[E157] Selling The One Thing Everyone Needs with Jamie Sarche – Part 2 of 4

Jason: Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. Welcome everybody. My name is Jason Cutter, so glad that you’re here. You are catching this. And part two of my conversation with Jamie Sarche, we talk about a very interesting topic and she is a very interesting person who is taking a very unique and appropriate approach to a very sensitive topic, which is pre-planning for death. At first I thought, you know I’m going to introduce her and it’s like she sells death but she doesn’t. She’s sung the planning and the comfort and the peace of mind that comes with knowing that you’ve taken care of that. And as you’ll hear in these episodes in the conversation, you would think on the surface that would be the easiest thing to sell because it’s something everyone cannot avoid. But it’s actually really hard and I appreciate and love how much she focuses on doing it the right way and for the right reasons, which we talk about in these episodes. So make sure to check out this if you haven’t, make sure to check out part one and here you go here as part two.

Jamie: I am not comfortable with this at all. This doesn’t feel authentic to me, although I know for the other woman it’s completely authentic, so I don’t question how she does it. I just know I can’t do it that way. And I figured out just like you said, what works for me that makes me interact with my clients in an honest and transparent and authentic way where I feel like I’m doing the best thing for them.

Jason: Yeah, and I think that’s always important is that being authentic to yourself and what feels right for any salesperson listening. If you’re at a company and they have a required process and it doesn’t fit with you and it’s not in alignment with who you are, how yourself. If you can’t change that or do anything different and it’s like a very structured thing, seriously, think about finding a different role somewhere else that fits who you are because you will be wildly more successful and be happier in general. Like mentally.

Jamie: Yes, you have to feel passionate, you have to feel like what you are doing has value. You know, so many people will say to me, you must be so good at sales. You could sell anything that is so not true. I believe deeply in the work that I do and I believe that it helps people and I believe that they need it. And so it is the only thing that I can sell.

Jason: Interesting. I think if you could sell what you sell now, you could sell anything, but you’re right.

Jamie: I mean I can, something I believe in is deeply,

Jason: I mean that’s really what it comes down to is when you have that passion about something, whatever it is, right? It doesn’t have to be, you know, extreme services kind of like yours. It can be anything as long as you’re passionate about or you’re excited about it, that will come has value. You kind of talked about building the process and setting that up, but like what does that sales process?

Jamie: So it really can look a lot of different ways. Sometimes somebody just calls. And as I mentioned earlier, we’re in a very specific niche. And so we, I’m lucky enough that my community, we are the go to for them. So like when people say, who’s your competition? While lots of people could do funerals and lots of people do. The community that I serve really looks to my funeral home. So I have that natural naturally. So I have a lot of call-in business, but I also have developed such a nice referral network of my clients, you know, so my clients start telling people, you know, I did these plans and it’s given me such a sense of peace and I’ve learned now to help give them the language to refer people to me, which is really helpful. And I’ve also done, um, like I mentioned, just so much kind of education.

Jamie: One thing that I just started doing about two years ago is an event that’s more like a book club. That is where somebody just invites all their friends over and we drink a little and we talk about this stuff and we call it caskets and cocktails and yeah. And it’s, it’s just really fun. And what I’ve discovered is that because our society is so death averse, giving people a framework in which to talk about things that they need to talk about is really helpful to them. So I found that people always say to me, Oh, I have the weirdest question. And it’s never a weird question and it’s just that they think that they are weird for having a question. The other thing that I’ve done to really set myself apart is stuff like this. You know, I do a lot of podcasts. I have a Ted talk, I have a talk that is on another platform called the Eli. I speak at conferences, that kind of stuff. I really have set myself up to be an expert and that leads me to get people calling even if they aren’t going to necessarily use my funeral home or they don’t even live in my area. They view me as a real trusted advisor and a real expert. And that really raises my profile in my community. And I love doing that.

