Superstar Sellers Do These 3 Things, Sales training with Ryan Dohrn

Live from the Braintree Media Studios, this is the Ryan Dohrn Business Show. Welcome friends and fans to another edition of the show. This month we're gonna be focusing in on 2 listener questions, one sent from Rich in Toronto, one from Deb in Boston. Rich wants me to really dig in on the times that I'm sending emails to brand new clients, and he's very specific about that. And then Deb in Boston, she really was getting ghosted a lot and trying to figure out what are some strategies she could deploy in an effort to not get ghosted as much. And then our main topic is really about your sales plan. What are the 3 components that most serious sellers have as a part of their daily sales life to help them close more business now than ever before? All that's coming up next here, friends, on this month's edition of the program. Stick around, stay close, here we go. Hey friends and fans, welcome to another edition of the show. I sure appreciate you being here and showing me so much love and support, and really thankful 'cause so many of you reach out to me and say, hey Ryan, the show, the videos, the podcast, everything's so helpful. And I sure do appreciate that as well. All right, if you like what we're doing, give us a thumbs up, be sure to subscribe to the channel, and let all the algorithms out there know how we're doing to help all of you. All right, as promised here in the promo before the show, we're gonna focus in on sales planning. And what does your sales plan actually look like? I have a really fortunate opportunity to work with 80, 90 different sellers a month as we're coaching them on their performance to be crazy successful. And I noticed that all of them tend to have 3 to 5 things in common. Let's focus in what I like to call the big 3 things that they do. All right, the first thing is seriously successful salespeople, they have a schedule for their day. And the important tasks of that day are time blocked so they don't forget to do them, and it creates areas of a very big focus for them in their given day. All right, so some of those things might be prospecting, might be retaining customers, might be making sure their CRM is updated. These are very important tasks, so they actually make time blocks for those tasks. Now you might be asking yourself, well, when should these time blocks be? What would these time blocks look like, and how do I make them work every single day? Well, you may not need a time block for every task every day. Now, for me, prospecting is so important. I have 2 time blocks a day for 45 minutes at 11:15 and 3:15. That's when I'm really spending a lot of time on my outbound prospecting. Now, what's important though is that when that time block pops up, you've gotta respect that time block and you've got to get to work on that activity. If every time a time block pops up, you're like, oh gosh, I don't have time for that right now, then it probably is not at a good time for you, or you're kind of disrespecting yourself. You've said to yourself, hey, this task is important enough that I'm gonna put it on my calendar every day. You need to respect the time block and you need to train those around you that when that time block is occurring, this is really important and you wanna really focus in on it. All right, so the first thing you wanna consider is what can you do to schedule your day and time block your day? All right, the second thing that I've observed of serious sellers is that they've gotten rid of their written to-do list and they use a task app to keep up with all of their tasks. Now I'm a G Suite kind of guy, so I've got the Google Tasks app on my phone. I add tasks to the app, which then puts it alongside of my email in my inbox. So in G Suite, I've got my inbox and then I've got my tasks right next to it. I no longer keep a written to-do list because that written to-do list, it doesn't buzz, it doesn't whirl, it doesn't chime, and my phone goes with me everywhere. To the beach, to the bus, to the bathroom, to the bar, to the bedroom. I mean, everywhere your phone goes with you. And so that task app is important. So there is one called To Do, and that is in the Microsoft suite if you're using a Microsoft type thing. And then I've got Google Tasks for those that are in the G Suite world. So the first thing is time blocking. The second thing is using a task app to prioritize your day. If your inbox is prioritizing your day, friends, guess what? You're never gonna get as much done as somebody that uses a task app to prioritize their day, and then they use time blocks to really get things done. Okay, the third thing is retention planning and understanding, hey, retention is more important than prospecting, yet we spend a lot of time on prospecting for new business. All right, we know the math works to our advantage. You are 60 to 70% more likely to re-sign somebody that's already run with you in the past if you've done a great job of keeping them happy. So what do happy customers look like? Normally for me, I don't reach out at Christmas time. There's nothing wrong with Christmas, I love Christmas, but everyone does Christmas. If you wait until Christmas, I'm gonna have out-retained you. Whether you're selling software or insurance or marketing solution services like me, I'm always reaching out and referring clients to people, remembering birthdays, remembering things that we have in common. I just was talking with one of my favorite clients today who's a big college football fan just like me. And so I always remember when things happen as it relates to college football, I reach out. But it's not just sports. I've got people where I have connections through automotive racing. Through aviation, through my wife's love of horses and our involvement in the horse business, the fact that I've been to Disney who knows how many times, the fact that we travel to the Bahamas. I mean, all kinds of different things that we do on a regular basis. Those are connection points from a retention perspective. Now, also math to your advantage is when we retain people well, those people have a tendency to spend a lot more money with us in renewals But also in additional products. Current clients are way more likely to try new things, especially if we've done a great job of retaining them. So if I asked you, send me a copy of your sales plan, your personal sales plan, what would you