[E113] Social Dynamic Selling with Rylee Meek – Part 1 of 3

Jason: Hello and welcome to The Sales Experience Podcast. I wanted to do a quick little intro before I kick off the recording of what I did with Rylee. He’s a special guest this week in keeping with my goal of making sure that the episodes are short and to the point as much as possible, giving you daily bite size bits of sales information and value, trying to keep episodes between 10 and 15 minutes a day. What I’ve done is Rylee and I got on a roll. We recorded for about 40 minutes and what I’ve done is I’ve turned this into a three part series, so if you’re listening to this, this is part one so I’m going to kick off the recording of Rylee and I and then we’re going to do is take a break and then come back for the following episode where we’re going to pick up where it left off.

Jason: And again, if you want more information about Rylee, you can go to CutterConsultingGroup.com/podcast find the episode in there as the show notes, the transcript as well as Rylee’s links. One of them is workwithrylee.com and it’s R Y L E E. Workwithrylee.com. Check that out and now enjoy the show. All right, welcome to The Sales Experience Podcast. If this is the first episode you’re listening to and marks the very first guest episode of season two and for those of you that are not familiar with the show and the format, I keep my regular episodes to about 10 minutes each. And then in season one my guest episodes were all bonuses, but this time around for season two I’m making guest episodes more of the focal point because I want to bring everybody, a variety of cool sales leaders, coaches, business owners, anyone who really wants to talk about sales and not just to promote themselves or their business, but to provide value and give you the listeners, something that you can use in your daily walk within sales or management.

Jason: Now, whether you’re a sales rep or manager owner, you know my mission is to help you create an award winning sales experience for you and your prospects that lead to more high quality clients. So for this season two and now this guest episode, I have with me Rylee Meek. Now he is the founder of the Social Dynamic Selling System along with many other things. And officially Rylee, you have a lot of pressure on you being the first guest in season two.

So Rylee, welcome to The Sales Experience Podcast.

Rylee: Hey Jason, happy to be here man. This is gonna be fun.

Jason: Yeah. So let’s jump into this. And now for anybody, you know, I just want to tee this up in case anybody who’s new listening to my show doesn’t know me or my podcast. I don’t do interview shows. I don’t like to do that format.

I want to have a conversation that’s fun. We’re going to give value. You know, if people want to find you and your story and your background, they can find that it’s what the Internet’s for. And so we’ll have a lot of links. We’ll talk about that towards the end. But the one thing I did want to start off with is explain what social dynamic selling is because I’ve never heard that term before.

Rylee: Yeah, absolutely. And partly that’s why I came up with the name social dynamic selling system because it creates some questions or you know, at least some thought process for people to try to understand what this actually is. But at the core of the social dynamic selling system, really what we do is dinner seminars.

Rylee: We’ll do dinner presentations in which we’re inviting out a particular client avatar or an ideal customer for business owners or sales reps and we provide a neutral environment for them to be able to deliver a presentation, a dynamic enough presentation ultimately for the potential customer or clients to get them to know, like, and trust that the presenter, because as everybody knows, people like to do business with those that they know like and trust. And this is something that we’ve been doing over the little over a decade now and I’ve kind of pivoted more to coaching in, in teaching the process of setting up people’s own campaigns versus early on it was just me selling my own products and services. And so we’ve kind of transitioned now into more of a coaching consulting role and numerous different industries. It really the product or service is irrelevant. What we’re doing is taking people through a process, a sales process or a system, a really what I believe is of quite well-oiled machine here as far as doing group presentations, so selling one to many versus just selling one-on-one.

Jason: So when I entered sales, I wouldn’t say accidentally, but I kind of fell into it and didn’t realize what I was getting into. Mortgage industry 2002 my instructions that I was given was somebody called in, get in front of them, set an appointment as quickly as possibly that come into the office or you go to them, but get face to face and do that. Then over the years I transitioned where it was like all over the phone and then I know a lot of people who try to do a lot on email or social media or texts and selling and so you’re then taking it full loop back, which is more in person face to face, which it’s weird. 2019 when we’re recording this. That seems weird to do anything face to face anymore where humans actually look at each other and interact.

Rylee: Right. But I think that’s why it’s become so successful for us is because over the last decade really I feel like this is kind of a lost art in what I think consumers are hungry for is still being able to have that human interaction where you can look that sales rep or potential customer in the face shake their hand and spend some time with them. And I think that’s something that people kind of miss. You know, because a lot of things have gone online and it’s doing webinars and you know, online funnel systems and things like that. And so that’s why I think we put ourselves in a nice little niche that consumers are hungry for is still that, that human interaction of being able to know who they’re actually doing business with.

Jason: So because I want to provide value for the listeners that this is, you know, to understand if this is something that would make sense, whether it’s through your system or just in general, like taking it back to the face to face, what is there specific industries, products, services, is there something where it makes sense to do this without the answer being of course, yes and everything.

Rylee: What is really the home run or where do you see the most value in that kind of, yeah, this isn’t for everybody and I will be the first person to tell them if you’re selling a $48 widget with no additional upside or lifetime value to that customer, this is not the sales system for you. I can direct you to many other places, but this is just not going to be for you because the return on investment just is not going to be there early on. Most people have probably heard of or maybe even attended these dinner presentations done primarily by investment or advisors like financial advisors, financial planners, attorneys do these, you know, they’ve been doing this for the last two, three decades and been very successful with it. But what we’ve done is we’ve kind of made this more of a, regardless of the product, it doesn’t really matter what it is that you’re selling, as long as the profit margins are there.

