Coffee Talk And Weekly Wins

Dave 0:02

Welcome to the Business Unscripted Podcast. We're here to share real life insights, practical strategies, and the honest lessons that we have learned from our own state. So whether you need help with operations, accountability, financial knowledge, and maybe just getting your mindset right. We are here in the right spot for no fluff conversation. So grab your favorite cup of Joe. Let's jump into the show. All right, everybody. Welcome to another Friday. Grab your favorite cup of Joe and let's jump into the show. You know, it's funny, I did a uh favorite quote sort of search using claw code, and that was obviously one of the most used quotes that I that I use on this show. So grab your favorite cup of Joe. Let's jump into the show. Is I as as every business owner knows, you can never have enough coffee, right?

Duarne 0:49

Absolutely. If you're like me, you have to drop your caffeine intake at around about four in the afternoon because otherwise I'm up until four in the morning, which is great for productivity in some cases. Terrible if I actually want to get some sleep.

Dave 1:05

Exactly, exactly. And so, well, here we are. It's another Friday. Jordan, thanks for joining me, sir. Uh, I know for both of us it's been it's been a busy week. What's new? Any any any wins recently?

Duarne 1:18

Yeah, well, look, one deal we've been waiting for for a while looks like it's gonna get signed on Monday. And we've been able to, because there's been such a delay in getting it signed, we've been able to revisit and add something to the quote, or a couple of things to the quote, and uh they've been accepted. So that's exciting. And yeah, the person who's actually in charge of it now got a promotion and they're actually owning the project, which means that they basically managed to cut out a lot of the red tape that was holding it up, which is fantastic. So we're excited. It's gonna be a very busy couple of months for me as they get the plan, get the project on track. You know, there's a about seven, eight people I have to hire to do the job. Oh, yeah, it's fairly significant.

Dave 2:07

Nice. Well, congrats on that, man. That's it's just is this one that we've chatted about for a while that's been kind of it's one of the ones we've been chatting about for a while.

Duarne 2:15

Yeah, I mean, it's the other one's still lingering. We've been promised updates on that front, and you will wait and see. I mean, that's waiting on investment. So investment, as we know, can it's very it's very can take a while, right? It can. I mean, and look, things fall through, especially with the volatility of the economy and the world trade right now, and all that other wonderful stuff going on that's affecting that.

Why Self-Promotion Kills Trust

Dave 2:41

So we talked about it, what was it, two weeks ago? Maybe it was even no, it was last week. We talked about kind of what to do, how to follow up, and so if that's something, if you're in that situation, maybe you're you're waiting for a client to follow up with you, go back to last week's episode and listen to how you can set up your follow-ups, but also not give away too much of your time for those types of prospects that drag their feet and you know, kind of keep you dragged along in the process. So go listen to last week's episode on that one. This week, though, we were talking like pre show pre-show. And I think it's how do you even get to that point? And so there was a client and pre-for somebody in the office, they were kind of giving me a little more history on this, and it's a topic that I think is probably impactful for a lot of people. And it's how do you have that conversation with a prospect? And what should you be focusing on? You know, how do you lead that conversation? And throughout our journey over the last year or so, we have always talked about neuroemotional persuasion questioning. And so, an example from this past week with a prospect is I've seen this person, know this person in the local area, and heard them speak, heard them talk to others. Oh, yeah. And you may see yourself in this situation and they like to talk all about their accolades, right? What they've done, what they've accomplished, what they want to do for you, right? So, Duan, when you hear that, when you when you've known, I'm sure you've talked with a lot of people that way as a business owner. What is your first response when you hear somebody just immediately start telling you about what they've done in the past, what they want to do for you, all of that?

Duarne 4:28

Yeah, typically I start to feel like uh they may be full of shit, or they may be, if you want the blunt opinion. I mean, like, let's face it. I mean, we've all been down there. A lot of these people tend to talk a lot more about themselves because they feel like that's the way to get the attention. If you like talking about yourself too much, then at least make it bloody relevant to the person you're talking to. A lot of it's like going to the pub and uh having a beer, and you've got that old timer sitting there who did, you know, mandatory four years military experience and has the same stories to tell every single time. Yet the guy who's gone and done 20 years of service never has a story to tell. You know, because he's they saw real action, they saw things they probably don't want to talk about. But you know, the guy who went through boot camp, he's got a few stories to tell. He you know, he likes to tell over a beer. But every time you go, it's the same story, and that tends to be the same thing I find with a lot of these business owners. And like a couple of years ago, I was hitting the rounds on alignable, as you know, and one of the things that I came across was a lot of business coaches, right? And business coaches who just sit there and love to talk about themselves and their accolades, and then sit there and try and tell you what you need without asking that one critical question. Where are you at right now? And what do you think you need? Right. Right. So, I mean, that's my take on it. What's yours?

Lead With Questions Not Pitching

Dave 6:01

Well, so I I think ultimately you you kind of hit a little bit on it, and it's like you can't start talking until you understand what that person's going through and where their situation is. So, how do you do that? We have to ask questions, you have to listen first as a business owner. You know, if they're coming to you, uh one, I and I talked to another client about that. If they've scheduled a meeting with you, uh it means that they are interested in something that you've mentioned or something they've seen in your profile, seen in your content. There's a reason why they're scheduling with you, right? And they agreed to schedule with you because just like you, you and and in your time, their time should hopefully be just as valuable to them. So they're not just scheduling a meeting, just to schedule a meeting. There is a particular interesting peak or interest that peaked inside themselves when they saw your profile, saw a content, something like that. You have to to build on that. Uh you know, find out what made you book this meeting today, right? What caught your attention to want to take 30 minutes out of your day to learn more about what I do? Right now, again, with the persuasion, they're persuading themselves why they needed to have the meeting. And you're listening because you're able to then figure out okay, I'm hearing some things, uh, maybe it's a surface level. Dive deeper. Tell me more about that. Why is this uh a situation right now? Why is this a problem for you right now? How many hours are you spending on this every week? Depending on what you do. That is what's going to then help you understand at the end of the conversation what you need to suggest as an outcome. Similar to this, you don't then just say, once they, and this is a problem. I was in this problem too, before I you know I learned from Jeremy Minor in seventh level, right? I was in this problem where it's like, oh, okay, I heard something, you you know, Duarn, you and I are having a conversation, and you say to me, Well, I don't know my numbers. Oh, that's great, because we can totally help you, right? Understand your numbers. We can do this by doing monthly accounting. And maybe you already have an accountant, and I've already jumped in trying to assume that I'm just gonna take over that accountant's role. But really, your pain is that your current person isn't giving you better analysis or isn't giving you a report at the end of every month with the information that you need to make your job more impactful. But if I just jump in right away, right, you jump in too early, you haven't listened to their entire pain, you haven't listened to their entire problem. So, what you have to understand about your sales process is what are the questions I need to ask? Right, go through the actual framework. If you don't have a framework, and Alex Ramosy says this with his, you know, his sales teams, obviously, you know, Jeremy Minor with his setup, you know, everybody has a sales process that's successful, right? Grant Cardone, Alex Ramosy, right? You have to learn what that framework is that works for you. But then once you find something that works, you have to develop that repeatable set of questions that you ask everybody in one of those sessions. And there's a list, like you're not you're not going to read from a script. And this is what's really important for all of this is that you're not just going through your checklist of questions and saying, Oh, I have to ask you this one now, even though it doesn't make any sense in the conversation. I need to ask you this question. No, you have to be able to be flexible, and that's why you have a set of questions at every stage to potentially pull from and then move them forward in that conversation. This is the same whether you're a business owner trying to sell a prospect. This could be used even when you're, you know, in a career, right, having a conversation with a team member, right? Neuro persuasion questioning can be used anytime. You know, it could be used, you know, in in dating if you really wanted to, you know, as you're having that first date with somebody, you know, are you talking the whole time or are you asking questions to find out more about them, which now they feel more connected to you? Because surprise, surprise, the more somebody talks, the more they actually like the person that they were having a conversation with. So if you want to be likable, you want to be relatable, shut up in your prospect meetings.

