As these uncertain times continue to play out, it might be getting harder and harder to pick what priorities you should focus on, especially in sales. But now is not the time to relax! On our first LIVE episode over Zoom, we talked about what each of us is doing while COVID-19 continues to lock everything down. And for the first time ever, we were able to interact with our audience, take real-time questions, and we even got to hear from one of our fans! (Thank you, Jill!) Check out this episode, and then go join us this Friday by signing up here: http://links.salesthrowdown.com/LLB And if you've been thinking about using this time for personal growth, a DISC assessment is the perfect place to start. Email us at DISC@salesthrowdown.com for more information. ✅ Sign up for our emails: https://www.salesthrowdown.com/ ✅ Connect with us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Salesthrowdown ✅ Check us out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/salesthrowdown/ ✅ And keep up with us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SalesThrowdown
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Let's get ready to Throwdown.
What's going on everybody? This is our first Live Lunch Break, right.
Guys, I'm gonna have to take a call I apologize. Horrible, horrible. I'll be right back.
The I just can't
Is that a potty break or an actual phone call? we do not.
That's funny.
It's a real phone call.
What's gonna be awesome is whenever we can critique Al's entire phone call from here because he's still in the same room and we're gonna be able to hear it.
Absolutely. So all right, so what are we talking about today, John? We're talking about our focus,
We're talking about our focus, right? It's different. And, you know, in our conversations, we're all approaching this very, very differently, which makes sense because our personalities are different. We're also at different levels right? Clint, you're in a publicly traded company. So you guys are gonna approach this different than Al, who's gonna approach it different for me. And then we add DISC on top of all of that, and it gets pretty crazy. So figured we'd kind of start there, right as being on the higher end of this thing and being kind of at the top of the food chain on a publicly traded company, what're you guys working on as far as all of this to make sure you're set up for success.
Yeah, I think it's, you know, getting back to the, you know, the basics right of, I think that, you know, if you get out there and you grow really fast, you tend to get focused on, you know, this big growth thing, right. But now, the growth opportunity is kind of gone. And so you got to get back to the basics of who your true good partners are. And you have to, you have to realize what it is to be a good partner yourself and get back to those basics, kind of the fundamentals of being a good salesperson at this point. But I mean, you can't go chasing a bunch of stuff because let me tell you right now in my business, Everybody is out there chasing there's two 300 opportunities that come across my desk a day, but they're not real. Right so narrowing those things down to what is real and what's not. You know, people are trying to keep busy basically. So, so that's been a challenge right now. Yeah.
Then the Clint, can you kind of expound upon what you mean not real in your world? I mean, what what are the telltale signs are well what's that look like?
You know, so there's there's a lot of investment in money investment in my business and the construction so you know, when you're talking about building a new condo is a guy you know, that's willing to put up millions of dollars really gonna invest his money into building, you know, a new shopping mall right now or a new, you know, a new condo on the on the beach in Galveston? Are they really going to do those things right now? Or are they going to wait to the end of how this shakes out with the COVID right. We're gonna wait to all that ends. Up to see how the economy bounces back before they invest all that money. Now, what they're doing is getting ready for that. They're they're getting out there and they're price checking everything. The problem with that is do you get in now, do you waste a bunch of time? Or do you chase real jobs? If you have the, you know, the bandwidth to do that? Maybe, but most of us don't, right? We probably let a lot of people go we're, we're down to our, you know, bare minimum that we can survive with. And so, so you got to really chase actual projects.
So do you think that part of this may be they're kind of shopping to see what if price points have come in any or whether they can get a discount by booking some business now to you know, kind like airlines, you know, you can jump on board, buy a ticket, and you've got a year to use it or you can change it? Yeah.
Go ahead. You know, to be honest, to be honest with you, it's kind of you know, A lot of these people are just getting ready. So they're getting budgets ready. So they might have three or four opportunities that they're ready to put their money into. So they're sitting, you know, sitting there gauging which one they're going to do and in the beginning of 2021, so here we are, you know, all all pouncing on these opportunities because they look real, but when pouncing on them, or putting all this effort into them all for free consulting, it's all all boils down to. Okay, but there but there are real ones out there.
