• 49:30
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Sales boot camp, sales process, prospecting, qualifying, discovery conversation, handling objections, closing with confidence, follow-up process, unique value, customer service, AI in sales, sales leads, proposal presentation, decision makers, investment mindset.
SPEAKERS
Thomas Ellis, Damon Pistulka
Damon Pistulka 00:08
All right, everyone, welcome once again to the faces of business. I am your host, Damon Pistulka, and I am so excited for our guest today, because we have none other than Thomas Ellis, sales coach extraordinaire, chief sales coach, business coach, LinkedIn trainer at EWC consultants. Today, we’re going to be talking about using sales boot camp knowledge to help your business grow. Thomas, thanks for being here today.
Thomas Ellis 00:40
Damon is a pleasure coming back one more time to do it again. Let’s go. So
Damon Pistulka 00:45
much fun. Man, so much fun. So Thomas, let’s start out like you always like to, for those people that don’t know who you are, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Thomas Ellis 00:56
So I am a sales coaches and trainer, and my mantra is, I help small businesses by teaching them as easy and simple, repeatable sales process that gets them awesome results, and I basically teach them how to be helpful to prospects and not sell them anything. I tell people I haven’t sold anything in 100 years. I help people by solving the problems that they have, and that’s what I do for many small businesses and a lot of associations.
Damon Pistulka 01:35
Nice, nice. So as you’ve been talking, okay, let’s, let’s back up a little bit to this easy, simple, repeatable sales process now that just got my ears going, because I don’t think of sales as being easy, simple or repeatable.
Thomas Ellis 01:55
And most, most people don’t. Most people that I talk to think of it as a very hard process, and oh, my god, I gotta do this, and this times I can’t do this. And what I break it down to them is very simply this, at the end of the day, sales is nothing more than a bunch of great conversations with the same person over a period of time, and that’s all sales really is. The more you and I talk, the more I understand what your problems are, the more you get to trust and like me, and if I’m able to solve and help you solve those business problems. You and I are going to do business. It’s natural. I don’t have to force anything. It’s just going to be a natural fit. So that’s easy, because we all can talk. We all know how to have conversations. Yes, the caveat there is you have to be able to ask questions that help you understand what the problems are and the problems that they want to fix urgently, not you know, things that you want to fix now, things that you want to fix in the next three to nine six months, nine, six. Yeah, I know I need to fix that, but we’ve been doing this this way for 20 years, and that’s not a big deal. We’ve been living with it. No, I need to understand what problems if you don’t fix now, can really have a negative impact on your bottom line. And so we talk about Easy. Easy is just having the conversation, but mentally, I have to have the mindset to say I need to ask questions in a conversational manner. They get this person to open up and tell me what their problems are,
Damon Pistulka 04:00
yeah, yeah. And I like how you said their current pain, not current problems, not one that they like, oh, you know, I’d like to lose 100 pounds, or whatever, 50 pounds. That’s like, yeah, that maybe someday. But it’s like, I gotta take care of this now
Thomas Ellis 04:14
exactly. And that’s and that’s the one thing. So if most of most of my clients that I talk to, as soon as they hear a problem, they want to jump on that problem. Say, hey, hey, I can fix that. And and the customer goes, well, I don’t really want that fixed, right? Yeah, you know, we we can limp along, but that’s not the problem. And then they get stuck, right? They don’t know how to move the conversation. So I always try to coach my clients as to we have to work on the urgency, right? What’s, what’s the urgent issue that if they found somebody to fail. Fix it, they act on it immediately.
Damon Pistulka 05:04
Yeah, that’s a great question. If you know, what is it they have, if they found somebody to fix it, they would move on right away, yeah,
Thomas Ellis 05:14
otherwise, you end up having a lot of conversations, and people say, send me a proposal, you know, and yeah, then there’s, there’s no deal, because you didn’t solve the urgent problem. And the price to fix the not urgent problem is too expensive. Yes,
Damon Pistulka 05:37
yes, exactly, because they’re not ready to spend money on the not urgent problems, because they know they got to spend money on the urgent problems Exactly.
