How to Make Sure you Only Ever Talk to the Right Prospects

David Newman [00:00:00]:
The big aha moment from ten years ago. Our best clients are the ones who want what we do. They do not need what we do. 

Jeffro [00:00:18]:
Welcome back to digital dominance. When it comes to running a successful business, there are a million different pieces that need to fit together for the machine to run smoothly. Let’s assume for a moment that you’ve put in place your marketing strategies and now the leads are coming in. Now you have to meet with people for some kind of discovery call. And this is where you cross the line from marketing into sales. And this is a place where a lot of people make mistakes. Whether you’re too timid, too aggressive, or simply disorganized, there are lots of ways that this can go wrong. And I would hate for you to create a marketing engine that’s bringing you leads only to have you blow it when you get on a call with those leads.

Jeffro [00:00:54]:
That’s why today we’re going to talk about the do’s and don’ts of a discovery call, along with some other key elements of your marketing funnel that will set you up for success even before your prospects schedule that call with you. David Newman is here to share his expertise on these topics. David is a certified speaking professional and member of the NSA Million Dollar Speakers Club. He’s the author of the business bestsellers do it marketing, do it speaking, and do it selling. David thrives on helping his clients get results, and he routinely helps solo consultants and business coaches grow their revenues by 50% to 500% in less than 15 months. So welcome to the show David, and thanks for being here.

David Newman [00:01:31]:
Jeffro. An honor and a privilege.

Jeffro [00:01:34]:
Well, David, you’ve written books on both marketing and selling like I just mentioned, so you’re in a unique position to talk about how the two connect. How can someone make sure that marketing and sales are working together for the ultimate goal of bringing in new customers?

David Newman [00:01:48]:
So that’s a great question. It’s funny, in a large company, there is a big divide. There’s a big problem between marketing and sales. Not collaborating, not communicating, not connecting. In most small to medium sized businesses, especially if it’s a founder led business or an owner led business, there’s really not a lot of distinction. So where I draw the line between marketing and sales is marketing. That is everything that gets you into that first conversation that you just mentioned in the intro. Once you’re in that first conversation, now we’re having a sales dialogue.

David Newman [00:02:27]:
But what does it take to get someone to raise their hand, express interest, saying, I’ve got a need as far as what you do I get it? I need it. I want it. Maybe there’s even a sense of urgency. That’s the job of marketing, to get the get it, I get it. I need it. I want it. Sense of urgency going initial contact. Fill out the contact form, raise their hand, place the phone call, click on the contact us button.

David Newman [00:02:55]:
Whatever that initial call to action is that gets them into a conversation with you at that point. You are now crossing the bridge over into sales.

Jeffro [00:03:04]:
So what are some specific examples of ways your marketing can tee up the salesperson for a big win?

David Newman [00:03:10]:
So I think the first mantra that marketing and marketing folks need to embrace, and I put this in my do it marketing book as one of the early chapters, I call it you need to offer value and invite engagement. So people that don’t like marketing, they don’t like the term marketing. They’ve been burned by sleazy marketers in the past. I say, you know what? Take the word marketing off the table. Even take the word sales off the table. How good are you at offering value and inviting engagement? Offer value means share, insights, recommendations, actionable strategies that can help people whether they become a client or not. And that concept I call happy meal marketing, that your clients and customers, when they buy from you, they get a beautiful seven course meal, white tablecloth, five different kinds of glasses, that weird knife that you’re not sure is that for the fish? Is that for the butter? I don’t know. By the way, it is for the fish.

David Newman [00:04:20]:
It’s not for the butter. So that’s what your clients and customers get. Even people who do not buy from you and who will never buy from you should get a happy meal. So if you’re doing a great job with offer value invite engagement, happy meal marketing means that everyone is better off. Not because they bought from you, but just because they experienced your marketing. So that’s the part. Ad value, offer value, invite engagement is when they like what they see. What is the call to action? The call to action, by the way, does not mean buy our stuff.

David Newman [00:05:03]:
So these are often a series of micro commitments, right? Micro commitments. If we’re on social media, it could be, hey, drop an emoji down below. It could be like comment, share, subscribe, opt in, give me your email address. So it could be a series of increasing micro commitments. Book a call is a serious micro commitment. Hey, I’d like to talk to you about how you can help us. Right? And then, by the way, here’s my credit card. I’m ready to jump in.

