Episode 19 Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Why spend the time, the energy and money putting the quote out there in the first place if you’re not actually going to invest the time to follow it up to get to the point of a conversion. Hi everyone, Rob Kropp and welcome back to another episode of The Trade Den podcast. How are you Dan?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I’m good, Rob. The weather’s getting colder, but things are certainly heating up in our world, which is good to see. Very busy time, very productive time. Looking forward to today.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Part three of three around this little theme that we’ve done around sales, super important topics that we’ve done over the last couple episodes, really timely in terms of not only about timely, about what’s going on in the marketplace at the moment around challenging times around marketplaces. Definitely getting a little bit tight at the moment, but putting that aside, these conversations that we’ve had over the last couple of weeks, these are just good fundamental topics around sales pipeline, the sales bullseye, getting your foot in the door with new customers. Today we’re going to be talking about the power of follow-up, but gee, haven’t they been some just good fundamental sales training and sales skills that every business owner, owner has to learn and master over time Don’t they?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
They do, and it’s interesting when you do peel it back to fundamentals, all the shiny tricks, the marketing spiels. So much of what we’ve bombarded with online these days is all around how to sell, how to get customers, how to bring money through the door. When you really boil it down, you look at the fundamentals, all of the pressure and all of the options all seem to fade away into that couple of key points that hopefully we got across well last time in terms of how do you fill a pipeline and how do you go about just taking steps forward consistently?
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, and what I also love about fundamentals is that the businesses that hurt the most in challenging times do not have great foundations. And it’s good solid rock solid foundations that a business owner can leverage off is what makes them successful regardless of what marketplace they’re in, what’s happening in the economy, regardless of what’s happening out there, the better your foundations that you’ve got in business and the better that skill sets that you have a business owner enables you to thrive regardless of what’s going on out there in the marketplace. And that’s why this topic is so important.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It is. And I think having that idea, what we’ve talked about a lot over these last couple of episodes is that idea of being exposed. And what we’re starting to see is people who have been exposed with poor foundations, people that are being exposed after either becoming too complacent, becoming a little bit lazy in terms of what they’ve done or just riding the wave of what we’ve called a really buoyant economy today.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And it leads us into today. And what we’re going to be talking about is a really good follow-up system and one of the biggest mistakes that we see a lot with pretty much, I dare say every business owner that we come up against is it’s very rare that a business owner, unless they’ve come from a real sales background, but most businesses that we deal with anyway, sales is something they’ve got to learn to love and learn to embrace, become a sales led organisation. And one of the biggest holes in their sales buckets is their ability to follow up well. And they’re very good at generating leads, sitting down, spending hours and time and money and resources, getting that quote out the door, and then the demands of more quotes landing on their desk and their customers going, when are we going to get this quote? When am I going to get this quote? They often leave this massive trail of destruction behind them where they’ve got all these open loops and open quotes that are unconverted and they wonder why is it they’re not maximising the revenue for the quoting that they’re doing? It’s because they don’t follow up well. And it’s a massive hole in so many businesses, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
It is. It’s one of the things as a coach, it’s one of the questions that we inevitably get to when someone has a pipeline challenge. I’ve put a lot of quotes out the door, and if you are listening and this is you, please listen Well, but we hear it all the time. I’ve got a lot of quotes out there, I’ve been quoted my head off, I’ve been really driving business development. I’m working really hard at it, but it’s just not paying off at the moment. And we have to ask this question. We always get to this and it’s probably the scariest question I think as a business coach, I have to ask is how many quotes have you got out there? What have you actually got sitting out in the market? And we hear these things all the time, and I can remember a story of someone that I was coaching, Liam, it was, and Liam had this sort of situation.
(05:02):
It was tight in the market, in his market in particular. He’d been quoting a lot, he just couldn’t win work. And I ended up having this conversation. It was like, all right, you’ve done step one, you’ve done step two, deep breath, can you tell me how many quotes you think you’ve got outstanding? And the answer came back around 200 and I was like, big gulp. And I’m like, okay, so what’s the value of those quotes? About $2 million. Okay, bigger gulp. So how do you do your follow up is the question. And that’s where we throw it out there and that’s where you get that response back. And with Liam, it was basically crickets. Oh, don’t follow up, I just go on to the next one and keep quoting. So that was, it’s shocking how many people are in that position where they do all that work.
