by Nancy Calabrese | Apr 30, 2024 | Podcast
About Jon Keel: Jon Keel is the Founder and CEO of Improved Together, LLC, which helps small business people increase revenue and gain the freedom they want by using proven automated systems. Jon is a results-oriented Business Advisor who has been helping businesses and their leaders stand out and thrive for nearly 25 years. Jon has developed a local, national, and international reputation as a performance-based online marketing expert, actively involved in this arena since January 1997. In addition to being CEO of Improved Results, which he founded in September 1997, he co-developed the Xavier University MBA E-Business program, where he taught online marketing and e-commerce for over three years. Since 2008, his business has focused primarily on expanding its online presence, reputation marketing, and conversion improvement for local and regional businesses. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Jon.
In this episode, Nancy and Jon discuss the following:
- The rapid growth of LinkedIn and its frequent updates
- Importance of staying informed about LinkedIn’s changes
- Need for a professional LinkedIn profile.
- Significance of staying current with LinkedIn’s features.
- Tips on how to grow your LinkedIn followers through engagement.
Key Takeaways:
- The limit on connections is 30,000, but there is no limit on your number of followers.
- LinkedIn will now show about 60 to 70 % of the posts of the people for whose bell you’ve clicked.
- It’s essential when you reach out to people and make connection requests that you include a personal message with the person.
- 99 % of LinkedIn users use it ineffectively and don’t know due to ignorance.
“You have to master five principles. I have given a talk on mastering these five principles to be successful on LinkedIn. And, you know, one of them is to have a killer profile. LinkedIn also says, in addition to 99% of folks not using it effectively, that 99% of profiles— and I don’t know any better way to say it— they suck. They’re terrible. And people need to have their profiles be professional. In other words, would you show up as an amateur or a professional? And it’s your choice. The second is to understand that it’s about relationships on LinkedIn. It’s not a quick sale. LinkedIn is not a transactional platform. It’s a relationship platform. So, develop that mentality in your writing and in the videos that you do. And the third is to expand and grow your network. You can never have a large enough network on LinkedIn. And there are ways to do that. The fourth, I’m trying to remember, I’m just having a brain cramp this morning, but the fifth is to stay current, which is what I offer all my members, the ability to stay current through twice-a-month master classes that I hold where I share with them all this current stuff that I’ve learned. And my objective, Nancy, my objective is not to be the smartest guy in the room. I just hang out with them.” – JON
“Well, the easiest way is to find people on LinkedIn that you want to follow, that you think, well, that person, I might, number one, have the opportunity to do business with them. Secondly, they might be a great referral source for me. So, it all starts first with following them. And I remember from the “Five Love Languages” book that came out many years ago, it’s hard to withdraw before you make deposits. So, you make a deposit by following them and commenting on their content. A certain number of them will follow you back and comment on your comments. That’s the way it starts. It’s a process.” – JON
“There’s no limit to the number of posts you can do. I personally recommend three a week. Some people post every day, and that’s fine. If you can do it, that’s great. I personally don’t have the time to do it every day, but certainly no more than once a day. When you post more than once a day, your overall post-exposure will increase, but subsequent posts are throttled, if you will, by posting more than one today.” – JON
Connect with Jon Keel:
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, 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 John Keel, the founder and CEO of Improve Together, an exclusive community of like -minded professionals working together to develop their personal brand by making LinkedIn work for them. John works with LinkedIn users who are frustrated, confused, feel as if they’re missing out on the tremendous business growth opportunity LinkedIn offers and even overwhelmed by LinkedIn’s continuous updates. And in addition, he co -developed the Xavier University MBA e -business program, where he taught online marketing and e -commerce. As I said just a moment ago, John, it’s all about LinkedIn these days. Welcome to the show.
Jon Keel: Thanks so much, Nancy. I’m glad to have the opportunity to share with you and your audience today. [1:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, I watched a short video that you created. The one thing that jumped out to me was there were 350 million members in LinkedIn, and they add three new members every second. And yet, 99 % of LinkedIn users use it ineffectively. Why is that?
Jon Keel: I think the main reason, what I discovered four or five years ago, Nancy, was that while LinkedIn is a great platform, a great B2B platform, a great business platform, and it actually crossed a billion users worldwide, the end of 2024, and it’s now adding four new users every second, LinkedIn continues to make upgrades to the system. Improvements, et cetera. Last year, for example, in 2023, LinkedIn, made 140 changes and modifications to the platform. Well, that’s great. That’s great, by the way. But at the same time, in my opinion, LinkedIn does an equally poor job at communicating those changes and upgrade to its members. So people, in a sense, I’ve said this on several recent calls, people are wallowing in ignorance. It’s not that they’re stupid, they just don’t know. [2:43]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, that’s weird. So why do they continually update it?
Jon Keel: Well, to make the platform better. I mean, they’ve just within the last two weeks have made some additional what I consider to be fairly significant changes, particularly around the profile. And I personally believe it’s just going to make the profile better for those people who choose to use LinkedIn as a sales medium, as a sales potential medium. [3:13]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure, what kind of changes did they make?
Jon Keel: Well, they eliminated what’s called creator mode, which came out about two years ago. And what will in effect happen is that the about section will move up back up to the top of the profile the way it was before LinkedIn incorporated creator mode several years ago. Featured section will move down. But more importantly, I think for me, from my perspective anyway, is they have broken out the providing services section into a separate section with the opportunity for people to add media, videos, et cetera, to that section. And I believe part of this is, and I don’t know this, but I believe it’s due to LinkedIn maybe modifying its practices, if you will, to allow those of us who sell to use it more effectively. I’m excited about the change. [4:14]
Nancy Calabrese: Yo, how did you get notified? Because I certainly was not aware of any of those changes.
Jon Keel: Well, when I first got serious about LinkedIn around five years ago, I started reaching out to people and I have what I call a posse, my posse of 10 people worldwide who are definitely LinkedIn insiders. I mean, these guys and gals know their stuff. More importantly, over a period of time, I’ve come to trust them implicitly so that if they say something, I know that it’s correct. There’s a lot of people out there, a lot of people out there on LinkedIn advising that say things that maybe not, aren’t necessarily true or not up to date. And I pay these, I pay these folks every month, uh, just in order to have the, the relationship with them. [5:06]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, I think that’s awesome. So, can any person on LinkedIn be successful? I mean, what do you have to do to be successful?
Jon Keel: Well, I think you have to master five principles. In fact, I have a whole talk I give on master these five principles to be successful on LinkedIn. And, you know, one of them is to have a killer profile. LinkedIn also says in addition to 99 % of folks not using it effectively, that 99 % of profiles, and I don’t know any better way to say it, they suck. They’re terrible. And people need to have their profiles be professional. In other words, would you show up as an amateur or a professional? And it’s your choice. The second is to understand that it’s about relationships on LinkedIn. It’s not the quick sale. LinkedIn is not a transactional platform. It’s a relationship platform. So, develop that mentality in your writing and in videos that you do. And the third is to expand and grow your network. You can never have a large enough network on LinkedIn. And there are ways to do that. The fourth, I’m trying to remember, I’m just having a brain cramp this morning, but the fifth is to stay current, which is what I offer all my members, the ability to stay current through twice a month master classes that I hold where I share them all this current stuff that I’ve learned. And my objective, Nancy, my objective is not to be the smartest guy in the room. I just hang out with him. [6:51]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think that’s smart. You know, you mentioned about the connection. I mean, is there a limit to the number of connections a person can have?
Jon Keel: Yeah, the limit on connections is 30, 000. But there is no limit on the number of followers you can have. I have a number of friends who have well over 100 ,000 followers. And that’s important because followers, in addition to connections, see your content and see your comments on posts. And I’ll say so I continually, every day I have an exercise I go through every day. It takes me about 30 minutes where I’m continuing to grow my connections and followers. [7:42]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. How do you grow your followers?
Jon Keel: Well, the easiest way is to find people on LinkedIn that you want to follow, that you think, well, that person, I might, number one, I might have the opportunity to do some business with them. Or secondly, they might be a great referral source for me. So, it all, it all starts first with following them. And I remember from the five love languages book came out many years ago, it’s hard to make withdrawals before you make deposits. So, you make a deposit by following them, commenting on their content. A certain number of them will follow you back and comment on your comments. That’s the way it starts. It’s a process. [8:33]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. You know, why is it that, you know, I see some of my connections, posts, and I don’t see others? How does LinkedIn determine what posts you see?
Jon Keel: Well, that’s all part of the, some of the work that LinkedIn has done over the years, but more particularly since last fall. Typically, it used to be that LinkedIn would show when you post a post, LinkedIn would show your post to 10 % of your connections. Well, that’s changed a little bit. They now show your post, your content to people with whom you’ve had an engagement, you know, and messaging back and forth within the last two or three weeks, people who have recently followed you, which again goes back to why it’s important to continually build the list of people who are following you. [9:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. That’s really interesting. You know, one of the things I learned, and I don’t know if this is a new feature, but apparently there’s a bell on profiles. I’m sure you’re aware of it. They were on some profiles and they’re not on others. Maybe you can describe what the bell is. Why doesn’t everyone have that?
Jon Keel: Well, the bell is located right underneath the banner graphic in the upper right. If you follow somebody, you will see their bell. So, if you go to somebody’s profile and you don’t see the bell, you just need to go down and click the follow button to follow them. The bell will automatically appear. And when you click the bell, LinkedIn will then show you, and this is again, a change from last fall. It used to be they said all their posts. LinkedIn will now show about 60 to 70 % of the posts of the people for whose bell you’ve clicked. [10:32]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. Huh. And how many posts do you recommend? I mean, is there a limit to the number of posts? LinkedIn allows you to.
Jon Keel: There’s no limit to the number of posts you can do. I personally recommend three a week. Some people post every day and that’s fine. If you can do it, that’s great. I personally don’t have the time to do every day, but certainly no more than once a day. When you post more than once a day, your overall post exposure will increase, but subsequent posts are are throttled, if you will, by posting more than one today. [11:13]
Nancy Calabrese: I mean do they ever flag you if you post too much?
Jon Keel: I’ve not read that. I mean, there are things you can do to get flagged by LinkedIn and you definitely want to stay under LinkedIn’s radar.
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Well, how many connections can you, I guess, reach out to on a daily basis without getting flagged?
Jon Keel: Well, that’s another good question. If you have the free version of LinkedIn, you’re limited to 10 connection requests a week. Yeah. If you have premium or Navigator, I think the limit is 200 a week. To me, it’s worth the money. I wouldn’t use LinkedIn without having Navigator. [11:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, no, no, no, we have navigator. You know, I, I, somebody told me it was about 50 a day.
Jon Keel: Used to be the LinkedIn has recently throttled that back. And I don’t know if they just want more people to have premium, invest in premium or Navigator or what. And it’s important when you reach out to people and make connection requests that you include a personal message to the person. Where do you want to connect? Whenever I get a connection request from somebody and I probably get 10 to 15 a day, if they don’t have a personal message for them, I will just immediately disregard that connection request. [12:45]
Nancy Calabrese: So, what do you mean by personal message? What are some examples?