David Newman [00:05:33]:
That’s the ultimate commitment of I’d like to become a client, I’d like to become a customer. But I think the problem in the world, Jeffro, and I know you rant and teach and preach against this also is trying to get married on the first date, trying to make the first interaction, the commercial transaction. And that’s not how the world works. And the world doesn’t work based on the agenda and the needs of the seller. The world works on the agenda and the needs of the buyer. So understanding your buyers and showing up as far as marketing is concerned, showing up with relevance, showing up with value, showing up with some level of intimacy or connection. So in my do it marketing book, one of the other mantras that I share in there is if you were to take Zoom out to the 50,000 foot level, planetary level, what’s the ultimate job of marketing? I think it’s to get two and only two ideas across to your prospects, to your target market. Number one, I know what you’re going through.

David Newman [00:06:39]:
Number two, I can help. If you convey those two messages loud and proud, consistently over a sustained period of time, you will build trust, you will build brand recognition. You will become the go to expert company in your industry. Because consistency matters. Value first. Marketing matters. And helping people, whether they buy from you or not, matters now more than ever.

Jeffro [00:07:11]:
Yeah, that was a great explanation and I like that you broke it down into those two main goals of marketing, to convey the fact that you understand them and that you can help them. So that kind of in some way assumes that you’re talking to the right people already. So if you do a good job targeting with your ads and things, okay, then maybe you are in some cases, maybe you’re over targeted or people might slip through the cracks. Maybe it sounds good, but they’re not ready. Maybe they will be a good prospect, but not yet. So I want to talk about being intentional with your sales and marketing copy where you can actually dissuade certain people from booking a call, and that being a good thing, because you don’t want to waste time talking to the tire kickers or the people who aren’t ready or aren’t serious yet. So can you talk about that a little?

David Newman [00:07:55]:
Yes, it’s really an important point. And I think there’s millions or billions of dollars being wasted on advertising and promotion where we do no filtering of any kind. And I think the kind of, because here’s another one of my little sound bites that you can hang some ideas on as far as sales is concerned. We are really not in the convincing and persuading business. We are in the filtering and sorting business. And if what you are putting out there, your free content, your ads, your promotions, your whatever, your invitations to events, webinars, videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel, read my blog, et cetera. If you’re not very clear and very sharply defining who this is for and who this is not for, this is where you get all kinds of bad fit leads, bad fit prospects, people who are not qualified, not necessarily even financially, like, oh, they can’t afford it, they’re all broke. That certainly could be a problem.

David Newman [00:09:06]:
But it’s just the wrong demographic, right? It’s not your people. So what are the three solutions to that? I think the way that you need to craft your messaging is based on research, relevance and relationship. So those three R’s research is really finding out what are the biggest pains, problems, heartaches, headaches, challenges and gaps. And also dreams, aspirations, goals, opportunities that your perfect client, not a good client, not a marginal client, not yeah, we can work with them. The folks that you do your very best work with, the folks who get maximum value from your products and services, think about that person. And sometimes it’s even helpful to have that one ideal client in mind. And I remember Jeffro, I did this, this is probably ten years ago, I had a really harsh wake up call around this. I was putting some stuff together and I was using what I call struggler language, right? Are you struggling with, is this a problem? Are you always frustrated by.

David Newman [00:10:15]:
And I put these bullets together and I had a friend who was in this buyer Persona, I had a friend who this was, I thought relevant to. And I said, hey, will you do me a favor? Have a look at this. Am I hitting the marks? Is this resonating with you? Is there anything you would add or change or fix or remove? He sent me back this email going, David, none of these problems apply to me. And I was what? How could this possibly, like, I didn’t want to tell him, but like, dude, I had your face in my head when I was writing these. He says, david, you’re talking about people who have all these problems. So when you use struggler language in your marketing, on your landing pages, on your website, in your advertising, guess who you attract? Strugglers. When you say, are you frustrated by guess who you’re going to attract? People who are frustrated? Are you stuck? Guess who you’re going to have as clients and prospects? People who are stuck. So the big aha.

David Newman [00:11:18]:
Moment from ten years ago, our best clients are the ones who want what we do, they do not need what we do. So think about the strugglers. I lovingly call this segment for whoever the population is. They’re the broke ass losers and you don’t want to ever deal with broke ass losers. Whereas the high achieving companies, the high achieving prospects, are the ones who, and this is exact language that you need to use, they want to get ahead, stay ahead and move ahead faster. It’s the language of ambition, it’s the language of drive, it’s the language of successful people who are already experiencing some level of success and they want more and they want faster and they want better. So the thing I learned, and I put this in the do it selling book, which is the most recent book that you mentioned, the best of the best are the ones who invest. And yes, that rhymes, but you need to remember that your marketing messaging to filter and qualify and sort, the people who raise their hand and want to work with you.

