your best closer will lose you money the day you go cold

But the one who is accustomed to warm audiences, I view them more as cashiers.

A lot of those coaches have it like very difficult to crack cold audience because the only reason that those people also want to buy from them is because of their content on how they objection handle and how they do sales as well.

Exactly.

Which means they're already far more nurtured.

Such a closer is very strict with his structure. What's up guys, Kevin Chinkobo here. Today I'm here with CEO Wali, or Wali, you can choose how you call him. He goes by both, right? Did $60 million together in webinar sales. And today we're going to talk about the difference between cold closing and warm closing. All right. Because, you know, as you know as well, you have a lot of experience in that, in both areas. Truly curious about the way you think about the differences of both, man.

Yeah, man. There are a lot of differences. We've been working together. We've been getting, you know, closers in, for example, or salespeople in that are more Like profound or more sophisticated when it comes to, you know, offers, warmer funnels, right? That are coming from a personal brand, for example. But we've also been dealing with SDRs that are very sophisticated when it comes to cold sales. It's very interesting to see the actual differences. What do you feel like is the actual biggest difference between both SDRs if you would compare them?

Between both SDRs? And it's actually funny because I've seen some things that I think will actually, you know, surprise you as well because I've seen a great cold SDR, right? He was active on a cold sales funnel and he was actually the SDR there and one of the top reps, by the way. And then I hired him on a warm offer. He literally got outplayed by everyone else on that team. You know, I've actually seen both sides to it. So I've seen an SDR that is accustomed to calling cold leads that was successful in it struggle with warm leads and vice versa, right? But I do think the sales rep that is experienced in cold closing basically has way more skills than the one that's only—

So like, yeah, you believe that, for example, a cold closer would have more success into like an offer that has a personal brand and a huge following compared to like a warm closer that would go to an offer where it's completely with people that never heard of the—

Definitely.

The business or even of the offer.

Definitely. And the thing is, because a A closer who has experience closing cold leads, they're not educated, they haven't been through hours and hours of content and all these kinds of things. Such a closer is very strict with his structure. He has all these phases on point. He knows what phases he needs to go through, knows what points he needs to touch on before he actually moves on, right? And he holds himself to that same structure every single time, right? But the one who is accustomed to warm audiences, I view them more as cashiers, you know?

Yeah, absolutely.

They're just there to respond to some questions and then just cash in the money. And I actually had such a closer on one of the offers that we were managing. It was a B2B offer. When I had that closer, who was a top closer in a warm audience, he was struggling.

The thing is, even when I start hiring, you know, SDRs, yeah, I never hire SDRs that only did closing for a personal brand. The reason is just because they can get away with so much stuff. Like you said, a cold SDR has way more structure and as well goes over the structure in details, make sure that he hits every single point.

Exactly.

That's needed in order to reframe You know, change the person's belief, educate that person well enough as well.

No, 100%.

Yeah. But I feel like a lot of these SDRs do get sales training though, right? They do follow a program and still there's a big difference. You believe the program that they're buying from sometimes they're not getting teached on how to actually close cold? Yeah.

I mean, to be fair, and I don't, I don't want to shit on anyone, right? I don't want to. talk bad on anyone, but there's a lot of bad sales programs out there because I have a lot of closers and setters coming in, but they started out with someone else.

Okay.

Because I don't work with beginners. I only work with them if they are already live on the seat. They have live calls that we can review, that we can train upon so that they make more money. Okay. So that's what I'm doing. But when they come and we work together, the first training and the first call review or the first hoplay is always so eye-opening to them. And they're always baffled by the level of feedback and the level of detail that we work with. And one thing that made me cringe a lot is that these closers and setters, they get training from someone, but the only roleplays that they train on is to close for the program they got closed on. And that just doesn't make any sense to me.

Yeah.

You know? And when I ask them like, okay, do you have any call reviews that you can show me? Try to close B2B that you try to close for a roofing company, for another biz op, for anything. They cannot show me. The only thing they can show me is how they sold for that coaching program. And it floods or it makes the high ticket sales space look very bad because I've also encountered a lot of people that actually believe the high ticket space is a pyramid scheme. They get closed on a program and now they have to become a setter or closer for that specific program. But you already know which ones I'm probably talking about, you know.