So for instance, we have clients in the home remodeling industry, the solar industry, we work with doctors. Um, if in the cosmetic industry, dentists, regenerative medicine, we’ve worked with investment clubs, business opportunities, uh, travel clubs, all sorts of different industries that we’ve worked with.

Rylee: The focus that we work with. Anytime I take on a new client, I always do a strategy call to just start out and it’s usually 2030 minutes with myself or someone on our team. Just to talk through kind of the foundational aspect of your existing business. You know, do you know what your true customer acquisition cost is or do you have a lifetime value to your customer? And really if you’re not able to profit at least a thousand to 1500 bucks at the minimum per sale, this probably, or at least have a lifetime value or additional bites at the Apple for that customer. If you’re not able to do at least that this probably isn’t going to be the best program for you just from a return on investment standpoint because we’ve developed a well oiled machine here in my goal is not just to do one campaign annually with our clients.

Rylee: I mean we were doing these every single week. We’re hosting now anywhere between probably 50 and a hundred campaigns every single week throughout the country. And so this is, you know, when I kind of, the tagline is is we’ve developed a predictable, sustainable and you know, from a growth standpoint, a scalable selling system if that’s what our sales reps or business owners are wanting to do. So it is a system. This isn’t a bra rush to the brain room and of course, or whatever. This is definitely more of a, a two step approach where we’re getting them to know, like, and trust you. And if you did a good enough job asking for that additional appointment to meet with them one-on-one, ultimately going to be able to make the sale or close the deal.

Jason: Well, and I think there’s a bunch of interesting things that you were just talking about. The first is a good reminder to anybody out there. If you’re in sales, sales manager and owner, it’s always amazing how many people I talk to leading companies where they don’t know their cost per acquisition. Yeah. And they don’t know their lifetime value of a client and a customer and what that really means. They’re basically spending money on marketing and it’s generating some leads or they’re buying leads and then they’re converting some of them and they’re not the, you know, nobody’s doing the math to figure out like, is this, you know, what’s the cost per acquisition? Is this a profitable customer that we just earned and then how much value are they to our organization long term. There’s many times where a company is buying leads or doing marketing.

Yes, they’re making sales, but those sales are actually worse than literally doing nothing because of actually fulfilling on what they’re selling. That’s usually, you know, there’s times where an underperforming sales rep will actually cost the company money because they’re selling $1,000 product for $2,000 in marketing and it’s backwards. So that’s a good reminder. So anyone listening to this, make sure you know even a sales rep, if you don’t know what your cost per acquisition is based on the cost per lead, even as a sales rep, then you don’t necessarily know if you’re winning and you don’t know where you stand with the company and if you’re producing profit or not, even as an employee sales rep.

Rylee: And then the other part that’s interesting, and again, your focus obviously is on business to consumer, one to many presentations face to face. But even within that and anything that would work and that’s important is building that relationship, building that trust no matter how it falls. And then moving people on forward where you’re addressing whatever their need is, their goal, their pain, which is what you’re talking about, where literally you’re doing dinner presentation, which most people have been to something like that. And then, uh, you know, move in that relationship forward without it being, you know, the standard, let’s say hard sale, it’s more of a, you know, presentation and then, you know, a needs analysis. Yeah. And each product is going to be a little bit different on if it’s, you know, staying after the, the venue at the event or if it’s the next day, every product is going to be a little bit different.

Rylee: And if it’s a, if we’re traveling into an area, if we’re only there a specific amount of time, there’s different ways that we create sense of urgency for the consumer to, I mean, ultimately we’re taking them on that emotional journey. You know, every buying decision I fully believe is an emotional decision. We do a good job by helping it be backed by logic. You know, sometimes people can get caught up in that, you know that rah rah rah rush to the back of the room and emotionally make that decision and that’s when you have those sales that cancel.

Jason: You know, and I’m so glad you brought that up because a lot of times I know that you know, again, owners to sales reps in the whole category aren’t thinking that way. They’re thinking, how do I get the sale? How do I close deals now? But again, going into lifetime value and long term to something I preach a lot, which is it’s not worth getting the sale of somebody’s going to cancel tomorrow or cancel next week or return whatever they bought, right?

Jason: Like you don’t want to push somebody into it where two o’clock in the morning they’re going to wake up in a cold sweat, freaking out and feeling like they made a mistake that’s not necessarily worth it. Now waking up at two in the morning freaked out at what they did because it’s different and it’s change, but you still know it was best for them and it will put them on the right path. Right. Financial planning or whatever they’re doing that’s different but causing cancels, that’s something you’ll always want to make sure you avoid. Like longterm sales success is not getting people, again, rushing to the back of the room and then making them regret it the next.

Rylee: Right. Absolutely, and that’s where, just getting back to, you would talk about numbers and just knowing your numbers. With my existing sales reps and even the clients that we have, we were tracking every aspect of our campaign and we’ve really broken down. We have six measurables that we’re continually tracking on any campaign. Even though I’m right now in Minnesota, but we have events this week in Charleston, South Carolina. I know from afar based upon the numbers of how many invitations we had sent out to how many calls we received to how many actually showed up to how many requested an appointment to how many actually purchased and then how many actually stuck. You know, we’re measuring all of those because I know at any given point if I need to pivot or what I need to work on with that client because you know it should be, we’re just constantly sifting the sand and it’s that continual funnel to find those few sales each week and if at any point that funnel is out of whack, we know what we need to work on and how we can coach them to be better.

Jason: Hopefully you enjoyed that part, one of the mini-series here with Rylee, and make sure to tune into the next episode. Again, if you want more information, go to CutterConsultingGroup.com forward slash podcast you can find all of his information and if you want to reach out to me and chat more about your sales program, your sales process, and maybe how I can help you, then make sure to use the contact page or you can email me [email protected].