267. Sales closing rate is down, practicing our marketing handoff and intake process pre objections

As I reflect on the countless blessings in my life—from my rock-solid family to our all-star team—I'm reminded that these are the very pillars that sustain a thriving business. In our latest episode, we delve into the transformative power of gratitude and its ripple effect on our mental state and day-to-day joy. You'll hear us dissect the complex dance of sales training, spotlighting the essential role of high closing rates and the art of resonating with clients' emotional landscapes. I share the lessons learned from intertwining the finesse of business acumen with the grace of personal connection—how to craft expectations, foster anticipation, and ultimately, how to build relationships that stand the test of time and challenge.

Strap in for a journey through the mechanics of enhancing your sales process, where we commit to the ambitious goal of doubling our closing rates. The secrets lie within our structured methods, like meticulously crafted intake sheets, and a strategic approach to common objections that every salesperson encounters. We tackle the four pillars of hesitation—cost, partner buy-in, product belief, and time constraints—with a tailored plan to turn each 'no' into a 'yes.' Beyond the boardroom, I also share the delicate balance of energizing work with nurturing family time, underscoring the zest and optimism that catalyze professional triumph. Whether you're a veteran salesperson or simply looking to polish your people skills, this episode serves up a treasure trove of insights and heartfelt advice. Business Buyers Club
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Good morning, good morning. So today's Friday, friday Friday. So payroll ran through and last episode I was talking about I'm choosing to be grateful. I'm choosing to see the sun. I'm choosing to see the good in the world and the good in the day. So here's the things I'm seeing today.

Speaker 1: 0:49

I've got an amazing wife. She loves sitting with her kids, even as crazy as they are. I've got a team that's fully staffed, love sitting with our kids, even as crazy as they are. I've got a team that's fully staffed, fully trained and fully in place. They like their jobs. They like me at the studio and they show up and when someone's sick they cover for each other. You can't plan that. You cannot ask people to step up and cover shifts, especially when I'm working crazy hours at my day job. I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for a bookkeeper that's keeping meticulous records, helping with my balance sheets and profit and losses. I'm grateful for franchisees that are helping when either I or someone else have questions about apparel or supplements. I am grateful that I can drive to the studio in a truck and I'm grateful that I have gas in the tank. I'm grateful that payroll went through, regardless of how it, what it took to get the cash into the account to make sure people got paid. I'm grateful that I have a microphone that can help me not pop when I say my Nathan Platter things, as you can tell, and I'm grateful that I have an iPhone. I'm grateful that I have paid for internet, grateful that I have heating and cooling my vehicle. I'm going to stop there because I could, because I'm learning to go on and on all day. That is what I'm choosing. That is what I'm going to focus on today.

Speaker 1: 2:01

So today we're going to go in and we are doing some sales training with the team. We are going to talk about establishing a good sales pipeline. Just some KPIs for where we're currently at, because I'm sure that we're not perfect. So our marketing agency they're generating 150 leads a month. Out of 150, about 70 are booking appointments. Booking appointments not necessarily showing up. Out of the 70, about 35 or so, maybe 40, are showing up. So pretty good show rate. However, where we're struggling right now is on the closing rate, where, when people are walking through the door trying a class, talking to a manager, you want your close rate to be like 60, 70% or so. Right now we're at about half of that.

Speaker 1: 2:41

So that could be one of two things. That could mean that our sales team doesn't know how to have a sales conversation. It could mean that they're good at having a sales conversation, but it's unstructured. There's no objective, there's no decision that's made. It's just more like an interest gathering session, which, it's very logical. That's not emotional, and people are coming in for an emotional problem like weight, and they need to have an emotional solution. Logical problem logical solution. Emotional problem emotional solution. That's where we're at, and so what we need to be doing is we also need to be focusing on making sure the leads are teed up nicely so when they come in, they need to know what to expect, what they're going to be talking about, where they're going and what they're anticipating.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Recently, what we're struggling with is our leads are coming in saying, hey, I'm looking to talk to someone who works over in the Philippines. So there's not good communication on who the phone person is, who the manager on site will be. They don't know what they're gonna be talking about. They don't know what a conversation is going to look like. They sometimes think they're coming in for a class when our classes are done for the day. Sometimes they think they're coming in to have a sit down session, but our manager is scheduled to be leading a class, so they're not available to have a sit-down conversation. So there's a lack of clear next steps, expectations and anticipation.