See what you're saying, 100%. You know, there are a lot of sales gurus in the space as well that are selling coaching and that claim to close X amount, but most often it's always on their own offer that they're closing. Hence why they have such high closing rates and cash collection, et cetera. And a lot of the people right now are very skeptical of the sales space because of that. Because even them, they're more sophisticated, those sales gurus, into like warm leads, closing warm leads, easier deals, layoffs.

Yeah.

Yeah. Almost because your content doesn't work. Exactly.

What I would say, if you want to teach objection handling, show us how you objection handle prospects, for example, in the roofing niche, for example, in the B2B.

So a different, uh, bogey.

Exactly. With A-type leads, that's a whole nother ICP than showing us your objection handle sales reps that want to master objection handling.

Yeah.

I, that's the easiest thing. I did that too.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I was closing, I had to close some, some sales managers or whatever. You're selling something to them that they already believe in as well.

Yeah.

Do you understand that difference? And that's something that does tarnish the high-ticket sales space is what I believe. It baffles me that people, you know, fall into that trap. I'm not saying that these closers aren't great at closing, but you're selling for a big personal brand. You're selling objection handling. You show us objection handling in your content and you're selling it to people that want to master objection handling. So to me, you're not necessarily great at sales, you're great at marketing.

Great at marketing. Yeah. Because the only reason that those people also want to buy from them is because of their content on how they objection handle and how they do sales as well.

Exactly.

Which means they're already far more nurtured compared to a cold lead who has never seen you. That's why as well, a lot of those coaches have it like very difficult to crack cold audiences.

Yeah, exactly.

That's literally what I make my living on. Your pool of your warm audience runs out. Either you closed a lot of people there, people are not willing to buy anymore. That warm pool runs out. So now a lot of those coaches try to crack cold, right? But they fail massively at that. The reason why, and that's what you're teaching your sales reps as well, you have to educate them first. about your mechanism. Then you have to let them believe that the solution to their problem is that mechanism. And then you still have to convince them that you're the right guy that can get them that result.

Exactly.

And they skip all of those steps just because they're so used to selling to warm leads.

Exactly, man.

My question to you is, right, let's say warm closers or warm sales coaches, right? If they're selling on the call themselves, so what do they have to do differently compared to them closing a warm lead? If they get a cold lead on the phone?

It's to have the right structure with the right phases, stick to it while staying fluid as well, seeing where the conversation is going and flowing, basically where the prospect is taking you while staying focused on the structure that you need to maintain to be able to hit all assets. Because I view it as a puzzle and to have the full picture, you need every single component. But you need every single component in a certain order as well to have that puzzle. You see? And that's what they would need to do more.

Okay. So let's say, for example, in that puzzle, right? What's the most important piece actually? What's the most leveraged or most, the biggest lever right there?

I would say it's not necessarily on the sales call, but it's in the pre-call process. It's in the pre-call process where they need to then do their education. They need to be able to showcase case studies and testimonials that are in alignment with either the challenge, the pain, or the goals that that prospect has in that short window of time, need to be able to create a connection between the personal brand that they are and that prospect.

Okay. You see, I see. Pre-call process needs to be in a way where basically—

Where it's way more dialed in.

Dialed in. Yeah.

And what you see with these big, you know, personal brands or sales teams or whatever is that because they have a lot of content out there, they have a huge audience, a huge brand, their pre-call process isn't necessarily dialed in.

Yeah.

It lacks tie-downs. It lacks the flow of the conversation. It lacks making sure that the prospect actually went through the sales assets.

Like on the, on the, on the setting side of things.

On the setting side of things, right? In the pre-call process.

Mm-hmm.

You see, and even if you look after the call, because everyone wants to, you know, pretend that they have 100% close rate.

Yeah. Yeah.

Let's be real. Yeah. Like objection handled this, or you have to prevent this. Of course I agree to with everything, you know, but still not every prospect is at that level. of buying yet. You know, some need more education and that's what these big personal brands or sales trainers forget about, right? They forget about the fact that some prospects need more education.

It's not that they wanna qualify. They're at a different stage basically. That actually makes a lot of sense what you're saying. Let's compare the two, right? You have a warm lead that has been following you for a while. They have been going through your content on their own.

Yes.

