57:44
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, wholistic sales, wanted, selling, talking, day, business, call, andrew, jeff, ira, thinking, question, years, grew, customer, linkedin, deutsch, allison, understand, Business broker, Business value builder, M&A consultant.
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Jeffry Graham, Ira Bowman, Andrew Cross
Damon Pistulka 00:07
All right, yeah, you’re gonna need to turn the camera on
Ira Bowman 00:16
hairband. I don’t have any here
Damon Pistulka 00:20
take that sucker.
Andrew Cross 00:23
Anyone know the shot man? That’s a shot right?
Ira Bowman 00:26
That’s that’s a Chicago shot. Hey. They changed my my music player. Did you guys ever said you play music like, good as a media player on Microsoft, they changed it. So I was trying to turn the music on one of my other shows and I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I’m like, What happened? Yeah, it was one of those, you know, Microsoft updates, anyways. Yep.
Damon Pistulka 00:50
All right. Well, thanks, everyone for coming once again to the Exit Your Way Round table. Jeff, you’re gonna have to turn on your camera. It doesn’t do it for you. Maybe what we got to do let’s let’s just wait here. I’m gonna make sure that you take them up on a jet. Yeah, there we go. Oh, now I’m gonna go. So should come up now.
Andrew Cross 01:14
Folks, good morning.
Jeffry Graham 01:15
There we go. Sorry.
Ira Bowman 01:17
He’s like, I can’t turn my mic.
Jeffry Graham 01:21
was on. So
Ira Bowman 01:23
Well, that was a man’s fault.
Damon Pistulka 01:25
Yeah, it’s my fault. You know, it’s just like, look at the old guy trying to run technology. Enough said.
Andrew Cross 01:30
It’s so chilly in Denver.
Jeffry Graham 01:34
Yes.
Andrew Cross 01:35
So with us today, we got Jeffrey Graham from the Denver Consulting Firm. Jeffry is going to talk about a little bit about wholistic sales. And when we when we talk about that, really the reason why I’ve had Jeff here today is he’s scaled a lot of different businesses and and with a lot of different methods, you know, everything from hardcore pay per click, driving people to sign ups to product sales, and different things like that. And one of the things that he really taught me about wholistic sales, was the fact that in his Words, you have to fish at all levels. And if you if you’re limiting yourself to one way, one method or something like that, you probably are a missing out or be heading for trouble. Because if one of those methods goes away, like we saw this year, if you were all based on physically being in front of somebody, and didn’t have any other way of doing things, you probably got hit pretty hard. So welcome, Jeff. Glad to have you here.
Jeffry Graham 02:51
To hear me. Okay.
Damon Pistulka 02:53
Yeah, yeah, you might.
Ira Bowman 02:55
I do want to make I want to pop in we are on LinkedIn live.
Andrew Cross 02:58
Yeah. If you look at
Ira Bowman 03:01
if you get our exit your way page, then to find it I need to do is go to the videos tab over on the left. And it’ll be the first thing up.
Damon Pistulka 03:09
Yeah, well, this is the first one with LinkedIn Live this this week. We’re also going to be simulcasting this, this presentation, and then maybe even some of the table discussions after to LinkedIn live, we want to be able to share this with others immediately. And maybe if they if they so choose, they will join the group after for the conversation. We’ll see. So we’re kind of excited about that. And all of our events are going to start to do that. So, Jeff, thanks a lot for being here to talk about wholistic sales. And Andrew is gonna start sharing it. There. There it is. on LinkedIn. Yeah.
Ira Bowman 03:52
All right, the mirror looking at yourself in the mirror.
Damon Pistulka 03:55
It is. So as we started doing, we’re going to bring people up Run, run through everyone to be able to just kind of say hello, how you doing? Andrews got a question where he’s going to ask of everyone. So you’re going to come up, you’re going to answer the question. Introduce yourself and take it away, Andrew.
04:15
Yeah, it’s all just bring you up. This is just like, you’re in a meeting, you get 30 seconds to your elevator pitch, but we’re gonna not do it that way. Just Just wait a lot of us know each other already. But just say hi, and tell us about yourself. When you were 12 years old. What did you want to be when you grow up? In about 30 seconds or less so anyways, I’ll start calling folks up and we’ll go through this real quick.
04:39
Are we last do we get into it? I feel I don’t want to feel Oh, you don’t get to do it.
Andrew Cross 04:44
You don’t to do it Jeff.
Ira Bowman 04:49
We were talking about motocross before on the table that would be kind of cool to figure out how we got into it. That’s kind of cool. That would be
Damon Pistulka 04:56
alright Adam. What?
04:58
Yeah, man. When I was 12, I wanted to be IRA Bowman. Does that. Yeah, yeah, buddy. I know, I know, I wanted to be a Raiders fan.
05:13
I wanted to lose a bunch of Super Bowls.
Jeffry Graham 05:19
Hey, I remember to LA.
Ira Bowman 05:22
And he’s lost every Superbowl he’s ever played in. So this
05:27
Yes, I’m gonna glom on to one of the goals. We lost and claim that, you know, that trophy for us instead. So. But in reality, when I was 12 years old, I think I wanted to be a teacher. I think that was where I was, I was thinking I was heading at the time. So I have gotten far afield from that, in some respects and not in others. So, you know, being in the finance realm, but I teach my clients every day about things. So I’m still doing it just not standing in front of a classroom or at this point, a virtual classroom. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 06:00
Very good. That’s awesome. Adam, is.
06:06
Thanks, Adam. Well, Brad Smith, so Andrew, that’s a really interesting question and not something I hadn’t thought about because it sparked a thought. When I was 12. We had we were still living in Evansville, Indiana. My dad had worked for me Johnson, and my favorite magazine was Fortune magazine with the the Jetson M and that mentions and that so I wanted to be I wanted to be a business guy so that I could afford those things. Which I hadn’t actually thought about that. Until you asked that question. That is
Damon Pistulka 06:46
awesome. Dude.