Pattern Breakers That Open People Up

Duarne 10:13

100%. I mean, it's a case of like the more you ask questions, that'll actually take you in the direction. This is why like I don't tend to get I don't get stressed at all when I get on a sales call anymore. Like I've been doing it long enough that, and this is something I I used to teach my sales team, whenever I train them, I just do one, I'll tell you one thing. A sales conversation is just a conversation. A sales call is just another conversation. Treat it like a conversation, call it a sales conversation. Because if you try and gloss it up as a meeting or an introductory or a discovery meeting and all this sort of stuff, that's fine if you're gonna need to label it. But in your head, think of it as just a conversation. We have hundreds of conversations every week with different people, and it's just a conversation. And how do you carry a conversation forward? You ask questions, you show genuine interest, you add value to the conversation. So when you're asking questions, you can ask questions about how they got to where they are, like your instance there with your accountant, client, and you just you know made the assumption they may not have had an accountant and ask the question. Oh, do you have an accountant right now? Oh, yeah, yeah, we do. And if they don't volunteer any more than that, it's like, oh, okay, so how's everything going if you're an accountant?

Dave 11:30

Encourage to Well here and here's here's the first question that you ask, which so many people default to the opposite. Excuse me. When somebody says, like, whether you're a janitorial, like, you know, do you already have somebody cleaning your office, or do you already have an accountant, or do you already have somebody who does X, Y, and Z for you? And they respond with yes, the typical sales mindset would be, well, what's not going well right now, right? Like to immediately try to find the pain, but you have to break that pattern. And what you want to say and ask first is what's going well with what you currently have? What do you like about what you currently have? And it's twofold. One, it breaks the pattern of every other salesperson or every other person trying to, you know, convince that person that they need to make a switch. And two, you now can understand what's important to them.

Duarne 12:51

And you also get to understand as well that they're going to be more open because you have broken that pattern. And this is the key to a conversation. I mean, when you can break a pattern and it's not standard default answering, it makes a huge difference. When you what I used to like, I mentioned before, I used to work on the floor selling televisions and hi-fi equipment they uh store back in Australia. And one of the things I used to do is we're in a store with no windows. So I'd always ask the question of the customers and they're coming, hey, what's the weather like outside today? What? Oh, it's yeah, it's good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, oh cool. Is this still overcast or is that cleared? Uh, and before you know it, you're talking about weather. And they always say, you know, you know, it must be pretty boring if the only thing you've got to talk about is weather. But I used to use it as an opener and say, look, sorry, it's been flat out in here today. I haven't even had a chance to get out for a and check out the weather. Right. So I've been relying on asking customers occasionally how it how the weather's going. So what brings you in today on such a nice day then? You know, wouldn't you rather be outside doing something and then start the conversation?

Dave 13:59

Right. Well, and and and some of that, it and you did it in a way that made it fun. You broke the pattern, right? You said, Hey, by the way, like what's the weather outside? Like, I've been so busy in here, there's no windows, I can't see outside. You used it in a particular way. Now, where that can go wrong is for the business owner, and this happens all the time. I used to be in the same way, right? Would be like, oh man, how's how's things going today? You know, how you been, right? And you start a conversation like that. That is the most generic way, the worst way to start with any sort of meeting with any sort of prospect, right?

Duarne 14:31

You've got to niche down a little bit on something, is the way I find it works. I chose weather, which was something that worked for me. And I think with a business owner, you have to find something that's unique to them. You know, whether it's some news media content that's out there at the time. I used to use football, you know, back in Australia, we've got rugby league. And if I knew a client was coming in from you know Queensland, I'd be like, I'm making a comment on the latest results of the Broncos or the Cowboys, the two teams up there, and say, Oh, I did you catch the game last week?

Dave 15:03

But here's the thing so so that's fine if you already know the person, right? However, if you're just in a prospect that booked off your website or anything like that, you should never start with how's the weather, how's things going, anything like that. You have to start more directive to those, of course. Right. You you want to lead with what's exciting lately? Yeah, because once somebody, when you when you lead with a question like that, now it's like they're memorable in their mind and they they'd love to talk, right? It's already opening it up to you being a memorable person for the first question. And if you don't have anything like that, then you just start with, well, I'm curious. You know, I see you booked on the call through X, Y, and Z. Tell me what brought you in. You know, again, just dive right into getting them to start persuading themselves. You don't remember, it's not your problem to solve. They have the problem, you are the person that has a potential solution for them. So you don't need to thank them for their time, you don't need to do any of that, right? It you uh it's not your problem. So they should actually be thanking you, who could potentially solve the problem uh for them for your time because you're taking time out of your day to potentially help them solve their problem. It should be, hey man, I thank you for taking this exploratory call with me, not you as a salesperson be like, oh man, I really appreciate you jumping on the call with me today. Like, you're immediately putting your level down below an expert level by doing that. So when you start a call and you're you know trying to help them solve a problem that they have, one, be generally interested in helping them solve the problem. And sometimes what that means is that it's not gonna be your solution that's right for them at this moment, but point them in the right direction, give them the next step that they need to take so that when they do take those steps, now they can come back to you and they're ready. And what are they gonna do? They're gonna remember you because you pointed them in that right direction.

Duarne 16:50

And don't feel like you have to do it all on the call. This is a big mistake I see too, is leave room to follow up with an email. Leave room to follow up with something at the end of it and and let them know, look, oh yeah, look, I'm gonna cut a couple ideas around that. Would you like me to email you those over? And that way you've got a line of communication still going after the call. One thing I see, and I you know, is a lot of people try and do the sale on the call, they try and do everything on the call, they try to add so much into it that they leave nothing. Stop fumbling around trying to find the link to send on the call every time. Just say, hey, look, look, do you mind? I'll shoot you an email after this with that link so you can uh check in on that. It's almost like doing that follow-up email, but now you've got a reason to get in and do that email. It's not something that feels like it's forced where you're like, oh, thanks for your time. It was great chatting to you. You know, you mentioned you had this problem, and I've got a solution over here that fixes it. It's you know, something a little less generic, which you know carries on to what you're saying.

Dave 17:49

Um and that's why, too, like you don't want and even your emails. Stop the hey, just following up, or hey, it was great chatting with you today, you know, looking forward to our next conversation. Like those just sound desperate. Again, you are not the one to be thanking them for their time to solve their problem, like it's their problem. So, not not saying that you're not generally interested in helping them, not saying that you're not, you know, willing to you know have a meeting with them. It's you have to stop lowering your your level of expertise to sound and try and show your expertise on that.

Framework Over Scripts And Speed

Duarne 18:34

Talk to them about so that problem we were talking about, XYZ. If we would implement this solution, how would that make you feel? Or how would that change everything for you right now? You know, you mentioned looking at getting that vacation with the family in this year. Where was it you're planning to go again? Do you think this would help you get there if we did this? Find a way, an angle, something that's emotionally gonna get them to take that next step. It happens, you know, because the follow-ups just don't work. People get sick of it, people are busy, and this is the other thing. People get busy, and if it's a generic follow-up that doesn't force them to take a moment, then they're gonna sit back and just go, I'll get back to it, I'll get back to it. One of my favorites, if I've got a client just drops off and I've done this, I do this very selectively. You've got to pick your clients, but I'll have the four, hey, haven't heard from you for a while. I'm guessing it's one of the four things that's happened. You don't want to talk to me anymore because you've already solved your problem. You're too busy to solve your problem, you've gone with another provider that had a better solution than me, or you're falling down and can't get up. And if you need some help, respond back to this and I'll organize some help for you. Right? And normally they get to the last one. I get a g I get a reply back within 24 hours going, ha ha, very funny. No, we've just been flat out, or you know, we've actually put that on ice for the minute, or you know, but I appreciate the concern. And again, you picked your customers, and I'm I'm a I'm more humorous with my communication. I try to be casual and commute in my communication to that point. A lot of my clients appreciate that. Now, I've dealt with a lot of professionals who don't appreciate being called mate, don't appreciate the you know, the casual nature of my communication sometimes, and I'll adjust accordingly for them. But from a business point of view, you've just got to, if you start going down the path that we're talking about with that NEPQ questioning and communication technique, you're gonna open up your clients a lot more, you're gonna create bigger rapport very, very quickly than you'll ever do with a script. And those questions, like you should use them as general questions until you're used to them, and then it should become second nature because you'll know what you need to know. And you don't don't sit there and rapid fire those questions at people because they will really feel like you're just trying to go through a checklist.

