business freedom or many people to freedom of building a business is because nobody was there for me. Nobody ever walked up and said, dude, you got this, stay in the game. Take one more step forward, go sell one more thing. And so, I just hope that as many people can hear my story, hear the things I went through, and they go, all right, I got this and keep moving forward. [6:47]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, so why do so many people struggle with building a business?
Donnie Boivin: I think most people were like me and we worked for somebody else for 20-plus years and then we jumped out and we wanted to start a business. And we don’t realize that during those times working for other people, somebody was telling us what to do. And now you’re out on your own, nobody’s telling you what to do. And the second portion of that is when you work for other people, excuses are easy. If the business is down, you can blame marketing, sales, leads, the economy, and everything else. But as a business owner, you don’t get that choice to blame anybody. If the sales are down, go sell. Marketing sucks. Go fix marketing. You know, it’s whatever it is. And people have never actually looked at themselves in a mirror to see what they’re made of. And at the point that business gets hard, they don’t want to face their own reality because they’re scared of whom they meet if they start looking inside. And so, I tell people, the greatest exercise in the world you can do is every night go to your mirror and say the words I’m proud of you. And whatever pops up that you’re not proud of is the thing you got to go fix or do. It’s the greatest exercise I’ve found for me for self-discovery. [8:06]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. So, talk about the Badass Business Summit. What is it all about?
Donnie Boivin: So, a lot of summits that I’ve attended personally are these summits where you take a crap ton of notes and then you do some networking and then you get home and you forget all the crap you actually wrote down and, you know, I’m one of those guys that draws into the margin. So, I’m like, what the hell did I draw that picture for? And so, we really wanted to create a summit that works on your business while you’re there. So, the Badass Business Summit is designed to bring in expert speakers on very specific operational mindset, marketing, and sales perspectives to teach workshop style so you’re working on it at the summit. So, by the time you leave, it’s already functioning in your business. You don’t have to remember the notes or things like that. And the other thing that I wanted, there were so many conferences that I wanted to do that I wanted to talk to the speakers and ask them questions. Well, all of our speakers are also attendees. So, you’ll be sitting side by side with the speakers as they work on their own business. [9:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, any particular facet of the business that seems to be more common than others?
Donnie Boivin: I would say sales more often mainly because that’s my background and so everything I teach tends to have a sales spin to it. But mindset would be a second one, but not from a woo-woo place It’s coming from the very practical advice of how do you keep your head in the game. How do you continue moving forward when you’re getting your teeth kicked in out there in the marketplace? [9:49]
Nancy Calabrese: So, success champion networking. How did you come up with that idea? And what happens when you belong to it?
Donnie Boivin: Yeah, Nancy, you’re going to see a theme here. So, success champion networking was a fluke as well. We were getting ready to do the inaugural Badass Business Summit in April of 20, and we all know that that’s the time COVID hit. So, we had to postpone this summit and we knew that the whole world was moving online. What took us two and a half years to build a legitimate online business? So, and these companies didn’t have two and a half years. They had maybe 30 days to figure out to transition their businesses online. So, we were going to be okay as a company being an online business, but we knew we were kind of Liam Neeson at this point. We had a particular set of skills and we knew how to use them from our past backgrounds of running networking groups and organizations. [10:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Donnie Boivin: So, we launched it and did not understand that we were disrupting the industry at that point because what we really created is a mastermind peer group that happens to have a networking problem. So, the first thing we said was no MLMs, network marketing, direct sales, or anything like that. So, we work with service-based business owners that are proactively looking to grow their businesses. In our world, it’s not about trying to just get referrals and the like. We’re coming together on a weekly basis to work on growing your business through roundtables, very specific instructions, training, and the likes. And a lot of business tends to come out of these. So, everything we do is virtual. We’re the fastest-growing networking organization on the planet right now because we just got dialed in to bring in the right people together that understand that if networking is the only thing, you’re doing to grow your business, you’re going to lose. Networking needs to be a portion of your business development strategy, not the entirety of it. [11:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. How do you pick and choose the players in the community?
Donnie Boivin: So, each one of our groups has a leadership team that we put in place and every member has to be voted in. We’re not looking for heartbeats here. So, just because you sign up does not mean you get to become a member. So, you’ll go through meetings with each one of the leadership team of each one of our groups and they’ll determine if you’re going to be a good fit because we don’t want the people that are coming at this looking to just sell the group or only kind of come at referrals perspective and the likes, we’re looking for the people that want to open doors for others. And I just know that if you can sell and then network and you can bring your clients back to the network, and you get a group full of people doing that, amazing things happen. [12:47]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. I mean, it sounds amazing. You know, when I think of networking, I think of phone networking, right?
Donnie Boivin: Right.
Nancy Calabrese: There’s less face-to-face. And I happen to love it. I would rather be sitting at my desk getting introduced to people. So, it sounds fascinating. Curious, how many people are included per group? [13:10]
Donnie Boivin: So, we cap all the groups at 30 members our current largest chapter sitting on 22 throughout the U.S. and growing rapidly. So, we just brought on territory leaders which are individuals that are actually helping us manage and maintain territories because of how fast everything’s growing. [13:33]
Nancy Calabrese: It almost sounds like Vistage.
Donnie Boivin: There’s a vestige portion of it. We’re just targeting smaller clients. So, Vistage, you know, want you to be five million, I think, maybe 10 million plus. Most of our companies are under a million dollars in revenue.
Nancy Calabrese: Okay, cool. So, talk about a fun fact about Donnie. What should we know about you that’s going to make us laugh?