06:48
You grew up.
06:51
Thanks. All right.
Damon Pistulka 06:53
Now you’re helping business people.
06:55
Now, now I just I’m just a gas pedal.
Damon Pistulka 06:59
There you go. Great. Well, thanks, Brad. So Cory, welcome. Today, what did you want to be when you were 12?
07:10
You know, I’m having trouble thinking back. All I can think about is says girls and music and, you know, doing fun things. So I had to grow up a bit before I wanted to do something. And then my dad was in the restaurant business and stuff and, and I realized I really didn’t want to be in the restaurant business. So I picked
Damon Pistulka 07:32
it up. Yeah, there you go. He didn’t want to not want to be Yeah. Yeah. Great. That’s good. That’s good to see a query, Kurt. Thanks, Cory. Kurt, what did you want to be when you were 12? When I
07:49
was 12. I was 12 years old. 40 years ago today. So I’m 52.
07:56
Happy Birthday brother. Thanks, guys. So I don’t know. The cheap trick. Or maybe Thurman Munson got
08:05
mine. Thurman Munson and cheap trick.
Andrew Cross 08:08
There we go. There you go. guys get good. And if you haven’t, if you haven’t joined us on the Friday, manufacturing e commerce Success Series tomorrow at 1030. Pacific. We got actually Jeff speaking tomorrow about digital transformation. So that’s got some good speakers. Iris coming up the week after I believe. And then we’ve got Allison to Ford and Bonnie. I don’t remember his last name, but she’s great at video. So Dan, warm everybody. Cold there. It was 30 degrees this morning. So yeah,
08:43
that warm.
08:45
Cold here too. Yep, same.
Damon Pistulka 08:47
So what my birthday was
08:49
on Tuesday, so I just turned 44.
08:52
Nice. Happy belated.
Damon Pistulka 08:54
Yeah. Yeah. But I wanted to be a professional baseball player. That’s what I lived, slept,
08:59
ate, drank. Everything was baseball.
Damon Pistulka 09:01
So cool.
09:03
Very cool.
Damon Pistulka 09:04
Yeah. It was quite a special week for my family. Blake’s now the guy that pitched in the last game in the World Series for their devil race. My son trained alongside him for like, six years in the winter because he’s from Seattle. And it was surreal. So awesome. Well, cool. Thanks, Dan. That’s awesome. All right, Jennifer. 12 years old.
09:34
I think when I was 12 I wanted to be a hairdresser. All right.
09:41
hairdresser. Nice. Keep in mind, but
Damon Pistulka 09:44
that’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
09:50
Again, business for me or Andrew.
09:52
Or IRA? I don’t know.
09:55
I guess the only person I get business from is myself because of COVID.
09:58
Yeah. Don’t
Ira Bowman 10:00
run exit your way because we sell businesses we run exit your way because it’s about follicles that exit your way.
10:08
Yeah, they leave. They leave. That’s
Damon Pistulka 10:12
awesome, Jennifer. Thanks a lot, right? My old Connor What? What you want to be when you were 12? Dude
10:23
20 seconds.
10:24
It’d be good
10:25
not to give you an honest answer. I didn’t really decided I wanted to be anything till I was 13 when I was 12 I just wanted to survive and drink a bottle of school vaca day, I lived with two very abusive brothers. Not to be a downer. But you know, it’s an honest answer to the
Damon Pistulka 10:42
question. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah.
10:45
So you wanted to be an alcoholic? Or what? Or no, no, just want to survive the day without getting beat up or molested?
Damon Pistulka 10:52
There you go. So
Ira Bowman 10:55
13 you decided you want to be something? What was the answer there?
11:00
And when I was 13, my brother and I started a landscaping business. By the time we were 16, we had almost 300 lawns.
Damon Pistulka 11:08
Not
11:09
that’s crazy entrepreneur from day one.
11:11
Yeah. Yeah, no, we actually decided to do that. There is it was a nicer way out of the house. Yeah.
11:19
Yeah. Yeah. means doing it.
11:21
Yeah.
11:23
No,
11:25
no, that’s good. They might think.
Damon Pistulka 11:28
No, it’s like, it’s like Mac’s
Ira Bowman 11:33
beat up every day to 300 lawns in a year. That’s pretty damn impressive. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 11:37
That’s cool. That’s cool. It is. Yeah. 13 year old.
11:43
No shame. We big people for the work.
11:45
Yeah. Good.
11:49
Some things never changed.
11:51
Never do.
Ira Bowman 11:52
They still eat that way. They don’t know how to sell any other way. Like I’m desperate. Whatever.
11:58
All right, join SPN
12:04
Mike Martin learning.
12:06
So I definitely wanted to be an architect when I was 12 years old. Now my parents talked me out of it. They’re like, you can’t make enough money as an architect so you can see what their priorities they wanted to be a lawyer. So now I you know, I design and build things. I think that’s that’s the vestige of the architectural instinct, me
Ira Bowman 12:27
designing building systems. So it started with me. Very cool.
Damon Pistulka 12:31
Very cool. Mark. Thank you
12:32
can make you can make more as an architect and as lawyer.
Ira Bowman 12:37
I don’t know what they were. I don’t know either.
12:39
I get it. But I think he needed a lawyer in the family.
Damon Pistulka 12:45
Yeah, yeah. You never know. Maybe this it was self serving. It was like you never know. Yeah, it needed it. We should have it at 20
Ira Bowman 12:52
years of experience, right. So in those large format printers, for blueprints, basically. But architects are like some of the most wealthy people I’ve dealt with. Yeah. That’s that’s funny, but maybe it was different back then. You know, I don’t know how long ago he was 12. But, yeah, anyway, great. Now that’s one of that’s one of the like, prepared. That’s not they’re usually business owners. They’re usually multimillion
Damon Pistulka 13:19
dollar businesses. Well, Pete, what Wait, you want to be when you were born? raised your hand to first what would you raise your hand? Yeah, well, because I didn’t know. I didn’t know how you were pulling them up. For me.
