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show notes

I hope you enjoyed my funny intro, because it would be nice if you could call on Ghostbusters when prospects decide not to follow up with you. In the last few episodes, we've focused on strategies to ensure prospects attend scheduled meetings.

I'm exploring this topic more with my guest, Steven Schneider, CEO & Co-founder of TrioSEO. He shares what he and his team are doing to keep clients from ghosting appointments.

Meet Steven Schneide

• Steven Schneider collaborated with two fellow sales experts to help scale multiple businesses into 6- to 8-figure enterprises by optimizing their SEO keywords on their websites.
• Even though he runs a multimillion-dollar SEO agency, he still struggles with clients who frequently fail to show up for appointments. He's sharing tactics that you can use in your sales approach.

How His Company Handles Ghosting Prospects

• No matter how much you prepare for the follow-up or how many reminders you send, sometimes prospects simply don't show up for the meeting.
• I asked Steven how his team is handling this common sales problem. He says that people often ghost sellers because they're actually too busy to respond, or they're shopping around to find the right product.
• Steven shares that he keeps this in mind and realizes that he is low on their priority list.
• So, he tackles their pain points and dives deep into them to show prospects why they need his assistance or product.
• He also shares how he views each client as a unique case study if they're not following up. He goes to their website, sees why their traffic has dipped, and sends a screenshot of it.
• Then, he shares his follow-up proposal with the prospect again. This is how he digs into the pain point and shows why working with him is valuable. Often, ghosting prospects will follow up with him after he sends this email.

During the Follow-Up Meeting

• After he successfully gets a ghosting prospect to attend the meeting, he begins by asking questions to help them uncover what they already know.
• Then, he shows them the website mistakes that are causing them to lose potential leads and money.
• It's a strategy that works so well for him that he's able to close deals right then and there.

Handling First-Time Leads with No Prior Contact

• Steven has a unique method to help keep first-time leads, who are in the very beginning stages of the sales funnel, from ghosting.
• He shares how his website provides a contact form with questions to filter out whether prospects are a good fit for his company's services. This lets him know who is serious and who isn't.
• Once they’re able to schedule a meeting, he sends an email sharing a little warning of why they must not forget to attend it.

How Individual Sellers Can Help

• The first two examples focus on collaboration between the marketing and sales departments to tackle ghosting clients. But what can an individual seller do to help?
• Steven suggests it's a good idea to share a case study to illustrate what success will look like if prospects attend the meeting. He recommends including this in follow-up emails to confirm appointments and demonstrate the value of the service.

“Treat every client as a unique case study to learn something new.” - Steven Schneider.

Resources

Connect with Steven on LinkedIn.

Learn more about TrioSEO here.

Sponsorship Offers

1. This episode is brought to you in part by...

You have a discovery call with a prospect, and they seem interested in your product—until it's time to follow up. After three attempts, you finally get the message: you waited too long to close the deal.

What can you do differently to prevent this from happening again? Listen to my chat with Benjamin Dennehy, who explains why sellers often get stuck in a "matrix" and how it prevents them from closing deals at the right time.

Meet Benjamin Dennehy

• Meet Benjamin Dennehy, known as the UK’s most hated salesperson, all thanks to his amazing marketing campaign.
• He shares how sellers often make the mistake of closing when prospective buyers are expecting them to.
• Don’t forget that you’re the one with all the power when it comes to choosing the right time to close a deal.

The Sales Matrix: Closing At The Wrong Place

• When first starting in the industry, Benjamin discovered that most sellers live in a system they don’t realize they’re part of. This is another reason why sellers tend to close deals at the wrong time.
• There are also two systems when sellers are out in the field: the buyer's system and the seller’s system. The problem arises when these two systems intertwine, making the buyer appear as the winner.
• Due to conditioning, buyers are aware that if they say no to a seller, the seller won't stop. So, they think of other ways to try to keep sellers from continuing without actually saying no.
• Benjamin delves into the list of reasons why prospective buyers give objections or deceive sellers to prevent a deal from moving forward. I'm sure you’ve heard plenty of these!
• He also explains how the matrix is designed to prevent sellers from exerting control in closing deals, and how their buying habits lead them to sympathize with prospective buyers when they express their objections.

