The Art of Pushy Sales Insider Tips from Rob's Sales Team

How old are you? Because you got on that stall like a 60 year old man.

Yeah, but I'm at the age now where I start making noises when I stand.

What age is that?

35.

35.

I know, I've not been here two years.

How long have you been here, Ben?

Five and a half.

And why are you still here? Because I love it.

Yeah, I love it.

What do you love about it?

Everything. I think the people are amazing. I think the support you get is incredible. The push you get is better than I've ever had. And I love the fact you meet new people every single day with completely different stories.

And what would make it even better?

Money. We come back to money, shall we? As we spoke about.

Hallelujah. For someone actually saying it. Yeah. Yeah. Because I've done a few of these now and I don't think enough people are talking about money.

No, I.

You like to travel Bavarian. I guess having a lot of money makes traveling easier and better. Yeah. So I don't think people are money focused enough.

I think anyone in a sales job, if you're not money hungry or motivated, you're in the wrong job. Simple as that.

Yeah.

You can want to help people, but the more people you help, the more money you make.

Yeah.

In this role especially.

Well, that's it. I mean, the more. Because people think that money is the root of all evil and all shouldn't be money driven. It's not religious and kind and. But it's the result of what you do.

Yeah. Money makes the world go round. You can't pay your bills, you can't go travel, you can't get a car, you can't eat.

You play a sport, you win, you get a trophy, you, you have a job, you win, you make money.

Yeah.

Anyway, what are your questions?

Oh, right, one of them. Which, you know, I have a lot of sales conversations every day, every week. I always struggle with the follow up without using the. Just checking in, you know, question. What's a great way to follow up without kind of being pushy and. But also providing the correct method?

Well, what's wrong with being pushy?

Nothing's wrong. But I think with certain people you push them away. Whereas if you're pushing too hard, you'll. They'll. You'll. They'll be a no, but some people will. Will be a yes, but timing is maybe a factor.

What's wrong with pushing some people to the point of a no?

Because it might be a yes. But if it's a no now, it will never be a yes.

I'd argue the opposite.

Okay.

If it's never a yes, it's never a yes. But at least if it's a no, I can find out why and turn it into a yes.

Okay. So different way of thinking, but I get it.

Well, different for you.

Yeah.

Not for me.

Yeah.

I'm just challenging you to think of some of the things that you might perceive to be bad. Why are they bad? Like why is chasing someone up to change their life bad? Why is chasing someone up because their life is waiting and money is on the other side of them responding to you bad?

I think it's not the fact of the chasing up, it's more of the tonality in the chase up. You know, just checking in to follow up on our last conversation. What would be a good word, let's say or follow up conversation to have to just let them know that I'm still here, still finding out what, what they're up to, seeing how we can help.

In the last Q and A I did, I talked about this little test I've done which is, is there anything else you need? Question mark. And that seemed to be working very well for me. So that might be something for you to test.

I've used that.

Does it work for you?

Yes. It hasn't quite got to the point of selling yet, but I found it a really good way to touch base work without being like, are you ready yet?

Yeah.

Are you ready to buy?

Yeah.

But it's a really good, simple little expression that kind of just tweaks a little bit of interest.

Yeah. Okay. Something that is quite a useful language phrase is I don't mean to be X but so I don't mean to be pushy, but I don't mean to chase you, but I don't mean to message you too much, but. So it sort of acknowledges that you are nagging, chasing, pushing, but then you, but. Well, then you follow up with an undeniable truth statement. I don't mean to nag you, but your life is waiting. I don't mean to chase, but you do know the deadlines in 24 hours. We agreed this, this recent budget should warn you that your pension is not safe and secure and they're coming for your inheritance. Do you even know how much is in your pension or where your pension is invested? Add to this the recent inheritance tax grab on your pensions and the risk of a market crash. You probably didn't know this and I didn't until recently, but physical gold can be added to your pension. Pot gold is Inheritance tax free and has grown 700% in the last 20 years. You probably know from my content I'm investing heavily in silver and gold and that's why I've partnered with Direct Bullion. Myself and Nigel Farage are brand ambassadors and Direct Bullion can help you with with gold to protect and grow your pension. I buy my gold and silver from Direct Bullion and I don't earn any money on any purchases of gold or silver if you buy direct from Direct Bullion. So if you go to robmore.directbullion.com you can get a great price on your silver and gold and you can get the pension Gold investing guide completely for free. As you know, I don't do many strategic partnerships and when I do, I do them with people who are credible, who've been doing it a long time, who invested things that I invest into. And gold and silver's going wild. I'm investing heavily in gold and silver and I recommend you check out robmore.directbullion.com.