Donnie Boivin: Well, since you talked about cold calling, I used to teach cold calling by standing in front of a room of people and doing live dials. [14:06]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh really?
Donnie Boivin: Yep. And the first time I ever did it, I was so scared standing in front of that room because now people, I was on display. My number one client, the CEO of a Fortune 100, walks in the room the first time I’m doing these live calls. And so, I asked him and I won’t use his name, but I said, hey, great to see you here. What brought you in today? And he goes, I just want to see if the shit I’m paying for is worth it. So, that’s what I get told right as I get ready to do these live cold calls. And so, you know, my butthole’s puckered at this point is I’m getting ready. And so, I put it on speakerphone, and about the third dial-in, I miraculously, you know, actually set an appointment with a very large company to go in and talk about sales training. [14:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
Donnie Boivin: So, that doesn’t always happen, you know, and I haven’t done those for some time. But yeah, I literally would call companies up and say hey I got nothing to sell you, but I bet your sales team struggles with cold calling. Would you invite me in on my dime? I will do live dials in front of your team and teach cold calling the only thing I ask you is after that session You give me 15 minutes of your time and most times; they were like I just want to see the guy do live cold calls in front of my team. And so now I was going in and training and prospecting and selling all in the same move.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you’re a genius man. [15:39]
Donnie Boivin: It was fun.
Nancy Calabrese: You’re a genius. Hey, and anyone that can do cold calling is right up there in my mind. We love it. So, tell me something that you know is true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Donnie Boivin: Most people think that they need referrals, referrals, referrals, referrals, referrals, and I think they’re absolutely wrong. And the reason I think they’re wrong is because very rarely am I ever going to run into your perfect ideal prospect. Like you teach cold calls, very rarely do I hear somebody tell me out of the blue, hey, my team sucks at cold calling, do you know anybody that could teach that? It’s just not a conversation we hear. So, so what I tell everybody is quit worrying about referrals and start focusing on introductions. Like Nancy, if I knew specifically the top three industries that would refer to your business because they’re constantly in conversations with their clients who struggle with the problems and issues you solve. So, their client base is your ideal client. If you can tell me those industries, I can make those introductions all day long. And if I can make that right introduction, there’s going to potentially be millions of dollars based on that introduction because you two would film this synergistic relationship. So quit focusing on the referrals and focus on whom you need to be introduced to, not from an in-client user, but from a place where their client base is your ideal client base and you guys can build this synergistic mutually beneficial relationship. [17:26]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. Wow. You know, we’re almost up with time. So, what is the one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?
Donnie Boivin: The biggest thing that I want people to understand in general, is that in this moment of time that we’re in, the only thing you need to focus on is your personal brand. And let me explain. You know, we saw this a lot when salespeople would leave companies. The company thought that it owned all its clients. When evidently, if they stayed in the industry, no matter whether NDAs or whatever were signed, eventually most of those clients would follow the salesperson because the relationship was formed. The same thing holds true in business today. So, people are going to follow you and your personal brand so right now the Opportunity to create as much business as possible is to pick one social media platform I don’t care which one it is and go all in on that particular platform. You know, there are these guys out there who put 18 posts out on every social platform I want to punch those guys in the face. Because the main guy Gary Vee who says that stuff, he’s got a team of like 40 people that are producing content and posting form, right? And most people are doing this on their own individual basis. So, I want you to pick one platform and I want you to work to become an influencer on that platform. Learn to put out content where people are actually DM-ing you don’t worry about the comments on your stuff. Put out content that gets people DM you into the right conversations and you know for me it’s LinkedIn. I have a team that helps me on YouTube. And then I go out of my way to be on two to four podcasts a week. I get on at least one to two stages a month, you know, and we’re constantly trying to find new audiences and people all to build the brand of Donnie Boivin, which leads back to everything we do as success champions. [19:26]
Nancy Calabrese: Whoa, Donnie is the man guys.
Donnie Boivin: Thank you for that.
Nancy Calabrese: How can my people find you?
Donnie Boivin: So, the best way to get in touch with me is to text the word success to 817-318-6030. That’s success at 817-318-6030. It’s going to ask for your email, and from there, it’s going to send you a quick video on how to get an endless amount of introductions coming into your business. But guys, if you’ll do me one favor if you hung out with Nancy and me this long, and you got any valuable tips or tricks out of this, do her the honor of sharing this show with one person. Having my own show, I can tell you how hard it is to build and grow an audience. So, if you think one person would get value out of this episode or any of our other episodes, share it with them, it’ll mean everything to her. [20:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, thank you, Donnie. Yeah, I would really appreciate everyone out there. So, I guess you’re gonna have to come back on.
Donnie Boivin: We can do that. We can do that.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, yep, and next time we’ll do audio and video. How’s that?
Donnie Boivin: I like it, you should see these baby blue eyes, Nancy, they’re gorgeous.
Nancy Calabrese: I did before, but my guests can’t see him. Okay, so everyone, take advantage of what Donnie has to offer. Get in touch with him. Get involved in the networking community, and make it a great sales day. See you next time. [20:56]
by Nancy Calabrese | Apr 20, 2023 | Podcast
About Joseph Rockey: Joseph Rockey is the founder of Elite Business Conversations, a company that provides cutting-edge training and coaching to entrepreneurs and business leaders. Their coaching methods are relationship-based, meaning they focus on building strong, trusting relationships with their clients. This approach has proven to be highly effective in helping clients improve their sales, develop positive company cultures, and achieve success in ways that are meaningful to them. Joe has extensive experience and expertise in the business coaching industry and has a proven track record of success. Since 2011, Joe has launched over 15 different entities in multiple industries – to name a few: podcasting, business consulting, personal growth coaching, keynote speaking, and real estate investment. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Joseph.