13:36
12 years old, I want to be a sportscaster. You know, and it just, I really want to call the games because there wasn’t, I wasn’t going to have the talent to make it to the pros. So I figured my best way to get it get to get it to make it to the pros. And then I found out when I got to college that I was going to have to move every three months to a bigger and bigger market. And I thought that so I’ll just I’ll go ahead and do that boring business degree like everybody else. Yeah.
14:06
What a fun job that would have been man.
14:08
Yeah. Well, you know what? I’m, I’m basically with the podcast I do now. I’m kind of tapping into that inner child a little bit. Because, yeah, I get to get to be broadcasting live every year.
Jeffry Graham 14:24
Awesome, man.
Damon Pistulka 14:25
Yeah. Very cool. Very cool, Melissa.
14:29
Hey, good morning. So I was thinking about what did I want to be? I think it was a teacher. And I think it comes back to like, it’s other than your parents. So one person you get to see like professionally on a daily basis, and they got to help people so I think it was a thinker.
Damon Pistulka 14:44
Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Question. Yeah.
14:51
Under sells,
Damon Pistulka 14:51
yeah. Yeah. You have to think about it, everyone. Yeah,
14:55
for sure. That’s awesome.
14:57
So Ron, what about you, man? Hey, Man, I know exactly what I wanted to be when I was. I want to be an adult.
Ira Bowman 15:03
He’s come. I knew that and Oh, yeah.
15:06
Yeah, that’s right.
15:07
Watch Star Trek. And then I knew everything about those Apollo missions, the space missiles, astronauts names, everything. I wanted to be an astronaut. So
Damon Pistulka 15:19
I think I did. So. So now you’re the only person out here that said that I wanted to be an astronaut when I was 12. And you actually tried out to be an astronaut?
15:27
Yeah. Well, I told
15:28
this came up on IRA’s live show, I think so you know, I, I took the path to be an astronaut. And I was nominated by the Navy as an astronaut candidate. And when I went to NASA,
15:40
I got disqualified. So
Damon Pistulka 15:42
yeah, I got as close as I could. Yeah, exactly. That’s great. That’s great. Cool. It’s crazy. If you ever anything in the wrong position
15:51
in NASA, they will kick you out. Yeah, this was you know,
Damon Pistulka 15:55
your finger your fingers crooked. Yeah.
16:03
It’s that little stuff there. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
Damon Pistulka 16:10
Thanks for sharing.
16:17
Rod bark.
16:20
Good morning, guys. Get dressed up for the occasion here. So glad to have it.
16:24
Yeah, look at me, bro.
16:26
Yeah. What’s, what’s your under Yeah, but there you go. For me. There’s undefeated so far. So I’ll take that. I have to
Ira Bowman 16:33
pull mark off the stage.
16:35
Go ahead. If that’s you where you’re like, I’m still
Ira Bowman 16:38
just about that at deception they call immaculate.
16:44
Why don’t you hold a grudge for decades, Ira. Wow.
16:46
That’s all I got, bro. I don’t have any hair to hold on to. I work.
16:52
We’re still in Detroit.
Damon Pistulka 16:55
Yeah. So what do we what do we have there for when you’re at 12? Mark?
16:59
I was thinking about this. You know how they tell you when you’re asked a question. You’re not supposed to listen to everybody else’s. And you’re supposed to think about what it is that you want to do. So that’s what I’ve been trying to do. The last few minutes was thinking about what I wanted to be when I was 13. And the only thing that I came up with was, there was a girl that I liked in my class. And sorry, my wife is on the phone. I got to go somewhere else.
17:25
And I’m outside. Okay.
17:27
The girl
17:30
13 year old crushes
17:31
coming back.
17:32
I was in the kitchen. And she was Yeah, hold on. Yeah, yeah. So there was a girl. And she’s
17:47
she never liked me as much after that. But I figured by
18:00
breaking out.
18:02
Yeah,
18:03
you went too far from your router?
Damon Pistulka 18:05
Yeah.
18:09
That’s probably what
Damon Pistulka 18:10
you want to be when you’re.
18:12
Oh, my goodness. Hey, Damon. Well, Ron already stole my thunder. I wanted to be an
18:17
astronaut. I grew up in the Space Coast of Florida,
18:20
just south of Cape Canaveral. And
18:25
I didn’t even I didn’t even wasn’t even a pilot. I was in the Air Force. Yeah, an officer and didn’t even fly. So I didn’t even get as close as Ron did. But that was my goal back then. Growing up watching watching all the rockets. And so when the shuttle launches and everything.
Jeffry Graham 18:39
Yeah. So awesome.
Damon Pistulka 18:41
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome drive. There. Yeah. Yeah, it’s out there. Well. It was next. Randy, were you next?
18:54
Yeah, the man with the green background here. I
18:59
allow you to do virtual backgrounds, or at least I haven’t discovered how to sew. Yeah,
19:03
yeah. Anyway.
19:05
I wanted to grow. When I grew up. I wanted to be gorgeous.
Damon Pistulka 19:09
Yeah.
19:14
so blessed to know him. Honestly, at that point in my life, I wasn’t quite sure. But I really had some powerful teachers that that have had a profound influence on me. So I really I think I wanted to be a teacher, I wanted to have a means of having the same kind of influence on others that those teachers had on me. Yeah, in a sense, I’m doing it in one way or another, not necessarily the path that they took, but I am influencing and teaching in other by other methods.