And you just got to get a got to, you know, get through like Hayden said, chase some waterfalls, right occasionally, though, you know, there's there's something to be you know, had at the end of that, but maybe not, not the sheer volume that you were looking for all the business potential that you would have on a normal day if we didn't have all this hanging over us? Gotcha.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Well, you know, our businesses actually coming to us right now. I kind of sit in a unique niche right now being in healthcare because it's, you know, people still need their meds. People still need to be seen. You know, where we're seeing people walk in every day because we are open, we're doing work, you know, we're expanding our telemedicine. So, you know, we've seen this but then, you know, we did get a hickey just the other day where insurance companies are saying, hey, our mail rooms are shut down our correspondence is going a different route. So we're concerned that our money's going to lag for for a bunch of excuses on the payer side. So you know that that's our dilemma. I think we're working now wondering if our cash flow is gonna hold up so that we can continue to and we've seen it dip. I mean, we have because people are working remotely and systems had to be set up so that they could mobilize, you know, the process of getting us our money. So yeah, it's been it's been a new different world, not completely, but in a certain sense. And
right now, there's so much unknown, and it changes every day. You know, when you brought up the when you brought up the airlines, you know, yeah, you You can get a great price for a ticket, but you don't know if in a year you're going to be able to use it, you know, you're going to feel safe using it. And I've know I've a lot of business people I've talked to they're like, not doing anything, not making any major decisions, because we don't know what tomorrow is gonna bring it changes daily. And to Clint's point earlier talking about just, it made me It made me think what he was talking about that it's so important. This really shows us how important it is to build those relationships. Because right now is when you can go to those relationships. If you're trying to create new business if it's there's too much unknown at this point. And you can't get out there as as easy as you used to.
So I'm going back to Clint, for a second. I'm curious, do you think that you said that these deals aren't really real? Do you think that when you're selling through channels and partners and doing stuff like that, that you have to go a little bit deeper to kind of vet when people are bringing new stuff so that when you Don't Don't free consult to them so that way they free consult to their prospects. And you don't really have any clarity.
Yeah, I mean, to be honest with you guys, 85% of what I'm seeing right now on a day to day basis for the last at least month is, is estimating departments and other companies and big companies too. And people that we've done great business with in the past, they're just out there keeping busy, right? Because they want to retain their job. So if they're putting out content, and then you know, maybe from a top down from the C-level, it's like, oh, man, I can get rid of them because they're busy. So they're just constantly estimating jobs, so they're not vetting them correctly before they send them to me to give them a price. And so, so that's really tough right is so now I'm seeing a company that might have sent me one bid every month, what you know, and they did their due diligence, and then I do mine. It's a real project after that. Now I'm seeing five or six a day and it's like You know, how do I don't even have time to go through the emails? to even shake it out, you know, just shake the tree and see what falls. And so I'm really relying on on people that we've done business with in the past and that I can pick up the phone, have a real conversation with talking about the project, if I can't do that, I'm not even looking at him. And, and that's hard, because, you know, you want to bid everything out there because you're slow, and you get desperate, right? So you're so you're immediately drawn to the, you know, to the, to the thought of, you know, I have to bid everything that way I get more and if I get more than that, I sell more and it's just it's a bad trap to fall in right now. At least in my business, you know,
so for you specifically being a D, do you? Do you feel any anxiety around passing up on a deal of saying like, okay, we're not going to have a conversation. I'm not even going to bid because it's not worth my time. Do you have any moment of if I turn this thing down? I'm not going to get another shot with this company or do you just not care?
Now you know, to be honest with you personality wise, this is like, this is where I fit in the best. Because of any time to just say no F it, drop that one, drop this one, drop that one. Look at this one. And you need that quick, decisive action. So for me, personality wise, it fits me pretty well.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Jill said that she gets no free consulting. But right now she thinks that showing value is super important. And I agree. Right. I mean, that's, I think, I think important at any point, but I think we're gonna see a lot of people who were pushing the value play a lot to try to stay, you know, in conversations and keep leads coming in and things like that. And the thing that I think is really interesting is it's really easy to end up giving away free consulting, free knowledge, you know, that could potentially put your prospect in a place to where they can make a decision without telling you what that decision is. And that's the thing that we're all trying to avoid. Right? Like, no one is no one. At least here is scared of a No, right If you are, then that's like a whole other problem entirely right? But you got to be able to have that laser like focus of okay. I don't know why we're talking right and moving forward. But then also, making sure that if you're spending time with someone, there's a reason for it. It is moving things forward. Jill agrees, like, Yeah,
I was gonna say, but I caution people, if we've got more time on our hands, then why would we not spend a little, at least through a conversation? I don't I don't agree with free consulting at all. But I also think that, you know, I wouldn't if I had the time, I'd take every call and at least start a conversation and figure out ways or benchmarks to decide whether it needs to go forward, or whether you're going to table it till after COVID-19. I'd have some really adult conversations with people saying, Hey, did you call me because you're bored? Or did you call me because we really have something to talk about here and just get to that? And if they say, Well, you know, we're thinking you know, if you get The truth? Well, we were just throwing around some ideas. So maybe they're stabbing at a new way of doing business or you're trying to glean something, I think you can have those conversations. And it benefits both sides of the equation. Now, in your business, Clint, you got to mobilize people to put pricing together, but from you know, from whatever level you operate, talking to your peers, talking to your clients, you know, you know, shooting the shit about potential business once this is over, you know, you brought up bonding and rapport, and I kind of shot it down when you know, when we were talking about topics. And I think you're right i think now's the time to do that bonding and rapport but also start discovering pain. And, and, and if there's ever a time for a pain, conversation, you know, now's the time because everybody, everybody can sympathize or empathize with the pain that's going around in every industry.