In this episode, Nancy and Joseph discuss the following:
- How is it humanly possible to launch 15 different entities in 12 years?
- What makes a person a master of anything?
- How do you go about fixing a stalled business?
- The difference between educated cold calling and uneducated cold calling.
- Joseph’s point of view on building a winning culture phenomenon.
- How can my people find you?
Key Takeaways:
- Many people in this country live essentially under a sales system taught to them in the 60s, if not older.
- Salespeople are the ones who are going to heal the world.
- I do make a solid line between educated cold calling and uneducated cold calling.
- Let’s have an educated conversation background, where I can leave an intelligent voicemail that gets someone to call me back, and we can move forward.
- Once you have a system, the simple fact of life is to pick up the phone and make it happen. Because staring at the phone and thinking it’s going to work does not work.
- It doesn’t mean we don’t like the person doing that job. It just means we need to recalibrate the job in a way where it’ll be productive.
- And now, everything about this job is an opportunity for me to improve my life rather than a place just to be and show up.
- The best people make the best companies. And that’s the fact of life.
- Every position has elements of their job that are tied to it and that are untied to it. And we need to get them tied to it, but in a way where it’s beneficial for everyone involved.
“In allowing your employees to have freedom by the fall, you are also allowing them to have innovational opportunities so that they can come out and say, you know what, for me, it works best if I do this, that, and the other.” – JOSEPH
“There are three elements of any company’s revenue cycle. The first one is we have to have people know we exist, and they have to want to come to see us. The second one is when they’re actually with us, do they feel comfortable enough to exchange resources in exchange for the promise of a future product? And then part three is the future product. So, we’re a lot of salespeople think it’s only about that middle part. I’m with the individual. Can I convince them to give me resources in exchange for this future project? And the reality is, if you fail your business at any of those three components, you will be hung back by your weakest of those three links. It’s just the way it is. So how do we fix a sales process? We start with which of your three links is wrong, which one is the worst, and whether we are not getting people to know that we exist. And have people want to find us? Well, what’s our model for doing that? Is our model a passive or proactive?” – JOSEPH
Connect with Joseph Rockey:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, everyone. It’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today. And it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Joseph Rockey, founder of Elite Business Conversations, a company that provides cutting-edge training and coaching to entrepreneurs and business leaders. Joe has extensive experience and expertise in the business coaching industry and has a proven track record of success. He provides customized coaching methods that are tailored to the specific needs of each client and places a strong emphasis on building trusting relationships with his clients. And since 2011, Joe launched over 15 different entities in multiple industries and to name a few podcasting, business consulting, personal growth, coaching, keynote speaking, and real estate investment welcome to the show Joe. This is going to be fun. [1:24]
Joe Rockey Jr: Yes, thank you for having me. Yes, thank you indeed.
Nancy Calabrese: All right, so how is it humanly possible to launch 15 different entities in 12 years?
Joe Rockey Jr: You have to be able to build systems is the primary element. And you also have to be willing to, uh, the build it in a way where you’re not responsible in the sense that I need to be here for every single decision. You need to hire people and then actually trust your people and allow them to take off and dominate. And that’s what I’ve done. Not to mention a couple of them. The answer was, I just got bought out of them and I’m okay with that too. [2:04]
Nancy Calabrese: Got it. Okay. So, yeah, but you’re like a gorilla man then. I still can’t imagine having to juggle all of that, but kudos to you. Now, you and I…
Joe Rockey Jr: It is certainly a challenge. There’s a lot saying it’s easy, but it’s doable.
Nancy Calabrese: So, you are a master in sales. I am totally honored to have this conversation with you. What makes a person a master of anything? [2:32]
Joe Rockey Jr: Well, proven results, that’s how I look at it is, are you consistently going to step up and produce or are you not? Easier in the world of sports, right? They’re a hall of famer, they win a lot, or they don’t. And that’s how I look at it the same way with sales.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. You know, I speak with many business owners that are frustrated because their businesses have stalled. You know, they’re trying to grow, and they just can’t get to the next level. How do you go about fixing a stalled business? [3:07]
Joe Rockey Jr: Yeah, so it starts off with Why did we stall? And in general, there are lots of reasons we can get there, but the paraphrase of the two of the more common ones is either A our sales force is not delivering in the way that it should be, or our overall structure of our company is not correct. So, I’ll start with the second one because I’ll go through its quicker cause this is not necessarily about the show per say. If you don’t know what you were supposed to be doing specifically as the business owner, and you have even less of an idea of what your employees are doing, and by knowing what you’re doing, I mean, like, you could write their complete job description, and this matches exactly what their day-to-day activities are. If that’s not the case, you’re going to have a pattern disruption that’s going to create inefficiencies and eventually stalling out at some point down the road. [4:10]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
Joe Rockey Jr: And what we do is we help analyze that problem is and how to fix it and how to incentivize our employees to get them doing what we want. And, to realize is the task they’re doing actually helpful for the business? Or is it just something that we’re doing because we think that we should because that’s what everyone else is doing. And part of what makes my training in helping people cutting edges, we don’t really live and that this is what everyone else has been doing and what everyone else should be doing. We just go with what is successful and the rest can go away. And that’s where the sale side of the world, so many people in this country are living essentially under a sales system that was taught to them in the 60s, if not older. [5:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Joe Rockey Jr: And it’s the mentality that when I present to colleges about when I tell people you should really look into sales, I could glaze over like almost horrified looks. Like why would I want to go to college to become a used car salesman that’s going to be scum baggy and put pressure on people and make people feel bad? Like that’s a waste of me. Why would I want to do that? [5:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Joe Rockey Jr: And my true passion and belief is salespeople are the ones who are going to heal the world. And that notion is incorrect. So, it starts with a culture reformation of why is our sales process not working? It is a true process. There are three elements of any company’s revenue cycle. The first one is we have to have people know we exist and they have to want to come see us. The second one is when they’re actually with us, do they feel comfortable enough to exchange resources in exchange for the promise of a future product? And then part three being the future product. So, we’re a lot of salespeople think it’s only about that middle part. I’m with the individual, can I convince them to give me resources in exchange for this future project? And the reality is, is that if you fail your business at any of those three components, you will be hung back by your weakest of those three links. It’s just the way it is. So how do we fix a sales process? We start with which one of your three links are wrong, which one is the worst, are we not getting people know that we exist? And have people want to find us? Well, what’s our model of doing that? Is our model a passive or a proactive model? [6:46]
Nancy Calabrese: Right?
