"Pick up the damn phone!"
This book was recommended to me by Brandon Wise, CEO of Wise Agent CRM for the real estate industry, with whom I'm an affiliate. Here's a web page about that.
I had sent an email campaign promoting Wise Agent to my tribe. Brandon, who's in the email campaign business, asked "How was the response?"
I replied, "I never expect a response. Email campaigns are marketing, not sales. Most people's email inboxes are jammed; they're overwhelmed, scatterbrained, and struggling with Attention Deficit Disorder. I've learned to be pleasantly surprised if I get a reply to an email campaign. It's just a touch, and I've learned that I have to follow up on the phone to convert that touch into a sale. The email campaign doesn't make the sale, but it does warm the lead."
I didn't realize it at the time, but I was preaching an important piece of Chris Smith's message. I guess it so resonated with Brandon that he recommended the book.
Chris Smith owns a dynamic, rapidly evolving business called Curaytor, a full-service, all-in-one marketing solution focused on the real estate industry. Although it seems like something on the web site has changed each time I visit it, the constants that run through whatever content is there are, "Help, not hype" and "People, not pixels and passwords."
Amen.
Grateful for the recommendation, I read it immediately and learned these surprising lessons:
I had sent an email campaign promoting Wise Agent to my tribe. Brandon, who's in the email campaign business, asked "How was the response?"
I replied, "I never expect a response. Email campaigns are marketing, not sales. Most people's email inboxes are jammed; they're overwhelmed, scatterbrained, and struggling with Attention Deficit Disorder. I've learned to be pleasantly surprised if I get a reply to an email campaign. It's just a touch, and I've learned that I have to follow up on the phone to convert that touch into a sale. The email campaign doesn't make the sale, but it does warm the lead."
I didn't realize it at the time, but I was preaching an important piece of Chris Smith's message. I guess it so resonated with Brandon that he recommended the book.
Chris Smith owns a dynamic, rapidly evolving business called Curaytor, a full-service, all-in-one marketing solution focused on the real estate industry. Although it seems like something on the web site has changed each time I visit it, the constants that run through whatever content is there are, "Help, not hype" and "People, not pixels and passwords."
Amen.
Grateful for the recommendation, I read it immediately and learned these surprising lessons:
- "Pick up the damn phone." Despite amazing advances in e-commerce over the years, giving rise to the expectation that there must be some way we can push a few buttons, kick back, and watch torrents of cash cascade instantly and automatically into our bank accounts, Smith's message is that the best e-commerce can do is generate leads. We still have to get on the phone to convert them into customers. They won't convert themselves.
- PPC Advertising. I was humbled to discover all I have yet to learn about the details of effective online pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, especially on Facebook. That's one of Curaytor's many specialties. Seriously, when it works, it makes more sense to pay experts $1,500+/mo. to handle that for you than to try to figure it out for yourself.
- "Zuck ain't doing that for you!" This is one of my favorite quotes from the book and I'll probably parrot it for years to come. "Facebook ads simply put the ball on the tee. It's up to the batter (salesperson) to hit the ball" (49). Six years ago, beginning on page twenty of the Benefits Manual, I addressed this in a discussion about initiative, good income, and the importance of salespeople. I felt mightily encouraged and validated to have an expert like Chris affirm that it's still true today, and probably will be in the foreseeable future.
- Marketers, Schedulers, Salespeople. Chris points out that in a well organized . . . well, organization, these three functions are assigned to three separate job descriptions. In small business, that's often not the case; and I often meet small business owners who don't clearly understand the difference between marketing and selling. They seem to believe that when they're marketing they are selling, that the two are the same. But nothing could be further from the truth. Marketing raises awareness and generates leads. To convert those leads into customers, appointments must be scheduled to sell. Until that happens, the leads just sit there, stuck in your pipeline. So even if your organization doesn't segregate those duties to different people, even if you're doing it all yourself, I find the distinction is vital. Say to yourself, "Right now I am marketing. Now I am scheduling. And now, I am SELLING." They're different, and understanding the difference makes the difference between failure and success.
