Let’s be real: it’s nobody’s job (but your own) to make you successful. In fact, the longer you wait around for success to appear, the more stagnant your professional life becomes. Want to be a top sales leader? You have to earn it.
What are the best techniques to ensure you’re on track to the top?
James Buckley, Chief Evangelist and Master of Ceremonies at JB Sales, is sharing four strategies every salesperson should be using.
In this energetic episode of Evolved Sales Live, host Jonathan Fischer sits down with James to discuss the top four ways every salesperson can elevate their sales techniques to level up their game.
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Meet James Buckley:
James Buckley is an experienced consultant, popular podcast host, and sales trainer extraordinaire. He's the chief evangelist for JB sales, a highly regarded sales training company serving dozens of globally known corporations from Google to Cisco and from LinkedIn to Amazon. James's use his big personality and deep knowledge of sales to help thousands of salespeople all around the world up their game, and become top performing professionals.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Jonathan Fischer 0:06
Well, it's time for another power packed facility of evolved sales live. Welcome back. I'm Jonathan Fisher. Working in sales offers one of the most rewarding career paths available today. And accomplished sales Pro can make a fantastic income by helping real businesses and individuals solve real problems. But sadly, the support most salespeople experienced in corporate positions is lacking, especially when working in a distributed workforce. This results in lower ROI, lengthen sales cycles and increased churn rates. According to today's guest, the responsibility for solving this problem lies not only with corporate leadership, but also with the individual producer. The most successful salespeople in the world don't wait for someone else to make them successful. He says they go make it happen for themselves. Well, here to share with us four specific ways you can do just that is our guest, James Buckley. James is an experienced consultant popular podcast host, he's a sales trainer extraordinaire. He's the chief evangelist for JB sales, a highly regarded sales training company serving dozens of globally known corporations from Google to Cisco and from LinkedIn to Amazon. And James's use his big personality and deep knowledge of sales to help literally 1000s of salespeople all around the world up their game, and become top performing professionals. James, I'm ecstatic to have you on our show today.
James Buckley 1:25
Oh, man, what a great intro. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to tap that at all.
Jonathan Fischer 1:32
Well, you know, I don't see anything I believe is true. And you've got some really, really good stuff I'm excited to jump in. And before we do that, why don't we talk a little bit about what I mentioned in the intro, that there's a real, you know, you get into this sales position. And a lot of times, all parties come in eyes, you know, they feel like its eyes wide open. And they can see there's a great upside potential. And especially when working remote, hey, I can get on the phone. And I can work through some leads and offer some great solutions make a great income. But then there's this gap that is experienced in the support that's available that can take different forms, maybe there's not enough training, not enough of the peripherals you need to help tell the story. And what have you talked to us about that? What What have you seen in your consulting work? What are the issues? And what do you think is the reason why those exist?
James Buckley 2:18
I think the issue is accountability on both parties. I think that there's also a generational gap. So let's peel those two things back for just a moment. In most instances, young sellers come into the sales market. And it's like drinking from a firehose for the first year, but they have this expectation that they're going to rapidly climb up the corporate ladder.It's not a realistic view, because you're not even profitable, usually, until your second year as a frontline seller, then maybe if you're hitting all your numbers, maybe you're profitable, right? So that's the reality of the situation. But we start getting hungry, the average tenure of a sales professional is only 18 months. If that's true, then what we have everybody out there chasing the shiny quarter of sales, instead of really setting some roots down and getting good at what you do. Learning from other individuals in the space that have been doing it for years picking up different tactics, a B testing, becoming mad scientists, this is how we invest in ourselves, we look at the data and we collect the data. And then we make informed decisions as top performing sales reps, but it takes time to get that skill. So we look externally in the early days, we look for someone else to make us successful. This is unfair to ourselves, and it's not the right way to view it. Because the responsibility to become the best seller that you can be is yours and not someone else's. Yes, you should have training. Yes, your company should provide guidance. Yes, they should support you in that training. No, it is not their job to enable you to be successful as a frontline seller. So that's the first problem is accountability. And I'll pause there because I know that you can speak to this. And for what it's worth. I'm so happy to be here. You and I we have a similar vibe. And it's just the energy is so great. I love it.
