The Art of Closing Sales

Dive deep into the art of sales with us in this episode. Wes Schaeffer, the Sales Whisperer, unlocks the secret: every step in sales is a step towards a meaningful close.

Key Takeaways from This Episode:

• Every part of your sales journey holds power.
• Recognizing a timely "no" can be as golden as a "yes."
• Empathy is your game-changer; see through your prospect's eyes.

Master these insights and transform your sales approach.

Wes Schaeffer, the mastermind behind The Sales Whisperer, has honed his sales techniques since 1988. A mentor to thousands, his methods have driven growth for global giants like Google and Dell. Dive in and learn from the best.

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Key Takeaways

• The Importance of the Sales Process - Modern sales techniques require a shift from the traditional "always be closing" to a more concise approach. This involves providing a little information at a time, tracking interest, and then delivering more based on the prospect's engagement.
• Understanding Sales Psyche - Salespeople often have to deal with internal challenges, including overcoming their own doubts or "head trash." This could be due to societal perceptions of sales or personal experiences.
• Effective Communication in Sales - Cold outreach and warm outreach mistakes often include sending too much information at once. Instead, the approach should be concise, and the engagement should be tracked.

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Top 3 Reasons to Listen

Reframing Sales: Discover why every interaction in the sales process is essentially a close, challenging traditional perceptions of the sales journey.

Real-world Examples: Schaeffer's anecdotes and experiences offer relatable insights, highlighting challenges and solutions in real-world scenarios.

Expert Insights: Wes Schaeffer, known as the Sales Whisperer®, shares his wealth of experience, offering listeners a chance to learn from one of the industry's best.

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More About Today's Guest, Wes Schaeffer

Sell more, faster, at higher margin, with less stress. Host of TheSalesPodcast.com.
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In 1997, Wes embarked on a new journey after leaving the Air Force, diving headfirst into commissioned sales, only to face early setbacks. Within half a year, he found himself collecting unemployment benefits in Alabama, where his second son arrived just 360 days after the first. Facing a series of challenges, including a legal battle with his former employer, Wes decided to forge his own path. He scoured the classifieds, securing a sales position in late April 1998, marking the beginning of his illustrious career in selling manufactured homes in Mobile, AL. Wes's remarkable journey led to a prosperous career, encompassing sales of diverse products and services to major companies worldwide and invaluable insights into the fundamental principles of successful salesmanship, all of which he now shares through his self-guided course, "THE MAKE EVERY SALE PROGRAM."

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A Transcription of The Talk

Mark Drager: Wes Schaeffer, you are known as the sales whisperer. I'm so excited to dig into this with you because we are going to talk about the art of the clothes. Now you have this presentation that you give but basically, you break it down to we got to focus on the opening, we got to structure things the right way to make sure that we can always move people forward and then follow up, follow up, follow up. I think so many of us struggle with that break this down for us a system, why is it so powerful? And why does it work?

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Wes Schaeffer: To make any sale you must make every sale. So every step is a close. And so the follow up is a close, you know, my inbox is filled with stuff with bad follow up, and I sign up for things that I'm genuinely interested in. But it's like, we're all busy. I'm busy moving my website, I'm moving my CRM, I'm changing platforms. After nine years, I've had two grandsons born between June and August. My mom was in town two weeks ago for a week my dad's in town right now, for a week, we're planning a family reunion, you know, I got, I got kids doing stuff, I got business to take care of things that I'm genuinely interested in, they fall behind. So you've got to nudge me, okay. Now, imagine if I, if I don't know that I'm interested in your stuff. And this is some cold outreach, you better be pretty good at staying in touch. And where people make the mistake in cold outreach, and in warm outreach and continuing the dialogue. They send too much information, you know, you everybody's familiar with ABCs of closing, always be closing, it's like no, that is such crap. The new ABCs of closing, or upselling are always be concise. Okay, don't send me every single thing is just I don't have the time and you don't know exactly what I'm interested in, send me a little nugget sent, have a link to you know, learn more, read more, and then have a tracking link in that you can tell if I click on the link that I hang out on the page where the information was. So you're better off sending more frequent, but shorter correspondence with links to relevant information, let the prospect you know choose their own adventure. Okay, so because people all the time, they'll come to me and ask if I can help with copywriting and creating these these sequences? And I'm like, Yeah, I'm happy to, because I charge a lot for it. And it's super easy, you know, because I get to know their story. Why are they different? Why are they unique, and then just create a little bit, a little short drip sequence once a day, once every other day? Depends on the on the size of the sale, and the life cycle.