Yeah, that's something I've started doing based on our last podcast. It's given people a lot firmer deadlines and like we said, if they don't hit that deadline completely, take it away. And that's pushed some people away. But like we said, you have to risk losing the sale.

You have to. So, you know, I said earlier about what's wrong with getting a no? You want a no from the right person, that is, you want a no from the person that's never going to be a yes, and they're just teasing you and dragging you along forever. Those kind of potential clients exist and you also want a no from an indecisive person that you can turn into a yes. So obviously I've done over a thousand episodes on my podcast Disruptors, and the ones you never get are the ones you never hear from. The nos often become a yes. Not always, but often. So actually, because you know their objection. Yeah.

So you can come around.

Well, being no is a form of communication.

Yeah.

And that's what you want. It's not a fuck off no, but even a fuck off sometimes can be a yes. We've talked about this before as well. So like you said, you have to risk losing the sale to get it, which means you have to set agreed deadlines and accountability and then when they miss it, you have to take it away. So I said earlier, we all want what we can't have. And sometimes people will not take themselves or yourself seriously because they think they can always have it and they think it'll always be there. And the only time they'll ever learn is, is when it's taken away. And then they have to wait. And then only, are you going to allow them back under your rules now, not theirs? And then what's happened is the power dynamic has changed. So in the weekly sales trainings I do for the team, I talk about the power dynamic. If they think you're some lackey who's just there to service them, they're not going to take you seriously. If you make them feel like you are the road to their success and you are the point at which everything that they want to achieve, you're the central point of that, they'll treat you better, but you have to teach them how to treat you, which is if you set deadlines, that's it. If you call them, they should answer. Your time is valuable. And I think a lot of people in roles, especially if their clients are important, they don't feel like that they can come across with that kind of power and authority. But let's say you have meetings with me and you know, if you're a minute late, I'm telling you to fuck off. I mean, I don't, because I can be late myself. But if, if you knew that, you would never be late to a meeting with me.

No.

So people think that, you know, they've got to sort of bend to the client's wants and needs. That's actually not best for the client. What they have to do is teach the client how to treat them. So I actually think it might have been you, that we talked about this in round one, that we did. What you do really upfront is you set your own expectations.

Yeah.

So upfront you say, look, I just want you to know, just so we're clear, before I even talk about your application, the deadline is Friday, 12 o'. Clock. That is unmovable. So do you. Do you agree that that is unmovable? Because what a lot of people do is when it gets to the deadline, they're talking about it, but they didn't even set the rules up front. And here's the thing, you've got the most power. When they've applied for something or they want something, that's when you've got the most power. So if you've got this application and they're like, yeah, I want to join this mastermind, that's when you have the most power.

Yeah.

So at that point you go, okay, look, before we talk about this, and I'm excited as well. For you. But we just have to set some rules because this is important. And then you set your rules, it.

Sets the expectation for them. They know that they have to have a answer or a final decision by said time. So anything in between that is leading up to Friday 12 o'. Clock.

Yeah. So all your follow up, you can space it out within that time and it. And now if you're following up, you're not nagging.

No.

Because you've already set the expectation up front.

Good, very helpful. Thank you. We've spoke a lot about me being comfortable. Well, couple of times. How do I inspire myself? Because I don't think comfortable is the right word. Because if I don't sell, I don't make money, therefore I can't pay bills, mortgages, etc. So.