Jonathan Fischer 4:03
Yeah, yeah. Likewise, we have way too many things in common. Yeah, it's awesome. So yeah, I totally agree. And I do think that there is I think there's unfortunately a little bit of a cynical calculation that's made as well as look into the research, you will find that the top 10% often get a lot of support. And the rest of them don't. And even some of my own trainers over the years have talked about, you know, feed the Eagles and starve the turkeys. Right. It's a little bit crass. You know what, there's an awful lot of additional potential within that 80% of the workforce. And if we have some good support available, I do think there is a need for us as leaders to do a better job. But today's topic is really more about what can you do if you're at a company that may maybe it's great, maybe your sales sales manager is doing what she can. There's it's a good solution, but there are some gaps and you can enter that gap yourself. You can own that responsibility for yourself and you got four really great areas of skill that If I'm that guy I can focus on and up my game. And one of the big ones is cold calling, you know, and that's, that's a big piece that we talk about a lot still to this day, churning through numbers, trying to get bodies on the phone and set appointments in the calendar is huge. It's critical.
James Buckley 5:14
My number one cold call still my number one.
Jonathan Fischer 5:18
Yeah, well talk to us about that. So what what are some of the big issues going on there the problems, things being missed opportunities lost? And how do you fix that?
James Buckley 5:25
Oh, the you know that. So there are a few key areas that I think salespeople struggle both early on. And even as veteran sellers, when they get a little bit less attracted to the calls because they get better at writing emails, they get better at social selling, when they turn into veterans, they use all these other channels, and then they avoid the one that typically makes people uncomfortable, right, that cold call. So it's the intro that usually becomes the talking point when they're a young seller new in the game. And then it's the transition later on, how do I go from the intro to the value prop to the pricing, and so on and so forth. So the transitions become the problem later. But the intro is the one I like to focus on most of the time, because it's the thing that we have to be able to dial in, if we want to keep the conversation moving, and earn the right to keep talking. That's the name of the game. Chet Holmes Ultimate Sales Machine, we have to earn it every single step, we have to earn it, we have to right, we have to earn the right to keep talking. So I want to give you some common openings that I see all the time on calls, and I hear them all a lot. And I think that they are dated. And I think that they are ineffective in the modern 2022 Selling environment. The first one is how are you today? Please don't waste decision makers time with how are you today? It it feels the same? When you get that introduction, that question in a DM from a random half naked person on Instagram. Right? And you're like, nope. Same exact feeling. You're like that's not for me. I don't have time for that. Yeah. And you move on about your day. Right?
Jonathan Fischer 6:55
Right. It's almost like why the heck do you care? I don't know. You don't know you really care how I'm doing?
James Buckley 7:00
I mean, yeah. But my friend John Barrows will always say what if you what if they say something terrible? I'm terrible. My dad died yesterday. What are you going to say that like you're in a position here? So that's one that I think could be it could be better. And then this one is another one that I think younger people do a lot and it gets them shut down a lot of time. Is this a bad time? Is this a good time? I hear both of those a lot. And those are easy nose and yeses. They're closed ended. And anytime you ask them people say, yep, that's a bad time. It's always a bad time for a cold always.
Jonathan Fischer 7:35
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally.
James Buckley 7:37
So you're giving them an opportunity to hang up the phone?
Jonathan Fischer 7:40
Absolutely. You are. Why do you think these have stuck? By the way? You've got a few more you're gonna cover but I mean, it does seem old. What's going on? Why? Why do we still hear this in 2022?
James Buckley 7:49
Yeah, I think because their comfort phrases, their phrases, we're familiar with their things that we can say to our friends. And it doesn't, it doesn't faze them, right. Because we're not in a sales situation there. We can say, Hey, what's up? Is this a good time to our cousin when we call them and it's four in the afternoon. And we don't know if they're still at work or not. So we feel comfortable saying that to strange strangers as well, like we, these are strangers. That's the different context, right? When you call your mom, you're like, Hey, how are you? Right, I'm calling I'm calling. How's your day going? Right? We say these things to people we know. They don't translate the same when you're calling a stranger that's not expecting your call, and doesn't have any intention of giving you attention today. That's that they don't function in that same environment the same way. And then if I do nothing else, I will remove these words from our vernacular, touching base checking in and following up. I think these are some a John Morgan, myself, Leslie Shelley. Everyone at my team agrees these are the most overused phrases that we use and what they translate to is, I have no real reason for reaching out to you today.To serve myself, no agenda?
