Learning Sales Mastery and Basic Lessons with Liam Morin

You got to have your own personal brand, right? And you got to be, like, recognizable, because at the end of the day, your brand, it's all you have, right? It's you, right? That's what makes you unique, right?

We're on a mission to empower all entrepreneurs with the financial information they need to make informed decisions and change the world. And we're trying to empower all entrepreneurs knowing that we're never going to physically be able to support every entrepreneur, but we'll damn well die trying. Good day and welcome to the Wealthy Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Bob Gover. I've got a very special guest here, Liam Morin, who I'm going to introduce you to in one second. But I just want to remind you that this is the place where we dissect the elements that contribute to entrepreneurial success, from mindset and leadership to profits and revenue. And again, my guest here, Liam, is very special to me. We've been working together for quite some time. Not necessarily just in the same business, but we've been collaborating for years. We're going to talk about sales mastery and building and sustaining client relationships. So, Liam, welcome formally to the podcast. It's great to have you here.

It's awesome.

And for those people who don't know you, maybe you could give a little bit of a background of, you know, where you grew up, how you got into the business, how you got into sales, and how you became the master of.

I'm not a master, but sure. So I'm born and raised in Toronto, which is about an hour and a half west of where we are now in Peterborough, Ontario. And I got into sales, actually, through a current client of the firm who I found out was a client many, many years.

I know who.

Which would be a gentleman named Ben Stewart, who runs a company called Canada Property Stars, which used to be called Spring Masters Canada. When I was 18. I know. 17. Yeah, 17. Almost 18. I was standing at a bus stop at York University, and there was one of those paper ads with the things you rip off, and it's like, do you want to make 500 a day working with your hands? And I. Which in retrospect sounds weird, but I took it. I called the number. There was a weird group interview at this giant warehouse on this really sketchy place near York University. Ben basically told us, hey, if you want to make money and have a great life, you need to get into sales. And basically just told us all about how sales works and then said, yeah, come back tomorrow, be your first day. You're knocking doors, you're selling lawn aeration. So we had a lawn like aerator, like a giant lawnmower. You push door to door, knock the door, sell the house. That was basically my first like it was a full immersion because it was just like 16 hours a day. Right. Learning from Ben, selling like crazy. And that's basically how I got into it. And from there got into the high tech space or tech company in Toronto and then now into more of the online world, which me and you met through. And then, you know, the way the world works. Circle it all back. And now I'm here at Govero.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Wow.

And it's super great to have you. So. So talk to me about your maybe your evolution of roles in the sales space. So in our shared space, that was really the coaching world. You got into doing coaching specifically for contractors and started to get to know that like you were a contractor as well at one point, right?

Yeah, I had my own construction business. I had worked for a construction technology company in Toronto that got acquired to like a mobile estimating SaaS product for contractors. I'd always been kind of in the construction space, even though Spring Masters was outdoor stuff. And then, yeah, kind of moved into the online coaching and training world, which obviously you're a big part of. So I met Bob, everybody listening at a. I was at an event in. Where? Redondo Beach, California.

Oh yeah, we were in California.

And the previous company I was working with the world, the world is such a funny place. So the previous company I was working.

With, I remember this well.

Our accountant and bookkeeping firm who Bob ended up acquiring basically had a little mix up and payroll didn't get run. And you know, some people were upset. And the CEO at the time was just, you know, he's like, he was all bluster. And I was like, just, just go, just, just go chill. Just walk away. Right? I go grab a drink. I sat down and Bob's like, what's wrong? And I was like, our accountant bookkeeper sucks. He's like, I happen to run an accounting and bookkeeping business.

Funny. I happen to know a thing or two about making those things happen.

And at the time you probably had no idea. Maybe you did that you're about that you're going to acquire that company. I won't name them, no. And it's all good. But it all got started out. We hired Bob and then I basically realized like, hey, most contractors, most small business owners, I kind of know in this from my own experience of running a business but also with just working with so many contractors at Joist and was that they don't really have a good grasp of numbers. Profitability, I mean, a common problem for all entrepreneurs, but just like really a lack of good financial data and understanding of their books. And we brought Bob in to help support our members. And then Covid hit and it got real bad and Bob really stepped up. We did like a ton of training, ton of extra kind of resources and support for everybody. And that's I think, where meeting you really got me deeper into the financials and how it works so integral to our contracting business, but also how critical it is as well for sales because again, the other day we're tracking numbers and sales. Right. It's a very data driven. So that for me was a good kind of opener to like, oh, wow, there's more than I thought here. Right.

And you wouldn't even want to see our sales data analysis that we go through on a weekly basis from marketing all the way, all the way down to the end of the sales process. But yeah, super fortunate. You guys understand how this works, right? You're a business owner and every now and again you have this opportunity that shows up and you have two options. You have one to embrace it, to take it on, and to open the door up to what could be possible, or the other is to continue to say no to opportunities. And I know when Liam and I connected in California, of all places, right? On the beach. On the beach, walking through in California. But to look at that as an opportunity to say, okay, well, you know what, it's very interesting. We work with a lot of contractors. Wouldn't it be interesting to work with the coaching side and collaborate, which we continue to do with coaches and with advisors to help bring the financial strength to a business and especially those financial insights to business owners. Because honestly, guys, you don't have those financial insights in your business. You're running blind. But certainly a great connection to make on the beach and come back to Canada and. And I think we work together for three or four years.

Yeah, a good four years in a really fantastic partnership with Shawna too, who was just on the podcast.

Yeah, really helping a lot of people, which was great. And the organization that you were working with was. Was fantastic, making a huge impact. And then, you know, it ended up that the organization kind of changed.

I think you were, you were looking.

