Selling Value to Price Fixated Clients

What is going on, friends and fans? Billion Dollar Sales Coach Ryan Dohrn here, and welcome to this week's edition of the Mr. Revenue Show. I sure appreciate all your love and support you're showing every week by supporting this program and so many others. All right, let's get started with your sales quick tip of the week. One of the things that I always am coaching on is helping people understand how to really sell value when we live in a very price-focused world. Focused world. Everything is about the price. And so it's hard sometimes to get more money from people when the product or service that you're selling is actually a little bit more expensive. So value selling, friends, is something that all of us that are serious sellers need to get very, very good at. Alright, there's 3 main things that I like to focus on when I'm value selling. The first is understanding the difference between a benefit and a feature. Now, some of you over the course of time have probably heard about FAB selling. F-A-B. Features, advantages, and benefits. Absolutely nothing wrong with that training or that thought process. But what I like to do is just a little bit different. I want to make sure that I vividly understand the feature and then I want to vividly understand the benefit that comes from the feature. Now, when you think about the benefit, the first thing you've got to think about is Hey, what is the benefit to the person that's buying? What is the biggest benefit that we can potentially find or claim or maybe like a pain point that we're solving? Because the feature is the feature, that's fine. The benefit is what someone's going to get from it. The benefit is the value. Never forget, price is what they pay, value is what they're going to get. So the first thing is get vividly clear between the feature and the benefit, but make sure the benefit is actually solving an assumed problem or a problem that you've seen in the marketplace. All right, the second is the bridge statement. So there's a bridge statement between a feature and a benefit. The bridge statement is in the middle and it links the two of them together. The bridge statement would be statements like, what this means to your business is Or how this impacts you personally is, or how this might impact your business is, or the value you might receive from this feature is— things along those lines. Those are referred to, friends, as bridge statements. So let me give you a very, very simplistic example. If I just said to you, this washing machine has spin cycle, Well, that's kind of a flat sale. A great salesperson would say, this washing machine has spin cycle. Then you bridge. What that means to your family is— then you give the value. Less drying time, less shrinkage, lower power bills. So the spin cycle is the feature. How this impacts your business or your family is the bridge. Then the value statement is what's the greatest thing they could potentially get or the greatest value they're gonna get from purchasing that product with that feature. Now the third thing in value selling, you're not gonna like it at all, I promise, and that is you need to practice. So what you wanna do is on a piece of paper, turn it sideways, landscape, put all your features on the left, write your bridge statements in the middle, And then put the value benefit analysis or benefits on the right. And then what you want to do is practice giving the feature, the bridge, and the value benefit. Record yourself just like I'm doing now. Record yourself, listen to it back, and get really good on practicing that. Now another little side note before we move on to our next section of the show is you also want to make sure besides practice that friends you really understand. The value-benefit paradigm for your customers. So whether you're going to ChatGPT and asking about benefits, whether you're going to ChatGPT and saying, what are the greatest struggles for this industry? You could even ask ChatGPT, hey, what could the biggest struggles be for a company like this? Now just remember now, chat— I didn't mean to wave my finger at you. ChatGPT can sometimes make errors. It makes a lot. So you do want to double-check and make sure you're not making too great of assumptions. Friends, we are living in a price-fixated world. We just are. So it's tougher to sell products that are more expensive, especially if we're not great at selling value. Never forget, price is what they pay, value is what they're gonna get. Alright friends, here comes your prospecting quick tip of the week. Now prospecting is one of those things that most of us in the sales business don't necessarily consider to be an awesome lot of fun. And everyone's looking to work smarter and not harder. Everyone's looking for a silver bullet, what they can do to shortcut the sales process. And friends, I'm just here to tell you that sales is hard work. That's why I always end all of my podcasts and video shows with the statement, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it. And they're not. We're the crazy ones. We're the chosen few. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. Because friends, prospecting is work. So what you want to consider is what is your prospecting pattern of persistence? What does your polite pattern of persistence actually look like in the sales business? Now, if you are prospecting and reaching out every day to somebody, I'm sure some would applaud you and say, yes, that's what we need, more hunters like you. Well, just keep in mind, even a good hunter in the woods isn't going to go charging through the woods and scare all the animals away, right? Right? So consider, what do hunters do to be very strategic in the process? What they do is they recognize they need good patterns, but they also need patterns of persistence. But I like to add a little polite in there— patterns of polite persistence. All right, let's say you reach out every 2 business days. Well, okay, that's showing a pattern of persistence, but I like to reach out every 3 business days, and there's really a secret behind it. Because we've got 5 business days in a week, we're