Ep 178 | We're All in the Sales Game - Let's Increase Our Conversion

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it. Today I want to talk about business, and specifically I want to talk about sales conversion. I want to talk about converting prospects to a sale. Now, if you're not a salesperson, still hang out, right? Because there's going to be some value in today's episode for you. Because the reality is, no matter your line of business, you're in the people business, you're in the sales business. You are either selling a service or a product to a potential customer or to a customer, a long-term customer, or you're selling your ideas, you're selling your thoughts, you're selling your strategy. So we're all salespeople in some regard. And I want to talk about the best things we can be doing to increase our conversion. So let's, let's just get right into it. We have 5 to 10 minutes here at the No Days Off Podcast to make a difference. I could talk about conversion for hours, but we're not going to do that today. We're going to knock this out rather quickly. So when I think about conversion, I love to look at things using things like this, using the law of inversion. The inversion mental model, as popularized— popularized, hard word to say— by our friend Charlie Munger, who unfortunately passed just last week. And we did an episode around that. Charlie was well known for many things, but the mental model he used, known as inversion, and one that we've done an episode on not too long ago here at No Days Off, the Law of Inversion, it is an incredibly powerful mental model. And I want to use it today as we look at Conversion. What is inversion? It's looking at things from backwards to forwards, as opposed to forward to backward or forward to end, right? So it's almost like beginning with the end in mind. So I would ask the question in the spirit of inversion, as it pertains to conversion here, if a salesperson was to fail in converting sales opportunity to the level that they desire, Why would that be? Think about that. If a salesperson was to fail in converting sales opportunity— opportunities to the level desired, why would that be? There are many answers for this. Some that stick out to me: infrequent and inconsistent follow-up. That one sticks out like a sore thumb. In addition, not providing value. Ineffective communication, not being trusted and not leading, not being a leader in leading towards a direction. So when I think about conversion, which is really just making a number of offers to a prospect in an effort to get that prospect to ultimately align with your strategy and work alongside you to accomplish it. That's what conversion is about. So if someone was to fail in converting, odds are it's because they were not frequent and consistent with their message. They were not providing value. They weren't effectively communicating and they weren't trusted and weren't leaning. I mean, it's one of, it's one of those things or a combination of them. So let's talk around these things because I think there's some obvious yet challenging things we can implement to immediately increase our conversion percentages. Now let's talk about follow-up. Here's the reality. We've all seen these stats. Salespeople, the vast majority of salespeople either do not follow up with their prospects at all, or if they do in fact follow up with prospects, they don't do it nearly enough, not nearly frequent enough, certainly not consistent. As a matter of fact, only 10% of salespeople make more than 3 contacts to a prospect. 10%, 1 out of 10 salespeople reach out to a potential prospect 3+ times. That's mind-boggling. It's also mind-boggling when you think that 80% of sales are actually made on contacts 5, contacts number 5 through number 12. So the vast majority of salespeople do not reach out more than a few times But the vast majority of sales, 80% plus, are made on the 5th to 12th contact. What does that tell you? Well, what that tells me is immediately right out the gate, before we even talk about communication and value and all of that, if I'm just more frequent and consistent in my outreach, my conversion percentages will skyrocket. It doesn't have to be that complex. This is simply a function of effort and not even skill. So number 1, if you want to increase your conversion, increase the quantities and consistencies of your outreach. Okay. Next thing I want to talk about, value. And I'm going to use Amazon as an example of value and how to make offers. Let's think about how Amazon, Amazon functions. Most all of us probably use Amazon. Some of us even on a daily basis. It starts with a search on Amazon, a free search at that. Say you want to buy a hairbrush. You put hairbrush into that search bar and you're going to get what? You're going to click and you're going to get a slew of hairbrushes to choose from. In addition, you're going to get an offer from Amazon that says not only do people that buy hairbrushes buy these particular hairbrushes because they're ranked higher, but they have this, this, this thing down there on the, on the site down below that says these items are frequently bought together. So if you're buying a hairbrush, maybe you need hair product, maybe you need, you know, uh, barrettes or some other things for your hair for females, right? So, or for those with longer hair, it will package those things as additional offers. Now once that shows up and you click again, what