Getting Comfortable With No

Dave 21:00

Well, you think again, like we're never going to get into the whole NEDQ here, right? And generally, the importance is one, walking them through their persuasion stages, two, ensure that you're practicing tonality and pacing. Again, as you just kind of said, is another important piece of that because if you just monotonely read questions, don't pay attention to the context of the answers, to dive deeper or to realize, hey, maybe it's time to move on to the next stage, you're they're gonna feel like you are reading from a script and that you aren't generally interested in the conversation. But the beauty of once you're able to understand those stages in the conversation, you don't have to read anymore. You know instinctively what questions need to be asked when, and then it can just be a general conversation. And it doesn't always have to be question, question, question. It can be question, probing question to dive a little bit deeper, ask a follow-up, you know, give a small piece of you know, kind of insight based on what you're hearing, repeat back what you're hearing to them, and then go to the next part. Right. So it is a general conversation that you would have with anybody. Yeah. But the idea is that throughout that conversation, you're asking the right questions when you need to to get them to not only tell you. What the answer to the question is, but to tell themselves. And so that's why it's super important as you are preparing, keyword, preparing for prospect calls, whether you're in business now and you realize that your sales process sucks, or you're just going to get into business and you know you're going to have to do sales calls, because you're going to have to, if you're getting into business, you are a salesperson as a business owner. You have to have that framework put in place. And so whatever it is, whether you you research Grant Cardone sales or you know Alex or Mosey sales teams or any other sales thing that you can find on YouTube right now, which is the beauty of where you're at. Like I when I got into business, my first business right 20 some years ago now, like I had to figure out everything my own because there wasn't a YouTube, there wasn't all this stuff that was at my fingertips to be able to find all of this information easily, at least, and definitely not the vast number of like what is it? I so many thousands of videos that are uploaded every like five seconds on YouTube. It's insane, it's hard to keep up with it. Yeah, you cannot not find something on YouTube that can answer your question, which is why and we'll come back to this at second talking point, which is why I love this unscripted price, but which is also why, and we I think talked about it last week, you don't have a secret sauce. And so stop trying to think you have a secret sauce. But the other piece is you have to understand again, you can't take no's personally when it comes to the sales process as a business owner. Duan, if you had to estimate, what was it? What would be the number of no's that you've received from either proposals or an exploratory call that they're not ready to go forward? What would you if you just had to estimate over your your business experience?

Duarne 24:23

90% at least. 90%, yeah. You get higher marches with hot when they're warmer clients and they come from a hard referral. But I mean, if you take the average, I mean, you're talking about an a you know nine no's to every one, and you can't take it personal. And this is why if you go to the time of vetting them on the call, and you can write, you can say they're not they're not going any further before you take the time to do the proposal and everything. That pre-qualification process made me feel a lot better about it because prior, I'd have to do big proposals, I'd have to get it out there, and this when you get a big you know a turn down, it was like I really wanted that deal. I put a lot of work into it. Right.

Dave 25:07

Those are the ones that here's what I want to kind of caveat your 90% with, right? And I would say probably around that number if you think of every initial conversation or anything. People might say in the big, oh my god, Juan, you're only at a 10% close rate. Like, but that's of like initial outreaches to a client. You're gonna have nine, or maybe even nine and a half is one of like number of initial conversation touch points that you need to have with a prospect versus people that are gonna from there book a call, right? That's that's a fall off. And then from your exploratory call to a deeper dive, that's a fall off. And then from your proposal to signing is another fall off. So you have all these different fall-off points. So you may have to get one client, it may require you to have a touch point with a thousand people, right? That's a 0.1%, you know, or even if it's a hundred, to get one client, you have to have cold touch points with a hundred people. That's 99% fall off. Of somewhere along the way, you're gonna hear a no, whether it's not responding, whether it's not interested, whether it's after an exploratory call, say no, it's not what I'm looking for. So you have to be comfortable with the fact that most people, the vast majority of people that you're outreaching are at one time or you know, until they become a signing client, are probably gonna tell you no. Some maybe even multiple times. They may initially say, Oh, not my right time, then it may come to you in a month or two, and then you do an exploratory call, and now they're falling off again. So if you take nose personally in business, if you take those as a sign of who you are as a person, you're never gonna be successful. You have to realize that again, it is not your problem. You may think that it's your problem because you need to make money, but it's not your problem that they have that you solve. You're gonna find somebody else. And just think of that that person that you outreached that turned you down, that's getting you one step closer to the person who will. So stop focusing it on, oh man, I'm just I just failed again at this conversation. Who cares? It's another conversation you need to have, and now you're using more practice.

Duarne 27:13

You got more, yeah, and you'll get better. I mean, like I've got conversations I have with people where I've probably like if we talk website sales for clients that have been referred, I've probably got a two out of every three I close, yeah, some much, much higher close rates because I know the touch points, I know what they want, and I deliver on it. And the only times I get turned down is typically because budget, or they've realized they haven't had the time to commit to the project from their side.

Protect Your Calendar With Pre-Qualifying

Dave 27:47

And that's where the pre-qualification, like in your exploratory call booking link, you need to have a protection of your calendar. I've said this multiple times, and it's crazy how much more I'm saying this, but because I just had a session the other day where I said this you if you don't protect your calendar, right, your calendar will control you. And so with exploratory calls, you have to have pre-qualification questions in your link to an exploratory call that and it and one it needs to be a hard stop. So, like Dwarne, you're busy. So on your websites, if they don't have a thousand dollar minimum budget or whatever that ends up being, uh, or a funding available to invest, like sorry, it's you're not the right client for us. We're not gonna let you book the call. And then in your routing, if they answer no that they don't, sorry, redirect them to your website or to your page or to your YouTube channel or to your socials to follow along and stay engaged with you as a business owner, and then give them some free advice or something. Here, say, here's um your initial website design. Yeah, a newsletter you can continue to provide value to them, continue to be front of mind, but you've protected your time by qualifying them, right? You cannot take unlimited calls, you have capacity, which is one of the reasons why we're all thinking, man, I wish I could have time to do that, because we all have the same 24 hours in a day. And a lot of us don't have time to invest in big, large teams like multi-billion dollar organizations that can have teams to do different things. You are yourself, and maybe you have one or two other people that are required to wear a lot of hats. How do you accomplish doing all of that with the same 24 hours as Elon Musk or Grant Cardone or all that? And you do that by protecting your time, and you do that by implementing actual qualifying questions on your calendar. And don't just book a call, just a book a call. There has to be a reason.

