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The 5 Proven Steps To Make Any Sale - With Wes Schaeffer

Sep 24, 2021

Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Wes Schaeffer.

Wes Schaeffer is The Sales Whisperer®, a pig-headed entrepreneur who rehabilitates salespeople and trains their managers. He's a reassuringly-expensive copywriter, sought-after speaker, and marketing automation expert. He is the author of 2.5 books on sales, marketing, and CRMs, host of The Sales Podcast, host of The CRM Sushi Podcast, and he will help you grow by mastering the overlooked truth in life that to make any sale, you must make every sale.

Why you've got to check out Wes's episode:

- Learn how Wes works with sales people, sales managers and small business owners who are looking for better sales training.

- Understand the biggest challenge that these people have which is around being able to bring authenticity and real connections into sales. Sales people need to have true and real life connections with real people.

- Discover the advice Wes gives all of his clients which is to focus on relationships in sales and how to see sales and prospecting as a circle. From the first interaction through to the sale, the relationship and the referral. You need to focus on the relationship more than the sale.

- How automation of funnels leads to only playing a volume and numbers game and how your business can be much more efficient built on relationships.

- Get access to The Sales Agenda from Wes which will help you make the most of your current opportunities rather than focusing on building automation.

Resources / Links

https://info.thesaleswhisperer.com/the-sales-agenda

Transcript

Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to Succeed Through Speaking the place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.

Hello, I'm Tom Bailey. And in today's episode, I'll be getting to know Wes Schaeffer, who is a sales whisperer, is a copywriter, sought after speaker and marketing automation expert, as well as the author of 2.5 books on the topics of sales, marketing, and CRMs. So, Wes hello and a very warm welcome to today's episode.

Wes Schaeffer: Thanks for having me.

Tom Bailey: Thank you so much. And just out of interest, whereabouts are you in the world right now?

Wes Schaeffer: Southern California, a little town called Murietta.

Tom Bailey: Fantastic. Thanks so much. And I just want to share a little bit more about you before we do get started. So, Wes is also the host of the sales podcast and the CRM sushi podcast, and he helps his clients to grow by mastering the overlooked truth in life, that to make any sale, you must make every sale. The title for today's episode is the Five Proven Steps To Make Every Sale. And Wes is going to show us how to do those in just seven minutes. No pressure. Wes, the question number one is who are your ideal clients?

Wes Schaeffer: So, for me, it's, you know, motivated salespeople. So, those carrying a quota it's they're sales managers that are looking for not even better training, but training a lot of sales managers have never had sales management training. Right. They were just promoted and thrown into the position and, and small business owners. So those that understand, you know, the success of their business is dependent upon them getting the word out and making sales.

Tom Bailey: Yeah. Okay, perfect. And when you think of your ideal clients, then before they work with you, what's typically the biggest challenge that they face?

Wes Schaeffer: So, it varies a little bit, you know, the individual salespeople they don't know how they are different from their competitors. They don't know how to prove that they're unique. You always say you prove you're different by being different, but my inbox is flooded your LinkedIn and cold calls and whatever. The same pitches they're copying what everyone else is doing. They think that automation is the key to everything, so they must automate everything. And, and it shifts, you know, when you only have a hammer, you know, everything looks like a nail, right. And they're just bludgeoning the masses and just trying to make it up in volume. Yeah. You know, that's just killing the salespeople and the business owners. They just, they don't know how to market. They don't understand the importance of marketing.

Tom Bailey: Yeah. Yeah. I think you've absolutely covered the challenge and the impact that this can have on them. So, the next question from me today is what is one piece of valuable advice that you might give to somebody to really help them solve this?

Wes Schaeffer: So, that's where the whole, you know, five proven steps to make every sale comes from it. Typically, everyone is familiar with funnels or with pipelines, and you've got to fill the funnel. You've got to fill your pipeline because there's going to be leakage and, you know, throw enough stuff against the wall of something that's going to come out. The problem with those is that they're fine to a degree. They're fine as part of your planning, but they are one direction. Okay. And they don't take into consideration referrals and testimonials and how, how the cyclical nature of sales and relationships really are.

