Responsiveness Is the New Sales Superpower

Hello, welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. What's new in the world of entrepreneurship? Let me tell you about what's been bugging me lately. A couple of months ago, someone reached out. They wanted to help us market and scale our digital products. Sharp guy, had some smart questions. And then came back with a clear plan and a clear proposal. You know, one of those you think, this could actually work. They understood our business, they, they've done work in our domain, and we thought they'd be the right vendor to go with. So we sent over a few follow-up questions, just some basic scope and contract stuff, and then crickets. We didn't get, hey, I got it, I'll get back to you soon. Or, hey, I need a couple days. Just silence. My business partner and I had a bit of an argument. We went back and forth. We're still impressed with his performance and, and what this vendor has shown us. But I said, if this how responsive this vendor is before getting paid, imagine how it will be After the check clears. So still, a few days later, we wanted to know what's going on. We nudged him. We, the customer, nudged the vendor, and he replies two days later, "Sorry, I was tied up." Okay, life happens. Then silence again. So we decided to just we're not going to proceed with this person. So we did the professional thing. Sent a thank you note and said we're going in a different direction. No response. Not even thanks for the update, hopefully we can work with you in the future. Nothing. And it didn't stop there. Another freelancer for email consulting— this is a different field now— same type of behavior. And then a third vendor, this time for affiliate marketing, unresponsive. 5 similar experiences in just a few months. And I started to ask— I started asking myself, what is going on? Are these folks serious about running a business? When it's time to follow through, they ghost. And here's the thing, 10 years ago I'd have been mad. I probably would have gone on social media and blasted them. But now I feel bad for them. I feel bad for this new generation of founders because they're hurting their own shot at success. They're talented. They show up with talent. They show up with know-how. They've done a bit of research about us, but they miss the most basic skill in business, especially in a consulting and a services business, responsiveness. And according to Gartner, 70% of B2B buyers have ghosted a vendor. So your customers, 70% of them, 70% of them, they would ghost you as a vendor because of slow or no follow-up. So if you're ghosting your clients, get what— guess if you're ghosting your leads, get— guess what? They will ghost you as well. Not because the pricing is high or the offer is bad or, or the know-how of, of, or your expertise. It's because vendors did not show up. And see, responsiveness is not about being polite. It's how clients experience your reliability, and that's before they ever pay you. And if you want to build a business that earns trust closes deals and actually lasts, then this discipline, this discipline of being responsive might be the most important one to master. And that's what we're diving into today. And at the end of this, this livestream, I'll walk you through my 2-1-2 formula or rule that powered our $65 million and more in sales throughout the different businesses that I've had. So let's get into it. But before we do that, quick check on technology here. Looks there was an issue streaming to—

an issue streaming to Instagram. My goodness. Okay.

But we'll proceed. So if you have any question, if you're listening now live or watching live or tuning in later, I'd love to hear from you. Leave me a comment, send me an email, whether you're on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, X. Let me know what's going well for you. Let me know the challenges that you're going through. Let me know if you are struggling with responsiveness, or I'd love to hear about your wins. And every other Thursday, I'm here on this live stream sharing a business topic with you practical tips and insights and strategies to help you grow and scale your business. And at the same time, I answer questions that I get from the community. So make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel or wherever you, you follow us. And, and again, let me know about your business, about your situation, your challenges. If it's something very personal, very private, you don't want to put out on social media, email me at feras@blackbeltstartup.com. or feras@startupwithferas.com, and I'll be more than happy to respond to you, and I will keep all that information confidential. So back to closing more deals. And again, there seems to be an issue with streaming to Instagram, so hopefully folks there can come and check it out, check out the— this episode on, on the channel on, on YouTube, or on which— wherever they get their podcast or their live stream. But we'll proceed. And again, as for those of us who are tuning in just now, if you have a question about responsiveness, if you have a question about, you know, you don't, you don't know how to set up a system in place so that you are responsive to your clients and to your leads, let me know. If you're just challenged in closing deals or in nurturing relationships with clients, let me know. I'll be more than happy to answer it before we end the session today. All right.

