What If It Did Work?
What If It Did Work?
Mastering Recurring Sales: Transforming Buyers into Loyal Customers with Guitze Messina
Unlock the secrets of recurring sales success with our special guest, Guitze Messina, executive director at Hardy the Avocer Trade Association. Discover how businesses can thrive by transforming one-time buyers into loyal customers through a deep understanding of customer needs and behaviors. Guitze shares pivotal insights on the dynamics of recurring sales compared to long-cycle sales like real estate and life insurance, emphasizing the art of maintaining relationships without the pressure to purchase. Explore proactive sales strategies that keep your business ahead, taking cues from Guitze's transformative journey from skepticism to advocacy in the sales domain.
If you've ever wondered how some businesses keep clients coming back without slashing prices, you'll find valuable techniques in this episode. We delve into the essence of effective sales techniques, focusing on listening and understanding customer needs to craft tailored solutions. Avoid the common pitfall of competing solely on price, and learn from real-world examples, like the restaurant owner who paid dearly for a cheaper ventilation system. Gidzi guides us through the importance of asking the right questions, making client feedback a cornerstone for strengthening business relationships and growing sales.
Close the episode with actionable insights for both budding and seasoned sales professionals, as we explore strategic marketing solutions tailored for self-published authors and businesses alike. From conducting a Pareto analysis to identify key clients, to the power of storytelling in sales literature, we offer strategies that can reshape your marketing efforts. Embrace the transformative power of implementing ideas from nonfiction books with Messina's proven techniques, designed to unlock potential and leave a lasting impact on your personal and professional legacy.
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I never told no one that my whole life I've been holding back. Every time I load my gun up so I can shoot for the star, I hear a voice like who do you think, all right, everybody, another day, another dollar.
Speaker 2:Another one of my favorite episodes of my favorite podcast it's my own podcast. I've got with me Gidzi Messina, executive director at Hardy the Avocer Trade Association, based in Columbus, ohio for the Latin American Division. He lives in Boca Raton, just north of me, for several years as an industrial engineer and operations manager. He started his sales career as a management consultant for VDC Consulting, later acquired by RSM, for seven years helping different companies implement the methods described in his book for VDC Consulting, later acquired by RSM. After seven years helping different companies implement the methods described in his book Money Call, he felt it was time to show other reoccurring sales businesses a new proactive and predictable sales system requires less prospecting you know two books about sales, man, so I can't wait and provides more control of the sales process. The author has written several sales articles and two other business books and provides sales seminars and speeches to recurring sales businesses. How's it going, man?
Speaker 3:It's going great. I would like to say that the number one thing we need to talk about is what is a recurring sales business, because a lot of people would probably not know, so I think it's better to illustrate it. So if you know a realtor, if you know someone that sells life insurance, if you know someone that sells software, those are sales that require a lot of prospecting, because once you sell something, you're not going to sell anything again to that client for a long time. Because once you sell something, you're not going to sell anything again to that client for a long time. So once you sell a house to a guy, he's not going to buy a house next week. He may. I mean that could be an exception, but most likely somebody is not going to buy a house.
Speaker 3:Very frequently Same thing with a car, same thing with software, same thing with life insurance. But when you sell the stuff that distributors sell for example the distributor that sells office supplies, paper envelopes, clips for your office they sell continuously to the same customer the supermarket, to the same customer the supermarket. No matter if you want to admit it or not, omar, you do most of your shopping in one supermarket. Yes, you do go to certain others to find some specialty stuff, but 80% of your purchases you do it at the same supermarket. So that is what we call recurrent sales. So once in a long time, long cycle sales, totally different.
Speaker 3:You need to prospect, you need to look for the next client because they're not going to buy frequently, but frequent sales. You just have to use analysis in order to understand what your customer wants. Nobody wants to be sold, but we all love to buy. So what we need to do is help the customers understand them so you can help them get what they want. So those people that buy air conditioning that they want to install in different houses, those contractors they are recurrent sales to the distributor. The distributor becomes recurrent sales to the manufacturer. So any AC brand that you see sells continuously to the distributor, and that's basically the basic difference between those two. Does that make sense, omar?