Thomas Ellis 05:44
And so we we need to help people to really have the conversations and ask questions and and and understand what their mission is, what did, what their mission is. And one thing that I’ve done this year is I’ve been teaching my clients to use AI, and what, what I’m finding, because I’m using the tool, is that now, right, I’m I was working with a couple credit unions. And no, I would ask AI, what are the top five challenges that BDP, BD reps are having in the credit unions? And it gave me the five things, and I was able to have conversations with leadership at so credit unions to basically say, Listen, I’ve been doing some research. I work with a couple credit unions. And as far as the business development, these are the five challenges that they’ve told me, and I’ve done research on, can I go over these with you to see which ones resonated with you? And also, what is what of these five? What do you need to fix life immediately. Yeah, and Damon, I gotta tell you, that changed the whole conversation.
Damon Pistulka 07:28
Yes, yes, because you’re, you’re showing them that you’re trying to understand their situation. Yeah, that’s a great way to start a conversation.
Thomas Ellis 07:39
And now when you’re when you’re when you do that, not only do you know what the problem is and they identify what they want to solve, you have a service that can solve that problem. So you match up the problems that they have as an industry right to your services that you provide for each one, right? And so now you can have great conversations about, hey, if this is your top priority that you needed to be fixed. The next question I have for you is, would you be willing to look at an outside event to help you solve that problem? Now, if they say yes, then the conversations moves on. But if they say, No, we do that internally, then you want to ask why. But you always have to get their their approval, to say, You know what, if I can find somebody to solve this problem, yes, we will go outside or do that because I, I’ve had many clients who’ve had great conversations, and they get all the way to the proposal stage and everything and that they find out that now we don’t do outside vendors, right? We’ll, we’ll either fix it in house, so you wasted all that time, you know, having two, three meetings to figure out that day. So I try to train people you need to get that information at the first meeting.
Damon Pistulka 09:32
Yeah, you know, it’s a huge thing. It’s a huge point, because you don’t know, you don’t know. And somebody could be hoping that that could change. Somebody could be fishing for maybe their answer. You know, there’s a whole lot of reasons why that question is important. Yeah, that’s good stuff. So as you’re working through these conversations, then, well, so I. Let’s let’s talk a little bit, because we hear are here today talk about sales bootcamp. I can talk sales with you a long time, and we’ll work back into it. But I first want to say we have Marius stop by to say hello. Thanks for dropping a comment in. Marius, Hi Mary. Hope you’re having a great day. Thank you. If you’re out there today, you got some questions for Thomas, go ahead and drop them in the comments, and we’ll get them answered. So sales boot camps now you, you’ve been doing sales boot camps for a while. You, you’ve, I’m sure you intended some before. What? What do you think the sales boot camp environment, or the boot camp environment, really helps someone that wants to get in and and maybe make some change in their sales.
Thomas Ellis 10:45
So it does several things. So it’s kind of like basic training. I think a boot camp. I think of basic training, preseason football practice, right? Hey, we’re going to learn some new plays, but we’re going to also sharpen the fundamentals, right? So boot camp, when? When I think of sales boot camp, I think about sharpening the fundamentals, because I firmly believe that if you master the fundamentals of sales, you’re going to be wildly successful, not mediocre, wildly successful. And here are some of the things that that boot camps help you get clarity on number one, most, most small businesses and businesses in general have a lack of a clear sales process. Oh yeah, right, right, so they know, you know, and, and many of them wing it, right. They don’t do it the same way every time. And so they don’t have a prospecting, qualifying, presenting, having a all of those things are part of the sales process, so they lack that process. They also have difficulties in generating consistent sales leads. Mm, hmm, okay. Why is that? Because many of them rely heavily on the word of mouth and with referrals, and they really haven’t identified their ICP. For those of you though, don’t ICP, they really haven’t identified the ideal client profile. Mm, hmm. So they’re kind of winging it. Well, I got this product and I can sell it to a lot of lot of people. That’s the second thing. The other things they struggle with is what makes them different?
