SPEAKER_00 0:00

You do still need to take the time to build a relationship with that new person. Um, one of the common mistakes that I see is they just immediately again skip to it and pitch right away. And nobody really wants to be sold. They like to buy stuff though.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

All right, everybody, welcome to another episode of Connections That Matter, where we have awesome conversations with Northern Colorado's best networkers and find out the tricks of the trade that have made them successful. Today I am bringing in a sales expert. We have Matt Roberts from Effectaus Sales Partners. Matt, welcome to the show. Thanks, Andrew. Appreciate it. Uh so being a sales coach, a sales expert, uh, tell us what that means and how did you climb to that level?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Sure. Um, so being a sales coach is just a lot of trial and error. Um, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't, kind of how you structure things. Um, when is a good time to ask a question? When isn't? When is a good time to ask the question? Just be quiet. Um but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Well, in networking, a lot of people can't stand silence. Uh so um, you know, and I I see that, Matt, like when people are out networking, you know, there there's this when it's done right way, it's not necessarily led with sales, but there is still enrollment, there's creating buy-in, there's creating a follow-up sequence that they're hoping to achieve. And a lot of people are winging it. Uh so what does winging it look like? Uh, what are some of the maybe pitfalls or things that people are not optimizing when they're not using a sales system? And then uh we'll get into like what a more evolved sales process looks like.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Sure. Um, definitely like the most common mistakes that I see on a regular basis are like swooping in and pitching way too early. And we see that whether it's networking or just doing a meeting in general, but they don't really understand an issue or they don't understand or they they just get so excited that somebody has something that they can solve that they feel like they assume everything else that's happening and they just swoop in and hammer it. And then they just start talking about themselves, um, which usually is the worst way to sell. Uh, you don't care that my company's been in business for 10 years, you don't care about my reputation or how many Google stars I I have, especially when you're meeting somebody brand new. Um so winging it in those conversations, you're usually not really focused on that other person to really understand what they need. And if you can help, you're focused on yourself and what you're gonna say next and how to pitch them. And what we find is that usually leads to the worst outcome, which is you turn them off and they don't actually want to talk to you.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Matt, that's so good. So, like uh when when people are out networking and and a lot of it's passion, right? They're they're excited for what they're do, they're excited to be in a room where there's a lot of energy, there's a lot of um stuff, stuff going on. How do you how would you coach somebody to have a systematic sales approach uh in a networking situation where uh they might be a potential lead, they might be a potential golden goose, or they might not, like that initial rapport building. How do you how do you use it as a filtering mechanism?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Absolutely. Um, I think it's a really important filtering mechanism. Um, and it could be a golden goose, and you really don't want to judge anybody right off the bat just from the way they walk up to you, or you want to give everybody a chance. And so, what I always encourage my people to do is just to be curious, ask some questions. You don't have to hit it off with every single person that you meet, and you you definitely don't have to give business to every single person that you meet just because they're part of your same networking group, but you're really trying to find your people and where you can build the relationship off is just being known and liked. So work to try and understand who they are as a person, work to understand what makes them excited, what motivates them, why they got into the business that they got into, what brought them to the place that they are in today, and then figure out a little bit about their business. And if that can be added to your lineup and help your customers, then everybody's being helped and everything's going great.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

What um what do you see people get wrong about their sales process that is like the light bulb moment where they're like, maybe, maybe I should get this fixed?

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Usually the one of the biggest things is just getting ghosted. So you have a great conversation with somebody, you think it was great, you told them all of your stats, and you you showed them and they tried your product, and you're like, oh man, like this this thing is definitely gonna close. And then when it comes down to actually being committed, that prospect never calls you back, they disappear, you never see them again, they won't return your texts, emails, calls. It's that sales rep, are you sure you're okay? Like conversation that's good.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Just checking in.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Please following up for the 70 millionth time, you know. Um if if that's happening to you, you probably lost it way earlier in the process. But that's one of the big, big red flags for us to say, okay, was that person really worth your time as the salesperson? Um, or was there something that you missed?

SPEAKER_02 5:22

So one, let's say I'm not interested. Uh, and you know, I it is. It's like it's easy just to leave them on red or like, oh, they're just trying to sell me again, so I'm not gonna respond to the message. Yeah. Um, but that also impacts your professional reputation of not being in communication. So what's a way that you can let a salesman or saleswoman down? Easy if if the answer is a no, rather than just leaving them on red?

