Latest / OneLegUpAlex Media / Benjamin Brown Explains Why Selling Your Brand Will Give You One Leg Up 5-1-24
Transcript
- 0:00Here's your host, Alex Darren. We've been talking about small businesses on one
- 0:05leg up because I believe in talking to CEOs and those in the industry who
- 0:09have gotten one leg up in whatever field they might have. And Benjamin Brown
- 0:14comes in and he's on my next guest. Thanks for joining me, Ben,
- 0:18welcome, glad to be here. Sir Ben comes and says, Okay,
- 0:21now you have the one leg up. Now how do we sell your
- 0:24business and make it profitable? Right? That's kind of where I want to
- 0:27start with you tonight. Absolutely, you take it away out, So tell
- 0:33us how you know someone's established, right and now they wanted to start selling
- 0:37what they've created. How do you come in and support I know you've been
- 0:41an entrepreneur for about for many years now, right, Well, the main
- 0:46thing I teach in and what we want to go through is like the simple
- 0:48steps people can generate or start working or understanding sales in a simple manner in
- 0:55this call. So it makes it simple for people to understand the sales is
- 0:58simple, but it's not easy. And where the not easy come in is
- 1:03the work that you need because sales is a skill. It is his own
- 1:08skill that you can actually elevate your business, or you can just use that
- 1:12skill to make your own employment or your own career in life. Really,
- 1:19so, let's say there's someone that's actually gotten investors already to help them build
- 1:25the business. Do you recommend going back to those investors? Okay, well,
- 1:29how do you help me grow it now? Or do you look for
- 1:30new leads? Well, when it comes to leads, you're talking about investors.
- 1:34Everything in life is a sale pretty much, even when you're a child
- 1:38asked to get picked up by your parents, you're selling them. You're closing
- 1:44them right, You're trying to get them to move. And so when you're
- 1:47working with either with investors, you're pitching your products, you're at seminars,
- 1:53or you're doing shows, everything around your business is pretty much sales. And
- 1:59that's where HR and accounting covers the other things on the back end. But
- 2:02most businesses are run purely by sales, and a lot of people don't have
- 2:07the knowledge, but they do a lot of marketing and they able to get
- 2:12by. Well, now, how about how small a business does that mean?
- 2:19Like, do you have to have people that you hire to help sell
- 2:22it or can you sell it yourself as an entrepreneur. Well, the main
- 2:25thing is that when you get more into sales, it's hard or difficult to
- 2:30hire salespeople if you don't know sales. So one thing a salesperson can do
- 2:36is get a job, doesn't mean they'd be able to sell your product.
- 2:38So that's why you have a lot of businesses that have turnover or high turnover,
- 2:43which is very costly time wise and money wise when it comes to small
- 2:46businesses. And so how do you come in at Benjamin and help them save
- 2:53money and time if you will? Well, mainly I analyze the business.
- 2:57There's many facets and sales when it comes to businesses, from the technical side
- 3:02to your performance on sales to the meaner to your your process. Right,
- 3:07what is your sales process is what I teach. When somebody comes into your
- 3:12company, walks in your door, sends you an email, calls you,
- 3:15what do you do and what do you say? And how do you process
- 3:20that information? Is your sales process and it should be rep repeatable where you
- 3:25can walk away and it can run on its own, or you can hire
- 3:29somebody and train them on your process and move on to other things in your
- 3:34company. And that's what's pure growth. Is about when it comes to growing
- 3:38your own independent company. I've gotten a booked you because also you know,
- 3:42this is a podcast, so I want to know how podcasters can make this
- 3:46a monetization monetized, you know, not just a hobby but something you actually
- 3:51make a living. How do you do you help podcasters as well? Well?
- 3:54When podcasters go in, it's generally based on what you want to accomplish.
- 4:00What is your product or service in the beginning, because some people are
- 4:02just informative when it comes to podcasts, some of them want to actually make
- 4:06money on it. So there's many ways to do that. Main thing is
- 4:11the communication with how you want to do that face to face, person to
- 4:15person or email to email, And the same thing is how you present that,
- 4:19how you how what is your process for getting people to actually work with
- 4:25you? And I actually sometime pay you right right? Well, you know,
- 4:30as an affiliate marketer, I try and find the get find that groove,
- 4:33and that's very difficult. The affiliate marketing is is something that's popular,
- 4:38but is it a successful bed. I'm not done affiliate marketing. When it
- 4:44comes to that main thing, when you're dealing with affiliate marketing, it's kind
- 4:47of like referrals, you're asking somebody, you're selling somebody else's product taking a
- 4:51percentage? Is that correct? That's exactly correct, and then it's tough to
- 4:57even get them to buy E Hummer. So there's just a lot. And
- 5:00that's why I always think of the handshake deal. And that's right. We
- 5:02got to work on closing the deal or getting the handshake deal to begin with.