Joe Rockey Jr: So, you know, a passive model being the old school, we just put a bunch of advertisements in the newspaper or on TV and just hope things work out. Whereas, you know, an active campaign can be something like direct marketing, direct emails, trying to go through people on Facebook all of the spam type approaches that don’t really like and I don’t encourage but it’s an example of active marketing and that also includes the umbrella of uneducated cold calling as well. I do make a very strong line between educated cold calling and uneducated cold calling. [7:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, now you’re talking my language. Let’s take a dive into that. Tell me what the difference is.
Joe Rockey Jr: So, essentially the way that I classify uneducated cold calling is you’re given a name and a number and you’re just calling this person with only your sales pitch, your sales script in tow. You don’t really know anything about this person aside from their name, maybe if you’re lucky a pronunciation guide of their name and their phone number. And you just come across essentially as useful as a robot except hopefully you don’t have that couple seconds delay after they pick up to talk to you. So, unfortunately many people’s cold-calling experience is just that. I know nothing about this person. I don’t even know why I was selected to call them or anything like that, but it’s as uninformed cold calling as you can get. [8:24]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Joe Rockey Jr: And where I invite people to do intelligent cold calling being I know that this person at least has an interest or a need for my business. And I want to introduce myself in a way where we’re going to create a relationship and a connection. Because every relationship starts with a cold introduction, whether we realize it or not. It can be the first time we meet in person and it’s a combination of being introduced across hands. Well, still, it’s a, the new relationship hasn’t been established yet. It’s fresh and open. So, this is where I see a lot of business-to-business opportunity that people fail at. You know the type of companies that buy your product, and you know where you have been successful at or not, and the type of titles that the industry has. [9:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Joe Rockey Jr: So, let’s do instead of just giving me a straight list of these are all of the heads of security that I’m calling up to try to give my upgraded security package to. Rather than just having a cold list, let’s go and say, this is the actual company, do a little bit of thought behind it. And instead of trying to call 100 cool calls a day and getting a 2% result rate, so two meetings out of it, let’s have educated conversation background where I can leave an intelligent voicemail that gets someone to call me back and we actually can move forward. Not a gimmicky one but an actual successful that’s personalized to the individual to the strongest degree that we can. And if we can. [10:10]
Nancy Calabrese: So, may I politely disagree with what you’ve been saying?
Joe Rockey Jr: Sure.
Nancy Calabrese: Okay, see my experience in cold calling, the reality is you are going to wind up in voicemail land, correct?
Joe Rockey Jr: Oh yeah, yeah,
Nancy Calabrese: And we recommend not doing heavy research before each call because it’s a time suck and each call counts, you get closer to somebody picking up. But when we approach a cold conversation. We don’t go in with the feeling that we’re going to sell them something. Our approach is we’re going to make this a discovery call. Because if I have 100 of those security managers on a lead list, number one, I want to know if I’m speaking to the right person, if they are indeed my target audience. And number two, at the time of the call, they are experiencing a frustration or a concern that we know our clients can solve or One of a Kind Sales can solve. So, I think we look at it a little differently. [11:23]
Joe Rockey Jr: No, I must be explaining this wrong because I agree with everything you said. I think that the differences is when it, when I’m trying to articulate is, is that you’re still knowing that you’re calling a specific realm. You know, you’re calling, you know, people who are going to be eligible and purchase able to buy my product rather than straight. I just bought a list of people who might or might not be interested. You at least. So what? I’m saying is that you need to have a guided start. You don’t want to be just blanketing it. But yes, I’m not saying you waste hours upon hours figuring out every detail this guy’s life. No, not at all. The goal I agree with you, it’s to create a discovery. But what I’m saying is, if you’re calling upon a corporation, you at least are starting in the right ballpark of where the decision maker is going to be. If I’m calling to sell something that is say a mid-tier type product. I’m not trying to get the CEO on the field, even if the entire goal is to have the entire corporate, the entire company eventually incorporated. We’ll talk to the CEO later. [12:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Joe Rockey Jr: So that’s where I try to draw the line of, because for where I’m coming in, and I think this is the difference here, I’m coming with people who have never created a cold calling system before, then trying to ease them into it. And you were talking about we already have a system, because once you have a system, the simple fact of life is pick up the phone and make it happen. Because staring at the phone and thinking it’s going to work does not work.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, I totally agree. And you know for all those businesses that don’t incorporate this channel in their marketing, they just leave money on the table. It does work overtime. You’ve got to be on the call at the right time with the need. And a NO in our world is not now. If they’re in your target audience, so then you move on. I know you speak about building a winning culture. That is so important to the success of anyone in sales and in business. What does that mean from your point of view? [13:44]
Joe Rockey Jr: Yeah. So let me dive into that. I just want to put one last point on the cool calling thing. Cause you’re a hundred percent right about the value and growing with it. But there’s another almost as important effect as finding the new piece of business is that when you are going through the process, especially when you’re calling, call it more than 30 calls in a session, you are developing a skillset and a resiliency to your own. That cannot be replicated in really any other way. And it makes you better in every other aspect of life. [14:22]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep.
