If You’re in Sales, Watch This (How Top Reps Actually Win Deals)

If Your Sales Team Is Busy but Still Missing Quota, This Is Why

 Most sales reps don’t have an activity problem. They have a process problem.

In this episode of Entry & Exit, Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble of Alarm Masters break down the sales systems, habits, and questions that help security, alarm, fire, and life safety companies close more deals without competing on price alone.

They unpack what separates average reps from top performers, why most salespeople commoditize themselves, and how a structured sales process can improve close rates, qualification, and follow-up.

They cover:

• Why most reps lose deals on price
• How to control the sales process from first contact to close
• The discovery questions that reveal budget, authority, and urgency
• Why bad deals should be disqualified early

Stephen Olmon — https://x.com/stephenolmon

Collin Trimble — https://x.com/TXAlarmGuy

More Entry & Exit — https://www.entryandexit.co/

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Transcript

Discovery Questions That Win

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Every time you talk to a customer, you need to be trying to get nuggets out of them. Don't give up asking discovery questions.

SPEAKER_02 0:07

You don't feel like you can ask that question or this question. You gotta get over it.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Like, why are we not having this conversation three weeks ago? What happens if you don't do anything? That's gonna tell you if you need to spend a lot of time on this deal or not. Because if they don't have a compelling event, you really have no reason you have to do this.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Like a bad habit of spending way too much time in a deal that was never gonna close.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Pick up the phone, turn every one of your emails into a phone call.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Like it's 1995, just wild. Welcome to Entry and Exit. My name is Steven Ullman, and I also have Colin Treble with me, who is my co-host and also my business partner. We run Alarm Masters in Houston, Texas, and we also run this podcast where we try to give you practical, tactical ways to grow and scale your security or life safety business.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

I'm excited for today. This is uh Super Bowl. This is my Super Bowl.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Yeah. This is a big one. This is a big one. Um I think a lot of times we get owners or prospective owners or executives that listen to the podcast. And I think probably a lot of our content is geared to that. Because that's a lot of what we do is run our business. But today, this is all for the sales guy and gal out there. So if you're an owner that does sales regularly, like you're carrying a bag, you're out there, like your most of your day is sales, then you will benefit from this. But if it is not, you need to just copy and paste this link right on over to your salesperson or your salespeople or your head of sales because we're talking directly to the sales folks today. That's right. Um, and by the way, I will admit that I say sales guy as a catch-all. Okay. I know there's a lot of sales gals out there. So I'm gonna try to remember to say both sales guy and gal. Forgive me, sales gals, when I say guy more often. Sales salespeople. Salespeople, sales individual, if you will. Yeah. Um, so lock in because today we're talking all about what we did as salespeople

Measurables and Sales Process

SPEAKER_01 2:20

and how you can improve in some things that you can do to get better. Um, so you know, I think that a lot of this is gonna come down to kind of three core categories, and we're gonna go kind of walk through what those categories are. But um I think the first thing we got to start with is the measurables. And so if you're sitting there and it's morning and you're eating your fruity cereal and you're doing your thing, waiting to get to the good stuff, we're gonna start off with the good stuff because I actually think this is the thing that actually moves the needle. Um, and when I say measurables, you gotta find a way to measure to improve. And we talk about that every single podcast, basically. And that has never been truer than in sales. And I think that there's really two ways, um, big categories that you can control, and that would be activity and your sales process. Activity fills the pipeline, sales process improves the close rate. You have two levers to pull. And if you don't have a CRM, your company doesn't have a CRM, go sign up for one. Uh just do it. Or track it in a track it in a spreadsheet, or go have Chat GPT code you a custom CRM or something. I don't know. You like Claude now or Perplexity or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Right. Perplexity computer. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

