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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Optimal Sales Mindset Webinar sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales on February 17, 2021. It featured high-performance expert and the author of “How to Follow Up and Close the Sale.”]
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JEFF’S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Let the personalization drive the nature of the call. You can look at a follow-up call based on saying, “Here’s what I have to say, isn’t it cool?” or I can look at it and say, “Here’s who this human being is and what their needs are.” But the more personalized you can make your follow-up, the more effective your follow-up is going to be. I’m not suggesting there isn’t a place for having something on the shelf that you can deliver, but before you make that follow-up call, look at your notes and find that sense of personal connection. This ties into a mindset that you want to carry through, every single conversation sets up the next conversation and every conversation starts by reframing back to the last conversation. If you’re in your sales call, do not end that sales call unless you’re already getting the check. Don’t end that sales call without making an appointment for the next call. Then when you make that appointment, what do you say? “Back here we talked about this.” The more personal I can make that “this”, the better off we’re going to be. The more personalized your follow-up is, the more effective your follow-up is going to be.
THE PODCAST STARTS HERE
Fred Diamond: Welcome to the Optimal Sales Mindset. Our guest today is Jeff Shore. Jeff, you have the new book Follow Up and Close the Sale. For people listening and watching today, you’re the author of 10 books so congratulations. This is your latest, it’s fantastic, I read it, I recommend it to everybody. Jeff, before we get started I’ll tell you why. The #1 problem that we see with sales professionals is that they just don’t follow up. Tell us why you wrote the book and tell us why follow-up is such a big topic for this.
Jeff Shore: There’s no question that follow-up is a skill that is oftentimes neglected. I also noticed that if you Google books on sales follow-up, if you just type “sales follow-up” on Amazon, you’re going to get a very sparse return right there. A lot of people talk about follow-up, a lot of people have pined about follow up but I wanted to be able to take everything that I’ve learned over 30+ years in the sales business and to be able to put it into one resource. I happen to think that this is such a phenomenal opportunity to stand apart. I know we all want to stand apart just based on our personality and our great product and all of that, but these things come and go. Follow-up is the way to be able to find that inside track, to find that edge over what everybody else is doing. It’s not just how you follow up, it’s how you stand apart.
Fred Diamond: We’ll get deep into that. People who’ve listened to the Sales Game Changers podcast and who’ve watched our webinars before know this. Are you familiar with Steve Richard and the company called ExecVision? They do call recording for sales teams and you get to listen. Steve’s listened to over a million sales calls in his career and I asked him, “Steve, what’s the #1 thing that you saw is a commonality?” He said, “Easily half the people didn’t do any follow-up” or not that they didn’t do the follow-up, they didn’t ask for the follow-up. They didn’t say, “Can we talk next week?” or something. On that topic, what are some of the common best ways that you’ve seen sales professionals follow up? Every day you’re not going to get the deal, of course, you want to keep moving forward. Give us some ideas on what follow-up actually means.
Jeff Shore: First of all, I think that when you diagnose this and ask the question, “Why don’t salespeople follow up?” Salespeople are people, we’re human beings and the human brain is designed for ease, the brain is always looking for the easiest way to do anything at all. Danielle Kahneman, the founder of Behavioral Economics calls this The Law of Least Effort, we’re always looking for the easiest way to do something.
When it comes to follow-up, we ask, “What’s easy?” Sending an email, that’s easy. We’re always going to default on what’s easy without necessarily asking the question, “What’s best?” I think we all know that email is the #1 way that people follow up, they rely on their assistants to be able to do that. We also know that only about 15% of emails ever get looked at so 85% are immediately discarded. It’s not a matter of what is easiest, it’s a matter of what is best, so we really have to start there by trying to figure out what’s the most effective way, not what’s the easiest way.