Joe Rockey Jr: I started my career being forced to in cold calling and the benefits that I’ve got from it in the long term have vastly outweighed the short-term sale that I got at that time, and you know, it, to me, this is part of what I got convinced people to do about why you put yourself through it. I’m not going to try to lie, but it’s worth it. So, that does tie into how to build a culture though. And this goes back to when I was saying in the beginning about how businesses can fall apart is, are our employees doing the activity that we want them to do that will lead to revenue? So, going back to the three options of revenue, having people find us, when people are with us, are we able to have conversations that eventually lead to exchanging resources for a product and having the product delivered on the back end. And what I tell people upfront is unless there’s a legal reason to have something that’s not directly attributing to one of those three events, the position is by default a drain on your business. It’s just the way it is. So, it doesn’t mean we don’t like the person who’s doing that job. It just means we need to recalibrate the job in a way where it’ll be productive. So that’s, you know, every position has elements of their job that are tied to it and that are untied to it. And we need to get them tied to it, but in a way where it’s beneficial for everyone involved. So, if I can give you an example here really quick, I think it’ll tie it pretty well. I think that you owned a hotel and that your most important concern about your rooms were that they were clean to a specified degree of cleanliness and that they were all done on time because if they’re not done on time, you can’t have people check in. And if they’re not clean enough, it’s going to hurt your reputation in the long run. So, you can do the same old same old that everyone else does saying hourly rate, go clean the rooms and effectively yell at people if they’re not good enough. [16:33]]
Nancy Calabrese: Hahaha.
Joe Rockey Jr: That’s option one. So, everyone does, you know, let’s just go with the crowd. Or option two is say, you know what? We’re going to give you the freedom of doing it and cleaning the rooms in whatever desire you feel fit. And we are going to compensate you accordingly to how good the room is when you’re done. So, if the room is an A plus, you get this. If it’s a B, you get this. C, so on and so forth. [17:02]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Joe Rockey Jr: And what we’re going to do to make it fair is we’re going to have two different evaluators evaluate the quality of your room. So that way there’s no favoritism or anything like that. And what we are doing as managers is a lot of things in this decision. First is we’re allowing our housekeepers to have the freedom to explore their own order of operations. Do they want to vacuum all four rooms first? Do they want to do one room all the way to completion and then do another? What is their choice? And in doing so, in allowing your employees to have freedom by default, you are also allowing them to have innovational opportunities so that they can come out and say, you know what, for me, it works best if I do this, that, and the other. [17:58]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Joe Rockey Jr: And this is my order. And as the owner of the business, are you going to end up paying more on a per hour basis? Absolutely, you are. Because you’re going to only end up with employees that keep putting up A plus scores B plus scores and the other ones are going to phase themselves out. And the other part is because you’re now paying them directly to what you want them to do, you know, what you want to do is getting accomplished, but you’re also allowing this housekeeper to have more freedom of their life because if they can walk in and say, I get all four of these rooms done, they don’t care how long I’m here, I get paid based upon the results. Now I’m getting done faster. Now I have more time to be with my kids. And now everything about this job is now an opportunity for me to make my life better rather than a place just to be and show up. [18:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
Joe Rockey Jr: So, to build a culture, it starts with empowering and trusting everyone around you. And yeah, there’s some certain elements that you’re going to do training and you’re just going to teach them this is how we want the toilets clean and the bath stalls or whatever. But you’re letting them have the freedom involved that no other hotel would let them have. And I specifically choose housekeepers because most people can understand this concept when we’re talking about a CEO and their compensation. [19:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Joe Rockey Jr: But the point is you can do it to every single position in your company all the way down to what most people would consider the least important being their cleaning staff and every position in between. That’s how you build a successful culture. And that’s really how you take off and you end up with the best people. And the best people make the best companies. And that’s the fact of life.
Nancy Calabrese: I totally agree with you on that. And now I have a whole different level of respect for the house cleaners. Yeah, the room cleaner. So, Joe, I can’t believe we’re up with time and we just like chipped at the iceberg. You’ll have to come back on for sure, but how can my people find you? [20:06]
Joe Rockey Jr: Yeah, you can reach out to me at elitebusinessconversations.com. And in there, we can have, long story short, we set up a 10-minute chat. We’re going to see if we’re a good fit for you and you’re a good fit for us. And the things that we’re a fit for is everything you outlined in the beginning. We help businesses that have stalled out, and we help them get back to the success of the business owner once. I help people, well, I’m keynote speaker, so I do all the speaking engagements that involve anything around this topic and one of the areas that I absolutely love doing is at universities where I’m teaching people about the importance of sales and why to embrace it because I do believe that salespeople will heal this world. It’s the way that it is. If I’m bringing equal value, you’re bringing equal value and we’re selling correctly through relationships, you will heal the world. [20:54] So I love doing that and the other thing is depending upon what time of the year looking you were looking at us, if it’s the second half of 2023, my first ever bestselling book, which is going to be coming out will be available on my website as well. So those are our key reasons to go check us out at elitebusinessconversations.com. And I look forward to speaking with you there. [21:24]
Nancy Calabrese: Wonderful, wonderful. And hear that you are being offered an opportunity to speak with a master in sales. Again, I go back, Joe, we could go on and on. And I hope we will do part two relatively soon. But thank you so much for coming. And make it a great sales day, everyone.