All right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. He's sponsored. Um you're gonna have to find a way to track this to some to some degree. And if you want to be really good, if you want to be crushing your number and you are in a um if you are in a market where you don't have named accounts, meaning you're not uh an enterprise salesperson that can only sell to 20 accounts, then you have every ability to hit your number. You have every ability to double your number every single year. Okay. And I'm on to you salespeople. Okay. I know what it's like in this industry. I've been there, I've done that. And uh I'm gonna just say this because it's a little spicy, but I believe it. Majority, we'll say 80-20, 80% of the salespeople in this industry sell in the exact same way. And then they commoditize themselves, and it comes down to price. And so they're closing one in three deals. It's look, put your thumb in there, and hope to God that you close those deals, and it's basically all luck, and you're just slamming as much activity as you can, and you're just trying to get as many quotes out as you could possibly get out, and you really have no repeatable process. So we're gonna talk about how to not be that salesperson and how to differentiate yourself because we have heard this time and time again from our customers. Y'all weren't the most expensive, you weren't the cheapest, y'all were right there in the middle, but y'all clearly put in the most effort and made us feel like it was we were like the most important customer to you. And so that has won us more deals. Our entry-level reps who just had never had a sales role ever in their life. We've got two guys, one guy that kind of came from the uh fitness industry, another guy came from like construction project management, both of them 50% close rate, and that's because they're following a sales process. You've got to have a sales process. Do not let your customer or your prospect dictate the sales process. It is so easy. This is how it happens. And I know because I've been there, I was the salesperson for Alarm Masters for two years before uh before we hired a sales team. Phone rings, customer is hot, they need you out, they're ready to go. You go out on site, you walk the job, you get them a proposal in a couple days or a week, and then nothing. You don't hear anything. And then maybe in a month you hear back from them and they either move forward or they don't. And that's how you're living your life. One site walk, your sales process is two, is it's really two things. It's like, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna email the pricing. Maybe you do a call with the customer on the front end to learn a little bit more about what they want. Um, you've got to have a sales process. So we're gonna talk about what that looks like. And you also have to keep up high levels of full cycle activity. You've got to be filling your pipeline. You're gonna get slammed with doing quotes and pricing presentations and sitewalks, and you're gonna think I don't need to prospect. I don't have time to prospect. I've got more deals than I know what to do with. And I would tell you that you should be figuring out a way to cut out the lower quality deals that are likely not gonna close early and spend always set a threshold and say, I'm never gonna go below this amount of prospecting activity. I'm if I do 20 appointments in a week, I'm gonna not do less than five prospecting appointments, even in my busiest week. Steven, what do you have to add to that? Because I think those are two really important things as a salesperson that you gotta really understand. And we're gonna dive into more about that. But what's your hot take on that?

SPEAKER_02 7:22

My hot take is um that the prospect isn't right, like they're going to want to ask for things. Um, and just because they asked for something doesn't mean you should give it to them. You know, like we're not going kangaroo mode and hopping around the sales process. Yep. We are gonna control the process. That's right. We're like the prospect you have to because you can't be hopping around.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Kangaroo mode. I've I've never heard that before. Kangaroo mode. That's that's great. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I don't I don't know where you pull this stuff out. So I think the listeners are really getting a true glimpse into who you are as a person.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

And so you know where it came from? This morning, this morning we made a song with AI. And and it was like all about kangaroos. Uh actually. We actually did that this morning in my house. And my daughters were laughing, and I don't know, I have kangaroos on the mine. Yeah. Good times. Um but if you don't you set up a process, you have to stick to it. Uh and so if you aren't controlling the process, then you're likely going to get pricing pressure applied to you. You're you're gonna get um you're gonna lose the uh the edge that you have like in the deal. Any sort of leverage you have is gonna just like poof go away. Uh because if you didn't stick to uh like a good process, it's actually good for them. Yeah, they may not know it. They're maybe they're an immature buyer. And so it's important to to stick to whatever you've kind of established as your process.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Yeah, you're there, the customer's timetable is not your timetable.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

And that feels counterintuitive. If you want to get uncommon results, you have to do uncommon things in sales. And that that means sticking, you've got to be type A, due diligence on every deal. You've got to stick to the process, you've got to, it's got to be a very standardized process, and also you've got to do the small stuff. You've got to do the things that nobody else is doing. Um, and so again, I just want to walk through some of the metrics for my team. Okay. And you and you can um we've we've got some tools at our disposal, or my sales team does that maybe you don't have. Like my sales reps wake up every Monday morning with a calendar of 20 meetings booked for them. We've got an SDR that books all of their meetings for them. They book some of their sales process meetings, like coordinating with the customer to do a new site walk or a demo or whatever, but like their their prospecting appointments, all that's fully booked for them. And and the other thing they get is they have somebody that's doing, I'll say, 90% of the quoting. So they go out and they take the pictures and they specify the manufacturer and they specify a couple things, but then they we have a full-time inside sales person and estimator that's doing those quotes. So you may not have those things. Um, but I don't think that that should mean that you you cut the numbers in half. I think that you you should still try to hit some of these numbers because my team is going to hit more. Like we're growing in our numbers. But anyway, so so from a sales process perspective, you've got to fill the pipeline. So we're trying to do 10 prospecting appointments minimum per week, and I really want them to be at 15.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