reaching out every 3 business days. If you do that successfully over 3 or 4 weeks, business days, every 3 business days, you're not gonna end up on the same day because of the mathematics of 3, every 3 days on a 5-day workweek. So it's gonna take you basically 4 to 5 weeks to end up back on the same day. I just was working with a great client, his name is Tom, he's awesome, newer to sales, doing a really great job. And what we did is we actually broke his prospects into several groups so he could really focus, like Monday Group A, Tuesday Group B, Wednesday Group C. Then when he gets on Thursday, he's gonna be re-reaching out to Group A, and then he's also got another group that afternoon. So being organized is never fun for folks, but just recognize, friends, that your patterns of polite persistence, they are what are gonna separate you from everybody else out there in sales land that quite honestly is just being weak. Just being shy. Quite honestly, just being a little chicken out there. Let's not be sales wimps out there. Let's not be brash, but let's be bold. All right, friends, here comes your sales tech tip of the week. Now, you probably already heard me mention ChatGPT in this video. Whatever the large language model is that you love to use, some of you are using Perplexity. Some of you are forced to use Copilot. Nothing wrong with that. Some of you are using Autopilot. So many different AIs out there. But as you've heard since you're probably a kid, computers are a garbage in, garbage out scenario. And so that's why when I'm working with AI, I'm working with a purpose and a set of rules and a set of instructions. Now, let me just be clear. You really can't shortcut ChatGPT and say, give me the rules that I'm going to give back to you. What you need to do is think about— all right, so let's give me— let me give you a scenario. You're going to research 10 companies to see if they're a good fit for your product or your service. Rather than saying, here's the 10 companies that I want to research, GPT, give it back to me. What I want to do is I include a set of instructions. So I upload and say— so what I might do is start a new project, call it my prospecting project, so I don't have to do this every time, right? Then load your rules into that project. For example, I want you to bring back this research in a columned format. I want 8 columns across the top. I want it to be first name, last name, company name, job title, maybe what they're good at, what they're bad at, who their competitors are, what— however you want those columns laid out. And then let it know the end result I'd like is a CSV or an Excel file, an XLSX file. Let them know how you want that. And then you also want to give rules to the bot of things like this. If you can't find the email address, don't make it up. Just mark it as not verified. Give me the email address, mark it as not verified. You can also set a rule that says in one of the columns, if you find their email address, give me your probability that that email address is actually accurate. See, one of the things that— well, there's a couple bad things that people do with AI. One is that you use ChatGPT as a search engine. Okay, there's already a bunch of good search engines out there. Use AI to help you be more productive, help you prospect better, improve your processes, and so much more. But without rules, like your kids, without rules, they live based on what the world's rules are. And is that really the rules that you want AI to follow? So your sales tech tip of the month is create structure and rules that you want AI to follow, and you're almost always, friends, gonna get much, better results. All right, friends, here comes your retention idea of the week. Now, I think we all know that it takes 5 times the effort and 5 times the energy to get a brand new customer. So what are we thinking when we're constantly always focused on new business development? Now, you didn't hear me say don't focus on new business development. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is we've got to really ask ourselves, what do we do to retain customers for a lifetime? Now, one of the things that I love to do is I use my phone, I turn it in a vertical format, and I record quick videos and send them to my customers. Just as an example, I might say, hey Bob, I am so happy to have you as a customer. What can I do this week to make your life even better? I am here to be helpful to you. Thank you so much for your business. You don't even need to reply. I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about you. And then you send that email. So what I did is I bought a little stand that you can put on the desk that holds my iPhone, and then I put my iPhone there, and then I can go and just, you know, talk right to it. So I find, friends, that if you can create retention strategies that people really like, things that are personal in nature, you're always gonna get further faster with customers. I received from one of my friends— her name is Charity, she's an awesome business person out in Denver— She sent me a text, she said, hey, just thinking about you today and thought I would reach out. Do you have any idea how meaningful that is? That is awesome, because she's great at maintaining those relationships and retaining customers for life. Do you time block for retention? Do you budget for retention? Remember friends, something that separates the good from the great is the understanding of what it takes to retain customers for a lifetime. Customer service, friends, that's expected. Retention are the things you do above and beyond customer service to keep those customers for a lifetime. All right, now my favorite part of the show each and every week is answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. And if we don't answer you back via email, send you a video, feature you here on one of the podcasts or TV shows, We did not receive your email. I take great pride in all the emails that come to ryan@ryandorn.com. All right, next question comes here from David from Kentucky. Hey, David. David asks, why does it feel like people are not reading their emails anymore? I