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Absolutely. Um, just tell them no. Usually that's one of the things that a salesperson really loves is the there's two winners, two winners in every deal. The person that wins the deal and wins the business, and the person that finds out that they're not winning the business first. Um, because then they can spend time with the people that would be able to move forward with them. As salespeople, the other thing we really need to do is make it okay for a prospect to tell us no and and leave that door open. Hey, at any point, like if this doesn't feel like it's a good fit or you can't move forward for whatever reason, just tell me. And I would rather get that out of the way so I can spend my time with somebody else than continuing to try and push this rock up a hill that it's never gonna make it up.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Sometimes it's like I just lost the bid, but others it's like they weren't really ready to buy, or maybe they were ready to buy, but then the price was a little bit out of their comfort zone. They're trying to they're trying to talk themselves into it, or maybe they were hot and ready uh when you first talk to them, and then now there's another fire they're putting out. How do you as a salesperson, how do you uncover which is which and and what you're up against, and um how to navigate all of those steps so that you can get to a close?

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Absolutely. Um the biggest thing is asking questions. Um I spent 45 minutes with a roofer one time and talking about pricing structure and like how to think about it and all this stuff. And then at the end of it, he was just like, So, what you're telling me is ask more questions. And the the honest answer is yes. The honest answer is yes, you do need to ask more questions. You as a salesperson, you're paid to collect information. It's what you can get them to say, and the more honest that they can be. Of course, in a sales situation, if you uh don't start from that foundation of trust, there's a lot of smoke screens that you might get, or there might be some half-truths or dishonesty between your interactions, depending on how you go about it. So asking good questions, asking those questions maybe multiple times just to make sure that you're on the same page, never assume anything, um, would be the key to truly understanding and helping them versus trying to get them in a product because you have commission breath or you need a sale that month or whatever else.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

And so effective sales partners has uh partnered with the Sandler method. Um why Sandler?

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Oh man. Um so when I first started talking to Sandler, they opened up a meeting and they did all the things that I did. And I'd never actually known I would always taught this is how you open a meeting, these are the things that you do. And I had never actually heard anybody else do it. One, and then two, I had never been able to be like, hey, so like you start the meeting the same way I do. Can you help me understand why? And they were able to answer it. And it was just this mind-blowing thing for me, um, that uh it's it immediately gets control of the situation, it elevates your status with your buyer, it sets really clear expectations, so you know exactly what's gonna happen. That's building trust on top of it, you know how long it's gonna be, and it's just this beautiful way to get a meeting started, and the meeting goes so well. Um, and it was just like this tiny little thing that you do on every single Sailor meeting that uh I just absolutely loved. And every single step throughout the rest of the sales process, there was some nugget of wisdom or some great technique that I was able to pick up, um, either that I was doing or that was new. And so it was super exciting that the sales system wasn't just like a one-trick pony, which a lot of them are. It's make more calls or it's ask this question or whatever else. Um, it was just so spectacular that there was so much content and so much that I could learn.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

And your background, uh, one, you've held some really big roles and big place in design large, but also uh your humble beginnings as a painter cut your teeth in in sales. So uh share share the journey, Matt, of like those first couple of days learning to sell uh when you were at a painting business to your your role at Shell.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Sure. Um, so when I was 19, freshman at Sioux Boulder, don't hold that against me, poor Collins people. But um I I got recruited to do CollegeWorks painting, which was this internship. But basically it was go out, sell to your friends and family, and hire your friends to paint some houses over the summer. Um and there was a little bit of training there. Like they definitely helped you say, okay, like this is how you structure an estimate, these are the questions you ask, but also go out, knock on some doors, and get your teeth kicked in to some extent. Um, so that was kind of the first place that I really cut my teeth selling and figured out that it was really, really fun uh when it goes well. And then also, you know, it can be pretty frustrating if it's not.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

