Key Components of an Effective Sales Strategy

Episode Transcript:

[Designing Growth introduction plays]

[00:00:00] Sam Chlebowski: Happy Thursday everybody, and welcome back to Designing Growth. Very excited to have Perry joining us after a two-week hiatus. I took episode eight by myself and then had a guest for episode nine. So, Perry, welcome back to the show. How are you doing?

[00:00:56] Perry Rosenbloom: I am glad to be here. Thanks for having me back. Sam, uh, I left you in the lurch for episode eight. That was when, uh, I think I tested positive for Covid and I was like, Dude, I can’t record an episode right now.

[00:01:07] Sam Chlebowski: The Covid bug finally bit you. Yeah. It seems like it’s something that is kind of unavoidable at this stage, regardless of how many vaccinations you’ve had.

[00:01:17] Perry Rosenbloom: We were super cautious for so long, and now we’re vaccinating. We’re like, all right, I just kind of wanna just not worry about this thing. And I got it. It kicked my butt for about 24 to 48 hours, but, Back in this chair recording now. So

[00:01:30] Sam Chlebowski: Well, I gotta say I did miss you and excited to have you back on this show. My guest last week was awesome.

[00:01:36] Recording the episode before that solo is always hard, but

[00:01:40] Perry Rosenbloom: Well, you do a great job, uh, running the mic solos, so don’t uh, discount your solo podcast and skills there.

[00:01:46] Sam Chlebowski: So, Perry and I, on this week’s episode of Designing Growth, are gonna be talking about sales. And we wanted to record this episode because sales, I think is something that is, Difficult for people who have web [00:02:00] design branding businesses or, you know, wedding planning businesses, anything along those lines.

[00:02:05] It can be really tough for people who aren’t natural salespeople to start marketing their services and selling their services has to become a part of it. so, we’re gonna be talking about that in this week’s episode. But before that, wanted to just talk about some updates, and have Perry share what is new and what’s going on here at motion.

[00:02:23] Perry Rosenbloom: Yeah, so we got some really exciting motion updates here for y’all. so, about a week after this episode gets published, our pre MVP is going to be released. And what that means is that if you are on our launch list, and if you’re not, you should be. If you are on our launch list, we’re gonna reach out.

[00:02:42] We’re gonna be like, hey, we have our pre MVP ready. Can we take you for a spin through the product? And just kind of show you how the product works, how it functions, what you can do in it, what’s really cool about it, some things that we think are super awesome. and just kind of give you an idea of like, give you a tour of the platform and.

[00:03:02] Then be able to like, be like, hey, what else do we need to do here? what about this works for you? What doesn’t work? What do we need to build in to make this more robust for you to be able to use with your clients? so we’re super excited. You know, this has been, what I mean from the, the first conversation was, I think we had was in February of this year about, it’s like, what, nine months ago or so?

[00:03:22] Eight months ago. And then Zach started development on it about three months.

[00:03:26] Sam Chlebowski: A snowy day in February.

[00:03:28] Perry Rosenbloom: lunch on a snowy day in February. That’s right. Uh, and a Japanese bakery right next door that we didn’t get anything from for some reason.

[00:03:35] Sam Chlebowski: No, we did. They were like sold out of

[00:03:37] everything.

[00:03:37] Perry Rosenbloom: It was weird. But Zach, our, our co-founder has been hard at work building the product based off of our conversations with y’all, and we’re excited to be able to share it with you.

[00:03:47] Sam Chlebowski: And I think what’s cool about how we’re approaching development at Motion.io just to give my kind of take in the story is when we’ve been talking with people about what they’re using to manage projects, to collaborate with clients,

[00:03:59] [00:04:00] everybody had a project management tool they were using to some degree and we kept hearing like, I just wish it could do this one thing, or I wish it had this feature.

[00:04:10] And That’s what we wanna get right with motion.

[00:04:13] Perry Rosenbloom: Yeah. And, that’s what we’re building. The I wish it could do X or I want it to be able to do y is, why we’re building motion. and then also one thing we’ve noticed is, there’s some great tools out there that can manage, like a client comes in, you send them a contract and a proposal, and you get the invoice paid.