Damon Pistulka 12:45
Oh, yes, they’re unique value.
Thomas Ellis 12:48
Their unique value. What? What is why? Why would you buy this from me? Yeah, and probably one of the most important things that they lack is they have poor discovery conversations, right? Because if you don’t have that great discovery conversation with that client, you’re going to end up proposing the wrong thing at the wrong price, and there’s no deal. Yeah? The other problem, the other thing that a boot camp does is that it helps them, because there’s a topic in there to talk about handling objections of, right, yeah, because you’re going to have a you’re going to have some objections, a sale, as they used to say, a sale doesn’t begin to be a sale until you have an objection, and you need to be prepared for those objections. Now, the wonderful thing about using AI is that you can get and this is what I do a lot of my clients. I say, tell me, what objections do you hit 80% of the time? So I I may be in a room with five to 10 sales reps, I say, what are the objections you hit 80% of the time? And we write them on the board right. And then I say, how do you handle those? And each one has a different way of handling those. And I’m saying time out as a team, we need to come up with, how do we respond to those objections? Yep, so it sounds like smooth jazz that I’m not fumbling and bumbling all over the place. I’m saying, Mister customer, I’m glad you asked me that question, right? And so we need to learn out of that. Then we have to learn how to close with confidence. We have to ask for the business.
Damon Pistulka 14:55
Yes, you’ll be
Thomas Ellis 14:56
amazed how many people you know are on sale. Calls making great progress, but they are. They don’t ask for the business, and if you don’t ask for it, as My grandmama used to say, if you don’t ask, you don’t know what you’re going to get so and then they have follow up failures, right? Because that sale that you’re working on now may take six weeks. Mm, hmm, two months, six months. What’s your follow up process? Yes, you’re going to develop to stay on top of this customer. So those are kind of the concepts for the boot camp, and all it is is like basic training, right? Getting back to the fundamentals. Now, I’ve done this boot camp with I just did this with a group, and this group, the average tenure of the sales team was 18 years. Oh, wow, right. And, and, you know, the after the boot camp that, oh my god, Thomas, I haven’t been to a training like this ever. I’ve, I’ve, I see how if I tweak and tune, because it’s a matter of tweaking and tuning things, not to blow everything up, but yeah, let’s fine tune this. Let’s do this a little bit differently. Those that group are doing extremely well. I hear from them periodically. I even have them using LinkedIn on a on a regular basis. Now, these are people that never use LinkedIn only. Wow. They’re using the tool. They’re getting results. They’re getting meetings, nice, but that’s what I kind of do in the boot camps.