Jason: Well, and in my experience too with someone who’s operating at your level, and you know when I’ve done sales and worked with teams, is that when you become that expert, you’re passionate about it, you’re giving a lot, you’re doing the meetings and networks, the Ted talks and all of that, whatever that is relative to that salesperson, there’s a confidence that comes across when you’re talking to a perspective client where it’s almost like you can be persuasive and pushy and, and like almost forceful but for their needs because you know what you’re providing is a value to them. Um, and it comes across different than someone who’s manipulating and pushy because it’s about their needs as a salesperson. But instead, but there’s just that confidence, which is like, you need to do this, we’ve got to get you set up and here is why. And it comes across as a completely different,

Jamie: And yes, you’re absolutely right. And I am very good at asking questions of why do you think this is what you need? You know, cause there are so many myths in the business again because we never talk about this stuff. So like one of the myths that I run into quite a lot is that people think that cremation is an environmentally friendly choice. So they think, well I’m not using up space so it must be better for the earth if I am cremated and it actually is a terrible choice for the earth. Cremation has a very high carbon footprint and when the burning is done, everything in our body goes up into the atmosphere and just like we used to burn leaves and trash, now we compost. There is a whole burial method that is the most natural that is called green burial and it’s no embalming and all wood casket or no casket and it is really literally feeding the earth.

Jamie: And so I really good at saying to people when they say, Oh, I just want to be cremated because they think, Oh there’s a dead body and we’ve got to get rid of the dead body. I asked them a lot of questions like, do you think this is an environmentally friendly choice? And sometimes they say, well, I don’t care about that. Okay, so then I asked some more questions. Are you trying to make this really convenient for your loved ones? And often they say, yeah, that is what I’m trying to do. I don’t want, I don’t need a few. And I help them to understand that ritual is so important for lifecycle events. I actually do a whole presentation about the importance of ritual and I always say to people, does anybody in the audience know why we wear a cap and gown out of graduation?

Jamie: Jason, do you know why we do? Yeah, so that actually is the answer. I don’t know why we do either. We just, do, that’s how we know that someone has graduated because there’s a cap and gown. I mean, I don’t know about you, but when my kids were in preschool, they made a cap out of her bowl and a little thing on top of it and they each wore their dads white shirts to be the gown and that was their graduation from preschool. So this is how we know that there is a life cycle event because there is ritual attached to it. How do you feel when you go to a birthday party if they wouldn’t have cake and candles, you know? Yeah. They’re just things that you do because these are what you do. And then a time of a death. That’s when we especially need ritual because we don’t have the psychological ability to understand death. We just don’t. Those of us who work in my business, people who work in hospice, it’s still psychologically challenging. And so having ritual around it helps us to process our feelings, our thoughts, and helps us just start creating our new normal. And so I really help people to understand by asking a lot of questions that it’s not about there’s a dead body. I mean that is part of it. We can’t just let that sit there, but there’s so much more.

Jason: So when we’re looking at kind of the process you’re taking someone through, um, obviously you’re asking questions, you’re figuring out kind of where their, their mind is, what their thoughts are. They’re kind of prejudgment or concepts or ideas than you’re moving them forward and then obviously you’re doing a presentation with them and laying out options and that’s pretty much it, right?

Jamie: Right. Yeah. There are about 120 decisions and pieces of information that I need to talk to them about, but sometimes it’s very easy if they know exactly what choices they want, like they want to be buried, they know which cemetery, then we’re going to say, okay, what casket? Should there be a newspaper notice? Things like that. Very pragmatic stuff. I’m not typically saying to them, what music do you want? Unless they have something specific that they want, then they share that with me, but I’m not typically going over the exact stuff for the day of the service because it actually is really helpful to the loved ones to think about some of that stuff too. So we go over that with them at the time of a desk. Although some of my clients really do want to be very much in charge. I have one client and he’s a surgeon and so this really fits his personality every year. He comes to visit with me, he brings me a new thumb drive with photos that he wants. He has literally written a script. Um, he has put an order who’s going to talk when, what they’re going to say that’s what he needs and that’s okay. And you know, maybe his family will follow it and maybe they won’t, but that’s what he needs to feel comfortable with this. Yeah, that’s really on the far end.

Jason: Especially updating it yearly. Right. There’s one thing to have a plan and then to be that involved. But Hey, you know,

Jamie: That’s what he is, you know like he is a very detail oriented person. He’s had to be in his career. It served him very, very well and that’s just what he’s going to do, which is great. You know, I’m happy to do whatever he needs because that’s what I do. I meet people where they are.

Jason: Alright. That’s it for part two of this four part series. Make sure to subscribe so you can get all the episodes. If you want, you can connect with me on the cutterconsultinggroup.com website can also follow me on LinkedIn where I’m very active and as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.