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Cost Vs Value

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Let’s look at cost versus value, and where do you focus your attention?

Now, for several years, I ran my business on the basis of cost, so the cost of any goods or services were always viewed in terms of what they cost and not the actual value they gave me.

Of course, this meant that any goods or services I needed, and I did need them, was always dictated to by how much it was going to cost me.

I was in the mindset of, oh, I thought it was going to be cheaper than that.

I bet that resonates with so many people watching this video.

Now, because I was looking at cost, I was not getting any value. But fast forward to now, and I see things based on how much value I get.

Now, you see, you need to start asking yourself, what is the cost of not doing this?

So a project or service may have a low cost, but does it bring you value?

So think of it this way, I may spend $40 or £40 on a few courses to learn how to advertise on Facebook, for example. That may take me two weeks or so to figure everything out, but the true cost is more than $40 or £40.

What about the time on the course? The time away from the business? So you could spend $1,000 or £1,000 on individual coaching and get up and running in a day.

So actually, which holds the greater value?

So your business and your future decisions really cannot be solely based on cost without analyzing the true value of a product or service.

So that’s my message for today, think about the value over cost. Thanks all, speak to you soon.

Letting go of no show frustration

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Hey, it’s Andrew, how are you doing? Just wanted to check in to talk about one of my pet peeves. At least it was one of my pet peeves, and that was the dreaded no show.

Now, depending on where you are in your sales journey, you might often feel relief when somebody doesn’t show. Hopefully, that isn’t the case. And if it is that there’ll be another video on that coming soon or already here, depending on when, when you’re looking at this channel that talks around how to get over that feeling. But no shows used to be the absolute bane of my life. And I was working on an engagement as a closer Facebook ads, booking calls, very little in the way of qualification. And unfortunately, there was up to 80%, no show rate, which is catastrophic.

You know, you’ve got a calendar full or say, you think your paid commission only. Thankfully for me, it was very much, it was very much a side gig, but you’ve got a load of calls in the calendar. You think, Hey, this is looking really, really rosy.

Now say 20 calls booked. You have four people show up. Well, to make that time viable, you’ve got to close all of them and preferably more, more calls you, you don’t have. Now. It used to really, really get me angry and I just couldn’t understand it. These guys would book a call. They fill out a pretty detailed form. And even as little as 24 hours later, didn’t show up and I would send them initially a quite polite email. And then as time went on and it would really, really get me fired up, I would send sharper emails not to the point of saying where the hell were you, but you know, going along those lines, now, I then had a bit of a wake-up call. And somebody that I follow a guy called Matt boon said something really interesting, which was, Hey, give these guys a break.

You know, it’s really important to you. It’s the focus of your day. But life happens, stuff comes up, just give them a break. They probably meant to be there. They just got derailed or they didn’t see the, the alert on their phone or whatever it was, but just give them a break. And it’s a really simple bit of advice, but it just was enough to stop me in my tracks and just go, yeah, you’re getting far too bent out of shape. And then I sat and thought about it and thought, well, not only is that frustration carrying through, into my, into my followup, emails and communication but should I subsequently get that person back on the phone? I then wondered whether it was carrying through to the opening of that call, that residual frustration that, you know, I’m keeping it in my mind that they think they’ve stood me up once and sometimes twice already.

And this stuff that you don’t even realise that you’re conveying has a massive impact on how the customer perceives the call or how the prospect perceives the call. And he’s one of the things that kind of throws you off your game without you realising it. And it also derails them. They don’t know why necessarily don’t know what’s up with the conversation, but they may not feel comfortable. It may help to give them a degree of uncertainty or lack of trust or a lack of rapport. Something may be missing and it may be just enough to stop them from proceeding with me. So food for thought. So, as I often say, get into the groove before jumping on a call, let go of all this stuff that’s gone before and just be in the moment and play what’s in front of you. You know, this is not for me. I’ll catch you soon

Objection Handling

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Hey guys, how are you doing? I wanted to talk to you about objections today. I get asked an awful lot about objection handling, how do I handle this? How do I handle that?