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So like in real estate, for example, let's say we write 12 emails. And if somebody is a long term prospect, you know, they're looking in September, kind of getting some feelers because next summer, when the kids are out of school, they're gonna make a move. So that's a nine or 12 month drip sequence. If somebody's like, hey, you know, we're gonna move at the first of the year. Okay, I'll take that same 12-month sequence, and compress that into 12 weeks, same content, just increasing the frequency. And if somebody's like, Hey, I'm hot to try it. I'm, I'm changing jobs or whatever we're moving our parents in with us. We need to we need a house in the next 30 to 45 days, that same sequence will go like every three days. So exact same content, right. So it's just the frequency and the timing of it that changes. But most people, they don't do it. They have bad messaging, no really good information. It's all me, me, me. We assess us when it's focused on you the prospect just they lose interest. You know, so I always equate it to dating because everybody has dated, or at least said no to a date. Why'd you say no to a date because the approach was bad. But when you go out on a date, you know, and the guy is just talking about himself. Oh, here's where I went to school. Oh, here's all about my business. Oh, you should see my car. Oh, you see my other car? You know, you're just like, okay, you know, I gotta get out of this date. This is killing me.

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Mark Drager: This is so good. You remind me of two things. I'm sure you're familiar with Dean Jackson, a great copywriter from Genius Network. I always loved his line, right? There are two types of customers: those who are ready to buy today and those who are not ready to buy today, and that's it. Like there's no other type of customer. So what you're really hitting on is a lot of messaging and a lot of follow up and a lot of stuff in my inbox as well. Even my phone still rings. I can't believe that, but people are just like, "You want to buy, you want to buy, you want to buy." Well, I'm not ready to buy today. I don't even know if I have a need. I don't have a problem. The thought of switching from this to that is so much time, it's so much money, it's so much effort. I'm not sure it's worth it. So what you're saying is we should be focusing a lot more time and effort, perhaps not ignoring the immediate hot leads or the marketing qualified leads that are coming in, or the people who need to move forward through a process because they have an identified need, an identified budget. They're ready to make a purchasing decision. But for that whole other category of people who will be your customer one day but are not ready to buy now, the trick is just to get in front of them more often with lighter content so that we're not overwhelming them.

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Wes Schaeffer: Yeah. And you know, you're slow cooking them. Look, if somebody knows they have a problem, right? Like, if right now, boom, I develop chest pain, shortness of breath, whatever, I'm not even thinking, I'm just like walking off the camera, grabbing my wife, and go, go go. And when I get to the hospital, I'm not saying, "Who's qualified? How much do you charge? How much is that anesthesia? What kind of saw are you going to use to cut my chest open?" Right? I'm like, "Make the pain go away." Those are great. And you get those leads. If you've got that dialed in, you know, you don't need any help.

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Mark Drager: People suck at following up with even those. Like the people who have a need, they still suck at the follow-up.