Right? And because of that, they become warmer and warmer, but at a, like a slower speed because it's on their own. Mm-hmm. Right? They consume maybe a piece right now, but next week they consume another piece, you know, of your personal brand. It's slower. Yeah. But what you're saying is that on the selling side of things, you're actually guiding them to the content at a much rapid rate, tying them down. Yes. On each stage, making sure that they're sold at each stage so that they actually arrive on the sales call as a warm lead.

Exactly.

So that's actually a very interesting way to, to look at it. And that's where a lot of these coaches have it wrong.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I call that the indoctrination process.

Yeah.

And that indoctrination process happens Like I said, in the framing window, right? So from the moment someone books in until the moment he shows up to the call or the moment that he should show up to the call, because you probably don't have 100% show up rate, right?

Mm-hmm.

But that indoctrination process increases the show up rate. And like you said, it also increases the interest level because there's 5 interest levels, right? But it increases the interest level of that prospect prior to him hopping on that call.

Mm-hmm.

So that you had a cold lead. You made him warm. Now you put him in the buying state, and by the time he hops on the call, he actually is a warm lead.

That makes a lot of sense on the marketing side. The thing is, a marketer also is a big part of it. Mm-hmm. What we usually do is like in between them booking and at the actual sales calls, we have the confirmation page, what's the best practices, right? Making sure that objections already get handled. I already have a good idea of like what the process is, et cetera. Most asked questions. Yeah. Et cetera. We spam them with FAQ videos or breakout videos, and we run ads for that actually, between them booking and them hopping on the call. Literally what happens right now is that they booked, now they scroll on Instagram again, they keep seeing your video of like each question that's like the most asked or the biggest objections that we see on the sales calls already handled.

How do they see that? Through ads, you said?

Yeah, through ads basically. So it's like 60-second videos. Practically breakout videos. Now you're running ads for like 20, 30 of those videos of 30 to 60 seconds that you're pushing out to the people who booked because you can actually track them through the pixel.

Wow.

Right. So before the call, they're already getting indoctrinated as well and keep seeing your face. Of course, we want them to book within like a 48-hour window, but in that 48-hour window, they already have seen like probably 5 to 6 times your face.

Yeah.

So they click on your profile, boom, they watch more reels. Oh, actually there's a CTA to a YouTube video. Boom, they see the YouTube video. What we also do that's very interesting on the funnel pages, yeah, we don't embed the videos with Wistia embeds. Yeah, we use YouTube videos. Why? Because if they watch that through their account, it's automatically logged in. So the moment they hop on YouTube, they see you, they see a recommendation of one of your other videos.

Yeah, yeah, I see.

All before the call.

It all makes sense, man. It all makes sense. That's, that's actually a form of indoctrination process.

Exactly. And I think your indoctrination process with that indoctrination process is like hand to hand.

It interlocks. And what I wanted to say is that that's also a form of indoctrination process. And I've literally not know, not earlier than today, I saw an example of a pre-call process of a company, right? I won't name that, I assume, because we talked about it, right? Of course. Of course. Their pre-call process is not an indoctrination process.

It's just a reminding Yeah, that's also what a lot of these do actually wrong.

And that's a big difference, having an indoctrination process or just reminding people.

That works with warm. They've already consumed your content the moment that they book, like they already sold.

Yeah.

Right, that's why they booked. Like no one really forced them, maybe through the DMs a little bit, but they've been consuming your content for a long time.

Yeah.

That's why the show-up rate is also very high on warmer leads, or, you know, leads that are coming from personal brand, just because the respect is already there, the belief is already there, you built through the content. Their pain up as well, and their challenge made it bigger. Yeah. To the point that they realize they need to do something. The urgency is there as well.

Exactly.

That's why the show rate is there. But with cold audiences, it's not there. You have to basically manufacture it.

Exactly. To that point as well, right, with authority and trust that the leads have when it's a warm audience, when it's a big personal brand, what we actually did on one of the offers, I want to, with one of my clients is that we saw that he had like what we call aura. And we had a term that we said is aura selling, aura closing.

Yeah. He had good energy. He had good energy.

People truly looked up to him and we made the closer, when he had a difficult time closing, we had the offer owner hop on those calls and just them seeing their faces, they bought.

But do you think that works with cold though?

No, with cold audiences, that would never work. Never. And also it actually diminishes the authority of the closer. You know, like I said, it doesn't work. That prospect won't buy and any value-driven follow-up attempt that that closer will do will—

Will not work. I never let my closers actually get the offer owner Never on the call. Never.