Networking Mistakes And Forced Calls

Duarne 30:23

I get this how did you end today? I got a client I partner with, I do white label services through them, and they needed a client needed something set up, a Google Business Listing. And they're a tech service. So the first thing they do is get on a call to try and solve problems. I'm like, you just call him and sort it out, and I'm like, no, it's not what I need to do. I need to send him an email with a quote and get a list of him to respond back with everything I need to be able to go and do it. I said, and confirm me that he's willing to pay my rate for the next two hours to do that. Yeah, yeah, he'll pay, that's fine. Okay, good, that's a good start. So I got to the point and I've gone through and I've realized I could actually claim their old listing, which they'd lost. And I put a request in, I sent the email through to the client and I said, Hey, check this out. We could possibly do this. Oh, great, call him and tell him. I'm like, I'll reply to the ticket and let him know that this has been done because there's a timeline on this. Like it's gonna take three to four days before this happens. Nothing's gonna happen any sooner than that. Because Google put a timeline on it. So I'll send the email. That was me saving my time. Every time I turn around with that client, it's always get on a call, call them. And it's like, it's not always a call. So my first point of call is hey, let's schedule in a time to talk. When are you free to talk? Let's here's my calendar, find a time that works for you. Because that means they come prepared a bit better for that. And they're gonna get they're gonna be better prepared to be take my call rather than me just randomly call them and go, hey, look, I need to talk, I'm here to talk to you. I got told to call you. I've done that so many times originally where I'd get, oh look, I'm just in the middle of something queue back in 15 minutes, and then I'm sitting around for 15 minutes going, okay, I've got to remember to call back, I've got to take the time. I I'd planned to talk to you because I had an hour spare. Now I've only got 45 minutes spared to have that conversation. So it really does affect you. And I think you need to have the control of the narrative a lot more. And this is where you will meet certain people in certain industries who their first point of call is to jump on a phone call. And then you get others that just want to send an email all the time, then you get others that want to do a text message all the time.

Dave 32:42

Yeah, everyone's got a different technique, and the question is the ones that like are crazy to me are like are and this happens a lot like on alignable. If you don't know what alignable is, it's basically like a LinkedIn for business owners, you know, kind of people that are kind of in charge of their own income. But it's a lot more personal because you're you're really limited on the connection requests that you can send out, especially as a free member. Like for those of you who don't know, LinkedIn, you can send out 200 connection requests a week as a free member. You can't send a personalized message with it, but you can still send 200 connections a week on LinkedIn. So it's not really personal. You can just go on there and kind of search, and I highly suggest you do that as a prospecting tool. But with alignable, you're only limited to 10. But the ones that really kind of are are just smack me as you have no sales process at all, is I will connect with them, and their first thing is, hey, let's schedule a 20-minute call. No, and my that's my response. No, sorry, I have nothing, no idea about you. I don't know, my schedule's busy, my schedule's packed. I don't even know if I want to have a meeting with you. Like, who are you? Like, what are you doing? Like, especially if they have requested me, you know, where I and typically when somebody connects with me, my initial response was, hey, great to connect. However, you know, I'm really interested, generally curious, what stood out that made you want to actually connect with me, as we kind of talked about earlier. Because with Elidable, you are limited in the request that you can send every month. So why did you want to waste one of those credits on me? You know, and then their response was, Well, I thought maybe you know, we uh we serve the same people, so let's have a meeting. And I'm like, No, sorry.

Duarne 34:21

Or my favorite there is too when they say, Oh, look, you know, I just wanted to catch up and see if we can refer business to each other. Because that's what they're told to do in networking, and it's like, what? No, I don't know you, I can't refer business to you until I even know who you are. Well, that's what the 20-minute call is, some might argue. And it's like, but how do I know we're aligned? And my my favorite is when people do introductions. Hey, you guys are in the same industry, you guys are probably gonna get along really well, and it's like, okay, that's like getting two hot dog vendors and putting them on the same street corner and saying, you guys are gonna have a great time. Everybody here eats hot dogs.

Dave 35:03

And and what's what's and I get the platform, the platform wants to build relationships. I get it. So they they encourage you to, you know, hey, John could be connected with Jane because they both serve similar customers. Why don't you make an introduction? And John wants to connect with people like Jane. Now, my feedback to you is if you want to be known as a connector and not just somebody who clicks buttons, you cannot click that button to connect Jane and John and then just take the message it gives you and send it. Like I hate those, and 99% of the people that I get connected with are doing it that just that way. And I uh it almost it's like nails on a chalkboard sometimes to me when it comes to that. And so my my initial message was hey, great to connect with Jane, uh John, but why did you think Jane and I should be connected? Like, what do you what was the important factor that you thought that would make Jane and I a good connection? And 99% of the time, again, they don't respond because they were just clicking buttons. That's not how you make an impression, that's not how you become memorable. You know, I have it tattooed on my arm, be memorable. You know, it it's you know an actual motto. You don't become memorable by just clicking buttons, you become memorable by adding value, right? By continuing conversations, by being an actual connector because you're listening to people, and then when they say something, you find it them and actually connect with them and then personalize that connection. Yeah, not oh, I clicked the button to connect Jayne and John. I hope they remember me the next time that they want to connect with somebody or they want to refer somebody because I'm awesome. You didn't even take time, you took three seconds to click two buttons to connect me. I'm sorry.

Duarne 36:48

And the other one is when you actually do take those meetings and then they sit there in the middle of the meeting, go, oh, I know someone who does something similar to you. Let me connect them, and they're doing the connection in the meeting. It's like, well, hold on, how are they gonna be of value? We're doing the same thing, right? Like, you know, I'm not gonna they're we're fishing in the same pond.

Research Without Bad Assumptions

Dave 37:05

And don't get me wrong, like there is there are benefits, and I'm sure you would agree too, there are benefits of having people in your peer group, you know, in your in your network, but why don't you say, would you would you like to be connected to this person I'm thinking about? Is there a value? It's value. Like what if I already have five people in my network and I don't want to add anybody else? Why would you waste your time and my time that and that person thinking that I'm gonna be connected with them, and then I look like an asshole because I don't respond because I don't need to, because I got other stuff going on. Like lead from would you be opposed to me connecting you with X, Y, and Z? Or would you be opposed if I made a suggestion here? Or can I make a suggestion here? Right? No, don't just give your suggestions, and that's where now you can start being seen. You know, you're still letting them have control of the conversation, and now you're being memorable, you're being that person that is truly a genuine connection and piece of their network.

Duarne 38:10

So it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, because it's like it's every time I get on a website call, I'm always a little bit cautious about, you know, I don't criticize the current website. Much like if you're on a business call, you don't criticize the business that built, right? And this is one of the common things that happen. And what tends to happen is if you jump into that critiquing or making suggestions, unsolicited suggestions initially, what tends to happen without asking enough questions? Oh, my brother built that website. Oh, sorry. Oh, it's right, I don't like it anyway.

Dave 38:47

Oh, okay.

Duarne 38:48

I didn't see this stuff, or it's like, yeah, I didn't have a lot of budget back then, so you were doing me a favor. All right. Well, you're stomping it for you.

Dave 38:56

Or my my brother who passed away, this is one of the last things he did for me, and now you just destroyed it. Like exactly how horrible it is. Well, yeah, because he's been passed away for three years and he hasn't been able to keep up with it.

Duarne 39:07

Yeah, like of course, like exactly. But I mean, this is and this is what jumping in and making assumptions in a these calls can do, right? I mean, you and this is what this is what used to bug me a lot with a lot of business coaches when I'd get on calls with them. And you've got to remember when I was on calls with these guys, I'm talking about a software platform that's what I was representing at the time, right? A marketing platform be savvy.

Dave 39:32

So you and so exactly.