Speaker 2:I've sold life insurance. I've sold life insurance. I've sold prescription. Well, prescription-based too, if you think about it, whether it's coaching or whether it's consulting, you have to. You know it's a re or a big item. You always have to sell because don't you want to follow up, don't you want that prospect, that client, to be happy and to especially the amount of money it takes to create a customer.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Well. One thing is to follow up, and follow up is definitely part of the sale, and any type of sale needs follow up. The average sale takes five follow ups in order to be made OK. So if you are recurring sales or if you are in one in a long cycle sales, for example, you're a real estate realtor. He shows you a house, he shows you three others and you say, okay, we're going to think about it. He better follow up to find out what is your decision. What is it that you liked about one? What is it that makes you still hesitant in order for him to be able to close that sale? So following up is part of the sale. That has nothing to do with the type of sale. Recurrent sales means that they're going to be buying frequently. Long cycle sales means that it's not the size of the ticket.
Speaker 3:Life insurance could be a very little amount if you pay once. If you're 20 years old and you want life insurance term life insurance until you're 65 and you want to pay it all right now, it could be $1,000. But that doesn't mean that you don't need to prospect now. You need to find another customer that wants that life insurance. You don't need to prospect when you are selling continuously to the same clients. The problem is are you proactive or are you reactive? So, does the phone ring, or are you making the phone ring? So, for example, the supermarkets they're basically reactive. They have to wait for Omar to show up and say hey, I want meat, I want milk, I want eggs. Next week you're going to need something different, but they're reactive. They're waiting for you to make the decision to show up. Do they send you mailers? Do they follow up in that way? Yes, but do you read the mailers? No, you just show up.
Speaker 2:No, I do, because I was an owner for 20 years, so I always like to see who's still using print.
Speaker 3:Beautiful, beautiful, all right. So that is being reactive, right, Beautiful, beautiful, all right. So that is being reactive. Now, when you are a distributor and you are reactive, basically you're just waiting for the customer to call you and say hey, omar, do you have XYZ product? Can I go pick it up? How much is it? But how many of those customers are not picking you as a number one option? They call you when somebody else doesn't have it, when the price went up at the competition, when the product from the competition is not working as well as yours, then they think of you as a second option.
Speaker 3:And in order for you to turn that around, you need to do what we call a Pareto analysis, which is an 80-20. It's very simple, right, 20% of your sales come from 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients. So when you analyze that, you come into the 21 to the 30% of your clients that not necessarily think of you and they don't necessarily call you all the time. And now those are the first ones that you should be proactive about and understand what is it that they buy? And the number one thing you should ask is hey, omar, this is Guy from XYC Supply and I really want to give you personalized service and I want to know what is it about, gi Supply, that you like so much for doing business? And shut up. And let's see what they say hey, I really like your service on this and I like the way you deliver and I like your products here. And whatever they say, you need to listen and the number one thing that bad salespeople do is they say oh great, you like our service. So they go into the second question instead of going deeper into the first one. So, besides the service, what else do you like about doing business with us? Oh, we like the way you honor the warranty, we like the way that you ship on time, things like that. So until they say you know, guy, that's about it, that's everything. I have the reasons that I like doing business with you guys.
Speaker 3:Then you go into the second question, which is hey, omar, what is it about the competition that you like? And you don't need to ask them what the competition's name? You don't need to ask anything, just listen. Oh, we like that. They give me better price than you. If, for whatever reason, they attack you, don't take it personally and don't defend yourself. You're there to get information. So, hey, omar, I understand it's interesting that you're finding the prices that you want. But besides great pricing, what else is it that you like about doing business with the competition? And here they go and they give you more information. And once you have those five key questions on, what is it that they really buy? Nobody buys a product. They buy a solution to a problem that they have. Once you have all those now, you can help them buy. So next time we call you and we say hey, omar, I was looking at your previous purchases and, like I said, we want to give you personalized service.
Speaker 3:So we see that you normally buy five air conditioning units of XYZ capacity every month, but it's been two months since you bought any. Is there any reason for that? And then you shut up and wait for Omar to provide the feedback? Does that make sense? It?
Speaker 2:makes perfect sense. What usually people do in the sales process is they do instead of being, listen instead of listen, because the client, the prospect, will tell you everything that you need to know. They're too nervous, maybe lack of confidence, maybe they heard no a few, many times, but they want to throw up on, they want to show how much knowledge that that they have on, and usually people only want to know you much knowledge that that they have on, and usually people only want to know you know three or four bullet points or something. How does this solve my problem? They'll do that. They'll do all the talking and they don't listen and it frustrates the client or the prospect and they leave. Or a lot of times. If you're not confident about yourself or your product, you think it's price Never To me. I always tell people always go for premium, always align yourself. If you want to be the cheapest, just ask JCPenney's, just ask Sears, just ask Kmart. What's it like competing for being the cheapest?
Speaker 3:Right, and the key here is don't be the cheapest, be the lowest total cost.