Number 1.

Tip here, responsiveness is how trust is built. So this is before money changes hands, before your client signs the proposal. And I want to give you a small analogy. Imagine walking into a restaurant, you place your order and then nothing. The server is not checking in, no update, no food, no drink. You're just there. You're being ghosted. How long are you gonna stay? And that's exactly what it feels when you ignore a lead, especially a warm lead, a lead that you worked hard to get or to nurture or to meet at an event. Or maybe you've done some cold emailing and you've, you've got them engaged. You've— they're already talking to you. You, you've impressed them with your experience and expertise. So this, this moment when someone reaches, uh, them out or they express interest, they're paying attention, they're emotionally invested. And that window is small, and once it closes, you rarely get it back. So people— I don't want you, I don't want you, I don't want your clients to be chasing you. People don't change, uh, people don't chase consultants, they move on. You're competing with others who are more responsive. And, and your responsiveness and attention to detail, to detail, and, and delivering, um, on the time that you say you will deliver things to, whether it's a follow-up email or a demo or a white paper or a case study or the proposal, you, your responsiveness and, and delivering on what you promise is what, what is telling the client that they can trust you. It's, it's really how the clients feel. They feel out your reliability before a contract is signed or an invoice is sent. And in business, where your reputation is your product, that first impression really matters. So pay attention to your interactions with clients, and, and that trust, that sense of reliability is really important. Especially early on. Number 1. So that's— that was number 1. Number 2, this isn't— this response, this responsiveness concept here, this isn't about personality. It's really about building a reflex. I think I used to think that I'm just not good at follow-up. It was, it was a personality flaw. But over time, I realized it's not a personality thing. It's another muscle. It's another habit that you have built as a founder, as a business owner. See, in martial arts, you don't just practice the flashy moves. Like sales and in business is not about winning this big deal because to get there, you have to drill just like in martial arts. You have to drill the basics over and over and over until your body responds without thinking. It becomes second nature. And if you're meeting someone at an interesting event, initially, when you first do that, when you speak with strangers about money, about your business, it will feel awkward. But over time, as you practice, as you speak, as you start those conversations, as you pitch, as you deliver more demos and meet with more potential clients, All of those, what you thought were flashy moves, big moves, once you do the basics over and over and over and you practice and you learn from what you're practicing, you will get better at it. And the same thing with responsiveness. You don't need a giant team or a fancy system or AI. Yes, AI could help. I get it. I use AI. But you need is the discipline to treat communication like part of the job. Because it is. And even if your life is chaotic, I get it, sometimes you're very busy. Even if you don't have the answer to the client or to the lead, a simple, hey, I got it, I'll follow up to you, I'll follow up with you by end of day tomorrow. This puts you ahead of a lot of competitors who are not responsive because a lot of people are just not, um, they don't take responsiveness as, as a value in their business. And it doesn't cost you a whole lot of time. Of course, you can't keep delaying answering the question. At one point, you have to answer the question. You have to send the— you have to schedule the demo. You have to send the proposal. But if you're stuck because you're busy with delivering a product, or you just have a lot of leads coming in, or there's an issue at home, just asking, letting people know that I got you. I will respond within a couple of days. And one thing, Someone taught me this many, many years ago. He said there's a difference between responsiveness and resolution. So at times we don't have the solution for the problem or for the issue, or we don't have the document ready to share with the client. So this is the resolution here, is to deliver what we told the client we want to deliver to them, be it a demo or a deck of, you know, slide deck or a proposal. So that's the resolution. I want to bring this issue to resolution. Or maybe if it's a ticket, if you have a customer support practice, you're trying to resolve the issue that's reported to you. So there is a resolution time which sometimes could vary based on other variables, but responsiveness or response time is under your control. So if you don't have whatever you promised to deliver ready yet, just be responsive. Say, I will get back to you next week. I've heard you. I've got, I've got your additional questions. I need to check with my technical team and I need a couple of days and then I'll get back to you first thing on Tuesday morning. So you can, someone can fault you for taking longer to resolve a problem or to send maybe a proposal or to schedule a demo. Yes, if it's taking you long, if for whatever reason, yes, someone can fault you for that, but you should never get a bad grade on responsiveness. You should always be able to respond and let people know where you are on trying to resolve that issue. So again, separate between response time and resolution time. Response time is under your control. At the end of the day, hey, hey Mike, I got your messages. I'll get back to you in a couple of days. I'm dealing with the crisis now. Or hey, I need more information from my technical team so I can give you a a more thorough answer. Do not ghost your clients. So that is number 2. The 3rd point here is, and that's really more about you as a founder, as a business owner, as an executive, how you deal with responsiveness in your own habits, in your own, in your day-to-day emails and scheduling calls and how you how you highlight what's important to you as, as a leader, the way you conduct yourself, that's going to be mirrored by your team. And before I go to this, to this point, let me make sure, see if we have any questions from—

