Never Give Up! How To Close the Deal. Ad Sales Training from Ryan Dohrn

Hey everybody, Ryan Dohrn here from 360 Ad Sales, and we're on to our next step of the Selling Backwards sales process. This is called never-ending follow-up. Alright, so you've prospected correctly, right? You've gotten to the meeting, you've asked a bunch of really great questions. Hopefully you've had an opportunity to present a package deal. You can— something you can sign right on the spot. Now what happens a lot of times though is that an advertiser will ask you for a proposal. Now let's keep in mind, before we leave that meeting, we want to ask them 3 times, 3 times for an opportunity to follow up. Meaning that on location, I'm gonna say, before I even agree to a proposal, okay, I'm gonna say, hey, is it okay if I follow up with you on Thursday? And the answer would be either yes or no. How about Friday? Get them down to a day. Or you could say, would Thursday at 2 or 4 be better for you? Or would Friday at 9 AM or 2 PM be better for you? Before you leave the meeting, I want an opportunity to be able to set a time and a date to review that proposal. Now, you know what happens sometimes, right? You'll get a date to review the proposal, you'll call the person or stop by their office, and they're MIA. They're gone. They're missing in action. And then all of a sudden you hear this. You hear ree ree, ree ree. What's that sound? That's the sound of crickets. Yes, that's the worst sound that you ever want to hear. It's one of these. Oh my gosh! I hate it when I hear silence or crickets. Okay. So what do you do to get these people back on the phone or communicating via email? The first thing you have to remember is this: experts tell us that after a sales meeting. If things even go perfectly, you may have to reach out to somebody 15 to 20 separate times in order to reengage. Now, why is that? What can you do to shorten that? First of all, shortening it will happen if at the meeting you can set a time and then use your Outlook calendar or your Google Calendar to send them reminders. I mean, that would be awesome. What else can you do? Promise that you're going to stop by, or you can let them know you're going to be politely persistent until you get some type of answer. Now, you don't want to give up though. 90% of salespeople— and this is my statistic, okay— 90% of salespeople give up after only 4 attempts. Now, let's just say you might say, oh, Ryan, I contact people every other day until they give me a no or they give me a yes. I find that hard to believe. Most media sales reps That I encounter on a regular basis give up after 4 or 5 attempts. And most of those attempts, let's be honest, guys, I mean, let's be honest with each other, most of those attempts are via what? Email. Most of the time it's via email. So first thing to remember, don't give up. It's gonna take 15 or 20 attempts. Now this is where this comes from. How many times have you actually gotten through to somebody and they've said, oh yeah, Ryan, you know, I was on vacation, or I had this come up, and I'm really sorry, I wasn't trying to ignore you. I just completely— I honestly, I just forgot. Yes, I want to get back to that. It happens a lot, right? So what I find is that most advertisers, as long as in the meeting you've clearly explained the options, you've left them some good collateral. Now, if in that sales meeting all you did was run your yap, that's all you did was talk the whole time, okay, and you didn't leave them good information, you left them your media kit, okay, good, bless your heart on that one, alright? If you didn't leave them good materials that are easy for them to share with their boss or their spouse or their partner or whatever, you got a problem there. So go back in these videos and figure that out. Okay, what you want to remember is you are going to reach out to them 15 to 20 times, so don't give up. All right, now how do you do it without being a pest? Now what I want to share with you is tip number 2, and that is I like to use the theory or philosophy, if you will, of every other day. Now, some of you might say, whoa, Ryan, seriously? Every other day? Isn't that the true definition of being a pest? For me, it's not. Here's the thing to remember. 