I think that there’s a mindset that goes into this and that is that you have to start by asking the question, “What is follow-up?” or more specifically, “What is the purpose of follow-up?” So often we see follow-up as the nagging, pleading, begging, getting-in-people’s-face and hoping that you can just harass them until they’re going to buy, and that’s not follow-up at all. In my view, follow-up first and foremost is about serve, how do you serve your customer? How do you serve your client? How can I be sitting there thinking, “What does my client need right now that they don’t even know they need? Those are where the cool opportunities for follow-up are going to come in. It starts with a mindset: serve, above everything else, the reason we follow up is to serve. The sale will come, but it is serve first, that’s the big question.
Fred Diamond: Jeff, you mentioned Mindset. How does that fit in with growth mindset? Are you using that in the same term? How does growth mindset follow into this?
Jeff Shore: There’s no question about it. When we look at a fixed mindset or a scarcity mindset, we tend to look at it and say that there are only so many sales to go around and I just have to make sure I’m getting my fair share. I think that this is a mediocre way to look at your sales career, I often counsel the idea that the mindset you really want is, “All I want is more than my fair share.” It might sound a little arrogant, but if you look at it with a relevant example right now, think about Tom Brady. Has he got more than his fair share of Super Bowl rings over the course of the last two decades, and some would say, “Yes, he’s gotten more than his fair share, look at him.” But why? Because he’s performed at that high a level. If you’re performing at that high a level, then you should get more than your fair share. To me, that discipline of follow-up, that art of follow-up is all about the mindset to say, “I’m not content to get what everybody else is getting, I want my share and I want somebody else’s share because I’m willing to do what they’re not willing to do” which means that there will be perseverance and activities in the follow-up that they’re ignoring and that I’m taking advantage of.
Fred Diamond: Jeff, I read the book, it’s excellent. Congratulations again, it’s really well done. As a matter of fact, for the people watching, you can see the book right behind your left shoulder. By the way, I see an autographed football, who autographed the football behind you?
Jeff Shore: I’ve held for many years that the greatest quarterback of all time is, in fact, Joe Montana. Tom Brady is making it very difficult for me to hold onto that thought, but I’m a 49er fan through and through, so I got Joe Montana there. Shifting over on the other side is Jerry Rice. The idea is that I love studying not just great salespeople but top performers and when you look at the career of Joe Montana, there’s so much that we can learn even in the world of sales that come out of things like that.
Fred Diamond: I would tend to agree with you, I think Joe Montana is the greatest quarterback of all time. Jeff, in the book you talk about resistance. That word seems to come up all the time, would you mind defining that term and telling us why it’s so important as it relates to follow-up?
Jeff Shore: I came across this concept when I was reading Steven Pressfield’s book, The War of Art, which is a fantastic book. It’s written for people who paint and draw and write and writer’s block is a thing, painter’s block is a thing. I write a lot and I know you do too, part of the issue is that we come against these times where there’s just that block and there’s this voice in our head that says, “You don’t need to do that now, go do something else.” That voice, Steven Pressfield refers to it at Resistance, same thing with follow-up. As sales professionals, there are so many things that we have to do. There are so many things that occupy our time and that are on our priority list and that voice is going to look at it and say, “No, you don’t want to sound like a telemarketer. You’ve invested in this relationship, you don’t want to ruin it now.” The Resistance is going to come along and say, “I’ve got a million things for you to do other than to follow up” and that’s where we get into trouble.
The key here is that we have to recognize that that voice is going to come into our head, but we need to recognize it in advance, we need to prepare for it in advance. If I wait until the voice is speaking, I will probably heed that voice and do something other than follow up. I need to build this into my day, at the very beginning, knowing that there’s this Resistance factor inside of me that says, “I don’t want to do it because it’s uncomfortable.” I’ve got to understand that when that voice comes into my head, it is not the voice of growth, it’s the voice of scarcity and I’ve got to be able to trump that voice. I recommend giving that voice a face and then hitting it with a 2×4. We’ve got to overcome that Resistance if we’re going to be good at follow-up.