again, still this Instagram live streaming is still an issue, so I'm gonna just, uh, remove this. Yes, might be causing some trouble.

But yeah, if you have any question, feel free to send it in the comments. I should be able to see it right now. Again, this Instagram issue was blocking my view, so we should be all set to go now. All right, now your team will mirror your pace. So whether, whether you like it or not, uh, our— we can say we're committed to responsiveness, we say we are committed to customer satisfaction, but if me, the leader, the founder, the executive, the man, the manager, if we're not walking the walk, then guess what? Our team will notice and will follow mostly what we do, not what we say. Because— and for founders, this one is for founders— your company culture is a reflection of you. If, if you drag your feet, your team will crawl. You set the tone. If you want responsiveness to be a core value your organization, then you have to model it, and consistently. If you say, hey, I'll get back to an employee now, not, not a customer, to your colleague. If you tell your colleague, your employee, that you'll get back to them by end of day, do it. If you promise feedback on maybe a blog post that your copywriter has sent you, or maybe a proposal that your salesperson sent your way, and the salesperson said, hey, I want to send this proposal to the the customer tomorrow morning. Please give me your feedback before you leave the office today. If you committed to delivering that feedback before end of day, do it. Because now you're showing first that you care, that you're listening to the needs of your employees, and then you are helping your team member, the salesperson, be responsive and answering, sending that proposal at the time that they committed. So again, whether it's an employee or a contractor or a vendor or obviously a customer follow through. People do notice. And when they see that responsiveness in this case is part of your DNA, they'll start making it part of theirs as well. Because people can tell when you're serious and they can definitely tell when you care. So that was point number 3. Point number 4. And this is the last one before I share with you the formula that I've used in all of my consulting businesses. Point number 4 is about not being perfect. You just need to show up. I mean, I get it. We all get busy and we've got back-to-back meetings out there, meeting leads, networking, working on the next solution. We have deadlines and then at home, Kids could be running around, issues at home, you name it, everything else that's happening. But your prospect, they don't know about all this stuff. They came to you because they want their problem solved. So if your prospect has to chase you, it's already too late. And a lot of times founders, especially technical founders, especially experienced founders, they want to make sure that the answer is thorough and complete. And and and and and you cover all the angles, which is fine. That you know perfectionism is okay at certain level, but at times you don't have to. You know you can give a response maybe in you know here's what I have today. Here's what I've done so far. I'll get back to you. I need another day to complete. Here's here's here's some you know if you if you do a financial audit or maybe you're in data, you do some data audits, or you're in IT, you're an IT consultant, you maybe you don't have the audit report ready, but you can make some maybe incremental progress, share what you've done so far and say, hey, I need a couple more, a couple more days to complete that. So, so sometimes we, we want to package everything in one big deliverable, and, and then we maybe get too excited when we sign the deal and we commit to this deliverable, you know, very, very aggressive timeline, that's going to come back and bite us. So if you need to— I don't say change the scope because you've already sold the scope to the customer, but it's okay to go back to the client and say, you know what, after I've, you know, after I've had access to your system, to your data, I just need more time and I don't want to I don't want to bring in— I don't want to do any shortcuts. I don't want to do a half-baked job. I want to make sure I deliver you— I give you the best that I can. But for now, I need another week. So ask, ask, ask for an extension. Or, hey, my kit— my commitment to you was to deliver by the end of this week. I'm going to give you a, a, a, a rough draft of this, and then next week I'll complete. So find ways to maybe break the task into 2, buy more time. But in all times, in all times, I want you to be very open, very transparent, and let the client know what to expect. So whatever you want to deliver, whether it's, it's the big project, the big audit report, um, it, it, it has to be complete and thorough. That's, that's your expertise. That's, that's what you're selling. But it doesn't have that— the immediate response can be with a smaller deliverable or buying more time, or at least being open with the client and say, I just need more time because things happen. Again, you can't be doing this, you know, causing delays 5 times, like asking for 2 days and then another 2 days. That's just not going— you know, you're not reliable. People are just going to have— a lot of question marks. But if you're stuck and you need to buy more time, it's better to ask for it ahead of time and let your lead, your contact at the customer know, because they might have to set that expectation with their boss and their boss's boss. So if your client is expecting this audit and you need a couple more days, let your client know and give them advance notice so they can manage the expectations internally as well. And I remember, you know, with all this focus on responsiveness, because of the bad experiences I had over the last couple of months, I remember vividly a client of ours way back then early on after I figured out that responsiveness is important. He came and said, hey, I went with your company not because your proposal was fancier or your prices were the most competitive, but we went with you because you replied to every question we asked in a timely manner, and then you sent us the follow-up information, including the proposal, when you promised. That gave us confidence. So as I said earlier, in every interaction you have with the client, in every touchpoint that the client has with your organization, In these moments, in these touchpoints, clients get signals about who you are, how you operate, about the culture of the company, and responsiveness being the topic of today's session is what's going to give this early lead, this warm lead, that you're reliable, that they can depend on you to deliver what you are pitching them today and what you're trying to sell. And reliability is rare enough these days to stand out, you know, on its own. So those are the 4 points that we covered, and I want to end with— I think we have some questions, so let me see the comments here.