For an opportunity and I went, oh, damn, I know this guy. We should probably work together maybe a little bit more. So. So maybe let's talk a little Bit about sales. So. So Liam is currently the director of sales at Gover Accounting Tax Law Advisory. Not necessarily a traditional role in a public accounting firm. For example, you know, you typically have business development people. But one of the things that I have found in my experience in running sales, because I would say that I've been running sales for the last 16 years or sales and I, and I still do them and I still do development, but one of the things that was lacking was the accountability in the system to make sure that everything was getting tracked. And I guarantee you if there's any lawyers out there who are listening as well, or any other professionals, you know, you get phone calls, you get referrals, they get email to you, they get sent to you and you know, you email them and maybe they don't respond right away, it goes into the bottom of their inbox and that's probably the end of it. And there was so many low hanging fruits in our business over the last 16 years that we needed a better system in a better way. And a lot of people in the professional space would go, well, sales is maybe a dirty word or low priority, right?

Because not.

It's more so like how much money can we make? But it's all about the perspective of how we work with this. And for me, sales is the way that we don't let those people down. All those referrals, all those people who reached out, who connected with some form of media or a document or a training that I've done or the team has done, they reached out wanting help and we let them off the hook with not following up with them as much as we should have to make sure that we engage them and we let them down. And one of the intentions by bringing more of a Liam into the team on a sales perspective is to say, guys, we're not willing to let you down. We're here to make the greatest impact, to help you make the greatest impact. And we need to have this follow up process and this persistence so that we don't let you off the hook and, and let you down by not following up. So talk to me about what a modern sales process looks like.

You know, it's actually interesting because I had a chat with one of my mentors, Matt Ryder, who, you know, and he's been going through like a whole journey and we had an hour and a half, yeah, almost an hour and a half chat about this weeks ago and things have definitely changed since like Covid, since the online world kind of went through some big changes last year. But even I think all businesses, and I think now, you know, with ads getting more expensive, right? Like it's harder to compete for a lot of people. Like maybe you're listening this podcast you run, you know, a physiotherapy clinic, right? And maybe it's getting more expensive to acquire a customer. Maybe you have to spend more on ads to get the same number of people walking through your clinic, right? And when that starts happening again, I'm not a numbers guy like you are, Bob, but it's like, okay, well, hold on. Rather going to have to sell more to compensate. We're going to have to raise our prices, right? Or we're going to have to do both at the same time or we're going to have to cut costs, right? And that's not necessarily fun as a business owner because there's implications of that. And I think now if you're building a modern sales engine, you know, I think for a lot of people, especially probably listening to the podcast, there's probably some people who, who are big fans or who follow and they're probably really good at like meeting a client in person, helping them, getting, let's say, things sorted, getting the person over the line, getting them into the ecosystem, getting them as a client. And then there's probably some people who are really good at the front end. Like they're really good at marketing, promotion, networking, right? Probably listening. They do a lot of in person events. You probably get a lot of cards. You don't, like you said, don't follow up on all those meetings, right? People, I met that guy. It was a great meeting. So I think a lot of people are in one of those two ends, but then there's this huge gap in the middle, right? And this is what we saw, I think originally when we started working together is like, listen, I think a lot of people in general have this audience or they have their database or their funnel or their list and there's this big kind of block in the middle, right? So it's like a pipeline. If you're, if you're watching this or listening and the front of the pipe is open, it works. You'd add to plumber at the end of the pipe, right? But the middle is getting gummed up, right? It's like when your kitchen sink gets all gummed up. And I think a modern sales process now because a lot of people are good at figuring out those two ends either, like naturally, they just do it as the entrepreneur and the owner. They have no choice because it's like If I don't market and sell, I don't have a business and I'm not going to make any money. But that middle, like you said, it's all this opportunity gets lost. So we're searching for more. And what I've seen recently is you know the people who are really doing well and who are really making a big difference, they're really attacking that middle of funnel, that kind of bulge in the list through follow up rate, through check in, through leveraging client services, through leveraging women setters SDRs and moving away from like a bit of the like harder sell model or the like hey, you know, I really got to follow up with this person a million times to a more of a hey, let's consistently check in with these people, raise that touch base. Right. See how they're doing, don't let them off, see if they need help. And then that naturally just leads kind of to deal flow. And I imagine a lot of people listening probably have 5, 10, 15,000 people in their database or they do a ton of networking and it's like that's great, you need that. Don't get me wrong. But if you're not doing anything with it. Yeah, right. Like you're kind of just sitting on it, you know.

Yeah. And you know, let's talk about the evolution of our business for the last 16 years. So started out business development was shaking.

Hands, going to events back in the.

Day and then you know, we started with an online presence which was organic because that's what we thought we had to do. And then we ended up moving into more of a paid, paid lead gen sort of situation. However, we could never really find a good partner to help bring in the right leads which we have right now, which is really great. If you're looking for a great lead gen source, make sure you drop a comment in here. We'll connect you. And Valor Media out of Australia, they're incredible to work with.

But guys also shout out to the GoPro marketing team. Catherine, Brittany, oh for surely amazing people like killing it.

So the, so the evolution again we got into some paid ads and then we brought marketing in house as well and we started bring, bringing up really good brand recognition. Started doing lead gen through creating documents and trainings and you know, live events and video and you know the whole thing's evolved podcasts, right?

Yeah.

So we're hitting people in every way but that part works and you, you generate sales out of it. But the, the idea is that 90% of those that aren't really following up with you, you're losing them off the back end because you're just not following up with them. And truthfully, you know, we just had a new client today get on a call for the first time, fairly substantial business. He's been following our stuff for the last four years. And just this time, our team reached out to. Because they clicked on a document to download, our team reached out and booked them into a call. They've been waiting for it. Right. Waiting for the right opportunity. And if we're not reaching out to them, a lot of times they won't reach out to us in our space. You know, there's a lot of fear around finances and people don't want to talk about it. And maybe a bit of shame.

Yeah.