- "Time Destroys All Things." I don't know whether Benjamin Franklin originated the idiom "Haste makes waste" or whether its origin is older; regardless, I've always believed it. So the "Doctrine of Haste" that I encounter both in this book and elsewhere (it's very popular in sales software design, the idea that leads rot quickly so we have to fire an automatic instant text message response to them) is difficult for me to accept. I struggle with it, and in the struggle, I scribbled this table in my journal:
With respect to money, if you're investing, time is your friend because you're on the receiving end of the compound interest equation; vice-versa if you're borrowing.
With respect to honesty, if you're about Truth, time is your friend because it provides the opportunity to reveal it. But if you're about lies, time is your enemy because people will believe them only so long before the Truth comes out. If you have a cooperative, connected relationship with nature like a farmer, time is your friend because you work with natural growth & development rates of both plants and animals. You can't rush a crop to ripen or a cow to calf. It happens when it happens. And so on with cooking, value, workmanship, and the rest. I'm sure you can think of your own examples. With respect to this book's subject . . . what was striking to me was "The 100X Rule" on page eighty-nine which shows how, like delicate fruit or seafood, Internet leads start to rot within five minutes after they're received. That is, if you contact Internet leads immediately when they've identified themselves through your lead capture methods, the probability of reaching them is one hundred times greater than if you wait a half hour. He also pointed out how the median response time for most businesses is not five or thirty minutes; it's three hours, eight minutes; and that almost half the time (47%), companies don't respond at all. The leads, which they usually paid good, hard-earned, cold hard cash to buy, fall through the cracks in a state of total neglect. I believe this delicacy is so because the Internet is so distraction-rich and has made scatterbrains of us all. That is why in his treatment of landing pages starting on page three, he emphasizes how they must have one purpose, a single focus, one button to click - that's it - because you only have people's attention for eight seconds. At fifty-two years of age, having owned my own business for twenty and having had business and sales experience longer than that, I got to thinking about the quality of these avocado/pear/strawberry/sushi leads that start to spoil after five minutes. I thought about the quality of the leads themselves, and also about the breathless, urgent, stressful position suffered by those who choose to pursue them. It reminds me of the stress and urgency routinely experienced by those in the seafood business. Day-old sushi, anyone? Since as an asset guy I'm always focused on Lasting Value, the notion of paying good money for leads that start to spoil in five minutes just didn't sit right with me. I'd prefer to spend my time, money, and effort on something more durable and lasting. I thought to myself, "I would just rather not live and work like that. Life's too short to suffer that kind of stress. I'd rather pursue fewer, higher quality leads that have longer shelf lives. Or in other words, I'd rather tend to the neglected 47% than be in a constant, breathless, stressful mad dash to react to the latest ones within the first five minutes . . . and if, as a consequence, I wind up making less money, that is fine because there's this thing called Optimality. More isn't always better; there is such a thing as a Sweet Spot, or Enough." From an accounting and inventory management perspective, if you think of leads as a kind of inventory (which they most surely are, like money in the bank), working with perishable leads like this can lead to a LIFO (Last In, First Out) management method that neglects all but the latest ones. In a word, Novelty. I got to wondering whether there might be a way of doing business in which time is your friend, that is more amenable to the FIFO (First In, First Out) method. That's what I'd prefer. Whenever possible, I'd really prefer to live in the Friend column. How about you? And I was reminded of Ben Kinney, who is often quoted as saying that he sells houses today to people he met three years ago, and of Jared James, who in a recent Active Rain University podcast asked, "Would you rather win as a fraud, or lose as yourself?" He concluded that he'd rather lose being his authentic self, and I agree. But he's not losing. He's winning, big time, precisely because of his integrity and authenticity. They both are. I'm with Ben and Jared on this one. After all, that is why I became interested in CRM in the first place and why I became a Wise Agent affiliate. I came to both accept and respect how just like in farming, leads have their own ripening pace that oughtn't be rushed. They're ready when they're ready and, like Ben, he who learns to work well with that pace, treating time as a friend, will win - both economically, and existentially. That's why a good CRM is not just preferable, but necessary: it's a kind of bank where leads can be stored and cultivated until they're mature and ready to buy. Although I appreciate a one-call close as much as any salesman, I've also come to feel a healthy respect for natural development rates and, above all, a deep and abiding respect for my prospects' priorities, timing, readiness, and willingness to buy. Using a CRM like Wise Agent properly helps me practice that respect. It's an essential tool. |
- "Grab a pen and paper." Chris points out what we've all heard before, how only 7% of communication is words, 38% is tone of voice, and 55% is body language. (So theoretically, by reading this post, you're only getting 7%. Really? Hmmm . . . .) On the phone, he emphasizes how since you don't have the benefit of body language, you really have to work your tone and do your utmost to assume physical command of your prospect by persuading them to do something physical. So when a salesperson asks you to grab a pen and paper, it isn't about the pen, the paper, or the information they're about to give you. It's about assuming physical command of you.