Per salesperson.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Per salesperson, yeah. Yeah, exactly right. And so those, again, we think of every one of those coffee drops, is what we call them. Two out of every 10 of those converts to a converts to a closed deal. About four to five of them convert to some level of pipeline, right? So um that's filling the pipeline. And then um, the other thing that we're really doing is we're rigorously following our sales process. And so here's what our sales process looks like. Um, typically, most of our deals come out of coffee drops. So an SDR calls the customer and says, hey, we just want to stop by, um, introduce ourselves. So they go out, they talk to the customer, introduce themselves. The sales guy goes in, does a sitewalk, the not a sitewalk, just goes to introduce themselves. And the customer sometimes wants it to be a sitewalk because they'll say, Oh, well, you're here. Can you look at my cameras? And it's like, absolutely. Let me look at your cameras. But let me just be clear. I'm I'm likely gonna need to come back and do a formal sitewalk where I'm getting more pictures so that I can do this in the right way and make sure I capture the viewing angles you want, and I might need to bring in the manufacturer. So I'm happy to show me. Don't say no, be flexible, but also set the expectation. Once you do the like the coffee drop or the prospect appointment, that is the first stage of that's qualification of your opportunity. So you have some amount of need that's available. Then I'm setting up a discovery meeting for my team. My team is doing a discovery meeting every single time. And a discovery meeting is either virtual, or if the customer has a lot of time, they will jump into the discovery meeting right there in the coffee drop, depending on the deal. And the discovery meeting, I make them pull up a slide deck that basically does two things. The discovery meeting, well, really does three things. It sets the expectation of the sales process. So we do not send pricing over email until after we presented it in person. Do not do it. If you wait until the pricing presentation to say, Mr. Cusper, I'd really like to present this in person, they're gonna say, just email it to me. And then you look like a jerk if you say no. So instead, we do it at the beginning. We say, hey, FYI, part of our sales process, we always present the pricing in person. It's really hard to compare when you're getting quotes from multiple people, which I hope you are. It's hard to compare that. So it's good for me to be able to verbally walk through this with you. Is that okay with you? Because I want to make sure you're good with that before we get started. And they're always gonna say yes. And that means when you get to the time to present it, they're not surprised. So that's one thing. We're setting expectation on what the sales process looks like. Number two is we're building value in what makes us different. So we're trying to trickle that along the sales process, but this is really the time for us to say, hey, I'm not gonna go through all these slides to tell you about who we are. What you really need to know about us is three things. One thing is that we are trying to deliver the Chick-fil-A of the security industry. We're trying to have the very best experience. Number two, we're gonna deliver the highest level of communication that you've ever had in a sales process. And number three, you are gonna get the names and numbers of every single person on the executive team, including the owner of the business. And you can call any of those people at any point because we're that obsessed with experience. That's the three things that you need to know about our company. You