How to Get Out of the Sales Matrix

• To get out of the sales matrix, Benjamin shares that sellers must start closing at the beginning of the first meeting. When you try to close at the end, you give the buyer complete control over what happens next.
• At the start of the meeting, Benjamin does three things to get a prospect to say no:
• Get permission from them to say no. If they believe the product is of no use, then there's no point in continuing the conversation. This will also let you know if the person you're speaking to is the decision-maker.
• When speaking with the CEO, he asks a series of questions to determine if he can actually assist their company with their problem. If there's no "no" in these answers, then he moves on to the third step.
• This is when he'll discuss how they can move forward together to close a deal.
• The method works because if prospects aren't logically saying no, then they have to agree to move forward.

“We've been told a lie that the person with all the money has the power. But in reality, money only has power when someone wants it.” - Benjamin Dennehy.

Resources

Follow Benjamin on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram. Don't forget to DM the code TSE for a link to his two free courses. You can also learn more about him on his website.

Sponsorship Offers

1. This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.

With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and...

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Every time the marketing team sends you a new lead, they end up not showing up. Why do they keep sending prospects who won't even come to a meeting? When will they ever do their job right?

Maybe we just need to help them out a bit. Join me in this episode with Alisha Conlin-Hurd, marketing and sales expert, where she shows us how to work with the marketing team to get the right leads to book appointments.

Meet Alisha Conlin-Hurd

• Alisha Conlin-Hurd is the Founder of Persuasion Experience, a 7-figure marketing agency helping 7- and 8-figure businesses turn paid ads into predictable lead machines.
• She’s launched over 600+ funnels across 120 niches, generating tens of millions in client revenue.
• Her proprietary frameworks—DNA Blueprint Method™ and Endless Leads Framework™—have helped countless businesses double their revenue in under 90 days. Alisha now runs her business remotely while traveling the world full-time.

Why Do No Shows Happen?

• I've listed several reasons why prospects often ghost us:
• Not showing enough value
• Creating bad content
• Forgetting to remind them
• And you know what? Alisha agrees with me. She shares that if prospects don't see the value in showing up, they simply won't. If we show them "what's in it for them" from the beginning, they'll be ready for the call. People show up for what they care about.

Prepping The Call Before Prospects Come

• To get prospects excited about the sales call, Alisha says it starts with the marketing department doing these three steps:
• Building A Strong Landing Page: This is where you get lead magnets, and it must show authority, strong messaging, and uniqueness. She provides an example of how to establish authority through social proof.
• Touch Points During Becoming A Lead: This is when a lead clicks on the lead magnet to book an appointment. Alisha says there should be a series of questions that qualify and disqualify prospects. If they qualify, that's when they should be able to see the calendar; however, there's a stipulation.
• Making Sure They Show Up: Following up should happen between one and three days after a prospect books an appointment. Alisha says that marketing and sales should work together to ensure they attend the meeting.

“The best time to get somebody to do an action is when they just did one.” - Alisha Conlin-Hurd.

Resources

Follow Alisha on these social media platforms: YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Sponsorship Offers

1. This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.

With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales.

1. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.

Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your...

Thank you, Martin, for going back in time with The Sales Evangelist podcast. Thanks to him, we're going back to episode 1177 where I deep-dived into why leads are creating more work for us.

In this episode, I share why many small organizations struggle with their inbound sales and how to fix it. The challenge is always deciding who should follow up on them and how to do it effectively.

The Sales Team

• Assume that a sales team is composed of three people: the marketing person who does almost everything, the junior assistant who helps with content creation, and the outsourced person who does the marketing strategies. Among the three, who should follow-up the lead?
• Not all leads are created equal. This means that before deciding who will follow up the lead, the lead should be evaluated first.
• You don’t want your salesperson pitching to a lead that in the end would go to another competitor.

Do a Pre-Qualification

• Do a pre-qualification in your organization to know if the people you are going to have the conversation with are ready to consider the deal. Set a benchmark and rules for what you consider a marketing quantifiable lead. Consider the following questions:
• What is considered a sales qualified lead?
• What is the KPI of your organization?
• How many new inbound leads do you want to get per quarter/per month?
• How much money do you want to generate from those leads?
• The answers to those questions will lead you to your ideal customer. It would also help you identify the triggers that qualify them to be a marketing quantifiable lead and a sales qualified lead.
• The work is far more efficient because when a lead comes in, your salespeople can vet them and follow the pre-qualification factors you’ve set to see if the lead can generate new business for the organization. This is also helpful in maintaining your current customers.