- 5:06So let's say there's a business owner who is established, but they've not
- 5:12gotten the handshake deal yet. Where do you come in and say, Okay,
- 5:15I'm going to help you get that handshake deal. You're looking for.
- 5:17Sales is about performance, so we understand how are you going to communicate with
- 5:21that person. In my book Masteryard to close in the sale, I have
- 5:26ten steps that you need to go through to get a sale. Not all
- 5:29businesses need all ten, but every sale has ten steps. So mainly educating
- 5:33yourself on what that process is initially will help you and your communication skills convert
- 5:40whatever you want to convert. It's same thing. If you're married, you
- 5:44have children, it's the same type of deal. You're getting someone to move
- 5:47right, You're not do it through coercion or you're trying to rip them off
- 5:54because most people have sales as a negative connotation. It's to get them to
- 5:57move, to help them with something that's beneficial for you and also them.
- 6:01Makes sense, Yeah, but it does make sense. For the delay,
- 6:04it does make sense. And you know, I want to talk about leads
- 6:09because we often talk about leads in sales and even just as a podcast get
- 6:13you know podcast booking, Right, there's a lead to possibly get a guest
- 6:16on the podcast, and how do we make a cold lead come alive?
- 6:21And anybody listening to this might want to know that because maybe they're nervous or
- 6:26they don't know how to do that to make that cold lead come a lot.
- 6:29You said nervous and you said that, so sales. Eighty percent of
- 6:34sales is confidence. So when working with a client, most of the time
- 6:39I have to get their confidence up to understand the rejection that you have to
- 6:42go through if you're going to go through a sales process. And most people
- 6:46are not willing to take rejection. So that's why they're afraid of sales,
- 6:49because it's just part of the process that you're doing. It's a numbers game.
- 6:54So in the beginning step number one from the book is getting prepared.
- 6:57And most people, when you say anxious or whatever, that means you're not
- 7:00prepared, and that means you're not going to show up one hundred percent with
- 7:03your product or service. You still might get to sale. But when you
- 7:08calm those down, you become more very confident in your product and confident in
- 7:12your process. That goes away and it gives your ability to make more calls
- 7:16and make more sales. All right, let me ask you this because I've
- 7:20been learning today. So for instance, I was trying to work with someone
- 7:24on the ground level and I'm trying to get to this gala for New York
- 7:29City and I entered the executive director of the company and I went right to
- 7:31the executive director. Going right to the top is not always easy, but
- 7:35is that effective when you go right to the tops that I've tried to deal
- 7:39with the middleman? Absolutely, that's called connecting, relating, and make sure
- 7:44you're talking to the person that's qualified. Who better to do that than the
- 7:48make the decision is to CEO. So by doing that, kudos to you.
- 7:53And that's where a lot of people started their career, is by not
- 7:56being afraid to go directly to the top the decision maker to do it.
- 8:00So good job. But for those that feel hell back all, I can't
- 8:03deal with the ones and the ivory tower. If you will, how do
- 8:07we remove that? I know you kind of talk about it, but this
- 8:09is dealing with more than just making the sales. This is now making that
- 8:13connection with the higher up. How do we calm our nerves and do that?
- 8:16From your perspective, Well, I give you an analogy. There's what
- 8:20we call dating coaches, right, people that you want to go out and
- 8:22you want to go out and do approaches to people in real life. It's
- 8:28the same type of deal your fear. I mean, it's no such thing.
- 8:35It's just humans. I tell people, it's just another person. They
- 8:37go through the same things you do, no matter whether they have money not
- 8:41money, lambeaus, boats, jets. There's still really people. And when
- 8:45you meet higher up people on a regular basis, you realize they're the same
- 8:48just like you. They have fears, they have all of these different things.
- 8:52They've just been a little bit more successful in what they've done. So
- 8:56you know, once you start to understand that you can actually community with anyone
- 9:00and don't have that fear to do it. So the main thing is teaching
- 9:03people that because most people don't understand what that is. Ben you've been doing
- 9:07this for twenty years. Where do people stumble the most that maybe went into
- 9:11your writing of this book. They start because they assume the first rule in
- 9:18sales is never assume anything, and so they think they have a great personality,
- 9:22which means they can sell, which is good. But you still need
- 9:24to have a process so you don't assume it's all rule out by question.