As well. And you're like, yeah, yeah, it's okay. You know, there's. There's no shame. Everybody that we get in through here has got some elements that, you know, they got skeletons.

Yeah.

They feel like there's shame attached to it. But, guys, that's what we're here for.

Right.

But the same would be with any of your businesses. You know, if you've got a roofing business and you're looking for individuals to obviously replace the roof or do the shingles, there's going to be people who are like, oh, I need to do this. And they, they reach out, but they don't want to follow up. There's an obligation to follow up. And I think that's one thing that Liam brings, that's like, next level is the follow up and the persistence, again, to not let people off the hook with creating a home that doesn't have mold and issues inside the drywall and inside the roof, because they know they have to do it for their family. They just want to deal with it right now. Until you go, you know what, we're going to make this easy for you to deal with it right now.

Right.

Same with your finances. We're going to make this easy for you. Let us take care to deal with this right now. Right. And that's, again, not letting them off the hook and following up, which I absolutely love. So let's talk about maybe what some of the evolution is since you've come in. So I know we do a lot of work on marketing, which Catherine on our team, brilliant when it comes to supporting our marketing and our graphic design and our. Our documents that people download and building resource hubs and everything. You know, she's an incredible resource. But then taking that and saying, how do we get the most from this marketing so maybe walk everybody through a little bit of what our process looks like.

There's probably parts I'm missing from Catherine. Yeah. One thing I'll just say too, because when I was working with Matt Ryder, I remember we were one of his clients is Ryan Sirhan. You guys probably know him. Love it or leave it. Million dollar listing. The guy in New York, he sells like most expensive real estate in New York. He's like one of the best real estate agents in the world. He has his own program, you know, he has a record for most expensive penthouses.

Right.

Anyways, he, he follows up with people. Like he, he's got like eight year follow up deals. It's literally nuts, right? Yeah, he just falls up. But that's not even the most important part. The most important part is that his whole philosophy in business, which I think is something you've nailed, is I think anybody listening this can really take something from is, he's like, you got to have your own personal brand, right? And you got to be like recognizable because the end of the day your brand, it's all you have, right? It's you. Right. That's what makes you unique. Right. And a reason a lot of the marketing I think really works. It go over on why you've been successful, why the company's done really well recently, is that you get out there, you do podcasts, right? You, how many events did you last year? Like 40.

Too many.

Don't ask you and wife how many. Yeah, that's you last year. I mean flavors, you got one short.

Of half of everything. I own it that way.

Just that it's like if, if you want people to recognize you and work with you, right. Well, they got to know who you are and they got to know why they should work with you. And I think having a personal brand at the end of the day, from a marketing sales standpoint is one of the best things you can do at.

The end of the day.

It doesn't actually cost a lot of money because if you're willing to network and do podcasts and do events and just put yourself out there, do ads and it's not fun. Like shooting ads is not fun.

No, it's very hard. It's very hard, very time consuming.

It's draining. It's very emotionally challenging. Right. Like these things are not easy, but.

But when you believe in your purpose and you believe in that, then you'll do whatever it takes.

Right?

And I usually say this. We're on a mission to empower all entrepreneurs with the financial information they need to make informed decisions and change the world. And we're trying to empower all entrepreneurs knowing that we're never going to physically be able to support every entrepreneur, but we'll damn well die trying. And that's what it means to believe in something and go out and do all that. You know, do the podcast, do the. The presentations, do the. Any of the conferences that we go to, write the books, have the meetings, you know, all of that stuff, because we believe in it.

And I think it starts there too, right? And again, like, one of our core values of Gov Row is all in. And it's like, if you're going to do it, go all in, right? Like, if you're going to do marketing, do podcasts, do. But like, you know, you want to write a book, write your book, right?

Like, I didn't realize when we. When we said all in, that that meant all in on Bob's time.

All in Bob. Yeah, yeah, Bob doing.

Oh, okay.

The third podcast Bob's done today, I think back to back. So, yeah, when I came in, I mean, I think there was like some, you know, there's obviously some. Some system stuff. We had contacts in some databases. We had HubSpot. We were launching the new website, which is amazing. Catherine's done a phenomenal job on that. So there's definitely some, like, you know, I was coming into something that's already in motion, right? So there's a bit of system cleanup and all that kind of stuff. But once we got everything essentially you know, cleaned up and consolidated, it was okay, where are the leads coming from? Right? What's their journey? Like, where are they getting bottlenecked?

Okay.

Like in the pipeline, so to speak. And where do we have to interject more, let's say touch points or people or communication, right. To get them to move kind of through the pipeline. And every one of you, listen, is going to have a different process, right? Some people, your business is able to come in off the street into your business, and like, that's the start of the process for us. It's usually, yeah, they download a book that's in a podcast, they go to the website, they call the front desk, whatever. But it's like, okay, they start here, they end here, which is, you know, hopefully they become a client, engage some of our services. So the kind of thought is. Or what we looked at is, okay, well, what are the steps in between all of that, right? Like, if we start. Keith Cunningham, your friend and mentor, we start with the end of mind, right? Like, what do we have to do to reverse engineer that. And again, I don't think, I'm not, this is not me boasting or anything, but I don't think many accounting professional services firms really do any kind of, let's say like outreach like we do with our setting team.

No, because they again, they feel like it's maybe a bad word. Sales is like a bad word or it's intrusive, right.

It's like the clients don't want to be bothered.

But it's again, if it's the fact that yeah, it might sound like a dirty word but you're also willing to let everybody continue to suffer without providing them a solution. And we're just committed to that more than anybody else. And I think it's a wonderful thing.