David Newman [00:12:30]:
The best of the best are the ones who invest. That’s the kind of language, that’s the kind of thematic concepts that you want to put into your marketing is get ahead, stay ahead and move ahead faster. Again, it’s the language of acceleration, ambition and success. If you do that, the strugglers, the wannabes, the broke ass losers, they don’t respond to that language. You’re not talking in their vocabulary. It’s like you’re broadcasting on channel seven, they’re listening on channel three, they don’t get it. They’re not going to raise their hand. You broadcast on channel seven, only the people on channel seven, which is the clients that you want.

David Newman [00:13:12]:
The channel seven people will receive it and they will respond to it.

Jeffro [00:13:16]:
Yeah, well, I love the way you broke that down. You’ve got a lot of good nuggets in there and you’re making me want to go back to look at some of my landing pages and see if I need to change some of that verbiage. But my next question though is so do you think switching that type of language from struggle language to ambition language, is that enough to pre qualify and filter people out? Or should you also be using a pre qualification form before you let them hop on your calendar?

David Newman [00:13:40]:
You should always use pre qualification. That doesn’t necessarily have to be like an appointment form, but often it is. Sometimes it’s an engagement assignment. An engagement assignment is, hey, before hopping on a call with Jeffro, have a look at this pdf, watch this seven minute video, and then I call it indoctrination. We wouldn’t call it that in front of clients. And prospects, of course. But it is some sort of prospect education that invites them to engage with you and your content. And honestly, it enforces compliance.

David Newman [00:14:21]:
And I know that sounds weird, it sounds horrible, but clients who are willing to jump through just a couple of small hoops, prospects who are willing to jump through a couple of small hoops, way more likely. Way more likely to be good prospects. So read this PDF, watch this short video, complete this quick form, do this quick self assessment. It could be a whole variety of things, but an engaged prospect is much more likely to buy because they’ve taken a couple of baby steps towards cooperating and collaborating with you. Even before the initial conversation. It shows that you are prepared, that you are professional, that you have a process. And often I will start an exploratory conversation and say, hey, Jeffro, did you get a chance to read that one page PDF and watch the seven minute video? If they say, david, when you sent me the video, I not only watched it, I watched it twice and I shared it with my team. It’s like, okay, that’s going to be a good prospect compared to there was a video.

David Newman [00:15:30]:
What PDF are we talking about? I was like, oh God, another one of these. Now, the more that you put these engagement tools in place, the less of that second kind of prospect you’ll deal with. But when you are dealing with them, think about it this way. Would you want to know that someone is a low probability prospect early, medium or two months down the road when you’ve been chasing this person for eight weeks? I want to know right away. And I will often say, you know what, to me, that’s a red flag. And if you’re not serious about this, or if this is not the time for us to explore doing some work together, maybe we should know, respect both of our times and cancel the call. And I’ve often had people, so here’s the middle ground. People will say, david, I am so sorry, I did not get a chance.

David Newman [00:16:18]:
So they’ll proactively say this. I don’t need to do the finger wagging speech. I did not get a chance to read the pdf or watch the video. Is it better that we reschedule? And I say, brenda, thank you so much. I appreciate that. It is better that we reschedule. Here’s my calendar link again, and I’m looking forward to talking to you in the next few days. So they either watch it, total green light, watch it, consume it, engage with it, they don’t and they feel terrible and they reach out before the appointment time saying, oh, I got crushed.

David Newman [00:16:52]:
I didn’t have a chance. Is it better to reschedule another green light, or they show up unprepared, uncommitted, unexcited, and uninformed. I don’t want to talk to people who are unexcited, uncommitted, and uninformed.

Jeffro [00:17:06]:
Yeah, that’s, again, a great explanation, because I’m sure we’ve all experienced this as the consumer when we’ve tried to sign up for a course or a consultation. And sometimes you get this stuff and you’re like, oh, man, okay, I don’t mind watching a video. And then you look at, it’s like 45 minutes. Like, right, I don’t have time for this right now.

David Newman [00:17:25]:
That’s probably too much. But seven minutes, I think most serious people can handle seven minutes.

Jeffro [00:17:31]:
Right? I agree. So I have seen some that long, and it can be intimidating, but they’re probably trying really hard to weed people out, especially for the higher end services. That makes sense. All right, let’s transition to the sales side a little bit. So, talking about that first sales call, what should your objectives be? I know some people say, get the sale, but that’s not always the goal, like we’re talking about. So what should those objectives be on that first call?

