ve-BINAR How to Beat 89% of Your Competition With 8 Simple Messages

Good morning.

Good afternoon, folks. Depending on where you are. I'm Andrew Miller, one of the partners at the Vendux Group where we focus on helping clients to grow their sales leadership capital. And I am thrilled to be here today with our friend Steve Rosenbaum on his favorite topic, flawless follow up. Steve is a lifelong entrepreneur who's been in sales and marketing for nearly four decades. And he's helped tens of thousands of businesses and professionals make more sales by leading with their back end, which we'll surely find out more about. The book he wrote 10 years ago is actually called Back End Blueprint. Steve's going to share what he has seen work over and over again in a system that he calls the Full, the Flawless Follow up system. And he invented this nearly 12 years ago. So just a couple of housekeeping notes before we get started. We'll keep everyone muted for the duration of the webinar and then we'll have Q and A at the end. So you can either use the chat function in zoom to submit your questions or we'll open up the floor at the end of the webinar and you can ask your questions directly and engage with Steve as however you want. So with that, let's jump in. Steve, it's really great to have you here with us today. Let's talk flawless follow up.

So thank you, Andrew. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, no, no, no. It's great to have you, Steve. High level, big picture. We set the stage in the context. Your nickname is the King of Follow Up. So why are you known as the King of Follow Up? What are the basics of the flawless follow up system? And, and what was your defining moment, if any, to create this system? And then I'm going to ask you about what it actually means to lead with your back end. That'll be fun.

Will do, Andrew. Thank you very much. And thank you everybody for being here and I appreciate so much you having me here on the show. So if I can remember all the questions and I might ask your help there. But you know, I. Yes, I've been helping businesses, individuals, professionals from around the world with sales for close to four decades. When I graduated out of college in the 80s, I went right into sales. And you know, early on in my career. Here's one of those defining moments, Andrew. There's a few of them, but early on in my career I had a massive sale. And the funny thing was, it was the first week that I joined a new company. A new company hired me. And it's a longish story. I won't tell the whole story. The bottom line is this. I made a huge sale because I got extremely lucky. I was exactly at the right place at the right time. And the reason why was because the person I was calling on it was a department store. I was in the luggage business. And that department store had even told me before I came in the meeting that they didn't have any budget, they didn't have any open to buy. But I insisted on coming in for the meeting. And while I was sitting there, they found out that their vendor was not going to be able to make their delivery in time for an advertisement. They came, they had coming up and she turned to me, she said, Well, I need $75,000 worth of luggage by next week. And I called my boss and I'd been on the job for less than a week and said, boss, I'm sitting here with a new customer that wants to place a $75,000 order. Can we get it to him? And the boss said, we'll get it to him if I got to load the truck and drive it myself. And, and so, you know, at the time I was 29 years old and you know, I was patting myself on the back and thinking that I was just the world's greatest salesman. That's how I got the order. As I spent more time in sales, I realized that I really got lucky. I was at the right place at the right time with the right message. So with that, I really, I'm a process guy. I'm a process guy. And I really wanted to put those odds in my favor. How do, how can I make this happen again and again and again without relying on luck. What processes could I put in place? And I also realized that, you know what, I had a lot more luck and a lot more sales by selling more products and things to the, to the, to the people that I was already doing business with. By following up with them, I would get more sales. And we know this to be true now. We know, you know, there's plenty of, of studies from the Harvard Business Review and others that show that the value of customer retention, bringing people back to buy over and over again is as much as 14 times greater and 14 times easier than getting that first new customer. Right? We all know that getting the new customers the hardest, the, the, the, the most expensive and it takes the longest. And so that's how I, I learned and I always did very well in sales and I was always sought after in the corporate world because I was, I would get great increases in the first place. The first thing I would do was figure out where can we make sales quickly go back to those past customers, figure out, you know, which products they're not carrying that they should be product that they should be carrying. You know, study the data and figure out there's always clues about how we can get sales fast without having to convince people to buy something. Just getting people that they're raising their hand, they want to purchase more, we just need to get in front of those people. And that's, that's how this all learned. You know, through my entire career, I just made it a habit of, of going back and, and maximizing the revenue with customers that I had, making them successful, helping them sell more products and they would grow their business with me. And that's how we, you know, they, they say the fortunes in the follow up. And I wasn't the person that invented that, but we all know that to be true.

