Sales Rockstar

Welcome to the Do It My Way Podcast. Today, I want to talk to you about becoming a sales rock star. I talk about sales quite a bit, and I actually just went on some sales calls with a new sales rep that we just hired. I actually had a girl come in shadow, and last week, she was– I actually know her parents from college, and she’s studying school in Boulder Colorado, and just home for the summer, looking for something to do. We’d already hired interns for the summer, actually, so I wasn’t looking to hire anybody else and ended up talking to her about sales and going through the process, and she just had the personality that I knew could just walk in and talk to anybody and create that small talk and sell.

I think it’s just a skill that either you have or you don’t. I definitely think you can learn it, but if you can naturally just have that knack where you can establish rapport with people very quickly you are going to be successful in sales. So, after she was here for a day, I decided, I’m going to offer her a position if she wants to just sell for the summer, and if it works out great, when she goes back to school, maybe she can even sell up there.

We just took the morning and went on cold calls. Owning an agency, we’re going on our year 10 here and so I don’t do many cold calls anymore. I absolutely love it, it’s something that fires me up. I get excited talking to new people, I love walking in. Most people dread that and don’t enjoy that but it’s something that I’ve always loved, I think as it takes me back to the beginning days with the 918moms.com website when I was naive. I didn’t really know what I was doing but I just did it. I wanted to share with everybody about the website and you get lots of no’s but you will get those yeses and there’s nothing more exciting than somebody saying, “Yes, I want to work with you. Yes, I need your help.”

It’s all just a numbers game. The more people you call on, the more you’re going to close. They actually say 10% of your cold calls should become really good prospects that could close. That means you call on 100 people, you get 90 no’s, and possibly 10 yeses. I live for the yeses and I don’t even take no as a no, I take it as a not right now. Amelia and I walked into one local place here, and they said they were on their sixth marketing company and they actually hired someone yesterday, so we just missed them by a day.

We weren’t the right timing and they ended up not going local because they tried national, they tried local, they couldn’t get it right. It’s been, really, a nightmare for them, which is unheard of. It should not be a nightmare, you’re calling the wrong people. I don’t know why you would be going through that many people but it takes me back to sales and getting out there is so important for every business, and we don’t do a lot of cold calling anymore because we have people calling us. We have established clients, we get referrals, we come to the top of Google or we’ll get Google leads coming in. We do ads and things like that, so we just don’t do a lot of cold-calling that we had to in the beginning.

You know what? If you’re a small business owner and you don’t have money to market and get leads coming through the door, you got to get out there, you got to

take a day every week or maybe every morning spend a couple of hours cold-calling, looking for partners, looking for people to do business with you. It still works and it’s never going to go away but it’s something, as you grow with your business, you tend to put that by the wayside.

It made me realize I need someone on the streets and I’ve needed someone on the streets for a while. It doesn’t always have to be me but somebody that can go out and talk to businesses every day about what we do and share our program and share the type of different marketing that we do for people. Even if it’s teeing up a sales call for me, it’s something that’s so needed and so necessary, and it really got me fired up again about sales.

I wanted to revisit how you can become a sales rock star because it’s not natural for everyone and even the girl that I worked with today, it’s not natural necessarily. She definitely can– the rapport part is very natural, but going in and asking for money, it’s a little uncomfortable for people, it’s something that you’ve got to learn. Before we walked in– these are just some tips that we did today that I want to share with you because they’re very simple but it’s going to make your call go so much better.

Number 1, before we– we went to a strip center, we drove up, we sat in the car, and we looked at every business in there that we thought would be a good prospect. We went to their Instagram, we went to their TikTok, we went to see what kind of content they’re putting out there on social media to see if it’s any good. Some people hadn’t posted in two years, some people hadn’t posted in a month, other people had no video—they were just doing all static posts, and some had no people in anything, it was just images, so there’s no human touch.

Quickly, we’re assessing, making notes on a spreadsheet for what they’re lacking, what they’re missing, and where the opportunity is. When we walk in there, we’re not just blanketly selling marketing, we’re saying, “Hey, we noticed you haven’t posted on your Instagram in the last two years, and we noticed there’s no video on there. Did you know video?” You start explaining some stats to them of how important video is and then getting eyeballs to their social media, and getting people to like them, and trust them, and know them, and follow them, and all those things.