by Nancy Calabrese | Apr 13, 2023 | Podcast
About Wesleyne Whitaker-Greer: Wesleyne is the founder of Transform Sales, a company dedicated to combining her love for sales with her passion for coaching. She has developed a proprietary seven-step sales leadership blueprint that identifies the blind spots, gaps, and inefficiencies in process, teams, and sales management in the technical fields. In addition, her coach-like approach allows her to work alongside managers to develop their sales, leadership, and teaching skills. Wesleyne’s management training improves sales leaders’ capability of holding productive conversations with internal sales team members, creating a collaborative, dynamic environment where everyone feels supported. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Wesleyne.
In this episode, Nancy and Wesleyne discuss:
- How does a former chemist get into or transition into international sales management?
- Why are there no comprehensive training programs for sales managers in STEM?
- Wesleyne’s seven-step process description.
- The qualities of a good leader in Wesleyne’s opinion.
- How long is the transformation to become a better leader?
- Does Wesleyne do any pure sales coaching for salespeople?
- Why do some teams resist sales trainings?
- How to motivate an underperforming sales team?
- How does culture play into having a great team?
- Referrals to key performance indicators and their role.
- Fun fact about Wesleyne.
- Something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with Wesleyne on.
- What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
- How can my people find you?
Key Takeaways:
- Everybody thinks that if you’re a really good salesperson, you’re gonna be a really good sales manager. But it’s the opposite of what you think.
- The seven-step process is a full 360 view of what you need as a leader.
- Whatever the thing is that your salesperson, or the people on your team are working towards when you coach them when you try to push them, you focus on the thing that is important to them.
- As a leader, you can’t just sit in an ivory tower as a leader and think that everybody fits into this little teeny tiny nice little neat box.
- As a salesperson, if you don’t see your company investing in any kind of training, internal, external, or any kind of development, that means that they’re not really committed to you as a person getting better
- I bring out the best in everyone.
“People were leaving. We weren’t hitting our numbers. And so, I really realized that the only solution was on me as the leader to figure out how I need to fix myself, and the skills I needed to build so, I could then translate that into my team. And so, that’s really what we do when we’re working with organizations, figuring out what’s the core nucleus of the problem and then translating those skills out to the team.” – WESLEYNE
“The one takeaway is your growth and development are important. If your company won’t invest in you, invest in yourself. Find resources to make yourself better. Find resources to develop your skillset, your empathy, whatever the thing is that you’re suffering. If you keep getting feedback from your leadership team, whether you’re an individual contributor, a frontline manager, or all the way up, whatever the thing is you continue to get feedback on, find a way to get better at it. Find a way to really invest in yourself because that is gonna pay dividends for years for decades.” – WESLEYNE
Connect with Wesleyne Whitaker-Greer:
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Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with a human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Wesleyne Whitaker-Greer, founder of Transform Sales, a company dedicated to combining her love for sales with her passion for coaching. Wesleyne has developed a proprietary seven-step sales leadership blueprint that identifies the blind spots, gaps, and inefficiencies in process, teams, and sales management in the technical fields. In addition, her coach-like approach allows her to work alongside managers to develop their sales, leadership, and teaching skills. Welcome to the show, Wesleyne. This is a great topic we’re gonna have a lot of fun. So, let’s jump right in. [1:07]
Wesleyne: Awesome. I’m excited to be here with you.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, so, I find your background real interesting. So, you are an expert in STEM. And for those of you in the audience that may not know the acronym, it stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Manufacturing. [1:27] And my first question to you is, how does a former chemist, yes, Wesleyne was a former chemist, get into or transition into international sales management?
Wesleyne: So, when I graduated college, I went in, I worked in the lab, and I worked there for a good number of years. And I got to a point where I was like, I want to talk to some humans. So, I need a little bit more human interaction. And I tell people, once I got into sales, I finally figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I was so, fortunate that the company that hired me, they were looking for somebody that had a technical background that was a chemist with no sales experience, which we know was like unheard of. [2:14]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Wesleyne: No one wants that, right? And so, I loved it. I was so, tenacious. I read books. I did everything that I could. And so, I made a really fast ascent from individual contributor to international sales manager. And then I realized when I became an international sales manager that I really sucked at that. And so, for the first six months, it was bad. People were leaving. We weren’t hitting our numbers. And so, I really realized that the only solution was on me as the leader to figure out how I need to fix myself, the skills I needed to build so, I could then translate that into my team. And so, that’s really what we do when we’re working with organizations, figuring out what’s the core nucleus of the problem and then translating those skills out to the team. [2:57]}
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you mentioned that there are no comprehensive training programs for sales managers in STEM. Why is that?