Qualify Hard and Walk Away

SPEAKER_01 14:02

get to deliver that in a space in a setting where it's kind of captive audience. And then the last thing is you get to get information from your customer. You need to always be, every time you talk to a customer, you need to be trying to get nuggets out of them. And the more times that you give time to them and you're interacting are chips and their deposit of your relationship, you will get the ability to get more information out of them. Uh, that's just how relationships are, right? Like if you meet somebody the first time, you know, they're gonna probably just very surface level. But after you've met with somebody four times, you're gonna know that their kids play soccer and they're middle schoolers and gymnastics and whatever. Like you're gonna get to know all these things about them. And so you're gonna start, don't give up asking discovery questions just in the first meeting. Like you, you want to kind of go through and you really put it in three categories. You need to be identifying budget. What are they willing to spend? What they don't may not know, so you've got to help coach them. So you've got to have some anchor pricing on what how much is it per camera per door? And say, if I come back with a proposal to you, Mr. Customer, at a pricing presentation for $10,000, would you be willing to sign that the next day? Like, what is it gonna that you should ask that? And then you also understand what is their compelling event? Why are they doing this today? So I would say, Mr. Customer, why are you doing this today? Like, why are we not having this conversation three weeks ago? Or what happens if you don't do anything? That's gonna tell you if you need to spend a lot of time on this deal or not. Because if they don't have a compelling event, you you you really have no reason you have to do this. Well, the fire marshal's coming out in three weeks, I have to have it done. That is a compelling event. My building was struck by lightning, and insurance says I have 12 months to do it. That is a compelling event. I had a break-in, a bunch of stuff was stolen, and the cameras are all down. That's a compelling event.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

The hard part, and I I've felt this so many times in sales, is walking away from a deal. Yeah. You got the initial conversation, yep, but you want to get out of there. If they don't have budget, if they don't have a compelling event, yeah, if they, you know, you're not actually talking to a decision maker, a buddy told him this is a good idea, whatever. Like get out of there. Go spend time on the next deal.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

And you know why you shouldn't worry about that is because they won't worry if they say no to you.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

You know what I mean? Like the customer's gonna say no to somebody, and it could be you. Correct.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Yeah. Yeah, I just I think that it is almost almost like a different uh topic of like bad habits of salespeople. Like a bad habit is spending way too much time in a deal that was never gonna close.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Yeah. They don't have budget, you're not talking to power, they don't have a compelling event. You're talking to the receptionist, they're not giving you any type of budget, and you have no real reason, you're not winning that deal. If you are, it's by luck. And that's not how this whole thing, you're not gonna get to your number, uh, you're not gonna get to your number consistently on luck. So you've got to make the decision like, am I gonna start doing the things now that are gonna get me to my number? And so Steven's absolutely right. Getting the ability to walk away from a deal is hey, Mr. Customer, I think we're the fit. Like, unfortunately, I've got to get connected with the folks that make the decision on this, or y'all have to have some budget because I'm not just gonna like do this. Because you get really two things. You get you have two pieces of leverage. One is information about the solution to solve the problem, and two, pricing. Those are the only two things you have. As soon as you give that up, you have nothing to hold over them. Not a thing. So you've got to get comfortable letting go of those deals and focusing your time on the deals where you do have budget, authority, and you have some type of need timeline compelling event situation. And and if you have those deals, I would rather you spend two, three X on those deals and cut these other deals out of your pipeline. Because sometimes when you say, hey, I'm not gonna do this because unfortunately we we only work with the folks that are actually gonna be making a decision on this, then the receptionists be like, oh, okay, well then yes, please, like let me get you introduced to our CFO. Okay, then now the deal is a little different. But you've got to get comfortable with that. You've also got to get comfortable asking the hard questions, like if I get you a proposal for $10,000, which you said is in your budget and it meets everything you need, would you be willing to sign it within 48 hours? You've got to get comfortable with that. You gotta get comfortable asking the question. And outside of you, Mrs. Customer, who else is making the decision on this? Because I want to make sure that we are on the same page.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

And so I think that that's really important. I think that's really important to ask those questions. What do you think? What other hard questions do you think you should be asking?

SPEAKER_02 18:41

I just think generally people are afraid of sounding and feeling awkward.

unknown 18:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Like if you're a salesperson, I I said this in a past episode like what's awkward is not hitting your quota. That's what's awkward. And so maybe you need to practice having hard conversations where you push a little bit and get used to some of those very direct questions because if you are kind of kind of beating around the bush, you're you know, kind of shy, you don't feel like you can ask that question or this question, you gotta get over it. You have to do the work to be to be someone who feels confident enough to look people in the eye and ask a very oh, just to be clear, do you actually have the authority to sign this? Yep. Oh, you oh you don't. Okay. Well, who does? Uh love to talk to them. We can meet with them together. That'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Yeah, yeah, like it's awkward for me still.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Like it's budget, budget, like people, even just like a personal finance, very awkward thing. People don't want to talk about money. Yeah, um deal with it. Like you have to, you know, and and even like budget sometimes, especially in like a larger deal, if you're going up market, more kind of enterprisey, like sometimes the budget is being pulled from different areas. Like you've got to kind of dig in. You have to understand like who are the different stakeholders in different departments, where's the budget coming from? You want to get out in front of that. You don't want to find out three weeks from now information you really needed three weeks ago. So if you are someone who I'm I'm talking right now and it's making you feel uncomfortable because you know you have this problem, yeah. I think you you gotta practice, like work with people on your team say, hey, can can we do some mock sales? Because I've got to get better at asking hard questions and pushing through the awkwardness. Will you help me? Like, and even probably asking someone to do that with you feels awkward.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