Jon Keel: Let’s say I wanted to reach out to you. We’re already connected, but I’d say, Nancy, and I would write something like, and by the way, I have all this templated. Nancy, I’ve been seeing some of your recent posts and really like what you write. It seems like we should be connected. Let’s connect. It’s something that’s something personal. It’s not high brow, but it’s just you’re talking like you talk to somebody in real life. [13:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. You said earlier that LinkedIn is about building relationships, not selling. And I had this, I guess, conversation with somebody else about it. To me, I see LinkedIn as a sales tool. Yes, you want to build a relationship, but the ultimate goal is to sell. Wouldn’t you agree?
Jon Keel: Oh, totally, totally. I don’t do LinkedIn for fun. I mean if you have the time to do it, and it’s a hobby, that’s okay. But I use it as a sales tool. And, and the way I do that, and then here’s where a lot of people make mistakes on LinkedIn, Nancy is that they will connect with somebody, and somebody will connect with them. And the first word out of their mouth is, and many times they will automate their responses. Oh, I do this, I sell this, I can do that for you. And many of those messages are automated. I disregard those immediately. First thing I want to do is, when I say build the relationship, is maybe engender some type of conversation. Maybe I’ll ask questions about them or about their business. And I typically will do that a couple of times, maybe over several weeks. And then at some point I’ll say, you know, it seems like it might be worthwhile for us to have a conversation. If you agree, let me know. I never include my call scheduling link unasked for, or basically unless somebody has said, yeah, I agree with that. One of the things I was going to say, one of the things that a friend of mine taught me recently is, Nancy, would it make sense to have a no sales zone intro call so we can get to know each other better? And I like to turn no sales zone to put people at ease. Most people think if you want to have a call, you want to sell me something. Well, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe not. You know, I’ve sold over the last 40 years, I’ve sold hundreds of millions of dollars of stuff in various careers. And I never did it by being over the top or in somebody’s face. [15:50]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. How did you know I’m just curious how did you make the transition to LinkedIn marketing.
Jon Keel: Well, this is my third career. My first career, 23 years, I had an engineering background and I knew that I wanted to do technical sales. So, I aligned with the company many years ago and over 23 years where we sold water treatment and wastewater treatment, plant equipment, capital process equipment. And that happened to be my educational background was environmental engineering. So, it fit. And in that timeframe, I sold a quarter billion dollars worth of stuff over 23 years. I ended up owning and running the business or it ran me. And for personal reasons, I needed to sell the business, which I did. Then in my interim period, because I didn’t have a job, I discovered the internet. And this was January of 97. And at that time, Nancy, there were 72 ,000 websites in the world. I saw this as a tool I thought that small businesses could use to increase their businesses, to increase their revenue. So, I went out and found some people that I trusted, paid them some pretty good money to teach me all about online marketing. And they did. And for the next 25 years, I worked with almost 1600 businesses around the world, helping them increase their revenue I never used the term online or internet marketing, but I spoke to what they were looking for, which was increased revenue. And that worked very well, building up to about a million dollars of revenue a year, ongoing, you know, continuity revenue. And March 1st, 2020, that shut down with the pandemic. And frustrating thing was what I’ve been doing for 25 years just wasn’t working anymore. So, through a serendipitous conversation I had with a friend of mine because I had ineffectively been using LinkedIn for several years. He connected me with some people who had developed a SaaS product that basically makes LinkedIn work better. And I became a white label partner for them. I’m one of five white label partners in the world. And I just, in fact, I was telling the story this morning on another call that what I observed was knowing what to do and knowing the soft skills that you need in LinkedIn and noticing that LinkedIn just didn’t update people. Again, 99 % of LinkedIn users use it ineffectively. And due to ignorance, they just don’t know. I love to teach, so I developed a whole series if you will of master classes where every other month, I teach all things LinkedIn all the things you need to do and need to know to be successful on LinkedIn and over the last four years I’ve had over 7 000 people register for and go through the training. [19:11]
Nancy Calabrese: it. I love it. Yeah, and you’re having one, right? Relatively soon, I think, in the next couple of weeks.
Jon Keel: Oh yeah, I have one coming up in third week of March.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Wow. Wow. John, I can’t believe we’re up in time. I could go on and on. Is there anything you want the audience or leave the audience with? Like, what is one takeaway you want the audience to have?
Jon Keel: Well, I think to understand from a principal or a fundamental standpoint, I give a talk, I have a 30 minute talk I give, that I recorded. And it’s called master these fundamentals, these five fundamentals to be successful on LinkedIn. Once you know the fundamentals and you master them, you just keep doing them over and over and over again. I mean, you know, I’d be glad to, you know, I can get you a copy of the link and people can reach out to you directly and, and, and watch the recording. I really don’t sell anymore. I just educate. [20:13]
Nancy Calabrese: I think that’s awesome, awesome. How can my people find you?
Jon Keel: Well, if they go to LinkedIn, my name is easy to easy to find as J O N K E L John Keel, like the bottom of the group. Reach out, follow me, reach out and reach out to me to connect because I will connect if you want to schedule a call. The way to do that, you can find that on my LinkedIn profile. I probably have 20 to 25 scheduled calls a week. Just talking with people, all kinds of people from all over the world. [20:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, fascinating. Take advantage of John’s expertise. I totally am in your court that LinkedIn is an amazing tool to develop the relationships and ultimately sell. So, people reach out to John. John, you were a fabulous guest and I’ll see you tomorrow at our networking event. But I really appreciate you sharing all of the wisdom that you’ve collected over the years.
Jon Keel: Thanks so much, Nancy. It’s been great. It has passed fast, for sure.
Nancy Calabrese: I told you it would. So everyone make it an amazing sales day and LinkedIn day and I’ll see you next time. [21:31]
by Nancy Calabrese | Apr 29, 2024 | Podcast
About Eric Boggs: Eric Boggs is the Founder & CEO of RevBoss, an outbound agency on a mission to bring honesty and transparency to the B2B sales process. Using a mix of software automation, creative strategy and messaging, and top-notch client service, RevBoss powers full-service outbound campaigns for 100s of teams across a wide range of industries, including SaaS companies, marketing and creative agencies, video production services, and business services providers. Today, Eric leads the effort to bring happiness to 100s of clients and more than 50 RevBuds worldwide. Eric spent the last 20 years building companies and advising successful CEOs (Device Magic, Kevel, UserVoice, Ignite Social, and many more). He completed his undergraduate studies at UNC Chapel Hill and earned an MBA at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where he was a Dean’s Fellow. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Eric.
In this episode, Nancy and Eric discuss the following:
- The importance of human conversation in sales
- Eric Boggs’ mission with RevBoss: client and coworker happiness
- The role of AI in transforming sales and marketing processes
- Strategies for generating qualified appointments
- The effectiveness of personalized email subject lines
- Recommendations for optimizing email cadence and timing.
Key Takeaways:
- When you see really long emails, it’s just laziness because it takes a lot of work to be sharp and direct in your communication.
- My team has probably gotten tired of hearing me say cut it in half, but I think you can cut it in half and usually cut it in half again.
- Content quality and volume are moving targets, but they are also goals you never achieve.
- If it can always be shorter, it can always be better.
“AI will not replace human-to-human interaction. However, it is in the process of absolutely transforming the steps in the marketing and selling process that ultimately will lead to human interaction. And it’s doing that with content and decision-making and process enablement. And frankly, it’s going to make the process better in the long run, but it’s making it awful messy right now.” – ERIC
“At RevBoss, we do lead generation for hundreds of clients. Most are marketing agencies, PR firms, and business services-type companies. That’s probably 60% of our customers. 30% are SaaS technology companies, and 10% are other. Machine shops and commercial real estate are all kinds of odds and ends. And our strategy and mechanism are generally the same across the board. We’re email first and primarily email. But increasingly, we’re augmenting that with targeted display ads. And sometimes, we’ll layer on a LinkedIn program if it’s targeted and small and makes sense. We’ve never done phone. And I know that’s your expertise. No, it’s more of a personal preference and experience than anything else. We have plenty of clients that have had a lot of success cold calling internally or with partners. And we’ve worked, you know, we’ve told plenty of sales leads in the past, hey, yeah, we don’t do that. But I do think that phone will work for you. We’ve just focused on email because we’re good at it. We can automate it with a lot of technology and increasingly automate it with many AI integrations. And that’s just kind of how we’ve how we built the business.” – ERIC
“As a subject line, I’m rather ambivalent. If it works, it works; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. We’ve had clients where we’ve dropped emojis and manipulated text. One thing I know works at RevBoss is that subject lines should resemble those you’d send to a coworker. You’d never send an email with a subject line like “Increase your XYZ by some percent,” right? Good subject lines are casual, like “Hey, how’s it going?” or “I have a question about this thing.” You’ll get the desired result as long as you broadly fall into that category. Emojis and text manipulation are great ideas.” – ERIC
“Our general approach is three emails over a week, maybe 10 days. One of the emails is usually like a bump or an inline reply, maybe two; perhaps both are inline replies or forwards. Instead of doing five, eight, or 10 emails or touches over an extended period, we like to do short bursts in seven days. Let that prospect chill out for 60 days 90 days, and then do another short burst over a short period of time. We found that the prospects we retarget—say, I email you today, and then if you don’t reply after two or three emails, I email you again in 60 or 90 days—roughly convert at the same rate as net new prospects. So, a lot of the success we’re able to generate for our clients is based on repetition, process, and ensuring we’re landing in the inbox with enough frequency, the right target prospect, and a tight message to get lucky. And you know, we get lucky to the tune of hundreds of times a day for our clients.” – ERIC
Connect with Eric Boggs:
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, 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 Eric Boggs, the founder and CEO of RevBoss. Eric has spent the last 20 years of his career building and advising successful CEOs. Eric started RevBoss in 2014 with a mission to build a business that made clients and coworkers happy. Today, Eric leads RevBoss’s effort to bring happiness to hundreds of clients and 50 plus RevBuds around the world. You can read about the guiding principles he wrote for RevBoss in the Hat Culture Manifesto. Welcome to the show, or like I said earlier, we have a lot in common.
Eric Boggs: We do. It’s really nice to be here, Nancy. Thank you. [1:12]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I’m really excited. So, what’s a RevBud? I’m going to go.
Eric Boggs: A RevBud is someone that works at RevBoss. Google has Googlers. Lots of companies brand their employees with a fun name, and we call ourselves RevBuds. I did not come up with it. I’m pretty sure Mason, our VP of People and Operations, coined that phrase. It stuck, and it’s really kind of goofy and fun. [1:43]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, I think it certainly caught my attention. So, you know, we again spoke earlier about, you know, the hot button in today’s conversation, which is AI on sales and marketing. What’s your take on it? And can AI replace human conversation?
Eric Boggs: I think my take on it would probably go a lot longer than the 18 minutes you had budgeted for this conversation, but I’ll offer some headlines. And take, certainly, opinion. I would say an informed opinion. I’m not an AI expert in terms of the technology itself but do understand deeply how it works and how it’s being applied in sales. To your question, no, not. AI will not replace human-to-human interaction. But it is in the process of absolutely transforming the steps in the marketing and selling process that ultimately will lead to a human interaction. And it’s doing that with content and decision making and process enablement. And frankly, it’s going to make the process better in the long run, but it’s making it awful messy right now. [3:02]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. You know, I read an article today about a gal who boasts that she can have AI do the cold calling and have them sound human. Have you heard of anything like that?