Thanks for the advice, sir.

Take love from Bangladesh. So thank you so much for, uh, it's, uh, Zarf again. I had some issue here with the screen with this Instagram issue, but I think Zarf, thank you so much for your comment.

I appreciate it.

I'm glad you're finding this helpful. Let me know, let me know if you have any challenges with getting clients or closing deals or there's an issue with responsiveness. But I want to end today's session with this final tip, and it's a formula, it's a system that that I used, and I call it the simple 2-1-2 rule. Okay, 2-1-2. Um, basically it's respond within 2 hours, and 1, that is pick and book the first available time that the client gives you. And then the last 2, the second 2 here, is send your proposal within 2 days. Okay? So let me go back over it again. Number 2, the first 2, respond within 2 hours. If you get an email from a warm lead, they submit a form on your website, they call and leave a message, get back to them. And then if you don't have time to schedule a full discovery call to understand better what is it that they're looking for, say, I received your message. here's my Calendly link, or here's my HubSpot link. Let me know when it's a good time for us to connect. But do respond. You can have some autoresponders in your system, of course, but a personal— a personalized email always scores higher, uh, than— or it's, it's an addition, it's a plus in addition to the autoresponder they get from submitting a form on your website. So that's 2, respond within 2 hours. Now, if the client gets back to you with 3 or 4 time slots when they're available. Always book the first available time. Momentum is gold. If you have a warm lead, someone who's ready to talk, you want to talk to them because delaying this talk, they could be talking to other vendors, their needs might change, their boss might reallocate the budget, things happen and all these things could kill the flow and as I always say and I have a video on this, Time kills all deals. So if the client wants to meet tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM, take it. That's okay. If they want to meet at 6:00 PM, take it. If you have some internal meeting and your calendar is busy, take the lead and move internal meetings. This is especially important for early-stage founders who just are trying to get those first few deals. or if you are not an early-stage founder and you're struggling with sales, look for these things that could be delaying your conversation with clients. So keep in mind that, yeah, you might have some really, really important personal thing and you cannot take the call at 7:00 AM, I get it, but to the extent that you can take the first slot that the client gives you, you will be ahead. If a client gives you a 10:00 AM slot, time slots over a span of 2 weeks and you end up selecting the last one, that's delaying the first call by 2 weeks. And even if everything goes smoothly, you're delaying closing the deal by 2 weeks and then getting the first payment by 2 weeks, and then your cash flow is impacted by 2 weeks. So taking these early slots when the client give you— when the clients give you a number of time slots is going to be important. Again, I I've tried this. I tested it. It worked. I know it might sound silly, but believe me, when cash flow is tight, every day counts. When payroll— because payroll, if you have employees, doesn't stop. It's on the dot, right? Every two, you know, twice a month. So pick those habits. And I have a note on this. If responding within 2 hours is an issue or or booking the first time is an issue, I do have a tip for you, but let me finish the 2-1-2 first. So we covered the first 2 is respond within 2 hours. One, take the first time slot that the client or the lead gives you, and the second and the last 2 here is send your proposal within 2 days and build templates and frameworks that you can make updating proposals fairly quickly. It's a fairly quick process.

