Chris Prefontaine coaches on seller call performance, focusing on voicemail scripts, peer critiques, and 50-minute time-blocked calling sessions. Confidence builds through repeated practice and feedback. He recommends auditing your tech stack to cut costs and adopting a culture of rapid iteration to boost conversion rates.
Chapters
Go do a franchise or something? We looked at equity partners. We're still out. How can we scale? Bring on equity partners. You look at a 5 to 10 year return of 5 co-tenants. When I lived— when I came in this one, I'm thinking every— without any exceptions, I think we need to revisit what we're doing as a business owner and put ourselves in a little bit different Spot to think bigger. I'm basing on everything about the dump videos now is based on hearing you yesterday and hearing your questions and interactions with Nick. Basically, I'd say that. Your investment to date, you and I had to brainstorm this this morning. I hear this a lot. I gotta get my money back, or I gotta get my deal. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta. So you guys understand what the equity world looks like when you go do a franchise or something? We looked at equity funds. We still are. How can we scale it? Bring on every client. You look at a 5 to 10 year return of 5 tenants, and we beat ourselves up. We don't have a deal. It's just it drives me crazy. The second thing I share with Judy because she has said it, but everyone has it one shape or form or other, and that is I gotta pay myself back or I gotta get my money back. Why? What do you mean? If you buy a franchise, they will give you a prospectus. The prospectus will say, "Rick, you might break even in year three, four, or five." Maybe, but don't. You know, you gotta figure it out.
Like so, it's a much.
longer-term thing for some people. And if, and if, so if you're in that where you go, I either want my first or I want to ramp it up, then you gotta dig deeper and find out how you can do that because people are doing it, right? It's like if you're in a franchise, forget me for a second, you're in a franchise and it's not getting done, what would you do? You'd call corporate probably and say, who can I talk to that's killing it? Would you not?
Period.
Okay, so what comes to mind for you right there? It's not up on the board, those are just some bullets. What comes to mind for me right there is, if you're not getting it done, how many private sessions have you had with myself or someone else to say, where am I effing up? How can I get better? How many times have you called Rick? He's got the success he has. How many times have you called Mallory? She just took her third taking in 4 weeks, 3 weeks?
Roughly.
Like, why? How is she doing it? Why is no one asking her? It drives me crazy. The mastermind should be filled with, hey, pepper Mallory, she just got her third taking. She's like, she's not even calling a lot. No, no, super confident, right? And that comes from what? Like, we're gonna hit all this. Um, okay, so think of it as a return. Like, if I were you, I would say— this is for anyone because coaches will get this from new students, right? So this is good stuff for you but also your students. Um, it's in a chamber. I invested X amount. Now my goal is to convert that capital to a return. 20 times eventually. How fast can I do it? Everyone's different. But don't beat yourself up on it. I wrote down $200 just to remind me. So a few of you guys, your knee-jerk guess with Nick was if something was $100 or $200. And I'm like, you should be looking for what $100 or $200 you can do if it's gonna 10 times your return or your efficiency.
Mm-hmm.
I think you guys know that now. I think I'm stating the obvious suggestion at this point. Little, little things like Judy this morning. This is down here, but we were brainstorming about call critiques, and she said, "Well, I didn't send all because some of my messages." Send me the messages. What if you can leave ten messages and get two callbacks versus none? For example, all these little teeny things are efficiency things we need to be looking at ripping apart.
I never thought to send a voicemail that I leave as a call critique. Like what am I saying when I leave a message?
You just critique something or something. I forget what, but we just critique something.
Like that never even occurred to me on that. So I'm like, that's a good point.
And then that.
That should probably be the message that I leave on the automated ones too.
Of course.
You know, so I'm like, I've got to clean that up. And that's all REI Black Book stuff too. I've got to change all the messages in there because I did it last summer. I don't know what I said.
The voicemails, I believe, are the ones that are on the script. That's okay. It's your voice sometimes too. Not you, the same person. It's not me a lot of the times. We got some from Dan, I think. I don't know if you heard them. I attacked him, but I said, Dan, you sound like you're on a stage reading a script. That's not how you talk to me. He started laughing like he found himself. Like, listen to these messages, then you go, why would someone call you back? Like, it was robotic. It sounded like you must have sent an AI freaking message.
Yeah.
Okay, so that's what I mean. You can read, you can read the script. Everyone here will leave a different message if you read the same script. So some of that's confidence. Okay, by the way, I know I'm diagnosing this, but how do you increase your confidence?
Doing it.
Doing it, yeah, but you need confidence. Jessica, Steve has brought her up a lot, and I commented this morning, Steve. I said her name a few times because she sent a call in yesterday morning before you guys got here. I critiqued it, and I gave her this one little thing. You know what she said last night on our nightly calls? I did that one thing, and I got the person on the phone. It was so cool. So she's taking and doing it, and then sending that next call. That's the idea of the conference. That's the idea, and it's how many you can get in. I hit Jose this morning, Steve. I said. Jose, you sound like you just got ran over by a truck. You sounded really down. I was actually concerned. I did no calls, I did this, and I said, you sound like you got ran over by a truck, and I haven't seen a call from you this year, and you had this grand plan to come up with. This is stuff that we just say all these things, but we don't— you guys should be doing a call and like begging us to send it back quicker so you can put that in the plate and do another one and send that. And that's how fast Steve and I will do it. I don't think we hold anyone up more than like 3 days. Pretty good with it. We'll make that more efficient, I think, with the channel. So side note, um, yeah, so some of your questions on money yesterday with Nick, or why, in my opinion, should have been how can I, how can I make this better? And if I got to get rid of something, good. That's a good tweak. Our tech stack right now in our company runs around Runs between three to six grand a month, and it's it's crazy. So we have to check it like every four months and go, "What the hell is that one doing? They haven't used it." So it's okay. Drop ship, and because tech moves so fast, see what you can do to be more efficient. Like Rick just showed us he already implemented, which is cool. Rick, you just left and did it. That's the tabs. That's something that will improve my efficiency for sure. These are the minutes. Do you realize what Nick said yesterday? It's in his book. When you get thrown off your flow. Yeah, 14 minutes. That's crazy. And yet we will get in a calling session for 50 minutes and let someone distract us, or a call come in. Or a tab. Yeah, or a tab, or a ding.
Ding.
Yeah, it's just— so when I say 50 minutes with no distractions, I assume everybody goes, okay, I'm just gonna block it off. And then I hear everybody go, nah, not really, I don't really block it off. It's crazy. So just think about this stuff. If we got nothing else out of Nick yesterday, Zach said, was it too much for his people? I said, well, if nothing else, everybody, including myself, got the efficiency piece out of it. You gotta be more efficient. Don't do more work, just be more efficient.
Um, may I ask you a question?
Yep, of course.
Uh, what about— what did you say about the 15 minutes? Is that what he time blocks? I didn't—
No, 5-0.
Oh, 5-0. Okay.
You guys all should be time— well, you can time block more, as much as you want. I just mentally, for me, 50 works. Because I used to be really like, oh man, I gotta do 4 hours of calls. When I first started, I would do 3 or 4 hours, no problem, but it would be way too boring. So I do 50, take a break, get a tea, 50, you know, whatever, just to get myself—
I think she's referring to the flow.
Do you talk about the disruptive downtime, or are we talking about the session that I was mentioning?
I know, I just didn't hear. I thought you said 15, so I couldn't place it on, you know, You— it's hard to hear sometimes. So I was like, okay, 50, now I understand what you're talking about. So thank you for clearing that up.
