In this Q&A video, sales coach Ryan Dohrn answers a listener question from June in Fairbanks about how to prepare for the upcoming fall selling and budget season, which typically starts in October. Ryan emphasizes the importance of warming up prospects well before the buying window by using non‑sales touchpoints such as videos, white papers, case studies, testimonials, and appropriate humor. He advocates a referral‑centric approach—regularly sending business referrals to clients to earn reciprocal business. Ryan also recommends sharing market research, competitor spend analyses, and year‑end impact reports to demonstrate value without a hard sell. Throughout, he stresses adopting a “helper” mindset, making roughly 40 % of outreach purely value‑focused, asking how he can help rather than pushing a sale. The overall message is to be visible, helpful, and informative early, so when the selling season arrives the salesperson is not perceived as merely asking for money.
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What's going on, friends and fans? Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach. We're answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. Keep those questions coming. All right, here comes our next question. This is from June in Fairbanks, all the way in Alaska. I've been to Alaska. By the way, friends, if you've not been to Alaska, put it on your bucket list. All right, June from Fairbanks, question. Ryan, I'm trying to get prepared for selling season and budget season, which in my world typically is gonna begin in October. What are some things that you do to prepare for selling season? All right, June from Fairbanks. So for me, I'm preparing way before that. So what you might consider is, what are your warm-up strategies to get your name, your company, your information in front of people well before the period of time that they'll consider it? So I'm going to be working in August so that I'm prepared in September, October, November, or I'm gonna be working in September to make sure I'm well prepared for October, November, December. Now, typically what I find is that most people, by the time you get to Thanksgiving, they've typically got their mind made up. Now, don't send a bunch of hate mail or leave comments on YouTube or whatever about that, friends, okay? To each his own. What I have found is that most of the time, once you get to Thanksgiving, after that, it's kind of signing on the dotted line season. And my presentation volume goes dramatically low. All right, warming up customers. What does that mean? It means non-sales touchpoints. So what are you doing? What can you share? What video clips, white papers, case studies, testimonials, information, things that are funny— of course appropriate funny things that you can share in a non-sales way to warm up those customers so that when it comes time for selling season, you're not seen as somebody with their hand out. Now, one of the fastest ways to do that is to refer business. So all throughout the year, I'm looking for every opportunity possible to refer as much business to my customers as I can, because typically if you refer business, they reward you back with business. Now, sometimes you'll have research, market research, you could send to your customers. Now, if you've got current clients you're trying to renew and you're in the media business, like I do a lot of work in the media sales and digital sales business, I'm going to do year-end marketing impact reports and things along those lines to show what we did for that customer throughout the year. But remember, friends, if every time a client or prospect hears from you, you're in sales mode, you're seen as a salesperson. And salespeople have their hand out and are taking money, and there's another group of people that takes money. They're called robbers, okay? Criminals. We don't, we don't want to come across that way. I'm very proud to say that one of my goals is to be a helper, so I try to help more than I sell. Now granted, feed my family from selling, of course, so, but I want to be helpful more than I'm always selling. So I would suggest to you as As crazy as this may sound, about 40-some percent of my outreaches have nothing to do with sales. I mean, they have everything to do with sales, but they have nothing to do with sales. I'm trying to help. Like, when I reach out to somebody, I don't say, hey Bill, checking in on you. It's like, hey Bill, how can I help? Hey Bonnie, how can I help? Hey Sally, what type of referrals are you looking for? You know, hey Diane, what can I do to help your business grow? I'm always looking to be helpful. to folks. So when you think about this, June, what can you do? You got to warm these people up, give them non-sales information, so when you— it's time to sell them, you're not just seen as somebody with your, with your hand out. Now, I also do a lot of research, market research, do market share comparisons, spending volumes of their competitors, and those kind of things as well. So June from Fairbanks, thank you so much for your question. And keep those questions coming to ryan@ryandohrn.com. Friends, never forget, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. Well, maybe we're a little crazy. This is a great career, friends. It's gonna feed your family for a lifetime. Get out there and sell some more and make us all proud. We'll see you next week. Bye.