happens? It's going to show you delivery times. It's going to inform you on delivery time. It's going to say, hey, if you want to expedite delivery, if you you can pay a little bit more. Or if you click again, what's it going to say? You could join Amazon Prime. And then once you join Amazon Prime, if you click again, what's it going to say? Well, you could subscribe to this product, maybe not hairbrushes, but dog food. You could subscribe and as a result, get it, get it delivered to you regularly without your any effort. Oh, and by the way, we'll give you a slight bit of a discount. This example of Amazon and how to make offers, this is a little bit different than what most salespeople do, which is call and say, hey, I'm just calling to check in. There is no value in calling to check in. That is self-serving. But when you call with an offer, one of value, it's a much different story. So when I think about value, you know, it can be, it can be, you know, in the real estate game, maybe it's direction of the overall market. Maybe it's how interest rates are playing out. Maybe it's some local area knowledge. Maybe it's ways to increase your home values, or maybe the way the buying and the selling process works. I mean, there are so many different things that we could be talking about that are in fact valuable, which is so much better than, hey, just calling to check in. So no matter your business, again, if you're frequent and you're consistent in your follow-up, but then you're following up and making offers that are in fact valuable, you're giving value and you're willing to play the long game. So you give value over and over and over again, and you're consistent in doing so. Your conversion will in fact rise. You do. I mean, there are clients, or there are prospects I should say, you may talk to for a year or 2 years, maybe even 5 years before they take action. They're yours to lose. And how do you lose? You don't provide value or you don't do it frequently and consistently enough. Now, when I think about communication, how do you gotta be, you know, effective in your communication? And how does that play a role in fact in conversion? Well, the truth of the matter is, if you want to effectively communicate, there's a number of things you have to do. Probably the best one, or the biggest one in my opinion, is you actually have to be credible. In other words, you got to live what you say. So if I'm calling you to give you value, I've got to be delivering that value. Obviously the value, it's, you know, the content itself has to be valuable. What I'm telling you must be valuable, but I've also got to be experienced. I got to be knowledgeable. I got to be, you know, delivering this to others in the marketplace. I've got to have a reputation. I have to be credible. In addition, in addition, I've got to be what I think I would say is be simple. I've got to be able to take complicated things and make them simple. If I'm credible and I'm simple in that I'm taking complicated things and explaining them to you, maybe even in a story sort of manner, because people love to see or hear stories. They see their own lives, in fact, in stories. If I can be a great storyteller, if I can be simple and I can be credible, my conversion rate goes through the roof. Lastly, I've got to be trusted. If I want to increase my conversion as a salesperson, then my prospect, my future client, has got to trust me. And when I think around trust, I think about authenticity. I think about empathy. And I think about logic. I have to be authentic. They have to feel like I'm not a salesy type of person, that they're getting the real me. I have to be empathetic. I've gotta, I've gotta be able to demonstrate to them that I actually care about what they're sharing with me. And I care about their, their, their direction, their success. And then lastly, In order to gain trust, what I share has to be logical. They have to believe that there's reason, you know, reasoning and judgment behind all that I'm sharing. All of these things, being an effective communicator, earning trust, being consistent with my follow-up, delivering value. These things are all, you know, what I would say roll up all under leadership. And at the end of the day, your prospects, your clients, they just want to be led. They just want to be led. They want to be led in the direction that, you know, they defined a problem for you. You propose a solution. They want to be led towards that solution. Think about your attorney. Think about your, think about your doctor. You don't need to know all things about the law. You don't need to know all things about medicine. You just want your lawyer or your doctor to lead you in the right direction. One that you can get behind, one that you're confident in. I believe in any sales business, it's that same thing. People don't need all of the intimate details. They just have to have confidence in your ability, in your knowledge, in order to empower you, engage you to work on their behalf. So conversion, you know, I guess my focusing question for everybody today, we can all stand to increase our conversion rates, whether we're selling a product or service or we're selling our ideas, our plans, whatever it may be. We all could stand to increase our conversion rate. So my question for you, of the things we covered today, where can you take action and increase your conversion? That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.