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Hey everyone, welcome back to the $100 MBA show. And in today's lesson, you will learn how to make more sales without being salesy. Now, a lot of people, when it comes to sales, they get intimidated. They feel like they need to be some sort of pushy, salesy person. And they don't know how to do it.

And nothing can be further from the truth. Actually, by doing that, you're shooting yourself in the foot and it can cause you to not only lose sales, but really ruin your reputation as a brand. So we're not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to show you how you can make more sales feeling great about your process of making sales, about your products, about your service, and without making your customer feel uncomfortable. But most of all, this process is repeatable. It's

easy to do no matter how you sell. Okay. So you might be selling one-on-one in person or on the phone, or maybe on a zoom call, or maybe on a webinar like I was doing to grow my businesses. It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, you need to take a potential customer to becoming a customer. You got to get them over the line. So how do you do this in the proper way that actually helps your customer? And at the same time helps your business make more sales. Let's

is this whole concept where you are asking this question to yourself, how do I sell without being salesy, without feeling shwarmy, without feeling scammy, without being awkward, right? The thing I need you to think about for a moment is your perspective is all wrong if you're thinking about that. Why?

Because you're focusing on yourself. It's not about you. You need to focus on how to help the customer. The whole concept of sales is helping your customer. Okay? It's not how you look or how you feel or how you come off. It doesn't matter. Okay? I know that sounds harsh, but you don't matter in this situation. The customer is who matters. If you want to make sales, you need to focus on the customer. Okay?

So how do you focus on the customer? I'm going to share with you a lot of insights today that I learned from my father. My father was a salesman.

He actually didn't start in sales in his career. He was an engineer for a very long time, but he went through a recession in the US. And during that recession, he wanted to make ends meet and try to put food on the table. So a friend of his said, Hey, there's a sales job open. Are you interested? Want to come and work with us? So he said, Sure, I'll give it a try. So rather than just sitting at home and not being able to find a job in between jobs right now. So let me try at least temporarily. So

So he tried it and he became one of the best salesmen in the US for over a decade, which is pretty crazy because he had no sales experience. But I'm going to share with you his strategies. The funny thing is that my dad was a car salesman. He sold luxury cars for a living. And when you think of salesman, you think of a car salesman with patches on the elbows and all that kind of stuff. My dad didn't wear the patches. He was very stylish. But the point here is that he

He taught me some really interesting things when it comes to sales that I want to teach you, I want to pass on to you because it changed my whole life. It changed my whole business by implementing these strategies. The first thing he taught me is a principle I want to just drill into your brain. I want to tattoo it through to the back of your eyelids, right? This is so important, okay? Once you get this concept, it makes everything so much easier for you and the customer.

Your job as a salesperson, as somebody who's selling to the customer, is not to push them, is not to say the right words, or to be slick, or to use some sort of salesy strategy. This is not your job. This is your job. Your job is to help them make a decision. That's it. When my dad told me this, I was like, wow, that is very profound because

I was like, I thought you had to kind of be pushy and convince them and, you know, kind of be like a lawyer and talk a lot. Right. And my dad is not in need of a speaker. So he didn't talk a lot, but he was a great salesman because he was a great listener. And I'll talk about how he used that skill to sell more. So, um,

Your job is to help your customer make a decision. What does that mean? That means that sometimes the decision the customer makes is to buy your product. Maybe it's the most expensive product. Maybe it's the cheapest product. Maybe it's somewhere in between. Maybe it's not to buy at all. Maybe it's not the right product.

fit for your customer. And that's great because you want them to be disgruntled, to be upset, right? Maybe they're actually a great customer, but not right now, maybe in a year, right? And that's the right decision for them.

But your job is to basically educate your customer. You know the market you're in. You know your products. You know your service. You know it better than anybody else. You especially know it better than the customer. So your job is to educate them, to learn about what they need so that you can be able to give them the information to what? To make a decision, right?

Your job is to help them make a decision. Great principle changed my world. So that was actually the first of the key elements, the key steps of this process I wanted to share with you today. So number one is understand the purpose of sales is to help your customers make a decision. Your primary goal is not to push them, is not to control them, is not to trick them, none of that, okay? Your job is to help them make a decision with the information that you can share with them, okay?