That makes total sense. So, so what does it mean to, to lead with the back end?

Well, that's another story. All right, and, and this comes from when I did leave the corporate world with a little help. I got, I got fired back in the financial crisis of 2008. I was in the building materials business at that point. We had the housing bubble and I was with a company that, a big, big, big company that was, that let go of like 10,000 people. And I was one of them. And that's when I went into business for myself and I started hitting the streets and trying to get clients. And at first I just told people that I was a sales and marketing consultant. Nobody really cared because everybody knew a whole lot of sales and marketing consultants and so nobody really paid attention to me. And one day I was calling on a guy and in fact, I wasn't even. It was the end of a long day of prospecting and in fact, I wasn't calling on this guy. I went in, it was the end of the day and I was going to get home. But I saw that the highway was jam packed and I didn't want to sit in, in traffic. I'm in Austin, Texas. It was, you know, 100 outside. I didn't want to sit still on the highway. Back in those days, I was smoking cigars. There was a cigar shop. I went in the cigar shop and I got a cigar. And the owner came up to me and he started talking to me and we were making small talk, very friendly, and it was going really, really well. And then he says to me, he says, what do you do? And I Said, I'm a marketing consultant. And he literally got angry. Our conversation, which was going so well, his smile turned completely upside down, not to a frown, it was almost a scowl. And he said, you're one of those guys, aren't you? He says, you marketing guys, you guys are scum of the earth. He says, he goes, you guys are coming into my, into my store every single week. You were just trying to sell, so you don't really want a cigar. You're just trying to sell me, weren't you? And he says, all I know is, you marketing guys, you keep promising more, you keep promising me you're going to get me on page one of Google. You keep promising you're going to get me new customers. All I know is I spent thousands of dollars with you and I haven't sold any more cigars. And I said, hold on, hold on. And at this point, I was kind of improvising. Hit me back on my heels. I said, wait a second, wait a second. I said, I understand what you're talking about with, with what they're talking about. We started talking about the importance of follow up. We started talking about, look, those guys are trying to get you new customers, and new customers are, they take longer, they're a lot harder, they take money. So maybe it isn't these guys are bad. It's just that it's harder to get new, but it's a whole lot easier to bring customers back. And I said, so let me ask you something, because, you know, in 20 minutes I'm going to be done with the cigar and I'm walking out that door and what are you going to do to get me to come back and buy another cigar from you? I said, those guys, they work on the front end of the marketing funnel. I work on the back end of the marketing funnel. I said, I'm a back end specialist. He turned to me, said, that's what I need, I need a back end specialist. And he hired me. That name kind of stuck for a while. Kind of gets me in trouble. If you, you don't want to Google it, you're not going to like what you find. All right? And, and so, but that's why, you know, that's why my first book was called the Back End Blueprint. By the way, the guy is still my client today, 13 years later, and we've more than tripled his business and we've done it by getting people to come back and buy more cigars. That's it. In with flawless follow up.

That is a great story.

Thank you, my friend.

So basically, so are you a software company? I mean, what, what is it that you are helping your clients with? What is the thing? Is it a framework? Is it a, is it a dashboard? Is it a set of analytics? This is a CRM first and foremost.

It's a process. We can make it work on any software. It so happens I do have my own software, but I get asked by people sometimes, hey, I'm working on this software, I'm working on this. So I like to say I'm platform agnostic because it's really about putting these processes in place and that's what I do first and foremost. Yes, I do have my own software platform. And yes, if, if I'm working with a client and there's, and there's a need that my software will fill, then yes, my software will, will do it. But if not, then, you know, I could, I could make these processes work on any platform. I've worked with many, many, many of them over the years.

So flawless follow up. It, it's a great term, but is it, is it a fancy term for marketing? Effective marketing?