David Newman [00:17:55]:
So the initial discovery conversation is to determine if they have a problem that you can solve and if they are a good fit client. So think of it like an audition. You’re literally auditioning or you’re hiring. Auditioning is a show business term, but hiring we’re all familiar with. You’re hiring for a position, and the position’s job title is my next client. My next client. So think about what qualifications would you want? What questions do you need to ask? And sometimes we need to ask questions about relevance, urgency, what they’ve done up to this point to try and tackle this problem, how long they’ve had this problem, who else is impacted by this problem, what it’s costing them, personally, professionally, financially, dollar wise, time wise, all these different things? Because if you don’t establish the context and the depth and the ramifications of the problem, then no matter what your solution costs, it could be $50. It could be $50,000 if I don’t really have a problem, or I haven’t put a number on it, and you say, david, I have great news.

David Newman [00:19:12]:
This thing costs $50. $50 is too much in a vacuum. If we, however, establish, and I tell you, Jeffrey, you know what? I’ve lost a couple million dollars of business because my online infrastructure is such a disaster. We’ve lost a $300,000 deal. Last year, there was $150,000 deal. A couple of years ago, we lost a $1 million deal because a CEO couldn’t navigate our website, couldn’t make sense of what was going on, and we totally lost that opportunity. Well, how much is it now? $50,000. Great.

David Newman [00:19:49]:
$50,000 to solve a $3 million problem. I’m in. Where do I sign? $50 with no context. Any number with no context is a number that’s too high. So part of the discovery process, part of our responsibility, is to really probe, uncover, and specify. Specify and quantify. Let’s talk about what you’re up against. Let’s talk about what’s that costing you in terms of time, money, dollars, hours, percentages, and really have them do the math.

David Newman [00:20:23]:
So we’re not doing the math. They’re doing the math. And then a lot of times people ask me, well, David, what if the person I’m talking to doesn’t know some of these numbers? They don’t know things like profit margin, productivity loss, turnover, shrinkage, whatever the problem is that we’re solving. Well, here’s the deal. The person that owns the problem will know those numbers. The person that owns the problem has the budget to hire you to create the solution. The person who does not know those numbers is not an economic buyer. So the big hint there is you are talking to someone too low on the totem pole, too low in the organization, who might be on a fact finding mission or, hey, find me three vendors.

David Newman [00:21:10]:
I hate the word vendor, but find me three vendors. Find me three suppliers, and you know that you are in a price driven sale. So that’s never where you want to be. Talking to the right economic decision maker and being armed with the right kinds of questions, like the ones we’ve just been describing, makes all the difference.

Jeffro [00:21:27]:
Yeah. And I’ll just reiterate on that first call, you should be doing very little talking. The prospect should be doing most of the talking. And like you said, you’re just asking lots of questions, taking lots of notes. So that way, if they are a good fit and you like their answers and you schedule them for a follow up call, then you can be prepared to do a lot more talking on the second call. So how do you evaluate if you did a good job on the call?

David Newman [00:21:49]:
I think there’s this emotional temperature that starts to happen in any sort of conversation. So the emotional temperature is, especially if we do these on Zoom, which we’re now doing, look at their body language, look at their facial expressions. Right. The problem with you talking too much, and I totally agree with you. I’m glad you brought up that point. An early sales mentor of mine even went so far as to say, a prospect who is listening is not a prospect. I had to think about that for a second. Prospect who’s listening is not a.

David Newman [00:22:23]:
Oh, prospect who is talking is a prospect. Yes. Prospect who is talking. So our job is to get them talking and keep them talking about where they are, where they’d like to go, et cetera. So we need to be really think of it like an attorney doing a courtroom cross examination. There’s three rules of courtroom cross examination. Not a lawyer. Don’t play one on tv.

David Newman [00:22:47]:
But I know quite a lot about sales and selling conversations. Number one, one question at a time. One question at a time. Sometimes we get so excited that we say, jeffro, tell me about the problem, what it’s costing you, how long you’ve had the problem, and what you’ve tried to solve it so far. It’s like, dude, that’s four questions. Number one, they’re not going to remember. Number two, they’re not going to give you detailed answers to any of it. They’ll probably just answer the fourth part of that four part question, and they’ll say, I’m sorry, what were the first three parts? And because you’ve stacked the questions, you forgot what questions one, two, and three were so slow.

David Newman [00:23:25]:
Your role, it’s almost like slow down to go faster. Courtroom cross examination, rule number one, one question at a time. Number two, use leading questions. In a courtroom drama, of course, a leading question gets the opposing lawyer to jump up and say, your honor, I object. Leading the witness. You don’t want to do it that way. You want to do it in an ethical way where you are leading them down a logical progression of what you need to find out. So a leading question is leading to an answer that you need to know.