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Wes Schaeffer: There better not be any follow up there. You better just take their money. But yes, people still screw that up, you know? Well, you know, maybe it's indigestion, and you're right, maybe it is indigestion. Right. But I mean, you get the point when somebody is in great pain, they follow your guidance. So when you're doing outreach, that initial outbound, the prospect has not yet. They either don't know they have a problem, or they haven't put a dollar figure on that pain. Because look, people, no pain, no purchase, okay? And if they can't put a dollar figure on that purchase, then your solution is going to be too expensive. That is just that. So you've got to get them talking. You know, people are like, "Oh, I bought a big TV. I didn't have any pain." Yeah, you did somewhere, growing up, maybe you were embarrassed. You were nine years old, and your family had an old black and white TV, and your friends got a big, new console TV with the record player built in. And you know, you felt poor, there's something going on, you got an asshole neighbor, that got a 65 inch TV. So you're getting a 70 inch TV because you hate that guy. There. Somewhere underneath all of it. There's some pain there that you're trying to fix. And so what is the pain worth, you know, kind of those TVs were $3,000 a month ain't that bad? You walk into Sam's Club and it's like Labor Day Sale? You know? $1,200 Okay, I'll buy it. So you've got to find the pain. So with the prospect, you know, you ever thought about this, you ever thought about sales trigger your thought about staging? CRMs? Why would it change? CRM is such a pain, you know, you got to start bubbling things up, you know, using the heart attack, you know, analysis say, hey, you know, Are you Are you a male between the ages of you know, 45 and 65? Yeah. Do you exercise less than you should? Yeah. Do you eat a little more junk food than you should? Yeah. When you go up and down stairs, do you get shortness of breath? Oh, yeah. After lunch, you know, do you find yourself like low energy even taking a nap? Like not able to stay awake? Oh, my gosh, yes. You know, so you start planting the seed and they go, what does that mean? Because prospects only contact you when they cannot find the information themselves. Okay, I can go into Google go into WebMD. Start typing this out. Maybe I have indigestion maybe I need a quadruple bypass.

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Maybe I have Ebola? Who knows? Right? It's gonna give me a million different things. I'm gonna keep clicking, clicking, clicking, going down that web, going down that well, right, going down that rabbit hole. When I'm just frustrated, confused, worried. Now I call my physician. Can I come in? What's going on? So now they'll reach out when they can't answer their questions. And that's our job as salespeople is to ask questions that the prospect cannot answer. Too many salespeople yap, yap, yap, they want to tell you everything. They want to prove how smart they are. Okay? But again, always be concise. People will come to me and say, Phil, I want to buy a CRM, show me the CRM. Okay, do you have seven days? We're talking about? Going to take about 12 hours a day for seven days straight for me to show you this CRM? Or can you kind of let me know what you're looking at what you need, we can narrow down the focus, and we can knock us out in about 20 minutes, you got to get into it to narrow it down. Right. So then, then you can start that well, why is that an issue? Why are you doing that? How are you doing? Follow up? What do you mean, you're manually entering the leads into your counting? Because it doesn't it doesn't talk it's not synchronized with your CRM, and that's not synchronized with your landing page. What? How much time does that take? Who's doing that? Oh, the yields are falling through you got to VAs that are manually entering the state of Whoa, how long has that been an issue? How much do they cost? Now let's say okay, you know, they're spending five grand a month for VA is there. Two or three deals are slipping through the cracks each month? Those are 10 grand apiece. That sounds to me like you got like a $30,000 a month problem. Yeah. Now when I recommend a $20,000 training and technology implementation solution to solve a $360,000 a year problem, that 20 grand offer, they should jump at that right but if I just can't Do you need a $20,000 CRM if you're high?

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Mark Drager: But Wes, this this is like what you're saying to me, it's so obvious. Now, it's obvious to me it's obvious to you and I hoping you're listening, you're like, This is obvious as well. But But there may be people out there who are listening this going, oh, man, I tried to approach prospects, I tried to create content, I tried to do these things, and like, people just don't open up. Now, for me, I don't give them a choice. It's like, I'm gonna have a conversation reveal. Like, we get to like, such detailed information so quickly, because I know that I need the information I ask with confidence. And I'm like, Yeah, I want to know what your gross margins are. I want to know what your net margins are. I want to know what this is. I want to know how much you spent, like, if you're not willing to give me the information, I cannot help you. And if I can't help, you are wasting our time. And so I come in with confidence. I know most people who are experienced can come up with confidence, they know what to ask. But for those who aren't. Maybe so experienced that this how do you crack through how do you break through and, and put yourself into a position where you can ask some of these questions and open up some of these pain points.