Let's say it's a part of marketing. Okay. You know Peter Drucker, I'm trying to remember the exact quote here. So Peter Drucker, he, he had a definition or, or the, a primary purpose for marketing. Have you ever heard this? You know, you know what Peter Drucker said was the primary purpose of marketing? Yeah, it was basically to make selling obsolete.

All right?

And, and he didn't use it superfluous. He didn't use the term obsolete. He said superfluous. The, the purpose of marketing is to make selling superfluous. And that is that if we do a good enough job marketing, we don't have to sell. We're just basically order takers. We just get. People raise their hand and say, I want that. I want that. All right? So that's my job. My job is to get people to raise their hand and say they want that. But I do it in a very narrow lane because if you say what is marketing? And there's so many aspects of marketing, but I purely focus on that follow up. So, you know, a lot of times I'll be brought into a client and they'll want help with other things, they'll want help with front end things, they want help with SEO and lead generation, all those things. Okay, there's a place for them, but I don't specialize in that. And so I would rather bring in a specialist that is that, that knows more about that. But there's nobody that understands follow up the way that I do and conversion of follow up. And that's why I call myself the king of follow up.

Steve so there's not many people or companies that we work with that are in the business of luggage or cigars. Lots of clients. Lots of our executives in our roster are in services. Sas, edtech, Legal tech, Professional services. How, how do you translate or how does the flawless follow up system work in the services business, in the enterprise sales business, with you know, five or six figure price tags?

Well, those five or six figure price tags, they also have very, very long sales cycles and they also have to coordinate many, many decision makers and departments and people. And it all comes down to having the processes in place to, to make that happen more effectively and more efficiently. So that's with the big companies, but we also have small companies that sell $10 cigars. The, the reality is follow. It's important for everybody. And especially in today's environment where we're so bombarded by messages, there's studies out there that show that it takes what, 6, 12, 18 messages before you even begin to notice. Now the good news is your competition, they drop out after one, two or three messages. Because if you don't have a process in place, you can't keep up with it. You can't do it the right way. We all have the best intentions, but if we don't have that process in place and we don't put those tools in place, there's no way to manage it all. It's just too hectic and too chaotic out there and, and we get swallowed up with, with all the noise out there. But when you're consistent, you know, when, when you've got consistency and frequency, then you break through all the noise because you're the only one, you're the one that they recognize because you're there for the long term. You're there. They see you over and over and over again. You earn the top of mind presence. They come to know like, and trust you. There's a term that we hear all times that takes time, that takes repetition and frequency and consistency. And those are the things that we put in place for businesses.

Yeah, it's, it makes sense. Sometimes people ask, oh, you know, what's, what makes a great salesperson or how do you define great sales? And sometimes I just say, well, it's not about selling, it's about helping buyers to buy.

So true, so true.

What? When you are with clients and you, you are training salespeople are you doing it personally? Do you once, once a client says, hey, Steve, we want to adopt the system, we want to learn the framework. Are, is, does it involve you going in to, to do the training or is it a setup? Is it a video? Is it something that people read? What's, what's the engagement model?

The engagement model is that I'm actually training people to become those trainers and to become value added resellers of the system long term. That's not the role that I want to be in at this point in time. Sure, I do get involved in that, but I'm partnering up with many people that are longtime sales trainers. This, they've got the established clients that need this and we're teaching them the systems and teaching them how they can be the conduit with those clients.

Okay, so we're going to open up the floor in a second. If you've got any questions, comments that you know, please put them in the, the chat or we'll open up the floor in just a couple of minutes. For any of you that want to ask Steve questions directly. Steve, maybe another question for the moment. So you've seen lots of different businesses, products and services and five dollar items and five figure items. Is there any business where your framework has not worked or would not be appropriate in?

