WHY NOT Wednesday! with Caryn Kopp, Chief Door Opener®

These last few years have made us question everything.

Our relationships.

Our jobs.

What constitutes an.

Office.

And who we are.

In a.

World filled with chaos, confusion and uncertainty. It's time for clarity. It's time to start understanding one another.

It's time to start understanding ourselves.

We envision a world where everyone knows their why. But even more, we envision a world where everyone knows their why. O s, their why, their how and their what.

The operating system that drives you, that lets the world know where you stand.

What your unique gift is, and most importantly, who you are.

Yos.

Are you ready?

Hey, good afternoon, good morning, good evening. Wherever you're watching from across the world, it is why not Wednesday. And boy, do we have a treat for you guys today. I have Karen Kopp, the chief door opener at Kopp Consulting, with us today. She is. She's helped thousands of business leaders and salespeople secure initial meetings with executives in almost every major company. Listen to these companies. P and G, Pfizer, GE, Merck, Verizon AT&T, Time Warner, Craft, Target, CBS. I mean, hey, are those are the big companies you want to get in front of? If you're a salesperson, a sales professional and you want to get in front of these people, this is the person you want to be talking to. She's been named a top 50 keynote speaker by Top Sales World. She speaks from experience and she provides practical, actionable information that business leaders need to accelerate their sales results. You know, I've always, you know, I led sales teams at a really high level for a long time. And I remember having those salespeople that were really good at closing and then you're some salespeople are really good at making connections. And what I found out is not, it's not often the same person. And so let's make sure we're not wasting time and talent doing the thing that they're not good at. And, and I'm going to ask Karen about all this stuff. So let's bring her on. Karen Kopp, let's see here. Welcome to the show. Karen.

Hi. How are you doing? Happy New Year.

Happy New Year to you. I am doing outstanding. I'm doing even better because I get a chance to talk to you today. Hey, Dave Tegmeyer says awesome. Glad you're here, Dave. Appreciate you. So, Karen, you're a best selling author, you're nationally recognized speaker, you're a BD expert. So I know a lot of people that are listening to why not Wednesday are going to be so excited to hear about your wisdom. You've done a book Biz dev done right. So I'm going to have you hold it up because I usually have the book in front of me, but you've got it. So what are people? What's exciting? What's exciting for you in 2023, right now for you?

Development has been changing. I mean, it's changed through the years, but when we hit the pandemic, things really changed when it came to the world of business development. And almost every six weeks from the time the pandemic hit, it changed a little more. But I want run a company of door openers and we're doing door opening at the executive level for our clients. So we aggregate all the information about what's working, what's not, what's changed, changing. And then I share it back out there with everyone. So I'll share as much as you like. I could go on and on. So I'll let you figure out where we're going to start.

Well, you know what, so. So you've got biz dev done right, the path to the cash manual. Every word matters. You know, one of the things I love and we're going to get into your yos, Karen. One of the things I love about working with people with your how of simplify. And I've had a few, a few on. You guys are so successful because you make things simple and easy to understand. And so you've taken a concept that, you know, baffles some of us, some of us who've been in the sales world for a long time, we still get baffled. Hey, how come that works so well with that guy and it doesn't work so well with this person or with that company or this company. So you've simplified some things. I want to get into that process. But let's go, let's go in order. Let's keep it simple for Karen because she likes simple. Your yos is contribute, simplify and challenge. So that tells me a few things about it. And we've had a chance to talk. You know, it feels like a year ago, but it's only been a while. So. So your why is to contribute. You believe in making a difference, having a positive impact on others, making being part of causes that are bigger than yourself. And how you contribute, how you contribute to the sales world is by making things simple and easy to understand. And, and man, I, I got to tell you, the more time I spent on your website, the more excited I got about how simple you make it. And it's easy to go and execute on those things. And then the final part of your iOS is to challenge the status quo and do things differently. So what you bring is a different way of doing things, a creative way of doing things. You don't necessarily like to be inside the box. What you deliver are solutions that are different and out of the box. And you said it just a little while ago, every six weeks things were changing. And guess what? That didn't bother Karen Kopp, did it?

No. It was actually fascinating to see what was changing, what was happening. When the pandemic first hit and people were working from home, many of my clients were afraid to communicate with their prospects. I'm like, no, this is. Embrace this, because your prospects need you in good times and in bad times, it's really important. You are a resource for them and they really need you. And then people were upset. Like, I would get on these help webinars and I'd look at the screen of people with really sad faces because they could not figure out how to connect with their prospects. But their prospects were picking up their cell phones. So if you could find somebody's cell phone number and yes, that's possible to find that, yes, you could reach them. And now they were accessible without their assistance blocking these calls. They were answering them directly. That became normal. Whereas before I would say, no, don't reach out to somebody on their cell phone if you don't know them. Now, all of a sudden, it was possible. Now, two years later, it's a little different on how we do that. There's a working. There's a hybrid environment and things have changed again. So I found it fascinating to figure out what is working and then to share it back out there with the people who really, really need this information.