- 9:30So the difference between a good and a great salesperson is the number of questions
- 9:35that you ask. So if you can ask good effective questions, that is
- 9:39the beginning stages of learning was to become a good salesperson. Have you found
- 9:45those who started a business so frustrated that I cannot I have to not only
- 9:48market my product, but now I've got to go out and sell it.
- 9:52I mean, it can get frustrating to be both roles, can it?
- 9:56Well? The main thing I work with individuals. The concept that I deal
- 10:01with them is that you have to like a love the product that you're doing.
- 10:05If you don't like it, love it, leave it because you're going
- 10:07to have to go through the hard times when it's like marriage or anything else,
- 10:11it's not going to be easy. So if you don't like or love
- 10:16the product that you're represented, it comes through in your voice, your message,
- 10:20and how you promote yourself. So you know, if I gave you
- 10:24snap my finger and gave you, hey, here's a cure for cancer and
- 10:26it works one hundred percent, you would go out and scream it all day.
- 10:30You wouldn't care who turned you down because it's something that everybody needs and
- 10:35you know it's a valuable thing. So where on the scale is that is
- 10:37your product? Right? You should be able to walk out every day and
- 10:41say, hey, I have this product. Hey, I have this product.
- 10:43It's the same kind of deal. But most people don't understand that concept.
- 10:48They think that I build it and people will come. You have to
- 10:52be more proactive and that's the way it used to be, and that's the
- 10:56way it is. Sales hasn't changed since the dawn of time, and the
- 11:00only thing that change is the tools that we have Now. When I started,
- 11:03we didn't have computers, we didn't have cell phones, so you know
- 11:09that's telling my age. So you know, you had to get on a
- 11:13regular phone, You had to call people and all that kind of deal,
- 11:15and then computers came in. We didn't like computers to slow this down because
- 11:20we wanted to connect keep talking to people. Now you can barely talk to
- 11:22a regular person, right, You have to go through messaging and all this
- 11:26kind So imagine if you can cut through that and just get directly to your
- 11:30client one on one, what advantage you would have rather than trying to use
- 11:33all these other tools trying to reach your potential client. Now I'm kind of
- 11:37talking here as a content creator, so I'm thinking I'm a creator, but
- 11:41I also want to keep growing my content while trying to market it. And
- 11:46do you find people have a struggle being that creator and marketing it. Maybe
- 11:52I'm asking the same question again, but I just yeah, well, what
- 11:56are your thoughts on that being the creator but also marketing your creation? Holding
- 12:00it? You're talking baits on around of marketing. So when it comes to
- 12:05distinction, I want to educate people on this is a difference between marketing and
- 12:09selling. Marketing and content. Creation is giving people the observation that you're there,
- 12:16and then when they start to reach out to you, like your sponsors
- 12:20or something like that, is when it actually comes into your sales process,
- 12:26So it's a two different things. So contrect creating is about you know,
- 12:30doing that making observations where people will do something like you or click you right.
- 12:35Marketing is the same thing that's people aware, but then when it starts
- 12:39asking them to do something like click on this, go here, call this
- 12:45number is when it starts going into sales. So it's two different things.
- 12:50All right. Let's say maybe someone has tried to sell the product and they
- 12:56maybe got a client to buy it, but then they lost that client.
- 13:00Does that discourage people when they lose someone and they're not really ready to go
- 13:03after that next one because they're afraid. I guess that happens too, right,
- 13:05when people lose a client, they're often all right, well, I
- 13:09got to do it all over again, and how do you get them through
- 13:11that? Well, your confidence understanding that you're not going to be one hundred
- 13:16percent. I've done that where I've actually had the same situation done. But
- 13:20the step number ten in the book Mastery articles in the sale is to generate
- 13:26not the sale, but a referral or testimonial. So I've actually went to
- 13:31a couple of times sold someone got two referrals. Two weeks later they wanted
- 13:37to return to product, which was fine, but the two referrals they gave
- 13:43me I sold them without even any marketing. So just by asking for referrals,
- 13:50give your ability to generate more through your business and understanding that happens and
- 13:54your customer service. So he actually gave me a testimonial. Had no problem
- 13:58returning too, because he gave me twice what he gave me gave me two
- 14:03more deals. I lost one, but generated too. So the process will
- 14:09set you free so you don't worry about those type of deals when you're in
- 14:13business. Well, I was going to say, how do you ease your
- 14:16clients worry then that, Hey, you know I'm going to go out there
- 14:18and help you sell this. How do you ease their worries so they can
- 14:22focus on being the brains behind the operation if you will. Well, if
- 14:26you're in business, you're in sales. So either you hire somebody to do