You know, I used to tell a joke. People ask me that question because a lot of times I talk about repeat business. So sometimes I said maybe it wouldn't work if you owned a funeral home, you know, if, if, if you were a mortician. And then I was at a conference and I met a mortician that owned a funeral home. He says, oh no, no, no, no, we spend a ton of money on marketing. And he says, no, we need that. So, and then, so, you know, I, I once said that as a joke and then, and then I did run into one guy. I'm, I do a lot of networking and, and I once had a bankruptcy attorney in, in my chapter. And he might have made the biggest point when he said, you know, he said, I'm not sure it'll work for me because number one, you can't file bankruptcy, but every so often, right? And number two, part of what I do with flawless follow up is also I help companies get more referrals, more reviews, more testimonials. Go out, tell your friends and family, spread the word. He says, yeah, but not too many people want to go brag about their bankruptcy attorney. And I did, I did agree with him that that made a little sense. So you, you know, you know, there may be a couple oddball instances, Andrew, but even those oddball instances, I've been proven wrong. So there's, there may be a bankruptcy attorney out there. That, that, that is, that, that is going to come to me and tell me I'm wrong.

Yeah, Steve, what, when I think, I mean, I like, I kind of pride myself on my, my own methodologies for follow up over a long time, but they're different from your methodologies. I love what you're bringing to the table. But. So for example, we're all having conversations with prospects and clients on a regular basis and often people say, well, you know, this is interesting, but I'm not ready now, or I don't have the budget, but you know, this may be appropriate, so call me in three months. And I've been on both sides of this equation where I say that to people and I really mean it. I said, well, you just missed the window. We're, you know, we're full up for this quarter with our projects and our priorities and, but feel free to call me back in three months. And it's very, very rare that people do that follow up. If somebody says that to me, I'm writing it down, I'm putting it in my note and I'm going to put it in my calendar and the CRM and I'm going to have all kinds of alerts three months from now. I'm getting back to that person who said, ping me in three months. So that kind of follow up and your flawless follow up system. What are the, the parallels, the differences or the similarities and then we'll open up the floor to, to other questions.

Thank you, Andrew. I love that question. Okay, so I've been in that situation too. All right? And you know, years ago before I had a system like this and I don't know if you ever encountered this, but man, you did it. You, you, you diligently made those notes and you called that person back and they said, oh man, I wish you're here last week because so and so came in and got the order. That's happened to me. I don't know if it's happened to you. All right, so the, it's a good thing to do. All right, but the, the real important thing here is constant engagement. It's not to remember to call them back in three months or whatever that time is. It's to keep engaged with them now during that time when my system is going to do is, it's going to nurture them. It's Going to, I call it three E's. It's entertain, educate and engage. All right, you and I've had some talks about, you know, not, you don't always have to be selling. Couldn't agree with you more. All right, if we entertain, educate and engage, then what we're really doing is, is I've said it before, we're getting the top of my presence. We're getting those people to know, like and trust us. We're beating our competition because our competition isn't doing this.

All right.

We're also earning reciprocity because that person's going to say, this person's given me a lot of good information. They've, they've, they've nurtured me. And when the time comes, if the time comes before the three months or whatever or something else changes, just like that situation happened with me, the story I told the very, very beginning, where something changes like that, then they say, even if they say who's that guy that's always sending me those emails? At least all they got to do is go back and look in your email for the past couple of weeks, are going to find something from you and they're going to call you. You're going to become the only logical solution.

Yep. Great, great, great input.

Thank you.

And wisdom there.

Thank you.

All right, good. Henning?

Yep.

Do you, do you see questions in the chat bar? Any. I'm going to moderate questions.

Yeah, let's start there. Charles, put one in here. And it's specific to new sales, new clients in the enterprise, software sales with long sales cycles, multiple stakeholders. And Charles would like to know what some of the best practices are in terms of follow up in this specific scenario.