Eric Boggs: I’ve not explicitly heard of that, but I absolutely believe that it exists.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Kind of creepy, isn’t it?
Eric Boggs: It’s a little weird, yeah. And I don’t know that I believe that, believe that exists in a seamless and meaningful way at this moment, but I do believe that it will exist in a seamless and meaningful way in the next, I don’t know, two to three years. [3:55]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, there are many different or several options nowadays for marketing. Part of it is cold calling, social media, LinkedIn, et cetera. What tools do you use to generate the qualified appointments? What’s your cadence? Do you mix it up with cold calls, emails, and so on?
Eric Boggs: Yeah, so at RevBoss, we do lead generation for hundreds of clients. Most of them are marketing agency, PR firm, business services type companies. That’s probably 60% of our customers. 30% are SaaS technology companies and 10% are other. Machine shops and commercial real estate, all kinds of like odds and ends. And our strategy and mechanism are generally the same across the board. We’re email first and primarily email. But increasingly, we’re augmenting that with targeted display ads. And sometimes we’ll layer on a LinkedIn program if it’s targeted and small and kind of makes sense. We’ve actually never done phone. And I know that’s your expertise. No, no, it’s more like a preference and experience thing for me personally than anything else. We have plenty of clients that have a lot of success cold calling either internally or with partners. And we’ve worked, you know, we’ve told plenty of sales leads in the past, hey, yeah, we don’t do that. But I do think that phone will work for you. We’ve just focused on email because it’s, we’re good at it. We can automate it with a lot of technology and increasingly automate it with a lot of AI integrations. And that’s just kind of how we’ve how we built the business. [5:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Got it. OK. You say email first. Why is that?
Eric Boggs: Why email first? That’s an interesting question. Probably 90% of the leads that we generate for our clients are a direct response to an email or an automated meeting booking that started with an email. So that is our go-to strategy for every client. The other cross-channel things that we do, display ads, maybe 20 to 25% of our clients, although that’s increasing quickly. And LinkedIn, maybe like less than 10%. Just because LinkedIn is kind of unwieldy and awkward and we haven’t had as much success generating outcomes from LinkedIn, which is not to say that you can’t do it. I know lots and lots of people do it and lots of companies do it. It’s just never been something that we’ve been particularly good at. Whereas the email thing, we know it cold. [6:49]
Nancy Calabrese: What about texting? Do you believe in that?
Eric Boggs: We’ve never tried it. Yeah, we’ve never tried it. And it’s never really kind of come up as an idea. And I think that texting for me is a lot more personal. Like I get, you know, business emails and I’ve, and it gets mixed in with lead notifications and Salesforce updates and emails from my team and automated billing, whatever from our own systems. And so, a marketing email isn’t out of place. Text message lands in conversation with my wife and my parents and my 12-year-old son and things like that. And it just feels a lot more off-putting in. And yeah, so we’ve never really done it for those reasons. Again, not to say it doesn’t work well. I would imagine it’s a lot more effective once a prospect is in your funnel and moving forward. I have used text for those types of things a lot. [7:57]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I’m in total agreement with you. I kind of feel like texting is personal. And when I do get some business texts, it’s kind of off putting. No, you don’t know me that well. You don’t know me at all. So why are you texting me? OK.
Eric Boggs: Yeah, I got one today from some guy I don’t know, and I’m not going to call him out or whatever, but it’s like, hey, you might know these people that live in Durham, I don’t know them. Have you got a couple minutes for an intro? He’s like a clothing stylist, which is hilarious because you can see I have on a cap and a Steely Dan T-shirt, and I wear blue jeans and a t-shirt to work literally every day of the week. And there’s nothing I care about less than like my fashion appearance. And so, this guy, you know, the text I got before him was my friend and the text I got after them was my wife and he’s already out of place and he’s trying to pique my interest with something that I have negative interest in. And so, it’s annoying. [9:04]
Nancy Calabrese: All right. Yeah, well, I guess, how did they get your text number? Yeah, I agree. I think it’s intrusive.
Eric Boggs: Oh, I don’t know. It’s probably easy to find my phone number. I’m sure I’m on some list.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Let’s go back to email. It’s interesting you bring that up this week. In one of the sales training classes that I participate in, the whole topic was about email and how to catch the attention of the prospect. And we talked a little bit about the subject line. And it was recommended that if you put an emoji in the subject line or if you bold the text, they tend to stand out and get more attention. Has that been your experience?
Eric Boggs: I am a subject line I would say I’m ambivalent with subject lines. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I’m sure that we have clients where we’ve dropped emojis in places and done things like manipulating the text. The one thing that I know works and that we kind of operate from at RevBoss is that the subject line should look like a subject line that you would send to a coworker. And you would never send an email to a coworker that says, increase your XYZ by some percent, right? You would send a subject line that said, hey, how’s it going? Or, hey, I have a question about this thing. Or then you need to ask, what do you think about this? Those are good subject lines. And I think as long as your kind of broadly fall in that category with what you’re doing, you’re going to get the result that you want. And things like emoji and text manipulation, certainly those are great ideas. [10:58]
Nancy Calabrese: Now, the other thing that really turns me off is when I get an email that is like a book, information dump. What are your thoughts on those types of emails?
Eric Boggs: Yeah, oh geez, I hear you on that. It’s like that Tom Petty saying about songwriting, like get to the chorus before you bore us. And we try to keep the content that we generate for our clients, one, we try to focus on story, a narrative, versus like a transaction or a feature or something like that. Two, we try to use connectors, and connectors are basically things that we know to be true about you, the prospect, that we can incorporate in our messaging. And that can be simple things like where you’re located, or the presence of a certain job title at your company, or the lack of a job title at your company, or some reference to some customers that you have. Something about me that relates to you maybe a shared customer or a shared experience or something to that effect, so that the message that you receive shows that I know you, and which is why I’m sending this to you, and I am also a person and not an AI drone. And then sort of the last piece of that is we try to keep it really short to your point. And when you can do those first two things, a story or a narrative, and surface connectors and keep it really, short, then you’ve got something. You know, when you see really, long emails, it’s just laziness, because it takes a lot of work to be sharp and direct in your communication. [12:49]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, that’s interesting. And so how do you know how much is a good amount of information?
Eric Boggs: Um, my team has probably gotten tired of hearing me say cut it in half, but I think you can cut it in half and usually cut it in half again. I had a poetry teacher in undergrad that more than once I would hand in, and I’m not a poet. It was a fun class, but I’m not a poet. More than once I would hand in an assignment and he would like, you know, 16 lines or whatever, and he would circle two lines and draw a big exit through everything else and say, these two lines were by far better than everything else, start over with these two lines as the starting point. And so, I think that, you know, quality and volume of content, it’s a moving target, but it’s also a goal that you never achieve. Like it can always be shorter, it can always be better. [13:55]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, interesting. Yeah, so how much time should you put into crafting, say, a researched email? What’s your recommendation?
Eric Boggs: Yeah, well that depends on the context too, right? If you are an important relationship for me to try to develop and you’re a well-qualified prospect or for whatever reason, you know, as long as it takes, as long as it kind of makes sense. Like I wouldn’t spend all day working on an email to a single person, but would I take 10 minutes, 20 minutes? Heck yeah, if it’s worth it. A lot of times it might be easier to find a shared connection. Like if you know Susie, instead of me emailing Susie, I might say, hey, Nancy, will you write an email to Susie and introduce me? Here’s some copy that you can use. That might be a quicker way to end around that process. If it is what we do at RevBoss in its more automated, higher volume outreach, where maybe you want to email 25 people a day or 50 people a day or 100 people a day, then your copy needs to be sharp and direct with the things that we talked about with connectors and narrative, but then you can start to bring in variables into the copy that will adjust the copy based on what we know about you. So, if you have a VP title, the call to action might be a little different than if you have a manager title, or if you have this type of keyword in your company, or that type of keyword in your company, the copy might change. Maybe we highlight a different customer success or a different reference story. And so, when it comes to one-to-one, you can be really deep. When it comes to one-to-many, you gotta be smart about using variables and automation to make the copy relevant. [15:47]
Nancy Calabrese: And what’s your recommended cadence to getting these emails out? How many in total? What’s the spacing in between?
Eric Boggs: So, we actually did a lot of research on this. I mean, it was a while back. It was more than two years ago, and frankly, we should probably revisit it. We found decreasing returns and increasing leave me the heck alone after the third email. And so, yeah, our general approach is three emails over a week, maybe 10 days. One of the emails is usually like a bump or an inline reply, maybe two, maybe both of them are inline replies and forwards. And instead of doing, you know, five or eight or 10 emails or touches over an extended period, we like to do short bursts in like a seven-day timeframe let that prospect chill out for 60 days, 90 days, and then do another short burst over a short period of time. And we found that the prospects that we retarget, say maybe I email you Nancy today and then you don’t reply after two or three emails and I email you again in 60 or 90 days, the prospects that you retarget roughly convert at the same rate as net new prospects. And so, a lot of the success that we’re able to generate for our clients is just based on repetition and process and making sure that we’re landing in the inbox with enough frequency and with the right target prospect and with a really tight message to just get lucky. And you know, we get lucky to the tune of hundreds of times a day for our clients. [17:46]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, but let me, you know, a lot of emails wind up in spam. How can you prevent that?
Eric Boggs: Yeah, that’s a tricky one. So there’s the technical aspect of deliverability And a lot of folks on the internet on LinkedIn Make it seem like that piece of it’s really hard like DKIM and DMARC and SPF and authentication and all that That’s that’s actually pretty easy if Once you learn it, it sounds scary, but it’s not there’s some other things that you can do to ensure deliverability with like custom URL redirects for your open pixel or your unsubscribe link and those kinds of things that are a little bit more complicated. But that stuff is kind of meat and potatoes and it’s like a well understood set of steps that you must take and so that’s easy. Where it gets a lot trickier is the content of the email. And when you like, you know, this guy that emailed me about, you know, my fashion needs, like clearly dude I don’t know you, the message was bad, and I’m not interested in that. And so that was a very off-putting message. It would have been a lot different if he had done the work to recognize that I was a better prospect or had reached out to me with something that’s more along the lines of what I need or what I care about. And it’s the same thing with higher volume email too. If the prospecting is on point and the messaging is on point, you’re not going to get a lot of spam complaints or unsubscribed. And those are generally the things that drive you out of the inbox and into the spam folder. [19:31]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well, listen, I told you this was going to fly by. We’re out of time, Eric. We could go on and on. How can my people find you?
Eric Boggs: I told you Nancy, I could keep going. I’m a talker when it comes to email. RevBoss is at RevBoss.com, R-E-V-B-O-S-S.com. I’m on LinkedIn, Eric Boggs, B-O-G-G-S. And I’ve been, one of my sort of goals for the new year was to increase my content production on LinkedIn. And so, I’m sharing a lot of videos and posts about email and the things that I work on and also a lot of personal stories. And so, I’d love to connect there with anyone in your audience that finds this kind of stuff as interesting as I do. [20:21]
Nancy Calabrese: I love it. Yeah, you know, I just learned this today. I had no idea that if you go to, say, I go to your profile and I click on the bell, I’m going to see your post. Did you know that?