- 14:31it or you learn to do it yourself. There is no you know,
- 14:35just standing back. There's always a sale going on in businesses, there's a
- 14:39sales team background that type of deal to move the product. So to have
- 14:43somebody just sit back and just have it go automatic. That's what sales funnels
- 14:48and all these kinds of things that came about the last five ten years,
- 14:50which work great. That's awesome, it does work. But if you're ever
- 14:56going to get face to face or on the phone or something direct with your
- 15:00customer, you need to know the language of sales so you can convert them
- 15:05as well. Now we talk about middleman, you are actually the the you
- 15:09know, the big man, A's three sixty sales consultants. You're the principal
- 15:13there. So at three sixty sales consulting, when a client comes to you,
- 15:18do they deal with you directly or do you have those maybe if you're
- 15:20on one case so you have you have employees that help out in the firm
- 15:24as well. No, I'd rather have one on one right now. I'd
- 15:30rather deal with them. Because sale is it's an action item, so role
- 15:35playing is the key. So I can give you a book on sales you
- 15:39could read. It doesn't mean you're going to be a good salesperson. So
- 15:43it's an action item, which means that we will role play. We go
- 15:46through a number of sessions. It's just like learning how to weld or learn
- 15:52how to be a carpenter. You have to go through a small apprenticeship to
- 15:54understand. So that way, you don't practice on clients because clients are not
- 16:00going to give you any feedback potential clients, right, because you'll probably mess
- 16:04it up, But potential clients are not going to grade you on your performance.
- 16:08When you go out there, you need somebody to give you feedback.
- 16:11That's why you have sales managers or a sales team, right. Or when
- 16:17you go into a company, they train you for two or three weeks before
- 16:21they put you on the phone or move out to start dealing with customers,
- 16:26because you don't want to burn good leads with bad performance. Makes sense?
- 16:30It does. And I want to ask you about maintaining because I've been in
- 16:34radio for eleven years and I've worked closely with the sales department here in radio.
- 16:37Because we kind of work side by side with production and sales, we
- 16:41kind of get to know each other's world. So tell me about when you
- 16:45have a lineage client, right, when you have a client that's been there
- 16:48forever, how do those businesses keep that client happy twenty thirty plus years later,
- 16:53and maybe those just starting up now, we'll have a client thirty years
- 16:56from now you saying, how how do you keep them happy? Yeah?
- 17:00How to keep them happy? How to keep them engage? And a long
- 17:03time you know client of yours. Well, the main thing is keep them
- 17:08in the loop based upon the performance of what you're doing to outline. You
- 17:11make them generational partners and then also make sure that every couple of months you're
- 17:18going back to them checking on it and also asking for referrals. Right,
- 17:22So the main thing if they're along with you, they know because they're your
- 17:26target market. Your best customer is the one you just sold, right,
- 17:30So that is your demographics normally, and they know people within their demographics to
- 17:36keep moving and you keep them happy in a database and a newsletter and all
- 17:40these common things to keep them close to you. So when things change,
- 17:44you might have a product along the lines of the same one that you come
- 17:47up with years later that might align with them. They already know union normal
- 17:51times, you already have the credit card, so it's easier to sell them
- 17:53on something new. I want to ask you about the technology because you just
- 17:57click something in my brain. You know, oftentimes people would be in the
- 18:00classifieds trying to sell their business. Now it's so easy online and the adaptation
- 18:06that maybe you as someone that takes in these businesses who are trying to sell,
- 18:11is it a game changer? And how do you utilize technology to your
- 18:15advantage? Bend to get the clients the business they want. Main thing is
- 18:21the database. What technology are you using to effectively go from one call to
- 18:26another and follow up? Right? So you know, most people will go
- 18:30through these behemoth type sales programs, Salesforce or you know, these big,
- 18:36huge programs that you will buy with. You know, your company's only thirty
- 18:40or forty people, but you're buying Salesforce, which is normally to handle ten
- 18:45thousand employees. Right, Keep it simple, stupid, right, So get
- 18:49us get a program, not a spreadsheet that you can work on. There's
- 18:53a lot of ones out there you can use with your phone app so you
- 18:56could be organized and structure. The main thing about technology is being able to
- 19:02be organized database wise, knowing who you talked to last time you talked to
- 19:06them, what was their deals? If somebody has to take over the call,
- 19:10they can go into that database. They can step right where you left
- 19:14off of and keep moving and everything is one concit complete place. Alex the
- 19:19most important thing I tell business is your database is your bank. So if
- 19:23in your company you had all these different resources, your bank is your database.
