My Best Sales Tactic (As A Fractional CFO)

Hey, guys, I'm Charles Leikoff, and I've been a fractional CFO since 2017. And now I help people start and grow their own fractional CFO firms as well as own my own firm. And so I've learned a ton of things over the, over the last eight years. But one of the most important things that I've learned is achieving the right frame to get the best relationships with your clients as well as the best sales process. So what we're going to go over today is what I've learned in the last year, taking over 1200 sales calls for fractional CFO and consulting services. And one of the things that I want to talk about today's frame. And this is going to set you apart from everybody else. It's going to help you close more deals, sign more clients, get better results them. And so we're going to structure how your client relationships start and then why it's so important. And then what does it look like to structure the relationship or the nature of your clients correctly from day one? That's going to stop you getting from missed payments. It's going to stop them from not taking your advice or being like, oh, what if I do this? Or what if I do that? It's going to better the relationship. It's also going to better the sales call. And you're not going to get any lack of compliance in your relationship or you're not going to get the I need think about it kind of thing. And so let's talk about frame. What is frame? Now, there's free three frames that your prospect can view you in. So you get on the sales call, you start your relationship right, you're excited. This is a new client. There's going to be a whole bunch of things that you're going to want to say, ooh, it's a new lead to the grade. I'm on the phone. I want to help them. Can I help them? What's their business look like? There's going to be a million things that are going to go through your head. So one of the things that's really important is how they view you. So there's three frames that someone can view you in. And when we're looking at this free three frames, there's superior frame right up here. There's equal frame or the friend frame, and then there is inferior frame. Now, what did these even mean? Right. What these are and why this is important is because this is what's going to make a better relationship to you and your client. And you're allowed to sign more deals. But what are these three frames are. A superior frame is simply that of a trusted advisor, which, well, that's your role as a fractional cfo. You're not their friend may become their friend, but you're, you're not starting off as their friend, and, and you're not starting off as their buddy or their servant, or they're like, you know, go for a kind of person. So you want to be seen as the trusted advisor. Now, when I think of the trusted advisor frame, if you think of any mentor you have or any mentor that you would like, right? If you, you know, want to start a software company, right, and you had, you know, 30 minutes to talk with, you know, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or someone of that stature, right? You probably wouldn't word vomit on them. You probably wouldn't dump a whole bunch of information. You probably ask a question, shut up and sit there and write notes on a notepad furiously. You would try and talk as little as possible, take as many notes. And if they said, go do this, you probably go, okay, and you, you just take their word for it. Exactly. Right? That's superior frame, right? That is trusted advisor frame. Now, equal frame is like, oh, this is my buddy. Like, oh, if he gives me advice, maybe I'll take it, maybe you'll not. You know, if your friend says, oh, you should do this, you go, okay, I'll, I'll take a look at it. But you're not going to stop what you're doing tomorrow and go necessarily do this thing. You know, you kind of give your buddies some crap back and forth. Like, I know joking with my friends, uh, there's always this, like, constant, like, little ribbing that we have of each other or poking fun at each other. Um, but it's just like an equal frame, right? No one's clearly better than anyone else. And it's not about better, but it's more of like, why should I listen? Why should I take your advice? Why should I have this level of compliance? And then you have inferior frame. Inferior frame is like your prospect can think they're. Do they know more than you? Why would they respect you? They think they're better than you. You know, they think they're times more valuable than you, right? Inferior frame is like, why would I, why would I listen to this guy? You know, when we go about our daily life, there's plenty of people that we put into an inferior frame, right? Like, maybe, you know, there's someone think about the. Think about the person you know in front of you in the line at Starbucks. Like, if they're gonna turn around and give you complicated financial advice, you're like, who are you? What do you want? Right? You're just like, huh, I'm not gonna listen to this. And so one of the challenging things is your behavior dictates the frame that you put yourself in in your new client or new prospect's mind. And so why we, we want to aim for the superior is we want to put yourself in the superior frame. It's going to set you up as the authority. You're not just a service advisor. Like, you're a trusted advisor. Now, that's the important part for being superior. If you're an equal frame, it's comfortable, but it doesn't give you leverage to guide the conversation. It messes up compliance. You're not going to be able to claim command premium pricing. Also, when they sign up as your client, they may not actually do what you want them to do, and that's gonna hurt their results. Like, at the end of the day, if we're getting paid to get somewhat a financial result, which is increased cash flow or profitability or even even just simply like helping them save time, like whatever financial result we're getting, if they don't take our advice, what's the point, right? Like, we're just really expensive therapy sessions at that point. And as much as I love, you know, providing business therapists, which we do a lot of, that's not the highest value, right? And so I really want compliance them to do what I say. That way the client keeps me on longer. But B, I can get them better results. So it's really important that I stay in superior frame for the sales process as well as for the client's own benefit, right? Like, I have clients, they show up for their financial review calls, they