So, in the five proven steps I talk about instead of being a pipeline going left or right. A funnel going top down it's a circle, right? Put it like a clock ABCDE, go around clockwise. And so, it's attract bond, convert, deliver endear. And so, when you realize that, how you treat someone in the beginning affects how you connect with them, affects how the sale is made, how you then deliver and delight and endear yourself ends up affecting how those people can attract more of their friends and family to you. So, when you don't see this as a, in its entirety, the entire sales and market. Lifecycle, then you act very narrowly, very closed minded. You're focusing too much on the sale instead of the relationship. And that's why you're always struggling and in fighting for your next dollar.

Tom Bailey: Yeah, it makes, it makes complete sense. And like I said, when, when we automate, when we take out that personalization and authenticity, it is just like you said, that volume game that you're playing. So, I'm interested in what is one valuable resource or what is something that you could share with people to help them get started in solving this problem?

Wes Schaeffer: So, you know, one that simple is, you know, the sales agenda. So, the salesagenda.com. It helps, it's hard for people to think holistically when they're fighting for every scrap. Yep. So the salesagenda helps you where you are right now. Okay. It's a piece of the whole, but it's hard to do the whole in the beginning, by following the sales agenda and taking control of your current opportunities, you'll be calmer. You'll be more confident. The sale will happen more readily. Bigger sales will happen more readily, faster. Okay. Which will start to give you some breathing room because if you're panicking, you can't dive into the bigger picture. Right? So that's why I start with the sales agenda and it's free. It's the same thing I've been using for 15 years to close business around the world. I've done deals with Google, with Dell, with major companies and my local chiropractor. Okay. So, it works. So, get that tool, go through the video, go through the PDF, refine it, make it your own. Start applying. And as you have more success, leverage that right into applying it to the more comprehensive ABCD model.

Tom Bailey: Yeah. Completely makes sense. So that is the salesagenda.com. One of the ways is I'll drop that into the show notes. So, people click that and they can dive right in and get started. So, what you'd mentioned, you've worked with everyone from the local chiropractor up to Dell and Google and across that journey, what would you say is one of the greatest either learnings or mistakes, or maybe even failures that you've made either in life or business? And what did you learn from it?

Wes Schaeffer: Overall? The mistake I made repeatedly, because I'm just a knucklehead is thinking someone else had what it took, that they were better than me. Somehow. They had some type of insight or knowledge that I didn't have and putting too much of my money and trust in them rather than myself. Yeah. Okay. If you've got an extra five or 10 or $20,000 laying around, invest it in yourself, you know find a good mentor, find a good program. You know, if conferences start coming back, you know, attend those, you think you need, but, make sure that you go to truly learn, not just go to socialize and get drunk, you know, so invest in yourself and the world is changing quickly.

The internet, make sure that things change quickly, but then everything else that's now happening in the world is changing even faster. So, invest in yourself, you know that you've seen that. You'll add it. You know, that the devil whispered you can handle the storm. And I went back. I am the storm. Okay. Nice meme. But are, do you truly believe that? Right. So, invest in yourself. So, you truly are the storm, so you can handle whatever comes your way. Okay. And by throwing money at things that you don't understand, if you can't explain it to a fifth grader, you shouldn't be investing in it. Yeah. Okay. So invest in yourself.

Tom Bailey: Yeah. Completely be one of the best investments you'll ever make is that self investment. And the last question from me today is what is the one question that I should have asked that will also bring some great value to our audience today?

Wes Schaeffer: You know, what is the number one job of a sales person? Yeah. Right. We'll keep this, you know, rubber meets the road in. And it's not to sell. It's not to make proposals it’s not to negotiate it's to prospect. Okay. If you're not putting yourself out there, you're going to be clinging on to every deal, even though you know, you shouldn't, okay. You're caving, you're giving in, you're giving concessions, you're losing sleep because you're hanging on in these deals because you haven't done what you know, you need to do. And that's to prospect your company is not going to give you enough deals. They're not going to give you enough education. So again, going back to investing in yourself, so, you can put yourself in front of the right people. I always hear salespeople. Oh, I'm great. When I get in front of a qualified prospect, like, well, whose job is it to get in front of that qualified prospect? You know, you're not working at McDonald's. Yeah. McDonald's is, and would you like to supersize that? Would you like to add an apple pie for an extra dollar? Okay. Those are order takers. You, if you're a professional salesperson or you want to be paid a professional salesperson. I understand your job is to get in front of people and disqualify them quickly. So, you can find those that you can truly help.

Tom Bailey: That's great advice, whereas I'm sure that will land really well for people. So, thanks again so much for your time today, coming along and sharing such great value in such a short time without audience.

Wes Schaeffer: Hey, thanks for having me.