- 19:29Anytime you need more money, you should be able to go into your
- 19:32database and pull out referrals, testimonials, new products. You're an affiliate marketing,
- 19:37right, So yeah, I got another product, go back through the
- 19:41same database that you just so offer them a new product and just keep moving.
- 19:45And that's how business is being done. Do you feel like you are
- 19:48a PR person for the businesses you work for or do you let them do
- 19:53the imagery or the PR work? If you will, what did you say
- 19:56again as that one more time? Do you feel like our public relations as
- 20:00well when you try and get your client business or do you let them be
- 20:03their own public relations? No, they deal with that. PR is just
- 20:07PR. That's a whole different thing. Sales is frontwork, down to the
- 20:12ground, bottom of the bottom of the company. Hard work. PR is
- 20:17just putting a brand, getting your brand, moving your name things. That
- 20:21nature is not really in sales. So it's totally different when you come to
- 20:23that. Tell me about if some of your businesses work door to door or
- 20:29if they evolved from just the door to door nature of you know, knocking
- 20:32and saying, hey, buy my product. How does what approaches do you
- 20:36find that your businesses take to sell their business. Well, it can be
- 20:41varied, but most of the time you're talking about putting together an email,
- 20:45phone calls, incoming calls, outgoing calls, zoom calls, all these different
- 20:52type of deals that you're talking about to generate. The closer you get to
- 20:56your client, the better off you are with your performance of sales. Most
- 21:00people want to sell at a distance from an email. I always many clients
- 21:03I don't even know. I'm like, you got the email, Get them
- 21:07on the phone. They're trying to sell through an email. You don't know
- 21:11the type of demeanor. If they're having a good day, bad day,
- 21:14you feel that on the phone. So my deal is try to get them
- 21:18on the phone, bring them closer to you, and then close them.
- 21:22I mean, most of your competition is doing the same thing. So by
- 21:26you changing up and being more personable, you're more beneficial to get the deal.
- 21:33All right, I have a feeling you went from corporate America to your
- 21:36own business. Is that about right? So were you frustrated with the way
- 21:40sales was in corporate America. So you said, all right, I'm going
- 21:41to do this on my own and help businesses sort of reinvent their sales way,
- 21:48if you're way of saling their business. Well, what I did is,
- 21:52over twenty years, take the best of what I've learned to actually comprise
- 21:56my own sales process. That's digestible for individual using analogies in their own life,
- 22:02music, dating, whatever to make them understand. Because when you learn
- 22:07the process, you're doing it in the background of your mind as you're talking.
- 22:11So it's a train type skill. So as you do it, you're
- 22:15actually judging yourself at the same time, so you slowing everything down. So
- 22:21it takes a while for me to get that into people's perspective to understand that's
- 22:25what it takes to sell. And once you're able to do that, you're
- 22:29actually grading yourself. You become a better salesperson and also you become a better
- 22:34communicator in life, I know, communication is key. And do you find
- 22:38that funny that you know someone can be the CEO and talk in front of
- 22:42a big group, but then they can't make their own sale. Isn't that
- 22:45kind of paradoxical? If you will one of the companies I work with is
- 22:49in that same type of deal and train them and they did well and they
- 22:53still don't like talking to people out lately. So you have introverts. But
- 22:59if I could take somebody who's introvert and if they stick to the sales process,
- 23:03they will do better than a person that has a great personality because they're
- 23:07system based. The other personality person will go way off and they will use
- 23:11their personality and won't follow the system normally and have to come back to that
- 23:15to keep them straight. So I've dealt with both type of personas and so
- 23:22both will work. Both will work in sales. So basically, you have
- 23:26to love the product that you're working on enough to sell it or love it
- 23:30like or love it, because when I talk to you about my product,
- 23:33I got to have some type of enthusiasm in order to get through to you.
- 23:37If I tell you, hey, I got this car, it's just
- 23:41crap, and you know it's like it's just it smells, and you know,
- 23:47do you really want to do you want to buy it? No?
- 23:49Right? Let me ask you when a client, when you have someone that's
- 23:53trying to sell it, and then you know, maybe they got the deal,
- 23:57but the money's not come in yet. You know, getting that money
- 24:00and collected is a big part of the sale. So did do you teach
- 24:06that kind of confidence? Okay, well, now you got to ask them
- 24:07for the money. If you say that to deal, that's step number nine.
- 24:11That's called pricing terms. So if you've got a problem collecting money,
- 24:15it's basically your problem. You haven't set it up properly where you don't have
- 24:18that issue. Your terms are wrong. So you need to make sure that
- 24:23you set the terms because people have various You're the one who facilitates the product.