Fred Diamond: We have a question coming in from Nelson, Nelson is a frequent listener to the Sales Game Changers podcast, he’s based in the DC area. Nelson asks, “Jeff, how quickly should I follow up without seeming needy?” Actually, you do talk about that. In one of the chapters in the book, you talk about the speed in follow-up and I think you even call it a sales superpower. People don’t want to be calling right away after the presentation, but you don’t want to wait three days like you might if you’re meeting somebody on match.com or something. Talk about speed and how it fits in.
Jeff Shore: That’s such a great question. Since you brought up match.com, there actually is an analogy to be able to use here. When we think about the idea of speed, we have to start by understanding the emotional journey of a customer. I don’t care what the product is, people are going to buy based more on emotion than they are on logic. They’re going to make an emotional decision, they’re going to support it by logic and that emotion could be any number of things. That emotion of pain avoidance, that emotion of looking smart or not wanting to look dumb, there are a lot of different issues, but we make the decision with our gut, we support it with our brain, doesn’t matter what the product is.
What happens here is when we’re engaged in a sales presentation as a customer, our emotional altitude is very high. That emotional altitude measures the amount of positive emotional energy that I’m bringing into the conversation. What happens after that conversation is over and the customer says, “Not yet”? That emotional altitude immediately begins to wane, so we go back now to the idea of dating or talking to somebody online. In that conversation, the emotional altitude is very high. What happens if there’s no follow-up to that? What happens if we go on a date, I have a phone number and then I never call that person again? The emotional altitude wanes. It’s the same thing in the sales process, the longer we wait to initiate our follow-up sequence, the more the emotional altitude that was tied to that initial conversation begins to drop. I would look at it and say that speed is critical because even 24 hours in the life of a prospect can be an eternity. In 24 hours, they’re talking to 4 different vendors, their boss is being a jerk, their teenager is being an idiot, they’ve got health concerns and they watched their favorite episode of whatever it was. There are so many things that are occupying their brain that the emotional altitude that they had in that initial experience is now falling and falling without that follow-up.
The question that got asked from Nelson is, “How soon is too soon?” I would argue here that if you are in a sales call, let’s suppose you’re selling a product in somebody’s office, you’re making a presentation in someone’s office or by Zoom, or in their home or wherever it is. If I just made a presentation in their office, I get down to my car, I can pull out my smartphone, I can send a text message that says, “I really enjoyed that conversation, thank you very much. I know I’ve got some work to do, but as I said, I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow by 2:00 o’clock.” Now what have I done? Hopefully, in that initial call, I already set up my follow-up, I said what’s going to happen. Now in a text message that came in within minutes of the conversation I’ve thanked them, I showed them that I care, I’ve stood out from everybody else, I’ve let them know that I appreciated the time, I put my phone number into their phone so that when I do call them back they’re going to know who I am, I’ve confirmed an appointment. I did that all in less than a minute and at zero cost, and that’s a very effective way to be able to establish that right from the very beginning.
I’m not suggesting that you should pick up the phone and call somebody within minutes, but a quick text message certainly makes sense. Then there’s the opportunity within 4 hours afterward to be able to again, use the smartphone and record a quick video message to be able to send out that shows some feature that you’ve not yet talked about or some connection point, whatever it is. I think we have a tendency to wait too long and the issue that we have is the longer we wait, the more the emotional altitude wanes.
Fred Diamond: Jeff, we have a couple interesting questions coming in here. The first one comes in from Kathleen, she’s a frequent listener to the webinars and the podcasts. This is a great question, she says, “Any advice with getting seasoned sales professionals to do follow-up or improve on their follow-up? Are many stuck in their old habits?” This comes up a lot on the Sales Game Changers webinars, “I’ve been doing it a certain way.” What are your thoughts? Should people radically change based on the research you’ve done for the book? Give us a little bit of advice, you’ve been doing this for a while, and you think you’re doing what works.