Yeah, but you're obviously not really struggling to pay those, are you?

If I don't pay, if I don't sell every month. Yes.

Yeah, but you get a simple answer. Yeah, but you get to a certain level where it's now become comfortable, don't you?

I'm comfortable in, in a sense that I push myself every month because if I don't, I know I'm going to be fucked. You know it stressed, it's stressing every single month knowing that if I don't hit targets or sell, I'm going to struggle. That's the life of a salesperson. You know, it's the best paid job in the world. But it can also be shit if you don't sell. So I'm very good at building longer term relationships and pipeline into the sense that it's not comfortable. It's. It's just probably well planned out. Does that make sense?

It does.

You know what I mean? Yeah.

So a couple of things to think about.

Yeah.

The first thing is you are comfortable because what's happening is you're uncomfortable.

I'm just going to write some of these down.

Sure.

Helpful.

You're uncomfortable to a point. So there was this study done around money and apparently I think a lot of it's nonsense, but let's just go with it. Apparently the amount of money you make has a big difference. Up to 75 grand in terms of how you feel and your happiness. But then after that it's marginal, the increase in happiness. I'm not sure I believe that. But here's what I know. The reason that this study is out there is because up to 75 grand you don't really have a quality of life. And we're all resourceful about not starving and Getting our bills paid because we have to. 75 grand right now, I'd argue is, you know, and this is dollars by the way as well. That's not giving you an amazing quality of life with what everything freaking costs. So I don't think it's anything to do with happiness. I think it's all to do with you're comfortable. So if I were you, I would gamify and challenge yourself to re set the thermostat of where you're comfortable. Because there's an unconscious amount of money, Ben, and you may or not know it the amount, but there's an unconscious amount of money where until you get to that you're uncomfortable, which is. I don't know. Okay, you only you would know.

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

But you know, you know, your mortgages, your bills, your quality of life. Because if you think about it, you know, getting your mortgage and all your bills paid, that's like, I'll do whatever it takes then. And then above that is lifestyle. So it's like you, you've got certain non negotiables. You know, I've got to go out a couple of times a month, do this, that, and that's there, and then everything above that is almost just sort of like, oh, well, that's comfort. So you'll race to there and then you'll get to there and then you'll relax there. This is just natural.

Yeah.

So you need to trick yourself to increase the amount of money that you feel uncomfortable. So a great way to do this is immediately when you get paid, you have a direct debit going out. Maybe you have one into an investment account, one into a savings account. But you've locked that money in there for two years and you can't take it away for two years. And now all of a sudden you've put your overhead up by say a grand a month, but you haven't because you're saving and investing that.

Yeah.

But you will feel like you have to make that extra grand a month that I think will help you. Then the next thing is when you feel comfortable, why and what can you do to make yourself feel uncomfortable?

That's the question.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I can't answer it because I'm not you.

It's one I don't have an answer for.

It's what's most important to you in your life?

Freedom. I'm not one of those people that likes, you know, all the fancy stuff in the world. I just want to be able to do what I want when I want. You Know, take work away from it because I enjoy working here, so that's, that's fine. But I want to be able to go away when I want, afford what I want and not have to worry about what's in my bank and can I afford it.

Okay.

Luckily I'm not there most of the.

Time, but so here's what, something for you to test, actually work out specifically how much that is because.

What a number.

Yeah. Because to do what you want, when you want, where you want is expensive.

Yes, it is. I don't do what I want all the time, but.

No, but the point is the opportunity.

Yeah.

So the reason I asked that question is I know the best chance to get you to level up is to link it to your highest value, what's most important to you in your life. So if you're saying freedom, what I want, when I want, well, at the moment you don't really know what that is. So how can you shoot for or be motivated by or be uncomfortable to drive towards what you don't know what is? But if you have worked out, right. 12 grand a month gets me this amount of dinners, this amount of holidays, this car, this, that, and that's the lifestyle I demand of myself and I want. Now you have a figure.