send me? Is it a document that you could send? Well, if you reached out to me and said, hey, send me a copy of your sales plan, I will be able to do it for you because I spend time each year putting together, and I revise it each month, my sales plan and my sales math. Now I'm not trying to say, oh, Ryan's better than everybody else. That's, that's not the point. If you know me well, you know that my goal is simple: to help you take your sales life to places that you only dreamed possible. The way to get there is to have a plan. I don't know who said it, but maybe it was Zig Ziglar or somebody like that: any plan is better than no plan. Would you agree with that? And so every day I have a plan that I follow. The days where I'm crazy successful, I follow the plan. The end of the days where I'm like, boy oh boy, I need a drink. Why is that? It's because I've had crazy, crazy days that have been derailed really, really easily. So sales planning, having time blocks, making sure you use a task app, and retaining customers like crazy. My serious sellers do those. 3 things, and then underneath of those 3 things, they've got all kinds of mini goals as well. I would suggest to you, friends, that you need a sales plan. If you don't have a sales plan, you need to get one in place, and you need to put some time aside to think about it. I try to set a little vacation time aside each year to create my sales plan. I usually don't wait till the end of the year. I try to do that around the Thanksgiving holiday, as I'm kind of done eating turkey and sitting around. I try to come up with these ideas that help me guide myself throughout the remainder of the year and going into the next year. Friends, never forget, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. I used to say we're crazy. We're not crazy, friends. This is a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. Just make sure you plan for your success. I hope that's helpful. Get out there and sell something. All right, after we take a quick break, we're coming back. with listener questions from Rich and from Deb. We're gonna focus in on what can you do to avoid being ghosted, and there are some changes in send times as it relates to prospects, and Rich wants me to dig in on that. We'll do that when we come right back. Hey, welcome back, friends and fans. We're answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. Hey, if you're liking the videos, if you're liking the podcast, be sure to subscribe, give us a like, give us a thumbs up. Lets all the algorithms know that we're doing a great job for all of you. All right, first question comes from Rich in Toronto. Hey Rich, I've got a lot of good friends up in Toronto. Look forward to visiting with all of you very, very soon. All right, Rich's question. Hey Ryan, I've noticed that a lot of things have changed in sales land, especially as it relates to email. You used to talk about sending emails around 11 AM and 4 PM. What's changed? Because I'm hearing you talk about different times now. Your help is appreciated. So, Rich, here's what's changed. People's lives have changed. We're working a lot more remote. I think people got used to during COVID working remote and maybe ending around 4 o'clock in the afternoon. We've got a lot more people we're selling to that have kiddos. That they're picking up from school, they're not riding buses as much anymore. So, what it for me is, is a lot of strategy as a part of our sales plan. We talked about that earlier here in the show. So, here's what I have noticed. I've noticed that I can do some quick hits of information around 10 o'clock in the morning. I can usually prospect a little bit better. I still like 11:30. Most people don't book meetings before lunch, so I try to prospect in that 11:30 to 12 o'clock timeframe. Now, what shifted for me big time is the afternoon. What I used to do is I used to send prospecting emails, Rich and everybody, around 4:15 because people didn't book meetings before going home, so I got more phone calls to go through and things like that. I'm really changing that. I've changed it to be more like 3 o'clock to 3:30 because I'm noticing that people aren't working as late as they once did. Now, Rich, it is important though, my friend, for you to recognize you need to be emailing your prospects at times that are good for them, not at times that are good for you. So depending upon your business, you really want to make sure that you're emailing at times that are great for that client. You know, I think I said it in last month's episode, if you're not using send later at least 20 or 30 times a day, more than likely you're not— you're sending emails at times that are good for you and not for your customers. So a lot of you know I travel all the time, 14-some-odd days a month I'm gone and on the road. So I'm writing emails while I'm on planes or sitting in a hotel or I'm waiting for a flight. And a lot of times that happens at really odd times of the day. So I'm using Send Later to make sure those emails are hitting at the perfect time for my customers. Also keep in mind I work with international folks. Big shout out to all my friends, Peter, everybody in Australia. Peter Smith is an awesome sales rep in Australia, and one of the things that I do is I want to make sure that I'm sending emails at times that are good for Peter. So I want to recognize what time does this email hit. If I wanted to hit at 11 o'clock in Sydney, Australia, I need to pull up my phone, I need to look at the world time clock, do the calculation, and make sure that I'm hitting him in the morning and he's not receiving an email from me in the middle of the night. So Rich in Toronto, I hope that's helpful to you. Also keep track of these things, make notes in your CRM and things like that. All of those things are important. All right, keep your questions coming, ryan@ryandohrn.com, and we get probably over 100 questions a month and I reply to all of them. So if you sent a question and you didn't get a reply or we didn't put your answer to the question here on the podcast or on YouTube, then we did not receive your email. So keep those questions coming, ryan@ryandohrn.com. All right, friends, our next listener question sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com— keep them coming— comes in from Deb, and Deb is in one of my favorite places up in Boston, Massachusetts. Here is Deb's question where she needs some