Duarne 39:35

I didn't go into a lot of detail about what we did or what the software could do for them until I got a bit of an idea about them, and then if they asked, I'd tell them, which was cool, and I'd tailor it to suit. But the amount of times I'd get told, like, you know, we're gonna fix your business, we're gonna 10x your you know, your cash flow. And it's like, didn't ask for any of that. That's very confident of you. But did you ever stop to think that maybe somebody's already done it, put a lot of work into their business? They've actually they've done pretty good to get where they are. Let's take a moment to recognize that and just look where we can make small improvements rather than trying to cut the whole tree down and then plan a new one, which is what a lot of them tend to try and go out and do. And I think it comes down to their training that they were given, and a lot of them were using programs that they were trained on. And I've but I see this with a lot of business communication as well, where they come in and they just start making assumptions, and it's like, oh, you want to reach these businesses, right? And and I've had it, I used to do it with websites. I'd go to their website, make an assumption about what they want to do based on the website, and then get told, actually, you know what, that works hasn't been touched for nine years, so out of date. We don't even do all that. We've got a different logo. Like, do you tell me about what you're doing? What are we doing now? Yes, this is what we actually want to do, and this is how we want to do it. And this is okay, and these are the what sort of customers do you you know, do you want to reach out to? Oh, these ones, okay, cool. It's a different conversation and it's a more engaging.

Dave 41:05

And and you should definitely do the research, right? So, like, look at their website, do that research, but then don't like try and come in, and so it's really hard, and you got to get used to this, to not try and come in and prove how smart you are or how much information you can give them in a conversation. And I speak from experience here because that's what I thought I had to do, because that's what when you especially when you're coming from a corporate world where when you do an interview, your goal is to just sell yourself, right? Because you're trying to show your expertise, say how you can fill the role, and say what you're gonna do to help them. When you're in business and you're having prospect calls, it is completely opposite. You know, you have to focus on them. What are their pains? What are their obstacles? What are their goals? What is their dream state? They have to say all of that before you ever have the conversation about what you are gonna do for them to help them get that and achieve that. And it's a complete mindset shift that you have to do when you come from corporate and go into your into your own business because you're so used to that of explaining, like, oh my god, I did this, I've done this, you know, if this at this place, this is what I was in charge of. This is the the team that I had, here's all my responsibilities, here's how I advanced. Like it's a mindset shift. And I've speaking back to the experience from earlier this week, this was that this is that person. He's he's in this mode right now. Every time I hear him talk to somebody, every time I hear him present, it's always about I did X, Y, and Z. This is what I've done, this is my experience, this is what I've built. Nobody cares about that. They care about yeah, they care about what are you gonna help me solve? How am I gonna get to the dream outcome of either save time, right? Save stress and be convenient. And if you can't solve those, and you can't help them see that you're gonna be able to solve those for them, and understand what their specific situation is, you're wasting everybody's time.

Duarne 43:12

And you're not getting-you've just disqualified yourself from that for for them, they've just disqualified you from being suitable for them. And this is this is the other thing you really have to remember. Treat it like a conversation, but always understand that it's kind of a tryout as well. It's like that first date. You're both seeing if you like each other, you're both seeing is this going to be compatible? Is there enough here that this is gonna work? And once you go through that process, you start to realize that you could disqualify yourself very quickly from saying the wrong things or not being suitable, and you could also disqualify them from not being suitable to work with you, and that's not a bad thing. That's what that first call is about. It's about figuring out whether you're gonna qualify you're qualifying each other. And some people get really upset that they get disqualified at that point. But like I had one client just recently, was a referral, and they said to me, Oh, this guy wants a website, he wants it all this stuff, blah, blah, blah. They're not happy with their current guys. Cool, no worries. Reached out to them and asked them if we could give a meeting, just have a conversation about what they're looking for. I get a real email response saying, Send through your proposal to this person, they're evaluating who we're considering to talk to. And I said, Cool, no worries. This is a bit about what we do, but don't consider us if you don't have a if we don't have a preliminary conversation about what you want to do. We'll we'll, you know, we're not gonna be a consideration for you. You need to, you know, we need that first conversation to make sure you're qualified to work with us. Right. And at that point, they're like, Oh, well, that's not how we're gonna work. We're going, this is what we know what we want, and we're going to go through this process. Great. Well, I wish you well. Reach out if you need any help down the track. I pulled out of it, contacted the referral and said, Hey, this is what happened there. Oh, that was a bit strange. Wonder why they did that. All good. Thanks for telling me. Right. And that's not a bad thing. It's just, it's an it's I saved myself a ton of time. I could have said it sat there and tried to create a proposal based on something I thought they wanted and wasted everyone's time, including my own. But instead, I disqualified them early. And you've got to be willing to do that. So these, you know, when I say 90% success rate, I count those. You know, I count those in my 10% success and 90% not successful because they're still first contacts, there's still conversations that could have gone somewhere, but I chose not to continue that conversation at that point. You've got to get to that level where you're willing to walk away from these unqualified leads. And it's really hard to do when you're coming at business from a desperation level and you're trying to take everything you can get. And we've all been there.

Price Shoppers And Refusing To Quote

Dave 46:09

But we that's when you're sometimes you're going to be forced in that situation, right? So it's, you know, maybe you lost a job and you decided that you're going to go into business for the first time. But you still have to lose that mindset of, oh my God, I have to close everybody. And there's so much pressure. And so what I've seen, and and and I guess like even looking back on my experience, you know, knowing that I was in this situation, right? I I lost my job from corporate, went to, you know, instead of, you know, while searching for other jobs, realizing that it was probably better for me, you know, from a push of my long-term client to say, hey, go full-time because I was doing it part-time, realizing that my mistake was I did have that desperation feeling. I did like, oh my God, I got to close the sale, like this next person that books, like they have to be it. And I came from it from trying to push too hard by having that desperation. I I needed it, right? Because we all have, we all, we all need money, we all need, you know, whatever to live. But you also have to be willing to like lose everything as an entrepreneur in order to like really be successful. Like you have to have that, you're always on the brisk brink of failure. Like one month you could be, you know, living in a in a mansion, and the next month you're, you know, you're at rock bottom. And it's a struggle that a lot of people don't understand. And it's a risk that a lot of people don't understand either. And so once I've lost that pressure, it made it so much easier. So once I went through this training for sales with Jeremy Minor and realized that like I don't have to do all the talking, that's when it began to kind of break free and everything trajectory-wise just has continued to be upwards. And one, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, which is another thing, but we can talk about that in another episode. You know, this is kind of on the sales conversation with the prospecting. And so I wanted to hit something that you mentioned as well there. And if somebody comes at you and says, Well, just tell me what you cost, or tell me what it's going to cost me, don't ever give them a price. Because of the fact that for people like that, most of them are just tire kickers. And a lot of them aren't generally actually interested in solving a problem. Like, you know, Dwarf, if you came to me and be like, Dave, what does it cost to work with you? Well, it it's expensive, you know, maybe probably more than you paid ever before, you know, in your business. However, I'd love to kind of understand your situation to be able to kind of point you in the right direction because what I may be initially thinking that you might need might not even be aligned with where you're heading. So let's, if you want, we can continue with the conversation, and then at the end of it, you can decide what's an appropriate next step for you. Would you like to continue? And some people are gonna say no, right? Tell me what it costs, and then some people are gonna be like, Yeah, yeah, sure, I get it. I understand. Thank you.

Niche Down To Earn Expert Rates

Duarne 49:33

They just disqualify themselves or they qualify themselves at that point, right? Which is part of your process, it's like putting on that form on your website and asking them the questions before they book the meeting. And this is where I think a lot of people get caught up in, oh, that's a lost lead. No, that's somebody who wasn't qualified to work with you in the first place, they weren't qualified to have you this use your service. We're not talking about somebody who's just going through the phone book or Google Business Listings, calling the next plumber trying to get an unblocked toilet or something, and they're just gonna take the first person who gives them a price that they've got in their head or close to and able to do it in the time frame they want. You know, they've got a problem they're trying to solve very desperately, very quickly, and they're gonna take the first person that gives them something close to what they want, right? Which but if you're gonna get a house with a you're gonna build a house, you're gonna take a lot more time, you're gonna plan that a bit better. If you're gonna do a kitchen refit, or you're gonna do a roof replacement, or you're gonna do a bathroom fit out, you're not gonna go just through the book and just take the first person, you're gonna vet them, you're gonna qualify them. So you're gonna take your time. So I think that's where you've got to realize too, is in your business, what sort of customers are you trying to service and which ones are they? Because they're gonna be a little bit different. But the grand scheme, if you're doing the outreach, you have to be willing to qualify and disqualify based on what you know your ideal customer is. Right.