(05:46):
Like you said, the amount of time and effort that goes into putting a quote together, especially if you’re on big B2B jobs and huge projects, the time that you’re investing into these quotes and tenders and this whole sales process is huge only to let yourself down by not having a follow-up process that allows you to get an answer. It’s the equivalent of just going up with your quote, having it on paper and standing at the top of the Grand Canyon and just throwing it into the canyon hoping it blows back with a big, yep, I’ll take the sale on top of it. It’s scary.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, it’s crazy, isn’t it? And that’s why we say the money is in the follow-up is because it is, the money is in the conversion at the back end of when you convert that quote. Because the reality is the percentage of people who buy on the front end of when you convert a quote is quite low, and there’s various stats in around there. You never know who to believe in terms of every sales trainer or a coach might have their own opinion of what that is. But what you’ve got to remember is if you’re in the B2C space and you are spending a lot of money on Facebook ads, SEO, Google AdWords, you might spend hundreds of dollars just to generate that inquiry and then you’ve got to spend hours either yourself or one of your team members’ time to generate that quote, have the conversation with the customer, and you’ve got to remember that they may not buy straight away and for various reasons, whether they don’t have the budget, they get busy, something happens for them personally, just slips through the cracks, whatever it is, and you are already hundreds if not couple of thousand dollars in the hole before you even have generated a sale yet.
(07:38):
Yet so many people do that over and over and over again. They’ve spent their hard earned businesses dollars on marketing, sales and development and to generate that quote, and then they just let it sit either in their job management system or their accounting packages or their CRM and they don’t follow it up. And that’s why we say the money is in the follow-up because the percentage of people who buy on the presentation of the initial quote is very, very low, and it takes time for people to get to a yes in their own decision-making time and that’s why the money is in the follow-up.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, it’s the equivalent of if you’re a farmer putting all your seeds into the ground doing all the work and then just never going back to harvest, it’s just crazy to think that you would do that. Yet that’s what we see in trades businesses almost week in, week out. There’s someone that’s fallen prey of not having this discipline to follow up.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
And in the B2B space, it’s often bigger than that. In the B2C space, it’s obviously the business to consumer. It’s a lot of smaller leads, so you don’t miss it as much in the business to business or B2B space that you may not spend a lot of money on marketing to generate that lead because you’re relying on referrals or referral partners. But it’s not uncommon for a trades business to spend half a day, a day or days pouring over those set of plans, whether they outsource that or do it in-house themselves or someone in their team to put all that time and energy and effort into getting to the point where they do a quote. The B2B game’s tricky because especially if you’re working with builders, for example, the buying cycle can be 6 or 12 months long. So if you don’t constantly follow that up and you just let it go out into the ether of time and don’t see that through and you just move on to the next one, you just burnt hours, hours and hours and hours of resources and what’s the point? What’s the in spending, investing all that time generating the quote if you’re not going to follow it up, and I think that’s the punchline out of today. Why spend the time, the energy and money putting the quote out there in the first place if you’re not actually going to invest the time to follow it up, to get to the point of a conversion, whether it’s a yes or a no, if you miss out on the sale.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, the worst thing to be is just unknowing having this no result. That’s probably the worst place from a sales perspective you can be. So I think if you’re listening today and this is you and you are wondering, well, how do I do follow up? We’re absolutely going to cover that off today, but we’ve probably got a couple of steps before that that we want to talk through because if you are someone that hasn’t followed up traditionally, we’re not just going to roll out and say, we’ll start following up and here’s how you do it. There’s a step before that that we want to talk about, and that’s all around getting some quick wins and tidying up your quotes as they currently stand.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I think the easiest strategy around this is like you said there with the Liam story, you were talking a bit about before the easiest low hanging fruit and the go-to for us in coaching very, very easily, it’s easy quick win that any business owner can have is they either look into their job management system or they look into their accounting package, they look and run a report on all the quotes that haven’t been accepted over the last say, 12 to 18 months, and there might be 20, there might be 50, there might be a hundred or more. There might be hundreds of thousands of dollars of unconverted quotes in there, and then you start picking up the phone and start ringing those people. And there is no easy way around it. There’s no sexy, there’s no sexy process. Do not hide behind a text message and take the easy option out of texting them going, Hey, where are you up to? Are you ready to make a decision? It’s literally picking up the phone. You’ve already probably spoken to them numerous times to get to the point where you’ve put the quote on their desk, it’s ringing them and saying, Hey, how are you? We haven’t heard from you. I just wanted to see where you’re at with your decision to be able to move forward with X, Y, Z. And it’s just grunt work, but it always pays dividends, doesn’t it?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