That's number one. Number two, okay, this is how you do it. So how do I actually become a useful educator to my customer? How do I help them make a decision? Well, in order for me to share that element, to share that key strategy, let me share with you a story. When I was 13, my first job was to go to work with my dad and to wash cars at the wash bay at the car dealership my dad was working at. From nine in the morning till 3 p.m.,

The wash bay was open and that's when I was washing cars and getting my hands all wrinkly like prunes and getting to drive cars at 13. It was a private lot. It's a dealership, but it was a lot of fun. But the point here is that at 3 p.m., my job was done. So from 3 to 9 p.m., I would sit in the showroom and watch my dad go to work because he would go home at 9 p.m. and I would just go home with him. Right. So when I was watching him, I noticed that my dad would

sell differently than the other salesman on the floor. Most salesmen would go up to the customer that just walked through the dealership and they would say, "Hey, have you checked out our latest model? Let me tell you all about it. This is all the great features that this model has. Look how beautiful it is." And they would just go on the spiel and try to sell them on the product.

My dad didn't do this. This is what he did instead. The first thing my dad would do is start asking questions. He would ask about three to four or five questions to the customer and let them talk. My dad said, "You want the customer to talk more than you because they're gonna give you information that can help you help them make a decision."

My dad would ask questions like, why are you looking for a new car? Why are you in the market? What's wrong with your current car? It looks nice to me. And then the customer would say things like, it's costing me a lot to fill up the tank. Also, the stereo is just horrible and I can't really fit much in the trunk. It's kind of small trunk, this car. So they would go and complain about their current car. Okay. By the way, by doing that, they're exacerbating the pain of their current situation, making it easier for my dad to give a solution and then sell them the car. Okay.

So he would ask them questions like that. What are their pain points? What are you upset about right now? Why are you looking to buy a car now? Why did you wait this long? Right? These are good questions because you're going to understand how the customer thinks and what their priorities are. Okay? The reason why he would ask them these questions is because

He told me there's no point in me showing them the features and the qualities of the car or the product in this scenario that don't apply to them, that they don't care about. He's like, well, now I know that they care about gas mileage. They care about the stereo and they care about the trunk space, right? The boot space in the back of the car.

So once he knows that, he's like, now when I show them the car that I think would be a good fit for them, I'm going to really spend most of my time showing them the solutions to that problem. I'm going to show them that, hey, by the way, this car does double the gas mileage your car does.

And check out the stereo. It's got 14 speakers and a subwoofer in the back. And Bose does a great job in terms of tuning the treble and the bass and whatever, right? The point here is that he's not wasting time on the double wishbone suspension and the paint job because the customer never talked about that. They don't really care about that. That's not why they're buying a new car in the first place. My dad really wanted to focus on the things that they care about.

And he also want to show them that he's listening and he's a consultant and he actually cares about what they want and what their needs are. And he's showing them something that actually fits their needs. That leads us to the second key element of this process, and that's to ask questions.

Questions help you understand why the customer is interested in buying, what their pain points are and their problems, and how your product can address those problems specifically for them. Now let me give you an example of how I applied what I learned from my dad in my own sales process. Now

When I was building my businesses, either the $100 MBA or Webinar Ninja, I love the concept of webinars. And that's why I created a webinar company, a webinar software company called Webinar Ninja, because I love this idea where I can talk directly to many people at one time to show them my products and services. So when we were growing Webinar Ninja for the last 10 years and grew it to 30,000 users,

I did it through webinars. 90% of the customers I got was through webinars. Okay. And the reason why I use webinars is because I can use this strategy. A lot of people, when they do a webinar, they have a presentation deck. They talk about, I'm amazing. Look at my company. Look at all these awards we have. I'm credible. I'm credible. Look at all these testimonials. Let me tell you about this product is amazing. Look at all these features, look at these amazing things they could do, all the integrations.

Boring, okay? I don't really care about showing them all this stuff right now because I don't even know what they want, right? What they need, what their pain points are. So the first thing I used to do in the webinar is ask people to pop in the chat, what is their biggest struggle right now when it comes to running webinars, right?