19:45
Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. Thank you for having me. Dr. Alien, what did you know when I was a teenager, I remember very clearly I wanted to be somebody that helped other people and something between a psychologist and that priest, interestingly enough, were psychologists. But that was the idea is like somebody tells you their problems and you help them. But you could do that ecclesiastically or in the, in the real world. And you know, it’s kind of interesting. Then when I get older, I wanted to travel the world and speak about happiness.
Damon Pistulka 20:20
There you go. There you go, man. You do now you’re doing. That’s for you, man. Yeah, that’s really cool.
20:27
Bring it on.
20:29
Thank you so much.
20:31
Everyone, everyone.
20:36
Except she’s on deck, but I can’t. She’s either got to turn her camera on, or she doesn’t need to Penny spread. Now,
20:45
if she’s been invited, but that’s the only one I think. What did you want? When you’re
Ira Bowman 20:51
1212 years old was an interesting time in my life. I was actually homeless part of that year. So much like Mike, I wasn’t thinking about the future. I was thinking about the now. Yeah, I’m at that age. Like, if you look at that just age range, like 10 to 13 I was a pretty good wrestler. So I wanted to be an Olympic wrestler. I wanted to go to Cal Poly in a wrestle for the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Cal Poly team, because that’s where my dad went. So his legacy. But the reason why I didn’t go to Cal Poly was because in 1994, I graduated high school in 95 and 94, that Cal Poly Music Building burnt down to the ground as a music major. Yeah, no, I didn’t want to go to a school that wasn’t going to have a building for three years because they said it would take three years to build it. And I’m like, you can’t do music and attempt because we’re gonna have like a tent building. Like, that is not gonna work. Like there’s lots of there are lots of different majors, you know, business or whatever you could you could like, sit there and do your work. Book music was singing and playing. How do you do that? You can’t do it with headphones on anyways. So I went to San Jose State, I went to a school that didn’t end up having a wrestling team. And so I didn’t pursue my my wrestling. There we go. I stopped at the high school level, but that’s what
Damon Pistulka 22:14
I want to wrestle. Very cool. Very cool. So Mary, what did you want to do when you were 12?
22:22
That’s a good question. Um, when I was 12, I was probably going to be an actress. And I was going to try and go to New York. Yeah, that’s what everybody wanted to be an actress in. upstate New York did know they went straight down in New York City. And then I was gonna be a singer. And but my voice is all soft now. So
22:49
all right.
Damon Pistulka 22:51
those are those are good ones. Those are good ones. Thank you very much.
22:56
No, Barry,
22:57
and Deutsch What did you want to be when you were 12?
23:01
I wanted to be a guy that would grow up to not be picked last to tell what I wanted to be when I was 12.
23:19
Though I wanted to be a world traveler, inventor. Or roadie for Frank Zappa.
23:37
Really want?
Damon Pistulka 23:48
Yeah, right. So who we who we got next Andrew Finney.
23:55
Can you hear me?
23:56
Yeah, there we go. And Mark, bro.
24:01
Yay.
24:03
When I was 12, I was actually modeling for Barbizon School of modeling. And actually, I wanted to become a fashion designer and go to fit in New York.
Damon Pistulka 24:15
Hmm. Very cool. That’s like it’s so interesting listening to all the ones and the ones like Mary just did. And Andrew just did because Andrew has traveled the globe many many times. And you you’re saying that and that it’s just the interesting different ones that we’re hearing is cool. So this is really cool. All right. Thanks, Penny. So Mark, what did you want to be when you were 12? It was a completely delusional I wanted to be a professional soccer baseball player. That’s awesome, though.
24:47
That’s a lot of kids drink.
Ira Bowman 24:53
Age, right because you have no you haven’t gotten into high school yet to me. I dream of being the Do whatever and told you’re not good enough. I mean, yeah, it happened. Yeah.
25:10
first hit
25:13
her with a moustache. Put my I came up off the ground and my teeth were loose. I was like,
25:21
Well,
25:23
everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
Ira Bowman 25:26
And there are a lot less concussions in chess.
25:34
You want to be a little Billy, whatever.
Damon Pistulka 25:36
All right. Well, that’s cool. I think that I think, Mark, I think you’re the last one other than the people on the stage. Right, Andrew? Or, at least?
25:48
Yeah. Cool. Yeah. That was fun. So now, it’s neat to we talked about people,
Damon Pistulka 25:56
you know, what did you want to be when you were 12? Andrew?
26:05
I traveled around a lot with my parents, you know, worked overseas, and we flew a lot, you know, which is a nice thing to do. But man, I just kind of loved getting on planes. And, you know, and traveling like that. And those long flights on the big Boeing’s and one of the pilots
Damon Pistulka 26:18
telling me traveling out into the Indian cockpit and talked to pilots before they were flying a lot and that kind of thing, too. You know, I
26:30
yeah, you know, they can be a little bad. You know, when you’re like, 12 years old. Right, the cat? Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, kind of, uh, you know, foot traveling. And I still like traveling like that, though. I don’t like that whole scene. I don’t know if people hate it, but I don’t know.
Damon Pistulka 26:52
Yeah, growing up in Southern California.
26:56
And I probably throw you guys for a loop on this one. So a lot of people know I rode motorcycles for a living so for five years professionally traveled the world doing that. So a lot of people think I was wanting to ride motorcycles for a living. When I was about nine, my parents sold all our dirt bikes. So I didn’t get a ride a motorcycle from about nine to I was about 13. So I had like a gap of time there where I was on a motorcycle, and then at 13 I went pro 16. But what I wanted to be at 12 was a veterinarian. There you go. I already had already had to pick that I was gonna go to Davis, which at the time was the best veterinary school in California. I had was reading books and I really wanted to be a veterinarian when I was 12 years old. So you go animals
Ira Bowman 27:47
Did you grew up in California? and California Orange County? Okay. Yep.
27:51
Yeah, yeah.
