6 Sales Tips to Prospect, Sell and Retain More Clients

What's going on, friends and fans? Welcome to the new Ryan Dohrn Business Show. Mr. Revenue here, your billion-dollar sales coach, and we've got a new show format for all of you. So it's going to be a lot faster paced, and we're going to be moving up to weekly updates, friends, on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, wherever you connect with us online. So get set, friends. New format, new fast pace. Here we go. All right, friends, here comes your quick sales tip of the week. Friends, I say to folks all the time, if you're not using delayed delivery and send later 30, 40 times a day, you need to be asking yourself this question: are you emailing at times that are good for you or at times that are great for your clients? Think about this. Maybe you're in a business where you're having to sell services to contractors or people that are out in the field all day, and you're a salesperson that sits in the office. Well, you got to be asking yourself, what's the best time to potentially reach that business owner? Is it first thing in the morning? Is it at lunchtime? Is it after 6 o'clock at night? You do you, and you need to figure that out. But once you do, from a sales strategy perspective, you want to use delayed delivery or send later to write your emails at a time that's good for you, but have them hit the customer at a time that's good For them. Now, in order to do that, you're going to need to know a little bit about the business. My dad is a contractor. I know that you don't want to email him at noon. That's his one time to sit down and get a little break. But I do know from his business and the way that his day kind of rolls, probably you're going to be more than likely going to get a reply to an email, say, at 6 or 7 o'clock at night. Oh, Ryan, that's people's dinner time. I, I don't necessarily care whether it's dinner or not. I want to hit their inbox at a time that I think the chances of them replying are gonna be higher. So if you don't like that, it doesn't work for you, maybe it's 8 o'clock at night, maybe it's 6 o'clock in the morning. Like for example, doctors, dentists, if you happen to sell to them, that's like 5:00 AM or 9:00 PM depending on the type of dentist or doctor that they are. So you've gotta be asking yourself, friends, am I sending email at times that are good for me or times that are good for my client? From a sales strategy perspective, you should always have emails hit your customers At times that are good for them. Now, if you don't know that what time is good for them, watch when they reply or just analyze their business a little bit or go into ChatGPT and say, hey, here's the type of business, here's where they're located. Tell me about their day. What does a typical day for them look like? What's a great day for me to potentially reach out to them and what's the best time to send them emails? And even good old ChatGPT will help you out as well. All right, friends, that is your quick sales tip of the week. All right, friends, now it's time for your prospecting tip of the week. All right, when I'm prospecting, friends, one of the first things that I'd like to do when a lead comes in from the website is I like to record people a video and send it back. Now, the tool that I use to do that is Loom, L-O-O-M. So if you're not following that, that's Lima Oscar Oscar Mike, Loom. And Loom is a web-based application. It's a Chrome extension. And when a lead comes into me, I immediately pop up Loom and I say something like, hey, my name is Ryan Dohrn. Thanks for submitting a lead through our website. I wanted you to be able to put a face with a name. I'm very excited to share with you what we're doing to help other customers of ours be crazy successful. So when we have an opportunity to meet, hopefully pretty soon, I'm gonna give you some case studies and examples of businesses similar to you that have had some really great success with us. If there's something specific you need, Please drop me an email back. Here's my phone number, 800-867-5309. If you'd like to text me and set up a meeting, love to do that. But in the email I sent is my calendar link. I'd love for you to jump on my calendar at a time that's convenient for you. I look forward to working together with you. Then I send the email, include it, include it inside of the email that I send. And I find that I love it because I can track and see when they open up that video. Here's what's interesting, friends, from a prospecting perspective. What are you gonna do differently today than everybody else, all of your competitors? What are you gonna do that's different? Whether it's an agency or it's a private company, whatever you're gonna do, you need to be doing things that are different than everybody else. And that's why I love to use video as a part of my prospecting process. All right, friends, let's move on to your sales technology tip. Of the week. You know, it's a dead giveaway when you're using AI if you send an email to somebody that includes those long em dashes. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like, ChatGPT is notorious for this. It'll polish up an email for you, and then they'll send the email to you, and, and it's got like a long dash in it. That technically is called an em dash, E-M, like an em dash. Well, that's a dead giveaway you're using AI because AI does that All of the time, and most humans don't. So there's a couple of things you might consider doing. One is when you're asking for a reply, use the cheat code forward slash human, forward slash human, human. Use that cheat code, and you're going to put that before your request. So you do forward slash human, okay, in the prompt box on any AI tool, and then you're going to say polish up this email for me. Colon, insert the email text, and the reply it's going to give you, friends, is going to sound more human, or it should. Now, if you don't like those long dashes— I definitely don't— you want to use the phrase in the, in the new chat box: when you do work for me, please do not use an em dash. Hyphens are fine, but em dashes, definitely don't want you to do that. Please remember that for the future. And what you're going to find is that the bot will remember that. Now, if you move from ChatGPT over to Claude or you add Claude on to your AI toolset, just don't forget that you're gonna need to take your data and that information from ChatGPT and either import it into Claude or make sure the rules that you define, and we'll talk about those in other shows, the rules you define for ChatGPT or Claude, make sure you copy and paste those rules in as well. All right, now it's time for your retention idea of the week. Friends, I just came across this, didn't know that it existed— starbucksb2b.com. So this is a website where you can go and order customized Starbucks cards that you can send to your customers. As most of you know, I try to be a retention machine. Never forget, friends, that customer service is expected. Retention are the things you do beyond customer service to keep your clients for a lifetime. So I'd love for you to check it out, StarbucksB2B.com. I'm not gonna necessarily get paid or something for it, but I really want you to always be exploring new ideas. So here's what I would do. I would write a custom note. You can send the Starbucks cards electronically to people. They tend to really like that. You can also get hard copy, hard printed ones if you wanted to hand them out at a trade show Show or something like that. Now, if you're like me, I've got the Starbucks app on my phone. I like to get them electronically. I just add them in to my app. But you might want to check out StarbucksB2B.com. And if anybody from Starbucks watches or listens to the show, love to have you as a sponsor of the show as well. It's very affordable, I promise. All right. Now let's move on to your favorite part of the program, and that is your listener questions of the week. So send those in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. All right, so here's one we grabbed from the grab bag. David from Oakland, and I'm guessing it's probably Oakland, California, is what I'm guessing. All right, David says, hey Ryan, I hate my CRM. It is a waste of my time. Why do so many sales organizations, they rely upon their CRM? Why is this such a big deal? David, I think— well, so first of all, the big thing, David, is that typically, professional salespeople are going to use a CRM to just help them to remember the things that they did yesterday or the things that they have coming up. For those of you that don't know what a CRM is, that's a customer relationship management tool. And every industry tends to have ones that tend to stand out from everybody else. As a lot of you know, I do a bunch of work in the media business. So some of the CRMs out there would be, for example, MediaOS, Magazine Manager, AdOrbit, Workbooks. They all work inside of the media space. Now there's some ones that are more generic, if you will, and are bigger, like Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce, things like that. But David, I'm sensing the negativity and your hatred in the email that you sent, and it's no problem. I understand what's happened here, David, is that someone has not helped you find value in using your CRM. You see it as not being valuable. So let me share with you 2 or 3 ideas that you might use to make your CRM a lot more valuable to you. What I like to do is I like to use my CRM as either a starting point or a way for me to guide my day. I use my CRM really as a time management tool. So I'm going to go into my CRM, and any competent CRM like the ones I just mentioned, any of them will do this. I want to create lists in my CRM. So on Monday, I'm working a particular list. On Tuesday, I'm working a particular list. I use the CRM to help me really maintain focus. Now, with my CRM and many that are out there, not all of them, but many, they have marketing built into the CRM. Just recognize, friends, that for me, I want a