send plenty of emails. I'm getting the lowest reply rate of my entire career. So, David, let's just go back to the question that you asked. Why does it feel like people are not reading emails because quite honestly, friend, I believe they are not paying attention to emails. So we've got to dissect our email life and ask ourselves what is it that we are doing as salespeople that are not getting those replies because the replies are getting less because everybody's turned to email and it's not like it's a brand new thing, right, David? We know this. All right, the first place to start is what subject lines are you using? Are you using subject lines that are intriguing? Are you using subject lines that are ethical? Are you using brain loops to your advantage? So remember from previous training, previous shows and videos, brain loops are when you as a human hear or see something and then your brain wants to naturally close that loop. An example of that would be a subject line that says, Do you agree with this? Okay, do I agree with what? I have to open the email to figure out what it is that you're saying. Now, you could use a subject line, your thoughts on this. My thoughts on what? You have to open the email to see what they need your thoughts on. Now, a lot of you that are watching or listening, you might say, oh, Ryan, that is so salesy. Everyone's going to see right through that. But they don't. My experience is that most people don't see it as being salesy, and if they do, it's okay. They know what it is that you're trying to do. You're trying to get them to open that email. Subject line variations and tries are not about what you like. It's about is it ethical and does it work? And if you think either of those subject lines were unethical, I kind of wonder what you're doing in sales because it's not. I would never ask you to do something unethical. So you've got to be asking yourself first, what does that subject line do? Does it complete a brain loop and cause somebody to open the email? The second thing is this: maybe they did open your email, but they didn't find value in replying to it. You've got to be asking yourself this question. It's very simple: why would they reply? Read the email and then ask yourself, why would they reply to this? Because if you're asking a generic question about a generic meeting, something that's of no value to them, It's highly likely that they would not necessarily reply to the email. So ask yourself that question, David. Look at the subject lines. But you are accurate. People are not replying as much. It's a darn shame. But I think we're going to have to probably get back to friends burning those phone lines up because guess what? People are just not paying attention to their email. So David, good luck out there. Keep your questions coming, friend, to Ryan at RyanDohrn.com. I appreciate them all. All right, last section of the show, one of my favorite parts, all about psychology. Here comes your brain quick tip of the week. Now we do this brain work section because I love psychology and I know that I'm always teetering on the borderline, friends, of kind of getting, you know, just a little bit burnt out. So what I always want to do is I want to be setting up my day for success. And so what I mean by that is I wanna be looking at my calendar and I wanna be asking myself, what can I do to set myself up for success today? Now this is gonna sound crazy, but do you actually plan to take breaks? See, we schedule in all the crap we need to get done throughout the day, but do we actually schedule in time for us to get things done? Now you might be surprised to know if you're a client of mine, you can't access my calendar. At 10:30 in the morning. You can't access it at 12 o'clock at noon. You can't access it at 3:30 in the afternoon. Why is that? Because I set aside 30 to 60-minute blocks for me. That's my time to either take a break or get caught up on other things. When you're thinking about setting up your day for success, you need to be asking yourself, what are the things that will derail my day? What can I do to either avoid those things or program around those things? Think of your day as one giant event that you're going to attend. If you're going to some type of conference or a networking event or a business conference, something like that, they're going to schedule or program in breaks throughout the day. Why do they do that? Because they know you need a break, okay? You need to let your brain rest a little bit. So when you think about brain work in this section, which I love, I keep saying I love this section, you gotta be asking yourself, what am I doing to control my day? What am I doing to program in time for me throughout the day? Because no one is gonna care, friends, about your time management schedule as much as you're gonna be concerned about it or care about it. And if you're gonna make big changes, friends, I'd encourage you to meet with your boss, your supervisor, whoever, and tell them exactly what it is. that you are trying to accomplish. All right, friends, that is our show for the week. We sure appreciate all of you joining us each and every week. Get down in those comments below. Hey, maybe you disagree with Uncle Ryan here. I don't care. I would love to chat with you down below. If you got comments or questions, feed them across and we'll make sure that we get them answered as well. Hey, friends, my calendar is filling up, but I still have time to come to your national sales meeting, come to your office, to train your teams up. My coaching schedule's pretty full, but I still have a little bit of time to hit the road here as we get towards this fall and get your teams all pumped up for this resale renewal season that's coming up here pretty soon. All right, God bless you. Get out there and sell something. Make us all proud. Never forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. I used to say that a lot. We're just the chosen few. This is a great career, friends. It'll feed your family for life. for a lifetime. Reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com and we'll get you all taken care of. See you next week.