It does. It’s amazing. It’s incredible what comes up when people do this and it takes one of those to convert and all of a sudden the pressure that people think they’re under is all of a sudden alleviated and they pick up one and then they get a bit bounce in their step and it’s like, I’ll keep making these calls, that’s probably pointless. But then after another couple of calls, there’s the next one, ah, we’ve been waiting to hear from you. We’re happy to go ahead now. And all of a sudden there’s two sales they never would’ve got purely because they just ignored the third part of this whole process that we’ve been talking about, which is following up.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, we did this exercise a couple of years ago when we brought in a sales trainer for our mastermind, and I don’t know the exact numbers, but I know that the numbers almost fell off my chair when we got the sales trainer, John said to all the guys, he’s like, all right guys, activity post mastermind weekend is to go and look at all the unconverted quotes you’ve got in your system. And there was like half a million there, three quarters of a million there, a million there, two million there. The number was crazy. By the time you’ve got 50 clients in a mastermind all rattling off big numbers like that, and guys got on the phone and they converted hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars as a collective group to be able to start clawing back some of those jobs that they hadn’t converted yet. And so when it’s really important when you’re approaching this is you’ve got to start prioritising them. I think that’s the key. You don’t want to just start going through willy-nilly. You need to be able to go through your list, you need to be able to work through which are your priority ones you want to be able to call, and it’s literally just picking up the phone and making calls and seeing where they’re at.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
And I think seeing where they’re ats important, but let’s talk a little bit about what seeing where they’re at means because when you have this conversation, you might get a no straight away. Would you recommend Rob that people take the no thanks for your time and hang up or is there a couple of other questions that you could tack on the end of that or something to, like we said in the last one, you’re always looking to build those relationships in a B2B space, so what would you do in that situation if you got the no, it was polite and it was still friendly, what would be the next thing you’d do on that call before you hung up?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, I think the most important thing when you’re going into that call is you’re looking for an outcome. You’re looking for a yes, you’re looking for a no or you’re looking for a time to be able to book in to be able to call them back. If you get a yes, then it’s very easy. You go straight into, great, let’s get you scheduled in. Let’s get a deposit invoice out to you. Let’s get that paid and let’s move forward. That’s easy when it’s a yes, when it’s a no, you thank them for their time. You can either inquire about if they’ve got any other work coming up or you ask for a referral. And so even though you get a no from that quote that you put out, use it as an opportunity to open another level of dialogue to thank them for their opportunity to price the job, but ask them do they have any more work coming up or do they know have any friends or family who might be looking for X, Y, Z service that they might be able to recommend for them? So at least you’re opening the door for future quoting opportunities.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other one, if it’s a no as well, which I always like to do, is always ask, is there anything you can tell me as to why try and learn from the experience, at least come away with a lesson. If you can do that, there’s something you can shift, something you can change to dial up your chance of winning the next one with whoever.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, it’s whether it’s price, whether it’s they’ve already given the job to someone else because you were too bloody lazy not to follow up, whatever the reason was. If you’re right, if you can get to the bottom of why you missed it, then that’s good feedback and feedback’s essential in sales to be able to know where are you missing the mark hitting the mark or missing the mark so you got armed better going forward.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah, for sure. So I think, I don’t know if there’s anything else we have to put there other than to say this follow up starts with the existing ones you’ve got, go back and revisit those to get your outcome. I think if that’s where we’re leaving that piece, I think and everyone understands that if you’re listening and you understand that that’s your first step, start there before we get into what’s going to be part two of this conversation, which is what do we do to set up a process or a rhythm going forward that’s going to allow us to make sure that hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially aren’t just going to fall through the cracks?