Jeffry Graham 27:55
Yeah, was
27:57
was exceptionally you know, skilled in every sport. I’ve played for the best club team in Southern California and footballs. lcif which is like all state you know, want to see if championship so a lot of people thought I wanted to be in sports, but no, really, I wanted to be a vet, and help animals.
28:15
Kind of, and that’s a real shocker.
Andrew Cross 28:18
Nothing wrong with that at all. That’s all good stuff. Well, you know, the funny thing was that have nothing to do with Jeff. But I wanted to be a motocross racer. I had nothing, nothing more than when I was 12 just saved up enough money and I bought a Hodaka dirt squirt dirt bike.
Jeffry Graham 28:39
Get on that. bultaco
Damon Pistulka 28:40
get that bultaco you know, and I was driving that thing around and I was gonna be a motocross racer. That’s it my teachers wanted. He told me I should be a scientist, but I didn’t like having that man. I was I was reading the you know that. I would. I would save up my money and go buy the motorcyclist magazine or whatever it was with the dirt pile. And you know, that was my deal.
Jeffry Graham 29:03
I was destined glory, Evel Knievel. I mean, just just just real badass is back then. Yeah.
Ira Bowman 29:12
When I was 12 everywhere, like that was that was the dude back then.
Jeffry Graham 29:16
Yeah, he was and he jumped a Harley, which is psycho.
Damon Pistulka 29:21
Alright, Anders, check it out early turn to get out early today. Great question. That was That was awesome. And as as we do, sometimes we get off a bit, but we’re gonna listen to Jeff now he’s got to talk a little bit about holistic sales. And, and like I said, it’s, it’s really Jeff’s done this with a lot of different companies. So we’re gonna listen to what he’s got to say here. And if there’s questions, just pop them in the chat. Yeah, I know.
Ira Bowman 29:48
I’ll monitor the chat for sure.
Damon Pistulka 29:50
Yep. So yeah. Take it away, man.
29:55
Yeah, well, I appreciate everybody taking the time to listen and all that but yeah, please throw them in the chat. questions, concerns, comments, ridicule, whatever, don’t care, I want to help out as much as I can. Sales has been a kind of in my DNA since I could remember I was trying to get more cat candy on Halloween, I had a lemonade stand when I was a child. I used to recycle aluminum cans and sell newspapers. So sales has just been a part of who I am. And ultimately what I do and and what I want to kind of get out of this discussion, I think for most people is there’s everyone’s going to be in a different process. Some of you are already a very experienced in sales and have have established really successful processes. Some, some maybe are just trying to redefine a redeploy a process in which that you wanted to start getting more sales or getting more traction. But I kind of go with some major focal points, from a sales standpoint, just to check the boxes to make sure that I’m on the right track. You know, first thing that I think is one that’s overlooked, a lot of people don’t do even veterans is set sales goals. Right? So, you know, are you setting your sales goals and objectives frequently, and that could be depending on who you’re talking to, and what kind of industry you’re in, you got to have a goal otherwise, to attain that goal. Typically, I aim higher than then a lot of time is attainable. But I have found in my career that I’ve attained those high goals at times in massive growth opportunities, and just building that process. So said, setting sales goals really important. The other thing that people overlook is analyzing your sales history, if you’ve been through sales processes or your company, you know, a lot of times people don’t look back and go, what were my failures? Where did I come short? What was the struggle that I had? You know, those are the things that I think that people overlook frequently and don’t really spend the time looking back. And you don’t want to necessarily look backwards to run forwards. But it is important to understand where you made mistakes and where you fell short. You know, industry trends, and what the economic and digital landscape is, is another big part of the sales process, I’d say now more than ever. So I think that that’s one that needs to be up on the top of the list, it used to be lower on my list. But now it’s it’s up up on the list. So understanding where you know, where your customers at who they are, what they’re looking for things along those lines, and I’m gonna be real generic to start just because I think that’s kind of given us some, some framework or some type of foundation. You know, the other thing is, is creating a profile of your ideal customer. Most of you I bet 99% probably don’t do that. You probably should. And I mean down to the tee, what do they like to eat for lunch? I mean, you really need to understand who you’re selling to, and what their triggers are, from a human emotional aspect, not from just selling them shit. But from, from a human aspect. Who are these people? What do they like to do? Who do they like to hang out with? What groups do they like to associate with? Those are things that are going to allow you to get in front of the right target audience. So really understanding the profile of your ideal customer is going to help you attain meeting more people like them, because birds of a feather flock together. You know, in addition to that, here’s another one that I think people miss by you know, map a buyers journey. So reverse engineer your sales from the end to the beginning, or I should say to the to from the end to the beginning. So like from the transactional aspect, all the way back to how they found you, where they found you why they found you, how they know you why they like you? What are the things so mapping that that journey that’s especially important in e commerce, especially important for online and in a digital aspect, but I think mapping a buyers journey is going to be massively helpful. And a lot of people don’t do it. Some of this stuff might you might have heard before, right? I mean, sales has been around since the beginning of time. And barter has been around since long before that. So so you’re gonna hear some stuff that’s probably regurgitated, but in, in essence is just hitting back on to get back to basics. Keep it simple, stupid, like my old sales coaches used to tell me back in the day, um, you know, the other thing I like to understand is
34:21