Speaker 3:Because I'm going to give you an example of something that really happened in our industry A brand new restaurant, beautiful, absolutely amazing, with a great chef, and he was installing his kitchen. And in the kitchen you need a ventilation system in order to take all the fumes out of the restaurant. And he couldn't understand why he was getting quotes for a bell for the kitchen that was so expensive to me. He was like $20,000. I mean, my kitchen is $20,000. That can't be that much. So he kept on quoting until he found someone that would say no, we can make it, and we just put a little fan on the top and we can get all the fumes and it will be 2000 bucks, hey, great. So he went for that. It took two days, didn't even open the restaurant, it caught fire because all the grease got stuck on that bell and it caught fire and he lost his whole investment. So it was the cheapest, but it wasn't the lowest total cost.
Speaker 3:So when we don't understand that, it is our duty to help the client, but nobody wants to be helped by being thrown up, like you said. So the key for a good salesperson is to ask questions. Have you considered the risk of a fire if you don't have the right bell equipment? Well, what do you mean? I'm a good chef but I don't know anything about fires. Well, do you realize that grease gets stuck on the bell? Yeah, I understand it does. Okay, do you realize that grease stuck on the bell can catch fire? Yes, so you're asking questions and he's saying yes, so now he's understanding. But if you're throwing up, oh no, you have to understand that the grease factor that gets stuck on bells is XYZ percentage and after XYZ time, if the temperature is 24.79, that guy is going to fall asleep because, again, he's a chef, he has nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he does it, that that's like you're speaking in japanese to him. He doesn't understand, but yet you feel like you need to tell him that you, you, you are the person with all the answers, man who cares. It's like if we went to, you know, the old circuit city, or we went to best buy, we just want a tv, it looks nice, right, aesthetics, but. But even to this day, but I remember, circuit City would always tell you the lines per resolution, an intricate thing, like you know, a 30 minute sales presentation, and it's like no man. Three bullet points why should I buy this and just shut up?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and a lot of the manufacturers have a lot of fault in that because they don't tell their salespeople, they don't show them how to sell. You know, selling is a process, but showing benefits, showing all the different nitty gritty, technical stuff, is what they are taught. That doesn't mean that you know how to sell what they are taught.
Speaker 2:That doesn't mean that you know how to sell. If I worked for good, because I see a bunch of brands I and my, my um cousins own boucher, which is a high-end appliance in miami, so just you know, I would ask any of them. Hey, b Bosh, give me bullet points. Three things, four things tops, why you are better than the competitor. Plain end of story. When you tell people stuff.
Speaker 3:That would be a bad salesperson if they go with those four bullet points, because those four bullet points may not make any sense to you or any difference to you. So here would be what a good salesperson should say. Hey, omar, okay, I understand that you're making a decision about a blender. Yep, okay, so what do you normally make in the blender I make?
Speaker 2:smoothies I make. I make like I used to make about like a thousand smoothies a day because I own five stores, about 200.
Speaker 3:OK, so now making a lot of smoothies it's important and you want that equipment not to break down versus. I make one smoothie a day. So you see, by asking the right question I'm getting the right information. But if I went and gave you four bullet points, maybe none of those would have included the fact that you need to make a thousand smoothies per day, do you see?
Speaker 2:that we wouldn't be going to, you know, Best Buy, or, or Sears or something like that. I have to ask, though, because when you say being in sales, I was a financial advisor for many years, sold life insurance as well. More now, the one touch On average on anything five to seven touches With what you're discussing, how many touches Are you more of a one touch, two touch?
Speaker 3:Yes, because recurring sales most likely the customer knows more about the product than yourself. It's not about the product, it's about the service surrounding the product.
Speaker 3:It's about the relationship has a lot to do with it, because they decide that they want to do business with you because you offer certain things around the product that they prefer. That's why you want to ask them why is it that you prefer doing business with us? And then they're going to give you certain reasons? Because, in the end, we don't sell anything. We just help them buy. So if we know what you buy and that's why I asked you the question what is it that you normally do in your blender? I want to see what is it that you buy. Because in reality, a good salesperson understands that we don't sell anything. We just help people buy.
Speaker 3:But that doesn't mean that they get the information. They ask us to send a quote, for example, in a required sales business. It doesn't mean that they make their decision right away. They may say OK, I still have a couple more units that I need to sell before I buy anything. Send me the quote, I'll call you when I need it. And then you say perfect, when do you think that call would come? And let's say Friday. Okay, If I don't hear back from you on Friday, I'll give you a call Friday afternoon, Is that okay? So you never leave the phone without having a firm date to call back the customer when he agrees upon, because exactly what you said follow-up is so important in sales. Exactly what you said Follow-up is so important in sales. Does that make sense? Perfect.