show up early, they're ready the whole time. They almost talk, almost too little because they're just trying to gleam as much information as fast as possible. They go back, implement it, and the next time we talk, the things I said to go do, they went and did all of those and they're like, all right, what's next? Right? That the level of speed and results that you can get for people if they put you in that fired frame. And also that's the frame that you want for someone to pay you 3, 5, $10,000 a month, right? So how do we even establish superior frame? Right? Like, how do we even do this? What does that look like? So when we Start a conversation, right? A lot of people, like, whenever we start a relationship, the first impression is like, the most important thing is like when we first meet someone, right? What is our very first impression? And so whatever your sales process looks like, the one most important things is when you first meet them. You want to control that impression, right? Because otherwise it can go downhill very quickly. And so we're looking at this. You want to establish authority early on in the conversation, introduce yourself with confidence and expertise. Outline your expertise right off the bat. So you can do this through your content online. You can do it through your emails that you're sending out through your webpage. But when you get on the phone, right, you want to frame the conversation. So you want to lead the conversation. You want to ask the right questions to guide them to the process. And then you want to be decisive, offer clear recommendations, not just options, right? It's like you want to do this or that, right? You don't want to be like, oh, you could do this or that. So let me give you an example, right? Like you get on the call and say, someone is. There's the first time sales call. You haven't met them before. Maybe you just found them online through your marketing funnel or like the no funnel approach that we teach, or a couple other different things. And so say you start the conversation with them and you have your camera on like I do. Hi. Right in the left hand corner of the screen. Right hand corner of the screen here. Now imagine you have your camera on and zoom and they don't. What do you do, right? Do you just sit there and go, I guess I'm just gonna present to them my camera's on. There's not a big deal. Charles, you're overthinking things. Trust me, I'm not. When we get on a call, my camera's on because it's, you know, a post Covid world. We live and work by zoom now, right? I can't just could, but it's not really feasible, nor is it scalable for me to. To your office or you'd come to my office and sit down. So this is our version of it, right? This is zoom. We're here, we're talking to each other, we're having this direct communication. And so when we're doing this, one of the most important things is when we, when we have this conversation is it's, it's simply to just get on, my camera's on. If there's is not, the first thing I say is, hey, Steve, I can hear you. But I can't see you. Go ahead and turn on your camera so we can get started now. And so what that does is that immediately, it's a direct command, right? The first thing I said to you is, hey, I can hear you, but I can't see you. Go ahead and turn on your camera and we can go ahead and get started now. So there's a couple of things that I did there, and I really want to call these out. Specifically, it's, hey, name. I can hear you, but I can't see you. Go ahead and turn on your camera and we can get started now. And so what that is, is it's name, right? It's calling them by name. It's recognizing them as a person. Right. When someone hears their names, their ears perk up. So, oh, you know, Charles, hey, what's going on? I can hear you, but I can't see you. So there's a lack of, right. Like, like, I'm here. This is the result. This is what I can't do. So I can hear you, but I can't see you. Go ahead and so there's a problem. Go ahead and turn on your camera. There's a command so we can get started now. Which is right now. And why I say that is because that's going to create some compliance is that's the very first thing you hear from me. You're like, oh, gosh, Charles means business. Right? And so, you know, I've never had someone really react weirdly off that. Like I said before, like, we've taken over 1200 calls just in the last year alone. Right. Forget the thousands over the other years, like, just in the last year alone, 1200 plus calls. And so that creates compliance. Immediately shows that I mean business. Right. If I'm here to learn, to be educated. Right? Right. It's not a good fit. Right. If I can't even follow those directions, how am I going to follow directions to me as an actual client? So that's the first thing. And there's something else I want you to notice about that is listen to my tone. Hey, Steve, I can hear you, but I can't see you. Go ahead and turn on your camera and we'll get started now. So when you end a conversation, there's three different tones that you can have right there, there, there. There's flat, there's downward inflecting, and there's upward inflecting. And so it depends upon the time that you're using those tones and the typ of statements, questions, or commands that you're issuing different tones mean different things. So go ahead and turn on your camera. We'll get started now. Like, it's like, let's go ahead and get started now. It's like, I'm asking a question, I'm asking for permission. There's that level of uncertainty, right? It's like I'm, I'm asking them like, oh, please, I want to see you. Like, it just, it reeks of insecurity, right? You're not going to trust someone who has commanding language, but non commanding tone. And so if you have it just flat, like, just go ahead and turn on your camera, we'll get started now. That's more like a suggestion. And so it's go ahead and turn on your camera, we'll get started now. Like, the deepening of my voice, the lowering of the tone is commanding. And so whenever you're trying to display confidence, you want to have a downward inflecting tone. And so when I go ahead and issue that at that statement at the beginning, there's lots of things to unpack there. And I know you might be thinking, well, geez, Charles, that sounds like a lot. This is the first sentence you're saying to the client. Like, does it really matter? Yes, it does. If you were to go meet someone and you have a first date, right? Like the very first couple seconds matter. Right? The very first