what’s your sales cycle? What’s the length and the average time of your sales cycle? So is it take me six months from the beginning of the conversation to close? Or is it take me Is it a one call one close kind of thing? Right? So understanding the length duration of your sales cycle is going to be really important to modifying and having setting your expectations your goals. If you don’t have you know, an idea of how long it takes to close somebody, then you’re going to be mad Oh man, and in closing one this week. Well, if your sales cycles a month, well, you’re closing someone you talked to a month ago this week. Yeah. And and so you got to kind of kind of keep those things rolling. You know, you know, these are the fun ones, I think Who’s your best customer. And then and then Damon I like this one who’s your worst customer, who’s the customer, you should probably shake can or fire, or get rid of, or, or say go somewhere else. Those will drain your energy. And in the sales world, your, you know, your enthusiasm, your, your, your passion, your, your excitement is a big part of what you’re portraying to someone you’re talking to. If I’m, I’m in a conversation with IRA or daymond, and I’m kind of like, yeah, Hey, are you interested in? You know, Lou growing your company? And what do you, you know, they’re gonna be like, Guys, guys a wet noodle, you know, so you have to carry your passion through your sales process, you have to give a shit about what you’re talking about. And you have to believe in what you’re selling. If you don’t believe in what you’re selling, then change your careers just go like down the street in some fucking house, house, you know, because honestly, like, yeah, you don’t have a passion and you don’t care about what you’re putting out there, then you’re wasting your time you’re ever in your customers time and everyone else in between. So if you don’t have passion for what you’re selling change careers. The last kind of thing I wanted to hit on before we can kind of jump into to, you know, different aspects of things is, is, you know, obviously, you have to have passion for what you’re doing. You got to believe in what you’re doing. But, you know, it’s a tough one. Creating, you know, sales is a human being element, it’s a human element, and everything we do every day is a sale. And, and when you’re at the grocery store, it’s a sale, when you’re, you know, helping someone you know, or asking for someone to help you move boxes, it’s the sale. You know, everything revolves in this world around sales. Politics is a sale. You know, everything is a sale, you know, when guys knock on your door, and on a bicycle, and a white and a tie in a white shirt, they’re trying to sell you. So understand that this the sales is always around us. We’re all sales people. We’re all sales professionals. Even if we don’t want to admit it, you know, because we don’t like that term. I’m a sales guy. Well, it’s not an embarrassing term, but you’re all salespeople. Everyone in this room, everyone on this chat says selling every day, you’re just selling different, but you are selling. And then, you know, the last game, you know, other things is just you know, why are there lows? Which opportunities were lost? Why were they lost? You know, we can start diving into more analytical things, but in a general sense, those are the high points. Those are the things that if you do those fundamentally, you’re going to set yourself up for success. And we obviously haven’t gone down the road of digital at all but
Andrew Cross 37:55
yeah, that’s the kicker below there’s some good ones I think if if people have questions for Jeff or would like to talk about any of these in specific go ahead and drop in the chat raise your hand we can get you up on stage here and talk about it because one of the things that that I was writing as I’ve taken notes is is really to think about the the ways that you’re getting the word out being in front of your potential clients and and one of the things that we spend a lot of time on discussing and and and actually trying are how do you what are the best methods you know, okay because they used to be that people get email used to be that people could you could send messages and LinkedIn you could all these different methods methods that over time were successful, but now aren’t at all. And we really need to be thinking about what are we doing? Because if you look at this year, which is all the weird crap that’s happened this year, one of the things that we found that is the most successful of all is sending letters letters been around for way too long, not too long but longer than us and it still is very effective because there’s no male Harley coming into anybody right now. And
Ira Bowman 39:21
part of that part of that is based on what Jeffrey already hit on you know identifying your your avatar your
39:27
Yeah, that’s true for us
39:29
yeah. And they’re getting inundated with right right and it with emails now and social media posts you know letter right like you’re saying or touching someone and a human element. Wow. We are humans we like interaction. We’re social creatures. So judging someone on a tan written is going to go a long way compared to the the generic junk ass LinkedIn message you’re getting every day. Yeah,
Ira Bowman 39:59
yeah. Or what you’re getting now is like eddm. So if you’re in the print space, you know, that is every Every Door Direct Mail campaign, which like, yeah, where did you get doesn’t have your name on? It just says resident or, you know, yeah, that goes in the junk. You know what I mean? Just go straight to the garbage. That’s mail, but not effective mail. So yeah. You know, to Jeffrey’s point about identifying your client, and then reverse engineering the process, everything he said, is 100%. Accurate? I mean, I
Damon Pistulka 40:28
love it. Yeah. And Andrew Deutsch sets up that I hadn’t thought about even handwrite a letter and scan it, then email it, that would be interesting to try. Because, you know, we’ve been sending them snail mail. And
Ira Bowman 40:43
the problem with that this is the only problem with that, because they don’t know you a lot of the email filters will stop it. But if they’ve already, if you’ve interacted with them at all, I think that that actually is a great idea. Yes, get through that, that spam filters can be a challenge, especially with an attachment, when you have an attachment. If you do this long enough, you’ll realize that those are even harder.
41:05
Yeah, having
Ira Bowman 41:09
a non authenticated email address with an attachment is more likely to get blocked.
Andrew Cross 41:13
Yeah, and and that, but that’s a good idea. And you’re I think that that’s, that’s interesting, I like to try it with people that I’ve reached out to before we’ve interacted before because it would be interesting to see how that worked. And then Ron came up with something here that we we’ve been doing I know, Iris much better, but short, personalized. Yeah, in short, personalized videos. And that’s what I actually I’m going to try to try this next week with some with some outreaches that, you know, taking a video on my phone, saving it to YouTube to my personal and then and just have an unlisted, so but it’s going to be, hey, Jeff, this is what I’m talking about, blah, blah, blah, lysaght likes to talk to you or get to meet you this way. Just want to say hello, blah, blah, whatever the heck, I’m going to say that it’s going to be then embedded in an email to try just to see, just to see because video is is that the
Ira Bowman 42:12
videos are great crisis here, for those of you who don’t have your sales process completely mapped out or you’re like, Hey, you know, I’ve been doing it this way forever. But it’s no longer working. I’m not getting the results I need. I’m not hitting that goal that we talked about in the beginning, right, setting that goal. So you can do I call a B testing, you could do some personalized videos. You could you could do some of the Deutsch suggestion, right, do that during scanning an email, snail mail, handwritten letter, send that and just test like 100 of each and some nets, the best results? Yeah. And then they discovered that but the answer is a mixture of maybe two of the elements, right?