[00:04:29] But then what we’re hearing is as soon as that invoice gets paid, Systems start breaking down that there isn’t a tool out there that allows you to communicate and collaborate effectively with your clients from point A, which is when the invoice gets paid all the way through till project completion, and that’s what Motion is gonna do.

[00:04:48] It’s a tool for you as a creative professional to collaborate and communicate more effectively with your clients as you. Getting content from them and providing them with deliverables and getting feedback on on those deliverables.

[00:05:03] Sam Chlebowski: Amazing. So Perry said it, but I’ll just say it again. If you’re interested in having a show you around the platform and you’re not currently on our launch list, head to Motion.io/launch. Enter your email and we’ll reach out in about another week or so to invite you to check out the platform and we’ll walk you through kind of all the features and what you’ll be able to do there so you can give your feedback and your thoughts

[00:05:25] with that, I think that now we should move into sales. So, let’s talk about it. Perry, what is your background in sales to kick it off?

[00:05:35] Perry Rosenbloom: My background in sales was that at my last company? I did whatever it could take to get the first 500 700 accounts that we got. that meant. Cold emailing. That meant cold calling. That meant putting together our crm, uh, talking with people, giving them demos of the product, and selling them on our product, taking credit cards over the phone, and then handing them [00:06:00] off to, uh, our design team, which at the point was, and I just did air quotes there, but then handing it off to our design team of a single person.

[00:06:09] The remarkable Andrew Etching, uh, who then handled all the design work. So it was really doing everything possible to get clients in the door, speak with them, and then most importantly, share with them how we could help them. And I think that’s something a, a critical piece that folks forget about in sales.

[00:06:30] and a critical reason why people they get tense when they think about sales, right? It’s like, I, I don’t wanna feel dirty. I don’t wanna do sales. it’s intimidating, but at the end of the day, when you’re selling, all you’re doing is trying to help somebody. You’re trying to help them about how you can create the right brand for them, that’s gonna help their business grow.

[00:06:49] You’re trying to help them about how you’re going to plan the perfect wedding for them, and it’s not gonna be the stressful event that, you know, they can just chill a little bit more. it’s about helping your clients. That’s what sales is to me, at the heart of it. And then after we sold 500, 700 accounts, that’s when you stepped in and took over

[00:07:07] Sam Chlebowski: Oh yeah, And, uh, shout out the great Andrew action in those early days of Brighter Vision. Absolutely crushing it. so I had originally joined as a designer. I stepped in around client 500 and picked up sales from there. Um, and then eventually moved into, you know, a larger role doing both marketing and sales.

[00:07:24] But along the way, I think that we have enough experience between us to confidently say, hey, these are the things that you need to be doing within your sales process. as a small business owner or even as a larger business owner, uh, I think can benefit from these sorts of general tips that’ll share.

[00:07:44] Perry Rosenbloom: And one of the, biggest tips I think that you and I both would agree on is the need for a follow up strategy. So often I would hear from, our clients who are, who are therapists, that a lead comes in, you send that first email, maybe you send [00:08:00] one more follow up email. , and then it’s like, all right, I guess they don’t really want to work with me.

[00:08:05] But that’s not the case. Like every single person listening here, if you got an inquiry and you just send that first email to the person and maybe one more follows up, and you think, I guess they don’t really wanna work with me, that is not true. do wanna work with you. They’re just busy. You know, people are so, so darn busy all the time, and it’s your job as a business owner, and if you’re doing sales in your.

[00:08:27] to follow up in a consistent, respectful way with every single lead multiple times, not just one or two times. You gotta follow up with them, you know, every three to five days with different emails, a different approach, a different strategy for each email to remind them like, Hey, you contacted me. Let me show you how I can help you, and you gotta follow up with them in my.

[00:08:54] as many times as you possibly can until they say, Yes, let’s have a call, or No, I am not interested. Once you get that, no, I’m not interested. All right, cool. I get it. Then maybe put them on your email list, but you, you gotta have that follow up strategy where you’re consistently and regularly emailing.