Jeff Shore: I’ve been in sales for a long time and I’ve had to make my follow-up calls like everybody else, I know what it’s like to feel like this is just not very much fun and I get that, I totally recognize that. If all you’re doing is picking up the phone and making what my friend, Art Sobczak calls parole officer follow-up, “Hey, just checking in seeing if you’re still behaving yourself” that’s not very fun. Here’s my advice, make it fun. I know that sounds like pithy advice but let me back that up.
I think if you’re a sales professional, you want to make that fun. Here’s the way that you do this, and this really is enjoyable. You start looking at it and you start asking the question, “How can I serve my customer in a creative way? What can I do to be able to take what it is that they’re going through right now and just provide some cool value that they’re not even expecting?” What problem are they facing right now? What problem are they going to face? If I can start brainstorming that out and thinking through how I can get in front of them and provide some aspect of over-and-above, you don’t have to spend any money on this, it’s just that you’re thinking about the things that they’re going to be thinking of. Fred, for example, give me a sales field. What’s the product that a salesperson is selling?
Fred Diamond: A lot of our people are in tech so they’re selling software. Since Kathy asked the question, she chimes in, she says insurance, let’s talk about insurance.
Jeff Shore: Let’s get a little bit more specific here, who is her customer? Give me a for example.
Fred Diamond: She says business, she sells insurance to business organizations.
Jeff Shore: Now I’m going to look at it and I’m going to say if I’m the buyer in that case, if I’m the prospect and I’m talking to you, I’m talking to you from the start because I have a need. A buyer without a need, you know what we call that person? A non-buyer. Right from the very beginning, if I’m talking to somebody, it means that they have a need and that need is affecting them on some level in an emotional way. There is some form of pain that they’re having to go through. My job as a salesperson is to say, “Here is this businessperson who has a need, who has a pain.” When I figure that out, then I can start to ask the question, “What is that going to do?” I’m a businessperson, I own a consulting company, there are 13 of us, we have a successful operation. If I’m talking to an insurance sales professional, they’re trying to look at it and say, “Jeff, I want o sell you liability insurance so that if you get sued, that’s not going to be an issue.” I might be looking at it right now and saying, “My business is 22 years old and I have never been sued. What is the big deal?” This is the opportunity for somebody who’s selling me liability insurance to be able to come along and say, “I want to give you some examples of where previous customers who were in exactly your position had not thought that they had an issue, but where we were able to really save them literally their entire company by the time they were done.”
You can just look and say, “Forget what I have to say, let’s just talk here a little bit about what other people have already gone through.” This is the idea, to ask yourself the question, “How do you get creative?” If you want to make follow-up fun, the best way to do it is to ask the question, “What are the things that my customer is not even thinking about yet, but I know, because I’m a professional on my side?” When we get into that brainstorm, it just changes absolutely everything. Make it fun, look for a creative way to solve a problem that your customer has not even raised.
Fred Diamond: A couple words that you brought up there, service. Again, we’re doing webinars every single day and we’ve had Art Sobczak on the show as well, I’m going to have him again in the future. One of the key things we talked about is providing more value than you’ve ever provided before and sales, as we know, has always been about providing value, or else like you just said, they’re becoming non-buyers. I love the way you just depicted it that people watching today’s webinar and listening to the podcast, you need to go off and think about how you can come up with some things that your customer hasn’t even thought about.
Here’s the great thing, Jeff. We’re still in the middle of a pandemic so everybody is still dealing with one of three things, coming out of COVID or dealing with the implications, two, dealing with the financial implications of the pandemic, and third, whatever the third thing might be. Maybe if they work in the entertainment space, obviously there are challenges, healthcare, there are challenges. How can you be a professional and take it to the next level? Jeff, I’ve got a quick question for you. What are people doing wrong as it relates to follow-up? Obviously not following up is something they’re doing wrong but give us some of your insights on what people might be doing wrong.