Yeah. So So catching up on a little bit of the chat before we continue. Paul said that right now is the time to really see the interest that people have. And being in the small business space, like Paul is, we're both on the lower parts of the food chain. I'm getting a lot of people who were scrambling and looking for any solution, right? And if I get ahead of myself and jump towards Oh, sure, let me help. There's going to be room of does this solution really fix fix my problem, right? So we got to be able to maintain a sense of urgency, which is super important, right? Because you're probably gonna have to do more outreach, more prospecting more attempts to get into conversations to fight through all the noise. But on the other side of that is you got to be able to nip stuff off in the bud rather quickly. Right? Because if there is no really interest, if it doesn't really align, if you don't have the money to invest to fix this problem, then there's no real reason for me to spend time talking with you now.
Right, yeah, and I think as a as a small business, you know, owner, you know, even yourself, John, you might get 30, you know kind of calls about a 500 fire that you might be the solution to, it's really important to dig into all that, and that pain and who you fit with and can partner with, to narrow that down to maybe just one, you might have 40 phone calls, but one of those is who you have to truly partner with and provide solutions for. So when the dust settles, you know, you just built a lifelong partner because you got them through a hard time, then those other 29 why they might have been a good fit as well. You don't have the bandwidth to do that right. And don't let 29 or 30 jobs fail. Be successful at the one now's the time more than ever to be successful at whatever you do. Yeah,
Well, let me bring up a point too, and this is happening in my world. We're talking about cash flow we're talking about we get to budget pretty quick on and that's just other people with clinics, other people who run their own businesses. So from a from a, I think even from a sales standpoint, it is, I think, very appropriate for you to bonding and rapport pain, and then go into, how's your budget holding up? Did you get the PPP loan? Right? Where's your money coming from? What's your cash flow going to look like? What are your projections for return to normal on a cash flow basis, because then they can buy and then you sell. But if you can ascertain that somebody looks like they might be weak, I say you stay sympathetic, but you understand that may not be somebody who is able to do much on the other side for a while. And you know, that those are really easy conversations to have, because people when they're stressed and they feel like there may be some value and at least just get it off their chest. They'll tell you things they wouldn't tell you prior to COVID-19
and you I saw a message come across from Hayden that says cash flow is key right now. And I know Doc, you speak to this a lot. But, you know, for me whether you're whether you're a ginormous, you know, billion dollar publicly traded company or a small, you know, two man firm cash flow is the same either way you have to. I mean, you have to manage that. In the end. The thing was with that, you know, with that cash flows, you've got to, and I've wanted to say this earlier there, there's a silver lining to a lot of this stuff out there for our competitors, right. The competitors that didn't set themselves up, they're out there running and gunning on credit, and making promises they can't deliver on but they're stealing our jobs, right, because they're making those promises. What I think we'll see out of this is those people will disappear because they didn't have the cash flow. They didn't manage properly. They don't know how to do this, right. And so when those when those people leave, we kind of open the door for ourselves, you know, as long as we maintain through this.
Yeah, I you know, I'm blown away at how Thin the the, the, the reserves are in a lot of companies larger than myself. And I mean they carry higher overheads, their margins don't go as far. But I mean if you're not eating leftovers and you know, saving every piece of tissue that you know, didn't get nose blown on it. I mean, I mean we but there's something to be gleaned from people who made it to the other side of the depression, right? Look look at scenarios prior to this that mimic this. There are amazing days after you get through troubled times on the survivor crew amazing days, you can outpace your competition. You can come out like a superstar once this is over. You just got to hold on to the lifeboat or whatever twigs floating in the water that you're holding on to long enough for the flood to subside.