Yeah.

The reason why is if they're getting used to that, they'll always see that as like an option B.

Exactly.

But you want to actually force them to actually do the sales call in the right way, which means the closer now has to use a different level of skill. It's forced to actually perform better in order to close. So I never in any scenario hop on my own sales calls, or if the closer is closing, of course, another closer, or let it happen in any of my clients, no matter the situation. Maybe if it's really like a very, very, very big deal, right? It would make a big difference talking like 6-figure level deals, right? Yeah.

When it's like a fairly low-ticket deal, right? Talk about $6K, $8K deals, whatever. And it's truly biz op. If it's biz op, right? Then we would do it. Aura selling, whatever. It works. They get close. Okay. You know, when we're talking $20K, $30K, $35K deals, B2B, that truly never works because the prospect knows exactly what you're trying to do. They lose respect. For not only for the offer owner that, you know, that he has time to actually hop on this call, but also for the closer, like I said, so he won't buy.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

But I do have a very interesting question actually. Do you believe, all right, or how do you think about closing very high ticket packages? I'm talking like $25K and upwards through like cold traffic and cold, cold marketing. Yeah. Do you think it could be a one call close?

I do believe that it could be a one call close if And only if the pre-call process is truly dialed in. All right. So if there's an indoctrination process, either the way you described it or the way that we do it, that's the only way that is possible. Okay. So that means they truly need to have like a full understanding of what the offer actually is. And very important as well is they cannot hear the pitch for the first time on that call. So they must have a great understanding of what the program is, what your services are. What they will get, not necessarily the how part, but what, why, whatever. Okay. That's very important. They need to know who it is. They need to see case studies, testimonials, again, that are in alignment with what they want.

It's always, even if it's a $5K product or a $25K product, it's the same.

It's the same thing.

In your eyes. Okay.

You know, what we actually implement is that they also need to see a personalized Loom or Tella video. Okay. In which you actually show them Their holes, their mistakes, what it is that you implement or what your service actually solves.

Yeah, never the how.

Never the how, you know. But that way also show them the numbers.

Yeah.

So you have to show them the roadmap and the financial model as well. That's the only way you can one-call close these people.

One-call close because he already has all of that prior information.

Exactly.

The sellers already, you know, made sure to write them down as well. Yes.

What's also very important there is that the seller actually had a call with them. He has to have a call with them for 10 minutes probably to run a proper discovery as well, have a good idea of their numbers, right? What we also implemented, by the way, is that we worked with the intake form, so they had to fill out all their numbers already. And based off of these numbers, we could create a roadmap, we could create a financial model as well.

So the intake map, right? Because I know from experience as well that richer people want to spend less time on stuff, right? That's why direct funnels, right, like a VSL funnel, works really well with like a richer demographic, right? They're getting called up, they don't want to go through that process of, you know, going to Too much to lead magnets, et cetera.

Exactly.

So that intake form, would you recommend it being filled out by the setter over the phone?

Yes. Or exactly. I would, I would recommend the setter, right, during that 10-minute call.

Yeah.

That he's asking all these questions, filling it out himself so that we actually have the numbers, that the team has the numbers, right? And that the team now can create all these assets tailored to the situation and needs of that prospect. You're right. You don't want to send that intake form to the richer demographic because they will not fill it out, right? They will just hop on a call and be like, yeah, why not do it on the Yeah, that makes sense.

What's your view on framing it before the call?

Yeah.

For them to go through the process of that indoctrination.

The way we do it with that audience, the richer demographic, and we're selling them the $35K deal or $40K deal or whatever, is when the setter has them on the call, he has to frame it always in a way that is in their benefit.

Okay.

So we tell them like, hey, we are not there to waste our time. We also don't wanna waste your time. Right. So if you hop on that call doing stuff that we could already done beforehand, we're not being efficient. And that's also the way we work with all of our clients, right? And that's something that they actually want to hear because they want to work with efficient people.