If they're on my webinar and they want to get a demo of webinar Ninja, then they probably are struggling right now. Maybe they don't know how to get started. Maybe they get overwhelmed with all the things that are on the screen. Maybe they don't like some of the chat features in their current software. Maybe they don't like the price, whatever. And they would just jot that down in the chat. And I have a list of things, a complete list of the problems are currently having.

And then I would go through my workshop and I'll go through my demo, but as I'm going through the demo, I would show them the solutions to that problem. So if they said, oh, I really get overwhelmed and I don't know how to manage the chat while managing the camera, I will go into the studio and show them how you can easily manage by yourself. And we built Webinar Ninja.

knowing that you're a solopreneur or a small team. We will also show features like, hey, if you're just getting started, you can just click this one button, it will create your first webinar for you automatically, and then you just fill in the gaps. So those people that said, I'm overwhelmed, I don't know how to get started, now they have no blocker in their head that's saying to them, I can't buy because I have this problem. Now that problem is solved, so I guess I can buy now. So this concept of asking questions and resolving the problems that the customers tell you about

Through your product and service, through demoing and showing how your product solves those problems is brilliant. It's helped me tremendously make so many sales. Millions and millions of dollars is due to this strategy alone. Now, the third thing my dad taught me is that you can't make anybody buy. You can't make anybody buy. And this is very interesting as a concept.

And I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, well, if I try to make somebody buy, if I force them to buy and I put a lot of pressure on them that doesn't exist, pressure that just manufactured by me,

then what's gonna happen is they're gonna regret the buy. They're gonna have buyer's remorse, what it's called, right? The best case scenario is that they're gonna feel bad and they're never gonna buy from you again, right? In the worst case scenario, they can complain. They can go over Google reviews. They can start a movement against you. This happens in the business world. They can cause all kinds of headaches for you, refunds, issues with your customer service team. It's a headache. So you do not wanna push anybody to buy something and put manufactured pressure on them.

What you want to do instead is element number three that I want to share with you, which is build trust and do what's best for the customer always.

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You've never had a business partner like Verizon, providing you with personalized advice tailored to your unique business needs. You can also set up a one-on-one meeting with a Verizon business expert for a quick overview of your current business tools and what it needs to level up. Make sure you don't miss out. Get more for your business with Verizon. Call 1-800-483-4428 or go to verizon.com slash smallbusiness to get started. Partner with Verizon business experts today.

You want to build trust and do what's best for the customer always.

And the reason why I just repeated that twice is because a lot of us don't understand the power of relationships when it comes to sales. What you want to do in your sales process is focus on doing it right the first time, meaning you want to sell right the first time. Be the consultant for the customer and give them the education they need, help them make a decision, and then make sure you build that trust with them so they can say, I really have your best interests in mind.

And sometimes that is you telling them, we're actually not a good fit. This is actually not the product you need. You need something else. And by doing that, I've done this several times, countless times, I should say. And when I do that, sometimes the customers come back and they buy anyway, against my actual recommendation. They're like, I actually trust this person because they're actually not pushing me. They're doing the opposite. There's something about them I like, I'm gonna buy. It makes no sense, but it just shows you the power of trying to build trust.

The other thing is that my dad told me that, you know, you can't make anybody buy, but you want to do this right so that once you sell them properly, because once they feel like you actually care about them, that you have their best interests in mind and you're building trust, once they actually come around and do buy, you don't have to sell them ever again. They'll continue to buy over and over from you year after year, product after product, service after service,

Because you did it right the first time. This is why I ran webinar after webinar in my career. I ran over 500 webinars in the last 10 years. I provided valuable content to people. I genuinely want to help people. I genuinely wanted to build trust with my audience, have a loyal customer base. And the reason why I wanted to do that is because I understood that if I just do the right thing over time, people will come around and they will choose me. They won't go to the competition.

When they're ready to buy, they'll come to me. And this is so important, so, so important because then once I do that, they just continue to buy over and over from me and I don't need to make much effort.