- 24:29You dictate how you get paid. So for example, I work in
- 24:34a limo business. My company is a limo One of my businesses is a
- 24:38limo service. You pay me all up front. I don't deal with anything
- 24:41on the back end. That's it. So if you can't do that,
- 24:45it's very rare. Only about three percent of the time. I might do
- 24:48payments or something like that nature, but most of the time, you pay
- 24:52me upfront. I don't deal with that type of issue, and I set
- 24:55that other people will work on. I'll pay get paid afterward or something.
- 25:00So you know, don't deal with that. So if you start seeing problems
- 25:03with that, you probably need to change your price in terms. Well,
- 25:07that's an interesting step to look at price and terms. Now, Ben,
- 25:10we're talking about Benjamin Brown, and I'm so glad to have you on today,
- 25:12Ben, to talk about all this because we just got through tax day,
- 25:15right, So some business might be feeling the pinch with taxes. And
- 25:19I know you probably don't deal with that part of it, but maybe there
- 25:25are a lot of discouraged entrepreneurs out there because they see their taxes and they
- 25:29see the art work they're putting in their business. How do you soldier own
- 25:33after tax day? If you will and keep selling your business no matter how
- 25:36much taxes you have to pay on it, if you learn how to properly
- 25:40sell. It's an adrenaline rush because it's something that you do as a performance,
- 25:45like being a stand up comedian. It's like doing something on Broadway,
- 25:48like a perfect play at a night time. I mean, that's what it
- 25:52really is. And now that's why a lot of people love to do it.
- 25:55It's an addiction to get into sales. The money will come. If
- 26:00you like a love what you do, the money will come. And so
- 26:03being persistent by that and understand it takes a little while. Everybody's sold on
- 26:10entrepreneurship over the last ten years, but a lot of people don't know what
- 26:12it truly, truly means, very true. All right. I got to
- 26:17ask you this because I feel like you probably deal with companies that want to
- 26:19be fortune five hundred overnight. Now that's not going to happen for a small
- 26:23business right away. But do you find small business can become that fortune five
- 26:27hundred if they work hard enough at it? Lightning in a bottle? Most
- 26:33of the time, people come from corporations or they come out of college,
- 26:37and they handicap based upon how the real world really works when it comes to
- 26:41entrepreneurship. And so you know to find that if you watch Shark Tank,
- 26:47you know you see all of those people very few. I mean, it's
- 26:49just a lot of work and people don't understand. Now I've got to ask
- 26:52about Shark Tank. Are you screaming at the television when you see that?
- 26:56Why are you selling it this way? You know, I look at it.
- 27:03It is humorous to me. But you know, they come out and
- 27:06the last couple of years, they're better trained, they have a platform,
- 27:10they know what they're gonna say. See those guys are really wanting money.
- 27:14So they come out. They're very they know what they're going they have a
- 27:18platform they do, and they know the process, they know what they're gonna
- 27:21say. They add humor in there, they know their numbers. All these
- 27:25type of deals you have to do when you're going in there. So it's
- 27:27the same thing. You got to know your price points, your break points,
- 27:30can you do a discount, all these different type of tools you could
- 27:33use in your sales process. So once you understand all of that and all
- 27:37the nuances of it, and then you add tonality in there and then your
- 27:44pace, all these different deals like I would talk to somebody from New York
- 27:48differently than I would talk to in Texas. All these type of deals that
- 27:52you could do. It's a whole feel within itself, and that's why there's
- 27:56some people at sales making more money than the CEO. All right, so
- 28:00let's talk about statistics, because every company that wants to buy a product or
- 28:06investment in it wants to know the numbers. And so do you work with
- 28:10your client to get the most accurate numbers or do you leave that up to
- 28:14them to when they're selling the accurate numbers. What does that mean? Elect
- 28:19the most accurate numbers of how much you've sold so far in your inventory?
- 28:23You know that type of thing. Would you call it book for that?
- 28:26You got to know where you are, to know where you're going, and
- 28:30so being able to do that one of the best companies I did. Your
- 28:33stats were always on the wall for everyone to see how many calls you made,
- 28:37what was your connect time, all of these things. Because sales can
- 28:41be measured, marketing cannot. You can put a million dollars into marketing,
- 28:45you can estimate how much money you're going to get back in sales. You
- 28:48can tighten that up knowing that your closing rates three percent six percent is going
- 28:55up to nine percent. Everything is matched by numbers when it comes to sales.
