Ryan Shank of PhoneWagon argues that sales works when you treat prospects like actual people, not leads. He texts them personally from his own number, opens by mentioning something shared like where they're from, and tells them straight that he's the founder. Consistency matters too: he drinks Blue Bottle coffee every morning, and that same discipline shapes how he shows up for people.
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What up guys, it's Ryan from PhoneWagon. We are here, day 14 of our morning updates. We have Blue Bottle again, third day in a row, being consistent, that's what is key to success here, and everywhere in life actually. So what I wanna talk about today is being human and also being relatable when you're talking to your customers, okay? And what I mean by that is one, don't go right into a conversation about the issue at hand, and I also don't mean make bullshit small talk either. What I mean is start talking to them like you would talk to anyone else, okay? Talk to them like they're a human being, not like they are just this, you know, customer, this lead that you got in through some channel that you now need to convert into a paying customer and you need to get the credit card. You want to actually engage in conversation which will help develop a relationship with them, so one thing that you can do is you can talk about location or geography and start talking about common areas that you know in the area. Maybe find something that you have in common with that person though and try to relate to them. And what that's going to do, it's going to start to build the relationship. It's going to show that, hey, I'm a human here. I'm not just some random, you know, person on the internet that you found that's going to, you know, perform some type of service. You know, a lot of times this is starting to happen with services that require unskilled labor, right, like Uber drivers. I actually had one the other day and I got a message in the app that it was, the driver was hearing impaired, hearing or, I guess not vision impaired, 'cause that'd be really bad, but hearing impaired, right, so you can't even really talk to them, but the point is like, you know, it's so transactional that you don't need to really interact with that person. You don't wanna become that, right, you ideally wanna have a skill that you're gonna be performing for that customer that does require some type of skill, you know, that you do, and one of the things that you're gonna wanna do though is you're gonna wanna talk to them about it. You're gonna wanna show them that you know exactly what you're doing, that you've done it before, that hey, I'm a person as well, and you're gonna wanna be able to relate to them. So being human, being relatable is very important in sales, but also, you know, in business and in life as well, right? People wanna do business with people they like, and a lot of times, right now, what I'm personally going through is I'm talking to a lot of these leads that I'm getting in from different channels, but I'm developing a relationship. I'm being real with them, I'm laying everything out, I'm being transparent, I'm telling them what we have, I'm telling them, hey, I'm founder of the company, you're going to talk to me. I'm not masking it and pretending like we're this massive company or anything like that. And I think most of them actually appreciate it. Not a lot, I haven't encountered any to be honest, but some people might not like that, they might want to work with a huge company and might want a ton of resources in terms of like people that could answer the phone if there's a call center. I don't know, I haven't come across any of those people to be completely honest, but the point is I'm being very real. I actually had a guy yesterday, really cool guy, he follows Gary Vaynerchuk and that's a random side note. Anyway, he's a lawyer up in Massachusetts and he was telling me, he was like, yeah, I got a text message, 'cause when he signs up I have an automated email that goes out, but then I also send a text message manually right now from leads that are coming in through certain channels because I can't automate that yet. But anyway, he was like, you know, where are you based? And I was like, hey, we're based in New York. And he was like, well, I got a text message, you know, from a 410 number. It kind of seemed automated. I was like, no, that was me. That's from my phone, which is a Maryland number. I'm from originally from Maryland. So I was telling him that, you know, that's, you know, that was me personally and that, hey, I— yeah, I sent you that text message at 10:00 PM last night. It was me. I manually typed it out. Anyway, point is, I was being real, I was being relatable, I was being human. I wasn't trying to be anything else. And a lot of people, you know, they want to do business with people like that. They want to know that, hey, you're— who's the other person on this, the other side of this transaction? Do they know what they're talking about? Yes, they do. Okay, great. And then you can actually, you know, then begin to interact or do transactions with each other and things like that. So that's what I'm thinking about a lot today. It's Thursday. It's kind of cold, but I hope you guys have a great Thursday.