And this is great because this means you build this reputation where it's like people are buying because they feel like they're making the decision, not you. They're actually making the decision to trust you and to buy your products and service and use them and then continue to buy them again and again and again. This meant that I had people on my webinar, not once, not twice, not three times. Sometimes I had people on my webinar seven times. It would come to seven webinars over a span of maybe a few months. And then on the seventh webinar, they buy. Right?

I kept on inviting them. They kept on coming. They just really enjoyed being on the web. They enjoyed the content. They enjoyed being part of the community. And then when they were ready to buy, they bought.

And I just invested in this relationship. I didn't just say, okay, this person hasn't bought after two webinars, kick them off my list. Forget them. No, they're showing up. They're taking action. They're partaking and they're welcome to stay as long as it needs. They need to be there. Even if they never buy, it's okay. Why? Because if they love your content and love what you do, they're going to be a champion of your brand. They're going to tell other people about you that will buy, right? Even if they don't buy themselves. Key element number four, and it's a

three-step process. KLM number four is a three-step process that I learned from my dad. So step one is uncover problems or pains. And this starts with asking questions. Ask questions like, why are you in the market to buy this product or service? Why are we having this conversation? What are you unhappy about with your current situation? How are you solving this problem right now? Right? Identifying. That's step one. Identify the customer's problems or pains. Number two is to show solutions by

By showing them your product or service and how it solves it. And you can also use things other than your product or service like case studies or testimonials, examples of how you solved this problem before. And the third step of this three-step process is called risk reversal.

And basically it's lowering the risk for the customer. You wanna make this transaction as risk-free as possible. You wanna take on all the risks. That's what risk reversal means. Examples of risk reversals are like a refund policy or a money back guarantee

or a free trial or something that makes a customer feel like if they make the decision to buy and they find out it's not a good fit or they made the wrong decision or they changed their mind, it's not the end of the world. It's not a disaster, okay? And my dad actually revolutionized this idea of risk reversal in the car world, in the car dealership world, because he convinced the car manufacturer and the car dealership in the company he was working for that, hey,

Can we have a bunch of demo cars, the cars that they take on for test drive, that we can loan out to the customer for a day or two? We'll take their driver's license information. You know, we'll get their contact information. But my dad would do this. Like people would come in on a Friday night. They would look around. They were interested in this car. How about this? After everything we talked about today and all the things you learned about this car, why don't you experience what it feels like to be in the car and to go through your normal life? Okay. Take the car over the weekend. Bring it back to me on Monday.

And the customers would be shocked. Really? Like, yep, you can take the car on the weekend. Don't worry, it's insured. You know, just give me your driver's license. We're gonna take a photocopy of it. And you're well on your way. Enjoy the car for the weekend. See what it feels like. And the funny thing is that on Monday, they'd be convinced I want to buy this car because we as human beings have something called

a loss aversion. We don't want to lose something we already have. And we've already incorporated this product into our lives. We already incorporated the car into my daily routine. I've already gotten compliments from the neighbors. I already got comments from my friends and family. I don't want to lose that feeling anymore, right? I don't want to lose that feeling in my daily life. I want more of that. So it was a great strategy because my dad said, hey, there's only so much I can do. I need them to experience it

And that helped them because there was no risk because they got to try and then they're ready to buy.

We've done this tons of times with $100 MBA and webinar ninja, where you have 30 day money back guarantees, where we did free trials for 14 days, so they can try every single feature and try every single thing inside the software before they actually get charged. And it's just a way for them to feel like, hey, I want the product to speak for itself. So if you can have some sort of element of lowering the risk, that risk reversal element in your product or service in your sales transaction, it's going to make things so much easier for you. Element number five, it's the final element. And

And this is called time boxing the decision with real scarcity. Okay. Part of helping your customer make a decision is time boxing the decision. Okay. If you tell people, Hey, you can buy this product now later, there's no difference in price or value or anything. Just buy it whenever you feel like it. Okay. You're not actually helping them make a decision because they could just delete the decision. Okay. So reason for me to rush. No problem. Most of us, most

constraints so that we can make a decision. Most of us actually need that. Think about

maybe a holiday you booked with friends, they're kind of putting a little pressure on you to kind of book it. Hey, we're going to book it. These are the dates. Are you in? Are you out? And you're like, yeah, I want to be in. I don't want to miss out on this. FOMO kicks in. So you don't want to make this up or have fake scarcity. You want real scarcity. So one of the things my dad did when it came to scarcity in the car sales world is tell them the inventory and be like, hey, this car is very popular.