I think it's great. I think, I know we have a lot of fitness people who are in the space that are go fans and entrepreneur fans and it's like, yeah, you're going to, are you going to tolerate when your clients like oh I don't want to come today or you know, I want to change the diet. It's like, no, you're letting them down, right? It's the same thing. So that's where we saw the gap in my mindset was like, hey listen, you know what? This looks like a prime opportunity to have a team of setters. Phone, email, text, right? And for those of you listening, those would be generally people who probably aren't going to like do a proposal or do an intake or a consultation with a client. They're not going to demo a product, right. They're not going to do the assessment like if you're a Cairo, they're not going to actually do the work, right? If you're a lawyer or a partner, the ones kind of before that in the process. But my mindset was like, hey, let's just get setters attacking this. We have their contact information right? There tried people who years ago, right, like submitted a request and it fell off the radar or the person they were dealing with left the company or you know, they changed again. There's a million factors but we started doing that and we just started seeing again from what I have been doing before, very good ratios, response rates, you know, KPIs of hey, this is how people are actually booking in this, how many replies we're getting. This is our book through rate. And I was like, wow, this is great. Like this is our no show, right? We're getting very good numbers. One thing about Catherine that's amazing is she's very much, very much obsessed with benchmarking industry averages. But I think this is great. And I was looking at it and going, wow, you know, this is what we're doing. But, you know, a kind of rough system. Right. And again, I think everybody listening, guys, like, just rough it. Right.

It doesn't have to be perfect to make it better. Yeah.

You don't need, like, do you need HubSpot maybe? Right. Maybe you'd need like a very cheap basic CRM. Maybe you can just an Excel sheet.

Right.

Like, don't let. I think. I think I'll be. Let the system become the excuse of why you can't make progress. And it's like, well, hold on. Let's just do stuff. Yeah.

Right.

And that doing stuff is activity.

But, but, but build your database too.

Yeah. Like, store the contact somewhere.

Yeah. Like you need it. Because here's the thing, you know, somebody comes into your universe one time, they're interested in something, if you don't follow up with them, if. Engage them, share. Share more value, give them something else.

A tip.

Right. And. And when Liam talks about setters, he's talking about really somebody who's outbound reaching out to the clients instead of them reaching out to us.

Yeah.

Right. So they usually reach out. Clients usually reach out or prospects and they download something of interest or they watch something, but it really stops there until we reach out to them and say, hey, were you interested? Would you like to know more? How can we help you? How can we support you? And we follow up with people persistently to make sure that we're satisfying their needs. And sometimes those people don't end up being clients, but we're helping set them on the right path. And that's part of our mission too. Right. So even if they don't end up working with us, we're still supporting them.

That's fine.

Right. But. But this wouldn't happen if we didn't have somebody reaching out outbound to be like, hey, what's going on?

What's your problem? How are you doing? It's been a while. Yeah, Right. And sometimes, you know, people just literally reply with, hey, sorry, I've been busy. I just had to get back to you. And the email last year was like a year ago.

Yeah. We all know what that's like.

We do.

You know, we're all busy.

Yeah, yeah, it's fine. And you can't take it personally, guys. I think that's the one thing too, with modern sales, and I think just in general, a lot of the Changes because sales is going through a bit of like I say it's like a recession. That's not the right word. But for a good period, you know, 2008, 2009. Right. It was definitely like a wave and I think a lot of the. We're riding it and there's a lot of, you know, sales. I think just the sales industry. I went through a big period like Cardone kind of started it in 2008, 2009 with the whole like let's treat sales like sports with training and you know, focus. Right. And dedication.

And I loved it by the way.

I love like so. So when I started working for Ben Stewart, me and the other guys were too poor to afford the grant cardone like 15 DVD set because I think it was 1500 US dollars.

Cardone you.

Yeah, this is before Cardone you. Yeah, that's when he was doing direct mail DVDs. 20 years. Yeah, almost 20 years ago. So me and a guy. No, it's okay. So me and a bunch of guys, we all with five of us chipped in all together to buy it and then just pass it around. Like I said one guy would watch it, complete it, go to the next one. But yeah, it's been on a bit of a tear and you know, like all like as you know in accounting finance, what goes up must come down. And I think just a lot of the tactics have changed. The markets kind of become smart to a lot of things and a lot of was. I love grant but there's a lot of very like aggressive tactics.

Right.

Which is. Which listen is okay for certain niches. Let's learn them.

Like be aware of.

Yeah. Be aware of them. They don't work for everybody. And I think the biggest thing is like you have to just be able to like be humble that people aren't going to buy from you. But also just kind of lose. Yeah. Lose the ego, detach from the whole thing and just go, you know what? It's not about me making the sale or my business acquiring a client. It's about did this person have a great experience going through our process. If they did, like you can hold your head high. If the outcome of that is that they bought for you or became a client, then awesome. Right. But that can't be the goal because then you have the wrong incentive. I feel. Right. Or you're going to get motivated for the wrong reasons and yeah.

And you're, you're never going to please everyone. And that's okay.

I. One of those. Yes.

We all know that Right. Entrepreneurs like, we know that you're not going to please everybody and that's okay. Right. But if you're, again, you believe in your mission and you're doing things out of integrity with good intentions, sales process is very, very important. You know, for me, I look at my team, we're now a team of 99 and we continue to look for opportunity for every single person on the team. If I don't create opportunity for people, they will go somewhere else where there is opportunity. And for you, as a potential client or as a client of ours, we want to make sure that we always have the best people. If I don't create opportunity, I will not have the best people. So we must grow. Right. Opportunities need to happen. And you know, when we look at the sales process, one of the interesting things I would say, and maybe there was a little bit of a recession when it came to the sales process or there's a learning curve or maybe a little bit of a faux pas, a stigma attached to it at some point. We all have to recognize that the consumer behavior has so drastically changed over the last five to 10 years that, you know, whether, whatever process you call it, we just need to continuously evolve with the needs of the consumer and what that looks like. And so the, maybe the process that was on the DVDs that had an 18 step process didn't evolve. Right. And that's in. And we continue to have to modify that and stay up to date because there's constantly going to be new evolutions. And you know, one of them is really related to overcoming sales objectives. Right. Objections or objections. My apologies. Yeah, so sales objections where people are saying no or not right now. Or not right now or whatever. So, so maybe let's talk about some of those objections and how we can.