Eric Boggs: No. I’m a little bit of a Luddite when it comes to LinkedIn.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, see what you learned? Go to people that you want to follow, click on the bell in the upper right corner, and then you’ll see their posts come through. Yeah, I’m going to do that. Eric, you were fantastic. Very easy to speak with, and I suggest everyone to really take advantage of Eric’s expertise especially as it relates to emails, because I’m guessing you’d rather be emailing than cold calling. So, thanks again, Eric, for being on the show and to everyone out there, make it an awesome sales day. [21:18]
by Nancy Calabrese | Apr 24, 2024 | Podcast
About Benjamin Brown: Benjamin Brown is the CEO of 360 Sales Consulting, a company specializing in helping businesses and entrepreneurs excel in sales and dramatically increase their bottom line. Their proprietary sales system has come to be recognized as a “game-changer” and is in demand by companies of all sizes throughout the United States. Ben’s sales career of more than twenty years began with selling health club memberships and quickly worked his way into sales manager and sales director positions. Having held both inside and outside sales positions, his diverse experience includes selling autos, computer products and services, voice recognition software, staffing, and transportation services. Ben is a former United States Marine with six years of service and a Veteran of the Gulf War. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Benjamin.
In this episode, Nancy and Benjamin discuss the following:
- The importance of confidence in sales
- The effectiveness of mentoring and coaching in learning sales
- A 10-step sales process based on Benjamin’s proven sales system
- Customizing sales processes based on specific products or services
- The impact of AI on sales and the enduring importance of human interaction
- Benjamin’s journey into sales and teaching
Key Takeaways:
- 80% of sales is confidence.
- Children are good salespeople because they close for no reason.
- Anytime you’re in a conversation about working with an individual, there’s always a sale.
- Sales is the essential part of a business that brings in the money.
- One of the things that I teach is that you have to like it, love it, or leave it.
“ The best way to learn sales that I found is making sure that you have a proper mentor to work with or coach, especially if you haven’t done it before or if you have done it not to the point where you’ve been satisfied. Sales is a skill, so it’s better done in an apprentice-type situation where somebody is grading your performance as you do it. Theory, reading a book, watching videos and doing it and performing it doesn’t work well because there’s no way for you to get the direct feedback that you need to adjust.” – BENJAMIN
“We live in a Western civilization where we’re trained that your worth and things you want must be earned through your work. You don’t negotiate. If you make enough money to negotiate in America, the only thing you know in life is a house and a car. But if you go overseas and go to third-world countries or other places less, their actual mentality or culture is that if you go to a market, an open market in a second or third-world country, there are no prices. Everything is a negotiation. Right? Everything’s in the good in some cultures. If you don’t negotiate, they will see it as negative. So, I love it when I go overseas, and I go to these places, and at the end of the tour, you’ll see the native, the local people selling their arts and crafts at the end, and they’re coming at you with the, you know, the pressure for you to buy. You can look and see the Americans because they start to cringe. They’re not used to that aggression. But this is how people get things done in their country. We live in an economy where we don’t have to deal with that. But we get more inundation through our phones and television, driving down the road. We get hit just like they do. It’s just not verbally in our face.” – BENJAMIN
“There’s no need to fear sales if you understand that sales is a language. It’s just like sign language or anything else, and if you can understand that, your life becomes a whole lot easier because you’ll know when people are selling you and when you need to buy. And that comes through your personal life as well as your business. By doing that, your confidence level will increase because you now will understand that you need to listen more in a conversation because good salespeople are great listeners. And it is key. So, there are three things I say you need to do when you’re a good salesperson: First, you need to know where you’re going, which means a good sales process. Number two is that you need to be confident. You have to be able to take rejection. Number three is that you must listen. And you must do all three of those at the same time. Hence the skill of sales. So, some people could do one or two, but you need to do all three. And if you could do all three very well, you could become a great salesperson.” – BENJAMIN
Connect with Benjamin Brown:
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, 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 Benjamin Brown, the owner of 360 Sales Consulting, a company that specializes in boosting sales for businesses of any size and industry. As a sales coach, author, and speaker, he has over 23 years of experience in selling anything from stocks to cars to medical devices. His 10 -step sales process, which he reveals in his book, Master the Art of Closing the Sale, is based on finding and solving the customer’s pain points, building rapport and trust, and asking for the sale with confidence. Benjamin’s mission is to help salespeople and business owners achieve financial freedom by closing more sales. Well, as you know, Benjamin, I’m all about sales, so welcome to the show. Let’s get going.
Benjamin Brown: Glad to do it. Glad to be here, Nancy. [1:26]
Nancy Calabrese: I’m excited. So, you know, especially when I speak with other people that are totally into sales, and yet many salespeople struggle with asking for the sale. Why is that?
Benjamin Brown: 80 % of sales Nancy is confidence. So, when I work with individuals, the first thing I have to do is rate their confidence level, find out why it’s not as high as it should be. And most of the time that would help me reprogram them in understanding what sales actually is and what it’s all about and how fun it can actually be if you understand what it’s all about and you have a good actual sales process that you’re comfortable with. So, most of the time that’s them being uncomfortable or not confident enough. [2:22]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, why don’t we start with the basic? What is a sale?
Benjamin Brown: A sale is, I ask this for many people and they kind of don’t understand it because I say sales is simple but it’s not easy. So, I simplified it by the purpose of a sale is to get someone to move. So, it doesn’t have to do with money. It doesn’t have to do with denominations and currency. When your child asks you to pick them up, that is a close. They know how to close. Children are good salespeople because they close for no reason. Right? So, if you understand the concept of a sale is to get somebody to move, which means that we happen all the time. Click on this, give me your email address. Let me ask you this question. The billboard, call this number, fill this out. These are all baby steps in sales processes. Even dating is sales. Can I take you out? Can I get your ID? Can I get your phone number? Can you give me your name? All of these are baby steps in a process in sales. So, sales, when I teach the concept, making people relative to life is everywhere in life that you see it. You just haven’t paid attention to it. [3:35]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well why is learning sales so important?
Benjamin Brown: Well, if you’re anytime you’re an entrepreneur, Mark Cuban says the first thing you need to know how to do is sell. I work with beginning entrepreneurs and the first thing they want to focus on is a website and a business card. Now understand you must sell the product first to make sure it’s relevant. Right. Also, anytime you’re in a conversation of working with an individual, there’s always a sale going on. So, if you don’t know sales, that means that you’re always buying. [4:12]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. You know, I read somewhere that you state that many businesses don’t think sales training is important until it starts to affect their revenue. Why is that?
Benjamin Brown: They fail to invest in it because most or some companies are more geared towards marketing and don’t understand sales aspect of it. They don’t come from sales backgrounds. It’s just like hiring a coach and he comes from a decent defensive mindset, and you hire him as a head coach. He’s going to focus more on defense than he would on offense because that’s his mindset. So, business owners come from a more marketing mindset than the sales mindset. And so, some companies can run purely on sales without marketing. Hence, network marketing is not really about sales. It’s about referrals, right? Which is a sale, not really the marketing aspect of it. [5:12]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, well even asking for a referral is a form of selling, don’t you think?
Benjamin Brown: Yes, it is, but they gear their sales process mainly on that and benefiting the people that get involved to sell the seller, like insurance companies, all about referrals. Some companies are, but as far as face -to -face, cold calling, that’s another type of form, or would you say cold calling on the phone or things of that nature is a contact sport. So, you have to have a game plan for what that’s going to look like because it has to be replicated over and over and over again until it’s defined. And then you give that to someone new as a guide. And most companies don’t have a guide. I said most salespeople are not successful in the company because the company didn’t provide them enough tools to work. [6:08]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, over and over again. Okay, so what kind of tool should a company make available to salespeople?
Benjamin Brown: A solid sales process. Solid. Something that’s been proven, something that they do, something that has worked. Most people will come in and that, you know, IBM had a good sound set. You know, insurance companies have a different way of the training, you know, two to six months, sometimes training just purely just to get them to understand how they do things here. So, when I work with business owners and I say, when you hire salespeople, you need to have an SOP when you bring in a salesperson and say, this is how we do things here. And that is the mark that you want everyone to make. And if they can’t make that, then that’s your standing ground. It’s not because you don’t think they have a good personality. It’s just they’re not following proper instructions. [7:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, huh. What is the best way to learn sales?
Benjamin Brown: The best way to learn sales that I found is making sure that you have a proper mentor to work with or coach, especially if you haven’t done it before or if you have done it not to the point where you’ve been satisfied. Sales is a skill, so it’s better done in an apprentice type situation where you have somebody grading your performance as you do it. Theory, reading a book, watching videos and actually doing it and performing it doesn’t work well because there’s no way for you to get the direct feedback that you need to adjust. [7:42]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think about, again, myself, I’m speaking personally that I love sales, but many people absolutely hate it. They hear the word sales and, you know, they get goosebumps. They want to run away. Why is that?
Benjamin Brown: I’m glad you asked that. We live in a Western civilization where we’re trained that your worth and things that you want must be earned through the work that you do. You don’t negotiate. The only thing you know in life that you in America if you make enough money to negotiate is a house and a car. But if you go overseas and you go to third world countries or other places less, their actual mentality or their culture is if you go to a market, an open market in a second or third world country, there’s no prices. Everything is negotiation. Right? Everything’s in the good in some cultures. If you don’t negotiate, they seem it as a negative. Right? So, I love when I go overseas and I go to these places and at the end of the tour, you’ll see the native, the local people selling their arts and crafts at the end and they’re coming at you with the, you know, the pressure for you to buy. You can look and see the Americans because they start to cringe. They’re not used to that aggression, right? But this is how people get things done in their country. We just live in an economy where we don’t have to deal with that. But we do get more inundation through our phone, our television, driving down the road. We get hit just like they do. It’s just not verbally in our face. [9:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, let’s talk about your book Master the Art of Closing the Sale. What motivated you to write it? Maybe you can share a little bit about your 10 -step sales process.
Benjamin Brown: Mm -hmm. Well, I can prize that over the years of working with various companies and various sales system to formulate a simple 10 step program that can be retaught and made simplified. Like I say, sales is simple, but it’s not easy. Each one of these steps could take, if you had to do a semester in high school, it could take an entire semester to break down each step to make sure people understand what it is. Right. But by using these steps is front based, where you’re not having to worry about anxiety of closing because a lot of the steps that essentially needs to be done in the sales is done upfront and it’s done for the purpose of making the sales process a little bit easier. Also, making it more enjoyable. Also, the key is to make sure that the result is that you get a testimonial referral. So, if your sales process is smooth and can be done in a easy way asking to sale is just an aphor thought. I would prefer to get a referral and a testimonial and that way you can continue in your sales of driving leads as you increase your sales performance. Does that make sense? [10:53]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure. It does. It does. Another question just popped into my head. Do you believe in scripting?