Speaker 2:Money call. We have all these books on the selling system we have you're in Boca, just down in Aventura. We have Grant Cardone and his sales system, his Cardone University. We have Zig Ziglar and Tom Ziglar his son's still alive. What separates you, what differentiates this sales process and money call, and not just those two, because there's other selling systems. What separates it? The it condenses time because less follow up, less touches with the prospect and clients.
Speaker 3:No, the big difference is it only works with recurrent sales. You cannot use money call in real estate sales. You can't use it because you're going to need to prospect in real estate sales. You can't use it because you're going to need to prospect. So the first thing that you need to realize if you're in a recurrent sales business, the first thing that you see is that if you're prospecting, you're wasting a lot of time because, omar admitted, you did a lot of cold calling. Nobody likes to be cold called. Nobody likes to make cold calls. Okay, so why call someone that doesn't know what you sell, that doesn't know about your product, that doesn't know about your services? Why don't you call the customers that already bought from you, that already bought a good amount of product from you but are not your number one? They're not in the top 20%. That makes 80% of your sales. If you call that 21% to 30% and find out more about what is it that they buy, it's going to be a lot easier to increase the amount of sales that they get that you get from them in a way that is a lot easier instead of trying to prospect. So that's the number one difference. Recurrent sales doesn't need as much prospecting because you already have the clients in your database. You just need to understand better what they do. Second, you need a system that works in that industry and Grant Cardone, it's great for real estate, it's great for selling cars, but that's a lot of prospecting In our industry.
Speaker 3:We need something where you have a script and ask a question. Like I said, first you need to ask the five key questions why is it that you like doing business with us? What is it that you like about doing business with the competition? What percentage of everything you buy you buy from us? That's a key question to allow the salesperson to think hey, omar only buys 30% of everything he buys for me. I got 70% opportunity. What am I doing? Calling somebody else? I should try to see how I can get more of that 70% that I'm not getting from Omar. And the number one thing you should try is 1%. So those five key questions will hone in to what is it that Omar buys? And then you make that once every year or once every two years. But once you know what Omar buys, you don't need to ask the same questions again. So from now on, you make calls proactive calls, meaning you are the one that has the agenda when you get called by the customer who controls the agenda.
Speaker 2:Am I supposed to answer or are you going to answer? I want you to answer.
Speaker 3:The customer, right the customer always man. He is the one that's saying hey, omar, do you have this Because?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, but you're throwing you're. But here's something I have to ask Yep, With Money Call, it's primarily for somebody that has a book, that you know there's prospects, people that have purchased in their CRM, their salesforcecom or whatever. Don't want to plug them because I'm not seeing a dime from them. And you be can. A guy that just opened up his own business, his own practice, his own salesperson, with little book.
Speaker 3:Should he read this as well, or should he just wait until he's established a little? Ok? So there are certain things that you definitely are going to do different when you start a business even if you're let's say that you're a distributor for paper products, which I already said is a recurring sales business but you started, you opened up in Miami as a new brand is your first, first store ever. Nobody knows you. It's the Omar paper products, right? You'll have to compete against OfficeMax and everybody else, right? So you're going to have to prospect. You have no other ways about it. You're going to have to prospect.
Speaker 3:But at the same time, it's important that you need to understand to ask questions. So you may not ask what is it that you like about doing business with us, Because they never have, but you definitely can ask what is it that you like about doing business with your current office supplier, and then you can get information about that. What is something that you've been trying to get and they've never been able to provide for you, and then you get more information. So obviously, all of that is going to be like market research before you go ahead and put together some kind of an offering that is going to allow you to get more customers to start with right. Does that answer your question there, Omar?
Speaker 3:Yes, Then once you start. Now you can go into the other questions, which is you always buy A but you never buy B, or you've been buying A for a while but it hasn't been. It's been two months since you bought A. Is there any reason for that? Because you want to make sure that if they start buying from somewhere else, you don't wait a long time before you intercept the information and see why is it that they moved along. It is a lot easier to recoup a client once you get them after they've been doing business with somebody for two months than for two years. So definitely you want to be proactive. So the method works better if you're already established, but definitely somebody that wants to start. If they use the questions right, it's going to allow them to put together a better offering that is going to position them in a way that they're going to be able to take business from the competition without being the lowest price. Does that make sense? Yes, sir, without being the lowest price, does that?
Speaker 2:make sense. Yes sir and man, I'm reading, I'm multitasking, I'm talking to you, I'm looking at some of these reviews. A lot of these reviews say your book it's more of a story, absolutely yes, it's a novel, so it's a novel. So it's like a lot of parables, a lot of analogies. Is it like?