Overcome some of those.

Yeah, for sure.

So one thing I'll just preface it with is I'm more of the camp now because that's how I learned from, from Jeremy Minor, seventh level, which is let's, let's, let's focus more on preventing objections if we can, versus dealing with them. Because it's a little bit easier at the end of the day to prevent. Like prevention is the best medicine. It's easier.

That's the evolution. Right? That's the evolution. Because it was.

Yeah.

How do we deal with them?

We're going to have them come up. Yeah.

How do we deal with them? That was, you know, three years ago. That was the strategy. It's like, okay, right. But now it's okay. Instead of that how do we create language that maybe avoids.

Yeah. Those sort of projections that makes people feel much more comfortable. Absolutely. Makes people feel much more at peace. So, yeah, I think that's, that's the big change is like, hey, let's, let's just work on preventing these objections. So I think again, for a lot of people listening, you're running some kind of business where you're highly involved, right. You're wearing a lot of hats, but at the end of the day, you're going to be charging or pricing your customers based on either, I'm assuming for most people, Bob, like hourly rate, set rate, rate, or it's custom pricing. There's going to be some version of that. Okay. Either you're going to give them a.

Quote or ongoing market rates. Right. Like it's a commodity.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

This is just the rate that everyone.

Remember, guys, we don't compete on price, right. Then we become, then we've become a commodity. But given that, right. We know it's not like we're doing, you know, complicated pricing structures, right. Or like rev shares, it's like, it's pretty simple. So given that, I think again, for a lot of people, you have people coming through the front end of your business, where we talked about the top of the funnel, they're coming in. And it's very easy for us sometimes, I think as entrepreneurs especially, we're having a bad day, people are yelling at us, right? And someone quits and you're like, days. And then someone's like, oh, it's, you know, your price is too high and you're like, oh, you know what, you just don't see the value and you don't get it. And like, that's unfair and I'm the best and like that might be true. At the end of the day, doesn't really matter because I didn't buy from you. So let's reframe that. When you have people coming to the front of your process, I'm going to go with the price objection because probably the biggest one people are getting, it's very easy upfront and we do this a lot on our internal calls, you know, because again, I'm going to be honest with you guys. A lot of people coming to us who would maybe when they've been with a local small town person or someone's on from church has been doing their books, right. Like they've been paying below market rate because it's a friend or family kind of just, you know, doing it casually and now they're coming to a professional firm that's licensed, that's insured, that has standards. Right. Like, well guess what, you're going to pay more at the authorized dealer.

Multiple levels of review.

Yeah, you know, bonded. Right. Like, like there's a whole process we have to go through for Bob to get everything accredited every year. It's like you go to the Mercedes dealership, it's going to be more to service your Mercedes there than at the random mechanic around the corner. Right, I get that. That's just how it works.

Got the right technology, the right mechanics, he knows the knowledge.

Yeah. He's familiar with like this kind of work. Right. So knowing that, what's really important I think for everybody is when people come in. A very easy question you can ask all of your customers because this will kind of flesh out what's important to them. When you're kind of going through that initial process. Like again, let's say you're, you know, you're a physio or you're, you're building decks for people. Doesn't really matter. What we want to do is ask ideal criteria questions. So let's say again, I'm running a deck and fence company because I used to run one. So as an easy example, I know we have a lot of contractors in our network. You go to someone's house, they're going to probably say like, okay, cool, take the measurements, let me know how much it costs. Right, that's fair. That's like, that's not abnormal. What we can then kind of do and anybody can spin this is go, okay, great, happy to do that. I'm going to take my measurements. Just so you understand, this is actually my process, how I work. I'm going to take your measurements, right? I'm going to maybe do up a drawing, we're going to talk through some things, then I'll send you a price. But before we do that, I want to know, this is the most important question guys, called ideal criteria. Solution awareness. Right. Just so I understand, what's the most important xyz we can say, you know, characteristics, qualities, factors, whatever for you in this deck and fence project or for you working with the deck builder. Right. What's your ideal criteria? Well, I want this deck done in two weeks because I'm putting this property up for sale and I got to get it done because if I don't, I can't put photos up, I can't list it, I've already bought my other house. This person's time bound speed is critical. Okay, so you want this deck done fast, right?

That's.

Yeah, that's a huge priority to me. Okay. What else? I don't care about cedar or, you know, ipa. I just need a basic pressure treated deck, safe to code. Looks nice. Okay, so you're not looking for the fanciest wood. No. Okay, cool. So it sounds like what you're saying is you want a really well built deck done relatively quickly.

Right.

Done properly. Anything else? Yeah, you know what? I got like five other guys. They didn't even send me a quote. They showed up or they sent me like a word document. Very unprofessional. Okay, so it's important for you. Yeah. I got to submit this. All right, to my accountant. I got. My real estate agent is going to want all the receipts. Right. We got to have everything tracked. Right. I don't want a cash job. Great. So just so you understand how we work, we don't do cash jobs.

Right.

We work with multiple levels of materials. We can definitely do pt. If you do want this deck done by this date. I can do that. Maybe you can't. Tell them if you can't.

Right.

But just so you know, we're probably going to be more expensive than everybody else you're dealing with in order to accommodate your goals. So what have we done there, Bob? What's like. What's, what's.

You really just outline that you can service all of my needs when I don't think anyone else could.

Right. But also set the expectation that, hey, this is not going to be cheap.

Right? Right.