Charles, thank you for that question. That's a great question. And you know, first of all, the situation I just described with Andrew would be one that helps there, which is, you know, making sure that, educating and even entertaining. I love to tell stories and, and, and people love, people love to listen to stories and that, and, and so you can educate through your storytelling, entertain them at the same time, engage them, ask for feedback, ask them for calls to action. All right. And even engage some of the champions of those of the, you know, within an organization. You're likely. Sometimes I hear, Charles, you can help me out better. There's sometimes you might have, you know, you're going to have multiple stakeholders. It could be 10 or more. Right. And, but within those, you probably develop a relationship with a couple of them before the others and you can help, you can ask their help in championing that message. But what we really want to do, what flawless follow up gives you, is a layer of that consistency and frequency. It does not replace personal interaction. It doesn't. Okay, People call me and say, well, I can't automate things. I got to be personal. I'm not telling you, don't be personal. I'm saying put this layer, all right, of, of, of, of this entertainment and education and engagement, because it gives you that consistency, it gives you that frequency. It keeps you in front of them. And with that, when they see something they like, they're going to start passing it to the other stakeholders saying, hey, check this out. Look what, look what Charles is talking about. This is exactly we talked about in this meeting. You, you know, that's what's going to happen when you, when you give them an information. I get brought into businesses all the time. They've got information and collateral material through this, through the ceiling. They've got so much information and they've got so much collateral. What they don't have is they don't have a way, a consistent process to distribute it. So, so, so it's not getting used effectively and efficiently the way that it needs to. We could take that collateral material and put it in place for these type of nurture campaigns to make sure that that happens. Does that answer your question, Charles?

Steve, that does.

Thank you very much. Thank you for the great question, Steve.

Let me, let me follow up here on Charles with the thought of how customized the solution ends up being that a client puts into, into place or the other extreme. Is there a, a blueprint in regards to frequency and sequencing and the number of messages? That always works.

I love that question. All right, so I'll start with the last one. No, there's no magic number. There's no magic email. There's no magic silver bullet at all. All right, the, the thing that we're, the, the reason we're going to win. Going back to the first story that I told, being at the right place at the right time, the right moment, we never know when that is. But the consistency and the process gives us better chances of making that happen for us. Okay? That's, that's what we do more than anything. So, no, the, the magic number is not 6, 12 or 18. And there's no, there's no word that's going to do it. There isn't. All right. But the process puts the odds in our favor. That's what we do. That's number one. Now, in terms of the systems, considering that the majority of businesses really have four to none of this in place. It's a remark. It's remarkably simple how easy it is to, to improve sales. Get that low hanging fruit. And I've got, I, I even have an ebook which I'd like to share with people at the end here which is called how to win back customers in three days with five simple email messages. And if you do this, you're probably going to get some sales. And for most businesses that's where I start off. I go in and say great, let's pull your data, let's get your customer files. Where do you have customer files? First of all, I do an audit because have all their files in one place. Sure they've got a CRM, but they also have accounting, they got QuickBooks and they also have paper file and they also have calendars and they also have all, they got data everywhere but they don't bring it together and do this. So the first thing we do is go get this data, bring it together and then give people a reason to raise their hand and say yeah, I need some help right now. And you'd be amazed at the, at how well this works and it works extremely quickly. Now when you do get into larger corporations, when you do get into enterprise systems and long sales cycles and multiple stakeholders, then yeah, you might want to customize, you might want to add more of this on there and that's going to be more of a custom job. But I'm developing flawless follow up for the masses. I'm developing because there, there are seven core funnels that go into flawless follow up and that, that will get the job done for a lot of businesses. A lot of businesses that have mounds of data right now that they're not doing anything with and will help them get customers and get them fast.

When we put the webinar out for an invited people, we titled it how to beat 89% of your competition with eight simple messages. What scenario does that apply to and where do those numbers come from?

So that, and yes, I gave you that title. You know, there's many studies out there, one of them recently from Microsoft and I'm looking at a slide on my other monitor right here. And, and it shows. In fact I would. Is it okay if I show that slide?

Absolutely, go ahead.

Okay, let me go ahead and show you this one slide here. I got a whole slide deck open here. But let me show you this one slide here. All right. And I gotta adjust some things on my screen. Is everybody seeing this? The slide from Microsoft and I Could blow it up a little bit.

Yep, it's there.

