Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have. Today we're going to be talking about a very polarizing topic, the aggressive close versus the conversational close. Some people may argue that having an aggressive attitude with your clients, pushing them relentlessly towards a certain goal regardless of the circumstances is a good thing because you are getting them on board quickly and effectively, straight to the point. But is this a good practice in the long run? I'm going to give you my take on it. It is my version of the truth. Is it the only version of the truth? No, but I think you'll find it interesting and useful. To be clear, what I understand for an aggressive approach is closing the deal at all costs, don't letting the client go, don't letting them off the phone, don't letting them out of your sight until you've got the signature on the dotted line. You may find it useful, some people might go with it, but when it gets to the point where there's an imbalance, and it becomes more about you wanting to hit a number or get an outcome, leaving the concern of adding value and helping somebody out of the equation, that's a problem. If you don't plan on being in that role for very long maybe it will work. But long-term, word of mouth, especially if you live in a small place, is going to reflect badly on you. Remember that the way your clients feel about you is essential, people that have gone through the ordeal of working with unpleasant manners are very unlikely to subject anybody that they know to the same experience. So, this is a problem among people that get into sales. Think about it, everyone who starts in this business understands that they have to get good at it, so they learn what they believe is what they should be doing. These inexperienced people could learn that from somebody who has a very aggressive, hardcore, closed approach thinking that’s the best way to go. What I'm about to share with you is my take on what I believe, and what I have seen to work most effectively both short and long term. If you are interested, I really encourage you to join me in this episode as we'll talk about this topic in detail. To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide. Inside you’ll get word-for-word email follow-up templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.  

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have. Today I’m super excited because we have an amazing guest with us, Matthew Peters. He is the CEO and founder of Asynd Media, an Academy Award winner, and two-time Amazon bestseller and he’s helping elite-level entrepreneurs become the preeminent voice in their space. His media and messaging strategies focus on clear communication and compelling calls to action.  Matthew has a lot of experience in modern media and has gone very deep into all sorts of the different aspects of producing videos, podcasts, magazines, books, and this December, his first Documentary Film. So, I thought it would be really valuable for you to listen to what he has to say about the three core elements of creating maximum impact with your message.   He's actually the producer of my podcast and he has helped me a lot in this journey, so I am convinced that his way of doing things works.  If you happen to be a content creator (or if you are interested in becoming one), you have to know some things about how to get your best content out there in front of as many of your key prospects as possible. You also have to have a deep understanding of your content and your role as a leader because those elements are key in having your message spread throughout the world.   As Matthew says, ‘no one is going to follow a wanderer.’ As human beings, we constantly look towards people with certainty. When someone doesn’t have it, we notice, and we distance ourselves from it. If you don’t project certainty, your chances of producing deep connections and meaningful interactions are reduced significantly.  So, as you can see, there are a lot of elements involved in being able to get your voice to be heard. Often the process can be discouraging if you don’t see any progress after investing some time and effort in your message through blog posts, podcasts, videos, or even books. The thing is, dedicating your energy to creating content without the proper knowledge and assessment is very likely going to get you stuck and keep you there indefinitely.  So, what can you do about it?   Fortunately, Matthew is here to illustrate how you can carry on with this process in a way that works well for you and your audience. We’re going to be talking about each one of the core elements in detail so you have a better understanding of how modern media works and how you can take advantage of it, save heaps of time and propel yourself out there into the marketplace.   If you are interested, I really encourage you to listen to this interview.  To learn more about how Matthew and the great people at Asynd Media can help you get your message super clear, your calls to action even more compelling and your presence elevated and your influence expanded, reach out to him over at https://AsyndMedia.com  To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide. Inside you’ll get word-for-word email follow-up templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have. Just as in any other profession, being in business merits that every now and then you hold a mirror up, and go, okay, where am I at? What are my results? What I’ve found over the 17 years I’ve been a sales coach, consultant strategist, and another 20 years in business prior to that, is that when things go wrong there are one of two paths that you can take. You can blame circumstances and other external things to yourself for your results, or you can take responsibility for the role you take in those circumstances. These two have different outcomes. Today we are going to talk about what they are, and about the consequences of choosing one over the other. Let’s be honest, the list of things that you could blame is huge and quite handy at first glance. You can blame the economy, the competition, all sorts of things. But by doing so you are also disempowering yourself for a number of reasons. If you think about it, when you're blaming where you are on other things, then the only way that you can change those circumstances is if those external things change. In order to fix something that’s wrong you first have to have control over it. How can you have any control over something if you are not taking responsibility for it?. But, what is the payoff? there must be something people get out of avoiding these responsibilities, otherwise, we wouldn’t be talking about it. Is it worth it in the end? Today we are going to be discussing these questions so you can evaluate your situation and decide which path you want to take. I’d also like to share with you a personal experience that taught me a very valuable lesson about this some time ago, hoping it will help you. So, if you are interested in learning more about this I really encourage you to listen to this week’s episode. To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide. Inside you’ll get word-for-word email follow-up templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.    