42:55
But but all the video is doing and is the same thing we did in person, we just can’t do that person anymore. Yeah. So so we’re still just doing the same old thing. We’re just doing it through a personalized video, because I can’t go meet Damon right now with COVID. And I can’t go and reaching Damon if he’s in Philly, or if he’s in, in Kentucky. The personalized video is great. It’s adding a human element. People are human. We have you know, social creatures, that you know, if we just fundamentally remember that, you know, and touch people on that personal level. Do your research of your customer. Do they like motorcycles? Do they like football? Do they like baseball? You know, I’m Damon used to kind of give me you know, he’s to razz me a little bit about Yeah, I like everything my customer likes
43:44
smart.
43:47
You know, and it’s, it’s not it’s not that it because I don’t because what they like isn’t I don’t have an opinion about that. Like, we’re doing business here, like on a we’re not having beers together, you know, and, and if they like the Red Sox, then cool. They probably like the Red Sox for a good reason. And, and that’s neat. I don’t care about baseball enough to not like the Red Sox. So I like the Red Sox. And it works and it isn’t, it’s not bamboozling anyone. It’s just simply like not creating conflict over things that are stupid to create conflict over. Yeah, customer.
Andrew Cross 44:22
Yeah, that’s a good point. And that human interaction is what you really got to do. And, and that’s what the, the the winner was I called eddm or whatever, or the mass emails, you know, that that are sent out. Just don’t do. I mean, they don’t do that. Now you got that’s why I think it’s from if you’re selling a reasonable size ticket item, you got to know who the heck you’re selling to for each individual one and piece of communication, and it’s got to be customized to that level. Otherwise, you’re going to lose people.
Ira Bowman 44:57
But I think I think the reason why the letter works, it’s The reason why the personal video works is because the person on the other end that’s receiving it knows that you did it. Or at least they, you did it right. It isn’t something that you had a print company. Look, I’ve been in business for 20 years. I’ve made a lot of money printing, but the fact is, it’s not as personal. Right? So when you make that pride, we’re talking about a custom video that says, hey, Jeffrey, hey, Damon, hey, Ira. And you get that and it’s to address to you, it’s talking about you and your business. That’s, you know, they spent time looking at me and thinking about me, I just got a direct message request, or somebody said, I looked into your business. And you know, I thought it would be interesting. We do website design and SEO services. And I responded back saying, Oh, so you were researching your competition? Like he didn’t look at me. He just sent that out to everybody. Yeah, but you get it when you get something that’s actually legitimately to you, from the person that makes you feel important. It makes you feel special, you know, it’s not something I’m just gonna throw away. I’m like, least going to acknowledge it, even if it’s Hey, I’m not interested in that right now. Yeah, I was gonna.
Andrew Cross 46:05
Yeah, I bet. I’m reading the chat here. Allison, I just gotta say Allison’s made a couple of comments in here. And that’s cool. But one of the things that Allison brought up, she probably didn’t realize it, because she, you know, really, really good and does, says stuff and you go, oh, man, I was mind bore. But he did, this comes out of her. And she was talking about messaging and brand story and stuff the other day, and that stuck with me so much, why at first one bought the book, then I was then she, she said, talked about making your customer, the hero in your communications and stuff. And when you start to go into it, the simplifying your message, and I was going off too far, I’m going to simplify your message. But if your customer can, in about five seconds, understand, you know, how you’re going to help them why they should care and, and you know, how they can do business with you if you want that. They need to get that in five seconds. And I can’t be done with you know, 17 sentences and things like that these, this communications got to be concise, it’s got to be simple.
Ira Bowman 47:12
And that’s true across the board. I don’t care if you’re talking about your email, your website, video that you send, it’s got to be like, top of the fold has to be clean and quick. Yeah, people don’t read as much as they scan anymore, which is another thing. So you gotta, you’ve got to really use your titles and your subtitles. Well, and then edit. Edit. I like to talk a lot. So it’s hard for me, but edit.
Damon Pistulka 47:38
Yeah. Allison, and put the questions down there. Thank you. Because I, I paraphrase poorly, often. So
47:47
what, what other
Andrew Cross 47:50
other things? I mean, we got some great questions going here in the chat, we got some, you know, Andrew, again, was talking about the key to knowing your audience rely on your experiences to choose how to communicate. And that’s right. I mean, it is about understanding that audience. And you know, when you look at something like and I come back to our company, because we look at this junk all the time, I it’s as simple as I look at our website, and what people used to get on. We’re odd, because 75% of the people that visit our website, do it on desktop. Now we have to be mobile, we have to do all those kind of things. But 75% are on a desktop, little things like that tell you tell you how you might want to communicate with somebody. So
Ira Bowman 48:35
let me question is super important. I’ll tell you the other thing as a sales guy, right? I’ve been in sales a long, long time. Well, I, they used to have this it was a catchphrase. And it was kind of like, Oh my god, I’m sick of hearing this, but it’s solution sales. So the what’s in it for me, you have to know your your audience your target, you have to know what you do. And then you have to be able to show them succinctly. What I do here will address this problem in it will help you this way. So you kind of doing all three at the same time. But but with brevity, because you have that five, six second window to capture attention. So it’s like, they don’t want to hear how smart you are. They don’t want to hear how great your product is. Get off the wheeze because don’t pee on your page. It’s not the way we write. So if for me if you can address that in a smart way that you know is relevant to what they’re actually their struggles are that’s when you have a winning solution for sure.
Andrew Cross 49:34
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was I actually I just got to tell Allison I use that the other day after I heard you said yesterday I was on the phone with some people on a business call and I said we don’t want this website to be a wee wee wee site. And I was happy because the people that are working on the other end knew what I was talking about. So that was nice. But it is it is about it is about that though it is about how you’re how They are going to be able to solve their problem. And you might be the guy that gets in there. If you’re doing that kind of thing. So what else Jeff, man, you just what do you think if I was sitting here today, and I was like, man, I got a, I got a, I got to recharge my sales. I’ve got two months in the end of this year, what should we do?
