How to Make Every Sale – In Just 7 Minutes with Wes Schaeffer

Resources/Links:

• Your Prospects Have An Agenda To Wear Your Down. Get The Sales Agenda To Control Every Sale: thesalesagenda.com

Summary

Wes Schaeffer is The Sales Whisperer®, a pigheaded entrepreneur who rehabilitates salespeople and trains their managers. He’s a reassuringly-expensive copywriter, sought-after speaker, and marketing automation aficionado. He is the author of 2.5 books on sales, marketing, and entrepreneurship, host of The Sales Podcast and The CRM Sushi Podcast, and has helped 5,400 of the world’s top speakers, authors, coaches, and sales professionals achieve nearly miraculous growth by mastering his proven process, which hinges on the idea that to make any sale you must make every sale.

In this episode, Wes shares how he helps business owners build, craft and automate each step of a sale.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:16 – Wes’ ideal client: It’s a motivated entrepreneur, a salesperson, even a business owner, CEO type, sales manager, somebody in the leadership.
• 01:46 – Problem he helps solve: Helping them realize there’s the art of sales, there’s also the science of sales.
• 02:34 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Wes: You’re doing a lot of things by gut feel and intuition.
• 03:54 – Common mistakes people make when trying to solve that problem: The mistake is thinking there’s a shortcut. Thinking there’s an easy answer.
• 05:17 – Wes’ Valuable Free Action(VFA): Ask five times more questions than you normally do to truly understand what is going on before you prescribe.
• 07:08 – Wes’ Valuable Free Resource(VFR): thesalesagenda.com
• 07:25 – Q:”What does it mean to make every sale?” A: I talk about having a pipeline. Going through stages and phases and to make any sale you must make every sale. Each little one is a win.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“ Ask five times more questions than you normally do to truly understand what is going on before you prescribe.” -@saleswhisperer Click To Tweet

Info about our correspondent host:Travis has a background in sales, marketing, and strategy, and left the corporate world several years ago to start his own agency. As a copywriter by trade, his biggest skill is putting the right words, in front of the right people, at the right time. Travis has developed go-to-market strategies for grassroots apps to Fortune 500 and helped optimize up to $50k per day in Facebook Ad spend for one of the biggest startups in Asia.

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Travis Bennett: [00:00:09] Hi everyone and welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Travis Bennett and I’m rocking it to you out of Yangon, Myanmar. Proving that you really can be anywhere in the world and build a business into a success. I’m joined today by Wes Schaeffer. Wes, a very very warm welcome.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:00:24] Thanks for having me.

Travis Bennett: [00:00:26] Welcome. So where are you hanging out today?

Wes Schaeffer: [00:00:28] Southern California.

Travis Bennett: [00:00:30] Beautiful part of the world. A little bit shaky these last few days though.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:00:34] That’s right. Always be prepared.

Travis Bennett: [00:00:38] Very, very good motto. So, for those of you who don’t know Wes, let me introduce him really quick. He’s a copywriter. He’s become a speaker, an expert on marketing automation, written a couple of books, halfway through the third book I believe, and also host The Sales Podcast and The CRM Sushi Podcast, essentially building around a process that if you want to make any sale you must make every sale. So that’s kind of the, what we’re going to talk about today “How to Make Every Sale” and Wes is going to explain it all to you in just seven minutes. So, I’m going to start the timer and we’ll jump into question number one. So, Wes, who is your ideal client?

Wes Schaeffer: [00:01:16] It’s a motivated entrepreneur, a salesperson, even a business owner, CEO type, sales manager, somebody in the leadership, even if it’s the individual, right? Or you’re leading yourself. So, somebody obviously in the sales world that is tired of doing things the hard way.

Travis Bennett:[00:01:38] Okay. So, you’ve got six and a half minutes left. And then I guess for these leaders, what is it the problem that you solve for them?

Wes Schaeffer: [00:01:46] Ultimately giving those folks systems, right? Helping them realize. Yeah, there’s the art of sales, there’s also the science of sales. It’s selling and marketing is two sides of the same coin. It is very prescriptive. People are much more predictable than you would imagine. And when you become a professional, you’ll know you’re a professional when you don’t leave things up to chance, right? When you create systems and processes, you test and measure, your sales are going to grow.