Jonathan Fischer 8:59
Yeah. Just Oh, just wasting your time. You know, randomly.
James Buckley 9:04
So I know, I know, the thing that people always say to me is like, James Yeah, we all say these things. It's 100% True. But if you're gonna talk about things that we should stop saying, you have to replace it with something. So what, why don't we give you some stuff to replace it with? You wanna do that?
Jonathan Fischer 9:16
Please, please? What do we say?
James Buckley 9:17
All right. So first of all, I want to give you a good opener that I use all the time and it starts like this. Thanks for taking my call. If you know it's the person that you're about to talk to, thanks for taking my call is a pattern interrupt because nobody gets thanks for taking a cold call. Right. We use this every day when we do cold calls. The other thing you say right after that is do you have a moment before your next meeting? This does a couple things do you have a moment is acknowledging the fact that this is an unscheduled call before your next meeting steals their ability to say I'm in a meeting, which is the dumbest thing that prospects say to us when they pick up our cold calls, because we know you're not in a meeting. Nope. I've never been in a conference, a meeting with anybody and so But he called me and I didn't know the number and I was like, Oh, hang on guys. I gotta take this random. That's never happened to ever. Yeah, exactly. And then you want to immediately transition to the reason for my call is and then you fill in the blank. This is the most powerful transition. Remember earlier we talked about when you get better at the openers, the transition becomes the problem. Okay, so this is the transition sentence. The reason for my call is people like you struggle with X, they use my Y to get Z. Now you've got an actual reason for reaching out people like them who you know, they struggle with this thing they use are whatever it is to get this result.
Jonathan Fischer 10:41
Nice. So yeah, can you give us your actual real world one that that you use? Like, say I'm the guy you're calling?
James Buckley 10:47
Yeah, if it's you, and you're a VP of Sales my opener is, and I'm gonna do it right. Well do the Chet Holmes I love it. Right. I'm gonna say yeah. hotseat. Jonathan, please. Yeah, speaking. Hey, Jonathan, thanks for taking the call. Do you have a minute before your next meeting?
Jonathan Fischer 11:03
Yeah, just a brief minute, go ahead. We got great,
James Buckley 11:06
maybe you can help me the reason I'm calling is VPs of sales, like you say that they struggle with providing value to their veteran sales reps, while still being able to onboard their new reps at the same time, and they use are filling the funnel training, to be able to onboard and get them productive right out of boot camp, while still giving new skills to their older reps that have been in the game for a while. You have a second to talk about this. Do you want to put something on the calendar?
Jonathan Fischer 11:29
It sounds interesting. Like what are you talking about here? You guys have some sort of a training format you offer? What is that?
James Buckley 11:35
Yeah, yeah, it's more of a membership. Really, it's like a continuous learning experience. But it's with human beings. It's not like a robotic experience. There's recorded stuff, but there's a whole other platform involved in it, we can definitely set something up and show you the in depth. You can ask lots of technical questions, if you like. And I'd love to learn more about what you guys are doing for training now.
Jonathan Fischer 11:53
Dot dot dot, I like it. I mean, I was I was kind of getting in stakes, I get these calls. And yeah, I mean, I would just get on the call. And if I didn't hear you and every blue moon, maybe they've been through your training, getting a better quality call like that. And yeah, I mean, right? Because if it's done that professionally, you're already kind of you're you're you're giving a little taste of your of your goods right there. Right? If your claim is that you're can teach great sales skills you're demonstrating right then and there. I'm intrigued on that basis. If I'm in business developments, I like that a lot.
James Buckley 12:23
It's a really hard thing to say no to another human being. But it's really easy to say no to a robot. And when you feel like someone's reading off a page, when you feel like they're not being genuine with their personality. It's an easy shutdown, right? That's natural. Nowhere is this more obvious than when we pick up the phone on a strange number. And we're like, this is James, how can I help you? And the first thing we hear is, we are calling about your Auto Warranty. We don't even listen to it anymore. We just hang up, right? And then we block the number. Right? Right, right?