Benjamin Brown: Some people do, like I said, every sale has 10 steps in it from my book, but not every product needs all 10. For example, there’s 10 steps in every sales process. When I was in the gem business, there’s five steps, need, use, affordability, spouse, and guest pass. That is the sales process for the gem. But there’s 10 steps in there. So, what I do when I work with individuals, I customize based on the 10 steps, the specific ones on your product or service, that way you can build a customized sales process that’s replicated and can be retaught. [11:41]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, wow. You know, I guess sales has changed like everything else over the years. How do you feel it’s changed?
Benjamin Brown: It hasn’t really changed in my opinion. It’s just the tools that we use are different. Back in the 50s, you had nothing but door -to -door salespeople doing anything from vacuums, just talking to housewives. Then at the advent of the radio came with the radio commercial, then the TV, and then the telephone. So as of the last 20 years, we have been inundated with other tools, fax machines. The huge one is the computer and now the cell phone. So, people get too caught up into the tools and not focus on the performance of sales. And that’s why the process slows down in most businesses because they’re worried about how many likes they got on Instagram rather than picking up the phone and dialing. [12:43]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, what do you think about sales and AI? How is AI going to impact sales?
Benjamin Brown: Well, there’s gonna be a, you know, it’s gonna be a wave that’s gonna come along, but I actually see down the line, because I’m a little bit older, the fight for people to start coming back to reality. I mean, it’s gonna have its time, but man versus machine, it’s kinda like now when you get a robo call, right? People thought that wasn’t gonna work. People nowadays will not even take a robo call. They won’t take anything until they know it’s a real person. So, we have a sense of AI and what that’s going to look like, but it’s going to replicate to a certain extent, but it won’t replace humans totally. [13:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. I agree. Nothing replaces the human conversation. Don’t you agree? I mean, there’s…
Benjamin Brown: And the human contact is what we crave for, especially after COVID, us being locked down, things of that nature. We can’t survive without each other. Depression sets in. And so being to be able to sell at a distance with all of these tools is great if you’re making money. But most of the consumers prefer to have somebody live. [14:03]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, I totally agree. So why does every company need a sales process?
Benjamin Brown: Well, it’s essential that you ask the same company, keep it simple. Why do they need a marketing process? Why do they need an accounting process? Sales is a part of a business. It’s the essential part that brings in the money. Marketing brings exposure and brand, accounting, accounts for the money, accounts payable and the money that comes in. Every part has a function in the organization. Most people don’t put it on sales until those other ones, become so faulty that they must look back on sales. [14:44]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. Yeah. Tell me something that’s true in sales that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Benjamin Brown: Haha, ooh, I get everybody to agree most of my stuff. One of the things that I teach is that you have to like it, love it, or leave it. That’s how law there I am. If you don’t like or love what you’re selling, leave it. It comes through in your performance, your passion, your voice, your tone, which all of these play a part in your performance as a salesperson when you’re presenting. And people will know if you don’t like or love the product, if you don’t, they’re going to be like, why would I? And why would I pay money for it? [15:30]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. So, what motivated you to get into this business? I mean, you have an interesting background. You were in the military and of course selling along the way, but what is it about sales that attracts you?
Benjamin Brown: Yeah. Um, I started it by being recruited. It’s just like the acting bug. Once you get into it, you start and in Florida, you know, you make more money because this is a right to work state. A lot of the people here, and we based it on tourism to make significant money. One of the ways to do that is through sales. There’s a lot of sales companies here for the last 30 years. And so, by getting into that, there was a lot more opportunity to broaden or make it, you know, a significant amount of money through that and then suddenly, once I was taught properly how to do it over a period of time, it became enjoyable with my personality and what I can actually do. And then years later, I jumped at chance and thought about, I wanted to teach something, because most of my family’s preachers are teachers. And I sat down for six months to figure out what I wanted to teach. And it was always right in front of my face, teach what you know. And so, I tested the theory for about a year on people and individuals and looking at the results that was driven from that, proven and took that and built the company around that premises and been doing well so far. [17:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. You know, I can’t believe we’re almost up with time. What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Benjamin Brown: There’s no need to fear sales if you understand Sales is a language. It’s just like sign language or anything else and if you can understand that your life becomes a whole lot more easier because you’ll be able to know when people are selling you and you’ll know when you need to buy and that comes through your personal life as well as your business and By doing that your confidence level will gain because you now will be able to understand that you need to listen more in a conversation because good salespeople are great listeners. And it is key. And so, the three things I say you need to do when you’re a good salesperson, you need to first know where you’re going, which means a good sales process. Number two is that you need to be confident. You have to be able to take rejection. And then number three is that you must listen. And you must do all three of those at the same time. Hence the skill of sales. So, some people could do one, some people could do two, but you need to do all three. And if you could do all three very well, you could become a great salesperson. [18:19]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. I love it. I love it. Benjamin, how can my people find you?
Benjamin Brown: Number one is they want to reach out on one of the personable ones. They can go to meetwithbenjamin .com and schedule a call to assess where they’re at in their mindset or sales to figure out, because I would do mindset training as well. 360salesconsulting .com is the website they can go to, but they can go meetwithbenjamin .com and schedule. And then my book is Master the Art of Closing the Sale by Benjamin Brown on Amazon and on my website. [18:51]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. Love it. Love it, love it, love it. I told you this was gonna go by fast, didn’t I?
Benjamin Brown: When you enjoy it, it goes by quick.
Nancy Calabrese: It does. So, folks, take advantage of this gentleman’s expertise, you know, and I keep going back to what you said earlier, children are natural salespeople. It’s interesting how, you know, when you look at it, they get what they want, usually, right? And they ask for it with confidence. So maybe we should. Take the tips from young children and definitely Benjamin. Thanks so much for being on the show, Benjamin. You were great fun. And for everyone else out there, make it an awesome sales day. [19:40]
by Nancy Calabrese | Apr 18, 2024 | Podcast
About Christian Palmer: Christian Palmer is the Senior Manager of Sales Enablement at Justt, the only company fighting chargeback disputes for merchants and winning. Christian’s background includes working as an L&D Consultant/Sales Trainer at Phaidon International, where they provided foundational academy training to new consultants and coached and mentored them on both team and individual levels. Christian also worked as a Clinical Consultant at ProClinical, a global recruitment company specializing in the life sciences industry. Earlier in their career, Christian worked as an Associate Consultant at Real Staffing, an international pharmaceutical recruitment agency, and as a Corporate Recruiter/HR Associate at Dutch-X. Christian began their professional journey at Apple, where they served as an Expert. Christian Palmer, M.S.Ed., has diverse experience in sales enablement, recruitment, learning and development, and leadership roles. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Christian.
In this episode, Nancy and Christian discuss the following:
- Definition of sales enablement
- Importance of sales enablement within a company
- Necessary tools for enablement
- Role of sales playbook in enablement
- Enablement in one-person teams vs. global departments
Key Takeaways:
- It’s of tremendous value to businesses to bring somebody who can identify the gaps first, then fill them in and be the main voice for the salespeople.
- I’ve only seen playbooks succeed at larger organizations with more structure and infrastructure.
- Everything you say will not be listened to if you don’t have it.
“Sales enablement can be defined in a number of different ways. Because it is such a newer field, it tends to get mis-defined if that’s a phrase all the time. And the best way for me to describe it is essentially twofold. I’ll probably start with the more form formal definition of it. That is to provide the tools, resources, skills, processes, and infrastructure for sellers to enable them to be more efficient, skilled, and proficient with their actual product offering to sell more effectively over time. That is the more formal side, but I would say maybe something a little bit softer that I guess you could say is more layperson’s terms for folks is going to be that I am more or less bridge or support system or the voice of the salespeople. And that can stretch across different cross-functional teams to senior leadership and stakeholders and be able to bridge that gap between what’s going on in the ground with sellers and what’s happening strategically in the organization.” – CHRISTIAN
“In probably an ideal world is that you have your LMS, your learning management system, that you’re able to create content with and a CMS, a content management system, of which you’re able to organize that content of what you made in the LMS into a digestible format for sellers and anybody else looking at it. Both of those tools, more so the CMS, should be able to help you measure success rates of reps over time. That could be done in a number of ways, through their behaviors, actions, and results, corresponding those specific results to maybe some items that they had done during the onboarding within that CMS. But those are probably the main tools. You could throw in another authoring tool or whatnot if you wanted to facilitate making even more differentiated content, like maybe an articulate or something along those lines. Any place that doesn’t have either of those. It will be a bit more of a lift for an enabler to assemble something. Those tools make it a lot easier. But there’s a ton of them out there. It’s hard to know what’s going to be best.” – CHRISTIAN
“I think the easiest way, or the standard way you’ll see amongst most enablers, especially those with sales experience, is leveraging that you’ve been there before. Of course, this gets harder the longer you’re not in a sales role. The harder it’s going to be to align. However, I think the main foundational selling parts don’t change. So, those aspects are what you can align with a rep. Whether it’s somebody going on a performance improvement plan, I’ve been on it several times in my career. One time, it didn’t work out too great; the other time, it worked out for me. Using that as leverage and explaining to a seller, like, hey, look, this isn’t the end; it’s just the beginning, shows vulnerability on my part and shows them that I can relate to what this is—the vulnerability aspect I bring up because that’s how you build relationships with anybody. So, whether or not they’re actual sellers doesn’t matter as much to me. But the fact that they are, and I go in and let them know maybe areas that I’m weak in upfront, maybe areas that I know I’m strong in or where I think I can help them, and start adding value to them without them even asking for it.
An example of this would be if you come into an organization where you don’t have industry knowledge. This is very much how it was at Riskified for me. I knew nothing about chargebacks or the fraud or policy abuse space. But I did know all the different selling skills I’ve accumulated and enabled over the years. So, I was able to come in and create sessions and content and additional resources around some of these skills that were agnostic to what Riskified is and what industry it’s in.” – CHRISTIAN
Connect with Christian Palmer:
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, 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 Christian Palmer, a global revenue enablement manager at Riskified Global Enablement Team. His company focuses primarily on global onboarding and coaching. Christian has a combined 11 years within sales and enablement. Starting off in the hospitality and retail world, he honed his skills within customer service. This translated to the recruitment third party staffing world, where he moved from individual contributor to sales trainer. His enablement career started there. And since then, he’s been fortunate to work with a number of early stage startups. It is a pleasure to have you on the show, Christian. Let’s dive right in.
Christian Palmer: Heck of an intro, Nancy. Thank you so much for having me. [1:18]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I’m excited. You know, but I have to tell you, global revenue enablement manager is a tongue twister. I had to practice that a few times to get it straight. I guess it’s something that you get used to, but let’s just start with the basics. Tell everyone what sales enablement means.