Jeff Shore: I think one of the reasons why we don’t follow up is because we’re not quite sure what to say, we’re not quite sure what new value we’re going to bring so we’re worried that we’re going to sound like a broken record or that we’re going to nag people or whatever the case might be. I’ve got a tip for that. Often times we ask ourselves the question, “How do I solve my customer’s problem?” and I understand why we would say that and it sounds like good advice, that’s one of the things that you want to do, you want to solve your customer’s problem. Here’s the issue with that, A, your customer already knows that their problem is, they’ve been living in their problem. B, you’ve got 10 other providers who already have solutions that might be similar to yours, in some cases, it might even be better than yours. If we’re just going to look at it and say, “What is the customer’s problem?” and stop there, there’s nothing fresh, there’s nothing unique right there. The question that we ought to be asking is not, “What problems do my customers have?” It’s, “What problems WILL my customers have?” and this is where we can really flex the creative mindset and start thinking about issues and problems that are coming up that the customer is not even aware of.
I’ll give you an example. I’m a salesperson, if I don’t sell books, for example, if I don’t sell my training programs, if I don’t sell my keynote speeches, I’m out of business so I’m a salesperson just as well. What do I do? I’m constantly asking the question, “What’s going to happen next? What problem is my customer going to face?” I’ll give you an example of this. A huge part of my base, my following, if you will, is in the real estate field. In 2006 when residential homes were going absolutely nuts, I’d been associated with the real estate business long enough that I’d noticed something: after markets go up, they also go down. This had been the longest run-up we’d ever seen so in 2006 when the market was absolutely crazy, I wrote a book called Tough Market Home Sales. I wrote a book on how to sell when the market tanks. 2006 was the absolute heyday, I wrote the book and then I set it on the shelf because I knew what was going to happen. Then as soon as the market started to hit, then we put it out there and it took off, it was incredible.
Now I go back to March of 2020, not that long ago here. What happened? The whole world shut down and I had asked my question, “For my customers, sales professionals, what are they going to be dealing with next that they’re not even thinking about?” and it became very clear that it’s going to all be about video selling and they don’t know how to do it. I put together an entire program of video selling in two weeks to be able to get out there to people to say, “You need to learn how to video sell and you don’t know how to do it yet, and I’m here to help you.” I’m not trying to be arrogant about this, I’m trying to encourage the listeners right now to say if you think about your customer, if you truly are the expert, you should be able to anticipate what they’re going to deal with even before they recognize it. You should be the one to say, “What problem are they going to have?” and solve that problem in advance.
Fred Diamond: That’s what makes them a professional. That’s one of the things that when March of last year kicked in, March of 2020, a lot of people we were talking to all the time, 2020 was going to be everybody’s best year. Then, of course, the pandemic kicked in, so transactions stopped. If you’re a professional, what do you do when the transactions stop? You do like you just talked about, you learn how to do video. I want to talk about a couple specific tactics that you bring up in the book. You just touched on video a second ago, we had done a lot of sessions prior to the pandemic and I don’t mean video as in Zoom video or GoToWebinar, I mean using video to send a message. That was a huge thing, everybody has smartphones and you go record yourself, I don’t think it’s really caught on. We poll our members at the Institute for Excellence in Sales pretty frequently, a very small percentage are using video as a follow-up mechanism. I don’t mean as a presentation mechanism like we’re doing right now, and we have our good friend Julie Hansen who’s one of the experts on that, and you. Tell us about using video as follow-up.
Jeff Shore: Fred, you are so right on this. This should not be cutting-edge, but it still is. As long as people are going to not use video, it will still be cutting-edge. Just ask yourself the question, “When was the last time that I got a video message as part of a sales presentation?” My guess is the answer is never. I don’t care what industry you’re in, I don’t care what product you’re selling, there is always an opportunity to be able to use video and people will not take advantage of it.