Jonathan Fischer 12:51
Well, you know, this takes a lot of confidence to because if you're really self assured, and you know that you're just you are comfortable in your own skin, and you're basically communicating that through the phone call. If we if we're gonna go back to the other side of the table as sales leaders, I really want to work on the competence level of my team. And that probably means, you know, coaching with them doing a lot of hot seats, getting to where they feel so comfortable, that the nerves aren't there anymore. They feel a tingling because they it's fun,
James Buckley 13:17
you know, so I'll talk to you later, I'll talk to your leaders that are here, right? Have your people stand up and look in the mirror and deliver these openers, let them own the language. If they don't talk like that. Don't train them to talk like that. Give them the language foundation, and then let them change it. So they own it, make it their own. They're going to feel much more excited about delivering it, it's going to come out more authentic and it's going to be more effective.
Jonathan Fischer 13:41
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, script should be a guide. You have to kind of own it yourself. It can't be a word for word. It's not a recitation. Right?
James Buckley 13:48
It's my friend, my friend Richard Harris will say that it's okay to have a script. It's not okay to sound scripted.
Jonathan Fischer 13:53
I love it as well. Perfect. Perfect, perfect. So a cold calling awesome. So another very, very common tool to trade. You know, obviously, we use it every single day is email. And man email is a world of errors right now. And it can be really, really difficult to know exactly how to utilize it effectively. Talk to us about that.
James Buckley 14:14
Yeah, so I think people take for granted how important pieces of emails are. So let's talk about the structure of email. And the way it looks right now, my belief, and this is my belief, our data will show smaller messages tend to get more opens more responses. And that's because I think most decision making people are on the go a lot. They read most of what they need to read right here on their cell phone. And it's not necessarily that they're sitting on a laptop or with screens in front of them like we do it when we work at home. That said, the pieces of the email have to flow very nicely if you're going to open with a question, make it a very impactful question and preferably, not a closed ended question something that has to get some thoughts so how or what questions tend to go much farther When you open up with a question, but opening with a question takes confidence, like we said earlier, right? I think the other piece of the puzzle is, is it more than one scroll on a mobile device? If you're writing to somebody, and they have to scroll more than once we've all seen something come through and hit our screen. And we're like, nope, not reading that. Right? That is way too much. Right. So size matters in that instance. But here's the piece that I think is new, that I've been AB testing a lot of. And it's been really interesting capturing some of the data here, the sign off. If you use that as your variable, you can really see some different stuff. So I'll give you some sign offs that people use all the time. A lot of people that listen to this are gonna say I and all my emails like that. It's part of my E signature. Right? Like, that's what they do. Yours truly. Kind regards. Sincerely, Michael, favorite all the best, right? Okay, sometimes I'll add an of course, all the best, of course, right? Like we all do it. I'm guilty of it, too. If I'm writing an email from scratch, but here's some that I've been test driving, and they've been fun. I'll follow up. Okay. Oh, and an email, a prospecting email with all follow up. And it's I think that what happens is people read that and they go, I don't know if I want this guy following up with me. I should probably respond, because he's definitely not going anywhere. So our follow up, follow up. Yeah. Yeah, I like this one talk soon.
That's what I do. Like, I like that one truck soon. Right. Like, yeah, I feel like yo, I'm going to call you sometimes I'll be like, my next step is to call you tomorrow at two o'clock Talk soon.
Jonathan Fischer 16:45
Yeah. Well, there's intentionality behind that. Right. There's, there's both intentionality and there's an implied connection. Right. Like there's as though there's an ongoing conversation. That's what feels like to me.
James Buckley 16:56
There's this this familiarity? Yeah, I will say, Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. And then another one is, and this is my favorite one, sending you a connection request right now.That's good. I like that one. Because Because what happens is just moments later, you'll see them accept the connection request or view your profile. Yeah. And then, you know, they looked at your email, you know?
You're a candidate that I've been, I've been test driving, and they've been a lot of fun.