Okay, let's see if I could. There we go. So this is it. All right, so what you can see here is, here's your prospect. One message, one follow up contact. 50 of the salespeople, they never go beyond one. 65% of salespeople, they give up after just two follow up messages. And so it goes down. And you could see here that at 89 after four messages, 89 of salespeople, businesses, they don't follow up beyond that, that fourth message. All right, so and, and then you can see you get down here, get down to nine follow up messages. You got a 90 chance of making the sale when the prospect is ready. We thought that's so important. Ready, willing and able. And you know, they used to say, Andrew, we were talking about this and earlier you're talking about a great salesman and there used to be this saying that, you know, he's so good he could sell ice to an Eskimo. And, and today I think only I'll use nice language. Only a jerk would sell ice to an Eskimo. You know, why would you sell something to somebody that doesn't need it? I think that's the point. Hey, he doesn't really need it, so why are you going to sell it to him? These days it's all about being at the right place, being the only logical decision, the go to person. When somebody says I need that, I'm ready to buy.

Okay, wonderful. So if there are other questions, just unmute yourself and ask. Yep, that's always easiest. And if they're not, Andrew, I'll give the mic back to you and have you close us out.

Great. It's all about staying keeping top of mind, Steve. And that's, that's the art and the challenge. And so I, we, we will be spending more time together. And I, I know from our business at Vendox where a year later, you know, people have been reading the newsletter and seeing, you know, content that we would be putting out on LinkedIn and joining these vibinars. We've had people come in lit like out of the blue it seems and they would say, I've been getting your newsletters, I've always enjoyed your content. I've never engaged with you but let's have a conversation. It might be appropriate timing to explore your service for our business. So yeah, we, we've experienced that.

Congrats Andrew. That's a, that's exactly what we're, that's exactly what we deliver for businesses. So good for you. That's the way to do it.

Charles. Sorry, it's a couple of questions. Do you folks want to open up your mic and ask Steve any questions?

Steve, if you don't mind, I do have a question. This is J.C. yes, J.C. so the Microsoft slide that you put up, Yeah, I think I've seen it many times before, and I totally agree that those numbers are significant, that they do apply. One of the biggest challenges as a VP Sales right now, leading teams of territory sales managers and so on, is they talk about how, you know, it's all great to say, well, you know, you need to have 10, 12, 15, 20 reach outs. Problem is I'm not hearing anything back when I call people, I just can never reach them on the phone. Texting doesn't work. When I send out emails, it's very, very rare for me to get a response. And I feel like I'm probably just getting into some kind of a dark hole of spam. When you talk about from Your perspective, the 8, 10, 12, 15 reach outs, is this text, is this email, is this phone calls? Is it a combination of the above? And have you discovered kind of a magic formula, if you will, or a combination that somehow gets to the point of, of getting actually a response from a decision maker?

Wow, that is a phenomenal question. So, and you know, you know what it is and you know, in the numbers, what you're hearing from your folks are kind of sort of true, but they're not looking for the right thing. All right, what, what I train my clients to look for is activity. All right, so this is why when we send out these communications and, and every communication we send out should have a call to action. And now go back to what we were talking about. Educating, entertaining, engaging. You know, what if you, you know, so you send out a whole bunch of information, maybe it's a case study about a success story. What industry are you in, jc?

Multiple industries. So I, I've, I'm a fractional vp, Sales and a cgo. So this is something I've run across with sales teams and BD teams in multiple industries. And in particular, I was thinking about one client who's in manufacturing.

Beautiful. All right, So I once did some time in the building materials business. Okay, so I'll use as an example. And we used to send out case studies to builders. Now builders would never return your call. Only, you know, only if they're on a job site and needed something. Right. But you know, at the last minute, oh my God, I need something. I'M out, you know, but, but you know what we would, what I did was I would send out things all the time. Hey, here's how so and so is using a product. Here's a really cool example of how so and so is using a product. Now here's the magic. Jc I wasn't waiting to hear back from those people, but if I send out 100 emails or a thousand emails, here's what's going to happen. At best, 15 to 20% of those are going to get opened.

All right?

