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Lesson Info

No-Stress Selling

We left off before the break having that conversation right we identified the person blah, blah blah but went out to coffee how do we go to selling as you could see from our stress free friend dean you don't have to be like a crazy type a person to be selling like shouting and throwing things and breaking glass you can actually do it very delicately even as an introvert there were a lot of comments about how he just looked confident and just humble and relaxed and carefree yeah carefree right same with james thes guy and in fact even the person you're gonna meet tomorrow one of my other students from dream job these guys are not like way create and we concoct these things in our heads like oh to charge one hundred fifty dollars an hour I'd have to slick my hair back and be yelling at everyone that's not true look at these guys they're killing it and they're just normal people that what's the difference between them though, and other people who can speak to that what's the difference I ...

mean, I got like dean or james working it what does that mean? They're showing up there doing like the non glamorous things that it takes to run a business and they're doing it over and over and over and their course correcting and the refining and they're tuning and there they're in charge of their psychology as well they're dark times when you do this right, you're emailing people and they're just rejecting you and you're like, oh my god, you have a lot of doubt should I even be doing this? Is this even the right service? But if you've done your research, you know you know that you're on to something, you just have to find the pieces of the puzzle. What else is dean doing that other people are not works the world around him changes so the harder he works, the better his client's improve around him. The more he charges, the more people want him. I keep hearing that echoed in case study after case study yeah, and by the way, you can't just raise your rates from thirty to one fifty. In fact, if you want to go ahead and try it, you can email me back in a week and you'll have no clients, but there are systematic ways to slowly go up that ladder as I went from twenty to three thousand that you systematically get deeper and deeper into the client's head, you add more and more value whether through you or introductions to other people, etcetera so some of us might before we heard dean and saw him you might like, well, that works for dean, but that doesn't work for me but what we learned is dean went through a series of course corrections where he discovered he was under charging and he wasn't adding value. He corrected all those things systematically slowly and all of us like my parents say a year from now you're gonna be a year older what you gonna do two years later that's where he is all right, let's keep going uh okay, so number one uh in terms of going to the sale is you don't have to be the best you just have to solve their problems remember I talked about my book researcher who was a kid at u c l a it wasn't the best but he solved my problems he was communicative he knew the math etcetera I have, uh somebody who works in my staff an engineer charges a lot of money. Alright he's also one of the best communicators I've ever worked with. What do you think I care more about the fact that somebody knows some programming language you think I even know what that is or care or the fact that someone e mails me every time some things changed hey just want to give you a heads up no action needed which is a phrase I teach I'll teach that tomorrow busy people love seeing that sentence in their inboxes fully twenty to thirty percent of the e mails I now get say no action needed because I taught that to my readers that I will teach you the rich dotcom people know that I love that. Okay, we'll talk about why tomorrow so he can charge a lot because he's actually adding massive value and his technical skills are very good. But his communication skills are perhaps even better. Anybody have any questions about that before we move on? You don't have to be the best. Technically, yes. You have to be good. And as you get higher and higher, you have to be even better. All right. But you have to solve their problems. All the ancillary things I talked about here are the things that you could probably benefit from understanding more. Okay, next, be an adviser, not a sales person. This is something that I wanted a hammer in yesterday. Today and tomorrow. Do you guys see the way that I asked the questions of people? Do you see the way my students treat people? He said, look like I can help you out. I love this story about the transportation company coming back. How many defensive creatives do we know that if they're charging let's, say, twenty dollars an hour and a client came back to them a year later, what would the first thing they do say? I'm not going to help you, there's no way you just signed a contract? How many people do you know that would say that? Because what do we instinctively think they're trying to rip me off? And maybe they are because you're charging them fifteen dollars an hour their bottom barrel clients, but it's your fault, not theirs. Everything you have said has led them to believe that they can ask you for free work, and you will do that it's your fault, not theirs. However, if someone if you charge them with ten thousand dollars for a website, you finish it in like, you know, a couple of days for a week, you have a lot like he said, you have a lot of margin. What do you do, then? You help them and you don't charge you even think about charging, what did I do for the client that paid me that enormous day rate? He said, if we need you to come back, would you come back off course? Give me a call, I will never send him a contract for that, I'll come back, I'll do it there's a lot of margin in that, and I'm happy to do it and guess what two years from now he may be in a different company or he may want another thing who's he going to call the guy who was his advisor? The guy who said no problem happy to help you with that oh by the way I noticed that you're looking for a couple copywriters I know some really good copyright is let me know if you need an introduction the guy who was his adviser not the guy who's trying to gouge him for every last cent does that make sense for all the photographers in the room think about the millions of whatnot million think about the thousands of ways you could add value to your client's lives let's pretend that I hired you for a head shot. What else could you offer me? What else? Yeah family okay, I don't have a family. So what else company your your staff? Very good shots for the corporate newsletter really good. What else like photos of me? How about like a short video real for me like, hey, we meet I know you have all these videos on youtube dot com slash room eat satay wei teach that as well but I noticed like you don't have any video real like can I just do that for you? By the way, I actually put together a quick little real it's only twenty seconds but give you a sense of what could be done let me know if you think this would be valuable for something else bohm jaw dropped check is sent got it so when someone wants one thing they probably want many other things how do you find that out? Ask ask without selling deeply understand their needs if I were a wedding photographer by the way I have like literally ten plus ways I could add more value I could go back a year on their year anniversary I could do different types of shots I could do this I could I could send it in different modalities I could do an express service I could do with some online stuff there's a million different options now do you want to give people fifty options? No want to package it up and bundle it and we could talk about that but realize that if a client is paying you let's say two grand they'd probably be very happy to pay you five grand if you actually understood their needs and delivered more value. Okay questions on that that's being an adviser and advisor also means knowing when to tell somebody no like I said, if you have credit card debt you're not allowed to join my flagship or more expensive courses I have inexpensive courses for you but the more expensive ones I forbid you from joining in fact, as I mentioned, if I find out you join with credit card debt not only do I refund your money I ban you for life people like who the hell is this guy to tell me? I can't give him my money? The fact is I don't want them I don't want to deal with clients who our first of all, I'm not going to sleep a night because I'm taking their last money and second of all the reason, by the way, I had to explain this to them. Why I don't work with them. I said, listen, if you're in debt, get my book, it's ten bucks you can get on amazon or get it from the library, pay off your debt and come talk to me. I'd be more than happy to do that, and the second reason is those clients tend to be problem clients. I don't want them, I don't need them, and so a lot of people say, like, well, I could like, charge that if I had such a big audience, well, how do you think they got a big audience? They got a big audience by staying true to what they believed. I don't believe in taking advantage of people to pay me a thousand dollars doesn't mean much to me. To them it means a lot and I tell them, pay off your debt, come back to me, I'll be more than happy to open up a slot so every one of us could be an adviser to our clients, show them what we can help them with tell them what we can't and in some cases recommend someone else for them something I cannot emphasize enough when people believe that you are truly their advisor, that you have their best interests at heart, you take the relationship to a whole another level price becomes a triviality it's about trust anybody have ah, somebody in their life a business person that they completely trust who um, it's a friend of mine, actually, but help me negotiate my salary. Yvonne and I were talking about people that you don't necessarily like going out, like getting drinks with but people who you always come to you with a business question, and this is one of these people who I can trust all the time he has your best interests at heart, right? Many of us have a friend who looks out for us in relationships, they say, hey, you know, I don't really like that guy. I don't like that girl, we trust them because they have our best interests at heart for somebody it's our parents? What if you could be that person to your client not always going in there with an agenda to make money but actually to help them, as I mentioned, if you get on my list, you are all I've been putting up, you get emails, the vast majority they were totally free. And every e mail you read should be better than any paid material ever paid for. What do you think happens when I finally opened up one of my courses? People like I love this dude because he's been adding so much value to my life, I've actually made a thousand dollars from his free stuff. I can't even imagine what the page stuff is like. All right, let's, keep going, huh? So we did two three remove all risk. All right, what was the song we talked about? Take my risk away. Okay, way. Get some video person to make a song and all that like editing stuff could we do that? So take my risk away, there's all kinds of risk now risk number one is just like I don't know if that's gonna be worth it. So what is an easy way to mitigate that risk? Like, what do I do with my courses? If you join my urn one course what we did a full refund money back guarantee you can try the entire course sixty days if you don't like it, send me a note your money back? Sure, yeah there's always a percentage we know that percentage mathematically way plan for it, we account for it people, there is always a percentage of people who will refund and what people say is hey, wait a minute, remi, doesn't that mean that people can actually take your entire course, uh, downloaded and then ask for a refund? Yes, but I would rather focus on the people who are going to do the right thing, and that has significantly growing my business and that grows anyone who's in any kind of direct response business knows this to be true, offering money back guarantees you'll always get more people joining than people refund, and there will always be a certain percentage of people who take advantage of that that's the price of doing business. Okay, what are other ways that I might fear engaging with you let's say, um, your personal organizer and you come to me and say, okay, I come in here once a week for two years, and I'm like that's a long time where a personal trainer says like, ah, you need to sign up for me for five years, you can cancel it any time they're afraid they'll be locked in correct commitment fears we all have, so cancel it any time is a great one, by the way, when it comes to canceling what we hear he's fees and what happens if I call my gym and try to cancel sales, sales pitch run around so many people are literally afraid of using the phone that it actually pays to say no phone call needed send one email your charges will be cancelled no hassle. How do I know that? Because we dug in tow why people they actually I've actually seen people online say, well, I don't know about this room meat guy and then something else like, well, I've tried his course is pretty good, and some of this is, yeah, he looks interesting, but and he seems to offer this money back guarantee. But I know, like a lot of people just say that you probably have to go through this whole rigmarole to get it. And that was, like, very fascinating to me. I was like, wow, I actually offered a full money back refund. Like, how much better can you get? And people still had barriers? They still said he's probably scamming me because he's going to make it really hard to cancel. So we amended our copy. Okay, I think I just speaks to the importance of building trust, too, so you could change your language. Totally. Yeah, absolutely. And also remember how I give that example of the date and the kiss and it all starts way back here. So a lot of people watching this right now somebody told me earlier russ someone said like shut up and take my money right but no one's coming online was remained shut up and take my money but the funny thing is the only thing you khun join today is this class at creative life and I encourage you to do it because I think you're going to find massive value in it but when you go to my sight I will teach to be rich dotcom and you sign up for the newsletter you still can't pay for anything why I'm starting way back here I want even though you like me and maybe you do maybe now you think I'm a weirdo but you say okay, I feel like I could learn a little bit from me you might be ready to pay me right now but I want to slow that relationship down removed all risk so that by the time you get by the time I opened up my course next time you're like, damn, this guy wasn't just faking it this he actually he actually held me in creative live he helped me on the free stuff and now I want to see what the page stuff does for me see that we're truly understanding the nuances, the relationships what other ways can we remove risk let's say I'm a bride what are my fears, huh? Speak up what like what? Uh she's afraid she's not gonna pick the right bender she's afraid her family is gonna uh our guests are gonna have negative comments or judge her choices in a negative way what about for specifically for the, um, destination wedding planner like what you do uh specifically for me uh their initial fear is there with the first time he talked to me are completely lost they're overwhelmed by the internet search and um so they're just tryingto find someone anyone to guide them because they don't know what they're doing. Okay? So trusted guide one thing that you know you might do is say you know what I'd love to talk to you let me send you this quick video first could be on youtube or could be dvd take a look at this and then let's chat we're slowing that relationship down. Of course the video is going to be beautiful and amazing and answer every objection and fear they have and show them other people just like them who went with you and made an amazing decision. We're so happy afterwards and you know I'd love to talk to you but I don't want to do it hard sales pitch I know you're you're studying a lot of stuff you're looking don't you take a look at this and let's talk I'll give you a call tomorrow so that's one way to go any other types of risks or fear that people would feel that you could reverse their risk your word to them by a trusted friend like someone that they trust referred them tio referrals remove risk very good, by the way, let's, and we're going to talk about something really interesting let's say that I refer you megan to somebody else. Let's say your normal rate is fifty dollars an hour, and I refer you to a friend or a business colleague or something. What did you charge that person? The same? I mean, I shouldn't I shouldn't jack up the price just because you referred well, some people actually actually lowered their price, actually. So well, he's a buddy. So I'll give you the friends and family just okay, which is wrong. Wrong? Wrong. I referred you because you're great at fifty dollars an hour, I obviously like what you're doing. You can charge fifty or even mohr now. Mohr, you have to add more value. Can't just jack it up because you know me, okay, but the part the fact is, with a referral introducing you most risk has been removed. So you got to think about that. How many creatives right now online have lost rates a lot of money because someone referred them and they cut their rate because it's like the emotionally correct thing to do but it's not the right business thing do you actually hold your rate steady or add more value and increase your rates okay and there's phrases and scripts we have for that intern one k regards to a specific risk because I would love your feedback obama had to answer I know one of my bride's biggest concerns specific to photography is that they're not gonna look good they sent all this money on hair and make up great dress and the photographer is going to photograph an unflattering way so how would somebody remove the risk of that? Because that's a huge calibers for photographers taking cracker that you want uh I think your work speaks for it you know it does your previous work no. Why? Because it's not her in those photos and she's had bad photos of her sort taken before anybody here watch love line I mean listen to love line when we were growing up it's that radio show with adam coral on dr drew and they'll be like a sixteen year old girl on the show right she's like she's like uh hey, adam hey dr drew my boyfriend I'm sixteen my boyfriend is thirty eight years old he's overweight he's bald he beats me he's unemployed and he lives with his parents what do you think I should do and like this like a million people around the country like leave him but to her her question is you know meek when I went on tv and when I go on there now I get the same seven types of questions it's almost like the same questions different words I'm in debt what should I do how do I pay for my kid's education level? Same seven questions different words you're exactly right don you're so right and I want to highlight this point doesn't the work speak for itself almost never the work almost never speaks for itself something that creatives believe and is tragically misguided if I put my photos up they speak for themselves I put a portfolio of my writing should speak for itself it should but it doesn't I live in the world of what is not what should be and so when I talked earlier about conveying the meta message why am I asking these questions why do I not allow people to pay me with credit card debt for my most expensive programs? I explained that in great detail because people appreciate knowing that and the work does not speak for itself so let's let's answer your question who else has got any suggestions on way got some from the web on how a photographer could convince the bride that she's going to look well actually this is from me here grave alive we've got one of our wonderful photographer iain structures whose come here many times supervise here a few times and what she does is she always shows or she shows a lot of before and afters of her clients where she shows them without makeup just simply dressed you know not necessarily a flattering pose and then shows the final product of that particular person so that then her her potential clients can go and see those and say, oh, I see myself in that before and look what they did in the after so I'm not sure exactly how you would do that for wedding, but that concept is a possibility great one other that is perfect by the way you should totally do that. Another thing you can do is actually explain the work that goes into your photography. Now this is one of the rare cases where you actually do want to get technical with the client. Now you have to correct convey the right level of analysis, they really don't care about you using a one hundred twenty five millimeter lands or thirty five they don't care about that but you do say, look, I want to show you this photo this is what happened if you take this with a regular camera and then this is what happened when I took it and here's what I did so you show the before shot you show the after shot then you show a shot with all the crew and all this stuff in here you're like okay, so here's what's going on here and you could even make a video of this so you don't have to you can only do it once you go this is the lighting thing that's up here this is this this isn't that and what this does is look at this special image her cheek looks like this but after we correct it looks flawless and what is happening to the prospect she's like yeah, I got that flawless skin too, right she's literally living through your examples she now wants that now you've defined what a great photographer is. So any time she goes to any other photographers gonna like, do you do whatever and they're like oh no you know what that word is so marketers and business people for generations literally generations I have explained the magic of what goes into making their product and people do appreciate you have to get to the right level to be able to convey that. Okay, right eso remove all risk again a lot of people are afraid of doing things like this like haber meet what everyone asked for their money back why don't you try a couple times and see what might actually happen is they do it so stop however you might actually discover that four times the customers join because you've removed complete and total risk it's worth a test. All right, we're going to go to a script for closing a client. All right, so this is again, we've talked about all these things, removing risk, etcetera. Here's a script. Hi, my great chatting with you yesterday, here's my proposal for our project as we discussed all produce and organized bullet pointed assessment on blah, blah dot com, which will assess the following areas a, b and c I'm willing to spend several hours to produce this report at a discounted rate of five hundred dollars, as well as answer as many questions as you may have about mice suggestions. If this is acceptable, I can start immediately, and I'll check in with you regularly for your feedback. Does this sound like something you would want to do? Okay, I write this script up six or seven out of ten it's. Okay? There's. Much better tested scripts that we've tested with thousands of people what's going on here, what's good and what's bad. Go ahead. Just that you're following up with the client right away. It's still fresh in his mind. And he remembers the conversation and just any remembers you good, what else, good and bad, yes or no question, um, is like, worrisome right we talked about this yesterday so there's something you want to do what you want yeah does that sound like something you want to do can't what's stopping him from saying like yeah you know I'm happy with chatting with you yesterday but it's not something I'm willing to move forward with your time we'll talk about that what else you offer you offer future follow up which is good but I don't like that you use the word discounted I agree now it puts you in a category where I think you're cheap and your lower level yeah I like that don't feel bad this is that's great we're here to tear the script up there's some good things here although that's fine I listen I have a very thick skin after some of the comments I've gotten from weirdos all right, so so what what's really important about this? What a savvy business person will say is what happened at that meeting yesterday because that means everything the script scripts khun take you so far but he said great chatting with you yesterday so I would first thing I'll say is what happened at that meeting if you basically walked away saying ok, we're definitely gonna do this and I said, well, hey, I'm actually gonna just send you an email confirming everything does that make sense? And he said senate and I'll sign a thing that's this email it doesn't have a lot of marketing stuff, it doesn't show future pacing, it doesn't talk about all the deliver bulls and thinks he's going to get it's very simple. That makes sense if the meeting yesterday was like, okay, wham bam, we're done. However, if the meeting was like, okay, sounds like interesting, why don't you send over a proposal? He then wrote here's, my proposal for our project, the proposal is, I believe, sorely lacking, uh, there's some stuff here, but there's, some stuff that could be better, I'll produce this, which will assess that. Okay, I like that. Why don't you tell me what this can do? I wouldn't start additional paragraph, it says, at the end of this, you will be able to sales bullet sails, boat sails our s to earn an estimated additional conversion rate of point three percent or whatever. Uh, spend six percent less time on whatever, and it doesn't to be quantifiable. It could be something else, but you always want to be focusing on what the client is going to get. Okay? The client cares less about how many hours you're willing tto spend on it and more about what they're going to get the good things here, I can start immediately, and I can check in with you regularly. Probably because the client said, I don't want you going away for six months and coming back to me with something I don't even want that's why that person put it in there so we see good and bad with this script let's see what we have here? Uh, there's more scripts, you confined even better ones. Um closing a client, the script you send, really what you want to do is have a discussion with them in person. I don't really like when people are doing everything by email because if you're trying to charge premium rates, you have to talk to them. Ok, now there are a couple of exceptions, etcetera, but in general, I'd like if you want to start going like what dean did. Did you hear what dean said? He's like I met them, I talked to them, etcetera, he's an introvert if you want to start going up the value chain, if you want to start understanding what your clients are really thinking, you can't do that from behind a keyboard sorry, you might want to, but that doesn't make it so so if you want to keep playing in the kiddie pool that's one thing and you could do that, but if you want to actually systematically climb up that value chain, you have to start understanding them in person