Jonathan Fischer 17:29
I like that. Now, going back to the the first part that you mentioned, sort of open ended versus closed ended questions. Are you able to give us a couple of examples of the one versus the other? Just to clarify,
James Buckley 17:39
yeah, sure. Sure. So a good a good, a good way to look at questions is closed ended, open ended, and then layering questions. Those are like the three forms of questions that we seem to talk about a lot with sellers. So a good example of what I wouldn't say it's a bad question. But I would say it's a closed ended question that is hard to bounce back from no matter the answer. So I used to sell for a company, it was required that a company use salesforce.com in order Salesforce Sales Cloud, to use our product. So I would say do you use Salesforce? Well, they would say yes or no. But if they said no, I couldn't really prove that they didn't write that they did. Right. So it was an easy like, they see the pitch coming. And they know that if they say no, they're not going to get the pitch. So I was I was literally setting myself up for failure by asking this closed ended question. Many people were using Salesforce, and they were the decision maker. But they weren't. They weren't going to tell me that because they knew that if they say, Yeah, we use Salesforce every day, here comes the pitch. Right? So so close into question not to ask I later change that question to how familiar are you with Salesforce? And oh, man, did the answers change? Oh, yeah, we use it every day. I love it. The only problem I have? Is that what I would sell to?
Jonathan Fischer 18:57
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's great. Your double edged sword with that one? That's great.
James Buckley 19:02
So notice that that's a how question and it requires more of an answer. So you can still ask your clothes into questions, but you have to ask them in a different way that prompts somebody to put some actual thought in the answer that you get. And the layering questions is great. So to use that one is, or how familiar are you with Salesforce? Oh, we use it every day. I love it. My only issue is x. And I say that's the reason I asked. So let me ask you this, if I could solve that problem for you. Could you and I set up a meeting where I could show you all the technical side? You could ask a bunch of questions. Yeah, that was like, as conversational as you make. You know how many people were Yeah, sure. What do you I have my calendar in front of my calendar right now. This was the easiest thing to do in 2015 2016 For me, and all I was doing was just being a human being. I was just talking like I talk. I wasn't trying to like set you up for anything.
Jonathan Fischer 19:53
Right? Right, right. That's key, right. If there's an organic feeling to it, there's so much better than some up
James Buckley 20:00
There's, you can do them on the phone, you can do them on email, you can do them on social, there's so little, when you break it that stop with all the explanation, you don't need that you're not there yet.
Jonathan Fischer 20:10
Right, right. Well, speaking of social, I mean, that's the next logical thing to talk about. Right? You talked about the connection request social is huge right now, it needs a lot of attention. I think we saw recently that the the number of LinkedIn profiles here, just in the US alone, grew by something like 20 30 million new profiles in the last 30 years. So what, you know, what is your take on social? What's the best way to be utilizing it? And where are sales pros missing it there?
James Buckley 20:39
Yeah, so the last stat that I read was really interesting. It said, more people log into LinkedIn every month than there are US citizens, I think that's amazing. LinkedIn for being super active, right, is the better place to generate revenue. So here's where I think the boat is being missed. If you look at sales funnels, or Google sales cycles, sales funnels, what you're gonna find is a lot of complicated, tedious sales funnels that are usually made by marketers that don't sell. Right, if the person does that they need to go here. If they don't do that, then they fall into the next stage of the funnel. But then if they do this, and they come back up here, and they go over there, see this all the time, and you're like, Man, this was complicated sales funnel in the world. I think sellers and leaders need to embrace what made original content can do organically. So I think where people tend to overcomplicate things is where they try to say if this, then that, and there's a place for that, I'm not gonna say there's not a place for that, you know, it's in the process. But I think there's a simple sales funnel, that only has a couple of steps that makes more sense to me, and I teach this on my personal branding course, I will give it to you. So you can send it to everybody here. Content is the road to connection, that connection should lead to a conversation. In that conversation, I get the chance to build a relationship, some people will label this as trust. And once I have trust or relationship, I should have no problem either uncovering or driving opportunities, or just asking for opportunities. And the law of averages says the more opportunities I have, the more sales I make. That is a very human sales cycle. This is a 2000 plus year instinct that we are born with, to sit around a fire and eat meat and derive value from one another. You know, and that's it primal, all you're doing is creating content, and then talking to people that engage with it. It's extremely organic. And you always have context. I can't tell you how many sales conversations I've started by saying, Thanks for liking my posts, what was it you liked about it?
Jonathan Fischer 22:54
That is huge. What what are some pointers you would give to salespeople? You know, not everyone's a gifted copywriter. Not everyone knows how to create really great content. What are some tips? Maybe they're fantastic on the film? Yeah, great personality, and they've got a whole basket of other skills. What can they do to to fill that gap in their own profile their own world?