Damon Pistulka 17:00
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, I’ve written down the the different stage you’re talking about one of the things that that I didn’t learn until somebody taught me about the the importance of the sales process. I mean, once you have that in mind, and once you know, hey, I’ve got someone that I want to talk to, just to see what’s going on that discovery call, and you know what you’re gonna what you need to ask in that discovery call, the necessary information you need to get somehow in the conversation, that’s huge, because it relieves you to really have A conversation, knowing I have these three things that I really need to talk with them about today, that’s what it is, and the rest of it can be nice conversation. And if you don’t, you’re kind of all over the board with them. And maybe you’re like, Hey, do you want to buy what I’ve got? Which it really is that that’s not the appropriate time. It’s really learn about them in that first step, and then, if there’s subsequent steps, what do we do at each one of those? And went, What time should we know? What time is it closed? Time is it? Is it right away? Is it two stages away? Is it, you know? When is it and and how do we know? And how, how do we prevent ourselves from going down the stage to further stages if we haven’t got everything we need. You know, it’s just there’s so much power in that process. And a lot of people, I think, just turn it over to a salesperson or an inside sales representative or whatever. Who’s ever how are they handling it? And that person probably doesn’t really think about it in that process sequence, so they’re having trouble with consistent results,
Thomas Ellis 18:45
exactly, exactly. And the key, well, one of the keys is that first meeting is super critical. And you I teach clients to send an agenda for that meeting, right? So, and you, because you’re setting the expectations. Yes, you know, Damon, I’m not going to call I’m not calling you, meeting with you on the first meeting to close you, right? That’s not what the the agenda. The agenda is very simple. I’m going to tell you about my company. I’m going to learn about you, and we’re going to have a discussion about what your goals are for the year and what challenges you have in my area of expertise, right? Yeah, I don’t hear about your accounting issues, right? With regards to customer acquisition, sales development, what are your challenges? I. Right, yeah, is the team getting enough appointments every week month? Um, are they meeting their sales goals? Are they doing enough prospecting? Are they going to networking events? You know? How do you measure that? What are you satisfied with? What are you not satisfied with? Okay, and you you have that conversation. And most people that I talk to who tell me that they have a every company, every sales organization, has problems with getting good leads and getting good appointments. I don’t care what company, if you’re selling Kleenexes to medical devices to hammers, it doesn’t matter how many. I need to know how many appointments everybody wants to get those as they just say on on Glengarry guggen Ross, that those good leads. Give me the good leads, but you have to learn how to prospect to get those leads. So everybody needs that, and then everybody needs to understand what their process is. Is this? Is it two steps? Do you meet? Propose, close, or do you meet one meeting, and you come back and you do a deep dive, you know, into the problem, and then you come back with a proposal, and then, you know, you have a proposal meeting. Because one of the things that I do know is that? And one of my biggest things I try to teach people stop sending proposals via email. Yo, yo. You are wasting your time, and the close race on those is less than 3% why do we continue to do that? Well, that’s what we’ve been told to do. I said, well, listen, here’s what we’re going to do going forward. You either have to meet them in person, or you go over the proposal on a zoom call. Yep, right. And if you explain to this prospect, listen, this is my process. Okay, once I get the information from you, I’m going to go back and put together a proposal. Oh, while you and I are meeting now, let’s set that proposal meeting. Okay? Because I’ll have that proposal done in three days. Can we meet next Tuesday or Wednesday? Yeah, and you, and you book that proposal meeting right when you’re having your first meeting or the second meeting, but you always want to book the proposal meeting. Do not trust me, ladies and gentlemen, close ratio is going to skyrocket when you are able to present that proposal in person or on Zoom call. Why? Why is that? Thomas? Because now you have the undivided attention. Okay, you can reiterate why you guys are talking what things they’re interested in. You can look at their body language. You can get the questions that they have, you can also find out how decisions are made. So you got all this information, versus you emailing the proposal, and all they look as is the last page, which is how much it is. And now they’re like, oh my god, we can’t afford that. And so then they ghost you. Yeah, you call them up, you call them up, and you can’t get it because they can’t afford it. Trust me, if you do it this way, your proposal close rate is going to skyrocket.