Yeah, I think I've probably, I've got about a two year plan to buy a new house. Cause I want to get a bigger house. I think if I could work out backwards how much I would need for that, that could be a good way to work out what my I needed to be.

Yeah.

So that's a motivation.

Yeah. I mean, I'm amazed how few salespeople set very specific financial targets linked to their own financial situation. Yeah, but if you did that, not just the house, but also the freedom.

Yeah.

Because you've got the bills you need to survive that little bit of just being slightly comfortable above it. Then you've got a nice bit of lifestyle above that and then you've got full freedom above that. So in my money books I talk about financial stability, security, freedom and opulence.

Yep.

You will always hustle and do whatever it takes every month to hit your stable figure. Otherwise you're literally going into debt and you could get repossessed. So you're always going to hit that. So you probably unconsciously know that.

Yeah.

Then you've got secure, which is, you know, comfortable. Then you've got free and then you've got opulent. So I just think you need to figure out in actual dollars and cents, pounds and pence, the two year plan of the house, working back each month and also how much to give you this freedom, lifestyle and put it into a number. And it's got to be your number that you net in the bank.

Yeah.

So let's say, let's just say it's 12 grand, whatever it is, and let's say it's, I don't know, 50% more than you used to have before. Well, in theory all you need to do is 50% more. And you can do 50% more by doing more or by doing different. Yes, by doing different. I mean checking your call log and checking the times that you do calls, prioritizing your leads and working from your best clients backwards, knowing the admin times 3 o' clock or 5 o' clock so you work smarter and you might get a 20% or 25% increase and then you work a little bit harder as well and you might get the other 20 or 25%.

Yeah, it makes sense. I think I work quite smart. Smart most of the time. Like as you know, my calls and stuff, they're not the highest by any stretch, but I have the best relationships with my clients because I know who to talk to and when to talk to them.

So then the answer for your next level is just obvious, which is just increase the volume of that. Yeah, but there's a reason you're not.

Yeah, because I, I, what I, I've always been quite good at is finding who is a legitimate client and lead and who's not. I'm quite good at finding, excuse the term, but waste of time, people who, I know that and they're not going to buy and I can tell normally fairly quick if there's a potential in it, even if it's not like now, even if it's in a month, two months to someone you said a while ago, working on tomorrow's money, like I, that resonated me a lot and I work on that a lot. But if I know that they bought nothing, they've come to one event, they're not serious about changing their life, I won't waste my time on them. As harsh as that sounds. We're here to help people and if they don't want to help themselves, I will not help them. So I'm quite good at that. That's what sometimes takes the time with the longer sales.

Yeah, there's a way of triggering some of those on the fence people because you know, you've got the people who just throw you money left, right and center. You've got the people Who've got good intentions. They just need a bit of work and support. You know, you've got the ones you have to work a lot on. You've got the ones right on the fence. You got the sort of apathetic ones and then you got, you know, the.

Yeah, those ones.

Yeah. Well, but there's two types. There's the ones that they're really struggling, but they just need a break.

Yeah.

And they can't see it. And then you've got the ones that are just never going to be.

Well, we get those. The ones that we know they've, you know, they're struggling financially, but they come to all of our events, all the free events, and I don't mind that they're doing whatever they can. They're not financially able to. To invest in themselves further. So they're getting every bit of support they can to come to those, those people. I'm happy to spend as much time as I need to on them because they're just not able to right now. So I'll give them, I'll give them help. But it's the ones that come to 12 events, probably never going to hear from them again. That, yes, that's a no for me.

Yeah. Okay. So if you want to increase your money, you've probably got to get better at the ones you're not putting enough time into.

Yeah.

So maybe the ones on the fence or the ones that need the chance. Because I sometimes say to some people you've got to get good at pushing them away or saying no to them. That sounds like you're quite good at that. But you're probably leaving some good money in the bank by being a bit too smart and clever with how you focus on your leads.

Yeah, I think I possibly write people off maybe a little bit too soon. I think I'm good at it. But, you know, I'm not, obviously not perfect. I think I can improve on that massively.