Christian Palmer: I want to preface this with sales enablement can be defined in a number of different ways. And quite frankly, because it is such a newer field, it tends to get mis-defined, if that’s a phrase all the time. And the best way for me to describe it is essentially twofold. I’ll start with probably the more form formal definition of it. And that is to be able to provide the tools, resources, skills, processes, and infrastructure for sellers to enable them to be more efficient, skilled, and proficient with their actual product offering to be able to sell more effectively over time. That is the more formal side, but I would say maybe something that’s a little bit softer that I guess you could say is more layman’s terms for folks is going to be that I am more or less bridge or support system or the voice of the salespeople. And that can stretch across different cross-functional teams to senior leadership and stakeholders and really be able to bridge that gap between what’s going on in the ground with sellers and what’s happening strategically in the organization. [2:55]
Nancy Calabrese: Great. Oh, you said sales enablement is relatively new. How new is it?
Christian Palmer: You know, I don’t have like, I guess the official point of when it started, but I will say I did not really see the word enablement until around like four or five years ago. And it was honestly it was around the time when I had started my tenure as a trainer, and I was doing enablement work before the word enablement even came up. Yeah. [3:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. Huh, okay. So why is this so important, you know, to implement within a company?
Christian Palmer: I think it’s being able to have businesses strike a balance between the activities that most folks in a go-to-market organization, as far as the go-to-market function of a business is concerned, to be able to speak effectively on all the different things that are going on within the seller’s function and be able to translate that to other areas of the business um, or largest businesses need somebody like an enablement person on their side and on their team because they help bring their expertise, maybe as an individual contributor in their past sales life or other, um, you know, maybe other, uh, prerequisites that they bring to the table. Um, but also I think, uh, on the other end of it, they want to have somebody who’s able to come in and make the sellers better and more successful. And not to say, um, you know, a sales manager could not do that. A senior sales leader could not do that, or you know, maybe anybody else high up. A lot of the times, even the time I’ve been a sales manager, I did a lot of enablement work, but being a resource to them, not only coaching their reps and onboarding their reps and doing all the other associated enablement activities, but also working with the managers to help them get better as well. And I end up being, more of a resource and a support system and a true partner in the strategic aspects of the business, but also on the ground level working with reps directly. So, it’s of tremendous value to businesses to bring somebody on like that, that’s going to be able to really fill in the gaps, identify, I’m sorry, identify the gaps first, then fill them in and be able to be that main voice for the salespeople. [5:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure. What are some of the tools you mentioned that are necessary for enablement?
Christian Palmer: You know, I’ve been in roles where I’ve had absolutely nothing except my Google account. You know, I’ve had to deal with just having spreadsheets and organizing everything and what I like to say a spreadsheet, HE double hockey sticks. That’s essentially what it is. And then using docs and everything else accordingly. But I would say in probably a more ideal world is that you have your LMS, you’re learning management system, that you’re able to create content with, and a CMS, a content management system, of which you’re able to organize that content of what you made in the LMS into a digestible format for sellers and for anybody else looking at it. Both of those tools, more so the CMS, should be able to help you measure success rates of reps over time. That could be done in a number of ways, through their behaviors, through their actions, their results, corresponding those specific results to maybe some items that they had done during the onboarding that are within that CMS. But I would say like those are probably the main tools and you could probably throw in another authoring tool or whatnot if you wanted to facilitate making even more differentiated content, like maybe an articulate or something along those lines. But I would say any place that doesn’t have either of those. Obviously, it is going to be a little bit more of a lift for an enabler to put something together. Those tools make it a lot easier. But there’s a ton of them out there. It’s hard to know what’s going to be best. I’ve worked with a bunch of them, so it can be difficult. So, I see it from both sides, but certainly those two would be the most important. [7:15]
Nancy Calabrese: So, is creating like a sales playbook part of sales enablement?
Christian Palmer: I would say not always, but a lot of the times, yes. I have been tasked with making a playbook in past roles. I think playbooks can take on different formats. They sometimes can be a tool to help upskill folks maybe on industry or product knowledge. You know, when there is a complex sale at hand and maybe you have people or sellers coming into the role that you know, don’t have that experience upfront. So, for instance, like Riskified is in the fraud management space within finance. And I think, you know, if you don’t know all the specific jargon coming into the business, a playbook for that could be of tremendous value to be able to upscale really, quickly, and early. But also, in addition to that, I would say playbooks themselves are only going to be as good as your best rep. [8:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Christian Palmer: And the reason why is because a lot of times, I’ve been in this situation before, you get asked or suggested to make a PlayBic or you take it upon yourself to make one, you put what you think is out there as best practice to sell product or product suite effectively, let’s say, and it doesn’t always resonate with every single person. You must know what good looks like first within your organization before you can then put that down in writing and say, this is how it’s going to be, and people can then follow it. I’ve only seen playbooks be really successful at larger orgs that have more structure and infrastructure in place where the sale is a little bit blacker and whiter than it is all over the place in gray, not knowing how to make a quote, having different types of products, different personas and things of that nature. [9:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, so where should enablement sit within an organization?
Christian Palmer: It’s a great question. It’s a question I’ve been guests on other podcasts where this was the entire topic. It’s fun to think about, you know, and I think different orgs would say and argue that it should sit with maybe marketing, maybe your revenue operations team. Those are probably the most common non-sales functions I’ve seen enablement report into. It really is going to be dependent on how built out or not built out your executive leadership team is, I would say generally, it should report into a VP of sales or whatever senior equivalent there is for sales. And the reason for that is because everyone’s goals, metrics, and things they’re working towards are going to be the most aligned in that regard. Whereas if you are, let’s say, reporting into a marketing, a CMO, um, you know, perhaps somebody else in a, in another part of the organization, uh, those folks tend to have different goals and metrics and things that they’re working towards where your roles and responsibilities may not correspond with that. So, I would say it’s, it’s harder to be set up for success in those situations. And on the softer side of things, you don’t have as much buy-in, um, cause you’re not a marketer. You’re not, um, a revenue operation professional, although it’s somewhat close. And, if you’re on the sales side of things, you’re going to be like kind of one of them if that makes sense. Not to put salespeople in a box, but let’s be real, right? If you’re not a part of the sales org, you’re going to get looked at a certain way. So, I think that that’s proven to be the most successful in my eyes as far as like organizational structure. [11:11]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. And you mentioned revenue operations. So how, how would you suggest to best work with that department for successful outcomes?
Christian Palmer: Definitely, I think collaborating with them on where their strengths are going to be versus yours. I’ve seen, this has happened at a couple organizations I’ve been in, I’ve seen revenue operations focus a little bit more on the reporting aspects of things, whether that’s Salesforce Tableau or whatever equivalent tool we want to talk about, being able to understand the stats a little bit more, the correlations between the metrics and maybe what’s going on within the market or within the industry to bring conclusions to why those metrics are the way they are. But I think in tandem, using those or leveraging them with enablement to say, how could we help sellers get better at their role or improve this stat over time? That’s where enablement could come in and say, well, you know, there’s a number of things we could do, whether it’s a session, a self-guided learning, some type of assignment or a combination of all three of those things to get sellers to be able to get up to speed as quickly as possible, make that change with the support of revenue operations. So, I think it’s just playing to each role strengths. But with that being said, I’ve seen revenue operations professionals act as enablers in some organizations and vice versa. I’ve been in an enablement role where I’m the one pulling all those stats if they don’t have a revenue person. I’m the one who’s kind of making those connections and then carrying out whatever enablement activities there need to be. But at least in the larger orgs where things are a little bit more built out, that tends to be what I’ve seen and heard. [13:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. OK. Now, you mentioned earlier that it’s important to earn stakeholder buy-in early and continuously. Why is it important?
Christian Palmer: If you don’t have it, everything you say is not going to be listened to. I think that that’s probably the biggest aspect of this whole thing. And it is imperative that when you come into an organization, you’re able to build up those relationships immediately. It takes a long time, you know? And I think a lot of stakeholders may or may not agree or align on the sentiment of needing enablement or what its value is. So, for those folks, sometimes it’s more of like, I need to prove it. But with stakeholders themselves, I think if you have their buy-in and it’s done early enough, they’ll be able to echo your sentiments. They’ll be able to reinforce things that you’re showing their team and be able to do all those things when you’re not around. And excuse me, I think that’s when it tends to be the most valuable because everybody is going to appear more aligned and you’ll feel more comfortable knowing that, hey, I can leave this in the manager’s hands. Additionally, there could be some other things that they would then help with on the side, not to say I would want every stakeholder to do this, but maybe they can help look over material that I create. Maybe they participate in some of the things that I’m doing with the sellers. That makes it a lot more valuable to a seller and to me, because then the weight of the world’s not on my shoulders. A seller is going to hear something from the horse’s mouth, their manager. Let’s say that’s a stakeholder and that ends up being a lot more successful. [14:45]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, but how do you establish credibility with the reps, the sales reps? How do you get their buy-in?
Christian Palmer: This can be done a number of ways. I think the easiest way or standard way you’re going to see amongst most enablers, especially ones that have sales experience, is leveraging that you’ve been there before. Of course, this gets harder. The longer it is that you’re not in a sales role, the harder it’s going to be to align. However, I do think the kind of main foundational parts of selling don’t really change. So, like those aspects are what you can really align on with a rep. Whether it’s somebody’s going on a performance improvement plan, I’ve been on performance improvement plans a couple times in my career. One time didn’t work out too great, the other time it did work out for me. And being able to use that as leverage and to explain to a seller like, hey, look, this isn’t the end, it’s just the beginning, shows vulnerability on my part and shows them that I can relate to what this is and the vulnerability aspect I bring up because that’s how you build relationships with anybody. So, whether or not they’re actual sellers doesn’t matter as much to me, but the fact that they are, and I go in and kind of let them know maybe areas that I’m weak in upfront, maybe areas that I know I’m strong in or where I think I can help them and start adding value to them without them even asking for it. So, an example of this would be maybe you come into an organization, you don’t have the industry knowledge. This is very much how it was at Riskified for me. I didn’t know anything about chargebacks or the fraud or policy abuse space, any of that. But what I did know was all the different selling skills I’ve accumulated and enabled on over the years. So, I was able to come in and kind of create sessions and content and additional resources around some of these skills that were agnostic to what Riskified is and what industry it’s in. [16:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Christian Palmer: So that helped me build up that rapport very quickly. Also reveal to them what my vulnerabilities are. But a lot of it is like coming in, sending a video, introducing myself to everybody in the main general channel on Slack or something, just being very open and available. And sticking my neck out for them when it comes to supporting them is so important to help them start getting by in with me or I get by with them. [17:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, you know, what’s the difference when you work with a one-man team versus a global department? Is there any difference in enablement?
Christian Palmer: I’d say so. I think on the one hand of it, when you’re on a solo enablement team, the weight of the world is on your shoulders most of the time, you’re going to be in a position where not only are you ideally identifying where there are gaps and how you could enable upon them, but every Tom, Rich and Harry is going to be reaching out to you about something they need, whether that’s people that are not big on enablement or people that are enablement happy and want to training for everything. Generally, when you’re a one-man person, it’s going to be a little bit, I don’t want to generalize, but at least what I’ve seen is like, you’ll be a little bit more responsible for quantity of production rather than the quality because of how fast things are generally moving. If you’re a solo enabler, usually you’re in a little bit more of a lean organization. They’re going to be scrappy. They’re going to want things done yesterday, although I would say bigger orcs still do that too. [18:28] But with all that.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I don’t think you get away with that in any organization.