So yeah, there's some and role play it. You gotta role play it. It's a it's it's a great way to practice. Write down, yeah, write down a script that you're not gonna memorize, but you'll know it like conceptually so that you can kind of spit it out. So like you you can know the objections, like write down a piece of paper. And and and this is that gets into the like small stuff, which we're about to talk about in a second. I want to finish on

Sales Process Touchpoints

SPEAKER_01 21:08

sales process real quick. So discovery meeting, then we're coming out, we're doing a site walk, you know how to do a sitewalk, take pictures. Hey, by the way, pro tip if you're going out there for more than one thing, like if they're like, Yeah, we need access control and video, it's two sitewalks because the more face-to-face meetings you get, the better likelihood you're gonna close that deal. So set up, don't do it in one. Everybody wants to be efficient.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

Yeah. So so that's that's something that I wanted to bring up. People listening to this, if you are thinking to yourself, wow, this sounds like overkill. This sounds like a lot of meetings. I don't think people are gonna want to do that. I think I'm going to annoy my prospects. No. Statistically speaking, you are more likely to close the deal the more times, the more quantity of times you arrive and meet with them in person. And virtuals count. But you know, we're trying not to do only virtual. Right. Face to face as much as you can. Don't believe that lie that, oh, like they don't have enough time. I'm taking up too much of their time. I'm asking too much of them. No. Wrong. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Yeah, I agree. 100%. More face-to-face meetings. The next thing that we're doing is we're doing a demo always. Unless it's a fire alarm system, we're doing a demo. Even on intrusion, I'm going to show them. You know, we saw a lot of DMP. So we will do a virtual keypad demo so that our our customers can see what that looks like. That's another touch point. That's another place to ask discovery questions. That's another place to build value. That's another way to plant landmines because now you're uncommoditizing yourself from them. Like, so now if you just go in without showing them a solution, then they're going to see, oh, this is a 10-camera system and this is a 10 camera system. But if this one doesn't have an app and it's on-prem and this one is cloud and it's got analytics, you're not comparing apples to apples, but the customer doesn't know that. And you just telling them that doesn't mean anything. You've got to show them. So set up that demo every time. Give me 15 minutes. That one definitely could be virtual. Better face-to-face can be virtual. Up to you. Here's another one that's vague. People don't do this. They do not do it. And this is honestly, I'm even we're trying to get our sales team to be better at this. We are trying to get every one of our deals that's over really, I would say anything of like decent size. So anything over 25K. We're trying to make sure the customer has a phone reference call with another customer.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

And so what we do is we say, hey, the best proof to work with us, and so you can hear is to talk to another customer about how the experience went. And like, I we have a ton of customers. Here's one that I think you could have a conversation with. Go to your favorite five customers, ask them if they'd be references, buy them a gift card every single time they do it. 15 bucks, whatever. Get that customer talking to other customers. Yep. Then call the customer, set the the proposal meeting, get that thing ready, and you should be walking into that proposal meeting knowing you're going to get that deal. You've got a compelling event, you know the budget, you're connected to some level of power, you have line of sight. If you are worried about getting connected to power and you're still not getting connected to power before you walk in that presentation, use uh executive people above you. If you've got a sales manager, if you've got an owner, an executive in your company, say, Hey, can you come over the top and talk? And so one of the things we'll do is sometimes we'll have the salesperson say, Hey, last stage of this process. We really like to get executive to executive talking. So can I get my owner on the phone with your own just to have a conversation? And it just it just provides a little, like your owner's ultimately gonna be the one that's gonna have to deal with this thing down the road. A lot of our owners feel like they appreciate that. It's a it's a five-minute call. Is that okay? That just creates more adhesion between you and the customer than you're presenting that pricing. So you if you can measure your sales process and you can figure out where you're like getting in a deal and where you feel like you need to improve it and look try little things to improve your sales process, you are going to get better results and your close rate will go up. Your competitors are not running a sales process like that. They're not, they're not doing it. And this is the sales process, Steven. You and I were in SaaS world. This is table stakes. This is it. This is the only thing that the sales pro like the SaaS world does. They're like, oh yeah, this is normal. Sales process exactly. Like that's all we do is run that type of sales process.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Yeah. I I would say that a lot of the regionals and and even some of the nationals in our space aren't executing sales process.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