Damon Pistulka 23:56
Yeah, and that’s a great point. And actually it’s something that I used to do is send proposals, and you just realize that, listen, it’s, it’s one of these things that you have to show it at the meeting, or be there and go over it with them in person, because it is such a huge difference. Because, honestly, people would look at something and go, Wow, that’s really expensive. But if you’re there explaining it to them, and they understand the the effort behind it, or the value it’s going to create with what you’re doing. That’s a whole different that’s a whole different conversation,
Thomas Ellis 24:30
yep, and we need to change the conversation from saying this is going to cost you to this is your investment. Investment? Yes, right? Because they’re buying your product, they people buy my services because they want to invest in their people so that people can grow. So it’s not a cost. There’s a return on that investment, right? When you buy a car, that’s a cost you there’s no but when you buy. Buy a house, that’s an investment. Your Body Code, there’s a return on the money that you’re going to spend so many times. I have to retrain the people I work with to
Damon Pistulka 25:13
the verbiage, yeah, that’s a big deal too. It’s an
Thomas Ellis 25:16
investment, right? They’re going to buy a new software product and service, because it’s going to increase the efficiency profits. Well, you can put $1 amount to that. What does that mean for you? Bottom line, right? If you if it’s going to increase your productivity 15% what does that equate to in dollars, right? And so constantly talking to people about, listen, talk to people about the word investment, because you’re investing in this product or service, because you want a return. Nobody buys anything in business just to have it. Yeah, you know,
Damon Pistulka 26:00
yes, well, and it’s a you, you make a great point in these things. First of all, process gets you consistency. I mean, if you’re doing the same way every single time, if you know you’re not landing the right amount of sales, you can adjust a step in the process to hopefully help and and then when you look at so that’s consistency. When you talk about the going over the proposal with somebody in person, if that increases your conversion rate of people actually buying from you, that’s another huge boost. Because first of all, we get consistency, and then we get more conversion. We can, we can adjust our system to get more people that are interested and get more conversion in the same way, it’s really cool, when you get back to the fundamentals of
Thomas Ellis 26:49
that, yeah, and then you can also, if there’s a breakdown, if some so I’ve had clients that says, you know, at times, I have a lot of proposals out, but I’m not closing any deals right? So now you can kind of go back right and figure out what’s the where’s the problem, where’s what do we need to retune? And what, inevitably, I find most of the time, is that in the discovery process, They latched on to the wrong problem, right, right? They latched on to the wrong problem, and so, so that’s one of the issues. But by figuring out where you are in the process, you can figure out, wow, how come I have so many proposals and nothing’s closing? Yes, right? Or, and you could look at, you know, I don’t have many appointments that impacts my proposals and closing. And so where do we need to go back and fix and then we take a look at each one of those things to figure out, are we calling the right customer?
Damon Pistulka 28:11
Right? Yes, yes.
Thomas Ellis 28:13
Are we talking to the decision maker or the influencer? Right? And if it’s proposals that we have a lot out there, then are we just putting out proposals? Just to put proposals out, right? And so you get a chance to and then with the follow up, right? You know, we always want to make sure that we’re talking to our customers along the way to say, hey, hypothetically, if you found something that really work, what would be a good lead time for you to implement this probably a month or two. So now you know the sales cycle for for that customer. So if it goes beyond six to eight weeks you got a problem, and you need to go back and figure out where the problem is in your sales process, because they’ve told you that if they’re going to do anything, it’s going to be six to eight weeks For a decision wherever week 10 and nothing’s happened,
Damon Pistulka 29:22
yeah, yeah. Well, it’s again, it’s, it’s your discovery part of it, you’re getting so, so detailed with discovery. That’s really good information to know, because you you could be honestly in some in situations like a client we were working with, or just talking with them today, they have sometimes over a year lead time when they’re talking with for a project, from time they actually get information, get a quote done, and it actually they need to supply the product and services. It’s over a year, and that’s a that’s a big deal to understand how that’s going to affect you things
Thomas Ellis 29:59
exactly. So and if you and most of the time those are big deals, those are $100,000 million dollar deals, which, which in those cases there are, there are a lot more people involved, right? Yeah, lot, lot more decision makers, lot, lot more people that gotta sign off on that, right? Yes, yes. And in those complex sales, one of the things that’s very important is that you need to find out early on who the players are and what role they play and what’s important to them, and you have to meet with each of them, okay, to talk their language. So if you’re talking to the CFO, you have to talk financials and ROI and everything else. When you’re talking to the users, they don’t care about your finances. They want to know, hey, Thomas, is this going to make my life easier? Is this going to help me be more productive? I don’t care how much it costs. I want ease, ease of use, right? I want something going to make my job easy, right? But we have to make sure that we identify those roles and talk to those people only about what’s important in their role. Yeah, right. I mean, the CFO doesn’t care how easy it is to use. He care less about that. He wants to know what are the finances look like. Where’s my ROI, right? How much money do I have to put down to do this, right? And then so, and then you you probably have in those complex deals, probably five decision makers, because they’re going to make that decision as a group, and he’s got to check a very box.