Travis Bennett: [00:02:20] Okay. So, I guess then that’s kind of the symptom that they experience when they don’t have the systems and the processes. So, what are the kind of problems that this creates for these leaders? Five and a half minutes. Sorry.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:02:34] Yeah. The systems are just, you just don’t know what’s going on, right? You’re doing a lot of things by gut feel and intuition. You have a meeting with the prospect and you don’t know what the next steps are. You have a meeting scheduled with a prospect and you don’t know for sure who’s going to be there. You don’t know what the real objective is. You’re preparing presentations and literature to show up and do a dog and pony show versus showing up and asking questions. You’re prescribing before you’re diagnosing. And a lot of times it’s you have one source of whatever, right? You’re too dependent on your website, or social media, or paid traffic, and you just by having that one source it can all change at any time so you’re vulnerable. And you know it deep down but maybe things are kind of bumping along. You’re afraid to look under the hood, right? Like well, the engine isn’t smoking too bad, let’s just keep going, I think we can make it and lift that hood.

Travis Bennett: [00:03:37] Okay. So, then I guess. And when they actually lift the hood, what’s the mistakes that kind of come out when they, when they actually take a look inside, when they try to do it themselves? They don’t have the right, the right processes in place. What, what does this kind of result in? Just over four minutes left.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:03:54] Yeah. A lot of it, you know, I guess even deep down the mistake is thinking there’s a shortcut. Thinking there’s an easy answer. Thinking there’s some guru out there you need to pay twenty-five thousand dollars or fifty thousand dollars and join their mastermind, everything’s going to get easy. You know or think you know I’m in the computer repair business, I’m going to go invest in cannabis because that’s really hot right now because you don’t have the confidence to invest in yourself, right? Buy the training, invest in the people. Maybe, maybe you don’t need that 50 thousand or mastermind, maybe you need a five-thousand-dollar consultant to come in. And sit down with you and expose everything and teach you how to diagnose and fix it. And then you can go and do it on your own. So, looking outside thinking somebody out there has the answers and losing faith in yourself. You got it within you, right? But you’ve got to take the time to start taking that engine apart. You will figure it out. You will be able to put it back together. It probably will take longer than you thought and hope. But in the end, it’s going to be worth the effort.

Travis Bennett: [00:05:00] Okay. So then with that kind of in mind, we’ve just got two minutes 50 seconds left. What piece of advice or what is something that you could teach someone who’s struggling with this, with this kind of problem that they can maybe take away from listening today that they can implement and maybe get a little quick way in or something like that in their business?

Wes Schaeffer:[00:05:17] I would say you know strive to ask five times more questions than you normally do to truly understand what is going on before you prescribe, okay? And even if five times is too much. Take it upon yourself, when you’re having a conversation with someone rather than, let the pregnant pause hang for a moment and let the prospect fill in that void. Or just ask them, “Oh really, how does that work? Tell me more about that.” You know the funny story is that a lot of times I’m doing interviews. I will put myself on mute. I’m typing, I’m taking notes during my own podcast. Kids are coming in and out, dogs are barking, so I stay on mute just to minimize the background. And sometimes the guests will stop talking before I’m ready, right? Because usually, you can tell when somebodies kind of wrapping up a point. So, I can’t get to the mute button in time. So, they’ll just keep talking. Okay. So, learn how to elongate you know, elicit a longer response from the prospects before you reply.

Travis Bennett: [00:06:28] Okay. That’s a very powerful way to look at especially when you’re talking to people and make sure you’re actively listening to what they’re saying and not just waiting for a pause so that you can jump in and start hammering them with what you’re planning to say next as well.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:06:42] Yeah. It’s got to be a dialogue, right? Asking more questions can sometimes make people feel defensive like you’re just like you’re grilling them like the police. So, avoid that, okay? But do learn how to just ask better questions.

Travis Bennett: [00:06:56] Okay. So, we’ve got 50 seconds left and two more questions so I might try to speed up a little bit. One valuable free resource that people can take action on today from you that can maybe help them with this.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:07:08] Yup go get thesalesagenda.com.

Travis Bennett: [00:07:12] Thesalesagenda.com?

Wes Schaeffer:[00:07:12] Free video and download.

Travis Bennett:[00:07:13] Perfect. So, they can check it out.

Travis Bennett:[00:07:16] And then I guess 30 seconds left. Considering we should be asking questions and giving you space to answer, what’s the one thing I should have asked you today but I didn’t get a chance to?

Wes Schaeffer: [00:07:25] Well it’s talking about you know what does it mean to make every sale. And in that, I talk about, in the download I talk about having a pipeline, right? Going through stages and phases and to make any sale you must make every sale, okay? Each little one is a win.

Travis Bennett: [00:07:44] Perfect. And that’s seven. Okay. Wes, thank you so much for your time. It was lovely to talk to you today. Sorry, we cut kind of a little bit short.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:07:51] That was good. Thanks.

Travis Bennett:[00:07:52] Perfect. Cheers mate.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:07:54] Cheers.

Tom Poland: Thanks for checking out our marketing the invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.