[00:09:13] You could call the person too. I’d recommend calling them, but if you, you don’t feel comfortable with that, that’s cool. Just consistently emailing. Hey, you reached out. Here’s some examples of my work. Would love to chat with you. Here’s my calendar link. Hey, I haven’t heard back from you. I think I could really help your business in ways X, y, and Z.

[00:09:29] Here’s my calendar link to schedule a call with me and just keep on doing that once a week. know, you can utilize automations, you can utilize a crm. , we had a sales team, and then we also utilized automations through a platform called Drip that kind of like automated a lot of that outreach to stay front of mind for.

[00:09:45] and remind them like, Hey, you reached out to us. Let’s chat about how we can help you.

[00:09:49] Sam Chlebowski: I remember when I had moved into sales cuz. At first joined Brighter Vision as a WordPress developer, and on my sort of first day [00:10:00] of sales training, I guess you would called it, it was really just you coming over to the room that I was in and saying, Hey, this is kind of my beliefs in sales. This is what I think that works.

[00:10:11] customize it how you want. But the one thing that you shared was the fortune is in the follow up. You need to follow up with somebody until you get a yes or until you get a no. And that was something that I lived by. And at first was it a little uncomfortable?

[00:10:26] Did I feel like. Hey, I shouldn’t be emailing this person. I didn’t hear back from them. Yeah, that that happened for the first, you know, week or so. But then I found out that people were happy to hear from me. People wanted to get that extra email cuz it just fell off of their inbox. It was something they had in their to-do list that they forgot about.

[00:10:45] And so many times I would hear, Thank you so much for continuing to follow up. I feel terrible for not responding. And they would close.

[00:10:54] Perry Rosenbloom: and it’s, okay to feel intimidated, right? Especially if you haven’t been doing sales for a long time, or maybe you have been doing sales for a long time. You know, I, I’ve been doing sales now for, for well over a decade in and out of, of my businesses, and I still get intimidated when I pick up the, the Zoom call and I’m having a face to face with somebody who I have never spoken with before and I have to do a, a sales pitch.

[00:11:20] In this case right now, you know, we’re, raising some funding and I have to do a sales pitch  “Hey, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s why I think it’s really awesome. Are you interested in investing in our company?” And we just met like 20 minutes ago via virtual call. It, it’s super intimidating and I, I think it’s okay to embrace the fact that you’re a little intimidated by it

[00:11:42] and understand that you’re gonna feel uncomfortable and you might start sweating a lot. You can always, you know, throw some over deodorant on afterwards or something, you know, and, uh, it’s gonna be all right. It’s okay to be intimidated. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable, uh, in sales, cuz [00:12:00] everybody does.

[00:12:01] You know, even our experienced sales reps when they got on the phone for the first time, at Brighter Vision, and these, these guys have been doing sales. way better salesman than I was. they were doing cold calls, like 60, 80, a hundred cold calls a day. The first time they got on a real sales call with, one of our potential clients.

[00:12:18] He certainly was intimidated that sales rep and you know, he did a great job. Bless his heart, love the guy. but, uh, you know, it’s intimidating and, you know, embrace that discomfort. And, you know, as a business owner, you’re gonna have to do things that make you uncomfortable. Sales is one of them.

[00:12:36] And so, the fortunes and the follow up get that strategy in place.

[00:12:39] Sam Chlebowski: talking about how uncomfortable that can be. Does lead me into my next point to kind of put a bow on our first big takeaway fortunes in the follow up. You not only need to follow up until you get that definitive yes or no, but you should have a strategy for following up and you should leverage some of the tools available that allow you to automate parts of that strategy in general.

[00:13:01] What I like to do, and the way I kind of set things up is new lead comes in. I have a workflow that involves a set of emails and a set of calls for about a month after that lead comes in. If they don’t respond within that timeframe, I typically have a. Longer term follow up that’s less frequent and maybe just emails them every month or so.

[00:13:24] that sends a lot more informational stuff about, our business and about the services that they offer. So that’s my general strategy for your workflows. to move in though to our next big takeaway, uh, and this is one that I’ll take. You need to make each sales call a conversation.