Dave 51:00

Well, that that's a piece right there. No, so many people don't even have an ICP generator, they don't even know. They say, Well, I'm serving business owners, I serve everybody. No, you don't. Yeah, no, you don't. Stop that shit. Because if you say I service everybody, you're a dime a dozen. Everybody tries to say that they service everybody. Stop that. Really niche down, and that's when you're gonna become valuable. That's when you're gonna be able to, it makes your messaging so much easier, it makes your outreach so much easier, your prospecting so much easier, uh, because you're you're you're directed and you know exactly who you need to be working with. Now, again, it doesn't mean that you're not gonna find some people that are, you know, like correlation to your ideal client. That's fine. You can make the decision if you want to work with them or not. But ideally, you need to pick two or three four, maybe at max when you're getting started. Uh main service ICPs, industries, whatever, if you're direct to click client or you know, customer or your B2B, right? B2C or B2B, you have to decide where you're at and pick maybe three to five max ICPs that you service, and that's it. Don't say I service everybody, narrow it down. We service X, Y, and Z, and that's it. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, then I'm not part of that. And in your qualifying questions, you know, are you in X, Y, and Z industry? Or tell us the industry. And if it's another, oh, great. Sorry, we don't work with clients in this industry right now. We're focusing 100% of our attention on these five. And what that also does is for the somebody that is in those industries, they feel more special because they know that your attention isn't going elsewhere. You now have the expertise of saying we specifically design websites for the remodeling industry for the kitchen industry. And if that's all you're doing, you're gonna know in that industry what works and what's not working. Instead of saying, well, we just design anybody's website. Well, what works in the remodeling industry isn't working in the bookkeeping industry. And if that's where you're you're splitting your time, you're not gonna be that expert. So why would they pay you an expert rate? So many people want to say I service everybody, but then expect an expert rate. No, you're the you're the general laborer rate. I'm sorry. Like, so if you want an expert rate, you have to start niching down. If you want a general labor rate, sure, service everybody.

Duarne 53:28

It's an interesting point you make there. So from a website point of view, we actually do service pretty much anyone for websites. But we found our value add was actually this. We provide the content writing and the direction of your marketing to hit your ICP for you. Once we did that shift, everything changed. We could charge higher rates because we weren't competing on just building a website, we weren't just making pretty websites, we're making impactful websites with the correct wording, with the messaging that they wanted, and targeting the customers they were trying to talk to. And when we had that conversation and we're talking about, did you realize that most of your competitors' websites are not targeted towards their customers? Bring up a competitor website, let's have a look. And we bring it up on a call and we talk to them through it and go, so this messaging, what does that mean to you? I don't know. Exactly, it makes no sense. It was just some fancy wording that someone put on there that didn't make any sense. You're a builder and you're talking about dreams and skies. Great work, horizons, yep, great. What's that got to do with anything? And they're like, Yeah, okay, I see what you mean. And then we throw at them some NEPQ questioning techniques, which is what I like to use on a lot of my content writing. And suddenly it's like, oh wow, yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, those are the sort of questions we're getting asked a lot, actually. I don't have to be an expert in every field at that point. I have to, I'm an expert in marketing their product and business through their website to their customer base. And that was my shift in direction and value add that really made a big difference. And this is where it doesn't have to be the most obvious thing for you. And and ironically, writing the content was our biggest pain point for customers before, because customers would hold up projects for such extended periods of time while we waited for them to write the content, which used to be the standard. When we said we're going to include that, no extra charge. Oh, really? Oh, great. We just built it into the pricing. And suddenly clients started getting us to build their sites and get us writing all the content, and they were signing off going, This is amazing. Like I got one just the other day, and they went to it, it was a bridal website. They went to a wedding wedding expo. We met the deadline within three days of the deadline, delivered with all the final changes. And I checked in with her on the next Monday after the expo, and I said, How was the uh expo? So good. Everyone loved the website. We actually got some bookings off the website already. Right. Wow, perfect, great. You know, and she didn't have any content.

Dave 56:10

We provided a niche, right? You know, that's hundreds of a niche because you're doing something that nobody else in your industry does right now. Absolutely.

Duarne 56:18

And that's think outside the box with you, niche. It doesn't have to be targeting a specific model or product, it may be a value proposition that you already offer and you just bundle in. So, you know, it could be something as simple as that. Like if you're a solar installer, it could be as simple as you have an architect that avail available to help some or an engineer to sign off on well, and this project, and maybe this is something that we can like include like maybe next week in a conversation.

CAC Beats Cheap Leads Every Time

Dave 56:51

And this is the the idea of how do you create your offer as well. So not only do you niche, but how do you actually create that offer and the levels of that offer to make it a home run where you can charge more? Right. And so we'll talk about that. That's a good kind of topic for next week, because I know we're already almost at an hour, and I don't want to dive into another topic without because we can go forever. But I do want to hit on one other thing that you mentioned, and this is for something that's really important. You you mentioned earlier, like leads and your cost of lead falling off, and you're just like, oh man, that lead fell off. If you're running ads, the you're not worried about what is your your cost per click or cost per lead per se. That's not the number that matters. The number that truly matters is what is your cost of acquisition for clients. Yeah. Because anybody can say, well, I'm going to get you a dollar cost per lead or 50 cents per lead. But if those leads suck ass and 99% of them are wasteful, why who cares? I even if they're charging you, you know, maybe okay, maybe a penny might be worth it. But you know, if they're charging you a dollar, you're wasting 99 for every good dollar. So it's still costing you a hundred dollars per good lead. Like that's what matters, right? And then of those good leads, let's say you, okay, let's use this as an example. They can get you a dollar per lead. 95% of them suck. Okay, so you you're for those five uh good leads, you're still spending a hundred dollars, right? So your cost per good lead is still twenty dollars, right? And you spent a hundred. Now, of those five, let's assume that you only close one. So your cost per client is now a hundred. That's the number that really matters, is what is it costing you in your marketing and your spend to get a new client? Because that's where you begin to make money. I don't care what I'm paying per lead. I care what am I paying per good lead that then turns into a client and what are my client numbers? So if it's if I can get if they can tell me, and this is where they won't, nobody will ever promise you what your cost per client acquisition is because it's out of their control. Nobody will ever make a guarantee based on cost of acquisition or CAC cost because they can't control that unless they're doing the entire process for you. Yes, and even then, they still won't because they nobody can guarantee that. No, no, guarantee. They can't guarantee the front end of oh, I'll just get you a dollar per acquisition or two dollars per acquisition, or we'll reduce your your lead costs by 50%. Great, that doesn't mean shit to me. That just means you could just be filling my pipeline with worse qualified leads to increase the number of leads and still spend the same amount of money, which brings down my cost per lead. Like you're not doing me anything that's impactful.