So that moment you're ringing the doorbell, or you know, a business owner who's like, okay, I'm gonna make sales calls today, and it's like their phone's in their hand, they're making the dial, but it's like, you know, call or knock. Uh obviously you seem to have a knack of like getting over the fear, any anxiety. But well, give me some advice for a business owner who might be experiencing fear, anxiety, like fear of rejection, those kind of things in that moment where they're about to uh step up to the plate and doing a bat for a sales opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Yeah. Um, so call reluctance is a normal thing. Everybody gets it. So the first thing to know is everybody has call reluctance. Nobody really wants to go out and get themselves rejected. Um so you gotta play some some games with yourself. The first thing you really need to understand is what number do you need to be at as far as like touches or reaches or however you want to frame it? What number do you need to be at to be able to provide for your family and your why that you you need to get to? And then you need to hold yourself personally accountable to that number. And it kind of changes the frame, right? Because instead of just being like, oh, like I'll just maybe go do some service calls or call somebody I know or call my dad instead of calling new people. Um, you're you realize like like every no and every kind of situation that you're in here, like you is going to lead towards something positive within your business. Um, and if you're consistent, we call it a cookbook. And it's a set of the top behaviors that you have that you need to accomplish on a weekly basis in order to get where you want to go from a revenue perspective. Um, you just gotta hold yourself accountable to that and make sure you're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

Don't want to leave out some of the ingredients, you're gonna get a bad recipe, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Yeah. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

So uh from the painting, origins of the painting to shell, where you're designing large uh you know, sales uh methodology. Sure. Um how did you get the the role? How did you get the influence to be able to design strategy? And um what's different about that level of sales versus you know selling it to your friends and the the college for the painting?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Sure. Um so getting into Shell, um it it was pretty interesting that there wasn't like a very clear sales process. Um when I first came onto Shell, it was very much a like a shadowing and a partnership situation where it was built in that you would shadow a more senior person for the first like year or two. And once you showed that you could handle bigger deals, then they would eventually kind of move you up. But there was no like systematic way to be able to pass knowledge back and forth. And like most sales organizations are are similar to that where the management really doesn't quite understand exactly what the salespeople are doing, especially if nobody's in the field selling and they're not practicing those sales chops on a regular basis to hear objections or to know where to take a conversation. Um so it's it's but the first thing I started doing is I just started writing down my sales process. Um and then I started sharing that feedback loop with my leaders and saying, hey, like I'm just trying to document what we're doing here, what the goal of each call is, and then that way if somebody else comes along, instead of starting with a blank sheet of paper going on meetings with somebody, you actually have a document of like, okay, so initial phone call, I want to be known and liked. How do I what questions do I ask in order to kind of start that? Where do I get the leads? What does that whole situation look like so that I have enough behaviors and I have enough technique to be able to yield to a decent good result? Um, and so that's how I started. Uh, and eventually all the other sales reps at Shell started asking me some bunch of questions. Um Hey, could you teach that?

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

And I I started um getting some other people ramped up way faster than it even took me. Um, and then it kind of grew from there. Where um on the last year I was at Shell, um, we a couple of uh my good friends and I, we built out this full sales process and did this big presentation to the rest of the sales team um and just laid everything out as clearly as possible. Uh and it it led to some pretty amazing results.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

That's cool. Well, I'm thinking like in that that duplicatability, yeah. Uh you you have some talent, you're you're getting some results, I'm sure, internally, like whatever metrics there, if there's leaderboards, like you're hired on them. And then people who are picking it up are also getting results. Um I see a lot of people like maybe they're successful in sales on passion alone, or maybe they have like uh their processes in their brain, it's not written down. Yeah, and then they hire somebody to try to get some, you know, hey, just do this. Yeah, and it doesn't work the same. But you had recently worked with a financial professional and training their two salespeople um to actually build a an organization. So take us through that case study about how you're able to dive in there and get them duplicatable results.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Yeah, um, it's kind of one of those things where like I didn't even realize what I was doing a lot of times in selling, why I asked the question. That's where Sandler kind of fills that blank in for you. Um, and in the case of the financial advisor, he'd been selling for 30 years. He didn't know why he said a specific thing, he just knew he did. And so he wanted to kind of safeguard his practice. Um, so we hired some some younger folks, um, was looking for them to just set appointments for him, um, knew he wanted to get them some training to to make sure that they knew what they were doing and how they would fit into his organization. Um, and so we we started working together and in the classification of what we do on the front side of that meeting, and then on top of just the the various steps that we kind of break the sale down into, he was actually able to improve his own close ratio um to the point where they added eight new customers last month, which was a new record for them. They have booked out their appointments for the last for the next oh, I think it was for the last three months. Um, and those appointments are even of higher quality with key points that uh your customer wants to go over and they're excited to talk to you. So it was a it was really great. We've only been working together uh for I think two months, um, and already it's it's paying pretty big dividends for him.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