Yes. You know, you bring up a great topic and that is picking up the phone. That's a lost art, isn't it, Karen? I think some of us had to learn it during the pandemic.

Yes. And people really should have learned it a long time ago. Because when people ask me what's really working now in business development, I'll say to them, if you learn nothing else from me than this, what's working is conversation. That's what's working. I get 250 emails in my inbox every day. So do most decision makers. I can't read them all. I absolutely can't. I might see them, so I have an awareness. But then those same people who are sending me emails trying to get meetings with me, they don't pick up the phone. But hey, my cell Phone's right here. It's right here. But that phone isn't ringing. So the people who embrace conversation and are willing to pick up the phone and have a conversation prospects with their clients are going to win over those who don't embrace it.

Everybody embrace conversation. I love that. That's a great, great starting point. Because I want to, I want you to share the five planks of door opening success. Because that's, I think that's when I, When I went to your website, I met, I met you through Samantha Borland, who kind of walked me through your process. And Samantha and I had a great conversation and she shared with me the genius that is COP consulting. But tell us about the five planks of door opening success. And people use that information to simplify their path so they can accelerate their business development success.

I'm happy to share. Happy to contribute. Right. That's my why, thank you. Yeah. So when people hit my doorstep, it's because they want more prospect meetings, usually at the executive level, than they're able to get on their own. And they typically don't know why they're getting more, more prospect meetings. They'll say to me, when I get in the door, I can close most of the time, I, I just can't get in enough of these stores. And if you're not getting in as many doors as you think you should, there's a problem. In one or more of five key planks of door opening success, the first plank is the right target. Right. This is a big offender. If you have sales that don't close later in the sales process, it's likely the big offender was it was never the right prospect to begin with. It's really important from a sales perspective to take this wide world of prospects and make it into a more narrow group of prospects who needs you. They find you to be an obvious solution. As soon as they know you exist, they would say, I can't believe I didn't meet you six months ago. Where do I sign? They also will willingly pay what you want to charge for your services. Not everybody out there will buy on value, but most people who come to me want to sell on value. So what if we just focus on the prospects that will appreciate value and then there's urgency. Which prospects or prospect groups are more likely to feel urgency for a particular reason about having that meeting and taking next steps? So right target is the first plank. The second plank is the right sales message. Not marketing messaging. That's a marketing initiative. This is sales messaging. So this is the Spoken word or the email that's meant for one person. This is one to one communication, not one email meant for 999 other people. That's marketing. We're talking about sales. So what do you say? And by the way, life doesn't happen according to a script, so you can't spell out everything. But what are the themes that the right group of prospects will respond to and feel like, gee, I better not put this meeting off. I better take this meeting. So that's plank two. Plank three is the right answers for the objections. Not just any answers, but the right ones. And what's really fascinating about objections is that if you study them, you can actually see that if you're having a lot of objections in one particular area, you may be able to change target step by step one or message Plank two in order to reduce the number of times you're facing the objections in in the first place. So when you face the objection, you still need the right answer, not just any answer. Plank perfect door opener. Who's doing this work? Does that person love this job or does that person person loathe this job? Do you have somebody doing the job who really shouldn't be doing it? And we could talk more about that later. Perfect is the right execution, including how much time weekly are you spending against this very important narrow group of prospects? If you're only spending 15, 20 minutes a week, guess what? That's not enough. Is it a phone call, is it an email, Is it a message on LinkedIn? What do you say on the third try, the fifth try, the 20th try? Because you're not going to give up. You've already identified this right group of prospects really needs to hear from you. So there's no point in giving up on those folks as long as you've done a good job targeting so five planks. Right target, right message, right answers for objections. The right person doing the work, which is the right door opener and the right execution. If you've nailed every one of those planks, the doors open.

You know, you mentioned, I think the word we're looking for here is persistence, right? Because you've done the work to find the right target, so you know it's the right target. You know they're probably going to buy on value if you can just get in front of them, right? And they're going to value what you have. And then once you do get in front of them, having the, the right answers to the objections that you know are coming, right, let's have the right answers and let's just not have any answer. I think having the right answers, but I like the idea. And then we definitely want to get into more of this. Having the right door open. Is it a person that really loves doing that work to get you in front of that decision maker. Because then now it's time to execute. So the right execution. And I love that too because, you know, I've been doing a lot. I went through my year end retreat and one of the things that I realized I wasn't doing is the thing that is the most important to my business is the thing that I was spending the least amount of time on.