Duarne 59:38

No, I I told a client just the other week, he asked me to sit in on a meeting with a lead generator out of California. And the lead gener and he's this lead generator is there, oh, you know, we we've been doing this for you know six months with this industry. We got some great experience here with some US-based clients in the same industry as you. Great, cool. So my question to you is how many leads do I have to, you know, I do I have like uh to pay for from you to before you guarantee I'll get an actual sale from this? Oh, there's we can't guarantee that. I said, okay, so let's say, for example, I pay for 10 leads in a month. Of those, how many of those leads do you expect I'd be able to close? Or we don't no, no, we just you got it wrong. We're we're just qualifying them and then sending you those calendar appointments so you can reach out and talk to them. Okay, but let me ask you a question again. If we're reaching out to them, how qu what how qualified are they? Well, they are in your location and they've got the business and they've got the income that you said you want. And I said, Okay, so it's really primitive level, and no one's actually spoken to them yet, no one's actually found out if they're warm, if they're looking. Oh no, well, it's well, no, that's really hard. I mean, that you know, we can't do that. That's your job to do that. Okay, so if we do is that so let's say, for example, you send me 10 leads and we have 10 meetings and nothing happens. Are you gonna throw me an extra couple of leads and you know to try and sweeten the deal and hope I get an extra, I get a sale out of one of those? No, no, you have to pay per lead. There's no act, you know. I said, So the there's no way of knowing what the return on investment is. And he goes, Oh, well, let's let's let's look at it this way. If you were able to get one closed out of 10 leads, I mean that's a really good return on investment. I said, Okay, he goes, but these sales could take six months, right? He goes, Well, yeah, but that's okay because you've got them on your you could close a deal in six months from now. So we can't really measure that. I'm like, I said to my client, but I said, I don't think this is the right fit for you, but it's up to you if you want to go ahead any further than this. Right. I said, but no one, and this is where like the initial conversation with the client was all these wonderful guarantees. And I got this phrase that I use like, I mean, anyone in the lead generation industry, if they can if you find the unicorn that can give you guaranteed leads, fantastic. I've never heard of it, and I've been in marketing for a long time, and I know people are gonna come out and say, it exists, we do it all the time, we get great leads. You probably do, but you're qualifying them a lot better. You've got a qualified process, you've got a qualifying process, a funnel for that. It's not just go and pick them off a tree and then send me a send them out an email and say, Hey, can you get a meeting? Can we take a meeting? Want to introduce it?

Lead Gen Models And Hiring Hunger

Dave 1:02:39

Yeah, and you get a point. There are two different types that you're gonna be presented with if you if you're searching it. One is gonna be what you just said. They're just basically scraping people's information, they have the data, and then they're gonna match it to what you're ideally looking for, and then just sending to you, and then charge you by having the data and giving their information, where again, they haven't done any sort of qualifying, which we talked about earlier on in this conversation, how important it is to qualify. That's a waste of money because a lot of that time is gonna be wasting you trying to follow up doing all this stuff. Now, if there are other services out there that will do a lot of that front-end work for you, what one of two ways. One, either they do the outreach on your behalf, and then once they qualify them and they are warm, then they put it on your calendar and then they charge you at that point. That's a time-saving service, as well as you know that those people are now warm. They generated interest. The second way of that is they were actually running generic ads to say if you're in the market for X, Y, and Z, like this is why you need to reach out and fill out this form, and we're gonna get you, you know, somebody in touch with you.

Duarne 1:03:47

A matching service.

Dave 1:03:48

That, yeah, right. And so essentially then what happens then is then the lead comes in, they've submitted the form, and then they forward it to you and say, hey, here's this person, right? They just responded to an ad or something like that. Now, first way, great, it's one-to-one, right? They're they're contracted with you. Hopefully, that person is only booked on your calendar. The second one, when it comes into the advertising, most of those people are sending that lead to multiple agencies. So you have to be careful. Like, am I the only one getting this lead, or are you sending this to multiple? And then now that person's getting outreached by five different sources, and now they're overwhelmed. And now by the time I, you know, we reach out to them, they're like, Yeah, what the hell's going on? I responded to one form, and now I have seven people reaching out to me. Like, no, I didn't it it's it's a turnoff sometimes when it goes that route as well. So you really have to understand what's important, and that's why it's internal, like it does make sense to bring something internally where it's one-to-one, and whether it's a commission-based in your business, uh anything, you can start building that. You can find people that work on commission, whether it's just part-time or not. You know, hey, if you have a good program, offer somebody commission and say, I'll give you a program where you get X, Y, and Z. If it's per month, you get X percentage per month for the first six months, and the second six months you get a smaller percentage. And then maybe give them a small residual if they resign. Like think, think insurance people. That's how they get all of their money for working for insurance companies. It's all commission-based. They have a good program, they have to sell it. That's what your salespeople are. You can bring an internal salesperson in without having to pay all these lead generation services for their data, which is essentially what you're what you're doing.

Duarne 1:05:32

And what you'll probably find is a part-time salesperson working on minimum wage with community with a commission is gonna be hungrier, they're gonna understand your business offerings better, and they're gonna be able to get out there, and they're gonna, and you're probably gonna be cheaper than hiring a lead generation service anyway. And overall, yeah. Yeah, I mean, typically that's what I typically see happens. They like I've also seen this where new businesses have gotten together and spent five grand over the a month over the first three months, and that's a huge chunk of their marketing budget just gone in one go, and then at the end of it go, Well, we've got nothing left because that didn't work. We trusted the own marketing company to go and do, and it's like, well, that wasn't a marketing company, that was a lead generation company.

Dave 1:06:16

And now they've got I'm having a client, I'm in that conversation struggle right now with with a new client over here because they've spent they they've invested like in three different experts, said, Oh, we're gonna grow your your first it was your TikTok shop, then it was your your Shopify sales and all this stuff, and we're gonna grow it by 100%, you know, and then they bought into it and they said that there was a guarantee, but by like the first 30 days realized that it wasn't gonna happen, and now they're fighting to get the money back. And that's the other thing is that you literally a lot of these places will say pay a hundred percent up front, and then we'll guarantee I'll give it back to you if we don't, if it doesn't work. So all these things that say we're gonna give you 10 to 15 great clients, or you don't pay. Oh, you paying, they'll just give it back to you if it doesn't happen, and then they fight you tooth and nail to get it back, to give it back to you, because they say, Oh, well, you didn't do this or you didn't do that.

Duarne 1:07:16

Okay, and then other than there's always prerequisites like sorry, 80% of the cost went to actually paying for ads, so we can't give you that back to the back.

Dave 1:07:25

We can give you that back, sorry. Yep, and so it's really you have to you have to really find out all your information when you look in they're all over Facebook or whatever right now, or on YouTube if you're watching business stuff, they're always outreaching you, they're always, you know, if you're on these LinkedIn and alignable platforms, they're always reaching out to you.

Duarne 1:07:44

And it seems like the easy thing to do. My biggest advice to any business owner. Is I guarantee you'll do a better job trying to get yourself a new lead by just picking up the phone and ringing 10 businesses a week yourself. Over a period of a month, you only if you get one sale out of that and you're offering a service of significant value or a monthly recurring revenue, it's still one more sale than you would have got prior to doing that. And 10 calls, you could probably achieve that in under an hour if you put the effort in. Because you're gonna pre- you have it pre-qualified. If it becomes a call that takes a little bit more time, then hey, look, do you mind if we schedule this in? I've got some time over here, we can have a proper conversation, then get back into your mindset of prospecting again. You don't have to that first call's not about trying to get them and sell them on the call, it's about getting their details and committing to that next call. Unless you feel like they're really hot and you want to close it right there, then go ahead and do it. But at the end of the day, do those calls yourself.