help. Hey Ryan, thanks so much for all your helpful advice. You bet, Deb, happy to help. Ryan, I'm getting ghosted a lot, way more than ever before. What's changed? What is going on? Your help is appreciated. So Deb in Boston, you know, a lot of things have changed. We are living in a world right now where people's brains are a little bit mushy. People are really considering things longer. They're not spending as much money as they once did. But don't forget, Deb, This is not something that's new, okay? People's brains have been a little bit mushy. They were mushy when the last administration was in office. They're currently— their brains are a little bit mushy. People are worried about economies. They're worried about their paycheck. They're worried about all kinds of different things. Now, whether you think it's getting better or you think it's getting worse, that really isn't the point. The point that I want to make is when people's brains are a little bit mushy, then a lot of times we get ghosted Because we don't give them the path that we want them to follow with us as we follow up. So a lot of times what salespeople do is you will turn over the follow-up sequence to the customer. You'll say things like, when is a good time for me to follow up with you? The moment that you give them any control over the follow-up, I believe you're in a losing scenario, Deb, and everybody that's out there. Instead, what I like to do is guide them. So, you get to the end of the conversation. You heard me talk about in our last podcast about making sure that in that conversation, you're doing a soft close, right? So, you might say, Bob, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 you love it, 10 you hate it, where are you at? You know, figure out where they're at and make sure you qualify them before you actually give them a proposal or set a follow-up. Then I suggest the follow-up path. I'll say, so you need to think about it, Sally? Great, no problem. Then what I'd love to do is follow up with you, say, next Tuesday. How does that work for you? I just need 5 minutes, a very quick phone call. We'll follow up and make sure we answer any of your questions. I'd like to be the one that's in control. Then what I do is I get out my phone, I put that meeting on their calendar. I say to them, hey, did you receive that invite? Okay, great. Then the next step. The next step is for me to say, okay, so Sally, I've set this for 5 minutes next Tuesday, 2:30 in the afternoon. Looking forward to that chat. If you need more time and maybe you can't get a decision by then, just drop me an email and we will reschedule. But if I don't hear from you, I'm assuming we're going to get together, which would be great. If I miss you, then what would you want me to do? How do you want me to follow up? Is it a text message? Is it a carrier pigeon? A smoke signal coming to your office, standing in your driveway in the morning first thing. I mean, what do you want for me to do? Now, if you're funny, be funny. Like I just was trying to be funny. If you're not, then keep it straight. It's it's a okay. A lot of times we also though, Deb and everybody, we give people way too much time to think about it. Like people don't need a week to think about things. It's it's a very common default. So if someone says next week. A lot of times I'll politely say, you know, a week's a pretty long time and I don't want to lose track of you. You're going to get busy, I'm going to get busy. What I'd love to do is just follow up with you in the next 2 or 3 days. Make sure you try to control the follow-up and don't let them just throw you out there and say, well, we'll get together in a week, right? It's kind of a default. Now, this time of year people might be on vacation, it might actually take a week, but you really want to be in control of the follow-up and And that's what stops you from getting ghosted a lot. One final thing though for Deb on the ghosting piece, super common problem for a lot of folks. Deb, you're probably just really nice. Like, I'm a really nice guy. So I say to people regularly, if the answer is no, just let me know. I'm not going to cry. I'm not going to beat you up about it. If the answer is no, the answer is no. Because a lot of times people don't want to say no to someone that's nice. So now I'm gonna take a lot of hate for this down in the comments down below, especially all the sales gurus out there. Never let someone have a chance to say no. Well, you know what? People are people, and if they're gonna say no, you don't want them to be afraid to say no to you. No doesn't mean forever. No just means probably not right now. Maybe it's a timing thing, it's a budget thing. We can work through those objections, but sometimes The answer is no. And if you've been selling as long as me, of course I love to get a yes, but if it's a no, just tell me so I can move on to somebody else. It's really not that big of a deal. Friends, never forget, if you lose control of that follow-up, your chances of being ghosted increase exponentially. You need to control the follow-up. Don't let them control the follow-up. And I know that sounds a little harsh, but the reality is If they get control of the follow-up, more than likely your chances of ghosting, they just keep going higher and higher and higher. And that's the unfortunate— it's a tough part of the sales business, Deb. Don't forget, Deb and everybody else, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it. And they're not. We're not crazy. I used to say we're crazy. We're not crazy. This is a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. You just need to make sure you're very strategic in all of your processes. All right, friends, that's the show for this month. Keep your questions coming into ryan@ryandorn.com. I travel all the time. Would love to come to your sales meeting, your national sales meeting. I've got workshops and keynotes and all kinds of topics to keep your folks motivated out there. So reach out to me, ryan@ryandorn.com. All right, friends, get out there, make yourself proud, get selling out there. If I can be of help, reach out to me, ryandorn.com. We'll see you on the next episode. Hey, don't forget, give us a thumbs up, hit that subscribe button, let everybody know how we're doing out there and taking care of all of you. All right, see you on the next episode. Get out there, sell something, and make us all proud. Thank you.