We did that in the car, we sat there. It took some time. We looked everybody up, looked what they were doing. We put it on the notes, and then we walked in. Right before we walked in we’d say, “They’re missing video. They haven’t done video. They haven’t posted in a month. Here’s the opportunity,” and walked in and started talking to people. Of the people– we probably visited, I would say, 15 businesses. We walked in from 9:00 to noon, so it could easily be done.

We had some really great conversations. People that were, like, “You know what? We have been looking for someone to do this.” Other people said, “Gosh.” We went into a restaurant that said, “I’m so busy, I just had something go on, and we’re getting ready to have our lunch crowd. Is there any way I can make an appointment with you?” Well, I’m thinking that it’s probably blowing us off, he’s never going to call

us again. He gave us this card, and said, “Please text me right now some times that you’re available because I want to meet with you. It’s just not right now.”

I really think there was only one person that blew us off when we walked in, which actually pretty shocking. Of 15 people, to only have 1 person blow you off is actually really good. We would walk in, we would compliment them on the store. If we hadn’t heard of them, we asked them how long they’d been there. I sat and talked to a small business owner that just had opened a franchise, that was frustrated, and really trying to make it, didn’t understand marketing.

I sat with her for a good 15, 20 minutes giving her some free advice. I don’t know if she’ll do marketing with us or not but I love talking to people and I love helping people, and she’s going to remember that. When she does need marketing, she’s going to remember that. The little tips that made today successful were their research before we walked in. When we started talking, we weren’t generically talking and trying to sell something generically, we were actually giving some great advice for their business or some opportunity we saw was missing, and then we showed them how we could easily do that and help them, and take that off their hands and work with them.

The conversations went really well. Some had owners that weren’t there that we have to call back and talk to or come back by, some were passing our information on to the owner. They’re in progress, you’re typically never going to walk in and sell something immediately, it’s going to take a couple of times and getting in front of them. It has to be the right timing. If we had gone yesterday, we might have gotten that company I was telling you that went through six marketing companies and hired someone yesterday. It’s all about timing.

The key to being great at sales is really understanding what the buyer wants. When you walk in, you’ve got to quickly ask questions and figure out what is their biggest need, what are they missing. I’m sharing what is obvious on their social media that they’re missing, but what do they want? Is it more sales? Is it more followers? What is it that they are interested in? Might just be the brand awareness if they’re brand new.

Then you’ve got to establish trust with them pretty quickly. Well, they start to trust you if you’re sharing free advice. If I give one or two things that they can implement right now without me, just doing it on their own, they start to trust me, they start to go, “This girl, I guess she knows what she’s talking about.” I’m not getting anything out of that. I don’t want anything out of that. I’m actually helping them that hopefully they will, someday, call and say, “You know what? I need your help now. I appreciate the free advice and now I need your help.” Or they might need my help right then.

You’ve got to communicate clearly. We were explaining a TikTok program. Some people aren’t on TikTok, some people aren’t on social media at all. If I start going into too much detail, they’re glazing over, and they don’t know what I’m talking about. You’ve got to keep it very simple and talk in layman’s terms—don’t try to get techie or

too much in the weeds, it doesn’t matter. All they need to know is they’re going to get 12 videos a month, this is how much it cost, and this is what it’s going to do for your business.

You want to help them rather than close them. If you have that mentality where you are sharing and helping, it will close them without just being that used car salesman. We talk about that all the time. Everyone runs from the used car salesman on the lot. Nobody wants them coming up, right? Walk in, be friendly, compliment them on their space, ask them how long they’ve been there, show a genuine interest in their business, and they will open up and talk to you.

Then finally, tell stories. Stories absolutely sell. I shared several stories with these business owners of similar businesses that were doing so well with social media video and how their TikToks were exploding, and different things that they were doing, that was making an impact in their business, to where that is selling it for me. It’s a real life story and people want to hear stories more than they just want to hear you talking about how great it is.

Where’s the proof? Show me what you can do for me. Those were just some tips that I wanted to share with you today that I was sharing with Amelia, who’s out there starting in sales and really doing a great job already, but just thought I would take some time, share it with you out there. I would love to hear your biggest tip for sales. How do you become a sales rockstar? I know there’s not just one way that fits all. Everybody has their different style. Everybody does a different way. This way has been very successful for me over the last 20, 25 years, but I would love to hear from you as well.

If this was something that helped you, I would love for you to share it with a friend. That helps us out to get more people listening to the podcast, and coming, and following us, and all of that. Hopefully, that was a great tip for you today. Until next time, we’ll see you on the Do It My Way Podcast.