[00:13:41] this is key for me because as Perry shared, he still gets uncomfortable on sales calls at times. I’m the same way. It happens to everybody and it’s something that can get easier, but you’re never gonna totally eliminate. One of the ways that I’ve found to make that easier is really turn the sales call into [00:14:00] a conversation instead of thinking that you need to.

[00:14:03] Have this pre-rehearsed script or these things that you need to hit on no matter what. Flip it on a 10 and start asking questions and listening to the responses because the way that people respond is going to give you a lot of talking points where your services can seamlessly slide in. What I prefer to do instead of having a script that I follow, is have questions that I follow then have a general idea of how that person might respond to that question so I can then fit in the value that we add, the services that we bring to the table, that solve those pain points.

[00:14:38] Perry Rosenbloom: Sam, you were so good and, and our other reps were so good at making that sales call a conversation and chatting with somebody, helping, like you said, understand what those pain points are, and it was, it was just so impressive how y’all were able to do that. And, the folks listening here, you’re a business owner and I’m sure that it’s intimidating to get on the phone.

[00:14:58] again, if you’re just viewing it as a conversation, a friendly chat to understand what, pain point someone is struggling with, that’s gonna make your life that much easier. It makes the process of selling that much easier.

[00:15:08] Sam Chlebowski: One thing that I like to keep in the back of my mind on sales calls to help conversational nature of the call help feel comfortable on the call is saying to myself, Hey, this person is talking to me because they are looking for help with a problem they think I can solve.

[00:15:24] I am not trying to sell them something they don’t need. you know, Unless you are. Selling timeshares in, Jamaica or something. you’re giving somebody a service that they really need, that they really want, and they need your help with

[00:15:38] Perry Rosenbloom: Where did the Jamaica come from? Did it, did it come from the, the green and yellow on your hat there? That Cause I’m like, you know, timeshares in Jamaica. I, I would never think of Jamaica as a place to get a timeshare, but then I, I see your hat. It’s black, green, and yellow. And, uh, maybe it was, uh, subconscious there,

[00:15:56] Sam Chlebowski: I have the yellow and the green from my hat, and the black two put [00:16:00] all those things together. You have the core components of the Jamaican flag, so it probably is that.

[00:16:06] Perry Rosenbloom: Well, you know, we have one other bonus takeaway here, Sam, we’re taking things from like sales 1 0 1 to kind of like sales 3 0 1 with this bonus takeaway, but it’s an important one to, to touch on real fast.

[00:16:18] Sam Chlebowski: Yeah, and I would like to cover this just because it’s something. We had covered in our last episode, episode nine, with Megan Gersh. If you haven’t listened, go back. It’s a fantastic episode. And in that episode, Megan and I were talking about her strategy for cold outreach when she first started her business.

[00:16:36] And it was really enlightening to hear, because I think cold outreach is a really underutilized strategy, especially for newer business owners. And it does. If you are saying, Hey, I’m uncomfortable on sales calls, cold outreach sometimes can ratchet that up to 10 if you’re, you know, on the phone, cold calling.

[00:16:59] But there’s ways to do it that can make it more comfortable. For example, email outreach. So one of my favorite strategies for a cold email outreach, uh, campaign is go on the internet and if you have a niche search businesses where. You know that you work well, whether it be, you know, for example, let’s say you do websites for construction businesses or home remodeling businesses.

[00:17:25] Go and look up construction home remodeling businesses near me on Google and find businesses that have outdated websites. What you can then do, get their email and have a template prepared that says, Hey, I was checking out your website. Uh, Here are some things that I noticed could use improvements and here are some work that I’ve done with other businesses, and send off that template.

[00:17:52] Have a campaign with a couple follow ups to get that, you know, definitive yes or no and execute it that way. Uh, cold email [00:18:00] outreach is a really great way to. Start getting traction with your business in the early days, and I personally think should extend even past that. You should always have some cold outreach running in the background because there will be times that you’re getting a ton of inbound leads, people coming to you saying, Hey, I want to use your services.

[00:18:20] But that might not always last forever. And it’s important to have a foundation laid for people that you can quickly work with or you can quickly scale up those efforts to bring new clients in the door.