Damon Pistulka 31:55
Yep. It’s so important, like you said, to understand who you’re talking to and their role in the decision Pro or the buying process, because you can spend all your time with someone that you may really connect with, but they have nothing to do with the actual decision of, are we going to buy this from them or not? They can be the one that says we need this. Is that this and you have one of the solutions that can help. But if you’re talking to someone, that’s who you’re talking to, and you really are trying to go to the point of, we need to close the sale, because it’s that point in our process. If you’re continuing to talk to that person, the person making the decision is not even ready to go yet,
Thomas Ellis 32:39
they may not even know you exist, yes, right? Even worse, it’s even worse, right? I mean, but that that has happened? Oh yes, you know, I’ve seen those that happen in complex sales situations. So I try to, when I’m working with clients, I really try to understand what they’re selling, what it costs, because depending on the cost, determines how many people have to sign off on us. Mm, hmm, right. And then we need to find out early in the process, who are those key people that you have to woo right to get a nod from Yeah, this works on my end, right? And the suit, and you have to do that early, because if you don’t, you could spend a lot of time talking to people and doing proposals, and nothing moves because you’re talking to the wrong people. Mm, hmm. But we get excited. These business owners, sales reps, get excited when the customer says, give me a proposal. It’s It’s like they hit a home run. Mm, hmm. And I tell people, a lot of times, people are telling you that to get you off the phone and get you out of the meeting. And I’ll tell you a quick story here. Years ago, I was talking to a client, and I met him, and he was a VP, and he him and I met and he says, when the cops, he said, Give me a proposal. And I said, I don’t really know what you want, and I don’t, I don’t have enough information to get you know, but I need, I need basic sales training. But I said, I really need to know more information. Mm, hmm. So he kind of shooed me off, right? And so I did not send him up. Oh, and then on top of that, he would not meet to go over the proposal. So I’m thinking, Well, I’m not giving you a proposal. I’m not going to do because, first of all, I don’t know what you need. Yes, right? And, and it’s going to be wrong, and we’re not gonna have a deal, so I’m not going to do it. So. Four months later, I’m at an event, and I meet two of his sales managers, and I said, Hey, yeah, I spoke to so and so four months ago, so and we kind of talked about things. So how’s things going? Oh, my God, Thomas, we really need training. I said, you do? I said, Well, yeah. I said, Why don’t Can I set up a meeting with the both of you to kind of go over what you need, and then we can present that to the guy’s name, perfect. So I met with them for about two hours, got a really good understanding of what they needed, what they wanted, yep, presented a proposal to the VP, and he and because of these two gentlemen, they said, Yeah, we want to do this nice. And so I end up doing business with them. In hindsight, if I had to give him the proposal that he would have sat on, yeah, and then I meet these two guys and give him another proposal, he would have said, well, how come he gave me two different
Damon Pistulka 36:13
proposals? Right? Point two, yeah, yeah, yeah. Think about that. That right one thing. So
Thomas Ellis 36:21
it’s always good to sometimes the best thing is not to give somebody a proposal until you have enough information that you can give a proposal that you think you can win. Because companies don’t pay sales reps to generate proposals. They pay sales reps to generate wins. So it’s not a proposal contest, right? It’s a how many deals did you close contest?