Just as a very simple opportunity here, about a month ago, my wife and I just bought a car and we went through that process. We went to dealership after dealership and any one of those dealers after we left that dealership having looked at one particular car had the easiest opportunity in the world to grab their smartphone, go back to the car, take a quick tour around, show us a couple of features that they didn’t get a chance to show us while we were there. That would have kept the emotional altitude high, the emotional altitude is really high on the test drive, but it wanes when we step away. I don’t care what the product is, even going back to business insurance. You’ve got a salesperson there who in the office can be looking at an underwriter and just put out that video and say, “This is one of our underwriters right here, this is why we rock, because of people like this that are so good. Joellen, tell us what makes you so effective. What is it about it?” And listen to Joellen’s heart about the way that she takes care of people. Maybe it’s showing an aspect of the product that we’ve not yet talked about, some cool feature that other people are utilizing. There are a thousand opportunities for video and it’s just not being done. Quite frankly, Fred, it ticks me off because this is low-hanging fruit right here. The reason that it’s not getting done over and over again is because of the comfort addiction of the salesperson who is simply not comfortable using this. They’re going to look at it and say, “I don’t look very good on video.” I’ve got a newsflash for you, that’s what you look like, just get over yourself, it’s not about you. It’s about standing apart from everybody else that’s out there because, as it’s been said, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a thousand pictures. This is the day and age that we live in, we’ve got a whole generation that grew up on video, this should not be cutting-edge. Find the creative ways to be able to use video and you will stand out by a long, long way.
Fred Diamond: That actually comes back to Kathy’s comment before. A lot of people think, “I’ve been doing it a certain way.” The last 10 months have changed it for pretty much everybody and there’s definitely some tools. I want to talk about two other things, specifically some tactical type things that you bring up in the book. I encourage everybody to go up and get the book Follow Up and Close the Sale, it’s available wherever you buy your books. You actually devote a whole chapter to scripting, and we’ve had some people on the show a couple times, you mentioned Art Sobczak who’s the king at this, Alex Goldfayn just came up with a great book as well on the 5-Minute Selling. You don’t love the idea of scripting although you devote a chapter to it, but how should we be thinking about scripting?
Jeff Shore: Here’s what I don’t love, I don’t love reading somebody else’s script, that’s where I get into trouble with this. When we think about scripting, I don’t love the idea of saying, “This works for this person so I’m just going to read this script.” First of all, people know when they’re being read to, everybody knows when they’re being read to. Secondly, if you’re reading somebody else’s script, you’re not reading it in your voice and people can see that coming from a mile away. Having said that, there is an incredible benefit to scripting to make sure you’re getting it right. If I look at it from a perspective of an actor or an actress in a role, there is actually a script but acting is not the reading of a script, even a memorized script. The script is the pathway that allows them to be able to communicate what they’re trying to do, that’s what I’m talking about right here. There is a right way to say things in the sales world.
When I craft my script in my own language and I practice that over and over again, what will happen over time – and this is really the irony here – is that I will have my script down so well that I’m not thinking about my script. That’s when I’m allowed to insert myself into it. They were still my words, but I’m allowed to say this in a way that’s very calm and natural. We all know when somebody just walked out of a training seminar, has not committed into their core what that message is and is trying to pull something off on us, we all know that. Don’t adopt somebody else’s script, write your own but work it so much that you don’t need to think about the script anymore because it’s done perfectly, that’s the idea.
I often say that the destination called mastery lies on a road called repetition. When it comes to getting your skills right, it’s just do it again, do it again, do it again. There are no shortcuts on that road, but when you do that, that’s when it’s going to allow your true nature to come out and you will not sound at all like you’re reading a script.
Fred Diamond: Jeff, before I ask you for your final action step, all of our listeners know that we end every webinar, every podcast by asking the guest for something specific, although you’ve given us dozens of great ideas to do. Again, I encourage people to go up and buy the book Follow Up and Close the Sale, and Jeff is also an author of 9 other books, he’s referred to a couple of them today. First off, congratulations, Jeff, on being such a published successful author and speaker.