Speaker 3:No, no no, no, it's actually a story, and the story is basically about a son of the second generation owner of a business air air conditioning and distribution business in Boca Raton, florida, right, and the son has been going through different departments and he didn't like sales very much. And now he started working at the sales department for six months and he sees that he doesn't sell anything. He actually just picks up the phone and people say, hey, guy, do you have XYZ? How much is it? Okay, I'll go pick it up, or please could you ship it to me. But he's not selling anything. He's just picking up the phone and providing whatever people call him for.
Speaker 3:And he says I wonder if it would be more effective if I turned that around, if I was the one that made the calls. And that thought allows him to start talking to our consultant about the possibility of changing the system from being reactive to being proactive. So the story is basically how to implement the system anywhere in the world, based on the stories of many of the companies that we have implemented it with. So the story is a fable, but in reality it's something that has actually happened and it puts you in the driver's seat, because I don't want readers of a book. I want implementers. I want people to see me on the street and say, man, me, myself are up 20% because we did exactly what you said. That's what we want. We don't want people to say, hey, the story was great.
Speaker 2:So then it's similar to the Alchemist and all the other books by you know a story. Yeah, now is that somebody that inspired you?
Speaker 3:No, I wanted to make sure that people felt that they were the ones asking the questions and they were the ones thinking about the answers to these questions, because this is happening in their business as they're reading, and everybody tells me that and I want them to think about how is it that they can implement it? And the book is full of numbers because it's a scientific book on sales. We don't talk about you're going to sell X, Y, Z. No, we talk about probability. We talk about statistics. If you do A, 20% of the time you're going to get B. If you do Z, 80% of the time you're going to get A.
Speaker 3:We want to be scientific about the whole approach and we took that from Spin Selling, another book. It wasn't a fable, but it was a book about analysis of 30,000, analysis of 30,000, 35,000 cases of sales. And they took sales that were more than $100 and sales that were less than $100. And they found that for less than $100, closing techniques worked. For more than $100, closing techniques didn't work and based on that, they found out what type of questions allowed salespeople to be effective. And that is the kind of questions that we want to provide in the book as a script so people don't have to reinvent the wheel and they just can copy those scripts and use them and get the results that we have seen many, many other companies get. Does that answer your question, Omar?
Speaker 2:It did. Now here's a question for you. Were you always great in sales? Were you born a salesman?
Speaker 3:Man, that is the best question for me, because normally I start any conversation with that. I'm an industrial engineer and I got an MBA, and I don't say that just to brag. I say that because normally that is the kind of person that does not like salespeople. And when I was a plant engineer, I did not appreciate any calls from the salespeople whatsoever because it usually meant work overtime, work on the weekend, we need a special order, we need it fast, the customer really wants it tomorrow and you have to make it happen. So I always felt that salespeople lied, they shouldn't be alive, we shouldn't need them and anything we wanted, we just should get it at amazoncom or at the supermarket, right. But it doesn't work that way and I realized that it was that salesperson that actually put money in my pocket so I could pay the rent. And it wasn't until I became a management consultant that I realized that that was the case. So this is what happened I get to be the top manager at the management consulting firm and then they say, hey, you're the top honcho, now you got to go sell the consultancy before you can provide it. And I go what? So people are not going to come to me and say, hey, how can I change my business, how can I improve it? No, no, no, no. You got to knock on doors and you got to do prospecting and see what you can do. I went oh my God, I know anything about sales. Can you help me out? So they sent me to an IBM training that was about the process of sales and being an industrial engineer. That opened up my mind. So if you look at my book, the number one person that I thank is Roy Cheatwood, the person that gave me that first training. But the number one book that changed my vision of sales was Spin Selling, that book that I told you about the Scientific Approach of Sales, and it has for many people. I'm not the only one and there's a bunch in the book that I mentioned as well but those two one got me into the career and the other one changed into the scientific approach, which made a lot of sense being an engineer, and now I do love sales. Obviously I've written other books, but this is number one in Amazon. The passion is behind it. I don't know if you can tell how passionate I am about it, but if you really want to change the way you look at salespeople.
Speaker 3:Ask salespeople for their definition of sales. And even if you're hiring a salesperson, this could be a great tip for anybody listening. If you're hiring a salesperson, ask them what is your definition of sales. And if they say, hey, to convince the customer, to make sure that they buy your product, to whatever in that line of pushing, convincing, changing people's minds, those are not the right people to hire. The great salespeople are going to look to help. They're going to ask questions to understand your problem better.