There's an old saying and like, it's in constructions and sales. It's called the triangle. Good, fast and cheap. You can only ever have to. If you want your deck done good and fast, probably not going to be cheap. Right. If you want your deck done cheap and fast, not going to be very good.

Right.

Or not good enough. So you can use that as a little model. This ideal criteria question, it's super important. Now again, let's say you run a physio practice, right. And someone comes in and go, you know what? Had this on and off injury. Right. For years. I've been to doctors and stuff. It's like, okay, tell me more. This is what we call solution. Where. And it's like, what have you been doing to try and solve this leg issue? I've tried supplements. Right. I went to this other place in town, I saw this guy. Nothing really worked. Anything else? Yeah, I did some home research. Okay. So it sounds like you've been trying to solve your leg problem. Your Accounting problem, your whatever problem. Right, but you haven't really found the right solution. Yeah, totally. I need. I just need to get this fixed. Okay, so what's important for you? Getting a leg fix, like immediately, right? Or finding out the root cause again. It's another way to ask ideal criteria so we can figure out what's really been affecting you versus maybe these people have been treating the symptoms. Yeah, I just want to know what this is. Right again. What we've done. We figured out what they've done to try and solve it. Hey, they've gone to our competitors. Maybe. Maybe they've done nothing. I've been sitting around eating chips on the couch. Okay, you haven't really done much that's not going to work. Not going to work for fixing your leg, probably. Right, but now we know, right? And this gives us ammo, guys, a lot of our objections, we can. We can kind of deal with upfront if we know what's important to them. Because if someone's really concerned about getting things done on time, then we're going to kind of sell for time. If someone's like, you know What? I've had four CPAs in the last six years, and I just can't find a good CPA that I can trust or that understands my business. I just want someone that gets me, and I want a relationship. How often do we hear that, Bob? I want that.

I just want somebody who returns my.

Calls, who answers my emails, who doesn't disappear in the middle of the year.

Who can help me with a customized.

Plan, who files my returns on time.

Yeah, right. We hear it all. They're going to tell you.

People are going to tell you. They're going to start giving you what you need to be able to kind of get them over the line. Right? Because once we know that, that this person listen, like, well, they had four accountants. No one's been able to help them.

Right.

What's the gap? Okay, so, Jeff.

Right.

Just so I understand, like, aside from obviously doing your returns on time, right, Answering your emails, you know, getting back to you like a normal person. Right. Very reasonable. What else is important for you? Like, in a really good accountant? You know, I have two other businesses, and the other guys, they didn't do real estate. They didn't really feel comfortable doing it. So I had to work with another accounting firm. And I also had some contracts I needed done, and they didn't know any lawyers. It's like, okay, great, we have some lawyers we can refer you to. Or we have a lawyer in House. Right. Or we actually have a great relationship with other firm. Right. Because you've been doing your networking and you have your strategic partners. You need to make it so the person has no reason not to buy from you. And if you're going to present the solution, that's again, what they think is their problem. And it might not, as we know what they think their problem is. Might not actually be their problem.

True.

Right. They might think.

They don't always know.

Right? They don't always know. And it's your job as the expert. Right. I'm, I don't go to the doctor telling him I know the problem. I go because I want to find out. That's your job, guys. So.

Although I do feel like I have to do that at my doctors. Is that weird?

I think they have a term for you, the MU industry.

They say, do you Google? Like I've had my doctor.

Oh, they hate the WebMD. Yeah.

No, but my doctor has actually said, have you tried Googling this? And I went, yes, I did.

Well, what came up?

Well, let's try it right now is what he said to me the last time.

Anyway, one of my buddies.

That is weird.

He's a surgeon, orthopedic surgeon, like very successful. And I got some blood work and I was like, hey, like what do you think about this? Like these, some of these measurements look high. He's like, he's like, you need a real doctor. He's like, I'm a surgeon. He's like, get a real guy in here to look at this. I was like, fair play. Thank you for being honest.

But back, back to your point where. And sorry I took you off there because it was weird. But yeah, back to your point of the clients don't always know the exact problem that they need solved. It's our job as the expert.

Yeah.

To say, okay, this is, this is what the outcome is that you need solved letters. How we do tell you what it is that you need to, to get the outcome.

And also like, I think it's really important guys, a lot of objections can be prevented if you just explain your process to people.

Right.

Because if your process is multi step or there's, you know, a deposit or a retainer and then we charge fees but you don't go through that. Those are the things that often will hold up deals. Or we'll get objections like, well, you didn't tell me there's a deposit. And like, what do you mean I have to put money down? Or oh, what do you mean you need my documents or I have to come back for more appointments or like I have to come in every month. Really. People want to know what's involved and if we walk them through that upfront, it's going to prevent a lot of objections because again, another thing, like Bob said earlier, people will often overthink their problems, like, oh, my books are so bad that no, no one's able to fix them quickly enough. Or you know what, Like, I've just, I've been so many years behind on my taxes, it's too far gone. Or again, someone's been like, well, I've had this leg issue for six years and no one's able to fix it. It's your job to like reassure these people and tell them, like, listen, this is what we do all day and this is the process we have so that we take care of it for you. That's going to help them feel at ease again. There's going to be less fear, there's going to be less resistance and then it's easier to walk them through again, your process. Because if someone comes in off the street at Govro, or they call or they email, essentially the process of them getting the work done, like once I become a client's all the same, no matter where they came from, more or less. Right? Is that fair?

Yeah, that's fair.

And you guys, again, you can all do this in your business because whether they emailed you or came in off your webinar or walked into your office, it's like it needs to be that same process. And the other reason why I'm sorry, I'm belaboring this point of a process is that every one of you guys listening at one point, I think hopefully is going to want to not do all the sales for your business.

Right.

At one point you're going to want to hire a salesperson, you're going to want to take some of that hat off and if there isn't like a rough process, then what are we going to give that person?