Speaker 1: 4:04

And take that to your personal life. If you're dating someone, you're going to get married, but you got to sit down and have expectations and anticipations, so let's talk. We're going to keep this as a clean episode, so we'll let that run for. But when you're getting married, you're like hey, we're going to be doing something very personal. How many times a week, how many times per month? Is this something that you need proactively because you have a higher drive, or do you need this every so often because you have a lower drive? Now you can have a mismatch on I want it five times, you want it one time. That's okay, as long as you know what you need and what they need. And then you can have conversations on okay, we'll do three, we'll do one, we'll do every other. You pick every three days, I pick every three days. You can at least have a dialogue. Last thing you want is to get married and say well, what the heck dog, we were going to do this so often I thought it was so often. Now we're both crabby, and then having to have a conversation about this and we're both crabby about it. That's not good. Now I need the anticipations. What are you walking into?

Speaker 1: 5:10

It's scary walking into a gym where you feel like everyone has their act together and you feel like you don't know what you're doing, especially with kickboxing, with fitness, you don't know what you're doing and so when you walk in and people are punching bags and doing flying kicks and you're still new to the workout scene, you need to meet people where they're at. You cannot do your thing and expect them to up-level. You have to be a guide, a mentor. Handhold them, get them up to speed, show them some basics. A mentor handhold them, get them up to speed, show them some basics, encourage them, advocate for them. You can't just assume they're going to uplevel themselves, because that happens 10% of the time. 90% of the time you have to handhold people to get them when they're doing something brand new that they haven't done before and you have no expectation that they've done it before. They can anticipate being great at kickboxing and weightlifting, but they don't. They cannot expect to be good at day one. They can anticipate to get better, and that's what the conversation is.

Speaker 1: 6:04

So, with our sales teams, we need to be better at giving expectations. Hey, we're going to be sitting down. We're talking about your personal health goals, strength, lose weight, flexibility all the above. What kind of timeline are you looking for 12 months, six months, 10 weeks and what kind of budget can you do on this? If you've got 20 bucks to your name, we're not going to be able to help you. If you have $100, $50, $200 a month, absolutely we can get you rolling today and we will get you onboarded up to full speed. We'll guide you you can expect that from us and anticipate the results based on what other people have seen. So that's where the expectations is. What expectations is what you can assume will happen.

Speaker 1: 6:47

Anticipation is that little cherry on top that helps people realize hey, this is going to probably happen. Oh boy, I'm excited. And then that's where you can be creative and flirty and when I say flirty, I mean bubbly and upbeat with what's going on. Expectations is very discipline oriented. Anticipation is very you don't know what you're going to be getting, and that's part of the fun of anticipation. Just like Christmas or birthdays, you can anticipate what you're going to get. So that's where we're focusing on today.

Speaker 1: 7:19

Normally I have a one-on-one with my top manager on operations and making sure that things are running smooth. Today we're going to focus on the sales process, because we have high energy, high activity, people that probably are not as structured as they ought to be, to have smooth conversations, smooth handoffs, from lead to sales convo to making a decision to take action one way or the other. So that's what we're going to be talking about today and that's the whole thing behind it. We need to have a smooth handoff and from there our KPIs will tick up so that our close rate will jump from the 30-ish percent to more of that 60%, because 30 to 50 is usually more of that.

Speaker 1: 8:00

Sales process a structure, a framework, doing an intake sheet, a questionnaire and then, when you get to 50% or so, 50 to 70%. That's where you need to get better at objection handling. I need to either believe in the program I have a price concern, I want to talk to my spouse or I don't believe the program is going to work. There's only four of them and I'm copying it from another sales expert. I can't remember all their things, but it's going to be price, spouse, belief and time. Those are the four, if I remember correctly, and so those are the four true objection handlings, and that's where the sales mastery comes in. We're not quite there to sales mastery.

Speaker 1: 8:37

Right now we're in the preparation, the lead up, the alley-oop, if you will. If you ever see an alley-oop in basketball, someone throws an awesome pass, someone grabs the ball midair and slams it down for the two. Right now we a better alley-oop and then later on we'll focus on the slam dunk. Today is high energy, high excitement. We're going to treat today like it's an amazing day. We're also going to be doing a lot of day job work. I'm presenting something at work. I've been working 12 hours a day and that has been rough on the family, and figuring that out one day at a time. We're going to focus on where we can win, where the sun is shining and where we're going to get gold stars. So that's where we're at, that's where we're going. Let's rock and roll.