Jill made a really good point in the chat a second ago. She said that B and C clients are going to be calling you your D's and F's are going to want to consume your time and we need to be going over or after A's, right? The A level people like market alignment, it makes sense to have conversations with them and make sense to go after them and put in the effort. Because, at least on my side, on the small business side, I'm getting people who had never given me a shot before are now scrambling, right, like, hey, how can we improve ourselves? Well, let's go talk to John. You know, we need more leads. Look, look, go talk to John. And then we hop on these calls. And for me, this is something I've been really, really working on this week is my urgency is higher than theirs, right? Because I'm like, cool, like, I'm scrambling. Let's get this thing going. If I can fix your problem and help you then let's do it. But what that's leading to is like, I'm not asking the same kind of questions with the same depth that I was three weeks ago, because I'm kind of assuming right, which I shouldn't be doing. But some of these habits are hard to break. Look, you're scrambling just as much as I am. Let's figure out if we can work together and then let's go And that's not what people are looking for. Because while people are scrambling and looking around there, you still have to build trust, right? You're not getting business, especially right now, if people don't trust you, right, they might have been willing to give you a shot before when the purse strings were wide open and budgets were there, and everything was glorious. But now, okay, cool. I, I'm open to this conversation, but maybe I need to make sure this is really gonna fit. So I am really working on trying to slow down my urgency in the calls to get back to that place of, you know, why is this important now? You know, and that stuff, even though it feels like entry level conversations, you know, when they say it, I don't have to prove it, which is a huge, huge thing to remember, especially during these times when the salesperson says that you got to prove it when the prospect says it, you don't have to prove anything.
So I think I think you can use this COVID-19 to your advantage, you can get some leverage off of it. Because if people will even you know, suggest that why would you ask that question, you know, It'd be easy to come back and say, in this day and age, why would I not? Right? Are you ready to go? Yeah, how deep is your pain? What's your capability of moving forward? I mean, you can almost take a skeptical eye as can today. And if you're, if your programs are high, and they're applicable, and they're helpful, they'll find a way to get you know, get this thing started with you. Or, or, you know, or it's a waiting game like it was before you had the conversation. Right? So I think you can you can I, we did a deal or we have a deal in the works that came to us for telemedicine on hormone therapy. And and, you know, we were able to handle this situation, I was able to ask for more money. We were, you know, we were able to shuffle this thing in a quicker way. I can't speak to all the dynamics of it, but I whenever I picked up the phone for some of these physicians that I need to be on board They were looking for revenue stream. So it's an easy plug for putting some of these deals. I'm not saying that applies to everybody out there. But I think if everybody looks at their business and how COVID is affecting their business, then you become then start trying to be an influencer relative to code.
So we got some comments in the chat. So let's go back to the chat. So Paul says, also, now is the time for small businesses to add skills and more facets to your business with all the time we have, we should be adding value to our businesses. So when we come out of this, we have even more value don't stop because of the fear of the times. And I think that that's important. But you know, the thing is that once you're an entrepreneur, you gotta, you gotta be wary of the shiny thing, right, this new thing, right? Because once you spin up a business, right, and you get some clients and everything else, you look at other businesses, and it's just well I've done it once I can do it again. So it's really easy to over spread yourself. Right, and I'm kind of feeling that now, right, because I've got the main company that to growth that I'm working on. And then there's still a lot of effort that goes into this, right? And Melissa is on my team, and she's been helpful, but make sure that the effort you're putting into, you know, new skills. Makes sense. Don't spin up a business just because you think it's gonna be easier than the current business, right? Make sure that the skills you're going to be developing during this time and taking time to put into have some overlap with the business that you're already building. Because I don't think that now is the best time to start a brand new business. It's especially if you already have one. So
Unless there's a huge demand for it, right, the the other side of it too, is the training. If you've got a technical, you know, a group that's got a bunch of technical stuff to get through, you know, yearly renewals or quarterly renewals, this is the time to do that stuff. Because you're going to look back on it because this is going to we're going to come out of this and everybody's gonna be slapped. And you're, you're gonna wish you took advantage of this time,
right? So You're going to be doing the same thing where we are getting all our continuing education hours for all three of my providers that work with me and myself. We're doing webinars, they've relaxed some of the criteria in our industry. So when you see that utilize that time wisely, you know, agreed a lot of times you getting cagey, last thing you want to stay at home any more than you have to. But you know, I've got two of my my physicians that are doing webinars this weekend, to get those hours behind them while they got to sit at home anyway. Everything that you can do now to prep or lay down some framework, or build a base to launch from, that's what you're going to need because if you wait till this breaks, because we don't know if it's next week, next month, you know, two months from now, use this time wisely, it's easy to get lazy. It's easy to sit on the sideline, and then have to scramble to launch because it came off On May 10, instead of may 30. Right? Yeah. And with the, and be, I mean, I'm sure everybody is because in this game, you got to kind of read the tea leaves and look at the look at the landmarks. You know, if you're not waking up every day watching what's getting relaxed, what's going on? I don't know if you guys noticed I was observing yesterday or two days ago, earlier this week, two days ago, at lunchtime, I had to go from one clinic to the next, and man, just more traffic on the freeways. Like what the hell is going on? Did somebody lift the ban? Well, no, it's because everybody had 1200 dollars in their pocket it was burning a hole in it and they want to get out there spend right well, why is there not if that's what you need to be looking for? They were making purchases. So that money is going up the ladder which I agree with, so so be on be aware when the when the when the money hits the businesses when it hits the pocketbooks of the people out there on the street. It's gonna be spent. It's going back into the economy, figure out how whatever you sell, or whatever you do fits into that equation and go get some of that free money that was just given over by the government. Why would you not? Yeah.