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have. Today we are going to be talking about the four decision-makers that you need to be aware of in higher ticket sales. These are the people that have the most influence over the decision-making process so, especially in enterprise-level purchases, you have to know who they are and understand how their process works if you want them to buy from you. You know, when you're selling to a small business, with one owner, who’s got just a small team employed you really only have one or perhaps two people that you've got to get across the line. In a bigger organisation there are a number of different decision-makers so, the complexity is higher. One of them, probably the most heard of, is the economic buyer. He or she is the person that has the final sign off in terms of the money, the one that can sign the check. There is a certain school of thought that says that we need to get in front of the economic buyer and that's the only person that we need to be worried about, that’s not true. It is a mistake people make quite often. They just try to sell to the economic buyer, they pitch their proposal to him and they don’t bring the other decision-makers into the process. Eventually, the whole thing gets sidetracked. In fact, the economic buyer usually has a pretty big influence in the decision-making process but, what about the technical aspects of the purchase, who takes care of making sure that whatever it is that the company buys is compliant? Have you considered how important is his or her influence over the final verdict? There are other aspects as well that you have to consider because these big companies take care of evaluating many different aspects of a product or service before signing that check. The thing is, there is no common rule. In every company the decision-makers are different and have different levels of authority, you may have to deal with two of them or you may have to deal with all four at once, that’s why you should be prepared. So, if you want to know what these decision-makers are, I really encourage you to listen to this episode. I’m confident you will get something very useful out of it. To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide. Inside you’ll get word-for-word email follow-up templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have. When you are selling a product, you and whoever is working with you must know some things about it, right? How it works, what it does, fairly technical stuff.   You’d think that would be enough to make people want to buy it because you are being clear with its specifications and providing useful information to your clients, but is that approach really making people buy? Well, the answer is no, at least not on its own.  Today, I want to talk about a really important subject which is how to build product knowledge into your sales conversations.   Let’s be clear, product knowledge is necessary and very useful but when it is driven into a conversation without the proper timing and without building some rapport with the client it really does not provide good value for them. Your client doesn't care about your product until they understand that you understand their problem.  This is essential because, nine out of ten times, it looks like the only thing salespeople learn in their training is all of the technical aspects of the product. That leaves a huge gap in the learning process.  Obviously, the more technical the product is, the more stuff that they need to know, and the more stuff they need to know, the more they start to bring that knowledge into a conversation with a client.  What ends up happening is, on one side, you've got all of this product knowledge that forms part of this conversation, but on the other end, you've got the actual sales process and the process that you need to bring a client through in order to maximise the possibility of them actually buying something, and often they exist as two separate things.  So, what I want to tell you is how you can approach any sales conversation and any sales training in a way that both aspects get taken care of. This is a very useful tool that works everywhere, so you will see good results disregarding the product you sell.   If you want to know how to do it, I encourage you to listen to this episode. Believe me, it is really simple and rewarding to incorporate.  To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide. Inside you’ll get word-for-word email follow-up templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have. As promised, this week we continue our discussion on sales managers, but this time we are going to talk about the three core things that you need to look for when you hire one. So far, we know that the biggest mistake people make when they bring a sales manager to their team is that they just take somebody who is good at sales and take for granted the fact that he or she is going to be a great coach and mentor to them. The problem is that a good salesperson doesn’t necessarily know how to work in a team. There are many people that are amazing at sales, but their selfishness and disregard for others' well-being will lead to catastrophic results. This person may keep selling well, as usual, but there won’t be any improvement in the team’s performance which is no good for them, no good for you, and no good for business. That being clear we should be alert when traits of such personalities are seen in sales manager