Speaker 3:I hear all the time salespeople say, hey, we want the customer to change to our product and I say, but that's not the problem for the customer. Tell me what is the problem that the customer has, and then we can talk about the possibility of him changing into your product. And then the salesperson said, well, I don't know what the problem is, I just want them to change. I said, well, if you don't know what the problem is, he's not going to change because he's not on your schedule, he's on his. So I started asking him questions.
Speaker 3:Ok, so give me one reason why you think he should change it. He says, well, the equipment is really old, it's more than 10 years old and I'm sure he's having a lot of problems. As a fact, I've seen his hotel and a lot of the equipment is already shut down, so I know he's having issues. Okay, so great. Now you're asking something that makes a lot of sense. So how about if you go and see the customer and say, hey, how much problems are you having with the equipment that you currently have? For the fact that I know it's been a couple of years since you bought it and you listen to whatever he says and now you're getting understanding and perhaps from that conversation, if he has a lot of problems, he'll be willing to listen about the possibility of changing. If he doesn't have a lot of problems, you have no choice but to just say, hey, when you're thinking about changing, for whatever reason, give us a call.
Speaker 2:You know what I have to add this too man, you are the ultimate sales guy because you come from an analytical. Like an engineer, you think it out, it becomes a process and it's not like some people when it comes to how to sell. Well, I'm going to sell that guy's shoes, but he has no feet. Oh well, he's going to need it one day. No, man, that's why people that's not selling, that's manipulation.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. Now, man, I have to ask you, because not only are you great in sales, but you're also into personal development and how to sell. Your first book was Seduced by the Greatest, which is also a novel. You're not even going to talk about that. I mean, believe it or not?
Speaker 3:Well, that wasn't my first book. That was actually my first book in English. My first book was about operations management, the new management. That would be the translation of that book.
Speaker 2:Now you're going to have to translate it to English so you can have another one man. Multiple flows of income. Remember that.
Speaker 3:Actually, that book was inspired by a book that already exists that's called the Goal. The problem was, the Goal was a novel and I was really impressed with Eligayu Goldratt, the guy that wrote that book. I became a Jonah because of him, but I felt that a lot of people didn't understand it. So I said, hey, did you read the book the Goal? Oh, yeah, fantastic. Okay, so what did you learn? Well, it was a novel, it was interesting, but what did you learn? They couldn't tell me.
Speaker 2:Well, that's whenever, when there's a lot of hype Vine and a lot of people don't get it, they don't want to say, well, I really don't get it. Exactly the thing is you don't want to feel like you're left out.
Speaker 3:You're like it's an amazing book, all of it, it's just great, and a lot of books are just too thick. It takes too long. That's why this book is 106 pages. You can read it in two flights. If you really that's why this book is 106 pages, you can read it in two flights.
Speaker 3:Okay, if you really know what you're talking about, it should be really quick. It should get to the point, and that's what we're looking for and that's why I'm not going to write that first book in English, because it's very graphical and there's something already done on operations management, but this particular book, I felt that there wasn't anything exactly like it on the shelves, so that's why I said we had to write it. We wrote it in English first and then, since I'm the director for Latin America, a lot of the people that read it they said man, it's fantastic, I want my salespeople to read, read it, but they don't speak english, so we had to translate it and, uh, it became a bestseller for amazon already in spanish as well. So it's it's been a really great ride for me now.
Speaker 2:Now you're gonna force me to to write another book, so I can, I can try to catch up with you, man, you, you keep on, you keep on writing all all these books. But what I love about, uh, from reading with seduced by greatness, is you use the, the fable again, you use parables. So you, you actually have you're. You're very good at that. Not a lot.
Speaker 3:The other book had to be a novel because it's it's actually have biography and half fable. So it was the real life of the greatest playboy that ever lived and his name was Rubirosa. Okay, and the other 50% is an imagined fable. That happened when someone his best friend, which is a totally made up person was asking for advice on how to seduce his wife who wants to get a divorce right. So in a way there is a little bit of the selling technique that I'm talking about, asking questions, but at the same time there is a lot about the seduction techniques that he used as a playboy in real life. I mean, jaja Gabor was one of the many actresses that went out with him and he married the top three richest women in the world. I mean, very, very fascinating guy. Had to be a novel in that particular case. So it's two different things.
Speaker 2:And then Jaja Gabor's sister was in Green Acres.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. Actually, I couldn't use Jaja Gabor in the book because she was alive at the time, so I had to use a pseudonym in order to be able to publish it.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, her estate can still go after you. I'm just messing.