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Wes Schaeffer: Yeah, most salespeople don't feel worthy. They feel like they're an interruption. Okay, and then all of my training, helping the salesperson work on their sales psyche, right? Because you got to get over that head trash. That's unfortunate. That's predominant in most people. We grow up, you know, even as a young child being told no, no, no. And eventually, we just get the creativity beaten out of us. A lot of people fall into sales. You know, I didn't go to school. I didn't get a degree in selling.

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Mark Drager: Is that a thing? Because I went to film school. I mean, I didn't, I don't even I didn't even go to college or university.

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Wes Schaeffer: Yeah, I think there is one school I can Florida somewhere, I think you can actually get a degree in sales. Somebody told me that a while ago. So so they fall into it. And so and there's a big misnomer in in all of my sales training. I, oh, write on a piece of paper and then I'll hold it or I'll give it to somebody fold it up. Say hold on to that. And I'll go, hey, when I say the word salesman or selling salesperson, what what adjectives spring, the mind and it always pushy, and I'll have them hold up the paper pushy, right? That's what we think of salespeople. But we don't want we're not pushy. We're not greedy. We're not manipulative. So now we're in sales. So we want to bend over backwards to act like see I'm different. But the reality is, by asking good questions, in a firm, professional manner, if you're selling to high income earners, if you're selling to decision makers, C level executives, of larger firms, they appreciate the directness. So you need you know, the old adage Robert Collier, you must enter the conversation going on in the mind of the prospect. I don't care how you feel. Think about the prospect, that individual is busy, they carved out 20 minutes, they don't want to talk about the weather, they don't want to talk about the game. I don't care that you don't feel worthy. Ask the questions that your prospect needs to answer these to have their own answers to and the more concise, the more courteous that you can be.

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Wes Schaeffer: Okay, the more curious you need to be genuinely curious and know, Hey, Mark, what's going on? You know, hang in round numbers, what kind of what kind of top line revenue you do, and in round numbers, how is this impacting sale? I'm not comfortable answering that. I understand. You may not be comfortable answering that. And I apologize if I rubbed you wrong if I come across as untrustworthy. But if you can't answer those questions, if you're not comfortable sharing that information with me, we probably don't need to continue this dialogue. Okay, hearing No, early is a win. Do many salespeople because they don't want to ask the hard questions. And again, enter the conversation going on them and the prospect that prospect wants information, they want to pick your brain and they don't want to pay for it. So they don't mind stringing us along a little bit if they can get some info out of you. Okay, so hearing No, early is a win for both of you. So, you know, hey, it sounds I apologize if I rubbed you wrong, came across as untrustworthy.

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But if that's how you say me, I mean, let's go ahead in this conversation, because we're not helping. Well, I'm not but that's not what I'm saying. I know you're probably saying is you probably had a lot of bad calls, pushy, greedy, manipulative salespeople driving things, you know, all they're interested in is, is making the sale, they don't give a crap even if it's the right fit. They look, the last thing I want to do is sell you something that you don't want or need, and then you badmouth me on social media for the next decade. But I need to understand this. We have solutions that are five grand 10 grand 100 grand, you know, but if you don't have a $100,000 problem, I don't want to present you the $100,000 solution. You know, if we can kind of start over like, tell me where it hurts. No, you're right. I apologize. You know, just do my dad's in town. But you know, I'm moving websites, okay, I get it. But we can reset. So tell me what's happening. Reset the thing, you know, address the elephant in the room. And again, these hard chargers. They're like, I appreciate it. Good. Let's go. So you got it under Stan, who you're talking to, you know, we have to meet them where they are.

