[E288] Business Growth Evangelism, with Sam Dunning (Part 3)

Jason: Welcome back to another episode of the sales experience podcast. Welcome to part three of my conversation with Sam Dunning from web choice. And we're just going to keep going through my authentic precision questions. If you haven't. Make sure to check out parts one and two, and let's just dive into it. Sam: Asking so many questions, the person's going to get bored when all you really need is probably their name, email, their phone number, and then your sales rep can do the rest. Just ask the key information you need from that prospect and yeah, you're going to get more conversions. And then another mistake I see is that leads aren't followed up quick enough. So often I've had times where I've inquired on a website and then the company hasn't got in touch with me for another two days. Most of the time, as long as they're working hours, it should be followed up within an hour. Jason: Yeah. So on your first point. Let's talk about that for a minute because I guess the thing is that it depends on what the goal is, right? There's conversion from the website to get leads and then you're hoping your salespeople will do it or they have the volume. And then I also think for some cases, depending on the business and the volume of leads and the sales team having a longer form, which then gets really high intent leads, right? Not just tire kickers, but I think it also depends like how good is your sales team at converting tire kickers into actual business or do they need the layup slam dunk leads who have their credit card in hand? Sam: It's a good point. I see that and it getting a balance, isn't it? So not asking too many questions, but getting the right ones, but then I would flip it. I would say sales professionals should qualify fast and hard and. At the end of the day, I don't think you should be handing hot inbound leads to new reps. New reps should probably be training, then doing outbound, and once they're fully trained, then they should be taking inbound leads. So that's my angle. Controversial, perhaps, but that's what I believe. Jason: I completely agree. I've run many Campaigns at companies where the new reps out of training are do not get the inbound leads. They only have outbound until they close so many deals and then they'll get like low volume. They'll be low in the priority. They've got to earn their, the right to get those inbounds. Otherwise they just take them for granted, right? I've seen organizations where day one out of training, a rep is getting warm inbound leads and it just will make them lazy and entitled. Where they just expect that which then leads into the other part, which you said, which is the follow up, right? It's the speed at which they're doing it. Also, the number of follow ups, like calling somebody once and trying once and leaving one voicemail and then never calling again. Sam: That's it. When you get a lead, you've got, the key is a fast response. Booking that call in with them and then like you say, the fruits and the follow up finding out what channel the prospect prefers to talk to you on, whether it's a phone call, whether it's email, whether it's zoom, if they don't respond, then obviously you've got to turn to other channels, perhaps utilize video, perhaps connect with them on LinkedIn, start messaging through there. The amount of times we've had inbound leads and they've stopped responding on email. I've connected with them on LinkedIn. Then we started chatting on there or we've chatted on WhatsApp. It's just try all the channels, find out what works for them and then. Enjoy the conversation, put them through the funnel and work for closing them either as a sale or as a closed no business. Jason: 100 percent agree. I love that point. And that's a great thing for people to understand is the goal should always be with marketing and then outreach to meet the prospective customer where they are at and where they want to chat. I'll tell you for me, like I have not business wise, but even personal wise, I have people that send me WhatsApp messages. And I'm terrible at WhatsApp. I really don't enjoy it. It's just it's that one I don't ever use. And I'm super slow to respond, but you send me something on LinkedIn, then I'm usually chatting with people there. So I think that one's valuable is try everything. If you've got a high intent lead that came off your website and somebody who's looking for help and your job is to actually sell. Then, not in a creepy way, but find them. Yeah, there's a limit. Sam: You can't keep following up for every minute of the day, but you Jason: have to. Yeah, definitely don't be creepy stalker about it, because that will not help your situation. It will not close the deal any better. But try to find where they want to chat and interact, which I think is important. Let's shift a little bit away from that for you, because I'm all about authentic persuasion. Let's talk about that first one. What does it mean to you to be authentic? Sam: Good question. I guess being yourself really being in my case, I guess coming across to your prospect or your client that you are genuinely interested in helping them, which in most cases means asking decent questions. So I guess getting to the root of why they may or may not want to do business with you as we've been talking about leads, perhaps you would talk, we should talk about that. So yeah, I really understand that. So understanding the business they're in, understanding. How it works, who their ideal customer profile is, understanding then why they may or may not want to do business with you in terms of what ideal leads are, in terms of what the average order value is, in terms of quite a good question I've found. Is when you're talking to a lead that you've worked