Damon Pistulka 36:54
Yeah, yeah, not proposals. That’s great. That’s great. So one thing, and we’re getting getting kind of close to the end, but I think this is a pretty important thing. How many times do you see when you’re talking to somebody and they’re there, you’re helping them with sales process, do they actually understand their unique value in the market?
Thomas Ellis 37:19
That is another good question. They normally, they think they know what it is, right, and but they really do good most of the products and services somebody else has right? I mean, they’re not. You’re not the only person that’s selling this particular product or service, and what makes you different, right? And people get stuck on, well, we have 20 trucks. That’s great. I mean, what is, what is, what is 20 trucks mean, right? If, if I, if I’m a plumbing company, what does 20 trucks mean, right? And so they’re so focused on the feature. But what is the benefit for you? Having to 22 Oh, Thomas, that means we can get the most of our calls in an hour. I said, Ah,
Damon Pistulka 38:14
there you go. There you go.
Thomas Ellis 38:16
So when you talking to customers, you you can say Mister, mister, 90% of the time, because we have a large fleet of vehicles, we can get to your appointment in an hour. Okay, wow, that’s no other companies can do it. Most companies don’t do that. So we’ll, we’ll get there between nine and 12, so you’re there four hours, right? But if you can take what you take that, what the trucks are, and give it a benefit, yeah, so I’m always taking what they think their benefit is. It’s a feature. And I say, Well, how does that benefit the customer? What’s why is that? Why? What is in it for the customer? Oh, we can get there earlier. We can So, ah, you can get there to the customer. You can solve their problem quicker. Great. Then that’s a benefit. The other thing I try to talk to him about is they are the unbeatable advantage, right? Like in my, in my world, me against everybody else that does self training, I’m the unbeatable advantage me. It’s me, right? It’s It’s the passion I have, it’s the knowledge I have, right is the genuineness of wanting to help you be successful. That’s my unique value. Okay? So I always tell people, start with you, the individual, right? You and. Then you talk about the benefits that just service provides. But it all starts with you listen, I’m always going to be on time. I’m always going to give you the highest level of customer service, you know. And here’s, here’s some documents that state that, and you give some custom testimonials and things that back up what you said. And that’s your unique value proposition.
Damon Pistulka 40:36
Yeah, that’s good. That’s huge advice. I just write tons of notes here from that, because that is one of the things that I think a lot of people skip completely over, is, is that the people that the person that what is, is, whether it’s the, you know, the founders, vision of the company and why we do things the way we do, or the person and their individual nature, of how they work, how, like you said, passion, you know, their timeliness. That was another great one that you said. And they’re, they’re caring for people to succeed is a huge thing. Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome.
Thomas Ellis 41:17
And that, and that’s what people at the end of the day. You know that’s what really matters is, is that people want to deal with people that are reliable, dependable, honest, ethical, and have their best interests at heart, yeah, not to fill their pocketbook. Because I always tell people, I said, Listen, I’m going to give you all of me. Okay? And no matter what you pay me, you’re going to get more. I can’t help it. Can’t help, right? That’s just who I am and so. And you’re going to also find that for my type of services, my prices are very reasonable because of the deep passion I have, excuse me for helping small businesses who don’t have a lot of money but need this type of service, and so I look at that and go, How can I help them and help myself at the same time? Yeah? So you get more, you know, then you
Damon Pistulka 42:38
pay for, yeah, that’s awesome. That’s a great way to to explain it too, because that passion helps you to deliver that exceptional service far above, like you said, what you’re actually getting paid for, because you want to, you want to help them, and that’s really what you want to do, and want to excel at personally.