No, they're not.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

And the reason I know that is because when I was working as a as a manufacturer's rep, I would meet with nationals, independents. I didn't see anybody running this sales cycle. Really. I mean, I didn't see anybody running the sales cycle. So I think that if you can run this sales cycle and look, use a little bit of touch, use a little bit of nuance. If you need to do the pricing presentation over Zoom, fine. If they're traveling, it's like, look, I really send them a Loom video. Like a Loom video is just a recording of you and the screen walking them through the proposal. If you have to do that, fine. You know, don't let that be the minority. But like if you're doing these steps, you're gonna get a higher close rate. You will get a higher close rate. And and I promise you, you're not gonna be the last bid in. If they're calling you, you're probably the first person. Most people, it takes them two to three weeks to get proposals out. You're gonna get it in before them no matter what, as long as you're running the cycle. So the first bucket, which I wanted to spend a lot of time on, is do the prospecting,

Uncommon Small Stuff

SPEAKER_01 26:37

stop giving up on prospecting when you're busy. January, February, March, commercial B2B security is kind of a dip, and and that's also a dip, or is and that's where residential goes up. And then kind of in the summer, it flips. Like residential in the summer kind of goes down a little bit and commercial goes way up. And so uh depending on where you are, uh, if you're a commercial or res e rep or however, like you need to be dialed in on keeping your prospecting appointments high all the time. Yeah, um, so yeah, I think those are the two most important categories. I want to move to doing some uncommon things in the small stuff. And this is like, I'm just gonna kind of rapid fire through some of this stuff. I don't think that like we've got to spend a ton of time on it. But one thing is if you've got a really big deal, let's just say 50 plus K, I mean, I don't know what a big deal is for you, so you've got to kind of contextualize this. It I a medium-sized deal is 50k for us. So if I've got a deal over 100K, that's a decent sized deal for us. We're gonna do a couple things that are in common. Number one, I'm gonna have my reps send a follow-up letter to the customer, handwritten, usually sometime in the middle of the cycle before the pricing presentation. So that's number one. Number two, I'm gonna get them executive alignment. So I'm gonna get me aligned with somebody in their executive team that has some level of power. Um, another thing that I think a lot of reps don't do that I think is really important, it's this phrase called BAM fam, which is book a meeting from a meeting. So if you're sitting at the sitewalk, do not leave the sitewalk until you have the demo scheduled. Don't leave the demo call until you have the reference call scheduled. You know, that you want to always book your next meeting from the meeting you are currently at. It shows organization. So book book a meeting from a meeting. Um, another one that I think is huge is just regular email touch. Like uh sometimes it takes a while to get quotes. Like I get it. We have times where like larger deals in particular may take us a week or even 10 days to get a quote done because of some like we're kind of waiting for information from them. We're also waiting for some information from our manufacturer. They're not upset about it. But what we're always doing is I'm having my reps follow up with those customers every 48 hours. Even what we call no news updates. Hey, I don't have anything to update for you. I just want you to know I am working on this still, still waiting for this person. I'm bugging them. They haven't gotten it to me, but I'll follow up with you tomorrow no matter what.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

Yeah. Bare minimum weekly. Like again, depends on the deal, depends on the dynamics. Bare minimum weekly. Like, if you're going multiple weeks because there is no update and you're just letting it sit, you're what you're doing is you're giving your compet anyone that's competing for the deal an edge. If you're just kind of being quiet. But yeah, every 48 hours like is um it takes a lot of discipline.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Steven hates this about me. This is this is another one. Pick up the phone, turn every one of your emails into a phone call.