date matters. You know, anytime you meet someone, the very first impressions count a lot. Now you can dig yourself out of this if you mess up incorrectly. So go ahead. We say we do that. And, you know, they go, oh, okay, sure. Most people go, oh, yep, sure. Let me find it. Let me turn on my camera. Boop. Here we go. You know, if someone says, like, oh, my camera's not working, what you're going to do? Turn off your camera. Right. You are not presenting to them. Right. This is not like a, hey, like, watch, you know, Charles dance show. If I can't see what you're doing or whatever, I can't see if you're paying attention. You could be sitting there on your phone the entire time just, you know, typing away. I don't know. Right. I'm not just, like here to present while you, you know, go for a walk or whatever else. My time is equally valuable. So if they don't put on their camera, I turn off mine, right? Just. Okay, cool. I'm not gonna stare at myself. Boop. And I turn it right off. That's the very sentence I use. Doesn't have. Maybe it's like one out of 50 that even happens. Most people just turn it on. So that's the very first thing. And so we. We want to set a really good frame, and that's how I control the frame. So, like, what if. Or let's talk about, like, what if we set the right frame? So if we set the right frame, usually what happens, we're going to get a lot more compliance. Compliance is important from the sales process, right? It's like, all right, like, we're gonna go ahead and take care of the invoice now. Like, give me your credit card number. We're gonna take care of this. Or, hey, we're gonna go sign the contract. Let's agree. Or it's, hey, we're gonna get you onboarded, right? Like, they're just gonna go, okay, all right. Like, you know, you got the process of, like, I'm telling you what to do, and we're gonna follow this path, right? B. The other thing is, when someone becomes your client, it creates a lot more compliance that way. And that's really important because simply when you don't have that, I mean, I can make all the recommendations. Like, here's your inventory. Let's manage your working capital. Go ahead and take this loan. Do this, pay down this card. Like, what. Whatever I'm going to ask you to do. If I don't have a record of compliance with you, of, like. Like getting you to do what I ask you to do, we'll go to my. As a fractional cfo, like, if I can't get the client to do anything, I'm just a really expensive therapist, right? I've just, you know, Cool. Charles is a thousand dollars an hour. It's a thousand dollars an hour to be like, hey, these are the things you need to do. If you don't do any of that, like, I feel bad. Like, you wasted your money on me, frankly. And so they're not going to stick around because they're not going to get results. So that is really important. Like, I want to make my clients, whether they be the people who join a fractional CFO coaching program or my actual fractional CFO clients who I help, which is mostly E comm brands. Like, if I'm not making them more money than I'm. Than I'm charging them, I got to go. There's no point in me being here. At the end of the day, I'm a finance guy, so my thought is, how do I make people more money than I cost, and how do I do this? They have to take My advice, right Happens if you don't set the right. Anything you failed to do when you first start a relationship with someone, anything you mess up in the beginning of the sales process, it'll come up in the end of the call or it'll come up in your relationship with the client. And so, you know, if I don't control the frame in the beginning, I'll get a, hey, can I think about it? Or hey, you know, I want to go ask my dog's neighbor, sister's cousins what he thinks about getting a budget done. You know, let me, let me ask my current cpa. Well, clearly you weren't happy with them because you got on the call with me, right? Like, no, nobody drops on these calls like, my business is fine, everything's great. I, I'm meeting my goals at 100. I don't want anything in my life. Let me jump on a sales call with a fractional cfo. Like what? Right? Like that's not a thing big. What if you don't? Just to recap, like having really good frame and however you do it, like, that's just one example. I also like set my calls in like a little box like the beginning. And we're going to tell you what, we're going to talk about, what's going to happen in the middle, what's going to happen, the end. Right. Like, you need a process that is repeatable and easy for it to make sense. And so I just gave you one thing if you want to find out more about, like how to control the frame, how to have really good sales conversations, how to get better results for your clients so you can keep them longer, charge them more, and they, you know, they can pay you more and they can make more money and be happier. You can work with us in a couple of different ways. If you check the link below, we have a school community. It's 97 bucks a month. Right? It's great. All the stuff that you need to learn to grow a profitable fractional CFO firm is there. And then we also have a one on one coaching program with me. Hi, Charles. I'm the owner of Profit Surge. And there is where we go really, really and really, really deep on how to grow a massive fractional CFO firm. So we have two models to work with us. Whether it's the school community, just 97 bucks a month, or if you want to take the, the VIP or the, the fast lane, there's our coaching program. I'm going to go ahead and put the links in the bottom but at the end of the day, whether you do any of those, I don't really care. The thing that I really care about for you is I want you to create as much value as you can for your clients and for yourself. And so if this little tip was helpful, let me know in the comments below. If you're thinking, Charles, wow, you're nuts. You overthink things way too much. Also, let me know in the comments below. I will say this is my experience of taking, you know, 1200 plus calls a year for multiple years in a row. So there's an experience behind this. But you know, hey, maybe I'm crazy, right? Put your comments below of like what happened when you have the right status frame or the wrong status frame, what's happened before and how you can manage this. And if you have any other requests for any other content, let me know. I want to make a lot more YouTube content, so as always, I really appreciate you being here. And check out all the other resources in the bottom below. I'll see you there.