Create a System

• Create a system to efficiently manage the workload. The marketing team can do the pre-qualification to increase the odds of the lead being converted into something real. Whenever a lead comes in, let marketing take a look at it and check the website and the title of the person.
• Then let the intern or junior marketing rep take over the other tasks like looking into LinkedIn, HubSpot, Marketo, or other platforms you have to find the data that you can transfer into your CRM.
• Marketing can help fix the problem of having to go back to the beginning of the funnel and pre-qualify the leads again because they’re not yet ready at the moment.

Website Leads Matter

• The sales team sometimes takes for granted the leads that they didn’t hunt for. A good example is leads coming in from the websites.
• It is disheartening when a sales rep doesn’t take that into consideration when a lead comes in via the website.
• Whenever an inbound lead comes in, it is best to use your flow process to follow-up particular prospects. It should be written and put in your company’s playbook so that everyone can read it and use it with every inbound lead that comes in.

Follow-up Right Away

• A stat from insidesales.com said that a lead that’s contacted within five minutes is 100 times more likely to convert than leads that are followed-up 90 minutes later.
• When a lead comes in, follow up right away. You’re more likely to convert than if you wait.
• The sales team can take a quick visit to the person’s website, check their LinkedIn profile, and the pages they’ve visited on your site.

Focus On The People That...

Are you relying on crystal balls, bones and feathers, and teabags to know whether you will hit this month’s goals or not?

Well, been there and done that and I’m telling you, “voodoo selling” just doesn’t work because you can’t quantify it.

In today’s episode, I am talking with Robert Harper and together we will shed light on the repercussions of voodoo selling and what you can do to ultimately be HIGHLY effective in sales. I have talked about this over and over, and again, PROCESS is key. Rather, GREAT PROCESS is key.

More About My Special Guest

• Robert is a serial entrepreneur who currently owns five companies, four of them are in the midwest that do B2B integration, like access controls and CCTV, making buildings safe and comfortable.
• His other business endeavor is a virtual company that provides virtual solutions to business owners.

What Is “Voodoo Selling?”

• Voodoo selling is based on guessing and hope rather than on planning, implementing strategies, or using metrics.
• Salespeople forget that they’re creative thinkers which makes it harder to do proper planning when prospecting.
• It makes us less interested in the process of selling and thinking of sales as a science since we tend to think of it as more of an art.
• Robert shares how voodoo selling is a waste of time because you’re trying to sell to people who CAN’T say no to you.

How to Better Gain Scientific Concepts in Your Sales Presentations

• Sell to somebody who can say no. If they say no, do it as quickly as possible so you stop wasting time. Break the theory and move on to the next.
• Determine your budget on how much you’re going to sell. Instead of targeting “X” amount of dollars a quarter, target how many phone calls or meetings it would take you to make that dollar amount.
• Start today. Start keeping track honestly of:
• How many phone calls you make?
• How many of those phone calls will get you a meeting?
• How many of those meetings will get you a proposal?
• How many of those proposals will get you a sale?
• Tracking your information allows you to introduce a change into your process and see how it affects those numbers.
• Have the process for the actual sale itself.
• Analytics and a great process are keys.
• Know your customer’s pain points
• Bring out the numbers and give precise information
• Look at the metrics
• Provide real data to the customer

A Special Tips for Sales Managers

• Don’t talk about the numbers. Don’t judge people based on how many phone calls they’re making. Otherwise, your people will lie on those forms. The numbers are for them and not for you to judge them.
• Don’t ever be afraid to ask every prospect if they have the ability and if they are willing to say no if this isn’t a good fit for their company. But, if it is a good fit, are they able to say yes?
• For every sales meeting, have an agenda and send it to your prospect at least 24 hours before the meeting. In the agenda, go over what you want to cover and leave room for them to edit it for what they want to cover. During the meeting, follow the agenda. Ex: budget, decision process, the decision maker.

“There’s no way to improve if you’re using your crystal ball.” – Robert Harper.

Resources

Connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message for more help with cold outreach, or send me an email: donald@thesalesevangelist.com

If you need more help elevating your sales game, join my Sales Mastermind...