Wesleyne: It’s because everybody has this and you know, I now know that it is not just a STEM thing. It is a problem throughout the industry. Everybody thinks that if you’re a really good salesperson, you’re gonna be a really good sales manager. And so, usually when I go into companies, I’m like, it’s the opposite of what you think. Your top salesperson was selfish. They were a driver. They’re a lone wolf. And now you take them and you want to make them a manager without developing them or doing anything to help them realize this new challenge is you have two problems. You take your top salesperson out of the field and you get a mediocre manager that gets disenfranchised and leaves. [3:46]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. So, I don’t know if you don’t have to go into great detail, but what is your seven-step process?
Wesleyne: So, really the seven-step process, it goes through, and I kind of chatted through it. It’s first we have to identify that there is a challenge, right? The first step is realization, right? And so, once we identify that there is a challenge and we do a comprehensive evaluation, so, we figure out what are the issues that you are having as a leader? What are the issues your team is suffering in? And then we do this magical thing in the middle where we align your areas of opportunities. I don’t like to call them weaknesses, but these are opportunities with the different training modules that we have. And then we align your team’s areas of opportunities with the different training modules we have. And what we teach you to do is we teach you how to upskill your actual team. So, our goal is to empower the leaders so, they can then take those skills back to their teams. And then once we go through the process, we teach them how to manage up, we teach them how to manage across. So, it’s this full 360 view of what you need as a leader. [4:53]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, what would you say are the qualities of a good leader?
Wesleyne: Hmm, one of the big ones that people don’t actually think about often is that the qualities of a good leader are typically the qualities of that quiet sleeper, good salesperson. So, empathy, the ability to listen, the ability to not always make it about yourself. Like realizing that as a leader, my team is a reflection of me. Always be in learning and growth mode. Having that I am always learning, I can always do better. I don’t ever know everything that I would say those are probably the top few qualities of a leader, a good leader. [5:41]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, but here’s the sad statistic. Really, there is only what? Top 30% actually hit quota? That’s pretty disappointing, isn’t it?
Wesleyne: It absolutely is, it’s horrible.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, if somebody identifies or recognizes that, okay, they need training, I need to become a better leader, how long is the transformation? [6:09]
Wesleyne: It really, it depends on the person because I have, when I work with clients, the thing that I say is I work with the leader and the teams together because the leaders are actually pretty weak and they’re deficient in some of their skills, so, they can’t uplift their team. Right? And so, when I started doing this work, I used to say, oh yeah, three months, yep, we’re good. Now I’m at a point where sometimes we’re at nine months and I’m like, okay, now you’re good. It’s really dependent on what that leader’s actual capabilities are. And sometimes I have to have hard conversations with organizations and I’m like, this person, this leader is gonna take them 18 months to get them to baseline. Do you have that time to invest in them to get them upleveled? And sometimes they say they don’t and sometimes they say they do. So, really, it’s dependent on where that baseline skill set is. [7:03]
Nancy Calabrese: Do you do any pure sales coaching for salespeople?
Wesleyne: I do, I do what I call team coaching or group coaching. So, it’s those core skills that a salesperson needs in this complex technical sale. So, it’s a lot of the things that we hear, you know the hunting, the how do I do strong discovery calls, how do I do demos. But in this field, these STEM industries, I like to say that they’re really smart people and sometimes they have a challenge in translating their knowledge to clients. So, I help them break it down so, you’re speaking your prospects language, you’re not speaking the language of your company. [7:45]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah! You know, I’m a big believer in ongoing training. So, everybody in my company, everyone, include the admins take sales training, right? Because it’s a form of communication. And why is it, though, that some teams resist that? Why? It doesn’t make any sense.
Wesleyne: A lot of times, whenever I walk into a room and you know they’re like, oh my gosh, you’ve taken me out of the field, I’ve already done this before, womp, womp, womp. I really feel that one of the biggest reasons is because these days, honestly, a lot of people can just hang a shingle and say, I’m a sales trainer. And if they’re a good salesperson, they can sell their programs, but they’re not actually adding a lot of long-term value because as you said you believe in that long-term constant reinforcement. And when you stick people in a room for eight hours and then you expect them to come out fixed or different, it doesn’t work if there’s nothing to back it up. So, a lot of times people have this training and it’s not effective. And so, they think like, oh, this is just another non-effective training. This is just another thing that I’m doing and it’s not gonna work. And so, breaking down that preconception that, hey, this is just another, you know, trying to oil this wheel in a different way. [9:09]}
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, so, you have a sales team, they’re underperforming. How do you motivate them?
Wesleyne: Motivation is baked into three different categories. So, there is extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, and altruistic motivation. [9:25] So, the very first step is you must know how each person on your team is motivated because the misnomer is everyone on a sales team is motivated by money, which is extrinsic. And that is they are motivated by making money, buying cars, going on vacations, whatever they want to do, but some people are motivated intrinsically. They are running a race against themselves. So, they work hard because they want to see their name at the top of the leaderboard. They work hard because they made a goal to do accomplish this by this point in their life. And so, motivating them that way. And then other people are motivated by helping others. So, when they make their commission or their bonus, they want to go pay off their mom’s house, they want to send their child to college tuition free. So, whatever the thing is that your salesperson, the people on your team are working towards when you coach them, when you try to push them, you focus on the thing that is important to them. [10:25]
Nancy Calabrese: So, I’m guessing you could be all three of those. Would you agree with that?