So we got a couple of things in chat that warrant some discussion. Brian talks about, can we speak into circling back on prospects that weren't closed before but also weren't a quote unquote hard no? For me, personally, I think, I think that this is like the greatest opportunity ever to reach out to anybody who's been on the fence, right? Because I can make that reach out about like, hey, like, what's going on? You know, are you doing okay? Like, you know, what does it mean for your company and your people, things like that. And, you know, we're going to touch on the fact that we have an open opportunity between us, right, and then you can also get like a really great kind of go for the new opportunity. Hey, with everything that's going on. I don't even know if this is on the top of your pile or not. If it isn't, actually, can you let me know and we can close the file and figure out if we should come back to it later. You When doing that kind of thing,
no better time than getting to know than right now because people have the easiest way out to tell you that. So if you're ever going to get one, man, just just go for it now.
Yeah, well, but I disagree in a certain sense. I see you use COVID as leverage, but not as an excuse, right?
Saying that people are very, usually non confrontational, right. Most people don't want to tell, you know, so they string you along and salespeople for five or six months, and you never get a no and you never get a yes. And for us salespeople, that's that stuff, right? Because we have a file lingering on our desk forever. And this is the time for in my in my world to get that hard no and throw that file away.
Yeah, because the thing to remember is that most most buyers are not maliciously avoiding you. Right? They do the same thing that everybody else does. And they get that email and they say, Man, yeah, I need to respond to this, but I can't do it now. I'll do it later. And then all this sudden a week has passed. And then your next follow up shows up. And they say, oh, yep, still super swamped next week. And then they just keep pushing that boulder along. And then what happens is we're the annoying pest or we feel that way or we look like it and it's annoying. But when you can go, some part of it is there's a pattern there, right sales guys following up, they're gonna keep following up, keep following up, keep following up. I'll get to when I can, you know, but but no one is sitting back thinking, I'm not going to answer this guy because I want to, I want to mess with them. Unless you're, you know, selling to Clint, in which case that's all he's different to you. It's just it's just trying to mess with you to manipulate you.
At the time. Well, can I say on my end this This reminds me of the ice storm. I've talked about the ice storm before. That's when I got out and no one else was getting out and no one else was being proactive. And I think this is the time when they're, I don't think this is time to be lazy or sit back. This is go out With your people and going out can be making a call making a phone call making you know sending them an email just initially asked what they're doing how's it How are you dealing with this or you know connect with the your clients at this point and don't just sit back and be lazy and and you know, oh poor us. No, you know make the best of this I really I think this is a really great time to do that.
And that brings up another point there's always an there's always something new coming out so there's you can almost weekly because they're doing the same thing everybody's waking up what what's the day look like what's today look like? And and I think you can almost maybe not partner up. But I know that we both up and down and left and right in our business dynamic. We're having conversations and we're having more than one and and so those those things are Set to pay dividends after this is over with in my world. So it's orthopedic surgeons that Nan and I sell to, it's colleagues that own clinics, it's patient groups that we normally go out and talk with. We, you know, so So from the patient, to the mid level clinics, to the ancillaries that we all sell into all of those things are, I mean, we're constantly on the phone communicating. And the Yeah, it you know, it, it's you know, it's just what we do in our world to kind of stay afloat but also to keep our anxiety level down to know that, you know, other people are surviving this, some guys got the PPE, I'm in the queue. I didn't get the money that I applied for. This will probably be the last day, so I'll have to wait for the next wave. So now I've got a little stress this weekend coming into Monday, you know, and and so I got to start looking at my Cash Flow. I got to start, you know, wondering, okay, what's that next wave look like? So I'll have another round of conversations relative to the same event from the guys who got the money, which will now be my best friends. Like, neither on the other side, you know, waiting for their money will be in the misery hut over, you know, down the road, right? Yeah.
So So Brian had to go he had to go close an A client. So hopefully Jill is going to make sure he inputs all of his notes into the CRM. Jill has a good, good coachable moment with Brian on the other side of this. So apparently, your state bank can help a PPP if only we knew people who worked there. That's so weird.