You see, what I've also noticed, and it's actually very funny, right? The better your sales process, the more they'll actually respect it because most of the time you're selling them on like, you know, business growth. And if they see that your sales process is really dialed in, You're calling them as soon as they opt in, you're asking the right questions, you're giving value during the setting call and the indoctrination process as well. They see your face on social media now pop up a lot more. Yeah. Go through the content. Like they'll think like, wow, these guys are very dialed in. We actually get a lot of compliments. 100%. Right. Yeah. Over the phone. And people think like, oh, I can't actually spam richer demographics. It's not spamming as long as you're giving value that's benefiting them for the stage that they're in.

Exactly.

Right. Those 5 interest stages that you talked about. Exactly. What you said is actually Very true, right?

Because people respect, especially when you're selling B2B, they respect it when your sales process is dialed in to the point, on point.

On point, yeah.

Right? Because most of the times, like you said, their sales process is not on point.

No, no, no.

And it doesn't even matter what you're selling. Humans believe that how someone does one thing, that's how they do everything. That's how they do everything.

Of course.

So if they see that the sales process is on point, they are taking care of me, they're taking the numbers, they don't want to have a call.

It feels customized. Exactly.

It feels customized. And they don't have a call based upon just general activity or general numbers or average numbers, right? They now feel like, okay, these guys truly want to have a real conversation based upon my needs. And they respect it if and only if you frame it the right way. So I definitely agree with it. And a big mistake that offer owners are making is thinking that if they have a sales process that is very much on point, that will scare off prospects.

Mm-hmm.

That will scare off clients. You see, and I saw that in the B2B niche, in the roofing niche, for example, because I also have clients in energy, right? And they were scared.

Like B2B, right?

Yeah.

B2B clients that are selling to energy.

Yeah, I have B2B clients that are selling to energy, right? And they were also scared, like, hey, you know, what if our sales process will be too on point, right? That will scare off these people because they don't really like it or whatever. I'm not saying you don't have to tailor it to your ICP, which you clearly have to do, right? But that doesn't mean your sales process doesn't have to be on point because they still view it as very professional if it is on point. And then by the law of association, or they will now think about your services, right? Or your products to be on point just as much as your sales process.

No, of course. That's the front end, the package that they see right before they buy. So definitely. I'm also quite interested in knowing your view on this, right?

Yeah.

Like if you take on a client, do you need them to have a personal brand? Do you prefer that? Or like, doesn't it really matter for you? Of course, we're very selective with our clients, right? Especially done for you. I personally don't take on more than 10 clients done for you.

Exactly.

Right? So I'm very selective with who I choose. But in your case, right, it's your selectiveness of taking on a client based on, of course, what revenue number they do, but as well, like, if they're also doing warm and not only cold or other way around. Yeah.

No, for me—

Because you're doing B2B besides the sales training too.

Exactly. You know, so to me, it's not necessarily about if they have a personal brand or not, right? But if they are selling B2C, I need them to have a personal brand.

Nice one.

Otherwise, I'm not working with them.

You're not working with them.

Okay. There's just so much, you know, skepticism or whatever. I'm just not doing it. Okay. If it's B2B, it doesn't necessarily matter to me if they have a personal brand or not. But what matters to me is, are they running ads? Yes or no? Okay. I need them to then run ads so that we can put the right sales process in place. I can bring in the right sales team as well, if necessary.

That's willing to work, right? That has enough calls, enough leads to work with.

Exactly. And the right team that is actually willing to hit KPIs as well on a daily basis or from Monday to Friday, Monday to Saturday, I don't care, but they have to hit KPI.

Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense.

Now for me, I don't work with more than 7 clients at once, right? The reason being is because I have to train every single seller.

Yeah.

And closer on that offer or sales manager, right? And sometimes even the founder. Okay. Now, obviously I also have my team behind me that is, you know, helping out with all the sheets, with all the numbers, with all the tracking. Okay. Very important. But still, I do value the training a lot. Okay. And that's just something that is not possible if I do it with more than 7 clients. And I never had that, you know, that will of growing horizontally, right? But I prefer to be with people like you, for example. you know, have a small team, have a small amount of partners, but we can grow vertically.

Vertically, of course. So no, that actually makes a lot of sense, right? It's really, it was really nice to see, right? Your, your view on warm and cold, right? It's a big difference and it's very difficult to actually crack cold, right? As a sales rep, as a marketer, 100%. But I really think that you said a lot of interesting stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I mean, I appreciate it. You yourself.

Appreciate it.

Yourself as well. I'm very happy to have you here, you know, and, um, always, always looking forward to everything.