Yeah, right. And even, even if, even if you are still doing the majority of sales, probably the earliest thing you could do is bring in support to help on the follow up side. Because here's.

Yeah, here's on the appointment setting.

Right. Yeah. Here's how I want to kind of end this last piece off here, Liam, is to ask you three things and I'm going to, I'm going to give one to start, but three things that somebody could introduce in their business right now that would increase their sales or improve their sales process. The first one I'm going to jump in on to give you a few seconds to think about your top three. Although I feel like he's already got. I got 10, but he's got it locked down.

I want to hear your top.

My top one, though is follow up and be prompt. Because I can tell you, in my experience and for me personally over the years, very good at helping find the solution that people need. I'm very good at that. Our team is very good at that. We're experts. You work with entrepreneurs to solve that problem. What I found was my greatest downfall was that I would solve that and I would have a meeting with somebody. We'd have. We'd solve the problem on the call and they'd say, okay, well, just tell us how much it's going to cost.

Let me pay you money.

Yeah, let us pay you money. Let me. What's the next step? And I would say, okay, well, I'm going to follow up. I'm going to give you a proposal, you're going to sign the proposal and we're going to get you onboarded and yada, yada, yada. And then I would go right from that call on to the next call and I would do the same thing over and over and over again. And I've solved all of the problems and I've got verbal confirmation about all of these deals done. But I never send the proposal. I don't want to say never. But you get busy, you forget about them. And there's some times that things slip through the cracks and that lack of follow through and immediate follow through really loses people's interest. Because there's one thing called buyer's remorse, where if somebody is on a call, you create a solution, they have a somewhat of an emotional response where they're like, oh my God, you're going to solve this problem for me. Oh, my God, yeah, please, you're my hero. We want to pay you right now. And when you. The longer you leave it to follow up with them, the less emotional response they have. So the less likely they're going to still sign on with ease, as they would at the beginning. So if I could give one, it's to make sure that you're promptly responding and following up with people. It may not be you business owner.

But have to be.

It doesn't have to be, but you need some sort of administrative or sales process in place.

Yeah.

To support that because otherwise you're going to continue to verbally sell and get all these confirmed deals that never actually Are realized because we're just not following up. Liam, over to you and your top three.

Okay. I think. And just what Bob is referring to, guys there is what we call like sales velocity, right? Like speed wins and sales. Right. The faster you get back to somebody, right. The faster you reply to their email, get on a call with them, figure out their problem, the faster you can help them, right. And if you wait two weeks to get back to their email, well, they may have gone to somebody else. And that's totally their right. And shame on you.

Right.

Like you've lost that.

That's.

That's like no one's going to cry over except for you.

Well, and let me ask you this. So in the sales world, yeah.

There's.

Regardless of the industry, I would say, you know, I used to think maybe the trades were the worst at this, but I don't know. Accountants are pretty frigging brutal at this, too. Of your 10 competitors, one client comes in, talks to all 10 of you. What are the. What's the probability that any of the other competitors are actually responding within three to four days? Likelihood is frigging low, right?

Yeah. So there's a lot of data, is actually very well documented. So the first is that when a lead comes in, right. Like whether it's they come into your system or they've talked to you from that moment, like, if we were to graph this, it's a very sharp, diminishing return, right. There's a very short window, 24 to 48 hours, right. Where we can probably convert them. After that, it just like falls off a cliff. Right. And then from there, on average, usually seven touch points is required in most industries to acquire one client. Like minimum. That's average, right. So seven, that could be, you know, three calls, a text, two emails.

Right.

Like it. And one more call, like, that's. Those are touch points. Right.

But even on the three, if you're a consumer, you reach out to three people, the likelihood of them, any of them responding aside from one, is really low.

I'm trying to get to be the ones right now and stuff, you know.

Like, yeah, be the one.

Be the one.

It's an easy. It costs nothing. That's an easy response. So don't. Don't lose that opportunity by being the one person to respond. Easy, close in that situation where there's frustration and you're just having to solve all the problems and then guess what happens? Pricing goes out the window.

We prevented it. Exactly, right, yeah. Prevent by winning. So top three. So the first thing and I've really come around on this and I think you will as well because I think it's been a big one for you. I think that most people listening, you're an entrepreneur, you're a business owner. Probably the biggest thing you can do to improve your sales process is better to. You know, we had Dan Martell on the podcast, right? You got to get control of your time and whether it's through using, you know, a calendar AI program, it's through getting a virtual assistant, like getting executive assistant like Bob has. You need someone because you can't watch yourself swing. Okay, I know many good, just individual lone wolf sales reps who have their own personal virtual assistant just to manage their calendars, to manage their follow up. You don't need to do it all yourself, guys. Sales is a time based activity. If you're not blocking time in your calendar, you're double booking meetings, you're forgetting to follow up. Like Bob said, it's a function of the fact that you're not managing your time. So you need to dedicate time in your week to take calls, to do proposals, to follow up. Right? You're a lawyer, you're probably gonna have to review some contracts or go do some research on like, on cases, right? To put together a proposal or to give out, you know, pricing, right? You're a doctor, you probably gotta order lab work and do these things, right? You're a physio, you're gonna have to get a consultation, you're gonna have to do all this stuff. You need to have time dedicated for sales. It can't just be something that's like an afterthought. Okay? Now again, there's a phenomenal amount of calendar AI programs that will help manage that for you. There's like the calendar bridge. Again. You get a virtual assistant generally for pretty easy upworks are fairly cheap. There's a lot of great programs, I like Fathom and Read AI that will record your calls and they'll just summarize the call. So then you just go back to that and go, okay, I talked about this with Steve. I got to get him a quote for this. And this versus like what do we talk about? And I got to watch this whole recording. So like leverage your time and technology. Your time as an entrepreneur, like as we know, is the most valuable resource. Absolutely. Right. Like you talk about in your book. We had Dan Martell on it, talking about it, right? Mike Michalowicz. So leverage your time, guys, sales, it's just like the gym, right? The gym has to Be. If you want to get good at the gym, you want to get fit, it can't be something that's an afterthought. It's like we dedicate, we default time to it.