SPEAKER_02 29:29

Non-scheduled calls. Yeah, like it's 1995, just wild.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Get your Wallet X out.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Call them.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

Leave a voicemail.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

I'm telling you, if you call your customer to say, hey, I'm just letting you know I don't have an update for you right now, here's where I'm at. I just want you to know that I'm thinking about you and I'm trying to get this thing done. You will crush it. Crush it. Pick up the phone and talk to them.

SPEAKER_02 29:55

So yeah, that's another really big one. One quick thing. Um, on the handwritten letter, um, I think just touch on what the message is there, you know. Like if you're pre-pricing, pre-presentation pricing presentation, like what are one or two plays to run on like what you might actually say, you know, um, outside of like something thinking about you? Like, that's kind of creepy. Um, like what are we trying to communicate there?

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Yeah, I'm always I'm trying to deposit emotional chips into the bank. And so I that's why I'm I'm trying to do everything before the pricing presentation. I I think so many folks like do stuff after the pricing presentation. Oh, I'm gonna follow up with them, see where they are, and yeah, I'm gonna send the letter after the pricing presentation or after I win the deal. No, early, earlier. So that way when you get into that pricing presentation, you've got this rapport and this relationship, and you can ask really hard questions like, hey, I've done everything I can do for you. I've shown you it, I've done the executive sponsorship, I've done the uh reference call, I've got this proposal sitting for you. It looks like we hit your anchor pricing. What do I need to do to earn your business? And what are the next steps for you specifically? When are you talking to these people? What do you do? Like, get specific. The qu the things I typically, I honestly, the content of the letter matters a little bit less to me. It's the fact that you're doing it, but I typically just have my rep say, you know, hey Steven, thank you for giving us the opportunity to present our solution on this. I've really gotten a good time to know you. You know, I hope that you know you keep us in mind for future work, whatever. It doesn't even really matter. I I just put something like, Thank you for your time. It's been great to get to know you. Mail it handwritten. And honestly, you can write 30 of them, leave out the two field, and just you know, write in dear whoever it is, stuff an envelope in your duct. Like there's all also you can do this, by the way, online. There's people that'll do handwritten letters for you, and you can just submit them online and they'll email, they'll mail them out. So depends on how easy you want to hit the easy button. One one more thing on the the small stuff, and then we'll move into kind of a funner segment is uh you need to always be improving. So I would always be looking for after every meeting, just take a journal in your car and write down a few notes on how you can get better, you know, what what can you do to get better?

SPEAKER_02 32:16

What earned you positive remarks where people kind of lit up and when did people glaze over?

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Yes. If you can do that, if you can try to improve incrementally, just writing it down while it's fresh. Like I literally used to keep in my truck a little like moleskin notepad, and I would write down this is the meeting, here's what went well, here's what I sucked at. It was like three sentences, and I didn't ever really look back at it very often. I just would kind of rem I would just kind of ingrain it into my mind, and I knew the next time I was going into the meeting, which by the way, last little small thing, if you can do some just small meeting prep, just like before you go into the meeting, review your notes. Go back and remember the questions, remember the personalized touches, remember that they're kidding soccer game. Like, yeah, review the notes and come in like it's fresh on your mind. You will crush. You will crush it. Um, all right, last thing, I want to close on this because I think this is fun. What are some creative things you've done to and actually we had somebody ask us this? They're like, you should do this as a segment. What are some creative things you've done as a salesperson to win

Creative Closing Plays

SPEAKER_01 33:20

business? You go first. I've got I've got two. I want to hear your answer.

SPEAKER_02 33:26

I've got two. Yeah. Um I would like to preface this with if you think what we're saying sounds creepy, go back to where I talked about feeling uncomfortable. No, you shouldn't feel uncomfortable. It's awesome. Get over it. Um two things. One, there was an executive that I really wanted and needed to meet with. And she did not have a LinkedIn. So I could not verify certain things about her. I did additional research, and I did find out where she lived, not her home address, but generally where she lived. So I shot her an email and I said, Hey, I think you might be based in the X area. I'm gonna be in town and would love to take you to coffee. Um, would that be okay? And so it wasn't totally verifiable, but I took a shot in the dark. She responded, and she didn't ask me, like, oh, creeper, like I just she just said, yeah. Like, actually, yeah, it is where I live. I relocated not too long ago, and that'd be awesome. So I wasn't actually gonna be in the area, I just bought a plane ticket and flew there. And yeah, as one as one does. As one does, like, well, now I'm in the area. Look at that. Right. Um, but I I put the extra effort in and made it feel natural. Um, I think there's a lot of ways to make sales feel more natural than it might be. Um, and and it just kind of depends on how you present that type of communication. Um, the other thing I've done to get people's attention is I have taken selfies of myself holding up a sheet of paper with their name with like an exclamation, like Lisa, exclamation point, and just like, I'd love to talk, Lisa. Boom, and just like the photo with their name on it gets their attention. And uh so I've done that sort of stuff to just try to like get a response to like take an extra step, do something creative or funny, and um I think that's the last thing I'll say is people a lot of times are bored. People are bored at work, they're doing the same thing, it's not that they don't like their job, but like it's just another day. So to interrupt their world with something that's fun or humorous, I think is an awesome play. Um, it depends what industry you're in, it depends what in vertical they're in, like you have to think through it. But um, I think when you can be a little lighthearted, it can make a difference.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

Yeah, two things on mine. Um very fast. One of them, um very controversial. I cold FaceTime people frequently when I was at Salesforce. So, but I would act surprised as if I didn't mean to do it. So I would be sitting there, like kind of like pretending to text, and I'd be I'd cold FaceTime them. And if they answered, I'd be like, Oh, Mark, are you FaceTiming me? And then they'd be like, No, you FaceTime me. And I'm like, Oh, well, I didn't mean to. That must have been a pocket. I'm just sitting here texting Mark. I'm so sorry. Well, I got you. How are you doing? What's going on? Where are things?

SPEAKER_02 36:41

So good.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

And and the other thing that I would do is I would, if I didn't get them, which happened a lot more times I wouldn't get them, I would I would text them and say, Hey Mark, did you just try to cold FaceTime me? Or I would say, Did you just try to FaceTime me? And they'd they'd respond, no, no, I looked like you were FaceTiming me. I was like, no, man, sorry, I wasn't FaceTiming you. I looked like you were FaceTiming me. How are you doing? And now you're on a texting relationship. So then I'm hitting them up on text. Frequently did that all the time in my old in my old deal. Another one that is very scalable and not quite as awkward is I would send my executive contacts an email that had a little um like dancing taco and it said let's taco about it. And his hands were in the air. And I would say, it would just say taco drop incoming, and it'd be like, Hey, I'm coming to your office on the third. I'm bringing tacos for the team. Love to meet you. If not, the team's gonna be psyched about the tacos. And I would bring in the tacos and I would hand them out to the team, and I would take a picture with me and the team, like, you know, sit in the selfie, and I would send it to the executive in an email. And so a lot of times they'd come down, you know.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

I think wasn't it like the largest deal you ever closed? Yeah, came from the drop. Yeah, so awesome.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

So you got to do uncommon things to get uncommon results. And if you don't have, if you're listening to this, you probably want to be better. And you you probably aren't gonna do all these things overnight. But I'm just gonna encourage you, salesperson that's out there, try some of it. Just try some of it. Start actually start at the top of the things we talked about, work your way down the episode, and you'll find out like, man, this is gonna move the needle um in your in your process. So yeah, we appreciate it. Steven, any closing thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 38:23

The thing that comes to my mind is none of this is really gonna matter if you don't have a great process that you follow. Yeah. Like you can do fun stuff, and it can be, but that's just all one off. Like none of this is really gonna work uh consistently if you don't have a great process that you follow to a team.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

I love it. Totally agree. Well, we appreciate everyone listening. Like always, if you'll like, subscribe, leave us a review, anything. Send it to your mom. Send it to your mom. Yeah. Anything that you can think of would be super helpful. Also, this isn't just specific to the security industry. So if you've got folks that are selling in any other industry, specifically a service industry, shoot them the link. We'd really appreciate it. Hope everybody has a great week. Thank you.