James Buckley 23:13
Yeah. So first of all, you don't have to be a gifted writer or gifted on video, or both. You could do memes. You could do small short form posts, random thoughts, metaphors. I mean, there are so many different avenues of content these days to go, you'd be hard pressed to find one that you weren't good at. Right? And you don't it doesn't have to be your face. You don't have to be that person. I know many, many accounts that are sales accounts that produce content, and no one knows who they are. The sales profit, right? The cash cow, you know, at, pick a label that you don't know who they are, right? Like, they're they're faceless. I know one guy that's got an SDR page. And I think he's got like 30,000 followers. Every time he posts something that's actionable. The people that like it, he just goes in, he reaches out to them. Hey, what's up? You know, I saw that you liked this thing. I follow that page, too. Let's connect and have a conversation about it. And he scheduled meetings this way. It's a context that you're really looking for. So I think that salespeople everywhere should start creating content, no matter what level of comfort they might have. That's geared towards their target audience. They don't have to be a subject matter experts. They can ask questions, do polls, they can use hashtags that are relative to their target audience when they talk about things that are targeted. And then reach out and said, hey, thanks. Thank you so much for your engagement. I love to have real words conversations with you. Right? That's what I do with people that connect with me are you in? And here's a quick tip. Here's, here's my best practice anybody that's inbound that connects with me, I send them this message. Thank you so much for connecting what prompted Due to reach out today, and prompted is my searchable term. And then once a month or so I'll go through and I'll search for the term prompted. And anyone that ignored me and never responded to that weeks and weeks ago, I removed them from my network. And that's how I have a valuable network. I removed a really good tip, I don't stick to your will that ignore me?
Jonathan Fischer 25:22
You know, we had a guest on a couple weeks ago, we talked about this, that, you know, just having connections isn't that valuable. If you really want them to be assets, they've got to be really truly part of your tribe, part of who you're trying to target. I like that. That's a really good practical tip.
James Buckley 25:36
You can also do the same thing with birthdays. Sometimes I'll get like notifications that it's somebody's birthday. And I'll be like, Oh, let me see whose birthday it is. And if I've never talked to them, and they've ignored me for the last three attempts to get in touch with them over the last year. I'm like Happy Birthday. You're out of here.
Jonathan Fischer 25:50
Yeah, that's nice. I maybe it's a it's a gift to you on their birthday, perhaps. But yeah. So you, you mentioned about creating assets, you lose video a minute ago. Now let's talk about that as well, because I think there's some innovative ways that I've heard you talk about that as a tool that's available to an individual sales producer. Explain.
James Buckley 26:12
Yeah, so I have a couple of formulas here that I'll give. But first, let me tell you some stats. So everybody will say and I think even our data used to point to not sending videos on your first touch. So I wanted to really try and like, Hey, does that work? And it turns out, it's right. If you send a video on your first touch, and it is a standard dry pitch video, it performs poorly. But this particular formula works really well as a first touch. So here was my process, I would reach out and I would send a blank connection request on LinkedIn first and then I would send this email to them with a video from a product called vid yard. They're a sponsor of JB sales, VID yard is an easy Chrome extension, you should check it out. If you haven't, there's a lot of video apps out there. Find the one that works best for you. That's the best thing to do. But vid yard is my preference since 2015. So this is my video and I sent this video on one Thursday to 90 Cold prospects with an email, okay. Okay. And at the end of the day, I had scheduled six meetings, and nine of them not in nine hours. And four of them were enterprise. So six meetings in nine hours and four of them were enterprise level. This was the video No shit, I'm not making this up. I would say, I don't know how many videos like this. You get? I'll use their name. If it was you. I'd say Hey, Jonathan, I don't know how many videos like this you get. But I wanted to make one just for you. The reason I'm reaching out to you is that you do X and people like you use my Y to get Z. I would love to have this conversation, no rush, no pressure. There's a link right here that you can click and schedule a time that works for you. And I look forward to talking soon. And that's the video. Wow, simple. Love it. I did not tell you my name. I did not tell you who I'm with. Because you don't care about that. Right? Right. I'm reaching out to you for this reason. Let's have a real conversation. scheduled it right here. And if you didn't schedule it, and I go and I look for my key terms. Have a great day like, it's okay. I'm gonna reach out again. I'm gonna try again. I'm gonna leave thoughtful commentary. It's hard to ignore me.