Right.

It has to be sacred. Otherwise, just like with the gym, we're going to get it in because as a result. Second thing, again, very, very, very, very simple. Leverage more than one channel for sales. A lot of you are probably really good in person or really good on the phone or you do a lot of your business over email. Start leveraging other communication channels. If you don't text your customers, start texting it. They might hate it, they might love it. We won't know until we try. Okay.

Again, you're not going to keep everybody happy.

Yeah, we can't. That's that. If you. I'm going to quote a man who maybe not everybody would want to quote Joseph Stalin. Right. Like, I don't know the secret to happiness, but the secret to sadness is trying to appease everybod.

Right.

And it's true. Right. So just try reaching them different ways. If you have their number, text them, call them, email them. Okay.

And next time, just don't say who said that.

Yeah. Because I got to give. Hey, like that's the original quote. Or it's probably reappropriated for somebody else.

Yeah.

And again, like, it's just a very simple tactic. A lot of you probably listening. And again, I'm not trying to single anybody out or make you feel bad, but if you're just sending emails, right. Hoping someone's going to respond to you, but. Well, that might not work. They might just be busy contractors on the go and they pick up their phone a lot.

Yeah.

Right. And many lawyers are very, very busy in court, so they don't pick up their phone. So you have to email them.

Yeah.

Right.

And guys, hey, we go through this too, where we're constantly looking at our communication channels and saying, how do we make sure we touch everyone? Like, how do we. And this isn't even just a sales process, but a deliverable process where it's like the email maybe isn't enough. Let's make sure we're using all means of communication to help ensure that everyone is getting their problem solved. So sales, not sales. I think it's important that everybody incorporate as many channels as they can because. And honestly, everybody's got their. Everybody's got a phone now.

Yeah.

So the easiest way to have it is. Yeah, it's probably emails in their phone too, but an SMS text that's it is unread in that very, very prevalent area on our phone that's unread messages. And we know that it's either our wife, our kids, or the accountant who's looking for you. And it's all very important.

All equal daycare expenses.

All equally important.

Yeah. And then number three, I think, would be. And again, this is going to apply a little bit different to everybody, is try and keep just some very rough metrics about your sales, right? If you know roughly how many leads are getting a month and you know roughly how many new clients you got that month just on a whiteboard, on a spreadsheet, just keep some rough track of your main metrics. How many calls you're getting, right? How many meetings you had, how many proposals you sent out, how many new clients you signed, what was the revenue of that? Like, very basic KPIs. I know you have worksheets on this, right, that we give out. We're doing basic financial metrics or KPIs. Just keep some rough data, guys. Even if all, literally all of you keep is just leads generated and then deals close and meetings held.

Right.

Month over month. After six months, you have really good data to go. You know what? It only takes four meetings for me to get a new client. Okay. As a meeting a day. Why not gonna do that with my eyes closed.

Well, then you can start to predict your revenue. Then you can start to predict your staffing needs on your advertising spending. So it just helps build out that pathway and clarity.

Right, Question. The really good way to test, like, a bit of a BS sales rep is you go like, what's your closing rate? And they all go 50 or 50%. You know, it's roughly. No one's 50%. Right? 50%. No, no, you're not. It's the same thing most people say.

If you are, your pricing is too low.

Yes. Come talk to us.

Yeah, that's. That's a problem.

So, yeah. Yeah. And again, once, you know, and again, the other great thing is once you know those metrics and you now have a rough idea of like, hey, this is how many, you know, chickens we got to put in to get this many eggs, Essentially, then you come and you talk to Bob and, hey, Bob, I need to get my, you know, accounting done so I can go to the bank and show them my statements so I can get a loan to get more money to grow my business. Right. It's like, it all plays together, guys, in the day data is never going to be a bad thing. Even if it's rudimentary data. It's better than no data because if we don't have any data, it's like driving in the dark with your lights turned off.

But definitely build your database at the same time. Like, oh, yeah, get those analytics. But that doesn't always get emails, phone numbers always. You can follow up, put them in a nurturing campaign where you send out an email every month. Give them value. Tony Robbins talks about this a lot. Give more value than anybody else and you will always win the game. I completely agree. Continue to give value because like Liam said, I think it's. You said seven touch points. I think on average, I think that's.

That's a very.

And I feel like now that number has gone up because of social media and the amount of constant pressure that people are always giving you that. I think it's in the 20s, a.

Mean or median is probably high. Teen.

Yeah. Which is, which is wild. So we have to, if we want to be competitive and we want to continue to grow and evolve, we need to continue to give people more value, give them those extra touch points. Liam, this has been super valuable. I got all jazzed.

I got to, I got to go.

Follow up with a bunch of calls that I've had.

You owe me some proposals. I know what you asked.

Well, this is awesome, guys. If this has been valuable, leave a comment in here. Share this info with anybody you know that is struggling with their sales process, with understanding maybe what the sales could look like in their follow up in any of, maybe their client service or contacts or building a database. There's been a lot of really good golden nuggets that have been shared in here. So drop a comment in, let me know what you like. Make sure you follow this podcast. If you follow this podcast, we've released a podcast every week and we'll continue to do so as long as I so shall live, because that's how I'm committed to it. And we're going to continue to offer value to you every single week. So make sure you follow it. You'll get a notification when next week's episode comes out. Again, share this information with those that need it and you think would benefit from it because again, we're on a mission to empower all entrepreneurs with good information to make informed decisions and change the world. And hopefully we can do that together. My name is Bob Govreau. Liam, thank you so much for joining today. And this has been the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. See you next time.

Bye, guys.