Really?

Yeah. And so. And I, I realized I need to just dedicate more time to that. And amazing how all of a sudden those start opening and the right conversations start happening with the right people. But you have to take the time to analyze. Right. And I think one of the things that I saw in, in going through, going through one of your videos is just really how when you start looking at the, the pro, the, the five steps, you realize, okay, where am I, where am I missing a step? So you challenge that idea that a hunter is a hunter. Tell us about the opener versus the closer role as you define them.

Yeah. And this is often a blind spot, not just for the sales leader who's tasked with hiring, but also for the seller himself or herself may not realize if they're an opener or closer because they haven't thought about it before.

Right.

But most people know the difference between the hunters and the farmers. The farmers grow the business and the hunters find the business.

Right.

But what most don't know is that within the world of hunters, there are actually different kinds of hunters. There are those who are great at going on the meeting and bringing that through to the close and developing that relationship. In our world, we call those the closers. There are other people who are intuitively great. They got it in their DNA to open up a conversation with somebody they don't know and get an outcome. These people do not need to be at a networking program. They don't have to be at a conference or trade show in order to initiate conversation with somebody they don't know and get a meeting. We call them the openers. Now, it's very rare in my experience and I've owned this company for 24 years, but I've been in sales and marketing my entire career. It's very rare in my experience to find one seller who's equally great at opening and closing one seller equally great. But when people go to hire they often hire one person and they want them to do the job of opening. But if they're a closer and they need opening done, it's painful for the seller and the leader. It'll take the leader about six months to realize they made the wrong hire. They've missed so many opportunities. It's just sad. Right? So the most important thing is to understand that these people are different. And what would happen here's the challenger in me.

Yes.

What would happen if you broke apart those roles and you had your great closer ready to take on a brand new. Exactly right. Opportunity that's delivered hand delivered with a warm handoff by a door opener senior level person who loves this job and knows how to get these doors done. It's a beautiful ballet dance. And then, then the efficiency is, it goes way up in terms of the right meetings and then the right person taking those meetings and bringing it through to close sale.

I love that. And so thank you so much for verifying Karen, what I posted this. So in my, in my post, you know, about half an hour before the show, I said, look, some people are great at opening doors and some people are great at closing sales. And many times they're not the same person. So it's exactly what you just said. So it makes me feel good that I was paying attention in our conversations. But really, that, that's, that's a huge, huge difference. And oftentimes, and I think you solve a problem that a lot of us have, if you're a closer, you get frustrated that you're not a great door opener. Right. You get frustrated, oh my gosh, I can't get people, I can't get enough appointments on my calendar. So you're beating yourself up for something that, hey, that's not what you're great at. What you're great at is closing the deal. So you need a door opener. And if you're a door opener, you probably beat yourself up all the time. It's like, I can't close a deal to save my life. Because that's not what you're great at. What you're great at is getting that meeting, getting the right person in the room with the closer. And I love the idea. How do those handoffs happen? Tell me a little bit about the mechanics of that because I know people are listening. They're like, no, you know what? I like controlling the whole thing. I like knowing my prospect from the beginning. I don't want to get put into a meeting. I'm sure you have a method to this madness, right?

Always. We're very process oriented people here. Well the right group of prospects is developed up front and approved by our client. The right sales messaging, we have two trademarks in sales messaging we're known for. This is created and approved by our clients. So we're not out there contacting people our clients don't know. We're not out there talking about themes that our clients haven't approved. And then our door opener who's a senior level business developer, this isn't a low level sdr. This is not somebody who grew up in a cold call factory. This against the wall, this is somebody who is exceptionally experienced who has this in their DNA. They just love this job and they are out there representing our clients as if they were a member of our client's team but a senior level member. So many of our clients are very concerned that they their brand is well represented out there. Well when you have one of our door openers representing you, the brand is very well represented at the highest level of professionalism. Our people will take a remote access email address from our clients organization. So all the communication with our clients prospects looks as if it's coming from somebody who works at that company. And of course our people use their own name. And then when the right person says yes to the meeting, our door opener will send the meeting invite. We'll send an appointment report, prep our client to make sure they do well on that meeting and then our door opener is on the meeting with our client to make sure the meeting goes well and to make sure that the end of the meeting results in the next meeting for our client. Really important.