Jill, I'm in the queue. I'm actually at the SBA. I just didn't get my number. So that but I've gone through underwriting them. I'm good with my bank. It's the SBA that's F'ing me over right now.
So the thing that we really wanted to talk about because when we were chatting the other day was we all had different kind of focuses during this time. Right and focuses very much on the management of this, like, you know, how do we get through it because he's got a lot of people on his team that he's got to, you know, try to keep on and but he's also going to make decisions that are going to set him up for success. So, if I, if I'm hearing you correctly, I like like, that's where all of your attention is going is just like, you know, making sure that you can weather the storm, right. It's not necessarily about huge changes or anything else. It's just let's make it through. Is that is that true?
Right? We're not trying to be prolific or, you know, we're not we're looking at it. We're in a survival mode, right? We our cash flow is you know, payday comes every week for me and because I'm, you know, three companies, and they're staggered. So, you know, I'm paying payroll, every you know, every week, and I've got this much money, and I'm seeing my, you know, my cash flow drop, and obviously I just explained I'm in the queue for the PPP. But I didn't SBA dried up before I, you know, my number came up. And yeah, and I'm no different than everybody else out there Believe me, this is not me having some great idea that's gonna save the day. But I'm every day, I'm living through that day to the next day. But but it's a communication, tons of communication every day in my industry, and then lots of hard thought in the evenings, about balancing budget what I pay, I mean, we have we have some decisions to make on my end. If this drags out another two months, because we'll stop, we'll stop paying certain things, and we'll keep our people paid because that's our commitment.
So Nan for you, right, you know, you and I'll work together but at different levels, right. So where are you putting your focus light, like what's taking priority for you right now as far as your pipeline seeing through getting new deals, you know, deepening existing relationships. Where are you putting all your focus?
Oh, when things are running normally, whatever that might be, but you know, whenever before this happened, it was a continuous making sure everyone was taken care of. Well, right now, I don't have new business because surgeries are gone. For the time being now, as of this morning, I did hear that they are talking about some time in may even may 1 starting elective surgeries again, so hopefully that will come to fruition. But right now, it's just keeping up with clients, keeping up with patients, and just being organized and I am trying to do some studying trying to when this does when we do get back into action, that I can bring something else to the table. So you know, I just think it's really important to keep on task. Don't get lazy. I know I said that a few minutes ago, but you know, wake up, get dressed, put your makeup on, get organized. Be ready to hit the, because when it does start again, it's going to be busy. I think for everyone, I think it's busy, you know, from restaurants we people haven't been eating now they're going to be like, man, I cannot wait to get out there and eat out to surgeries, people are gonna, there's gonna be a lot of surgeries because if you need a surgery, if you needed a surgery a month ago, that didn't go away, you're going to still need a surgery. So, you know, across the board that I think it's going to get really busy and I think this is preparation time. I also really think it's important to find a positive what you know, let there be a takeaway from this. Do not think only negative about this situation. I guarantee every one of us right now can think of in our head something that you know, wow, that that was kind of cool that that when that while that happened I learned this about me or my life or what I want to change what I want to do different going forward. If you're not thinking that start thinking that because I guarantee there's a positive that came out of all this,
yeah, yeah. What about you, Clint, like, during the day or during a week, like what's gonna take priority for you? And how are you figuring that out?
You know, the, the filter game has got strong for us. It's just, it's literally going through everything that's being thrown at us and, and picking up the pieces that are real, you know, to put the puzzle together every day, it's filtering, all that stuff that we we talked about doing on a normal day to day. For me, it's 10 times important now, to filter and find pain and find partnerships and make sure that the people that we're doing business with are, are really ready to partner with us, you know, so, you know, that's, that's not easy for us. That takes a lot of bandwidth that takes a lot of people and we're in the times where you're you're doing the exact opposite, right? You're trying To get down to the bare minimum of personnel, so you know, it. I think that Nan, you're right, there's silver linings all over the place, you know, and for me to, you know, to say, Hey, stay positive out there. I truly believe that there's just a ton of, of great things that'll come out of this. And it's unfortunate. It's unfortunate under the circumstances, but you got to take it run with it. That's just silly business if you don't,
yeah. You know, it is the proverbial war, you know? I mean, really, and truly, this is this is a huge struggle, a war, but always at the end of the war, you have things to reflect on and go, okay. Well, that was that was cool.
Yeah. Jill, put a good comment in the chat. She says that she keeps telling her sales team a recession is coming good news. We didn't sign up, go get it. And then the culture, the culture is key now and sticking with the process. And I mean, as the process guy here, like I obviously love that, right? Because I do think that culture is super important. If you're, sorry Al, go ahead.