Christian Palmer: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s a great point. And I think like if you’re if you’re solo, I think it just will come down to, you know, being able to spread yourself across a bunch of different areas simultaneously, pivot and adapt when necessary. Know that maybe some of the projects that are a priority today may be dropped as priorities tomorrow. On the other side of it, if you’re in a larger organization or like a global team. A lot of the times those teams are separated by function, by skill, by region. And with that means that people are going to have a little bit narrower swim lane. Maybe there’s people that are just focused on content. Some people that are just focused on bringing tools onto the team and integrating them. Like all those different thing’s kind of need to come together. Generally, there’s going to be a little bit more, I don’t know if red tape is the phrase, but You know, like the kind of bureaucratic tendencies of larger orgs where, you know, there’s a resource, meaning a person for everything and things will need approvals. You’ll need to work more cross-functionally. And in different ways than you would, if you were a solo person, you’d still would work cross-functionally as a solo. But I think in this regard, you’re going to be a little bit more like, okay, we’re going to do one piece of this enablement activity that I’m going to pass it on to a product marketing team or a data team or something along those lines. Whereas the solo thing, I would include them, but I generally would be doing everything from start to finish. So, I think there are pros and cons to both, but they are different. [20:07]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, can you believe it? We’re up with time. We could go on forever. No, not at all. I mean, you have a lot to share with us. So how can my people find you?
Christian Palmer: Did I speak too much? Did I say too many things? Definitely look me up on LinkedIn, Christian Palmer. I have a comma after my last name, MSED. And definitely find me on LinkedIn. Feel free to view the other podcasts and content that I’ve created in my featured section. And don’t be bashful. Hit me up with a message. If you need any help regarding enablement sales, maybe on the job search, I am available. And yeah, here to help. [20:47]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, hey folks, let’s take advantage of Christian’s generous offer. You were wonderful. And you could tell listening to you, you’re very passionate about what you do. And so, I’m going to end the show today and encourage everybody again, take advantage of Christian’s offer. Christian, you’re terrific. Thank you so much for your time and make it an awesome sales day, everyone. [21:14]
by Nancy Calabrese | Apr 16, 2024 | Podcast
About Jeff Savlov: Jeff Savlov is the Founder of Blum & Savlov, LLP, and consults with business families, legacy wealth families, and the advisors who serve them. He brings more than 30 years of unique experience in sales and marketing, business ownership, entrepreneurial endeavors, family dynamics/psychological training, and a common-sense style to his consulting work with families. By integrating his diverse business background, extensive academic work, and family dynamics/psychological training with his experience working in his family’s commercial printing business, Jeff helps enterprising families balance family and business/wealth so both will thrive for generations. Jeff has consulted on relationship and team dynamics with Fortune 500 companies such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, and Schering Plough. He also devotes a portion of his time to performance enhancement with corporate executives and elite high school athletes. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Jeff.
In this episode, Nancy and Jeff discuss the following:
- The role of the Sandler methodology in understanding client needs and building relationships
- Jeff’s background and journey into family consulting
- The challenges faced by wealthy families and the specialized assistance they require
- Strategies for acquiring clients: speaking engagements and referrals
- Jeff’s unique approach to using Metallica’s story in his workshops
Key Takeaways:
- It’s easy to idealize being wealthy, but there are many challenges.
- One of my areas is parenting in the context of family wealth and how to start when kids are young to raise them so that those values will remain there when they learn about money.
- DISC is excellent for people who don’t have the training to help them think about the general categories that people fall into.
“I got trained as a family therapist. After grad school, I did another seven years of training in a psychoanalytic institute for seven years. Like I said, I got fully certified and started a private practice doing talk therapy 30 years ago. And just by coincidence, some of my early therapy clients also had significant wealth or family businesses. I was working with them as a therapist, and I could see that there was a need that was different than therapy, but that lawyers, accountants, and wealth managers didn’t have the training and background to go into the family dynamic side. So, I saw an opportunity to do something that was not therapy but between what a therapist and business consultants do. I started to work slowly and consult with families. Again, I’m not working on finance taxes or operations. I’m helping families develop strong family teams and work together two or three generations at a time. Now that people are living longer, you can easily have, you know, 80-year-olds, 50-year-olds, and 20-year-olds working together. I help them work together, develop leadership, communicate well, and make transitions from one generation to the next, helping the senior generation step back, give the next generation opportunity, and developing the next generation to step up and take over.” – JEFF
“ In terms of meeting people and those early stages when I’m trying to decide if I want to work with them and they’re trying to decide if they want to work with me, Sandler has been incredibly valuable. And what I just said is really at the heart of it. Sandler talks about a level playing field. So, it’s not like, “Hey, I’m the poor guy with the poor schmuck with something to sell. I hope you’ll buy it.” It’s more like I have something of value; I’m looking for people who need it, have pain around it that I can solve, and have respect for what I bring. And they’re looking for someone to help them with their pain, and it’s mutual. And Sandler, that part of the Sandler attitude is that it’s a level playing field but a two-way street. I’m not just looking for anyone who’ll hire me. And that’s a big piece of it. I feel like the rapport part of the equation is something I’ve always been good at just naturally, and certainly years of being a therapist, and that’s a big part of the Sandler piece.” – JEFF
“I find sales is fun. Even though I am primarily sort of a consultant and I’m doing, you know, professional consulting services, I must find— I’m a solo guy. I must find my, you know, my clients and serve them. And that is sales. And I think that sales— really, life is sales, not in a manipulative way, but life is about understanding people, seeing if there’s a common need or desire, and then going for it. And so, I find it a lot of fun. Sometimes, I land a big client, and then I’m disappointed. I must do the work. Not that I don’t enjoy the work, but I find sales— I love the hunt. And I find it enjoyable. I don’t know, people think it’s crazy that aren’t into it.” – JEFF
Connect with Jeff Savlov:
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, 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 my colleague Jeff Savlov, family business and wealth consultant, speaker, coach, and facilitator. He brings more than 25 years of experience to his work with families and family enterprises through his consulting work with Blum and Savlov. Jeff helps multi-generational family enterprises manage complex decisions related to their shared assets. He guides families as they move along the continuum from operating businesses to owning and managing multiple assets where a family’s emotional and financial lives are tied together in pursuit of the common future. Welcome to the show, Jeff. I’m so happy to have you.
Jeff Savlov: Yeah, thanks, Nancy. It’s great to be here. [1:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, so Jeff and I go back many years and I’ve been trying to get him on the show for quite some time. We finally made it. Talk about how you got involved in this business. What’s your background?
Jeff Savlov: Yeah, so it was sort of by accident. Its kind of just fell together. I grew up in my family’s family business. I’ll give you the quick and dirty. Grew up in my family’s family business, middle school, I would go to the New York City on weekends. And then we opened a second location in New Jersey. High school, I got involved. Even during college, I stayed involved. As the business grew, my dad, who was really a blue-collar technical guy who started his own business, wasn’t really experienced as a manager or a leader got super stressed out, took out his stress on me, which is an unusual in family business. My mom found a family therapist that worked with parents and kids in family businesses. My dad agreed to go, the whole family went, my sisters too, they weren’t involved in the business. Had a really, transformative experience for the business, but also as father and son and for our family. I decided, you know what, I don’t love commercial printing and I love you dad and working together isn’t working for us, so I’m going to go my own way. I went into sales and marketing and that was my first sales job, which was interesting and had a lot of good experience while I was still actually in college. So had that experience, like I said, left the family business. But I was so moved by what that family therapist had done for us that I went back to grad school. I studied family and group dynamics. I got trained as a family therapist. After grad school, I did another seven years training in a psychoanalytic institute for seven years, like I said, got fully certified started a private practice doing talk therapy 30 years ago. And just by coincidence, some of my early therapy clients also had significant wealth or family businesses. And I was working with them as a therapist and I could see that there was needed that was different than therapy, but that lawyers and accounts and wealth managers didn’t have the training and background to go into the family dynamic side. And so, I saw there was an opportunity to do something that was not therapy but was sort of in between what a therapist does and what business consultants do. And I started to slowly work and consult with families. Again, I’m not working on finance or taxes or operations. I’m helping families develop strong family teams and to work together two, three generations at a time. Now that people are living longer, you can easily have you know, 80-year-olds, 50 year olds, and 20 year olds, all working together. I help them work together, develop leadership, communicate well, and make transitions from one generation to the next, helping the senior generation step back, give the next generation opportunity and developing the next generation to step up and take over. [4:08]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. So, what’s talk therapy?
Jeff Savlov: Psychotherapy, talk therapy, it’s what you think of as therapy or counseling. I use talk therapy for sure, but some people just use therapy, but it’s what you think of when you think about going to someone and talking about your problems. [4:24]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, so why do rich people need special help?
Jeff Savlov: You know, being rich ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. You know, it’s easy to idealize being wealthy, but there’s a lot of challenges. How do you raise kids? Especially 70 something, 75% give or take of millionaires are self-created in the U.S. right now. So, these are people that develop their own businesses, companies, whatever it was that they did to be entrepreneurial, develop their own wealth, and often they come from working class or blue-collar backgrounds. And so, they had built into their own childhoods, the need to work hard and create what they wanted to create. Now they have children who are growing up and it’s already there, the nice house and the cars and the vacations. So, there’s a lot of challenges with creating wealth and then how do you raise kids who can deal with that and won’t be spoiled and will have their own work ethic. It’s trickier than you might think. I mean, if you had a billion with a B, just say you had a billion dollars, how would you handle that with your kids? Would you tell them? When do you tell them? How do you raise them so that they’ll be responsible, and they won’t just sort of blow it all in their wild teenage and early adult years? So, there’s a lot of challenges there. And that’s really my expertise. One of my areas is parenting in the context of family wealth and how to start when kids are young to raise them in a way that they will be motivated and responsible, so that when they learn about the money, those values will still be there. [5:57]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, so how do you find your clients and sell them?
Jeff Savlov: So, I do a lot of speaking, paid speaking around the country, which is fun to do. I write a blog that’s popular. I’ve over the last 30 years met a lot of professionals whose clients, you know, trust and estate attorneys, accountants. Wealth managers who have wealthy clients and they’ve all seen the issues families face, but they never really knew what to do with it because they didn’t have my kind of a background. So, they’re really thrilled often to know somebody like me and make introductions, but it is hard because they’re also nervous. They’re not familiar with my world. They’re nervous. They’re going to insult their clients by saying, hey, here’s a guy that can help you parent better or help you work better as a family. They’re afraid they’re going to insult the client. So I’d have to do a lot of education with these people, these professionals who refer their clients, how to bring this up, how to keep it positive, how to say that this is normal stuff every family goes through, but now there are professionals like Jeff who have a different kind of expertise and I’d like you to meet him and not make it in terms of something’s wrong with your family, but more there’s an opportunity here and there is some danger coming your way and there’s an opportunity to manage it and get ahead of it. [7:10]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure. So, you and I both study Sandler methodology, and I know that we’ve been colleagues for many years now. How does Sandler help you in working with your clients?