Did you know that? I didn't. That's good to know the next time I am being prospected.
I have to admit I have mixed feelings about this book. Throughout it, there was a distinct predator/prey vibe that I could personally never bring myself to practice. Somewhere in it he even says, "The lion does not ask the lamb for a meal. He takes it." Something to that effect. As the son of a father in his 80s who has been the victim of numerous predatory sales schemes that target the elderly, exploiting their preference for pen/paper hard copy methods, reading this book has both forewarned and forearmed me to cope more effectively with predatory pitchmen. I feel like General Patton facing Rommel and defeating him in this famous scene: "You magnificent bastard, I read your book!" |
- Dig Deep, or Go to Sleep. In my prior sales training and experience, both from the perspective of working trade shows, and from the perspective of selling life insurance, ten contacts per hour - on average, one every six minutes - sticks in my mind. At the trade show booth, we were supposed to spend no more than six minutes interacting with someone. The goal was to get their contact information, scribble a note or two about their interests, and move on. So at the end of an eight hour day if you were 100% productive, you'd have 80 leads. Ditto on the phone selling life insurance. The goal was to set the appointment, period, and move on. We were Marketing and Scheduling. The selling supposedly came later. Of course the leads went into a CRM of sorts, which at the time was a shoe box full of 3" x 5" cards.
I always failed at this. I could never keep a conversation down to six minutes. My conversations lasted 20-40, but during that time I built rapport with people, and closed them. And even though I closed sales, I felt like a failure because I was totally missing their contact quotas and violating their time limits.
Although on the one hand I have trouble accepting perishable leads or treating my prospects like prey, on the other hand I totally love and agree with Chris' view of the sales call. He says it ought to take 20-40 minutes because it takes that long to "Dig Deep" and really develop some authentic trust and rapport with your prospect, to get to know them and demonstrate that you truly care about them and are interested in them as people, not just as "leads." That is the only way I have ever been able to sell anything. When I read that I thought, "Thank you. Finally, someone has given salespeople permission to interact like human beings." Now, let's do the math here for a second. If one sales call takes forty minutes to an hour (he advocates either a 40 minute one-call close, or a two-call close of twenty minutes each, separated by another twenty minute break when you use findings from the first call to formulate a closing strategy for the second), including breaks and pre-call prep between calls, I'm thinking it'd be reasonable to perform four to six such calls per day, or 20-30 per week if sales were all you did, that is, if you were a full-time salesperson. In annual terms, presuming a 48 week work-year, that's 960 - 1,440 sales calls per year. That's it. That's one salesperson's maximum selling capacity on the phone. And it makes total sense to me. Those are the kinds of constraints I've always worked with in my business experience . . . and I am not a full time salesperson. Like so many small business people, I wear many hats. Selling is just one of the many things I do. Given such a finite capacity, I find that my mandate is not to focus on filling my sales funnel with a massive quantity of leads. I find that my mandate is to focus on quality. If we have to "pick up the damn phone" then the phone is the bottleneck, the constraint. We should only fill our sales funnels with as many leads as we can reasonably handle on the phone. Consequently, I find that the mandate rests squarely on quality. In the beginning of the book Chris writes, "I'm a fan of legendary sales trainers like Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy, but they never had to call 10,000+ Internet leads and close them to feed their kids." Later in the book he advocates 40-60 minutes sales calls, making calling the 10,000+ impossible unless it's done by a phalanx of virtual assistant telemarketers, which could be used in either case - Old School, or New School. Either way, somebody is Picking Up the Damn Phone. And good for them. In all of this, though, I perceive a certain Cognitive Dissonance written between the lines of the book . . . call 10,000+ Internet leads, and spend 40-60 minutes with each one . . . wait, what???? . . . and that's okay with me. Now in my fifties, I've come to make peace with Cognitive Dissonance as an inevitable part of the Human Condition. Meanwhile we all have to strike the balance, draw conclusions, and manage our lives and businesses. For myself, I rest in the assurance that we must indeed "Dig Deep or Go to Sleep"; that this requires 40-60 minutes per prospect; and that we must therefore manage ourselves accordingly, focusing on quality. Reading this book leaves me in no hurry to rush out and buy Facebook advertising. But it does encourage me to Go Deep, befriend time, and work well with my limits to convert my highest quality prospects into paying clients with whom I can look forward to enjoying long and mutually rewarding working relationships. |
- Simplicity. Because of this book I've already radically simplified my email communications. Do you remember when HTML email first came out and we were all encouraged to pretty it up, design clever signatures with business logos and hyperlinks?
