Before we dive in:
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(Note: Alongside being a happy customer, I am also an investor in the business.)
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The highest paid individual at any company:
The best salesperson at that company.
Why do great salespeople make so much money?
It’s simple. They tolerate the discomfort of being rejected.
Ultimately, making the sale comes down to picking up the phone over and over again and not being afraid of rejection…because you’ll get a lot of it.
Rejections sucks. I’ve been hung up on more times than I can count when cold calling self storage facilities to source deals.
I’ve been laughed at on calls with potential investors. I’ve had folks tell me we’ll never make money and that we should find something else to do.
Get used to it.
Because sales is a numbers game, pure and simple.
Even if your close rate is only 2%, if you can push through 100 calls a day, that’s two new customers every day.
If it takes you a month or even two months to make those calls and you’re gaining just two customers over a much longer time frame, you won’t be growing fast enough, and it’s game over.
The key is consistency. Your job is to cast a wide enough net so that you can find the right people. The people who want to buy from you or work with you or sell to you or invest with you.
You sometimes have to go from coffee to coffee, dinner table to dinner table or Zoom call to Zoom call to find the right match.
You have to wake up every day and dedicate time to sales just like you dedicate time to brushing your teeth. Even if you feel uncomfortable at first, even if you dread it, it has to be automatic.
You must embrace the uncomfortable feeling of rejection and try to make the sale happen anyway.
My real estate journey started with a world of rejection.
I met with over 100 investors before I filled my first deal. Many of them laughed at my experience level, the industry, and my pitch in general.
I also met with 10+ banks who were potential lenders for that first real estate project. They turned me down for a myriad of reasons, many similar to the reasons the investors turned me down.
You don’t have the experience. What makes you think you can build a building from the ground up? How can you operate it?
You’ve never done self storage before. The real estate market is about to crash. That site you picked is horrible.
We eventually found six people who invested $500,000 and one bank that would lend us $1.7 million.
I was 26 years old, and I learned a valuable lesson:
With confidence and enough tries, you can sell anything.
But it is hard. My hands would sweat before every meeting. I’d get a lump in my throat. I’d get anxiety. I wouldn’t want to walk in the door or pick up the phone or log on to the Zoom call. The fear of rejection is real. It hurts to get told no in person when you are trying to make a big, bold move.
Over time, the investor meetings became more natural. The bankers began to feel my confidence. During employee interviews, I got better at selling people on my vision and convincing them to trust me to guide the ship.
That’s what it’s all about. To master sales you must smile and be confident, embrace the rejection, and get comfortable being uncomfortable.
5 tips for sales:
Here’s a few more tactics that will help you sell and close more.
1. Prove that you are an expert. You have to know your stuff.
That doesn’t mean bragging about yourself or talking endlessly about what you’ve accomplished. But you do need to be firm on your value proposition, how you’ve helped others before, and why you think you will be able to help this person, etc.
You need to know your prices and timelines and the reasons why for each. You can’t just say “This will take 3 weeks” if you can’t explain why.
You also need to know about the risks, difficulties, and potential problems inherent in any deal and be able to address them if needed.
This is all part of proving you are en expert in your craft.
2. Manage expectations. All stress = unmet expectations.
Show me a stressed out person and I will show you somebody who overpromised and is having trouble delivering. If you want to sell more you have to manage expectations. You have to be realistic. You have to underpromise and over-deliver. This is a much better strategy.
3. Add value first. Add value -> build trust -> give free advice -> get sales later.
Find a way to prove your worth by adding value first and a sale becomes much easier! This could be through free advice, a free-audit, a free consulting call, etc. 3 free ideas to help them grow their business etc. If you can provide value first, the sale will come later.
4. Make scarcity work for you. Say that you only have limited availability, or that you are only taking on 5 clients to start. Make scarcity work in your favor. Incentivize folks to act now.
5. Let the other party sell themselves: At the end of the sales call I like to ask an open ended question.
If you’re talking to a customer, it goes like this. “This is a tough project with a lot of risks. I think we have a great plan to manage them, but what makes you think I could be a good fit here?” Or if you’re speaking to an investor, “Given the risks we discussed, why are you interested in investing in this project?”
Or if you’re speaking to a potential web development client, “Look I’m busy and it’ll take us a few weeks to get on this. I know other companies are likely ready to go sooner. Why do you think I’m the right fit?”
Then, it’s time to shut up and let your counterpart have the floor.
Because nine times out of ten, an amazing thing happens at this moment.
The potential customer starts to talk, and they begin to sell themselves.
They tell you why they would make a good customer. How your circles overlap. How they like your approach and they soothe themselves when it comes to any concerns or objections, and then voila!
The rest of the conversation goes swimmingly. They’ve already convinced themselves they want to work with you and buy from you.
At this point you just need to say, “Great! When can we get started?” and close the deal.
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A few tweets from this week:
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Do you run paid ads on Meta and Google to grow your business?
The team at AdRhino is offering a FREE paid ads audit (valued at $2K) for the first 5 companies that reply to this email.
They will tell you exactly how to optimize your Google and Meta ads at no cost to you. If you want this, just reply and I’ll make an intro.
(Note, alongside being a happy customer, I am also an investor in the business)
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Onward and upward,
Nick Huber