50:27
Well, so the hardest thing about this whole conversation is all these all these comments and questions are really good, they’re all relevant, and they all fit within the in the sales process in a general sense. Some of those are going to, you know, hit homeruns for certain kinds of selling and some art. Right now we’re in a bit of a digital world and, and messaging digitally and how your possession positioning your brand or positioning yourself digitally, getting those messages that are over in the comments across are very hard. And you know, how you’re writing how you’re how you’re portraying things, not an eye, not an eye, and, you know, not making it an IRA. For me, it’s more of a you. And you know, it’s more about you and well I can do for you. Not about Oh, I’m so great, you should hire me because I’m great. And you’re gonna win because of that. No, it’s it’s more about what you’re doing for somebody else. But, you know, when it comes down to it, we have a huge digital transformation that’s happening, which is why we’re having that conversation tomorrow. And sales is not what it used to be, you know, it’s just changing so fast. And we’ve all had to pivot and learn a lot of different things in order to be as successful as we were. But you know what, this might sound insane. But I would cold call, I will go back to cold calling. And I know I know a lot of people here are gonna be like, well for cold calling. Now people will people. Inherently cold calling was the only way to sell in the day. Then it went away. And it was like no sending email. Now no one looks at their email. Now no one looks at in dm and LinkedIn.
Ira Bowman 52:06
He talked, he talked about it and he hit another
52:10
pick up, pick up a phone and call somebody that you want to work with and tell them hey, I’m calling you and just old school with it. Right? And someone wrote in comments earlier that the oldest knew and the result is true, right? We’ve done a we’ve done a bit of a 180. And that might not work for everyone. But I’ll tell you, you know, I I got a deal with one time I got to deal with scan sales was the second largest construction company in the world. And I literally cold called the guy and was like, Look, dude, I’m cold calling you right now. But I think that you’re gonna like what I have to say. And he goes, the fact that you picked up the phone a cold call me I’m gonna listen. And he listened. And I got a huge construction contract for a client. Because he was like, You cold call me dude. Are you nuts? You know, like, that’s the thing is it sounds absolutely idiotic, because people screen their phones. leave a voicemail. Guy No, no, you know, just I just think that that human interaction and, and touching people in a human way is going to go far longer and create a lot more unless you have economies of scale. Like IRA has enough. You know, followers, like Gary Vee has enough followers, these economies of scale. So it doesn’t isn’t applicable to you. It isn’t applicable to the 5000 followers on LinkedIn.
Ira Bowman 53:36
Where does it work? I when I was in the
53:40
Navy, maybe depending on what No, no, it depends on what you’re selling. If you’re selling a $200 widget, yeah, but if you’re selling a $20,000 month consulting package, it might not work that well. Because you have to have economies of scale and effects of sales. But mostly if you create a human interaction and you target Well,
Ira Bowman 53:57
you hope cold calling is always been one of those things that most people are afraid to do because they don’t like rejection. Right? And when you’re the No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But I have always had that as part of my game. I still have it as part of my game. I love it. I think that you hit on this real early. One of the reasons why the handwritten letters, the videos work better is because most people aren’t doing it. The phone in the 90s was the number one tool, everybody. Everybody was welcome. In the early 2000s. It started to transition over to emails 2010 email was the predominant outreach tool. So now when you pick up the phone today, you’ll get owners of companies who will answer the phone especially I’m going to tell you some I’m gonna tell you a couple tips cold call me from a cold calling professionals. Call it noon at lunchtime. call it 459 right at the end of the day because all the salaried employees all the hourly employees are going home bro. Yeah, the owner will pick up the phone. I’ve walked in I’ve cold called in person at 501 on Fridays, selling print and gotten to talk to the owner who’s like, I can’t believe you’re still, you know, out here, beating the street wearing run your shoes at five on a Friday. And I’m like, I know that that’s a successful time for me. Yeah, yeah. If you look at the common thread between everything that we’ve talked about the videos, the letters, the phone calls, know your avatar, if you put all that together, it’s the personal communications inside your industry and you focus on the solution to what ails them, not what’s so great about you, you do all that you will, you’ll be successful in sales.
Damon Pistulka 55:46
There you go. There we go. So, Jeff, any last thoughts before we have to shut down here, it’s, it’s great input from people at work, what you got for us getting out?
56:00
Um,
56:01
you know, it’s tough, right? There’s so much there’s so much to cover in sales, you know, being successful in sales isn’t, you know, we could not fit, you know, one of it in an hour long meeting, but, but the big takeaway is, is, is keep it human. Keep it empathetic, you know, have have some passion and care for the people you’re trying to help. And, and don’t get discouraged by nose or I can’t or are things right now, because a lot of people are struggling. So, you know, understanding that that I know doesn’t mean I know now, you know, Miami I know now, but doesn’t mean Oh, and a month, two months, three months, five months. So, you know, but be consistent. You know, a lot of times in sales, people will, you know, the there will cold call, like I was saying once twice a week, and then not for three weeks, and then once or twice a week and like this isn’t working. Now be consistent with everything that you’re doing. consistency is key executing ski. But those are kind of the main takeaways. It’s tough. Sales is hard. If it was easy. We would all just have, you know, clients jumping through the window.
Andrew Cross 57:08
But yeah, sure. Well, awesome, everyone. Thanks. Thanks, Jeff, for sharing information about wholistic sales with us. And I’m sure you’re gonna drop your LinkedIn. link in the comments. And we ready to go and we’re going to jump back to the tables here for a little bit. And those of you that may be watching on LinkedIn, I’m going to end the broadcast there on LinkedIn, and we’re going to go back to the table. So thanks, everybody, we got the music coming back out.