David Newman [00:24:01]:
Some of the best questions to ask after you get some of the basic foundational facts on the table are questions that sound like, who else? What else? Where else? When else? And why else? Right? Who else is involved? When else has this happened? How else is this impacting your profitability? Where else? Might this have a ripple effect? The who else? Where else? Why else? When else? How else? Power questions. Those five questions, if you integrate that into every piece of follow up, are going to get you some amazing answers. Rule number three of cross examination, do not just pepper the prospect with random questions. Or pepper the witness with random questions. Your questions need to be part of a questioning strategy, meaning that there is a sequence and a syntax. What you ask first then builds on what you ask second. What you ask third builds on what you ask second. What you ask fourth then builds on what you ask third.

David Newman [00:25:03]:
So any courtroom attorney is not going to go into a random list of questions. It’s going to be a questioning strategy that initially goes through all the areas that they need to talk about. So if you follow those same three rules of cross examination, number one, one question at a time. Number two, leading questions, please lead your witness, lead your prospect. And then number three, don’t just pepper people with random questions in a random order. Have a sequence and a syntax to your discovery that makes logical sense to you and makes them feel that they’re getting insights along the way. Last thing I’ll add, last thing I’ll add to this. People sometimes say, well, aren’t prospects looking for answers? Shouldn’t I be answering a lot of their questions in this discovery call? And the answer is no.

David Newman [00:25:54]:
Again, this has to do with low level prospects versus high level prospects. Low level prospects want their questions answered. High level prospects want their answers questioned. So in other words, you want to sort of disrupt the status quo. You want to sort of show them that what they think is the main problem is not the real source of the problem. What they think is the main goal is not really the main goal. It’s probably the side effect of the main goal. So when you start to shift their thinking, you start to do some pattern interrupts, you start to shift the way that they are perceiving the current situation and their future possibilities.

David Newman [00:26:39]:
Because one of the main reasons people buy from us is they’re buying a bigger, bolder, brighter future. If you can paint that future more vividly with their input, they will buy much faster and they will buy at a much higher fee, right?

Jeffro [00:26:54]:
I mean, that was a great overview, and I like that you broke it down. There’s a few things I wanted to call out from that. So number one, if you think back to the socratic method, right, it’s all question based. And that gets the prospect thinking. That’s actually a good way to learn. You’re talking about educating the prospect and answering questions versus questioning their answers. This is part of that, right? That can trigger them to realize, oh, that makes sense. I see why you’re asking that.

Jeffro [00:27:19]:
Here’s more information. And the other powerful part of this that you kind of touched on is if you’re just gathering all this information in that first meeting, your second meeting, even though it’s technically the sales call and you’re going to be talking, you’re not going to be persuading them of anything. You’re just going to be reminding them, hey, all right. You told me you want to spend this much money. This is your specific problem, and this is what needs to be addressed. We have a solution that does XYZ, if it’s within your budget and it fits within your timeline. So are you ready to get started? You don’t have to convince them because they said those things and you’re saying, all right, here you go. This is the prescription for your specific situation that solves your problems.

Jeffro [00:27:57]:
Why would they say no?

David Newman [00:27:58]:
Absolutely right.

Jeffro [00:27:59]:
Unless there was something they held back in the first meeting. But there’s no reason for them to say no at that point. So we are out of time today, unfortunately. There’s lots more we could talk about on this subject, so maybe we’ll come back to it in a future episode. But I did want to say thank you for your time today, David. I appreciate these insights that you’ve shared with us. For those of you listening, go connect with David on LinkedIn. Check out his books.

Jeffro [00:28:18]:
His links will be in the show notes. Last question for you, David. What is the most important thing that you want the audience to take away from this episode?

David Newman [00:28:25]:
I’m going to give you a three word mantra that has really helped me in every stage and phase of my professional career. Action eliminates fear. If you just take action. And this is true from this episode, all of Jeffro’s episodes, everything that you see online. If you’re not sure, how does this apply to me? How does this work? How can I get started? What does that start to look like? Just take a baby step. Take a baby step of action. Do a little mini micro experiment. Get back in touch with that lead.

David Newman [00:28:58]:
Get back in touch with that prospect. You have. Maybe a proposal that’s gone stale a little bit. Ping that person. Baby steps lead to big results. And I would just reassure you that action eliminates love that.

Jeffro [00:29:10]:
So simple and easy to remember. Thanks again for being here, David. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review because it helps us reach more people. Now go take some baby steps, close some deals, and I’ll see you all in the next episode.