Well there's a lot to unpack there. Thank you for sharing it. First of all, I think we're all a little bit, have a little bit of talent in this because what I'm what this almost feels like, it's like a referral, right? If I like Karen Kopp and I want to refer someone to you, I'm going to take the time to send an email that says hey, I want you to meet Karen and, and Karen if you'll accept the meeting. And I know that nine times out of ten when I personally recommend someone, that meeting is going to happen. So what this person does is they become kind of like a permanent referral getter.

They're the conduit. They are the conduit. And the part about the messaging, it's so important is that we need the prospect to understand why this meeting is so important to him or her. That's the messaging. Why would that Person not put off this meeting and take this meeting. So when they come to the meetings, they are already warm and interested. And one of my clients would say, half sold.

Yes, I love that. So there's a couple of questions that have come up. So, Bruce, Captain Kirk is one of our Y coaches says Cameron, sounds like you're downplaying the full cycle sales role. So can you clarify that? I'd love to hear your answer to that.

So the full cycle sale sales role is fine if you have that one person who's equally great at opening and closing. But the thing is that even if somebody really is great at opening and closing, they gotta open first. Right. Because if you don't get in the door, you really don't get to do much of anything else in sales. And then once those people are super successful, they have to focus on the clothes.

Right? Right.

So who's keeping the top of the funnel full with the exact right opportunities? What if they had the door opener to help them? So there's three pieces to this. There's time, talent, and desire. So does your seller have the time to constantly keep the top of the funnel full with exactly the right opportunities? And what would happen if they're closing the opportunities that someone else is opening? Talent. Not every seller out there has the talent to get in the bigger doors. What about companies that want to swim upstream, sell to bigger decision makers, want bigger deals? What. What about that? They don't always have the talent to do that. And many don't have the talent to get the door open in the first place. And then the desire. This one's really interesting because there are some people who have the time and they have the talent, but they'd rather put a stick in their eye than do this part of the job. Well, why make this so painful? Get those people some help so they can close all day long.

Love, love, love that. And I think it's. You know, Dave Sanderson, who was on a few weeks ago, talks about hiring the who's for the house right there. There's some good. There's some stuff that we're just really good at. And there are some houzz that I don't ever want to do. And I'm going to hire somebody to do that part of it for me, because why would I. Would I want to do something that I'd rather have a stick in my eye. Right. Than to do? So Dave Tegmeyer says. Great question. What about the relationship? How do you transfer the relationship from the opener to the closer?

All right, so That's a really good question. And this has to be done really well. So the person who's opening the door can't sound like a low level appointment setter. They have to be a door opener. And it has to be a very smooth handoff. It's an obvious handoff because the prospect wants more information, a subject matter expert, basically. And so our door opener will take the conversation and talk about why it's so important to have this meeting. The prospect says, you're right, I need to have this meeting. They go about setting the date and time. And then our door opener will say, just to answer your more specific questions, so and so will be here as a subject matter expert. And that could be the principal of the organization. It could be a senior level director within the organization, or it can be a salesperson. But it works both ways. But that person is the subject matter expert. And that's how we do the handoff.

Love that. Love that. Tell me. So tell me what other sales concepts? Because, man, I love talking to people with the. How simplified. Because you simplify things. What other sales concepts have you been simplifying lately?

So, well, which ones do we choose? Let's talk about sales messaging. All right, so sales messaging is really important. We have two trademarks in sales messaging. One of them is called the cop gap method of sales messaging. And this is the answer for the objection. I already have a vendor for that. Thanks anyway. Or we're handling that internally. Thanks anyway. And so here it's the structure for getting that right. And so what it does when somebody does this right is it takes the playing field of all of your competitors and puts them right here, levels the playing field, and then here's you. And the difference is value. A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to figure out why they're different. And I'm here to tell you, in sales, nobody cares why you're different. Nobody cares. They only care why you are of more value to them. And if you can explain that in language that's plain English, not jargon, that lands with the. With the prospect, you will win over people who can't do that. I've seen people win with words when maybe they shouldn't have won with their offering. People who have the best words wins. So this framework has three sentences. It's very simple. And what I'll offer the audience out here is if you want to play along, you can either put it in the comments or you can write it on a piece of paper. And then if you want to send it to me. I'll review it for you and I'll give you some comments and you can send it to me through, through my website. So here it is, the first sentence. Anyone can. And you fill in the blank, but not everyone can. And you fill in the blank, for example, and you fill in the blank. So anyone in our world, anyone can say they can set some appointments, but not everyone who sets appointments can get consistently get appointments at the C level in major organizations to discuss big deals. For example, one of our clients had over 200 meetings over the last two years and has closed in million dollars in business. And I can't share that exact number. Sure, sure we do. So think about what that does. It takes your playing field, it levels it. Here's you with value. Everybody else could do this, right? But we do this. But this is the value. Not everybody can get executive level meetings.