At best. Now, at best, a much smaller percentage of those people are going to click on the link to go watch the video, go read the thing. But that's where the magic comes in. Okay? That's where the magic comes in. Because if I send out a hundred or I send out a thousand, I don't have to worry about a hundred or a thousand. I might have 10 or 15 or 20 people that clicked on that link. And now my follow up is very specific. Hey, J.C. i saw you watch a video about that installation. What are you working on? How can we talk about how that's going to make it a better home? So we can now remember right message, right person, right time. I said I'm looking for processes that put me in the right place at the right time with the right message. I know. Okay, here's a builder interested in this product, went and watched something. I could follow up with him with some very, very specific intelligence and a much different message than, hey, how you doing? Can I take you a coffee? Can I drop off some donuts? Can I try to sell you something? So that's one of the things that we do, one of the, the beautiful things about, about technology today and marketing today. Use that word, marketing. All right. It's not so much about the message we put out. It's amazing the intelligence we get back. It's amazing the intelligence we get back. I literally put stepping stones in front of people to see who's stepping on the stones, because those are the people that I follow up with so I can isolate the hottest prospects and know where to focus my attention. That's what I would tell your folks.

Interesting. Okay, just as a quick follow up, you mentioned video, and I've used that with a couple of clients before. It made it sound like you're talking about a very focused, specific video. So when you're sending an email with a video link, that video is actually specifically geared to and focused to that client. Is that, is that correct or is it a generic, more of a Generic video.

You know, there's a. Correct, there's an application for all the above. All right, you know, when I'm, when I connect with somebody on LinkedIn, I take, after we connect, I take my phone and I shoot a message. JC great to connect with you. And I make, I make a personal video for you as a thank you. Okay. That's very, very personal. All right, but if I'm sending something out to a thousand people on my list, then, no, it's going to be more general. It's going to be more, hey, check out this case study. Watch what happened. Watch these great results. All right, I'm going to be looking for who clicks on the link to watch it. I'll have a call to action at the bottom that says, if you like this for you, for your company, here's my calendar. Or I might send them to a qualifying survey. You know, let's find out if you're qualified. That's, that's another step that, you know, I like to introduce because I, I want to spend my time with qualified people, not with, you know, I don't picking, you know, brain pickers and tire kickers. So, you know, those are all things that we could build into the process. But those are great questions and love to have a chat with you anytime about that.

Well, I, I for one, look forward to receiving the, my personalized video when we connect on LinkedIn.

You got it. Thanks, Jesse.

Thanks.

Brain pickers and tire pickers.

Great. Well, I've got, I, I have got a, a form for checking out on when people say to me, hey, can, can, can I pick your brain? I say, absolutely. Let me send you the link. It takes him to a link and it's, you know, 500 for an hour of my time to pick my brain. It says, Steve's brain picking 500. Not many people take me up on that. Yeah, I've got another friend in this business. He does something similar and he's, he's not as nice as I am. So somebody says, hey, can I take you to lunch and I'll pick your brain? And then he gives him a very strong response, which I won't repeat here. But he says, forget that. You pay me my fee and I'll take you to lunch.

Chris, you unmuted yourself.

I did. Hi.

Thank you, Steve.

This has been really wonderful and helpful. One of the things that I'm actually challenging with is trying to make things a little bit more automated and, but the balance between my personal notes and marketing has been like big jumble at Times. And so I'm just kind of curious as to, you know, how you kind of set up that cadence and the standard and how it might be effective both to mix what, you know, a conversation you've had in the follow up versus what is coming out from your, your organization. Just, is there a best practices? I know you mentioned that numbers are not what matters. Top of mind, what matters. But I'm curious as to how do you get this? So it kind of like makes sense in some type of order.