Thomas Ellis 42:58
And those people we all know people that go above and beyond their call of duty. We all know those people, and those people get calls from us all the time. I have two handyman for my house. Both of these gentlemen are outstanding. I don’t think I mean, they’ll call me when they’re on their way, times I’ll be there 45 minutes. Um, they call me if they’re running late. Nice. Um, when they show up, they they’re just professional, good people. So And guess what? I share them with other people. Mm, hmm, right. You know I refer them. I say, Hey, listen this person. Listen, how many people you know are going to call you when they’re late in a end up home improvement industry? They like to show up whenever the hell they want to show up. Yeah, right, really, you know they want to show when they want to show up after No, no, I have two people that are going to call you. I’m on my way. I should be there 45 minutes. They’re going to call you. They’re late. When they get there, they’re going to do maybe a little extras. Hey, I did this. I know I wasn’t supposed to do that, but I did that because this happened or this, right? And those people are always busy. Yes, they’re always busy, right? They don’t have the highest prices. The prices are reasonable, but they do quantity, yeah, of great service. And so I tell people all the time, no matter what business that you’re in, if you provide outstanding customer service. And I mean, every time you work with a customer, the customer gets a wow experience. Right? You’re going to have customers for life, and they’re going to refer you, and that’s what I pride myself on. Everybody that I interact. I want them to have a wow experience. Wow. This guy did more i i learned more than I would ever learn. I Wow, wow, wow, wow, because those people are going to refer you to other people and and they’re going to continually come back to you when they have issues. Mm, hmm. We all know companies that don’t treat customers that way, and they’re struggling and this economy, right? If you’re not taking care, if you’re not wowing your customer, you’re going to lose them, and you never want to get
Damon Pistulka 45:51
them back. Yeah, it’s a huge thing. It’s a huge thing because people have choices. They have choices, and people are people are used to getting good service on many things, and if yours is not up to the PAR, even if you’re in an industry that’s notorious for poor service, people still expect good service, and you just lost any any referral business or future business from those people by not being you know, at at least where you should be. Yeah, that’s a huge thing. Well, Thomas as usual, it is so awesome to talk to you. We could talk for for a long, long time. But, man, I just appreciate you stopping by today, talking a bit about the sales boot camp, how that really gets people going, but, and, and not but and just sharing the fundamentals. I mean, it’s so good to talk sales fundamentals with you, because we get caught on the latest tech or whatever, and really it boils back, like you said, to the fundamentals, because if we execute the fundamentals right, we will be successful in sales. Absolutely yes. Well, if people want to reach out to you, Thomas, what’s the best way for them to get a hold of you?
Thomas Ellis 47:06
So the best way there are servers. Number one, you can find me on LinkedIn, yep. The second way to find me is my email address. Is T, E, L, L, i, s, at, e, w, C. Can consultants with an s.com and another way to reach me is by telephone. There you go. A two the most underutilized tool in the sales world and the best tool you could ever move because I always tell people a sale doesn’t move forward unless you have some phone conversations. Yeah, well, for those of you who would like to call me, and believe this or not, I answer my phone if, unless I’m in the training, blows people’s mind. So that’s one of my unique advantages. I’m going to pick up my phone. My phone number is 301343, 13430001,
Thomas Ellis 48:06
and I will be willing to talk with anybody that’s on this call right now and give you a 30 minute free sales strategy session. Just mention that you are on this call, and we’ll make it happen. Damon, thank you very much. It’s awesome talking to you. We can talk forever and ever and ever and ever and and also, I have a book out. It’s called b, u, d, better, unique, desirable, yep, the sales process that get results. And it’s been out now for for about two years, and you can find it on Amazon.
Damon Pistulka 48:47
Awesome, awesome. Well, Thomas, thank you for being here today. I want to thank everyone listening out there. I can see the listeners online here. Thanks, Mario, sir for dropping a comment in. And thanks all of you that got here, and we’re listening with us today. If you got in late, go back to the beginning, because Thomas shared a lot of golden nuggets about sales in general, sales process, the steps in sales and why you may want to consider a sales boot camp. If you want to amp up your sales abilities in a in a compressed amount of time, we’re going to finish up offline for now. Thanks everyone for being here. Thomas will finish up offline and and wind down. Thank you.