[00:18:33] Perry Rosenbloom: Very well said there. Sam and I, I think we could probably do a, a full episode on you. strategies for cold outreach, uh, and talk about that for 20 minutes. We, we’d love to hear from you if you’re listening to this and, and are interested. In us diving deeper into any of these topics here that we can flesh out into a full episode.

[00:18:51] So, you know, please let us know either in the comments on our website, leaving us a five star review and giving us some feedback about what else you want us to talk about from a sales perspective. we’re here for you. we do this podcast every week,

[00:19:02] , to help you out as a business owner and, and to help you grow your business so that you can focus on the stuff that you really love, which is, delivering creative work.

[00:19:11] So, Sam, my laptop battery. I, I’ve got like this janky set up here right now. Uh, my laptop battery’s at 11. We gotta get to, uh, best things we’ve cooked over the last few weeks here. Do you wanna, do you wanna kick it off for us?

[00:19:25] Sam Chlebowski: I know it’s been a couple weeks, so Yes, absolutely. Uh, we have to get this in. It’s now mandatory whenever you and I are speaking. top thing that I ate the past couple of weeks, let me think. Oh, I know. So it was a little wild. kind of weird combination, but, so there’s this place where my wife grew up, uh, Durango, and there’s this place called Serious Texts where they do these like Tex Meile burritos.

[00:19:52] So it’ll be like shredded pork. But then one of the things you can also get on it is these delicious cheesy [00:20:00] potatoes. So it’s a burrito with pork and then potatoes.

[00:20:04] Perry Rosenbloom: Ooh

[00:20:04] Sam Chlebowski: We tried this weekend to recreate it. It wasn’t quite as good, but we were getting close. The potatoes in particular my friend Eddie, made, uh, were absolutely delicious.

[00:20:16] Uh, and we did that with like some shredded smoked chicken that I did on the Trager. So that was, uh, that was my top thing of the past couple

[00:20:22] Perry Rosenbloom: Ooh. Sounds good, man. Good, Uh, good. TexMex burrito is hard to top. I actually have my, uh, my oldest son, Zach, saying I wanna eat more burritos. It’s like, All right, cool. I’ll make some burritos for us.

[00:20:33] Sam Chlebowski: New Year’s resolution. More burritos.

[00:20:36] Perry Rosenbloom: Right. That’s a good one. Uh, over the last few weeks, I had Covid for a few days that knocked me out.

[00:20:42] I’m gonna go with what I made last night just cuz it’s, it’s fresh in mind. it was Rosh Hashanah this past. as a good Jew, I gotta cook, uh, some brisket, uh, for Rosh Hashanah, and kugel. So I made a brisket. I made, some sweet potatoes, like a, a honey orange sauce.

[00:21:00] my favorite thing is I’ve, I’ve been a few times. is, uh, this upside down plum kugel. And so kugel, I’m sure there’s a polish equivalent. Cause you know, it’s a Eastern European Jewish food. It’s egg noodles with some dairy. In this case I use cottage cheese and sour cream, some eggs.

[00:21:19] You mix it all together, uh, a little bit of sugar and salt, and you bake it. and what I do with, with mine, I, I take plum slices and I kind of make an upside down kugel with like this beautiful plum around it and like a bunt cake, uh, kind of format.

[00:21:32] Sam Chlebowski: Oh, that sounds amazing. I have never heard of Google before, so I was actually like googling it on the side here. No, no, I haven’t. That’s cool. I mean, I’ve heard of brisket, uh, which sounds

[00:21:42] Perry Rosenbloom: Yeah. You know, some people put like raisins in their kugel to sweeten it up. I’m a big fan of the plums in the kugel that, that I think helps take it to another level there

[00:21:50] Sam Chlebowski: Very cool. So with that, that does it for another episode of Designing Growth. As we had mentioned at the start of the episode, if you’re interested in having us show you [00:22:00] around the motion.io platform, we will be doing tests of in about a week, and inviting people to join us on a call to show us that, head to our website and sign up for our launch list.

[00:22:09] You can do that at Motion.io/launch. Once again, that’s motion.io/launch. Until next Thursday, everybody. Take care.

[00:22:18] Perry Rosenbloom: Have a great week.