But we can love that. So it's, everyone can do X and that's what everybody does. So it's, you know, it's back to a lot of our Y concepts, right? If you tell everybody what you do, you get lumped in with everybody else who does what you do. So you're going to tell them why you're different, why, why it's better to do business with you, why it is that you're the, you do the one thing that not everyone can, right?

That's a value to that person. What's really important about this is that the gap message may change depending on who you're talking to because different things are important to different people. It may change depending on where you are in the conversation with the prospect. Are you just meeting that person for the first time? Did you just give a proposal? Are you at the closing line? Where are you? Because your gap message will change. The other tip I'll give you about the gap message is that sentence number two, the person who hears it has to nod along in agreement. If that person doesn't nod along in agreement, you need to change sentence number two.

That makes sense, right? And I do this all the time with people when I'm working on their why, right? I tell people, look, if you're talking to Karen Kopp, you talk to her about making a difference. You talk about keeping it simple and you talk about it being different. And if she's nodding her head, we got it right. That's what's important to her, right? So I think we're doing the same thing with the gap. Make sure we're, we have the right message addressing the gap that they're talking about. I don't know if you, if you know Stephen Wilk, but he says he worked on an account for Cop. Karen's process is perfect and second to none. So Stephen, thank you for joining us. So, you know, why should a company consider at what, at what time and what's the right time for a company to consider outsourcing sales and how they, how should they go about outsourcing? Choosing the right partner.

Yeah. So when does somebody outsource? So. Well, the easy answer is if you want more doors open, then your people have the time, talent or desire to open. You need some outside help. And people will sit and hope that they don't need that. They'll throw money at their salespeople to get more doors open when really they should be spending their time closing the sales. They'll, they'll yell at their salespeople, you have to make more. They'll say between 9 and 12 on this day you have to pound the phone. But that doesn't mean that they're being effective in doing that. So if you want more meetings and you're getting currently, it's time to consider outsourcing. Now, who do you outsource to? People have a lot of different words and phrases for what this is. Some people say appointment settings, some people say lead generation. Well, there's a lot of different definitions of that. Is it email marketing? Is it phone and email? Is it one to one? Is it one to many? Is it AI? Well, the best way to think about what's right for you is, is to look at your prospects. So if you're looking to get in the door with executive level prospects, it's my experience that you need a more seasoned business developer who can hold their own in a conversation with that person and get an outcome. There's that word conversation, right? Right. So they have to be able to hold their own in that conversation and get an outcome. They need to be able to pivot in a conversation that may last less than two minutes and you don't get a second chance. If you have a finite prospect group, you don't get a second chance. You just sunk yourself by having Plank four wrong. You need the right door opener to get these right doors open. So these are some of the things to consider. What is the level of your prospect and then what are the outsourced options that will mirror what is going to work with your prospects? Too many people have a mismatch between what is, what kind of a salesperson is capable of getting in the door with the executive level versus what they choose when they go to outsource. That's a recipe for failure. We don't want that. We want success.

Love that. Love the way you, you, you illustrated all of that. And if you haven't seen, if you've been, haven't been to Karen Kopp's website or Kopp Consulting's website, there's a great video that she has on there that kind of talks about the four planks. And I love the visual of, hey, if you're missing that last plank, you can't get all the way across, right? So you need all five planks. So, Karen, let's end with this question. It's my favorite question on the show. Tell us about your biggest why not moment, whether business, personal time when you said why not to something and it worked out and you're so glad you said it's almost a time when you said yes, but you said why not to something and you're so glad you did.

Well, I'm going to hit with the personal okay. So as you know, we now are snowbirds and we spend eight months of the year in Florida. So I'm looking at you here, but if I looked here, I see ocean, palm trees, sand. And it was always the thinking that people have this kind of a lifestyle when they retire. And I said, why, why, why would we wait to have that? I want to live and work at the beach. And we made it happen. So that is my why not moment. Shocked a lot of people, but that's what we did.

That is amazing. What do you think? I love that answer. I love what came out of that. What do you say we end the show on that note, Karen?

Why not?

Thank you so much for being with us today, Karen. I know we got a lot of value out of it. We're going to record this, guys. This will be on our YouTube channel. You can go back and look at it. And we're going to share it with everyone on our why Not Wednesday channel on LinkedIn also, and we hope you'll join us next week. Thank you for being on, Karen. Have a great rest of your week.

Bye, everybody.