Speaker 3:We changed the name. We changed the name.
Speaker 2:I don't even I doubt very seriously. Anybody in the Gabor family listens to my podcast, but there's more power to them. So do you have plans to write another book?
Speaker 3:Well, I teach a certification class about sales management and there is a little bit of sales management in the book not too much, but I see that there could be a book about sales management in the future, because if you want to implement the system, 50 percent of the success lies in being a good sales manager, Because sales managers need to guide salespeople and in the book the owner of the business is the one that is a sales manager at the beginning until he promotes the first person that he trained in the system, and the fact that it is a system and it's repetitive it makes it easier for salespeople. You talked about being a newbie before. What we find is new salespeople do a lot better with this system than people that have been selling air conditioning and refrigeration products for a long time.
Speaker 2:I already know how to do it. I have my own system, exactly.
Speaker 3:You are saying exactly what those people say. They're not willing to learn because they've been doing it and they've been doing the bad habits, though, and they get the bad habits. So when we bring the new people and they start doing proactive calling, it takes about three to six months before they start making more money than the old guys. And now people start freaking out and they go oh my God, look at this newbie and he's kicking my butt, you know. So that's, that's a beauty of having a system where you can bring new people and make them go ramp up and get a lot of sales, but you better watch out, because the old people and get a lot of sales.
Speaker 2:But you better watch out because the old people you may have to remove them. You always have to remove them. Man and new blood, that's what drives I mean, that's what even drives America, when they're all wait, wait, we need to close borders. And throughout the whole history of the country, what's made us the best and progresses when you're hungry. So new people at a corporation are hungry. They're they're not set in their ways. They're not like a lot of times, people that have been there forever. They're a cancer. They just don't know it because you know they're untrainable. They know it all. Any implementation is something new.
Speaker 3:They ignore or you know, oh yeah, like that there is a percentage, and I agree with you and that's why I would say hungry. Right, because they may think that they know it all. But once they see reality, and if they're really hungry, they're going to adapt, and we've seen that too. Is it the minority? I would say it's about 30%. So 70% don't change, and you're going to either have to fire them or you can keep them for whatever they're worth, and in time, you're going to start taking customers away from them because the new guys can serve them better.
Speaker 2:So you mean weed them out? Weed them out 70 percent yes. So how do we find these books and where do we like? How do we find them, where do we buy them? And do you teach a program? Do you have one on one coaching or do you have like a group coaching to help?
Speaker 3:OK. So the first question is the easiest one, which is Amazoncom, and whether you want it in Spanish or in English, you can find it there Money Call. It's a blue book and it's going to have the weird name at the bottom, Gibson Messina, and I do a lot of coaching for the members of the association. I don't do coaching outside of the members I have enough work with all my 70 members throughout Latin America but I am doing a lot of coaching for them. I've done some speeches for different associations and different companies. Recently we did one in Miami for different people that came from all over Latin America.
Speaker 3:But the first thing that I always ask before we do any kind of talk with anybody is are we talking about recurrent sales businesses? Because if it's not, then the system is not going to be a good fit for them. Now there are some companies that do have a little bit of both, so contractors, for example. I would say 80% of their sales are one in a long time, one in a long cycle sale. They are not going to sell you an air conditioner every year, so they're going to be maybe once every 10 years. Now they can sell maintenance every month, every quarter, twice a year, and that is recurrent sales. So again, there are some businesses that are going to have a little bit of both. So that is going to be the key in order for that talk to make sense and for people to be able to take a lot from the talk, which, in the end, that's what everybody wants. Does that make sense to you?
Speaker 2:yeah, it does okay, so no audible though.
Speaker 3:You know the number one thing, that the number one cause for a book publisher, anybody that writes a book, is marketing. It is tough to get your book out there and that's why I appreciate, I appreciate you having us, I appreciate you having us Anytime.
Speaker 2:I have a fellow author because a lot of people think you and I are like on Oprah's couch. I'm like no, we're self-published. It's more about helping others, it's being in service. Yes, on a good month, you know you could go to a nice restaurant, but you know it's not. I'm not. We're not on the New York times bestsellers, we're not Oprah Winfrey. So the best way to market is to promote. Have someone read the book and go oh my gosh, this is amazing. And when there's results, people are going to be like man, I need that book. I need more recurring sales, I need more profitability and less marketing. In that sense, absolutely.
Speaker 3:That's one of the things that got us to number one in Amazon.
Speaker 2:Right, it's not a cookie-cutter approach Absolutely, believe it or not. I was a grant card on certified coach at one time in my life and it's that, just. It's a cookie cutter approach, not, not. And to you, it's not not every, not all.