You talk also in the book about what you call the Lead Conversion Hour. We actually have a question here from Brandon and Brandon said, “When is the best time to make follow-up calls?” Talk about that for a little bit, talk about what you define as the Lead Conversion Hour and then talk a little bit about – we talk about this a lot – time blocking and things like that. Give us some of your thoughts to grow follow-up opportunities.
Jeff Shore: I am a huge fan and I’m very strong on this concept that follow-up is best done early in the day for a number of different reasons. One, if you can get your follow-up done right out of the gate, right away, you are starting your day with success because you’re starting the day in control right from the very beginning. You did that, you know it’s important, you’ve got it done. If the rest of the day all goes bad, you did that, and you did it right. Two, you are freshest early in the day. By the time we get into the afternoon, our natural circadian rhythm is going to take us off of our game and we are going to be down here but so is your customer. You call your customer at 3:00 o’clock, they’re tired. So not only are you fresh, but they are fresh. Then if you don’t get ahold of them early in the day but you called them early, what’s happened? You’ve given them the entire day to be able to reconnect with you. There are so many benefits to blocking out your time so that you’re doing this first.
When we think about what it is that is going to make us successful, we’re always going to be most successful, to put it in Stephen Covey terms, when we keep the main thing the main thing. The main thing for us is lead conversion and that lead conversion comes through follow-up. If that’s the main thing, do it first. There are a thousand things that are going to scream at you and say, “No, do this first, check your email first, read this memo first, clean out your desk drawer first.” All these things are going to tell you to go first, you’ve got to decide what matters most. The best way to do that, I think, is to dedicate a solid hour early in the day for what I call the lead conversion hour where I am head-down, I’m not checking the internet, I’m not checking text messages, I’m not doing anything else except focusing one solid hour on my lead conversion calls, on my follow-up calls. When I do that, that hour gives me energy, it gives me a rush and it gives me sales, it’s all good at that point. Test me on this, get that lead conversion hour on your calendar.
Fred Diamond: I agree with you, one of the best things in sales is when you have conversations. We talk about that all the time, you need to have more and more conversations, ideas come from it, you have an opportunity to communicate something, they can ask you questions. The more you’re talking to people who are your prospects and in your pipeline, the better. Jeff Shore, before we wrap up here and you give us your final action step, you may not know this, you’ve been doing this for a long time and you’ve impacted so many people. Tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of sales professionals over the close to 30 years you’ve been doing this. I want to acknowledge you for all the great work you’ve done to impact careers, to help companies grow and to really help people achieve more out of their professional life, sales professionals, no matter what industry they’re in. Thank you for that.
Jeff Shore: Thank you.
Fred Diamond: You’re welcome. Give us an action step, something specific. You’ve given us dozens, give us one that people should do right now.
Jeff Shore: Let the personalization drive the nature of the call. You can look at a follow-up call based on saying, “Here’s what I have to say, isn’t it cool?” or I can look at it and say, “Here’s who this human being is and what their needs are.” But the more personalized you can make your follow-up, the more effective your follow-up is going to be. I’m not suggesting there isn’t a place for having something on the shelf that you can deliver, but before you make that follow-up call, look at your notes and find that sense of personal connection. This ties into a mindset that you want to carry through, every single conversation sets up the next conversation and every conversation starts by reframing back to the last conversation. If you’re in your sales call, do not end that sales call unless you’re already getting the check. Don’t end that sales call without making an appointment for the next call. Then when you make that appointment, what do you say? “Back here we talked about this.” The more personal I can make that “this”, the better off we’re going to be. The more personalized your follow-up is, the more effective your follow-up is going to be.
Fred Diamond: Once again, Jeff Shore, thank you so much. For everybody watching today’s Optimal Sales Mindset webinar, thank you so much. Jeff, congratulations, we didn’t lose one person who logged on from the beginning, that’s always a big win. Thank you for listening and for doing some things to take your sales career to the next level. Jeff Shore, thank you so much for everything you do.
Jeff Shore: Thanks for having me, Fred, it was a pleasure.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo