Practical Small Business Sales Training

• 49:07
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sales training, ideal client, sales process, focus industries, customer problems, helpful approach, open-ended questions, sales strategy, prospecting, handling objections, value building, sales cycle, activity tracking, sales pipeline, sales strategy session

SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Thomas Ellis

Damon Pistulka 00:00
See it’s not working. Alright? Everyone welcome once again, the faces of business. I am your host, Damon pistulka, and I am excited for our guest today, because we have none other than Thomas Ellis with here, with us here today from EWC consultants, and we’re going to be talking about practical small business sales training. Thomas, thanks for being here today.

Thomas Ellis 00:26
Damon, it’s a pleasure to be back here again. So let’s give the people what they’re looking for.

Damon Pistulka 00:33
Yes, let’s do it. Let’s do it well. Thomas, we always like to start the show off with our guests explaining a bit about themselves and how they got into doing what they’re doing today. And man, you’ve got quite a career. You’ve been helping people improve their sales for a long time. Let’s hear how you got into that.

Thomas Ellis 00:52
So it started out, I’ve been, I’m a 35 year veteran in the sales industry, and I’ve started out as a sales rep like everybody else, and I grew into management and directing sales reps and managers. And, you know, along that journey of I had the opportunity to work in a small startup company that became a big company, but I got a chance to learn and do a lot of things. And initially I was doing all of the training for my new hires. So when I hired them, I also trained them and coached them and went on sales calls and did all those wonderful things. I found that that’s something I really enjoy doing. And so when I left corporate America, I started my own business and and I’ll basically work with small business owners and small sales teams that need to understand how simple the sales process can be if They follow some simple rules and processes. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka 02:01
yeah. And it’s amazing how sales is a process. And many people don’t think, think you can just go out and do it. And it really is, there are fundamental steps to the process, absolutely.

Thomas Ellis 02:13
So, you know, one of the fundamental things that people overlook is, okay, I have this awesome product or and service. Who is my ideal client, who can use this who can use this product, who can benefit from my product or service? Right? So many people that I work with, especially small business owners, I have to get them to narrow down their focus, right? Because, you know, I would work here with an IT company one time, and the guys, I said, Well, who’s your ideal client? And he said, anybody that has three or more laptops. And I said, Wow, that’s a lot of different companies, but let’s narrow that down to what industries, what? What industries have the most use for your product services? And so I got them to really focus in on, I like to do things in threes. So we picked out three industries, and he became an expert in those industries and how they can utilize his products and services, which helped him tremendously by being focused, yes,

Damon Pistulka 03:26
yes, because then you get all your marketing materials, all the conversations that you have about the problems they have get more similar and easier to to help the it’s easier to help your customers when You You just did it with two other customers, and your marketing materials can speak to the same kind of challenges, absolutely,

Thomas Ellis 03:47
because it makes it easy for you to just kind of go, Oh, okay. So Mister Jones, I’ve been working in this industry with a lot of customers. Based on my knowledge, most of the people in the industry have these five problems. Wow, right, which, which one of these problems do you have? And let me see why I can help you solve them. So now you become kind of like an expert in that industry for that product, which is huge, because you’re not just a person trying to sell a problem a product. You’re there to help solve a problem.

Damon Pistulka 04:28
Yeah, yeah. And you can be more helpful with them, because you can understand what they’re going through better.

Thomas Ellis 04:35
And that’s the whole key of ourselves, is it’s being helpful. You know, many small business owners I work with have this fear about selling. Oh, my God, I got it sell, and they have this negative connotation about selling sales. And I talked to him, I said, Listen, remove the word sales and add the word help, and say. So I’m here to help you solve the problem. I’m not here to tell you anything. No, if you have a problem and I can help you solve that problem, then we’re going to do business. And it’s just that simple. Mm, hmm,

Damon Pistulka 05:15
yeah, and it’s and it is, it does reduce a lot of the apprehension for the the person trying to see if that that potential customer needs their help, and the potential customer themselves,

Thomas Ellis 05:30
yeah, because most, most people in sales go in to meetings with this notion that I have to sell this person something, I have to sell them something, you know, and the buyer is on the other end, saying, This person is here trying to sell me something there. So you both walk in there with this idea that you’re going to try to sell me, I’m not buying. But if, if you walk in there with, Hey, mister customer, want to ask you some questions so I can learn more about what you do and how you do it, and how maybe I have something that could help you do it better. Would you be interested in having dialog about that? And then at the end of the day, if I don’t have anything that can help you, then let’s shake hands and move forward. But if I do have something, let’s schedule another meeting to take a deeper dive into how I can help.

Damon Pistulka 06:30
Yeah, that’s, that’s a great just what you said there is so powerful because you’re, you’re not trying to in that, you know, we’re walking into the room or setting up that first meeting. We’re not hoping to get us. Hey, I want to pitch you my product, or I want to show you a presentation on our products and services. It’s really about understanding that, but that customer, that person, more about what they’re really going through to determine if there is even something that you should be talking about Absolutely.

Thomas Ellis 07:03
And when you approach them, for from that aspect, man, you have great conversations, because now their god is down, they open up and say, well, well, maybe let’s continue this conversation. And then at the end, you kind of say, You know what, Mister Jones, do you think I think I have something that can help you? Would you like to hear more about it? And they’ll go, Sure or not. And then you just move, move the conversation forward. The whole key of the initial meeting is to get enough information to determine if they’re a prospect, because not everybody that you talk to is going to be a prospect, so we have to, what we call qualify them, to see if they have a problem that I can solve. And the other important thing is, do they want to fix the problem? Yes, right? Because so many times we assume based on other company, well, I know they have this problem, so I’m going to pitch that, but they may say, you, you know what? Tom, yeah, that’s a problem, but we’ve been living with that problem for five years, so it’s not a big deal. So now you’re kind of stuck because you’ve been thinking about this one problem. So we always have to ask the question, what problems do you have now? What are important, right? What are you trying to fix in the next six to 18 months? What must you fix in the next six to 18 months, let’s talk about those problems, and let’s see if we can help you solve them. Let the customer tell you what’s important for them to solve today, that they’ll pay somebody to fix this today.

Damon Pistulka 08:58
Yeah, because if you let them tell you you’re not assuming that they want to solve something that they may not care about, like you said, and you could be wasting both of your time. So

Thomas Ellis 09:08
many times I’ve been on sales course with sales reps that go in. Well, I just sold this contractor and this contractor, they do the same thing, so I know they have a problem here, and I go in and talk about that problem, and the guy says, No, we really don’t have that problem there here, and the sales rep is stomped. They don’t know where to go next, yeah. And meeting ends,

Damon Pistulka 09:33
yeah, yep. And that’s that can stop it, or the right and you said this asking the right questions. So when you’re when you’re coaching and helping people in this around the initial meeting, do you like to have them work with, say, a handful of the same kinds of questions each time? So this gets real familiar, how the flow of this initial meeting goes? Yeah. Yes.

Thomas Ellis 10:00
So what I like doing with my clients is we, we craft up about 10 questions, right? Yeah, yeah, 10 and the open ended questions mean questions that are going to get the customer talking right. And I tell them, what? What do we what do we want to get out of this meeting? And so we craft up these 10 questions, and I tell them, I said, Now you can’t just ask these questions back to back to back to back, because, yeah, they’re going to feel like you’re you’re interrogating them. So you, you, you have to make a part of the conversation, right? So you write these 10 questions down, and sometimes you don’t ask but only three of them, because that’s pertinent. Sometimes you ask five seven. It doesn’t matter, but you have a list of questions that you’re going to ask them. The most important thing is that I asked them to practice these questions, right? Read them every day so they begin to seep into her brain. So when the customer starts talking about a specific topic, one or two of those questions just oozes out of them, right? The customer, like hits a button and that question pops out of them, and now it’s in the gist of the conversation. It’s not well, where that question come from? You know, it’s part of the conversation. So I try to help them to develop that. That takes time. But the most important thing I tell them in the first meeting is, it’s a conversation, right? It’s back and forth. It’s not me firing 20 courses at you, it’s us having a conversation, like having a conversation with a friend,

Damon Pistulka 11:48
yes, yeah. And I love that idea having the 10 open ended questions, not that you’re going to rapid fire ask them, but just understand them. Rehearse them, think about when they’re applicable, all these kind of things, because then, as a conversation evolves, you can ask those questions if they come up at the right point, and it weaves it right in and gives you the information you need to see if they are a potential prospect for you, and helps you to better then identify how you could help them,

Thomas Ellis 12:23
right? So one of the things I did when I first started my business is I used to use three by five cards. So this tells you how old I am, right? So I used to use three by five cards, because when we get an appointment and get in front of a customer, we get excited, right? We get oh my god, we get excited, and we don’t remember everything that we need to ask. So I suffered from that. So I got three by five cards, and I used to write questions down. And in my car before the meeting, I would take these three five cards out and read them say, I must ask these questions, right? Because for me, it was important to to ask, you know, how are they currently training their salespeople, right? You know, are they open to having an outside company come in and do training right? What are the three challenges that they have with their salespeople, right? So there were some questions that I always had to ask, and if I missed one of those questions, I would have to go back and think about, well, the customer wants me to bring them a proposal, but I don’t know what to bring them the proposal, because, yeah, I didn’t ask these three questions, so now I’m guessing. And you know what happens when we guess we screw it up? Yep. And so I used to carry these cards in my pocket until they sank in, and then I got the information so I could go back home, think about them and come up with the solution based on the three things that they said were important to them. Thomas, my people need to be better at prospecting, better at presentations and better at handling objections. I got it. So now I go back and I come up back to them with a customized training based on those three objectives.

Damon Pistulka 14:23
Yeah, that’s a great that’s a great way. And I like what you said about I’m trying to get three problems out of them, from the conversation, not out of them, but you’re trying to answer what their top three problems are in the realm of where you work, because then it really helps you to to draft a much stronger proposal, if you can help them exactly, because

Thomas Ellis 14:46
here’s, here’s what people do. They hear one problem, and they go, Okay, I got it. Let me go back and put you together a proposal, right? And you and you and you come back. What? A $10,000 solution, yeah, for one problem. I don’t know too many people that are going to give you $10,000 to solve one, one problem, yeah, but if you uncover three problems, okay, and you come in with a $10,000 solution, that’s $3,500 per Yeah, solution that’s more palatable, right? That’s that makes more sense. And so I always tell people try to find the top three problems that they have, right? They they probably have 10. But what are the top three that are really affecting them from making their goals, productivity, you know, people, culture, what are those? And then you can come back and say, based on our conversation that we last time, Mister Jones, you said that these were the three main things that you’re interested in, or is, is, is that still the case? Yes, great. Well, listen, based on what you told me, I’ll come up with a program that’s going to handle those three problems, and then I’ll walk you through how I’m going to do that, right? So you mentioned prospecting, so I’m going to work with the team on developing a prospecting cadence. Number two, I’m going to work with them. You mentioned that. Number three, and then at the end, you go, is that what you’re looking for? And they go, that’s exactly what I’m looking for. Great. When do we get started?

Damon Pistulka 16:39
Yeah. So this is the second meeting you’ve gone through the first meeting, you’ve had the conversation, they’ve expressed that they’ve got these are the three problems they want to do. Those indeed are problems you can help them with. Now you’ve come to the second meeting, and you are restating the problems that they told you and addressing each one of those with your proposal, yep.

Thomas Ellis 17:03
And then you’re asking them, Does that meet what your expectations are? Yes. I said, Great. So my final question is, when would you like to implement this program, right? Yeah. So no matter what your audience out there does? The simple question that I ask people at the end of most meetings is, what do you think our next steps should be? And I do that after the first meeting, right? So after the first meeting, I would say to the customer, what do you think our next steps ought to be? I know what I want them to be. I want another meeting, but I’m the orchestra. I’m not driving the ship, and the customer says, Well, I would like to learn more about XYZ, or I would like to bring my manager in, who’s going to be close involved with this great let’s set up that meeting for the next time when would be a good time for us to get back to God? Then you nail the appointment right then and there, right? Yes, you you book it while you’re there. So many people would go home get excited. Oh, my God, whoo. I got another meeting, but you didn’t. You don’t have the meeting because you didn’t get a date and time for the meeting.

Damon Pistulka 18:28
That’s a key point. And that’s point, yes, it is. Yeah, that’s why I wanted that’s why I was so excited about having you on because these little things make a huge difference.

Thomas Ellis 18:40
It’s the little things, right? So many times I’ve worked with salespeople, when I coach and train them, they will come back to your office. Time is Whoo. I said, Great, I got another meeting. And I would say, what’s the date and time? Well, he told me to call him next week. What’s the date and time? You don’t have a meeting, right? You don’t have a meeting. So I classify a meeting as you have a specific date and time to meet, not well. He said, drop by the the office anytime. That’s not a meeting, right? Stop it on Thursday, that’s not a meeting. A meeting is when you have a a firm date and time, I’m meeting him on Tuesday at two o’clock. And then I asked the next question is, what is the agenda for that meeting? Why we going back? Yes, right, yes. And so you have day and time and agenda, perfect.

Damon Pistulka 19:40
Yeah, but the agenda is very important, too. Very

Thomas Ellis 19:44
important, right? So I set up every time I have a client I work with, we work on setting the agenda, even for the first meeting, yes, the first meeting you want to have an agenda. And the agendas that i. Teach people. Very simple, very easy. You know, the first meeting is, I want to introduce myself. The second part of it, I want to, I want, I want to learn about you. And the third step is, what are our next steps? That’s the agenda. Now, how, however that flows. Nothing in the agenda. Said, I’m here to sell you anything. Right? Very generic agenda. Okay, I send that agenda out with the meeting invite. Most people that I talk to do not send out an agenda. So now the person on the other end has said, I have a meeting with Thomas, but I don’t know what it’s for, but you gotta say, Listen, right? So when you do the first meeting, that’s what you do. When you do the second meeting, right? You have an agenda, yes, daytime. The purpose of this meeting is going to be discuss the proposal or discuss the next the outline or the discuss you’re specific as to what you’re going to do at that meeting. And also, the third piece is always discuss next steps. Damon, I even teach people how to do this when they’re going to close the deal right. When a customer says, well, Thomas, I need to think about this for a couple of weeks. Everything was really good. I go. Great. Two weeks from today is the 17th. Can we get together on the 17th? Two o’clock? It only take 10 minutes. They go, yeah, yeah, sure. Okay. So, so I’m clear the purpose of the meeting is to go, no go on the sales training, yeah, yeah, great. So we know when I get on that call, it’s yes, I’m moving forward, or no, I’m not right. Mm, hmm, that’s it. There’s no more discussion or anything else, because you have all the information. Yep. Yeah, right. So yeah, when I get my clients to follow those three steps, oh my god, urine, it’s, you know, every call what the agenda is and what the outcomes is going to be. Every call,

Damon Pistulka 22:25
yes, yes, and that’s so powerful. Yeah.

Thomas Ellis 22:29
What happens most of the time? People say, Let me think about it. Give me two weeks, and, and, and the person goes, Okay, I’ll call you in two weeks. What’s two weeks? Two weeks from right, ambiguous, right. Call me in two weeks. What does that mean? Are we what are we doing in two weeks? Why am I calling first of all, why am I calling you in two weeks? Yes, right. And most people don’t nail that down to say, Okay, the reason why we’re going to talk into is because you’re going to make a decision, right? Great. Why don’t we take 10 minutes on a call, put it on the agenda? Go, no. Go on. Training, product, infiltration, whatever it is, yeah, but you know what the expectation is on that call, yeah,

Damon Pistulka 23:22
yeah. And that’s huge. I mean, it’s and this is why I was excited to talk to you, because the what you’re helping people do is add system and structure to their sales process. And a lot of people get input in sales because all we’re good with people. Okay, that’s fine, but if I could be the best athlete in the world, but if I don’t train and figure out how to do my sport, how good am I going to be and and that’s kind of like, you know, that we think that being good with people is a good enough skill that you can learn how to do sales. And it’s really not that case. And the training, like you’re helping people do and learning is very effective, especially in small business when you know you don’t have 10,000 sales people out there selling, hoping that you know we’ve covered the market enough that we’ll get enough sale.

Thomas Ellis 24:21
Okay, one sale, because we have a lot of people out there doing doing stuff, yeah, and you know, you’re absolutely right. And the thing that I really enjoy is that when I work with my clients, and it takes them a while to get it right, but once they understand it, now, if the deal gets stuck in between any of those points, then we can go back and address Well, where’s it stuck at? Right? Because it’s stuck because we didn’t necessarily do what we should have done. We always book another me. From the meeting in person. We always do that so that it won’t get stuck there. And we always book The next meeting to even to let them know, yes, I’m moving forward, or, no, I’m not. Or, or I have a question, or I have some objections. The other thing we work with clients on is every body has objections, right? And so it’s amazing to me that I sit in front of I just did this today with a group of salespeople, and I said, Okay, what are the top 10 objections you hear 80% of the time, what are they and how do you handle them? And I went around and asked a couple people, each one has a different way of handling I said, we have to come up with talking points that we develop for each one. Because what happens is that when a when a customer throws you an objection, you get stumped. It’s like getting hit with a right hand cross it. It stuns you because you’re oh my god and objection. How am I going to handle that? But if you say customer, hey, I’m glad you asked me that question. You know? So if, if the company says Tom Bishop, price is too high, I said, You know what? Damon asked me that question, what do you referencing? This? This from? Where why you let’s talk about why you think my price is higher, right? Yes. And again, stop to go, Okay, well, I’ll give you a discount. No, let’s understand where your reference where is this coming from? What research have you done to tell you that this price is too high. Well, I don’t have any reference, any reference, but I just think it’s too high. Okay, well, let’s go back and talk about what you’re getting, what the value is you’re getting for that price. So I always train people. I said, when you hear that the price is too high, the bell should go off and say I didn’t show them enough value. Yep, right, I didn’t show them enough value. Because if I showed them enough value, he wouldn’t ask me that question. So I have to get better at showing the value for for my price.

Damon Pistulka 27:40
Yeah, and this is something I’ll tell you, especially if you’re selling high ticket things, right? Yes. So if you’re out there selling a high ticket thing, and and it’s say software, for example, right? Some of these software packages that a bigger company will buy are crazy expensive, so someone’s going to spend 1000s and 1000s of dollars on something, you know that that you there should be, and I think, and I want you would love your input on this. You talk about building value. There should be extra steps in your process, not because they’re extra, but just to build value. Because, if I’m asking somebody on a a product like a software solution, to spend $100,000 with me and and commit to years of it with me, that value building process is so key, because you will run into price objections so hard you just won’t overcome them

Thomas Ellis 28:42
exactly and and you know that when you start the process, yes, so you you know that from day one. So you know that I want to ask this company to spend 1000 $100,000 I need to show them from day one, from the first meeting, I have to show them now what also I can do once I figure out what their problems, what their main problems are, and how much those problems are costing them by not being fixed, and my software can Fix that during my demonstration of the product, right? I’m going to highlight those two areas and say, See, remember you you losing $300,000 here and $100,000 so I’m asking you to spend $100,000 but look what you’re gaining. And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see that. But the key there is that if we don’t understand, like I said earlier, the three main areas that they’re having problems, and we can’t put a price associated with that. So when we show them our pro and here’s the other thing, people demoing products, right? You. I want to show you 15 features. No, they don’t care about the 15 features. They care about the three to five that you identify that can help them. The other 12 are bonus. That’s ice on the cake. They’re not buying them. They’re buying them for the three to five that you said you can save the money. The other stuff is nice, yes. But what I find that most people do is that they tell them every nook and cranny that the product does and to five things that you’ve identified in your discovery meeting, the first meeting, yes, if you beat those, you talk about those every time you meet with them, right? Remember, this product is going to solve these three issues that you’re currently losing money on. What is that worth for you? Right? Yeah, ease of mind, employee morale. I mean all these wonderful things, right? So you have to justify but that’s why I say the higher the price, the more we really have to understand what problems they have, what problems they want to fix, what problems they need to fix, and how much money just cost them by not having a solution to solve that problem.

Damon Pistulka 31:21
Yeah, yeah. That’s great advice, and it and it really, you know, you you make better sales because of it. By two things you said there, I think 100% we’ve all been in that demonstration where someone’s demonstrating something to you, and they tell you that 732 features that it has, and you you only cared about the first handful because that’s what was important to you, and that’s you cause more confusion in the sale. They might they might see something else and go, Oh, that’s kind of a cool feature. Let’s talk about that. Well, we shouldn’t be, because we’re losing focus on the thing that’s really costing us the money Exactly,

Thomas Ellis 32:04
exactly, yeah, exactly. And that’s, and that’s the sales person’s problem. So they, you know, you can give somebody too much information that they get. They can’t move, they can’t move an overload exactly. You give them too much of my so now they really go, You know what, Thomas, I really gotta think about this, and you walk out the door saying, God, started. I gave him too much information. If I didn’t start with the three main things, I could move forward. But I gave him all these things. And now they said, Well, maybe we can use that. And maybe we can use that. Let me talk to HR to see let me talk to finance, um, and now the still never happens because of you or what you did, yes, yes.

Damon Pistulka 32:53
So what was the most unique sales challenge you’ve ever had to solve

Thomas Ellis 32:59
unique uh, unique. See all of the challenges I’ve had I’ve all considered kind of unique. Oh, here, unique. So I was work, I was some software to a major wireless carrier right and talking to the product management team and the my engineering team, and somehow, when we get to the end of the process, we sent them the wrong agreement. Oh my, oh, my right, because we had went through legal right. They’re legal, our legal and if you ever been involved in those red lines and everything, so I sent them the wrong version of the agreement. And so they called me and says, What is this? And I said, What are you talking about? This? Got this and there, this is, oh my god, did I realize that they had the wrong they had version four instead of the final version? Right, yeah. And so I had to explain to them, you know, how we came up with the final version. I mean, it got a little hairy, yeah, so, but the lesson I learned there, and that’s a lesson on me. I mean, I owned it, but contracts sent me the wrong information, and I didn’t review it my Yeah, I own that, right. I own it. And it took like, two or three days of having conversations with them to get them to understand. That, you know, this is how it ought to be. That was probably my most unique challenge. It was, Wow, I remember that to this day, and that happened 20 years ago. Oh,

Damon Pistulka 35:12
that’s awesome. That’s awesome. It wasn’t awesome at the time, but a great story, very,

Thomas Ellis 35:17
very, very painful, but learned to value a lesson now, yeah,

Damon Pistulka 35:22
yeah. So what do you enjoy the most about when you’re coaching people and you see them, the lights turning on and things starting to happen for them? So

Thomas Ellis 35:34
you know, Damon, that’s the most rewarding thing of what I do is, is meeting people initially, and they got this glazed eyes over, and they’re like, Thomas, I don’t know if I I can’t do this. I don’t know if I can. I’m not. I’m not going to do well all the I can’t. And I excuses. And I said, Listen, I’m going to help you and show you this is not that hard. You sell every day. You, believe it or not, you’re selling every day you’re helping people. And just keep the world helping right. And once I get them to think about helping people, everybody wants to help people, and the light bulb goes off normally when we have the conversation. And I said, Well, I tried to do this. And I said, Well, let’s try this. Let’s see if it works. And I get the text message, eight, nine o’clock at night. Kind of I sent email to so and so, the way we talk about it. And I got another meeting, right? And I go, I said, because they’re afraid to be pleasantly persistent, yes, right? They’re and I said, You need to have a sense of urgency every day the customer doesn’t have it. You have to have that so you have to drive that. Don’t wait for the customer, the corporate say, I’m ready to do business. That’s not going to happen. You have to go and earn that business, right? And so the most rewarding thing is when I get those emails or text messages that say, Hey, you know, thanks for this session, because I did what we talked about and it worked. And I said, Great, let’s do it again. Yes,

Damon Pistulka 37:31
yeah, yeah. Cuz that’s a, that’s a, it’s the good. And the bad about sales is, you know, it doesn’t matter if you didn’t get a sale or you got a sale, you got to go do it again.

Thomas Ellis 37:41
Absolutely get up, dust yourself off, you know, I tell people. I said, Listen, you know, it’s kind of a game that you want to play, because in sales, you get more no’s than you get yeses, right? And I, I equate that to baseball, right? So if you’re a 300 hitter, you’re going to the Hall of Fame. Yes, that’s saying that you want to hit the board three out of 10 times. So you missed the ball. You missed hit seven out of seven times, so 70% of the time you fail. Yes, but yet you’re in the Hall of Fame, yes, right. And I say sales is the same, you’re going to feel a whole lot more than you succeed. But guess what? When you succeed, it wipes away all of the all of the nose, right? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka 38:36
that’s the way it works. That’s right, all the way.

Thomas Ellis 38:40
I tell people, for every 1010, or 20 nos that you get, just know there’s a yes coming, it’s coming. Don’t give up. The yes is coming, you know, because we have to pursue it, we’re going to get no no is great. No means I’m getting to a yes psychologically, we gotta think that way. Otherwise we would not be in sales. Yes,

Damon Pistulka 39:06
yes. And I’ve heard of people even talking about the fact that even when you understand over time, you know my average out of 100 whatever prospect calls, or whatever, if I end up over time, I get 2% of those that and that 2% earns me X amount of dollars that each call. I can figure out, even if it’s a no, I can I can think that it’s going to make money, because I know that that percentage I will eventually be closing. So even if it was a no, I know it was a $10 $50 whatever call right, just because I’m doing the right outreach, yep. And

Thomas Ellis 39:47
what I there’s, there’s a card that I had that I found years ago and and it was us a study done for all sales and all all industry. Dollars and the average closing rate, the average was somewhere between 28 to 33% so when I’m talking to people, I’m saying you’re going to be probably 30% closer. 30% right? If you’re that’s just the number. You may be 31 you may be 29 but let’s use 30% so that means 30% of people that’s in your pipeline right now you’re going to close. So if you have 10 people in your pipeline, shame on you, right? Mm, hmm, you’re gonna have three sales, right? I mean, if you have 20, you’re gonna have six. You just so the more the object of that conversation is, activity is king, because so many small business people that I talk to, yeah, well, I’m only talking to four or five companies. I said you’re not going to have any sales Yes. You know, you need to be talking to 20 people. Yes, right? You need to have a list of 20 people that you’re engaged with at some part of the sales process. 20 is absolute number, depending on the product and service that you have, but five definitely doesn’t cut it, and so I take talk to them as activity, activity, how many calls you make it? How many meetings do you have per week? Okay, and when you get when I ran a sales organization at one point time, I knew for every rep how many calls they had to make to get an appointment. And each sales rep was different. Some was eight, eight calls, one appointment. Some were 12, some were 20, right, and we knew the average sale. So I will be able to go and say, Johnny, I needed to sell me five more units this month. Let’s calculate what you gotta do to get those five units. Well, I need to this, this right? So we re engineer it. Yes. Okay, so the longer work with small businesses, we get a handle on that to Well, first of all, what their sales cycle is from start to finish, right? And so once we get to know, okay, my average sales cycle is three months, so I know I need to be putting stuff in my funnel, because in three months, all this is going to be dead, right? And what’s the average sale price? So I know the average sale price, and then you say, Well, how many? What’s your yearly goal? And we can take that from the ridiculous to say I didn’t have this many sales per month at the average revenue price. To get that number, forget about the main the the big number we’re working with the small number monthly. Mm, hmm. And those clients that I work with over a period of time, I can help them get that those numbers to make sense to them. So now they know, Oh, wow. I need to have three appointments this week. I only have one and it’s Thursday, shit. I need to get two more appointments right.

Damon Pistulka 43:17
I gotta get out

Thomas Ellis 43:20
exactly because in three months I have no sale,

Damon Pistulka 43:23
yes, yes. And that’s a, that’s the, that’s the the timing, the cadence, the everything that salespeople really need to get into. And the best salespeople are doing that they’re doing. As you said, it’s Tuesday. I’ve got two, I need five. I’m on I’m on track, or I’m not on track. So that means I I step up my game tomorrow, make a little bit more, make a few more calls, or make a few more outreaches, and then, and then measure again at the end of the day.

Thomas Ellis 43:56
Yep, yeah, it’s, it’s a daily, it’s a daily, weekly. And I grew up in an environment that we had daily calling numbers. Oh yeah, daily call because in the wireless industry, back in the heyday, it was selling units every day, right so? And we had it down to, you know, you had to sell two and a half units every day to make a quarter of 50. Yeah, 20 working days to right? So at the end of the week, if you didn’t have 10 or 12 units sold, oh boy, you know, you’re not trending,

Damon Pistulka 44:39
right? That’s awesome. That’s awesome because that’s that that gave you some invaluable, very valuable, highly valuable experience, because you understand how it works, yes, yeah, that’s awesome. Well, Thomas, it’s been incredible. Listen to you. Getting to talk to you about the practical small business sales training and the way that you’re helping small business people and their sales teams, you know, develop better processes and become better at sales so they can they can enjoy a more consistent business. And because that’s in the end, that’s what good sales do. They they give you a more profitable and a more consistent business. So thanks for being here today, and if someone wants to get a hold of you, Thomas, what’s the best way to get a hold of you?

Thomas Ellis 45:30
So the best ways are my email address is T Ellis at EWC consultants.com you can call me because I pick up my phone. There you go. 301-343-0001, is another way and and a third way is to reach out to Camille on LinkedIn. You’ll see me very good all over LinkedIn. I’m an avid user of LinkedIn. So reach out. And if, for anybody that’s on this call, I’m going to give you a special offer, and you, if you you must reach out with to say I was on the exit your way podcast, and I will give you a 30 minute free sales strategy session. I’ll say that again, a 30 minute free sales strategy session, if you mentioned that you was on the ACE away podcast. Nice,

Damon Pistulka 46:31
nice. Thanks, Thomas. I appreciate you extending that offer to the listeners today, again, we had Thomas Ellis with. Ellis with us here today, and he is from EWC consultants. You can find him on LinkedIn. It’s Thomas, T, H, O, M, A, S, E, L, L, i, s. Want to make sure everybody knows how that is spelled so they can find him on LinkedIn.

Thomas Ellis 46:56
Go ahead our book. I forgot to mention, people pop up my book.

Damon Pistulka 47:00
Yes, let’s talk about that just for a moment.

Thomas Ellis 47:04
So I have a book is two years old. It’s called B U D, B U D, better, unique and desirable. The sales process that gets results. It’s on Amazon, um, it’s a it’s a book that most people that buy it really love it. I give you practical sales tips on how to grow your sales. So please invest in that. It’ll be a great holiday present to yourself, yes,

Damon Pistulka 47:34
yes. And we’ll have you come back, Thomas, we’ll talk about the the the bud sales process, and your book too, that I we didn’t have time to get to it today because we were talking about the practical basics, but we can work into the bud system, I think, next time, and have a lot of fun with that. Absolutely, absolutely

Thomas Ellis 47:51
yes.

Damon Pistulka 47:52
So everyone, thank you for being here today. I want to say thanks Muhammad for showing up and dropping a comment in here. And yes, it Thomas did drop a lot of great sales advice, and I’m going to butcher your name, but I’m going to try to say it I’ve Taj thanks for stopping by, because he was listening about value as everything, and really when we were talking about building value with the customers. And yes, I believe Thomas did explain it very, very well. So I want to just thank everyone for being here today, whether you put a comment or not. We appreciate this. If you came in late to go back to the beginning, you can replay this thing from the beginning on LinkedIn and anywhere else you heard it. Listen to Thomas. Listen to the things that he’s talking about. This practical sales training for small businesses. It’s really good practical advice. And if you want to reach out to Thomas and he can help you further, Thomas, hang out. We’ll finish up offline.

Thomas Ellis 48:50
Thank you, sir. Have a good evening, everybody. Yep,

Damon Pistulka 48:53
thanks everyone. Well, I’m trying here. I’m having a little trouble my computer. There we go. I’m.