Speaker 3:You know, not everything fits in the same box right, yeah, and, and that that's why, when you publish the book, you have to spend in marketing, and we're glad that we got to be number one and now the book goes on its own and a lot of our members have talked to their friends and a lot of the people that contact me on LinkedIn. I get great questions and I get great ideas from people that are implementing or trying to implement the ideas in the book every day and I love that and please look for me on LinkedIn. But that is one of the reasons why we haven't gone into Audible and some I would say maybe two percent of the people that I talk to say, hey, I'm reading a lot more, but through Audible, because while I'm driving it's great I only get that excuse from like friends or people that that they're not going to implement anything.
Speaker 2:My book anyways. So save your time anyways absolutely so.
Speaker 3:That's a reason not everybody's our client right I haven't spent on anything on on audible. I just think that I've spent enough already and I'm getting good feedback from people reading the book, which is something that you can read really quickly. That's the reason we did it in a very easy, simple, quick reading format 106 pages.
Speaker 2:Well, this is what I have to ask you this. This is the ultimate question. This is the last question for you. For for that business, for that, that is, in reoccurring sales, but they're stuck. They're stuck prospecting, which really just spinning their wheels. They're prospecting, which really just spinning their wheels. They're prospecting because that's what you're supposed to do in sales. They don't know any better, that's all they hear. But yet you have a contrarian view. What words do you have to tell that person?
Speaker 3:And I find that all the time, especially in our industry, and I ask them. The first thing is especially in our industry and I asked them the first thing is could you do an 80-20 analysis from your database? Tell me, from the last two years, what are the 20% of your clients that gave you 80% of your sales? And normally they come back one or two hours later and they say 40 clients. And I go right, do you know which is client number 25? And they said not. At the top of my head I said right, because you don't have a ranking. So the first thing is you're that spurt, your mind is going all over the place. You need to concentrate. You need to understand which guys are your real clients. So now you have these 40 and now you can rank them from 1 to 40 and you can rank the importance of the time that you provide to them. But then you have the 41 to 70 where there's a lot of gold there. They already know you, they've purchased from you, but you're not their number one choice. So instead of wasting time calling people that never heard of you, let's call these people and understand what is it that they truly buy? They don't buy air conditioning. They don't buy products, they buy solutions. Understand what kind of solutions they buy. So that's why you also ask what is it that you like about doing business with the competition? So they can say we like the fact that they deliver within 24 hours and you don't. So now you can say, okay, if I want this type of customer, instead of looking for a new customer, all I have to do is find ways for me to deliver within 24 hours and I'm going to get more of their business. You see, and that's how you start helping that type of business that is totally lost because the phone is not ringing enough. And that's when they start calling. The phone is not ringing enough. And that's when they start calling. The phone is not ringing enough. So they say start calling, find new customers. We need new customers.
Speaker 3:Because the number three question is key what percentage of what you buy do you buy from me? Because if you ask a salesperson, they're going to say, hey, omar buys 100% from me. I can't sell one more dime to Omar. I need to look for a new client. That's why they do prospecting. Those are the two things. So I can't sell any more to Omar. He buys 100%. And because the phone is not ringing, I need to call somebody else. But then when I call Omar and I say, hey, omar, what percentage of everything you buy you buy from me? And he says 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%. I understand that I have opportunity. So why call someone that doesn't know me instead of concentrating on Omar so I can get more of his business? And that is the key to get unstuck from that type of situation that you just mentioned. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:It always does man. Everything that you say always makes sense. You would have been a great college professor.
Speaker 3:Well, we've helped a lot of companies and some of them started in the situation that you're talking about. Some of them, I'm glad that we're not, but when they implement the system, it works for them and that's the reason. It's a system and if you do step-by-step everything in there, starting from that 80-20 analysis as step number one, you're going to get the result Well, thank, you Good to see you.
Speaker 2:Messina, Multiple times Amazon bestseller. Buy his book. He doesn't want to coach you, so buy his books and, more importantly, implement. Quit with the highlighter, Quit reading books just to read them. All these nonfiction books. The entertaining factor? Yes, he's entertaining with his books, but most of these are just why, Implement. I highly suggest this book, especially if you're in reoccurring sales, to implement, To read, implement make your life better, create more sales and change your legacy, change the path of your purpose.
Speaker 1:What if it did work? Right now you can make the choice to never listen to that negative voice no more. The hardest prison to escape is our own mind. I was trapped inside that prison all for a long time. To make it happen, you gotta take action. Just imagine what if it did work.