The reality is nobody wants to feel like they’re being handled during a call. They want to know that their questions are being taken seriously, their fears, their concerns, their doubts, the way things are presented to us are very often in the, you know, I want to think about it I can’t afford it. I need to go and speak to somebody else. I need to go and contemplate life and the universe before I make a decision, a lot of these are stalling or delaying tactics. They’re not sure now the reality is you can preempt an awful lot of things that come up as objections, way, way earlier in the call, completely conversationally.

The problem is people just keep it surface level. They just go through scripts. They don’t gather all the information. They don’t give themselves a chance to address certain things. Like, you know, whether somebody has a business partner, whether it’s somebody who’s got a life partner, whether that person is going to be involved in the decision to move forward or not move forward. What else is going on? Has that person recently lost their job? Have they been impacted by global economic downturns and similar, you know, you have some, so many opportunities to get to the stuff and very often it isn’t covered off. And then you get hit with these things that you call objections at the end. And sometimes you have to ask yourself, well, who’s fault is it because actually most of the time it’s ours. You know, if somebody wants to think about something, is that because we haven’t really connected with their problem, we haven’t really connected with or brought out their aspirations and their goals.

Have we been completely clear in what we’ve attempted to articulate? Have we spoken too much and given them so much information that they’re struggling to digest it and guess what they then want to go and think about it? Is this how somebody just regularly operates? Do they like to take a step back and take 24 hours and come back? Or is it just an excuse to get off the phone? Because they’re not sold the answer to all this lies completely with us every single time. Okay. Now you can stay on the phone or on zoom talking to people, trying to handle, and get round objections really late in the day. You can, you can do it for an hour or more if you really want to is completely energy draining. Often counterproductive. My advice to you is spend way more time in the upfront portion of the call, getting the information you want and understanding what’s really going on, getting deep in terms of your questioning, the situation, the problems, the challenges, the impacts, the goals, aspirations, how committed they are to achieving those.

What’s the impact of not achieving those. And you’ll find that if you’ve really understood this and that your prospective client has really understood this, because sometimes they’re saying things for the first time, if they’ve really understood it and they connect with your offer, they’re probably going to be bought in. And when you get hit with things like I can’t afford it often, that’s it, that’s just an instant reaction to what might be a higher price than expected. Our job is to work with them, to find a way forward. If they’re a good fit, if we can deliver the outcome.

And if it’s ethic, if it’s ethical to help them do that, you know, I hear so many stories of, Oh, I helped someone open a credit card and everything else. Listen, there’s a big difference between helping someone see that there are more ways to move forward and counting the money they have in a jar or in their wallet, in their current account at bank account. But, you know, we don’t want to be marching people down the road to be opening credit facilities either a lot of the time, but we can show people a way forward, but it’s a pretty complicated area. I’m just kind of scraping the surface of this. But if objections is a really big deal for you, but your hand up, I’d love to have a chat with you because there are so many things that you can do to smooth the path early on in the call and give you an awful lot less to deal with down the road. I look forward to catching up with you soon, take care.

// MAKE SURE YOU SURROUND YOURSELF WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLE // 🙂

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Transcription

Let’s talk about surrounding ourselves with the right kind of people.

Now I am talking about in your business and your private life as well.

Now for me, the penny dropped when I was still in full-time employment and work at that time was quite a toxic environment. There was lots of negative people around. So I joined a networking group because I was building my business at the time. And all of a sudden I was surrounded by these great thinkers, positive people who really wanted to help me and my business grow. And of course they were growing their own businesses.

I came out to this meeting, feeling positive with lots of energy.

Back in the work environments, once again, these negative people would surround you and drag your mindset down.

So that was five years ago.

I’ve now got my own successful business along with my collegue Andrew, of course.

And if I go to networking groups, it’s great. Because you’re surrounded by people who are positive and want you to do well. Now it is the same your personal life.

I mean, as an example, a few years ago, I had to buy a new car.