Dave 1:08:48

A one call typically the if if you think of the long-term investment is small on a one-call sale. Most busy B2B and a lot of B2C, especially if you're in a new, are going to require two or three touch points, two or three meetings. A one-call sale is something where maybe you have like you and I, you know, in terms of your initial software, which is a white label, go ahead level, right? That's a one-call sale. The monthly investment's really small. Hey, do you want to, you know, we're on the call? Is it something you want to try out? Great. I'll get you signed up. It's free. You get 14 days. After that, you decide if you want to keep going. That's a one-call sale. The software platforms, right, that I'm doing the cash flow software or the intelligence software. Those are one-call sales because it's essentially we're doing a demo. Do you think that this is something you would you might benefit from? Great. Here I'll give you, you know, you get your free demo, and then after that, you can decide if you want to continue on or not. You don't need multiple calls for something like that. For things that are multiple calls, those are things where maybe you're you're asking four, five, seven, a thousand dollars, two thousand dollars a month. That's when you expect to have multiple calls because the first call is all about them, all about their problems, all about what their dream state is, all about everything. Only at the end of that conversation should you say, well, based on what I'm hearing, it might be beneficial if we schedule a deeper session where we can dive a little bit more into those, dive into a little bit more of your process, where you want to be, and then at the end of that, if it's appropriate, I can kind of give you an overview of what we would suggest as a solution. Does that work for you? One, they're even gonna say, no, can you just kind of give me an overview now? Great. They've kind of made it a one-call solution call. Or they're gonna say, yo, that's great. Like, let's look at our calendars right now, let's schedule it and do it within the next 48 hours. Like, hey, I got slammed, but I have time here and here between meetings, I can slide you in. And then now it's a two-call, you dive a little bit deeper, and at the end of that call, again, it's still leading them. You're still doing the same sort of process. You're asking all these questions, you're doing all this stuff in me. And then only at the end, that's 10% of the call, that's when you say, Can I make a suggestion of what I think might work for you? And use that might work, possibly. Those non-committal keeps that sales resistance down, which is very important. And I and I know we're we're at an hour and ten, and I don't want to like butt.

Duarne 1:11:23

So we'll finish up on that, I reckon. But yeah, I think just take the time, and you know, sometimes you might find that one, even if it's just once a week, one once a month, you make 10 phone calls. Find one day that you just make those phone calls, just start, see what happens, and you're gonna get rejections. That's fine.

Dave 1:11:45

Do ten uh if you're just getting started, you haven't done it, do 10 a week right now, just to get started. Ideally, I say this to everybody, I've said it before. If you are not where you want to be client-wise, you need to have at least two hours every day, six days a week, dedicated towards outreach. Something doing outreach every single day. But if you're like, man, that's way too much, I can't do that. Fine, start with 10 calls this week. I challenge you by the time we have the next uh session that you do 10 calls. And if you don't do that, then maybe you have to analyze why you're so resistant to it. And if you're really resistant because you're just uncomfortable with it, maybe you're not in the right business and you probably need to have a famir moment and figure out is this right for you being in business? Because being in business is gonna require you to do a lot of things that you're not comfortable with. And if just reaching out to try to solve somebody's problem is something that puts you outside your comfort zone that you don't want to solve, this is not your right solution. It's not easy street being a business owner. So it's gonna take a lot of of those internal mirror moments to realize what is your right path. And I I hate to be the person that uh has to say it straight like that, but it's true. Like and I'll I and it I'm your I'm your I'm a person right now. I'm gonna tell you right now, if you aren't gonna do 10 calls this week, be and and then you're gonna complain the next time we see, or you're gonna say, uh man, I need more money, or I need to pay the bills, or I don't have enough clients, and yet you can't make 10 calls in a week, you're not you're not made for business. You can't if you can't even make 10 calls a day and you're not where you want to be client-wise, and you can't find time in your day right now when you don't have when you aren't servicing your clients at capacity to find the time to call 10 people in your local network to add value, you're not made for business.

Duarne 1:13:49

And when we say 10, well, we're talking 10 people, 10 calls, etc. And when you say capacity, we're talking about people who actually really want to bring on more customers. Not I'm happy and content where I'm at because I'm servicing enough customers. We're talking about if you need more customers to stay open, keep the doors open, the desperation of staying open and just keeping running what your dream is, your business. You need to be on the phone, you need to be calling, you need to be doing email outreach, you need to be door knocking. That's right, you need to be out there in the community. If you need to get out of the office for a minute, and let's say you're gonna go down and grab a bite to eat, right? Go for a walk, five minutes in either direction of wherever you're going, knock on some doors, introduce yourself, have some business cards, some flyers. You know, you never know what's gonna happen. Like take an opportunity for that.

Dave 1:14:37

Yeah, if if you're gonna complain that uh I'm not, I don't have enough clients, I don't have enough money, I need to make more, and you're not servicing client, and you don't have and you're not at capacity servicing clients, that's what we're talking about. Exactly. Now, if you're servicing clients and maybe you still want to grow, but you truly are servicing a lot of clients, now it's a totally different issue. Now it becomes what's your processes, how do you become more efficient?

Duarne 1:15:06

What images are you doing? Maybe it's time to bring on a team, right?

Dave 1:15:08

And so there are two different scenarios. The person that we're talking about, like if you can't do 10 calls a day, maybe business isn't right for you. It's that person that is not where they want to be MRR-wise, monthly recurring revenue-wise. They're not where they want to be client servicing wise. What are you doing with your day then? I can guarantee I look at your day. If that's you, I can I can look at your day and I can find you the hour that's gonna take you to call 10 people. And I can guarantee you're wasting at least four hours every single day if you're not searching.

Duarne 1:15:38

Scrolling Facebook news feeds and shit like that ain't gonna get you a client. You don't have to say uh looking on groups and classifieds and trying to look for business, right? Yeah, okay. You might get one or two, but that's not gonna get you business in the in the long run.

Takeaways And Closing]

Dave 1:15:52

You need a better approach approach to better approach, and that approach is daily outreach to your start locally and go from there. But we can go forever on that one too. So next week, stay tuned, Dwarne. Thank you for being here, brother. If you made it this far, we'd love you. Give us a thumbs up, give us a like, subscribe, do all that fun algorithmy stuff, share it with your network. And then if you have questions, as always, drop it down below. We appreciate you being here. We love you. With that, Dwarne, what's your takeaway from today's conversation?

Duarne 1:16:20

My takeaway is just yeah, just don't be afraid of shying away from a conversation. Every conversation is an opportunity, and stop treating like first meetings, first sales and meet conversation, uh, sales calls and stuff as anything less than a conversation. Just hone your conversation skills, get more familiar with your product, and conversation will come naturally.

Dave 1:16:45

Yep. And I think the piggyback on that, right? Framework, make sure you have a framework and qualify your conversations. Protect your calendar, or your calendar is going to control you, and you're gonna be like, where did my week go? And I think for me, my takeaway for you all would be you have to focus on your client's problem, the pains, the struggles, the obstacles. That's it. Your messaging, your copy, anything. Every once in a while you can throw in your CTA, your offer, anything like that. But 90% of your messaging, your conversation is on them. If you're doing way more of the talking, if you're talking about your accolades and your experience in the first or even the second call, you're you're talking too much about things that don't matter to them. You have to focus on them. That's my that's your takeaway from today. And then your challenge this week, 10 calls a day if you're not where you want to be client-wise. If you can't do that, the next step is then analyzing am I doing the right thing? Am I in the right business? And then from there, decide your next step. But if you are where you are, as we just kind of mentioned too, and you and you have a number of clients and you still want to grow, now it becomes a different evaluation in terms of what are my processes, where am I efficient, what do I need to do?

Duarne 1:18:05

Processes, automation, staffing, all those wonderful things that come with.

Dave 1:18:08

Which is growth. Maybe we can hit on it next week. Yeah, we we might be able to hit on it next week, or we can have a topic for for the following week, right? So definitely stay tuned. Like next week, I think offers is going to be a good conversation, and then we can talk about processes and everything else. But we appreciate you. We love you. Hope you all have a wonderful and amazing week. Again, we go live every single Friday morning between 8 15 and 8 30, unless we have some technical difficulties like we had today. But with that, you live, you learn, you move, and you continue to grow. So, guys, have a wonderful and amazing week, and we'll see you. We'll see you in the next one. Have a good one. See you guys. Bye.