50% of the time, your voicemail or your email is either going to get deleted, it's not going to be remembered, or it's not even going to get through. See, a lot of times when you are sending information and it arrives on someone's mobile device, they're looking at it and they're like, oh, I'll get back to that, and they delete it. Or they see it on their phone and they never touch it back on their desktop. So what I want to encourage you to do is this: just like you have templates when you're prospecting using our Big 50 Prospecting Plan, you need templates for follow-up. So what I want to do is have 5 to 6— 5 or 6, okay— templates for follow-up. Let's just say as an example, the voicemail message you leave is, hey Bob, Calling to check in on that proposal. Really love to get it signed and get rolling for you. That's the voicemail. It's Ryan from such-and-such magazine. All right, the email is going to be very similar. Keep in mind, in an effort to not be a pest, you want to be polite, you want to be positive. So every voicemail, every email you send, you want to be really positive. Man, I'm really excited to get rolling with you. Love to get that proposal signed and back. Hey John, I'm gonna stop by Thursday at 2 to pick up that proposal. Hey Barbara, I know you loved that proposal when we talked about it on the phone. Love to get that signed. Love to get rolling with you. Okay, remember something like that. Now, if all you do is beat them up about a deadline, I mean, if that's your game, okay, I just have something to tell you. I just don't think that it works. I mean, how many times do you like it? Let's grind on somebody. Do you like it when somebody grinds on you? Well, that's why I don't like to sell off of a deadline. All right, now in some circumstances you can use a deadline to close the deal, and you all have had that happen, right? In some circumstances it works. For me though, it reminds me of buying a car. You know when you go buy a car and they say, all right buddy, sign on the dotted line. You sign right here and we'll get it done. How much do you need that payment to be per month? I just don't play games. I don't like those games. I hate it when people play games with me. Don't you hate that? So to that end, you don't want to be perceived that way. So again, tip number 2, every other day you want to vary your message, but it's voicemail and email, people. A lot of you, you're just so reliant on email. It's all you do, email, email, email. Email's awesome, but it is not the only way to get a sale done, to get a deal done. Alright, okay. Tip number 3, ask yourself this: what is your close process? What's your close process? Everything you do in sales, everything has to have a process. Everything you do has to have a process. Now, I know some of you that are watching are golf fans, and everybody knows I love to give sports examples, okay? The thing about golf that a lot of people don't understand is that That club, that head of the club, when it hits the ball, it can be off by just a minute centimeter, maybe even a millimeter, and that ball is gonna go a different direction. So when I was learning to golf, my golf teacher always said to me, hey, you need to make sure you have a perfect pre-shot routine. Everything you do, from the way you hold your club to the way you line up, everything you do, you need to teach yourself and teach your body to remember. That pre-shot routine. It's about having a process so that way when you step up to the tee, your brain can actually almost disengage and it just takes over. Your brain just boom, it just takes over for you as the club comes back and you hit the ball. It's about having a pre-shot routine, having a process. Same thing applies if you're running in a track relay. You practice the handoff, you have a process. Everything you do in your sales life, guys, you've gotta have a process. So what is your follow-up or your close process? Okay, for me, I'm sharing it with you now. Don't give up. Make sure every other day. Give options, you know, etc., etc. But you need to sit down and figure out, you know, you need a process. You need a process for prospecting. I call it the Big 50. You need a prospect for hosting great sales meetings. The nexus of that is 10 critical questions. Everything we talk about is about having a better sales process, a better sales process. So write it down and figure out what is your close process. Okay, number 4. If everything's going wrong and I've reached out to this person 15, going on 20 times, a lot of times this is my last resort. I like to give people the opportunity to say no. All right, I like to say to them, hey John, You know, I followed up 10 or 12 times with you. I thought you were really excited about this. If this is not the right time for this, just please let me know. I'm happy to work with you in another month, or I'm happy to work with you in a few months. But as a part of my sales process, I like to follow up with folks until I hear back from them. Give them an opportunity to either extend the contract, give them an opportunity to run with you another time. Now, very often sales trainers will say, whoa, Ryan, you never give them an opportunity to say no. Guys, here's something to remember. After 15 or 20 attempts, you've got to look back at your process. And you've got to follow it all the way through the steps and figure out where did this get derailed. Because if you asked good questions on that sales call, if you used strong visuals, If they verbally committed to you, yeah, I really like that and this makes a lot of sense, okay, something else is off. So tip number 4 for you is, you know, if the answer is no, just say so. Maybe it's, you know, a bad time. But if it's the price, give me