Now I know next to nothing about cars, but luckily my dad does. So we went to the showroom and of course, the salesperson jumped out straight away out of the shadows and wants to sell me this car, that car, and then asked a few questions.

Who was it for?

What was it for?

So in marketing terms, he was just trying to find my problem and to sell me the solution.

So he showed us three cars and my dad said, Oh, we will think about it. And he walked away and said, Rob, these cars useless.

There’s an oil leak in one, they’ve tried to clean it up there is rust on the others.

I just wouldn’t have noticed these problems for me, they look nice, shiny cars and they looked quite reliable.

So we went to another garage. Again, the salesman jumped out at us and tried to sell us anything under the sun.

At the back of the garage was a car that hadn’t been touched, it had only just come in. My dad said, what’s that car over there?

Of course, the salesperson didn’t want to show us the car because ‘it was not ready’. Will it be for sale my Dad asked? Eventually, the sales person said yes, once it has been ‘cleaned up’. My Dad wanted to see it right away in the condition it had been delivered to the garage. So after much persuasion, we were able to see the car.

My dad opened the bonnet and the engine clean. No oil leaks, great start!

There was no rust around it. They had a chance to clean the car up and hide any flaws.

So we struck a deal with them.

That was 15 years ago and I still have the car, it is still going strong.

If I had bought the other ones, they were all bangers, I would have wasted money.

My dad was the right person, at the right time to have in that environment.

So it is the same in business, you need to surround yourself with the right people, accountants, marketers, people who know exactly what they’re doing to help you in business and in personal life, you need to surround yourself with the right people.

Call Preparation

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One of the questions I get asked often is around call preparation.

What do you do to get in the zone before an enrollment call? Well, one of the things I don’t do is arrive at my desk one minute to the allotted time, have a mad scramble, find out who it is. I’m supposed to be speaking to look at their application form, fire up, zoom, get a drink, ready, remember that I need to go to the toilet and all that stuff last minute, turn up frantic and breathless. And all of that,

One of the things I see when reviewing sales calls is exactly that certainly initially right, with new clients, the call gets off to a Juggery start and it can be quite difficult to recover. And that first impression is kind of blown, right?

It’s a little bit unprofessional and you just do seem like you’re all over the place.

So, what do I do well at the start of every day, I look at who I’m due to be talking to. I look at their applications and if I want more information, then I go and find that.

But generally, I just look at the application and I may look at any previous conversations that we’ve had, via email or messenger or WhatsApp, and I kind of park it there. And then I wait. And then prior to my first call of the day, I usually get to my desk about 15 minutes beforehand and I will review the application again of that particular person. I will just have a read through, and I’ll also just use that time to shut things down on my desktop, to put other things on mute. So I don’t get disturbed.

I just take a moment to reset my mind because I don’t need other things on my mind when I’m, when I’m trying to give somebody else my undivided attention.

So it’s important that regardless of whatever I’ve got going on in my life, I didn’t bring that tension. Those thoughts that any stress onto that call, I’ve got to be completely in the zone, ready to serve, ready to listen and ready to be able to provide clarity, uh show that I may be the person that can help deliver that prospective clients outcome.

In taking a moment to set myself it means that when I open that call on time, every time I’m ready, I’m absolutely ready. And in the zone, and I know exactly what I’m going to say.

It means that I am very confident with my opening and it means I get that connection going really, really well And I give the impression that I know what I’m doing, I know what I’m talking about. And the person on the other on the other side can feel that they’re in safe hands. This is clearly somebody that does this a lot and is used to leading the call, which I am.

Conversely, if I was to get on the call and I was like, uh, right, who is it I’m talking to. And, uh, so-so tell me about you and I ask a question that they’ve actually, filled in on their form suddenly really super obvious, it’s going to sound like I’m stalling for time and I probably would be right.

So taking a moment before every call, just to dump any other baggage that you’ve got going on there, just get yourself organized, really, really important, really important call prep. Can’t overestimate it.