Now, as I said, that brings up a good point I actually talked about this before you're gonna, you cuz you fall into various segments and we talked about this that you maybe you are an influencer in your industry already, right? You're 25 years in, or you know, you're at the top of the food chain, you need to be reaching out and reaching down to help other people in your industry. If you're new, maybe you just got out of school, you've been in your job a year, two years, you just got a little bit of book of business and you're starting to see where you might be able to really make something of this. You need to be calling people further up the chain, reaching out and saying, Hey, how are you handling this? Could you take my phone call, I mean, go after building some connections within your own industry, with your competitors, because we all know who these guys are. And a lot of times we you know, we have the ability to kind of reach out during these times and and gain some In roads, because what happens if your company fails? Where Where do you move next? Well, it might be to a competitor. So you might want to reach across the aisle there and make some inroads over there.
Basically, that's so true out because, you know, basically in a synopsis of what you just said, helping others, you're really helping yourself.
There she is. There she is. Yeah.
Wow, that's a Nan's statement that I'm gonna pat you on your back.
So curious for Jill, right, running a team and having a baby and doing everything that like is going on now. What is working for you to keep people on your team motivated? Right, because you said the culture is key, and I couldn't agree more. And I think that a big part of that culture is how you communicate like, Are you being honest? Are you hiding from people? Are you are you just faking it till you make it kind of thing? Yeah, Jill, I'll unmute you, for sure. Hold on one second, alone to talk. All right, Jill, are you there? There she is.
Oh, my gosh. You're so cute. Look at you can see me now. Okay,
well, we see a photo we don't actually see your live feeds.
Okay, good? Um, no, I think for me, the biggest thing right now is understanding my role. And understanding that it's it's letting right now it's the high performers are rising up, and I don't have time to coach the lowest. And so letting those high performers come in and and take the lead and do what they know to do best and get out of their way. I always say my number one job is to remove the roadblock. And so I need to just get out of their way and let them go. But without positivity, like man was talking about in that culture so key and not letting people regress, because that's what our competitors are going to do. They're going to take this as a time to say, Hey, you know what, we can just sit back because everyone else is doing that. And this is this is the time I mean, fortunes are made and recessions
want to do completely agree.
I think that you know, that's our key. So You know, I think it's just constantly saying I mean, we are, we're still meeting reporting doesn't, you know, it's not, hey, we don't have time to meet now because we're all too busy with the PPP program or anything like that we find new ways reporting is still key, processes are still key. Qualifying is still key. We're still doing all of those same things. And as long as we stick to that, you know, that's where I said good news, that we didn't sign up for that recession. So this is how we keep jobs. And this is how we help people.
That was awesome.
Good words.
Good, good stuff. Jill, thank you very much. I'm gonna put you back on mute.
If that wasn't a D statement.
John, John, if you if you if somebody wants to speak up, man we'd love to hear your
questions, or
Yeah, don't look at this is a nice form because we can actually, if somebody's got something they need to say we can connect, connect some things together. And yeah, I'm up for listening to what everybody else has to say.
Has anybody grown their revenues or their pipelines since this whole thing started? I mean, has anyone seen an uptick as far as actual opportunities? We see that in the chat you have. Yeah. Yeah. Do you like do you think that they're good? Like, like actual opportunities, because a minute ago, you're talking about the fact that a lot of them aren't real. So,
yeah. I mean, just the fact that we have more to choose from right is, is is healthy in itself. But the other side of that, too, is people are when I was talking about investment people, why would people invest money, but there are people out there that are trying to get their money invested now, before you know the crisis really takes hold in the economy. So So we've seen a pretty big uptake of we're on track to, we're over our budget for the year on sale side, right. So we're actually climbing, which is crazy to think about, but, you know, I may see that drop drastically in the next month, but for right now, people are plugging money in there, man. So
We've kind of talked about processing. Somebody mentioned KPIs a moment ago. And I think that that's really important because I don't think that you can just look at the bank account right now and blow yourself into a spot that isn't going to serve you. Right. And I know that for some people, like that's the end of measure, right? I'm successful, because there's money in the account, but the money in the account is the lagging indicator, right? And you can't, you know, by that point, there's not a whole lot you can do to influence that. But when you go back and you look at the leading indicators that get you to the lag, then there's gonna be opportunities there. Right. So one of the things that I've done for me very specifically, is I really upped my my outreach, right? So I'm doing 30 to 40 asks, per week of people in my network on LinkedIn, I'm like, hey, let's hop on a zoom call. Let's look very specifically for some introductions and referrals between each other and I've got it in the guide. So then I give them the guide on the other end of it so that way they can use it in their calls. Hayden I talked the other other day, and he showed me a cool tool called Vidyard, which is a video prospecting tool, and it's a Chrome extension. And then you can drop little videos into your email. And it's actually pretty helpful because a lot of people aren't at their desks, but they're still getting their, their email. And there's like a free plan of it. And Hayden has been doing very, very customized videos for each of the, each of his prospects, right, so each one gets very specific individualized video, and that's awesome. The way that I've been approaching it as I've been trying to break my business into like three core components and recording videos around those three specific things, so that we have got a little bit of scale without having to redo the video for each individual client because, you know, I'm gonna judge myself too harshly, it's got to be perfect and everything else like this and it won't get anything done. So those are a couple of small little pivots that I've done. I've just upped my you know, my cadence in my in my urgency, because I think that man makes a good point that on the other side of this, we're going to see like a huge A runway right and it's really hard to go from second gear all the way to fifth gear. So keeping the urgency high and keeping your your days dialed in is going to, in my opinion, such as your success on the on the other end of this if you are in that realm of cool, we're done. Let's go.