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Mark Drager: Yeah. I remember being at a HubSpot inbound, the conference, the HubSpot conference 2019. And I remember being in a presentation and and I think, out of all the presentations be super honest, there were like only three that impressed me. But one of them was a representative from Gong, the software that that sales teams used to be able to manage or measure how much time on the phone and keywords and all this stuff. But this gentleman gave a presentation. And I wish I remembered his name. I tried to look it up, and I couldn't find it. But it was about speed to impact or speed to value. And he said, You know, when you're in presentations, when you're in conversations, we want to go through the narrative. Well, let's start at the beginning. And then let's have this problem. And then let's have the solution revealed and and what we did with it, and then why we're so great. Like you want to go through your pitch, your presentation, your, your your series of questions in order, because you feel like it's a narrative.

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And it ends up taking like 2030 4050 minutes to get there, as opposed to just going like, Hey, here's, here's what it's about. Here's what what matters. Here's the pitch, here's the presentation, here's the outcome, here's the solution. Here's the work that we've done, like, like get to the very last slide first, and then say, Now, I have all of this information. We've done all of this stuff, we can go any direction you want. Tell me what do you need more information on? What do you want to know more about? And so now that's more than a pitch or presentation point of view. But But it sounds like what you're saying is the same thing. Like if we're dealing with a Thai people who want to be direct, who need us to be short, who need us to get to the point who knows that they want to spar with us. They're measuring how confident we are going in coming into the room, we need speed to value as well. We need to start the conversation towards the end and then back up based off of whichever additional information they might need to help qualify it I suppose.

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Wes Schaeffer: Yeah, I call it close first than present. Close first and present. You know, how would you start on your American server? Maybe maybe say Oh, well, you got to present it look if the concept is closed for pain, yeah, whatever acronym you want fans, right? Budget, authority, knee time, whatever acronym? Do they have pain? And they quantify the pain? Have they quantified the pain? Are you talking to the decision maker? You know, do they need and want to make a change in a timely manner this month this quarter, whatever you're dealing with, okay, great. Let's talk you know if they don't have it, say Look, man, if this is you know, you're being acquired. I have a blog fiscal year calendar year recessions, higher interest rate war in Ukraine, whatever. I mean, if that's too uncertain, I'm happy to do I can call you in January if this ain't gonna happen this quarter this year. I'm happy to stay in touch. No, no, no, I'm gonna make them close me. Now we I can get the board this has been an issue how long has it been an issue man has been an issue for three quarters. Okay. In round numbers. How am I okay? million dollars. Okay, cool. Cool. All right. Well, let's talk you know, I'm I'm having them tell me why I shouldn't be on the phone. You know, that's manipulator or like No, it's not it's just

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Mark Drager: okay so if this is an inbound lead if this is an inbound lead if this is someone who's looking reaching out or who's made contact with you, I can understand why when you jump on the call, or in the presentation or in the meeting, you can come in and help frame the conversation. Let's say this is cold outbound, like 100% Cold outbound you're interrupting as you mentioned their day their life or what have you. How do you position yourself in the place of authority when they did not ask you to come in and fix all of their problems?