I would love to get your feedback in terms of what you do, whether what, what I’ve just said makes sense to you. Feel free to drop me a comment and if you do, I’ll come back to you, as soon as I can. Thanks for listening.

Are You Showing Up?

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So you may have seen some videos around the frustration of no shows when you’ve got a call booked and they don’t appear despite numerous prompts and reminders, nobody’s there. And as frustrating as that is, the real massive frustration is if you don’t show up yourself and that may sound a bit weird. Well, of course, I’ve shown up, but my question to you is have you? Did you? Are you showing up consistently as the best version of yourself?

If you don’t, you can’t expect to get consistently great results. If you are here one day, are you here the next, how can you compare? How can you judge, what’s really working when you’re a major source or I’m a major source of inconsistency?

One of the things I find in working with clients is that you know, we’re, we’re all busy. We’ve all got stresses in our lives, but we can’t afford for those things to come with us onto an enrollment call.

We can’t afford to pass that on subtly across on zoom or down the phone. These things get amplified massively when people are just looking at our faces on zoom, they can hear every nuance in our voice on the phone. If we’re stressed, if we’re uptight, if we’re upset, if we’re anxious, all of that gets passed across.

You may not think it does, but it does. And when you find that your prospective client, all of a sudden is unsure, there’s uncertainty, there might be a lack of trust. Well, where did that come from? You said exactly the same thing to the, exactly the same type of character as you did yesterday, you got a very different response.

This is often because we are not being consistent. We are not as focused as we need to be. So I’ve referenced routines pre-call routines before, they help us to reset so that we can go on fully focused on serving, detached from the outcome and turning up as the best version of ourselves. And it’s super, super important that we do this.

Now. Life is stressful. There’s an awful lot of stuff going on at the moment, which is causing a great deal of anxiety. If you find yourself being affected by stuff, whether it’s your home life, whether it’s financial pressures, whatever it is, it’s well worth taking a moment each day before you even start and potentially at regular times throughout the day, to have a bit of a mental reset to do some meditation, some mindfulness, this isn’t to get all woo, woo but you’ve got to find a way to dump out the stuff that’s spinning around in your mind, which is going to prove unhelpful to you and your prospective client. And at the end of the day, if it stops you from gaining your client, well, it means you haven’t served the prospective client and you certainly haven’t served yourself.

So back to routines, back to focus, you’ve got to show up, you’ve got to be consistent. You gotta be the best version of yourself every time. If you’ve got any questions at all about how to go about this, or if something I’ve said, hasn’t made sense, just drop a comment, drop me a line, you know where to find me I’m not hard to find and I look forward to hearing from you, check in with you soon.

 

Asking Difficult Questions

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I wanted to just jump in and talk about the reticence to ask in-depth questions.

We need to ask questions that could be uncomfortable.

They can be uncomfortable to ask and they can be uncomfortable to answer.

But we need to ask them to get the information we need to understand if we can help people

I’m probably preaching to the converted here already, but sometimes we need to go that extra level.

We need to understand what’s behind that first answer because we don’t want surface level.

We want to get to the real cause, the real issues.

We want to be able to drill into the real impact of what’s going on.

We need to enable the prospect to see for themselves that they got an issue. We want them to be able to see that we present a way forward that will solve these issues and that they want to work with us and our role is to make that a simple and easy as possible to show them we are the right choice to help them get to where they want to go.

If you don’t ask those in-depth questions because you’re scared, you’re gonna offend or it’s just a bit uncomfortable.

You’re doing yourself a disservice. And you are not serving the potential client because you’re just letting them off the hook and they’re going to go on their way, thinking that their problem isn’t as bad after all, probably just going to either stay the same or more likely, get worse over time.

That is not the service we owe ourselves.

And then more than that, they’re taking time out to get on
the phone with us.

Our job is to help them get to where they want to go.

So don’t be scared to ask those questions just ask and ask again, keep asking until you’ve uncovered the full extent of the problem and the impact.

So I know it can be uncomfortable, but good stuff happens outside the comfort zone.

GET TO KNOW ANDREW & ROB BETTER

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