an opportunity to work with you on that. Now, that leads me to tip number 5, and that is don't negotiate against yourself. So very often you're gonna be on call number 5, so you're following up and you're on your 5th attempt to get a hold of somebody. And you start thinking to yourself, oh man, it must be the price. That's the problem. You start running these scenarios in your mind. It must be the price. So what you begin doing is you start negotiating against yourself. And so you'll call somebody and you'll say, hey Bob, or hey John, maybe it's the price. I pitched you that proposal. I thought you'd really like it. If it's the price, I'm happy to come down 15% or 20% on that. If that would get the deal closed. What I like to say instead is, so I'm not negotiating against myself, hey Bob, let me know where that proposal needs to be price-wise to fit your budget, and I will do my best to work with you on it, instead of throwing out numbers. Let me give you an example of why you don't want to throw out numbers. I recently had my car repaired. I said to the guy, hey, What's that gonna cost? Probably $550, $600? He said, yeah, probably somewhere around there. I went and had the timing belt changed in my car. I went and picked it up, and guess how much the bill was? That's right, right around $550, $600. Well, a friend of mine, we were having breakfast together at the Waffle House, and Waffle House, rock on, by the way. So we're having breakfast together. I said, hey, have you ever had your timing belt changed? She said, oh yeah, I just did that in my wife's Honda. He said, it really wasn't that expensive, about $300. I went, $300? Really? It cost me $550. He said, oh no, I've had it done 3 times for around $300. See, I walked in and I threw a price out and negotiated myself right into a bad deal. Alright? So remember, tip number 5, don't negotiate against yourself. But if you feel that price might be a consideration, give them another way to look at it. Hey, John, I sent that proposal to you. Maybe there's something about the price that you don't like. If that's the issue, you know, kick me back an email or give me a call. Let me know where that price needs to be to meet your budget, and I'll see what I can do. I'll go talk to the boss about it. I'll see what I can do. All right, the last for you, last, uh, number 6 for you in never-ending follow-up is you've got to be bold. But you don't need to be brash. Okay, brash. Be bold, but don't be brash. You know, there's a lot of sales techniques out there and a lot of sales training programs. Not many of them like mine are dedicated to ad sales, but a lot of them will say you need to call somebody and say, listen, you know, I'm gonna lose my job if you don't call me back. Honk. Don't like that one. Hey, you know this, I've been calling you 6 or 8 times. I think it's a little bit rude that you haven't called me back. Honk. Don't like that. Anything that involves you throwing some attitude out there or going negative with a customer is the fastest way for you to get honked. And then all of a sudden, how much sales are you making? That not only is zero, but a double zero, because you come across as a typical salesperson that has a big old ego and is very brash. You know, you don't want to come across that way. For me, I do want to be bold But I always want to be positive. So as you structure your templates, be bold and remember something: it's your job to close the deal. It is not your advertiser's job to close the deal for you. It's your job to close the deal. All right, as we continue to move forward in that process, those are the 6 steps that I would focus on. Number one, don't give up. 15 to 20 different contacts after you've pitched over that proposal. Again, At the meeting, try to set a time to review the proposal in advance before you have it done. Tip number two: Every other day, I mean, be calling and emailing. Don't just rely on email people. Oh, kills me! Why do you do that? Voicemail and email. Tip number three: What is your process? Do you have a written process? If you don't know what your close process is, send me an email. Get your sales manager on the phone. Talk to a veteran sales rep. Number 4, if no, say so. Give the prospect, after 15 attempts, give them an opportunity to be out. Maybe the timing is just wrong. You want to leave that in a very positive way. Number 6, do not negotiate against yourself. Don't assume that it's always price. Sometimes it's timing. Sometimes there's something personal going on with the person. Maybe they're going out of business and they just don't want to tell you. Number 6, be bold, but don't be brash. Don't use any of those silly little tricks that some sales trainers teach. I just find that you're going to basically, as my grandmother used to say, you're going to get more bees with honey than you are with vinegar. So just remember that. All right, let's keep rolling forward. Next step in the Selling Backwards process. We'll see you on the next video. Bye.