Well, very well, thank you. Flawlessly, in fact. But so that, that is exactly the question. All right. And so I mentioned that flawless follow up basically comprise of, of seven different funnels. And it's a longer conversation, Chris, but I give you a very, very quick overview here. You, you know, in terms of the cadences, there are different cadences for where people are in, in, in, in the buying process. And, and when you meet them. The thing to realize is usually when you meet somebody for the very first time is probably when they might be in most need of what you do. Now, I'm not talking about networking, I'm not talking about you're in a room and you're shaking hands with 100 people. But if somebody, they find you on the net, they call you say, hey, I'm looking for something. Well, this is really the best time to actually sell them. And most people, you know, you might look at my slide and say, oh, I can't sell you anything right now because I got to talk to you eight times or 12 times before I could try. That's not what I'm saying. In fact, the first thing you should do, I say filter first and nurture. Next, the first thing you should do is find out what's your situation, is this something you need right now? And go for that sale. Because that's likely why they found you in the first place. So we start off with what we call an ignition funnel. All right? The first thing we do with the flawless follow up, and this is, I'm going a little deeper into my process. But the first thing is the ignition funnel. It ignites a new relationship. And the first thing I'm trying to figure out is I'm filtering. Are you ready, willing and able to buy right now? Is there a situation? You need this right now. So because we want multiple messages, the cadence is a little more aggressive. It's a little, it's a little more frequent. Right. When you meet people. So I tell people at least five messages in the first two weeks, first 14 days. So spread out messages every two to three days. And the way, the way I like to do this, I like to work with my clients or teach them that the best thing to do is make these messages somewhat related. Easiest way to do it is say five steps to accomplish this or five frequently answered questions. But tell them. Over the next two weeks, I'm going to send you a series of five emails that are going to tell you this, this, this, this and this. And then you literally say in your subject, here's message one of five. And you close that message by saying, watch for my next email. And you, you do what's called an open loop where they look forward to it. You, you create expectations and set anticipation and you say, in the next couple days I'm going to send you another email. Watch for it. It's going to say two of five. And I'm going to address this big question in your mind. When you do that for the first 14 days, you're liable to get people that say, yeah, this is what I need right now. All right, so you're liable to find the people that want it, not most of them. Most people are not. But that's okay. You're only looking for the few that are. Then after that you're going to go into what we call a follow up forever and a long term nurture campaign. So that's, that's, that's a very broad overview of what that looks like. But if you can picture what that all looks like, that's a little bit of a semblance of how these processes all fit together.

Thank you.

That's actually helpful. Appreciate it.

Thank you. What business are you in?

I'm in consulting and fractional. So it's been a, it's an interesting journey to have these conversations.

Terrific. I'm, I'm very glad to meet you. When, when Andrew asked me earlier about, you know, the training, I'm actually working with fractional. I'm looking for folks like you and JC that work with businesses. I can't be everywhere. There are so many businesses that need this. You've got the relationships. Your job is to, is to make a difference for these folks. And I promise you there's, there's, I call them acres of diamonds. There's a story. You can Google it on the, on the Internet. Your clients, I promise, are sitting on acres of diamonds that we could make reality.

That is the segue to wrap up. I was looking forward to some pearls of wisdom. I've got truckloads of wisdom or truckloads of pearls from you, Steve. Thank you. Do you want to. Do you have something that you want to wrap up with here and let.

Me put something on the screen here?

Okay.

Okay. So first of all, if you got a smartphone, take out and scan that QR code. That's the book I was talking about. It's a short little read, but this is essentially what I call a win back where you can, you can get customers or at least find people raising their hand, five messages in, in three days with a win back program. So that's my gift to you. You could also go to flawlessfollow.com vendux do we have that? Can I put that in the chat?

Yep, sure.

There it is. So you could scan the QR code or click on the link or grab that link. But please feel free grab that book. It will help you and of course, always reach out to me. I'm on LinkedIn and there's probably a few calls to action in that book I imagine, so you'll know where to find me.

Love it, Steve. It's been awesome. Love having you. Thank you so very much for your time, your insights, your guidance and, and your stories. Wonderful to have you. Perhaps we'll do this again over the next few months. I guess there'll be a hey, let's do it again kind of call anyway.

Just follow up with me, Andrew.

It's all about the follow up for sure, Steve. Have a great rest of the week. Thank you so much. Great to see everybody here today. All the best. See you next time.

Thank you. Thank you everybody. I enjoyed it so much. Andrew and Henning, thanks for having me. And everybody, thanks for spending time with me today.

All the best. Thank you, Steve, again.

Bye bye, everybody.

Bye.