3 Hacks To Close More CFO Clients

Getting fractional CFO leads on a sales call is harder than ever. That's why it's critically important that you close as many as possible. Today, I'm going to share with you three things that I do after the sales call that result in me closing more clients. I guarantee you you're not doing all three of these, so you're definitely going to want to check this episode out. About a year ago, I noticed that leads were starting to take longer and longer to sign contracts. What used to happen right on the sales call is now sometimes taking days or even weeks to get the deal done. And I think that there's two prim reasons for this. Number one, there's a lot of uncertainty in the economy. And number two is there's a lot more fractional CFOs entering the space. And so what this means is people want to take longer to think things over. They want to talk to their business partners or their leadership team. Sometimes clients even want to talk to their spouses before they make decisions. And what this introduces is what I call off ramps. Off ramps are things that can get the lead off the buyer's journey. Before they sign the contract, they get distracted. Other priorities pop up. They find other things that they want to spend their money on. So the primary goal of the three tips that I'm going to share with you today is to keep my name and my firm's name front of mind for these leads to increase the likelihood that they'll sign with me and that they don't get distracted by other priorities. The first thing that I do is I make sure that I send the proposal within five minutes of the sales call ending. Now, you're probably asking yourself, how in the world do you get the entire proposal generated and send it off within five minutes? Well, that's because I actually create the proposal before the sales call. My firm uses Ignition for all of our contracts and proposals. So before the sales call, I log into Ignition and I create a new customer. From there, I use all of our CFO service templates to create the proposal. And I have everything ready to go with the exception of the thank you email. Once the sales call's over, I log back into Ignition and I write the thank you email. And I make sure that I include some of the specific things I learned about the business, some of the challenges that they're having, and some of the goals that they have. I include those things in the thank you email, and I immediately send it off by writing the contract before I even get on the sales call. I'm able to get everything knocked out immediately after the sales call to keep us front of mind. The second thing I do after a sales call that virtually nobody else is doing is the tried and true method of writing the old fashioned thank you note. A few years ago, I ordered like a thousand custom thank you cards that include my company logo and my brand colors. After a sales call, I immediately sit down and spend three or four minutes writing out a thank you card. Just like the thank you email in the proposal. I'm including a couple of specifics that they talked about on the call and I tell them how excited my team and I are to work with them. But here's the thing. What I used to do is I would drop these into the snail mail and send them off. But what I found is you. It was taking like five to seven days for the client to receive the thank you card. In my mind, that's too long. So what I decided to start doing recently was I would immediately take the thank you card and I would head down to the FedEx down the road and I would literally pay like $50 to have the thank you card overnighted so that they're guaranteed to have it by lunch the next day. Again, this is just a little thing that you can do that's going to separate you from the competition. And like I said, no one is taking the time to write a handwritten thank you card. The third thing that I'm doing to close more sales is three to five days after the sales call, I'm recording a 60 to 90 second thank you video that I'm sending to the prospect via text or email. The important thing here is to just keep it simple. So in these videos I generally touch on three different points. Number one is I start by thanking them for their time. Number two, I reference back to a couple of the pain points or goals that they shared with me on the call. And the third thing that I do is I reassure them that my team knows exactly how to help them overcome their obstacles or achieve their goals. So what does that look like? Well, it might sound something just like this. Hey, Cameron, thank you so much for taking the time to get on a call with me the other day. It was really awesome to learn about you and your business and the story behind how you got to where you're at today. Listen, I know you told me how much it freaks you out sometimes when you're not sure if you're gonna be able to make payroll. I understand how challenging it can be when you wanna pay yourself more, but you don't know if you can afford to take more money out of the business. I've been there myself. I know exactly what you're going through. The good news is I shared your story and some of those challenges with my team. And honestly, we' super excited to start working with you. We know exactly where to get started to help you figuring out cash flows and how to increase profitability. So just let me know if you have any questions about the proposal. If you have any questions about what it's like working with us, just reach out. Let me know. I'm happy to clear those things up for you. So excited to work with you and thank you again for your time. I'll talk to you soon. It's as simple as that. This is just a 60 second video that thanks them, that reassures them that you heard them, and that reassures them that you and your team have what it takes to get them where they want to go. And literally nobody else is doing this. This is something that's really easy, that's going to set you apart from all the competition. So that's it. I send off proposals within five minutes of finishing a sales call. I'm sending those handwritten thank you cards the same day. In three to five days later, I'm shooting a 60 to 90 second video thanking them again and reassuring them that my team knows how to help them accomplish their goals. If you do literally just one of these three things, it's going to help you stand out from the rest of the competition. All right, that's it for this week. I hope you found this episode helpful. I look forward to seeing you back here next week. See you then, my friend.