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yeah, you’re a hundred percent right. We don’t want to be constantly having to clean up our pipeline or our follow-up system every 12 months because we haven’t done it consistently throughout the year. So the only way to be able to overcome this is to be able to create a system so that we don’t have quotes constantly falling through the cracks. So every time you put out a quote, it then goes into that starts a follow-up system where you can move that quote through a series of steps to be able to get to a yes or no. And that’s ultimately what a follow-up system is, is that the moment you drop the quote, you’ve complete the quote and get that on someone’s desk, then it goes from the quoting process into the conversion of follow-up system that you can develop over time.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
And I think it’s important to note that as we talk through this and you are thinking about how you might develop your system, you don’t have to be the one that executes this at every single point. This is one of those things where you could have an admin or a sales person or someone else who’s familiar with that side of the business follow up and do some of this grunt work as well.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah, I would agree with that. And I know I went through an experience around this before I had looked to got someone on to do some landscape design stuff that we’re doing around our house and we did an initial consultation. The guy came out and then he put a quote on our desk, I got super busy and it just dropped off my radar, and if his business hadn’t have followed up, then he would’ve run the risk of me going and either looking elsewhere or going and not even saying yes. But he didn’t actually follow me up. The first person who got followed up was his assistant shooting off an email going, Hey Rob, great to meet. It was great for such and such to meet you and Jacqui and come and see beautiful home. Just wanted to see where you’re at with your decision making process around would you like to move ahead with us or not?
(18:24):
And so it wasn’t him who did it, it was his assistant, and then heard nothing back, boom. He then jumped into the process going, Hey Rob, where are we at? Would you like to move ahead and yes or no? And so you’re right, it’s about not only having a system in place that you follow consistently, but it’s also making sure you’ve got the right people around you to help you navigate the prospect through that system with the right touch points in the right rhythm, which helps you get to a point where it’s either a yes or a no decision, and in the end of the day, as long as you get a yes or a no, that’s the most important thing.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, for sure. So let’s dive in then and have a chat around what our recommended rhythm is. There’s probably a few little caveats that we’ll cover off as we go, but in short, we’re talking about a simple three-step rhythm to this. It’s a three-step dance that you’re going to do, and we’re going to start with the first step, which is confirm.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, confirm is a big one, and confirm is your ability to be able to drop a quote on someone’s desk and you confirm that they’ve received it. That’s the most important thing. You actually say. You give them a call and go, Hey Dan, how are you mate? Great. Hey, just wanted to check. Can I confirm that you received the quote for X, Y, Z? And if they say no, that’s your ability to be able to resend it because the issue is sometimes if you are sending it from an estimation package, a job management system or whatever it is, sometimes spam filters filter out those emails and if Dan you didn’t receive it, you might be thinking, well, Rob’s forgotten about actually sending me that quote.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And that happens all the time. Everyone knows how busy trades guys are and how they sometimes can be hit and miss in terms of their ability to reply or respond in a timely fashion. So the answer or the default thing isn’t going to be for your prospective customer to ring up and pick up the phone and go, Hey, where’s my quote? They’re just going to move on to whatever does come through, or whoever has got a follow up process that has made the time and put in the effort to say, Hey, have you got the quote?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, correct. So timeliness of quote going out the door is critical. Then you make a phone call to be able to go, Hey, confirming you’ve got it. Whilst you’re on that call, you confirm that they’ve received the quote, and it’s your ability to be able to ask them if they’ve got any questions and talk to them about what their decision making process is and the timeframes around when that decision is they’re considering. To make that, you’ve got to remember that everyone’s decision making process and behaviours around saying yes or no is completely different. And so you’ve got to respect that. If you don’t respect it, that’s when you do come across as pushy and sleazy and slimy as a salesperson and the hard sell, you don’t want to be having hard sales tactics and that old school training where it’s like don’t be the first one to speak because if you do, then you lose the sale. Don’t listen to all that shit. You’ve just got to drop the quote on their desk, be polite, ring them and see if they’ve got the quote, ask them if they’ve got any questions and just say, where are you at with your decision making process and when do you think you’ll be ready to make a decision?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the icing on that cake is just then turn around and say, Hey, thanks for all that information. Would it be okay for me to give you a call around that date just to follow up and see where you’re at?
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Why is that question important?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I think what it does is it gives you permission and I think for both sides it’s important then because it gives you a sense that with permission, you’ll make that call with a lot more confidence. You won’t be holding back with permission. You’ve then made a commitment to the buyer before they’ve even bought. So your ability to remember that and follow up is something that’s going to either stick in their mind or not. If you come across to someone who you’re trying to sell to for the first time and you do what you say you’re going to do, that’s going to make that perspective buyer feel that much safer. They said they were going to run me on this date, I didn’t remember, but okay, cool. Yep, not a problem. Glad you called. Here’s where we’re at, and they’re going to be way more open. They’re going to be way more responsive to you calling to chase up that next part of the conversation. So it’s almost a green light to move to the next phase before it happens.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Because sales is based on trust and if you do what you say you’re going to do, if you drop the quote on their desk when you say you’re going to do it, if you do it in the timeframes and if you follow them up when you say you’re going to, that goes a long way to build trust and rapport, doesn’t it?