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Wes Schaffer: Well, on a cold outbound, you're typically the goal is to qualify or disqualify for paying for interest Baba blah, and then set an appointment to have a deeper dive. Okay, so you're not selling a big solution on a one call. cold call, you prove you're different by acting different. You know, Hey, Mark, this is a sales call. And I take 27 seconds of your time to tell you I'm calling you decide if we ever speak again. Yeah, we got 27 seconds. All right. Now I'm gonna stack the odds in my favor. I've done some research. I know, you're in my sweet spot, b2b, you know, 50 to $100,000,000.07 to 15 salespeople, so whatever, I'm stacking the odds in my favor. So I know pretty good certainty. I got something that can help you. Whether or not it's good time and whenever All right, you know, we shall see. If I'm selling tires, and I'm you know, buy one get three free if you just bought four new tires yesterday. Sorry. You're like, Dude, I wish you to call me if you run this special again, please keep my number. You know, call me in 36 months, these tires will be worn out. Okay, fair enough. All right. But otherwise, like, I need to stack the odds in my favor. Hey, Mark, you know, I work with with C level executives in in SAS companies, you know, 50 to $100 million who are frustrated so now I hit him with the talking points frustrated with with salespeople that can't you know, the last one Sal they made was getting hired. They're upset about the unpredictability of their pipelines. They're concerned that they even have the right people on board. And some of them are just downright angry despite investing in, in information databases, landing pages, webinar, software, outbound direct mail, CRMs, all these different plugins, they're still not hitting their numbers. You know, Hey, Mark, I don't suppose you're dealing with any of these that you'd like to get off your plate in the next 90 days, are you if one of those hit a button? You know, it's like when you go deep sea fishing, you don't throw one line out there. Right? I mean, a good cat is gonna throw 10 of them out there. So our fists, you know, just below 10 meters? 50 meters or 300 meters different Lewers live artificial. Do you care which one it hits? You? Okay, you want a Marlin but a 300 pound tuna hits it. You're just gonna cut the lines. They screw that I want to Marlin and nothing else. No, you're going to ride that thing. Right. So I'm, I'm throwing a few things out there. I'm chumming the water, stacking the odds in my favor. And man, I have salespeople I have sales managers to go holy crap. Are you listening to our sales meeting this morning?

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And again, I'm entering the conversation going on the mind the prospect, I'm calling a decent list. I've done my homework. I know roughly the demographics, right, the psychographics of who I'm going after, and then I'm just throwing it out there. I know they have those problems. Okay. And now look, you may be busy. You know what, dude, bad timing. Hey, no sweat gonna be called later today. Next month, next year, you give me a couple of weeks. Okay. And I hang up. I don't set a date. You know, now. Now I'll go find you on LinkedIn. Hey, Mark. Thanks for taking my call. I'll reach out here in a little bit. But now there's another touch point maybe I sent an email. Maybe I send a handwritten letter A note a book, you know, I got a book, I'll mail a book. If I don't have a book I'll, I'll buy thinking Grow Rich. Everybody loves thinking grow rich. And I'll buy you can buy 25 of them at a time for like $3 apiece from an online discount store. And write a note. Hey, Mark, thanks for taking my call. I'll stay in touch. Reach out everything changes, though phone call, social media, email, physical mail. Okay, maybe I'll wait a month, I'll kind of start to look around. Are you active in some groups? You know, I can comment, share. Okay, start typing. Who the hell is this guy? All right. I call on three weeks. It's not so cold again. All right. So that's how I'd be following up, you know, multimedia multi step. We've got to meet them where they are. Maybe you're an audio guy, maybe you're a video guy. Maybe you read emails, listen to the boy. So I don't know. I'm gonna do I'm gonna drop all of those lines in the water. Okay, and you're gonna hit one of them eventually. Okay, and so you do that enough? You're gonna win more than you lose.

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Mark Drager: Ah, so good, Wes Schaffer. This has been amazing. One last question for you to wrap up. It's a question I end every interview with what is your number one tip or strategy to help us sell more?

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Wes Schaffer: What have already said enter the conversation going on the mind of the prospect. And the word for that is empathy. Right? It's different than sympathy. Great salespeople are empathetic. You see things from the vantage point of the prospect. You see the old thing, pull the chair around the conference table, sit on the same side. That's entering the conversation, understanding what they're going through and helping them address those needs. Truly being helpful seeking to serve and sales. They really do come easy. If if you apply that in your outreach and in your day to day efforts.