very smooth, easy CRM to use. Sometimes that's hard to find, so I need to get more training. So if you feel like your CRM is hard to use, David, just get more training on it, whether you're using help videos or whatever. But I also like to use the CRM to drive my marketing efforts. So I'm gonna say, hey, I need to send an email every 3 business days to this particular list inside the CRM, and I set up that sales automation. And that's super valuable to me, David. So what I'd be looking for is what are things, David, that you find valuable in your sales life, and then get yourself trained or find the right CRM or whatever the circumstance is. Find that to be able to help you really guide your sales day. David, I use a CRM. I'm pretty good at this, and almost every superstar I know out there uses their CRM in one way or another to be successful. Now, I need to admit to everybody, David included, do I have some Google Sheets floating around out there to keep myself organized as well? And the answer is yes. But if my CRM went away, which I'm sure that it won't, but if it went away, I'd kind of be in a tough situation because I include my forecasting in that. I keep all my notes inside of it. I mean, it is really is my partner in sales crime. So I'd encourage you, David, probably what you need is to get more training. And probably what you need to do is maybe, David, no offense, have a little change in attitude, get excited about it, and find some value inside of your CRM. All right, keep your listeners' questions coming to ryan@ryandohrn.com. If we don't list them, list them and answer them back here on the show, more than likely we're going to send you an email reply as well. If we didn't get— if you didn't get an answer, I didn't receive the question, so make sure you resend if you've already sent That one in. All right, friends, last but definitely not least on the show is one of my favorite segments that we like to call Brain Work Tip of the Week. As a lot of you know, mental health is something that's a personal passion of mine. Why is that? Because, friends, I see so many salespeople that are stressed out to a point where they want to quit their job and do something else. Don't quit your job. Find a job that you really enjoy. Sales is wonderful. But also just recognize you do need to do some things, have some techniques to make sure that your brain doesn't get too burned out. One of my favorite techniques that a lot of you have heard me talk about before is the Pomodoro technique. So go on YouTube and find some videos on the Pomodoro technique. My understanding is it was invented by a stressed-out MIT student, uh, there in Cambridge, Mass. And that person was really struggling to stay focused. So the Pomodoro Technique is work on a task for 25 minutes, then come off of that task for 5 minutes, and then work your next task for 25 minutes, and then take a break for 5 minutes, and keep repeating yourself 4 times, and then take a 30-minute break. One of the secrets though, friends, is say I prospect for 20 minutes and take a 5-minute break. I have to come off of task, like I have to leave my computer and go do something else. If you just change tasks, you're not giving your brain enough time to potentially catch up on that. So you want to be thinking about the Pomodoro technique and what can I do to stop my brain from burning out so fast. And that is actually coming off task. Now, a lot of you are like me, you work remote. And so what you can do for that 5 minutes is go outside and walk the dog. I mean, don't be gone for an hour. I'm not saying you should take a jog and be gone for 30 minutes, but get up from your desk, go refill your coffee, switch from coffee to some, some good matcha tea or something like that. Go and find yourself something to go grab some sunshine for a minute or go outside for some, for some fresh air. But friends, I think from a brain perspective, you're always going to be A lot more successful, friends, if your brain is firing on all cylinders. All right, friends, so that's our new format. Every single week we do a quick sales tip, a prospecting tip, we're gonna do some sales tech. I'm gonna give you some retention ideas, answer a listener question, then give you, uh, from my perspective, some brain work, some mental health advice. So if you would, down in the comments, let me know if you like this new fast and furious format, because we're going to always be making changes. You asked for it, and so we are delivering back what you asked. Friends, as I always say, sales, friends, if it was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy, friends. This is a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. Hey friends, I speak 40 to 60 times a year at sales meetings just like all of you have. Love to have you invite me into your annual sales meeting or to your training conference. Love to work with you and your sales team. You can always learn more over at ryandohrn.com. All right, friends, Mr. Revenue signing off, and we'll see you next week. Bye.