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Yeah, I can rely on this person. They seem to be pretty reliable every step of the way so far. They haven’t missed a beat. That’s great. And there’s probably at least one, two, maybe even three others, I guarantee out of those other three, there’ll be a couple that haven’t. So you’re already starting to separate yourself out of the pack with that idea of people do business with people they know, like and trust. You are already starting to tick those boxes as you go at this early stage.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Well, it’s the biggest issue in the trade space is that most tradies have this reputation for being fucking unreliable. It’s ridiculous. They don’t turn up when they say they’re going to do. They’re not putting in quotes on people’s desks when they say that they will and they don’t get back to people when they say they’re going to. And that just an erosion of trust from the very beginning before you’ve made a sale is it doesn’t set up for a good relationship at the backend.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
No, it doesn’t. And I think people put way too much emphasis on the price or where they’re coming in with the number as opposed to the value of the relationship they’re trying to build or the service they’re offering or the trust that they’re able to give to the client in terms of reliability and being responsive.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
What’s your take on the benefit of that permission based selling versus the hard sell? Talk us through why that’s important that you almost, you don’t want to pander to them, but you do want to ask the question to be able to almost get some sort of permission.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, I think it’s a soft way of taking that next step and it’s saying, is the door open before you have to really walk through that door so you’ve already got the ability to know and anticipate what the next step should be, and there’s all sorts of psychology behind that in terms of social obligation and me saying that I’ll do something for you, and then you saying that I’ve got to come back with that. I’ve got to be accepting of that. So I think there’s layers to it in that sense. For me having permission, it just takes away the pressure. It takes away that pushiness. It can’t be pushy If I’ve invited, I might’ve invited myself, but you could say no, but if you say yes to that, I can make that call with absolute confidence instead of like we spoke about on the last episode, being full of fear and doubt and worried about the risk of if I pick up this phone and they say, no, that’s it, you already know that that next call needs to be made. All you’ve got to do is schedule it and make that call. You’ll get to that next phase gate in the process. You’re one step closer to getting the outcome, which is what we told you at the very beginning of this episode. You need to get an outcome maybe, or I don’t know, is not acceptable in sales. We’ve got to find out what it was.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Alright, awesome. So we’ve tackled confirm. Next step is check in. We’ve obviously got permission from them and they haven’t given us a yes, they’ve given us a Yep. Let’s have another conversation, another point, talk us through the whole check-in phase and getting a good rhythm around that check-in phase of the process.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
So the check-in phase, first of all it’s it’s not a push for a decision. It’s not, Hey, what’s your answer? It’s a check-in. Remember, we’ve already agreed what the call’s going to be about. You told me on this date roundabouts you were going to have some sort of decision or expected to be able to have some more information. All I’m doing now is making that call doing what I said I was going to do and checking in to see what the progress has been on your side. That’s all we’re really doing. So that’s what the check-in phase is all about. Where’s this deal at? What’s happening? What can you tell me since last time we spoke? It’s all you need to be doing at this point. Again, that’s very low pressure. You’re acting with the previous permission like we said, but you’re now making a phone call to say, Hey, we’re still here. I’m still interested. I want to work with you and I’m keen to show you that I’m doing what I said and we’re ready to go to the next step if you are. But you need to let me know just where you’re at. So very low pressure.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, I think the mistake that if you’ve ever done any sales training is that they try and prescrip a one size fits all check-in process. And the truth is there is no one size fits all. And the key to this is understanding the buying cycle, the sales cycle of decision making for your business. Now for a plumber in the B2C space where someone’s got their toilet has exploded and there’s shit everywhere, their cycle is going to be bloody short or middle of winter in Melbourne it’s fucking cold and your hot water blows up very, very short sales cycle where it’s like you go straight to Google, you go straight onto Plumber Hampton where I am, you make the first call on Google around there with the ad that pops up, you ring them and if they can get someone out there straight away, bang, you’re straight there. It’s a very, very short sales cycle. Now that’s different if you work more in, even in the B2C space where you’re doing bigger projects where it might be a bathroom renovation or it might be a landscaping job or concreting of a path or driveway or whatever. Even if you’re in the B2C cycle, that cycle then might turn into a couple of weeks.