Jeff Savlov: So, in terms of meeting people and those early stages when I’m trying to decide if I want to work with them and they’re trying to decide if they want to work with me, Sandler has been incredibly valuable. And what I just said is really at the heart of it, Sandler talks about a level playing field. So, it’s not like, hey, I’m the poor guy with the poor schmuck with something to sell, I hope you’ll buy it. It’s more like I have something of value, I’m looking for people who need it have pain around it that I can solve and have respect for what I bring. And they’re looking for someone who can help them with their pain and it’s mutual. And Sandler, that part of the Sandler attitude of it’s a level playing field, it’s a two-way street. I’m not just looking for anyone who’ll hire me. What’s that? Eagle stature. [8:13]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, equal stature, right? Equal stature. I think that’s so important.
Jeff Savlov: And that’s a big piece of it. I feel like the rapport part of the equation is something I’ve always been good at just naturally and certainly years of being a therapist and that’s a big part of the Sandler piece. And the other thing I would add is once you’ve gotten through sort of the initial rapport and there’s a back and forth around, I feel like you’re a client that I could help and I would want to work with and you’d be fun to work with and they feel like, Jeff, you’re a good guy, you have something to offer, we’d like to work with you. Once all that is solidified upfront, to really have an open, honest conversation about budget. [8:47]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Jeff Savlov: And what kind of fees were they expecting to pay? What kind of fees do I charge? Is there a match? Is it too far apart that it just doesn’t fit? And just talk it all out. I think in the old days before Sandler, I do the bonding and rapport and have a conversation, and then I just email them a proposal and keep my fingers crossed. And sometimes they were shocked by the number, but there was no conversation. It was like, it was shocking. And that’s one of the best things, most valuable things I’ve got from Sandler’s while I’m still in the room meeting them and talking with them is to say, Hey, let’s talk about budget, let’s talk about the amount of money you thought this would cost. Let me tell you about my fees. Let’s see if there’s a fit for what we’re both looking for and having that conversation and really getting that kind of cleared up directly face to face before sending a proposal. So now the proposal is a rubber stamp. They’ve already heard the number and agreed to it, or we decided to go separate ways. It seems crazy that I used to just send a proposal and hope for the best compared to this. This is one of the most powerful things I’ve gotten from Sandler. [9:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. And you know, my early days in sales, I would do the same thing. But now understanding, I think what I gain most from Sandler is the opportunity to really determine are we going to be a good fit? Am I going to be a solution for this customer? Are they going to be a good fit for my people and my organization? So, what’s your unique idea that’s different and sets you apart?
Jeff Savlov: So, I like to say, surprise them upfront, rather than coming in with the hard sell or going right to business, I try to find something out from the prospect. I’ll look at LinkedIn, social media, something where we might have something in common. So rather than sitting down and getting right into the business thing, I might sit down and say, hey, I saw that you like to volunteer at a soup kitchen in Texas where you live. I’ve been volunteering for 15 years at a soup kitchen in Trenton, New Jersey for you and it’s really not only is it disarming but honestly I’m interested in the same thing as them and I want to have a conversation it’s really genuine and so I think that kind of let’s just talk about something that neither one of us was expecting just to sort of start getting some common ground it’s a really powerful thing and because it’s genuine it’s not manipulative and I’m interested it I think it comes off well. [11:10]
Nancy Calabrese: So, we just came out of a class all about DISC, communication styles, right? And somebody brought up in our meeting, how do you do it when you’re having a conversation? How do you figure out their communication style? How do you go about it? Like what are some of the things you listen for or look for?
Jeff Savlov: Yeah. So, you and I happened to be in the same small group and we were discussing that. And when I was starting to say, and we got our, we timed out of our little breakout, just as I was finishing up, because I’ve had such deep and, and such long experience in, you know, as a family therapist, as a psychoanalyst working deeply with people. This is aside from the consulting work, this is sort of the, the psychotherapy work that I do for so long, which feeds into the consulting work. [12:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Jeff Savlov: Um, for me, DISC kind of throws me a little bit because it sort of puts me in my head when I have sort of an instinct for this based on 30 years of meeting all kinds of people and helping get deeply into their problems. So, I feel like for me, there’s an intuitive process of, um, of, so I might not use the disc terms of, you know, Eagle or dove or parrot or what, owl. Um, but for me, it’s clear to me that someone is, is sort of aggressive. Um, they clearly want to keep things moving. They might curse. If somebody curses in the first few minutes or first meeting, I might throw in a curse in a playful way and I think they appreciate that. I’ll keep things moving because I see that there’s someone that wants to keep things moving. If there’s someone that’s really talking a lot and telling stories, I can see that they’re the person that wants them back and forth and getting to know each other. For me, it happens intuitively based on all that training. I think DISC is great for people that don’t have that training to help you think, the general categories that people fall into. Here’s what they might be looking for. Here’s how you might want to handle it. Would you add anything to that or what would you say? [13:06]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. I mean, it’s powerful when you think about it. And I think I said this in the group. It makes selling fun to me, you know, trying to understand, um, you know, Jeff’s communication style as I’m speaking with him, because our goal in sales is to communicate like them, right? Not like yourself. And I, from that point of view, uh, look, my opening pitch is the same, pretty much to everyone, but then you get into really understanding the dynamics of, you know, how they like to learn, how they like to be spoken to. And I find it fascinating myself.
Jeff Savlov: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really interesting, right?
Nancy Calabrese: Okay, so tell me something true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Jeff Savlov: So, I find sales is fun. Even though I am primarily sort of a consultant and I’m doing, you know, professional consulting services, um, I must find, I’m a solo guy. I must find my, you know, my own clients and serve them. And that is sales. And I think that sales really life is sales, not in a manipulative way, but life is about understanding people, seeing if there’s a common need or desire and then sort of going for it. And so, I find it a lot of fun. Sometimes I land a big client and then I’m disappointed. I must do the work. Not that I don’t enjoy the work, but I find sales just, I love the hunt. And I find it enjoyable. I don’t know, people think it’s crazy that aren’t into it. [14:46]
Nancy Calabrese: Great. It’s so funny, Noelle in our class for the longest time swore that she wasn’t in sales, but everybody is in sales, right? Everybody is in sales, whether they admit it or not. You want to go to a movie, and you want to persuade your partner or your family member to, or a friend, you want to see your movie, not their movie. So, I don’t know, I find sales fascinating, you know.
Jeff Savlov: Yeah, I’m with you there.
Nancy Calabrese: Okay, so you come from your family business, you worked in sales and marketing, trained therapist and psychoanalyst. Is there anything else in store for you?
Jeff Savlov: Um, you know, I’ve said before, like when I became a therapist 30 years ago, I thought this was my final stop. And then I kind of fell into this. So, who knows, but I really like where I’m at now. It allows me to do a lot of things I like. I enjoy speaking and I’ve been getting sort of better and better fees for speaking. And I love speaking just on its own. So, to get paid to do it is fun. So, I think I’ll keep doing that. I like the families that I work with. Some of my families have businesses. Some of them don’t even have a business and they have just generational wealth without a business, but really big inherited wealth and they have a lot of the same issues around leadership and developing kids. So, there’s a lot of different things I can do, teaching parents, coaching parents with really young kids on how to raise them. I feel like I have so many different things that I can do that I’m not bored with it. So, who knows what the future brings. [16:22]
Nancy Calabrese: Hey, yeah, and you don’t you play a song when you travel a rock song to your people? When you go to conferences?
Jeff Savlov: I think you’re thinking of one of the workshops that I do, and I’ve done this to rooms of 200, 250 lawyers, accounts, wealth managers, as well as to families themselves. It’s called Drugs, Sex, Rock and Roll, Family Business, and Family Wealth Lessons from Metallica. And it’s, yeah, I play a song when I start it, but it’s the whole workshop is based on one-to-three-minute clips from a documentary about the band.
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Metallica, right?
Jeff Savlov: Metallica, and while they’re not blood relatives in that sense of family, when I watched the documentary for fun many years ago, because I liked the band and I was interested in the documentary, when I watched it, I was shocked by how much they were very much a family and they’ve stuck together through thick and thin. And so, I use these clips from the documentary to start discussions and to teach professionals and families, and it’s really entertaining and it’s like the most well-received talk that I do. [17:29]
Nancy Calabrese: Just in general, how long does it take a family to like for the light bulb to go off, you know, with your work?
Jeff Savlov: It’s a good question. Some families just know that they’re in a lot of pain and there’s a lot of fighting and they’re looking for someone who can help other families. The light bulbs gone off and they’ve done a lot of the right things. But if you think about it, just a numbers game, you have two parents, maybe they have three kids, but they all grow up in the same family together. The kids get involved. They watch the parents build it. They’ve seen a go from nothing to something significant. That’s one transition. But then when the third generation comes. So, the three kids start to marry people who didn’t grow up in the family. So now you have outsiders coming in. Each of those kids has their own kids. That cousin generation is where it gets tricky. The people who married in might have very different ideas about how the kids should fit into the business and what a sense of fairness is. And the kids have different values based on the different families they’re growing up in. So that’s where it gets really, tricky. What was the original question? I forgot. [18:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Just how long it takes a family, you know, I guess there’s no special time, right? It varies from family to family.
Jeff Savlov: So, some people, you know, it takes a while. And for some people, there’s been a kind of a light bulb and they know that they can find someone like me to help them, especially when they hear about it. Often, they’re they don’t know that there’s someone with my experience and they’ll be talking or telling their fears to their accountant or their attorney or their wealth manager. And if that person knows me says, hey, you know, there is a world of, of help there that you might not know about. So, some people, the light bulbs already partially got off and they’re looking for help and other people they really are doing harmful things that are going to hurt their family and their business and they take some work to get them to kind of look at things a different way. [19:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I can’t believe we’re up with time, Jeff, and I could talk to you forever. What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Jeff Savlov: Wow. It’s fun. For me, it’s relationships are everything in my personal life and selling. It’s really, I just, I love meeting people, connecting with people like you and I connected. And now we’re here on this podcast. I just think relationships are everything. So, if you’re selling something, you know, establishing a relationship with your prospects and just sort of in life. We just got back from a vacation in Puerto Rico and my wife just shakes her head. We get there and I’m in the pool and I’m talking to people from all over the world on vacation. She’s just sitting there reading a book and that’s what she likes to do. But I just like the relationship thing. And I developed friends in my week in Puerto Rico. [20:12]
Nancy Calabrese: Ha ha ha! Are you an I?
Jeff Savlov: I am an I, I and S. I’ve tested as I and S, I and a little D, but generally some form of I is always in there. Yeah.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, yeah, yeah. How can my rich people find you?
Jeff Savlov: Um, so it’s Jeff Savlov, S-A-V-L-O-V. My website is Blum and Savlov. So, it’s B-L- But if you search Jeff Savlov Family Business, any of those will get you to me.
Nancy Calabrese: All right. Hey folks, he’s the go-to guy. So, all of you sitting on a lot of wealth, you have kids, and you want to make sure that the wealth is, I guess, appreciated, and handled properly. Give Jeff a call, reach out to him. And Jeff, thanks so much for being on the show. We finally did it. And until we speak again, folks, we’ll see you next time. [21:15]
Jeff Savlov: Yeah, thanks, Nancy.