Yeah.

Task. So this way you don't have to build a new document every time you have to send a proposal. So my— what works for me in, in the businesses was 2-1-2. For your business, your service might be much more customized, much more, much, much, much more complex. So if you want to adopt a 4-2-4 rule, or maybe an 8-2-8 rule, that is totally fine. Pick a system, a process, a rule that works for your business, but then stick to it. The numbers aren't sacred, the discipline is. So when we follow this, then we close more deals, clients feel cared for, cared for. And when we don't follow these 4 tips and this formula, things stall and we end up wondering what went wrong. So that's what I wanted to cover today, these 4 tips and the formula to help you bridge the gap between the sales numbers you want to get and where you are today. So if you're losing deals or just feel like momentum is slipping through your fingers, get back and examine some of these habits that you have around responsiveness and ask, am I replying fast enough to keep the momentum alive? Do I have a rhythm for following up? Is my team aligned with that rhythm? So those, those are questions to ask at the end of the week, at the end of the month, when you evaluate what's going on with the business. And if the answer is no to any of these, now don't beat yourself up, but don't ignore it either. This might be the one thing standing between you and the next big breakthrough. And if you're ready to fix it, uh, Hopefully these tips in today's episode are, are helpful. And don't forget, as we wrap it up here, don't forget to sign up for, um, subscribe to the channel if you're liking this content and you're benefiting from it in your business. I'd love to hear from you. That's one thing. And then hit the like button, share this, this video. And you can see it here.

Let me share with you my screen. One second. Again, sorry for my screen challenge here today.

Um, you see, uh, you can again follow me on LinkedIn, but I'd love for you to hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, and also don't forget to go to startupwithferas.com and then click on the newsletter tab and sign up for the weekly Black Belt Startup newsletter. I share tips, strategies, I share with you some, some asset that you can apply right away, some, some worksheets, uh, templates that you can apply to your business right away. And don't forget to join us here every, um, every other Thursday at 3 PM Pacific and 6 PM Eastern. I cover a topic related to entrepreneurship and then I answer the questions that we get from the community. That's it for today. See you next time. And I do— oh, I do have— I do get a question here. Let me see. Uh, Summer, thank you so much. Here says, thank you for your time and effort to support the business founders. Yes, Summer, you are more than welcome. Thank you for joining in. It might be late, um, out there, um, or maybe you're traveling and you're in a close time zone, but thank you for joining in.

Thank you for—

I know, for the likes and the shares that you, you always do on on LinkedIn. Um, but that's it for today, and we will connect next time.

Have a good one.