(28:55):
Now we get into the B2B game, that can be months. And so there is no one size fits all. And what I often found or find is that the bigger the dollar value of the job, the longer the cycle. So if you’re a builder, that cycle can take 12 months to be able to land somewhere. If you’re a tradie working for a builder, the decision point from when that builder is quoting it for their customer to when they sign a contract can be 6 to 12 months. And so it’s about if you are listening here today, you’ve got to be able to think, well, what is my service offering and what’s the average time cycle from landed on someone’s desk to when someone makes a decision? And that will help you determine the frequency and the intensity of how you should follow up in your follow up process.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
And I think you’re right. So that’s why we’re talking through this as not so much just step one, step two, step three, but we’ve said they’re phases. So if you know what phase of follow-up you’re in, then you can remain flexible to your sales cycle. So I’m in confirm and clarify phase one, now I’m into this space which we’re talking about, which is check-in as you just said, depending on how long my sales cycle is, how many times I have to check in the benefit. And it’s almost counterintuitive. It’s not like, well, I know I’ve got a six month sales cycle, I’ll wait until month five and maybe see where they’re at. That check-in phase starts the minute you decide you’ve moved out of confirm and clarify. So checking in has also the benefit of, especially in B2B sales, it’s a real relationship stakeholder management conversation to understand what might’ve changed, what else is happening, where are we at with what’s the next decision phase, where are you at in your process?
(30:55):
Because the more sticky you are with your prospective client, the better that relationship’s going to be, the more chances you’ve got to prove yourself as reliable invested in their situation. I always talk with clients around in these sort of deals, you want to come across as if you are sitting on the same side as the client as opposed to sitting on the other side of the table, just hammering them with questions and demands for answers. So having that ability to check in, how’s it going? Where are we at? What’s the next stage? Can I call you on that next stage? I’ll check in a few months. All of that’s building that trust over time, but you might have to do it more than once and for a longer period of time than maybe just a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, short cycle, more frequent, longer cycle, less frequent, and it might be turned into monthly instead of weekly or if it’s a really short cycle, it’s daily and it just really comes down to the cycle, doesn’t it? Now, what do you recommend in terms of the modality to follow up? What’s the different modes of communication that a business owner they can do of certain touch points, I suppose? What’s your thoughts?
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, I think I’d go back first of all to really understand it. I’d go in that confirm and clarify phase, find out, ask what’s the best way to reach out? If we’ve got questions or we want to check in, can I give you a call? You’re touching base early to figure out what their process is and then fitting in with that. So it could be a call, it could be a call on an agreed date to a certain person. It could be an email to a purchasing department if that’s what you’re dealing with in a large scale project. It could be that you have to attend a meeting, whatever it is, you can find out. If you’re willing to be a bit patient, slow down and ask the question, what’s the best way for me to reach out? And when you do that, obviously if you get that answer, confirm again that you’ve got the details of the person you need to be talking to.
(32:50):
Is that the number I should be calling? Is this the email I should have? What’s the address we need to be at? Have your details and have your shit in order because the more you can come across as being organised, attention to detail, responsive, proactive, low maintenance, what’s going to get you more points as you go. Again, it’s not all driven by the number that you’ve put on the page and if they like it, they’ll get back to us. And if they don’t, they don’t. There’s a lot of work that gets won in these phases of checking in huge amount of work and a huge amount of jockeying for position, especially on big deals can happen in that check-in phase.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
I also like to mix up the different lots of communication. So it’s about understanding what’s their preferred way of being communicated to, but you’ve also got to hit different touch points as well. And so I know when we are meeting business owners, tradies for the first time, I like to use a combination of email, text and phone because I, it’s like our client base when we first meet them, they’re getting anywhere from 50 to 100 phone calls a day. And if they get a phone call from someone that’s not in their phone, they will screen that call. There’s no tomorrow. And that’s why I always like to ring, leave a voice message and send a text message.
(34:13):
I do all three in the same moment. And that’s because then you want to know that you’ve actually landed on that phone call. And so for example, internally here at Pravar, we know that there’s a cycle of about, and I know we’re talking about a coaching business, but bear with me through the process. We know that there’s about a three week cycle from a discovery call where if we know that we can help them, then we book in a strategy session. If the strategy session goes well, we talk a bit about coaching. If they love it, we move forward. If they don’t like it because we’re not good fit for whatever, it’s generally no or no, not right now. But during that three week cycle, it’s a combination of emails that go out via our CRM, phone calls, reminders to turn up to appointments, a phone call from myself, a text message.
