Sales Mindset and CRM Utilization in Video Business. EP #328 - Den Lennie

G', day, guys. It's Dan Lenny here with this week's episode of the how to Scale Video Business Podcast. Just came off our weekly 90 minute coaching call with my VBA elites and today we spent a good hour talking about sales from the perspective of how challenging it can be to maintain the right mindset when going out and chasing new business. And one of the biggest challenges that we face when we're doing this is the consistency required to do it and build a daily habit. And that's what we're going to talk about on today's episode.

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

Sales is is not something that you naturally necessarily feel comfortable with, but it is a skill you can learn. And I think when you frame sales as serving your prospects by identifying what their biggest challenges are, understanding what it is they're trying to achieve and why they want to use video to do that, and then listening, diagnosing, going through a discovery call with them so you fully understand what it is they're looking to achieve, and then being able to go away and deploy a series of options for them is very, very powerful. Now, that's all very well with inbound leads, but what happens when things go quiet and things are not necessarily as busy as you'd like them to be? And I think we've all experienced that emotion of sitting in the office feeling like there's 10 things to do and they're all important, but you end up doing none of them. And that was one of the challenges one of our members had today was he said, I just feel like I've got two or three really important things I should be working on and I've hit a bit of a wall and as a result, I'm kind of doing nothing. And so we rallied round them and had a really powerful call. There's about eight people on the call today and everyone shared their sales process. And one of the things that became very clear was the importance of using a CRM. Now, a CRM, if you're not familiar, is a customer relationship management tool. It's usually software based, but in simple terms, a CRM can be a spreadsheet of client names. When you last connected with them, what was the last job that you did?

You know, what was the profit on that job and how did you Win that project. And then you can have a list of follow up columns. And we use a very simple CRM spreadsheet which has a red, green and blue traffic light system for when you followed up with someone. So if you've got a list of 10 clients you've worked with and you haven't followed up, then you put them all in red. But then as you follow up with someone, you turn them orange and, and then as you get a positive result, you turn them green. Now that's a very basic CRM. The advantage of using CRM software is that you can preload a whole heap of emails, you can add text messaging, you can add replies, you can add a common sort of series of responses that you might have when in a conversation with a prospect. And it makes the whole process much easier and quicker. But the other thing about a CRM is you can create what's called a Kanban table, and that's the way I like to operate. Or you can do it in list view. But I have cold opportunities, people who have just made some kind of inquiry. Then you have a warm lead. Someone who's interacted, maybe they've downloaded an ebook or they've perhaps engaged in one of your forms on your website and then you've got someone who's actually been on a call, maybe they've been on a discovery call. Then your next column might be someone who you've sent a proposal to. And then you've got jobs that are waiting for response or have been won. And then there's jobs that don't complete for other reasons. And then what you end up with is what's called a pipeline. And that pipeline is your future opportunities. Now, the biggest challenge that videographers experience is they get very feast and famine orientated. So when they're busy on production, everything else stops. But when they're quiet, they panic because there's nothing in the pipeline. And so what you want to be doing is continually funneling the top end of your pipeline with new opportunities. And we do that through LinkedIn outreach, we do that through paid ads, we do that through, I say we collectively, the vba, through other methods, organic networking and such like website inquiries. And so you funnel them all into your pipeline and then you can see where people come from. And what a pipeline or CRM software will do is keep a data track of names, email addresses, phone numbers. Some of them integrate with LinkedIn, they'll integrate with your email. And so when you have an opportunity come across your plate, you can see every single interaction you can see every piece of content that they engaged with and every time you had some kind of engagement with that person, be on social media or otherwise. And so it's very powerful for tracking where your specific clients come from, but more importantly where they are converting in your process. So the whole idea is to have a tool that helps you to systemize the process of turning cold inquiries into raving, fan, repeat and profitable clients. And so the discussion was all about that today. And I think what was interesting was everyone shared how they do their own version of that. But what was key was the amount of love and support in the virtual room for this colleague of ours who is just having a bit of a rough down day. Cash flow has been a bit tight recently, and that's something that happens across businesses, all shapes and sizes. It's not something that ever really goes away because of the nature of our business. But what we were able to do was just give him a lot of moral support and strategic, practical advice on how to overcome this immediate sales problem. And you know, sales is a bit like dominoes. You can have a dry spell, but if you've got a domino stack lined up like a domino rally and you just tip one domino, it's amazing what momentum gets created that then allows you to follow through and get your mojo back. Because when you're selling, you have to feel like you're in the zone. There's definitely a zone to selling. So that's what I wanted to give you to think about today. Again, back doing these short episodes. So if you're driving in the car or traveling to a job, you can just absorb some really powerful information and yeah, let me know if you want to join our free community. I'll leave a link below, but go to videobusinessaccelerator.com, there's a link to the free community and you know.

Explanations about our programs and courses and how we can work together. But join the free group and let me know how you go with your sales process.

You've been listening to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast with your host, Den Lenny. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.videobusinessaccelerator.com to learn more about how the Accelerator program can help you today, don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes. And we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a.