Wesleyne: You absolutely can. And it really just like, where am I? What stage of life am I in right now? Am I in a stage of life where I have three teenagers that needs to go to college very soon? And so, I’m thinking that, yes, I want to reduce their debt. So, I want to reduce my debt, but at the same time, this is about to be the first time in my life I don’t have children. So, what is my legacy? What am I gonna do now? Right? Like I want to show up as my best self. And so, it really, you have to have a conversation, right? With the people on your team. You can’t just sit in an ivory tower as a leader and think that everybody fits into this little teeny tiny nice little neat box. [11:06]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure, sure. So, how does culture play into having a great team?
Wesleyne: One of the most important things as a leader is your leader, your manager, the organization that you have surrounding you. Because if your CEO or VPS sales are depending on how many layers are above you, if they’re only focused on driving numbers, if they’re only focused on profitability, and they don’t actually care about the people, they don’t actually care about people developing and growing, then that plays deep down into you as a leader and your team, because they’re just pushing you to hit your numbers. And you’re saying, we need training, we need development, we need tools, and they’re like, we don’t have money for that. Just figure it out, you’re never going to survive. You’re never gonna thrive, and that is not the organization that you as a leader need. And as a salesperson, if you don’t see your company investing in any kind of training, internal, external, any kind of development, that means that they’re not really committed to you as a person getting better. [12:13]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, yep. Really hiring people based on their character, right? That’s a match for the company. You’re halfway there, right? Because they will be a good fit for the organization, the personality of the company, if you would. I want to, you know, here’s the acronym, the KPIs, key performance indicators. How many should we be? watching as a baseline check? And how often do you recommend just holding your people accountable to those? [12:51]
Wesleyne: So, I always say that the, when I think of KPIs, I always think about KPIs are in the conversions, right? So, instead of holding people to make 30 phone calls a day, focus on how many of those phone calls are turning into meetings. How many of those meetings are turning into proposals and demos, right? And so, you figure out what the KPIs need to be based on where the leaky wheels are. If you see that we’re not converting our calls into meetings then we need to have a KPI right there for converging of calls into meetings. And so, we have a KPI for calls and for meetings. And we really, and I like to double down, I like to go really deep. So, let’s go deep on the one thing for a month, for a quarter, for whatever. And if you go deep on something that you know is a problem, your close rate, the ratio of from that point on, everything picks up. So, really that is something that has to be assessed, as a leader, you should be looking at it on a weekly basis. Don’t change it every week, but look at it on a weekly basis. And you use that again to figure out how do I coach my team? How do I focus on what we need to do in our next team meeting? Cause the team meeting shouldn’t just be, let’s look at the CRM and figure out, you know, the close rate and all of this. It’s like, let me develop my team. Let me focus on how I can uplevel them. [14:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Tell me a fun fact about Wesleyne.
Wesleyne: A fun fact about Wesleyne. So, I would say fun fact about me is I am a first-generation American my parents were both born in Jamaica, and I was born here.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, wow.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, I’m a second generation, so, I can really appreciate that. And there’s such a soft spot in my heart for people that are brave enough, right? Your parents were brave enough to make the change. So, kudos to them. So, tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on. [15:01]
Wesleyne: Mm, the first thing that came into my brain was, I’m a purple unicorn.
Nancy Calabrese: What?
Wesleyne: But I won’t use that one. I’m a purple unicorn.
Nancy Calabrese: Wait a minute, there’s a story here.
Wesleyne: So, I call myself a purple unicorn because every stage or step or season in my life, they’re like, you did what? Like literally my friends, my family, they’re like, you did what? What happened to you? And it’s beyond their imagination. Like I just got off a call with a client not too long ago and she just literally opened up and she said her. Her dad is going through a very difficult season and I was like, yeah Well lean into you know, whatever kind of faith walk you have and she was like, yeah, I went here I did this and then we just started talking about God. So, literally it just went from a conversation of she called to do a project update and she shared something with me and that and so, that’s why I call myself a purple unicorn because I can talk about anything to anyone and I have so, many different areas of expertise that I pull from my brain. [16:07]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, so, what you’re saying is you bring out the best in people. Is that what you’re saying?
Wesleyne: Yes, I would say that. I bring out the best in everyone.
Nancy Calabrese: That is not a bad quality to have. More of us should have that in this world. We’re kind of wrapping up in time, but we could go on forever. What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with? [16:31]
Wesleyne: The one takeaway is your growth and development is important. If your company won’t invest in you, invest in yourself. Find resources to make yourself better. Find resources to develop your skillset, your empathy, whatever the thing is that you’re suffering. If you keep getting feedback from your leadership team, whether you’re an individual contributor, a frontline manager, or all the way up, whatever the thing is you continue to get feedback on, find a way to get better at it. Find a way to really invest in yourself because that is gonna pay dividends for years for decades. [17:08]
Nancy Calabrese: That is awesome advice, awesome. And like you said, I think it would be a shame if the company doesn’t support that. That’s not a good thing. But if you believe in your company, then really take the leap and invest in yourself. I’m all about that. How can my people find you?
Wesleyne: The best way is on LinkedIn. Just Wesleyne on LinkedIn.
Nancy Calabrese: Um, Wesleyne is spelled W-E-S-L-E-Y-N-E. Beautiful name by the way. Does it mean anything?
Wesleyne: I am named after my dad and my mom says I am the feminine version of him, so.
Nancy Calabrese: I love it.
Wesleyne: It is a perfect name.
Nancy Calabrese: Whoa, I love it. That’s great. So, listen everyone. Thanks so much for listening and Wesleyne, I hope we can do this again. You’re a lot of fun to speak with. [18:05]
Wesleyne: Thank you so, much. It’s been a pleasure.
Nancy Calabrese: Have a great sales day, everyone. See you next time.