(35:04):
There’s all these different touch points because what it’s doing is letting that business owner know that A, we give a shit, and B, we are here to help. We’re staying on top of mind. And it also all these different touch points because everyone’s getting smashed with emails, text and phone. You’ve got to be able to mix up your communication for something to get cut through. And so when you are thinking about doing this for your own business, you’ve got to use a combination of whatever works for you and ringing and not leaving a voice message is not acceptable. It’s your ability to ring, leave a voice message, then shoot a text message or an email to let them know that you missed them and that you’ll be following them up at a certain date. You diarize that and then get on with it later down the line. And so I think different touch points is the key to a good follow-up system as well.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
It is. And taking the time for that too, to leave the proper messages. It’s probably almost a whole nother whole other episode, but the ability to leave a message that makes sense. There’s nothing worse than when you get, Hey, call me back. And you’re like, what did you want? Tell them what you were ringing for. I was ringing to confirm that date to see how we’re going on the decision. Let them know that you are on the ball. It’s not just a fly by call where you’re flying by and just dial in the number and go, oh, well, they didn’t answer. Hopefully they get back to me.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
I don’t love, I don’t know what your opinion is, but I don’t love scripts. I don’t love sales scripts.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
No,
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Because especially if you’re in trade space, if you’re a trader and you sound scripted, you’re a sales guy and no one in the trade space wants to be a sales guy. And so if you are thinking here going, oh, I just need the perfect script, where’s the perfect script? The script is, Hey Dan, how are you? Hopefully you and the family have been doing well. Hey mate, just following up in terms of that quote that we put through quote number X, Y, Z for this job. Just checking in to see where you’re at with how you want to move forward, that looking forward to chatting to you soon. Cheers, Rob.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Yep, done.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Nice and simple. And I think if you over script it where it’s like, Hey Dan, I rang you and you were away from your desk. Sorry that I missed you all that rubbish sales scripting, you sound way too polished, way too over scripted and it just sounds scripted from a sales point of view. And so when you’re creating this follow-up process, just be you and show that you give a shit and that you want to be top of mind and front of mind for these people and check in with them to see how they’re going, how you can help. Is there anything you want to do to be able to change scope or reprice or whatever it is. If you’re there to care and there to help, that goes a lot further than using slimy hard sales, hardcore sales tactics. Just being you is the best form of sales that you can do any day long.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah, I agree. And I think what you’re talking about there is we talked about trust and building that, but I think there’s also that idea of respecting other people’s time, long-winded emails, messages, this as well as I do, you get a really long message for someone to say, Hey, I’m just checking in. You’re not going to read it. It’s not what I’m after. Tell me exactly what you need and if I’m interested, I’ll be straight back to you. But if you abuse my time or you don’t value my time, it tells me that you don’t value yours. Therefore your relationship with time’s probably not the one we’re looking for on this job.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah. Let’s move to phase three. So first one’s been confirmed, second one’s check in. Third one is close, got to close the deal. Talk us through the close one. What’s your thoughts?
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Close? I think like we said before, regardless you’ve got to get an outcome. Draw is not acceptable, unknown is not acceptable. It’s time to get an answer. And you’ve got to get to that point where you do know whether what you’ve got in your head as a potential sale is going to be turned into actual dollars or it’s not. You’ve got to get an outcome. And I think for this one, you have to again get to that point and say, all right, we’re either moving on or we are going to do this deal. I think one of the things I had, and I think I might’ve said it before, but what I can remember when I was doing sales in another business and was I always had this thing on my computer screen when I was doing sales was I’ll get the result I want or the lesson I need and one way or the other, I was either going to get the yes or it could be a no, but I wasn’t after the no, I was after all then can you just tell me quickly where did we miss out?