As they say in New Jersey, "Fuhgedaboudit." Those things look like ads and get ignored. From this book I learned about "The Nine Word E-Mail" for refreshing stale leads: "Are you still looking to buy ____? Signed, Me."
As soon as I finished the book, one of the first things I did was radically simplify my email signature and most commonly used campaigns to be as brief and informal as possible, and I'm already seeing much higher response rates than I had before; and, in general, it has changed how I communicate. The shorter, the better. People are busy, their attention spans are short, and their human, mental and emotional bandwidth is already beyond maxed. They appreciate friendly, informal brevity. Thanks to this book, I'm getting better at giving it. |
Conclusion
Obviously the undertone in all of this - why I would bother to read a book like The Conversion Code and write a lengthy review about it - is that I myself need to improve my own selling abilities, and help my clients do likewise.
I've only scratched its surface. There are so many more links, tools, and details that I need to re-read it to learn about . . . and, of course, let's face it, like so many business books these days, it's a 162 page brochure for Curaytor. I suppose it's actually designed to overwhelm the reader, leading them to the conclusion that they can't learn or do it all, and that the most sensible thing would be to hire Curaytor to do most of it for them. And fair enough, it probably is. I'm sure his team earns every penny they get.
I couldn't help but notice similarities between this and Jeff Fox's Rainmaking books which I've reviewed here. For the time being a consequence of both is that I'm focused on Simplicity of communication, Sincerity, and a laser focus on Quality. That is, if it takes 14 contacts to close a sale and you only have time to make 130 contacts, it makes more sense to contact 9 prospects 14 times than 10 prospects 13 times. If you contact the 10, you won't close any; you will have been spread just a little too thin, like a golden retriever in a tennis ball factory, and you will have failed to feed your kids. If you contact the 9, you'll close all 9 sales, totally win, and having done 126 contacts (14 x 9) versus 130 (13 x 10). go home early with more quality time to spend with your family.
Gary Keller and Jay Papasan's The One Thing echoes the same thing: go small. Focus, focus, focus.
For help applying the lessons from all of these books, and more, to your situation, please contact me.
At your service,
Kris Freeberg, Economist
Making End$ Meet
[email protected]
(360) 224-4322
I've only scratched its surface. There are so many more links, tools, and details that I need to re-read it to learn about . . . and, of course, let's face it, like so many business books these days, it's a 162 page brochure for Curaytor. I suppose it's actually designed to overwhelm the reader, leading them to the conclusion that they can't learn or do it all, and that the most sensible thing would be to hire Curaytor to do most of it for them. And fair enough, it probably is. I'm sure his team earns every penny they get.
I couldn't help but notice similarities between this and Jeff Fox's Rainmaking books which I've reviewed here. For the time being a consequence of both is that I'm focused on Simplicity of communication, Sincerity, and a laser focus on Quality. That is, if it takes 14 contacts to close a sale and you only have time to make 130 contacts, it makes more sense to contact 9 prospects 14 times than 10 prospects 13 times. If you contact the 10, you won't close any; you will have been spread just a little too thin, like a golden retriever in a tennis ball factory, and you will have failed to feed your kids. If you contact the 9, you'll close all 9 sales, totally win, and having done 126 contacts (14 x 9) versus 130 (13 x 10). go home early with more quality time to spend with your family.
Gary Keller and Jay Papasan's The One Thing echoes the same thing: go small. Focus, focus, focus.
For help applying the lessons from all of these books, and more, to your situation, please contact me.
At your service,
Kris Freeberg, Economist
Making End$ Meet
[email protected]
(360) 224-4322