Jonathan Fischer 28:16
Yeah, I love that. Well, I mean, gosh, James is the time is blown by and you've just been dropping golden nuggets left and right. So this has been a fantastic show already. I always try to leave a little time. If you can linger for some q&a at the end. We'll see if additional questions have come in from our audience here. What it was, we had one gentleman wondering what is your take on good old fashioned snail mail? I thought about this too getting is making a comeback. Is it worth including that in the mix? What are your thoughts?
James Buckley 28:41
You know, I think it depends on the tear of the account, if it's an enterprise account, and it's worth investing the long term play and having that as a step, definitely, you should go for it because you never know which touch is going to be the one that makes the impact and gets the reply. But at the same time, it's not something that's super effective in the SMB world, the small to medium business world. I would also note that gifting has to be relative and contextual. Don't just send random things to people that they don't care about. Go look at their social profiles. What kind of person is this? What's a gift they would appreciate? Right? That's what's going to make the impact and get you where you want to go.Yeah, Chet Holmes always talked about the lumpy package.
Jonathan Fischer 29:20
And yeah, you don't send that to just anybody but on key accounts, you know, if it's a real dream account, you're gonna win it probably would stand out, right? Yeah.Are there other more conventional approaches that you still think may have some legs on them again, maybe in this, you know, this digital age, it's easy to overlook?
James Buckley 29:36
I, you know, I don't think anything ever dies. I'm going to speak from the heart here. I think it's all circular. You know, cold calling was dead two years ago. It's back now. Cold calling dies every year. There's always a cohort of people out there talking about cold calling isn't effective. And then there's this huge cohort of people that come forward and go yo, I do it every day and you're wrong, right? Like it's all circular and sellers find the channels that they are comfortable with. And then they gravitate towards those channels. It's also a personality type. Some introverts prefer email because they don't like conversations with strangers. So you've got to know your prospect. Who are you about to reach out to? Here's a quick tip, go on LinkedIn and stop in three places. The first one is their profile picture. Do they look like this? Yeah, that person is not excited to hear from you. And I don't care what you're saying, do they look like me? I'm super approachable. You can talk to me about anything? And I'll talk back, right? Stop at their about page. What's their love language? Do they talk in numbers, percentages, math, you should talk to them about that stuff. That's how they think? Or are they saying words like amazing, wonderful, awesome. These people care about how you make them feel. So change your language. And then finally, look at their job description. If it was copied and pasted from the LinkedIn page, it's not very useful. But if they actually wrote it, you should probably talk to them about this stuff.
Jonathan Fischer 30:57
Here's good stuff. So the question for you. So if someone is they understood, they buy in? They agree, James, I want to invest in my own training. And maybe there's something really valuable that that's going to cost some money. You know, should they you know, what are your feelings on that? Should they try to maybe push that through leadership and get that funded? Should they just fit the bill themselves? Like it's talking about that a little bit in the investment?
James Buckley 31:17
That's great question. Some companies provide stipends for their employees, like they get an annual amount of money that they can spend on development. Talk to your leaders about that, and see if it's available to you, they don't always come right out and tell you that that's available to you. Some companies will flat out say we have a relationship with a training company. And that's where we go. So that's what we're going to do. Okay, go ahead and go through that training. But it's up to you to make yourself successful, right? So if you do go that route, and your leadership says, No, I don't think we're gonna invest in that. Invest your own money, right? Invest in yourself, go home, on your weekends, and your Friday nights. And watch a webinar before you go out with your friends that night. Learn how to write better emails, craft better follow up messages, send better proposals, these types of skill sets are an investment in your future. It has nothing to do with the company, especially if the company wants nothing to do with your training. So you've got to take that step. And you've got to say, how am I going to make me successful, and enable myself to hit goals that I've set for myself and that my company has set for me so that I can advance in my career. Remember that this is not a job. This is a career and a lifestyle. If you don't accept that you're going to struggle no matter what decisions you make. So invest in yourself or not. That's the ultimate decision you're making. Whether or not somebody else pays for it. That's the decision you're making here.
Jonathan Fischer 32:44
I love it. Well, James, that's a great place to close out what a fantastic show we've had together. We're going to have to have you come back we'll pick another topic. And then you're going to drop a whole lot more golden nuggets for our audience. Thanks so much for being here with us today. You got it man. Thanks for having me. If you want to learn more, check us out at join JB sales.com. Join JB sales.com. Thanks again. Take everybody