prospects so that you can avoid going through the same awful experience other business owners have gone through. That’s why today I am going to tell you what are the indicators that you can find in anybody’s background that will help you separate the good salespeople from those who are excellent sales managers. Believe it or not, you can find these indicators in different places. For example, if you talk to somebody who happens to play sports like golf or shooting, basically, individual-based sports then that’s probably not a particularly good sign. Whereas if you talk to somebody who is or was captain or coach of their rugby team for a number of years then that's a good indicator. I am not saying that you should just hang your hat on this one particular criteria but it is definitely a good place to look for the one core competency every sales manager should have which is being able to take the role of the coach that knows things are done better when everybody’s efforts are combined. So, this is just one of the things you need to look for if you want to avoid the complications others have faced and instead hire superstar sales managers. If you want to know what the other two things are and why it is important to be aware of them, I really encourage you to listen to this week’s episode. To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide. Inside you’ll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have. Hiring a sales manager is a big step for a business. If turnover is at a certain point, if they’ve got a sales team that is performing, this may seem like the next logical step. The thing is, it is a decision that should not be taken lightly. Making the step to employ a sales manager is a pretty big deal. What happens next might be problematic, in fact, I’ve seen many businesses getting a sales manager and after maybe three months, six months, twelve months sales are simply not growing. Most importantly, it doesn't seem to be any movement within the team and if anything, some division starts to become quite noticeable among them. What is going on there? Where did it go wrong? Well, that is exactly what we are going to talk about in this episode. Let me showcase a scenario so you understand the importance of this matter: You’ve got a sales manager who is actually bringing business in, but he or she really only seems to be nurturing his or her own book of business, not really assisting the other guys in the team to continue to grow. All this person does is look at spreadsheets and pull the team up on being behind budget so what this person is really doing is looking at the deficit between the number that they’re shooting for and the number that they’re getting. If you ask this person what's going on the answer usually is, “I told them last month and I've told them exactly what to say, told them exactly what to do. I don't know why they're not doing it, I can do it.” So, it is not a sales management systems problem, the issue is somewhere else. I’ve seen many companies make this huge mistake when they hire a sales manager because, even though they want a mentor, a captain, and a coach that's going to nurture their team, what they end up getting is somebody who is quite self-focused and that is not really looking at the behaviours, the attitudes, and the culture within the team that underpin the numbers. The irony is that you actually can't do much at all about the number at the end of the month, but you can certainly do something else, something that is actually more helpful than just pushing your team towards a certain goal. If you want to know what else is underneath this problem and what is your part in it, I encourage you to listen to this week’s episode and also to stay tuned because we’ll be returning to this topic next week. To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide. Inside you’ll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have. Today we are going to be talking about another part of the sales process that business owners often fail to properly implement, the disqualification process.  This term may sound a little harsh if what comes to mind is that you're saying to somebody “look we're too good for you, we don’t want your business”.   That is a common misconception that happens mostly because some businesses don’t know how to approach this stage. To be clear, by disqualification we understand that businesses evaluate and make decisions over which clients’ necessities and capabilities fit more with the type of product or service that their business provides.  The fact that this misconception exists means that we have another variable in the equation, people’s opinion. Specifically, what the people that haven’t worked with you directly are saying about your business.  You know how easy it is to write a bad review on Google, if people contact your company to ask about something and they have a bad experience people are going to know about it.   If you don't have a good process for disqualifying people at the front end what happens is you are making people mad at your company, you are taking on clients that you probably can't help, and you’re trying to convince people that might not be qualified in terms of having the funds available.   You could be trying to convert somebody into a client where there actually isn't a really good business case for them to do business with you anyway. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise when later on down the track you find out they really won't convert, and that all the time you put into that relationship lead nowhere. That is why you should have disqualified them at the front end.  So, how can you do it? How can you know at the very beginning if a potential client fits or not? Does not helping them businesswise mean that you can’t provide any value to them? Do clients have to feel that you are being rude while you disqualify them?  Today we are going to talk about all these questions so you have a better understanding of how this process works when done right and most importantly so that you can increase sales because you are going to be investing your time and energy wisely.  If you are interested in learning more about the disqualification process, I encourage you to listen to this week’s episode. I’m sure you will get a lot of value out of it.  To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide. Inside you’ll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have. Today we are going to talk about a fundamental part of sales conversations which is often left aside. How to use tonality in your voice to increase sales. As we’ve said before, most of the communication that happens between people is not language-based. In fact, the words you use are only 6% of your communication. The other 94% contains your facial expressions, your body language, and your tonality. So, your tone of voice, your cadence in your speech, the energy in your voice, and the intention in it are supporting most of the weight in a conversation. This is very important because it is a bit of an issue when you or a person you work with, even when using the right words, don’t know how to project confidence or use voice with authority. For instance, one of my clients has three girls taking phone calls from their customers regarding the maintenance of security alarm systems. Two of those girls work very well, without having any push back or resistance on price whatsoever, but the same can’t be said about the other girl. So, when I listened to the phone conversations between this girl and their customers, I immediately understood what was going on. Whenever she mentioned the fee that was going to be charged for the technician to service the system her tone of voice changed drastically. She wasn’t projecting confidence at all, instead, she was phrasing almost as if it was a question. The response she got was people saying that the amount was ridiculously expensive, that there was no way someone would pay that much for such a service. I’m not saying that using questions is wrong, but you must know when to use them so that you can be in charge of what you want to project in a conversation while making sure your clients don’t feel like they are being ripped off. A big part of giving value to your clients is condensed in how you or your team talk to them. We really could have a six-week course dedicated only to tone of voice because there are many things to say about it, however on this occasion my goal is to give you some really simple tools that you can start using straight away. So, if you want to know how you can use your tone of voice to increase sales and how you can get to learn about this subject thoroughly in my Six-week Lead Conversion Mastery Programme, I encourage you to listen to this week’s episode. To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide. Inside you’ll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have. Over the years that I have been working with different businesses, I’ve learned that there are untapped areas of hidden revenue in almost all of them. Where should you look? What should you do to extract more out of what you do in your business in terms of sales revenue?  That is exactly what we are going to talk about in today’s episode. Before we get started, we have to know there are three areas that need our attention: front end, middle, and back end. The front end consists of the inquiries and the leads that you are getting into your business. They could be web-leads, they could be telephone calls, they could be inquiries that come through your social media channels, but be careful with what you consider to be a lead. There is a distinction that we need to have very clear before we move on. If a person is downloading your content, for example, on my website I have a free book called How to Attract Dream Clients. If someone downloads it but they haven't actually contacted me about making a deposit and becoming a client or inquiring about my services I can’t consider that an actual lead. That person certainly sits in my database and represents an opportunity, but it is not a lead per se. So, what should I do with that? How can I get to them? How can I find my way around the fact that eighty-seven percent of telephone calls go unanswered? Well, that is something you and your team can do, it depends on how you approach those leads. I know that most calls go unanswered but how many times is your team trying to get a hold of them in a month? So, getting to know the front end will let you extract the most out of it and guide your way to the next two areas. If you want to know how this whole process is done, I encourage you to listen to this week’s episode where I also share some experiences that I’ve had with clients in the past that illustrate the importance of knowing and taking advantage of these areas. To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide. Inside you’ll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.