- 28:59That's why I love it because it's not fake. It's real. When
- 29:03I make people money, it's real money. It's not I think we're gonna
- 29:07make money. It's like less close more deals. If you have the potential
- 29:11of clients coming into your your realm, all you have to do is sell
- 29:15them. So you have a process in place to do that. So it
- 29:18gets exciting to that point. Because it's a performance based type skill all right,
- 29:25A lot of people just settle for the customer service job with the right
- 29:27bind of desk with the headset turned on. But that that's not as rewarding,
- 29:33is it as an actual sales gig where you're actually selling a product?
- 29:36I mean, it doesn't seem as rewarding. What would you say to those
- 29:40that do that? And are they are they selling uh you know something real?
- 29:44Or is that? What are your thoughts on that? Like, Hey,
- 29:47most people come into their job doing their job customer service, graphic design,
- 29:53accounting, bookkeeping, text poured. They come in sales is. Especially
- 30:03if you're commission base. You come in every day having to prove or write
- 30:07your check every day. You're the only one that come into that building knowing
- 30:11that you have to perform. You can't come in and be at the coffee
- 30:15machine and hanging out and doing all that other stuff. You really your job
- 30:19is to go out and sell. So that's why when you have these conferences
- 30:23or you have a Christmas party, you'll notice that the salespeople are normally backed
- 30:29by the bar because they're very outgoing. They've spent a lot of energy all
- 30:33day long because they have to. They cannot perform unless they're at their best.
- 30:40And so that's the difference between salespeople and everybody else at the company.
- 30:44They have to write their check normally depending on how the pay is set up.
- 30:48Right, all right, So in your twenty years, has there ever
- 30:52been someone that made you proud, that became a salesman, that made you
- 30:56proud? Oh? Every day. I have my nephew. I have my
- 31:00godson that I've taught who read the book and started utilizing the things that I
- 31:04taught. I was there when he was born, my son who is nine.
- 31:08I teach my children when I go up, ask questions, well can
- 31:12I get something for less? You know, I start teaching my children from
- 31:17a younger age what sales is about, and I always teach them, you
- 31:19to the price is never the price. You can always negotiate everything. Everything's
- 31:25negotiable. So once you realize that, you realize that you can control a
- 31:29little bit more of your life by learning the skill of sales. Always talk
- 31:33to people, never be in Willie. So those are the things that you
- 31:36know, I do. So my my family, my nephew, my godson,
- 31:41and my children just just taking some of the things they see that I
- 31:45do. When I'm out or something like that. We'll go to a market,
- 31:48they'll see that I'll ask for a better price. They'll do so they
- 31:52able to negotiate. So it's trainable to children as well, the art of
- 31:59selling. And I feel like it could actually be the way of life,
- 32:01right, So if you make a right sale, it'll actually help you advocate
- 32:05yourself in the medical when you're at a doctor's office. I mean, it's
- 32:07all relatable. That confidence that you get from becoming a salesperson can trickle them
- 32:12into other parts of your life. Can absolutely when your marriage ends, it
- 32:16means that you stop selling. So there you go. And I just think
- 32:22of it, you know, as someone who might want to sell this podcast
- 32:25more and get more people on board with it, you know, in my
- 32:29home and my health stuff too. To be personal here, advocate for what's
- 32:34right in the doctor's office. I feel like that's interrelated there. Yeah,
- 32:37you have to know where you're going. Main thing about sales is being able
- 32:42to know exactly where you're going before they do, and then being able to
- 32:45ask questions that will open them up based upon what they need, want or
- 32:50will use. And that's one of the key points, you know, over
- 32:53the overlay of the sales process. It can it gets more detailed than that,
- 32:58but that's pretty much of it all, right, in your twenty years,
- 33:01did anybody surprising like that was the introvert that became the extrovert? Yeah.
- 33:07I worked with one client one time that started and they just refused.
- 33:10They would just like and I had to, you know, build a confidence
- 33:15up for weeks for them to finally get on the phone, and we always
- 33:20market marked down how much progression they made, and in two and a half
- 33:25months they generated an extra one hundred and seventy thousand dollars through that time.
- 33:31Shocking because they were doing a regular job, but they wasn't selling. Talking
- 33:37to somebody and selling. It's two different things. I feel like this generation
- 33:42is sort of like the they give me generation, but they kind of know
- 33:45how to fight for their worth. And do you find that in this generation
- 33:49as well, that they're sort of asking for what they want more than maybe
- 33:52before. I haven't, I haven't checked in fully on this generation that's coming
- 33:59out now see what we see. But they're surrounded by the easier things in
- 34:05life, and so you know, back in the days people used to go
- 34:08door to door sales was hard. Now people think that they become, you
- 34:14know, instead of firemen, they want to be you know, they want
- 34:19to be YouTubers and all this type of deal, which each generation have those
- 34:22type of deals. But they see a lot of success. I mean all
- 34:28the time. Everybody just puts their best foot forward, and that's not really
- 34:31what life is about. And so a lot of these children are going to
- 34:36have to face life and everybody cannot be successful. And so in the next
- 34:42five ten years, you're going to see a lot of people that's going to
- 34:44realize, hey, I've been sold the wrong thing because social media actually tells
- 34:47you everything's okay, everybody's doing good, everybody's making money and all this kind
- 34:52of stuff, and that's not really what's going on. All right, in
- 34:57your twenty years, there were two catastrophes I can think of financial that you
- 35:00know, probably change your perspective on selling. I don't know, but the
- 35:04seven eight crash and then the pandemic. Did those things change your style of
- 35:09selling or or whatnot, or teach a different way? No, not really,
- 35:14because I would I try to keep it simple. You don't change.
- 35:17It's just structure, and knowing that structure got me through the pandemic. It
- 35:22got me through everything else. So the main thing you keep trying to change
- 35:27or try to acclimate towards something. Most businesses that come to me and say,
- 35:30I don't know if you can work with us because we do this,
- 35:32and I'm like, I don't care what you do. I don't care what
- 35:35you're selling. We're doing this same thing because I'm gonna have to take the
- 35:39person who has an IQ of fifty or a person IQ of one thirty and
- 35:45teach them all the same way. That's the way you want it. Keep
- 35:47it simple, stupid makes sense. It does, And I'm glad that you
- 35:52are not having a little man when you deal with the three sixty substance.
- 35:57Only it's just you, which which is great because I think people need that
- 36:00and it seems like you give them that reassurance when they talk to you directly.
- 36:05That's what you need when you deal with a coach. It's not like
- 36:07theory. You got to have somebody that gives you the introspective on a regular
- 36:12basis to guide you through the hard times of knowledge of trying to transcend into
- 36:16something new. When they first try and sell their business at what you know,
- 36:22how much would you say, they have to have in the bank,
- 36:24if you will, monetarily before they start increasing that bank. All that varies.
- 36:31Wow, it depends on what you're doing. There's so many answers I
- 36:37can give to that, depending on what type of I mean, you could
- 36:40start off affiliate marketing. You know, you can start off with that,
- 36:44maybe around two thousand dollars a truck. In business which I started last year,
- 36:49you need you know, eighty ninety at least one hundred thousand dollars in
- 36:52capital just to ensure all the stuff and everything you have to do. So
- 36:55that varies depending on what you're doing. Well. I think for those in
- 37:00the media world, whether it be print or podcast or it's all about the
- 37:05numbers of how many people are listening and how many circulations you got. I
- 37:08mean, those play role and those can be daunting, but it's not insurmountable
- 37:14as how I feel about it when it comes to media. What is your
- 37:17question, Alex, I guess my question is if you're in the media,
- 37:22do you find that that could be a challenge selling it more or less of
- 37:27a challenge because you've got already something you can listen to or you can watch.
- 37:30The key is in life, and it goes back to the eightiest.
- 37:34There's no such thing as bad publicity. So if you're in the media,
- 37:40that is a great thing, and if you didn't pay for that, that
- 37:45is a great thing. Very interesting. Well, this has been great,
- 37:51and I hope small businesses can come to you because I'm sure that you know.
- 37:55As we go, I saw that there were a whole bunch of applications
- 37:58in February March follow that. How many people are applying for that small business
- 38:04you know application? Are you following those trends at all? Yes, yes,
- 38:07everybody's jumping ship thinking that they can get into the feel of small business.
- 38:14Good for them, but be very wary, is what I say.
- 38:19Well, I think that's where you come in because then they're applying, they
- 38:21get approved, boom, they go to Ben Brown and you can help sell
- 38:24their business after they approved. Right, Yeah, something to that sort.
- 38:30I can see something like that. Yes, Well, I'm glad we had
- 38:32you on and I hope that those were small business owners that maybe are afraid
- 38:37to launch. Don't be afraid, just go for it, and hey,
- 38:40Ben Brown is there for you as well. At meet Benjamin Brown dot ben
- 38:45Meet with Benjamin dot Com. Thanks for your times and I've ben and I
- 38:50look forward to talking with you again. Absolutely. What is the one thing
- 38:53that you learn in this conversation tonight Not to be afraid and that the confidence
- 39:00to just go up to someone and say, hey, this is my podcast
- 39:04one look up with Alex Garrett and here's why you should invest today. Absolutely,
- 39:08go out there. If you like it or love it, sell it.