(39:41):
How did we dip out? I was fine with it. If I could get a lesson out of it, it sort of softened that blow. It wasn’t rejection at that point, it became a lesson and something I could learn. So I think where we say close, close means either get the yes you’re after or get the lesson you need from it and then move on. Don’t just let it sit there and don’t stew over and no, or don’t try and get bogged down or upset about it. It’s very hard to do. It’s easy to say, hard to do, but the easiest way to get over that is to look for the lesson, I think.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yeah, really, really good. I love it. So to wrap up today, we’ve covered off two main things today and the first one has just been about getting the low hanging fruit and your ability to get into your current open orders, open quotes in your system, whatever your system is and your ability to be able to get in there, run a report, start making phone calls and starting to get yeses or nos and closing them out easy and quickest thing you can do. The second thing we did is we spoke around is creating a bit of a three part follow up system so you don’t have to keep following things up. So going forward, you’ve got the ability to implement a nice system. It could be done by you with your assistant or a combination of the two. Eventually over time you can plug this into a good CRM or into your estimation software or your job management system.
(41:08):
Utilising systems like that does automate that process a hell of a lot better. We spoke around confirming, checking in and closing. There are three Cs for a good follow-up system. Please don’t over script it, don’t it, don’t overcomplicate it. Just make it nice and simple and it’s your ability to be able to get in there, get the quote on someone’s desk, and then nurture that prospect to be able to get ’em to the point where they’ll either move forward with you, you or they don’t. And if they don’t, it’s okay. Just move on, get the feedback of why you missed out and always look to be able to learn from that, like Dan said.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Yeah, absolutely. So I think let’s do our takeaways Rob. I mean, as we said, we don’t want to overdo this, but we look at takeaways. I think the first one is to remember that the money is in the follow-up. Remember that story of Liam, someone who was fretting about not having work, I can’t find it. It’s really hard. I’ve quoted so much, hadn’t followed up. What happened? I didn’t tell you the end of the story At the start of the call when we went through and had a look at all those quotes and did what we needed to, I think we unlocked about $250,000 of value in the first two weeks of doing follow-ups. It was extraordinary. And all of a sudden it was like, oh, I don’t feel so stressed anymore. I don’t think I can now go and do what I had that thing that I needed to do. The world went on once we filled in this little bit of a hole in his world.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, love it. Takeaway number two is understand your sales cycle and this will determine the frequency of your follow-up.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Yeah, for sure. My last one today was all around, I think following up keeps you front of mind for me, that was the big one. Don’t underestimate what being front of mind does. Being that person that does what they say they’re going to do keeps reiterating that you are the guys that are reliable. Maybe yeah, you’re a little bit of a, they’re on the phone again, but at the same time there’s value in that that’s going to go a long way to helping you dial up your chances of winning the work you’re after.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Yeah, great one. So from today, let’s get in there and let’s set you a challenge. Let’s get in there and get you to run a report and start getting on the phone and doing some follow-ups and let us know in the Trade Den Facebook community, how you’ve actually gone and what you’ve been able to do. Securing work that had dropped into a big dark hole of your list quotes you’d punched out in the last 12 to 18 months that you hadn’t followed up. So that’s activity number one. Activity number two is let’s get a bit proactive and start putting some follow up systems in place. And that’s your ability to be able to put a nice system in place, get some support from the team around you if you’ve got one and hey, you spend all this time and energy, money generating the leading, putting time to get in the quote in the door. I think you owe it to yourself and to your customers to actually show them you give a shit and you’re there to be able to support them, to get ’em through, to be able to get the right work. So let’s get those two activities done and I think it’s just a great way to be able to ensure that your pipeline stays full and you’ve got the ability to be able to continue to grow your business with a good strong pipeline in front of you.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Totally agree.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Well, that’s a wrap of our three part series around pipeline management. We’ve tried to break it down over to three parts to be able to really go to depth on these topics rather than skimming across the surface, trying to do it across in one episode. So we would love to hear your feedback. What’s your thoughts? Have you enjoyed it? We’d love to hear your feedback around this series and if you’d like us to be able to do more of these multi-part episodes across a certain topic so that we can ensure we go to depth to be able to give you some great content. So please give us some feedback. It’s always welcome and always if you’ve got any mates in the industry that would love to be able to hear some of this content, please share it with ’em. Let’s help some of our mates out there to be able to fill their pipelines because hey, sales solves a lot of problems in business. And so if you’ve got a mate who’s struggling at the moment or is trying to grow their business, get these episodes in front of ’em and you never know how you might be able to help one of your mates in the industry hit that follow button and if you love it, rate us as well. And thanks very much for tuning in and looking forward to coming back to you next week with another awesome episode. Thanks guys.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
See you soon.