And we only have three left on the lot and the color you want is available, but I can't guarantee it's not going to get sold over the weekend or I can't guarantee it's going to be around for the next week. And it's true. That's the truth of the matter. Okay. So there's a few types of scarcity that works. It's time inventory and a combination of both. I found these are the ones I've tried that really work.

So for example, I would run a webinar, I would sell an offer for Webinar Ninja. I would say this is the special offer for Webinar Ninja. It could be bonuses, it could be some extra upgrades, it could be some extra features.

And if you get this deal by X amount of time, the next 48 hours, you'll get all these amazing value. Okay. I rarely liked to discount my product. I don't like cheapening my product by giving discounts, but I understand that sales is a thing and people do have offers and discounts and that makes sense. But that's my personal opinion. I don't like to discount. I rather give more value, give bonuses, give extra things, give them an upgrade, whatever.

than to lower my price 'cause I wanna keep my margins fat. That's a good example of time. Hey, for a limited time you're gonna get all this stuff

with your deal. That's one example. The other thing is the actual number of units or number of customers you can serve. So you might be a coach and you say, hey, I can only serve 20 people every single month. OK, if you're doing one on one coaching or if you have group coaching, we only have 100 people in the group. That's it. We cap it 100. So as soon as the 100 spots are full, that's it. We're not taking any more customers. So

So a combination of both of them is actually my favorite where it's like time plus the number of units or the number of products is scarce.

So whatever comes first, either in the next 48 hours or when we sell out, that's when it's over. So this makes people feel like, okay, I need to make a decision quickly because, hey, that's the limits, right? Either 48 hours or it could be in the next hour because they could sell out in an hour. So it just gives them a little bit of pressure, positive pressure here to

to focus up and make a decision. And maybe the decision's like, okay, I'm not gonna buy now. I'll buy later some other time. I'm just gonna have to give up the fact that I'm gonna miss this special offer.

And that's okay, but you gotta give them some motive to get off the fence and not to just procrastinate the decision. There you have it, guys. Let's recap real quick. Number one, the first key element of this whole system is understand the purpose of sales. Understand you're there to help the customer, to be their consultant, okay? And how do you help them? Number two is you identify their problems, their pains, right? You ask them questions, specific questions about what they're not happy about right now. Number three,

can you guess number three build trust you want to build trust with your customers and make sure that you do what's best for the customer do what's best for the customer no matter what number four right

The three step process, uncover the pains, address the pains and the problems with your product or service, right? Show how your product or service addresses these pains or problems. And then number three, the third step of this step four is the risk reversal. How do I lower the risk as much as possible to make it a no brainer? And number five, time box the decision and give them real scarcity so that they can get off the fence and make a decision, help them make a decision. My last piece of advice with all this in mind is to remember that

If they don't buy, it's okay, right? But you have to try to help your customers. The problem is that people think, okay, if they don't buy, don't buy. But you didn't try. You didn't actually make a sales attempt, okay? You didn't actually help your customers and take those phone calls and take those video calls and do those webinars. You got to try, okay? But it's okay after you try if they don't buy, okay?

Your job here is to build trust so that when they are ready to buy, they don't go shopping around, they come back to you. People will appreciate your professionalism. They'll show their appreciation by buying, sometimes just purely by the fact that you were professional with them. The opposite of this is desperation. And I got to warn you, desperation can be smelt a mile away. And it's the worst trait in any salesperson.

No one likes the stench of desperation. So don't push too hard and look desperate because that's going to really ruin your chances and ruin your brand. Thanks for tuning into the $100 MBA show. Hope you found this episode valuable and you're ready now to make more sales right now. You can just implement what I just taught you right away. And this podcast is all about implementation. The reason why I created this podcast, created the $100 MBA is

is so that I can give you bite-sized lessons, something that you can learn and take action with immediately and then come back for more for the next lesson. So I'll see you on the next episode. I'll check you then. Take care. At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.