with that you've nurtured Understanding where they want to get to so if you're offering Like a software as a service product or something that's sold monthly which many of us are understanding where they want to get to in 6 or 12 months. It's a really good question So saying look let's pretend we work together in 6 months or in 12 months time Where would you hope to get to and you wouldn't believe some of the answers you get when you ask that question So they'll start saying yep. I want to get this many In our case, when I'm talking to people, they might say, I want to get this many leads, but I want to get to a position where I actually don't have to sell anymore myself. I want to get to a position where I can start managing the company. I can have these sales reps doing all this stuff. And it means I've got less weight on my shoulders. So then people start talking emotionally as well as from a business point. And then once you've got that, the deal's nearly done because you know what their key drivers are. So yeah, I think asking great questions is a good way to build confidence and show that you're actually genuinely interested in where the customer wants to get to. That's probably one of the points I'd make. Jason: And I think you didn't touch on it, but I know this is true for you because we've chatted enough times that I understand and believe this for you is it's asking great questions. It's digging deep. It's wanting to know what you're finding out, which I think is perfect. You always want to find out the deepest level that somebody is going to share about where they want to go to what they want help with what they're trying to avoid if it's painful. But then the other part of that is that you actually care about the answer and not just care. To close the deal and cash the check, but because you actually want to help that person. Sam: Exactly. And I think to add to that, you've got to be passionate about what you're doing. So I would never encourage anyone to sell something they don't believe in personally. So for example, I used to sell ink cartridges over the phone. And whilst I was quite good at it, and whilst it was fun because it was very transactional so I could sell and close deals really fast, it just grinded on me because essentially we were selling in the daytime and the only people that were home in the daytime was elderly people. They were going to buy to us but just because they wanted someone to talk to and after a little while of doing it I thought this just doesn't feel right because they're only buying probably because they like talking and it just didn't sit right with me so I moved back and eventually went back to web choice. So I think part of it is actually selling a service that you genuinely believe in. And that you feel generally works and generally helps people. And that's the big slice of it. Jason: I love it. And so let's talk about the other piece of the equation. Where has persuasion fit into your success? Sam: Yeah, persuasion. I think it all links back to the question. So I think once, if you've conducted a good discovery call, so we're talking about B2B selling here. If you can get a good discovery call. Where you really understand your prospects, main objectives, their key drivers in terms of business perspective, in terms of sales, in terms of their emotional drivers, where they want to get to all that good stuff, when they want to do it, who's involved in the decision. Oh, that kind of thing when you're doing a demo, when you're doing your presentation, you can link it back. So once you've gone through everything and you're asking them towards the end If it makes sense to move forward or not and they say it looks good But it's a bit expensive when you start querying that you can actually bring up points For example, they've already told you the average order value They've already told you their profit goals where they want to get to so you can start bringing back these points That they've already raised So as long as you've carried out a good detailed discovery call, you've got all the points there in your notes that you can link back as a buying case for them to raise, but not on an objective manner. You have to do it sensibly. So when people raise these objections, I think it's keen and a gap selling that says things like you act confused. They say I'm confused. When we talked before you said that your average order value is about a thousand pounds a month and this product's only 500 pounds and it could get you five to six extra clients each month. So I'm not sure what the issue is here. So making sure you're taking great notes in discovery, asking great questions, and you can link it back to your presentations and it should help you close more deals. Jason: All right, everybody, the drill, that's the end of part three of my conversation with Sam tomorrow. We're going to go through the final one. He's going to share a bit more about himself. And answer those authentic persuasion questions that are more on the personal side. And so I will catch you tomorrow. That's it for another episode of the sales experience podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If you find yourself on iTunes, can you leave the show a rating and a review? It helps other salespeople and sales leaders find the show. And please subscribe to the show and share episodes you find valuable with anyone, in sales. Help me on my mission of changing the way. Sales is done. And if you're ready to work together, go to Jason cutter. com. Again, that's Jason cutter.com to find out how I can help you or your company create scalable sales success. I will see you on the next sales experience podcast episode, and keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people will remember the experience you gave them.