So I think you should create your own little system just for you, because you're probably not going to do this on the CRM, but the clients you get, you're intuitively going, this is a serious person. This with time is a serious person. This is an on the fence person. This is someone who's struggling but needs help. And this is someone who is just never going to do anything and start qualifying and batching those clients having like A, maybe you have your own A, B, C, D, E, F system for them because what you can do over time is you can get a good profile of each kind of client. Because there's probably ways of getting more of your A clients or because I imagine. Right, let's say you were absolutely destitute this month. You were screwed, and you just needed to raise 20 grand out of nowhere in a month. You'd probably unconsciously know who all those people you could call up are you, who have probably got some money in the pipeline that you could pull in from tomorrow to today.

Possibly.

Yeah, well, definitely. Yeah. Well, if I had a gun to your head or you had to get 20 grand extra in the next month, that's at least where you would try.

Yes.

You wouldn't go to all the people you think are never going to be a client and try and spend all day turning them around. So the more you nurture this A pool and this B pool and this C pool, and then when you've done all that at times at 4 or 5 o' clock in the afternoon or times where maybe you don't do as many calls picking some people from the E pool and just learning some tricks.

So it's almost like pre qualifying or qualifying them.

Yeah. Well, it sounds like you're sort of unconsciously doing it, but I don't think you're analytically doing.

I'm not tracking it.

Yeah, yeah.

Something that I can do. Yeah, see, I'll see how that goes.

I mean, I've been a big fan over the years of tracking everything. You cannot master what you do not measure. And virtually every answer in this business that I don't yet know is hidden in a data set somewhere. Yeah. So I used to go to all these retreats and we used to have our highest paying clients there. And then one day I just went around the table and said, oh, where did you find out about us first? And then it's like, oh, the money book, the podcast. The money book, the podcast. You know, wait a minute. Most of these leads are from sources that we didn't even spend any marketing on. Why don't I go and spend some marketing on these organic sources? And I noticed in our bookings team that we have a weekly target and I wanted to exceed that target. So I did some extra. I did an extra zoom class myself and I generated 160 buyers. They still hit the same target because I naively thought, well, they'll hit the target plus 160. But all they did was they just creamed off my 160 and they didn't.

Do their own job, so should have doubled their target.

Should it? So. Exactly. So in those months, weeks you double the target and then sometimes measuring the target on a four day week with a bank holiday when half the staff are off. That's also not fair. The other way. But you don't know all this until you track all the data. Now, what a lot of salespeople don't do is they don't do their own tracking because, well, we've got our CRM and, you know, it's supposed to be done for us, but you should track everything you do when you call. Like I said to Bav, you know, having your notebook testing things to say if clients are wasting your time, testing, being a bit more brutal with them than you would normally and testing, pushing them away and seeing what happens with that. Just making a note in your book if that works or not. Imagine every week just reviewing your notes at the end of the week and going, I tried this and that and this and that and that worked and that didn't. And these objections come up a lot. I need to figure this out. I need to have a chat with Rob or Haley. Imagine the compounded effect of that. Says, creating your own set of data.

Yeah. You could even make a tally. Different styles of clothes push away whatever it might be, what worked, what didn't.

Yeah.

To what type of people?

And then you'll get this cluster of like, why are we getting loads of dentists, doctors, lawyers, you know, accountants, whatever. And then you can go to marketing and say, we get loads of these. Do you know where you're finding these from? Because if you kept giving me these, we're all going to get rich.

Yeah.

So he's feeding back what works and then going back and going. We seem to get a lot of these. These never convert. So I don't know what you're doing here.

Stop it.

Yeah, exactly. But there's nothing wrong with you saying that in a nice way. That's empowering to the marketing.

It's feedback, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah. Cool.

All right, thank you.

That's it. Thank you very. Much.

This episode was brought to you by Disruptive Media, helping bold entrepreneurs stand out.

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This episode was brought to you by Disruptive Media, helping bold entrepreneurs stand out.

Through podcasting, video and social content. Visit disruptive media.co.uk to learn more.