What was the name of the video? Can you repeat?
It's called Vidyard, V-I-D-Y-A-R-D. Vidyard. Okay.
Cool. So there's something really, you know, to talk about here that, you know, if you're not technically challenged, or technically inclined at this point, you might lose some business right? So that good old boy mentality of going out and shaking hands and taking people to dinner if that was your only way to sell? You're screwed right now. Right? So elbow baby elbow. Yeah, yeah. I mean, but can you even take them anywhere, right? No, no. Yeah, people that had the disadvantage, and were getting blown out of the water by all those those relationships might have the upper hand right now. So, you know, if you're behind the curve, you know, the thing is, is everybody's learning right now. So whether you're 20 or 60, everybody's gotta learn new ways. So don't be afraid of it.
And one of the things not to interrupt but yeah, what do you like the other day, I mean, a little little brain brain, you know, idea jumped in, I got a buddy owns a bar. And I was actually talking to Nan and so when all this lifts, I'm going to throw you know, if there's, you know, my cash stays, you know, where I can do this. I'm gonna throw a happy hour at his bar for people I do business with, right? Just come out celebration, be thinking about ideas like that. We've gone by and done the social distancing. With some Attorneys Offices, that refers business saying, hey, we'll do a nice lunch down the road. So some of the promotional side of things that you do in your business, save some of that budget for being able to because that's where cash is going to be king, and you'll get out of the gate a little bit quicker, because what happens is there'll be people that will be huddled down and they'll be a little tentative. The minute this thing breaks off, man, it's a dash to be the leader. It's gonna be a dash to be the guy that's back in the community back in business back doing the things we used to do.
That's awesome.
Hey, guys, I hate to I think we should probably wrap this up. We're getting on the hour and I got some shit to get done. So
same here, I'm kinda in the same boat. So yeah.
Thanks for coming out. We're gonna thank you all this here, everybody. The plan is to do this every Friday. So if you want to come hang out with us next Friday, same bat time, same bat channel, come on in. If you're not able to make it to the lunches on Fridays, we get it. These are going to be turned into regular podcast episodes. They'll also be going up on the YouTube channel as well. And we'll just kind of keep plugging along because, you know, we're still all here in the trenches. We got to just figure it out.
You know, you got to. Hey, and now that you kind of saw the format out there, if you've got some questions, bring them if you're struggling with something, bring them there, there are ways that I think we are willing to help. I mean, that's why we do this. We want everybody that's listening, tuning in to be successful. And and we're all in this together. I mean, we're a village, we're here for you guys. And I love you guys being there for us. So thank you.
Yeah, if you guys have feedback, reach out to me or whoever, you know, let us know how this works, how we can improve it, how we can make it better, more value, all of those things. And yeah, we'll see you guys next Friday. Share this with somebody else. Please share it. Yeah, share the shit out of it. If you know, we're we're getting emails from people who are struggling because they're new to sales. And so they've never taken an assessment. They've been listening to us for a while. And we're getting these emails from people who are saying, Hey, this is harder than I thought it was. And while I had some traction early on, it's starting to get stressful. So let me see if I can improve. So we're getting people who are wanting to take the assessment. If you want to take the assessment reach out to us, I realized that the assessments at was a little bit wordy. So now just email DISC, D-I-S-C at SalesThrowdown.com. We can get you hooked up, we do a couple of different versions of it, you can just take the assessment, or you can take an assessment and we'll hop into one of these things and do a 90 minute breakdown with you talk about how this shows up in your work life, in your relationships in your communications, that way you have a better grip grab on it. So if you would like some information about what that looks like email, disk and sales throwdown comm follow us on social media. We're trying to up our game there as far as sharing what's working, and things like that. appreciate everybody coming out. Cool.
Thank you guys. Be safe. See you guys. Cheers.