Or or do you find that a lot of people are they're close? It's just a couple things dialed in and it brings it. It's like the the thing where they're digging in the mine, they're about to hit the diamond and they they haven't hit it yet, or they're steering on the wrong course.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

It's usually just like they're doing stuff in the wrong order.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

Doing it in the wrong order, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Um, so they're not asking enough questions on the front side, they're thinking that the price is this end-all be-all thing, and that once they get the price in front of them, then they can really negotiate. Really, what we kind of teach, and and what I show people how to do is to have all that discussion ahead of time so that by the time you actually present them something, that it's just a no-brainer and they're gonna sign it. Um, you should have a really, really good idea before you ever present any kind of solution, what they need, uh, what the budget is, what what everything looks like around it that could go wrong. Um, and you already have a plan for it, you've already anticipated it, and you're a true professional. If you do that, you're gonna win a ton of business.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

What about when a a a referral comes in? Does that change the sales process at all? Like because a lot of the networking game is empowering your referral network to identify those those prospects and make a connection where there's already been some of that rapport on. I mean, the idea is ultimately that it shortens that window. Definitely. Uh where do you take off and how do you make sure that you are if the ball is being put on the T for you, that you hit it out of the park?

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Yeah. I mean, close ratio with referrals should be almost double or like almost a hundred percent, depending on the type of referral. Um, but you do still need to take the time to build a relationship with that new person. Um, one of the common mistakes that I see is they just immediately again skip to it and pitch right away. And nobody really wants to be sold. They like to buy stuff though. Um, and so when you're having these discussions with either a referral, you're getting transferred trust from that other person. So it's important that you're managing your network with people that you know and like and that they're they're gonna sell in a way that you like. But um it's also incredibly important just to make sure that you take the time to recognize the new person's identity, the new person's business, the new person's who they are, and make sure that that you're known and liked with them and that you want to do business with them, and then really understand their issue. And it is okay if you don't have a solution to say, hey, you know what? I don't I don't really have a way to help you, but I might know somebody that could. Um, and then that's just another referral out. Like nothing builds more trust than looking after their own interest and helping them.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

How much of sales is confidence?

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Oh, probably over 50%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

Uh give us like maybe one or two tips to be more confident um in your sales process.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

To be more confident in your sales process, the first thing is have one. Have a sales process. Don't wing it. Um, what happens that we see all the time, and and the same later is like a long-term learning. It is usually done over years where eventually you get to this point where you're doing these things subconsciously. Um but in order to get to that point, you really have to be intentional about what your sales process is and have it written down so you don't fall back into the bad habit of, hey, he said this, and I'm just gonna whack whack them all that pain. Um, when you really don't understand it, you don't understand why it's happening, you don't understand the personal impact of the person. So um it it really goes back to understanding them and asking those questions. Awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:25

Well, Matt, in the age of AI too, that face-to-face interaction or the actual phone call when you're talking to a real human being, yeah, that there's becoming a wider and wider disconnect between, hey, all this maybe stuff AI, the the what is AI is being marketed to, if I'm not reflecting that in what's actual the interaction, yeah, there's a disconnect there. So I think it's really powerful uh the authenticity when you're having the face-to-face. So whether it's sitting down at lunch, going to a networking event. Um, but if somebody's like interested in their sales process, wanting to reach out to you, how do people um get connected to you?

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Oh yeah. Um definitely come uh to networking in action. Uh come come to the Elevate Group in Fort Collins. We'd love to meet them. Um, you can also reach out to me on my socials. LinkedIn is really good. Um, I'm I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and I share a lot of great content on there. So follow me on LinkedIn. You'll get invited to free sales workshops that we put on all the time and also webinars from my corporate office.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

Right on. Well, Matt, thanks so much for coming on the show, and we'll see you around Northern Colorado.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me, Andrew.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Hey y'all, thanks for watching. I love networking and building relationships with other Northern Colorado business leaders. So if you want to come meet some of these podcast guests, meet me or meet some other amazing entrepreneurs in Northern Colorado. I would love to have you attend one of our next events. Uh go in the podcast description. There's a way so you can see our upcoming schedule. And maybe you could be a future podcast guest as well. Thanks.