BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & PERSONAL GROWTH

Sell It Like Serhant: How to Sell More, Earn More, and Become the Ultimate Sales Machine — My takeaways.

The picture was borrowed from Audible.com.

The book is not a detailed guide on how to sell but rather a motivational kick with good points. As Ryan is in the real estate business, most examples are around properties. Still, I found all those examples applicable to my tech business. Ryan is an exceptionally successful real estate agent, and he closes 7 figure deals daily. It’s fascinating to read how a person who couldn’t afford a meal one day became such a successful sales professional. Makes me believe that such an ordinary person as myself can achieve something as well.

The Three Critical Ideas from the book (IMHO)

1. The Three F: Follow up, Follow through and Follow Back. Don’t delay a follow-up email. Send it straight after the connection. And keep your clients updated with the process (follow-through). Do you know what I did when I finished reading this chapter? Correct, I send follow-back emails to all my previous clients and business connections. And guess what? — Nothing, no one has responded. But I’ll keep sending these emails with the company updates and general information in the industry monthly.
2. “Build the house first”. Ryan shared his childhood story about a fancy fence and gates he and his brother passed daily, guessing if Batman lives there. One day they decided to check who lived there. They were amused with the great garden and landscape when they jumped over the fence. And a huge pit for the house foundation, nothing else. Later they found that it was some guy’s ambitious project. He wanted to build a castle with the best gardens. He ordered expensive trees from Europe and stuff for gardening. He started landscaping and ran out of money, and the bank ceased his property. Lesson — begin with the most important things first and then work on the decorations. This idea pops in other chapters as well, e.g. start your day with the most challenging or “don’t want to do” task, and when starting a business, think about getting clients and sales rather than how your office should look like.
3. “You are surrounded by opportunity,” Ryan suggests making contacts daily. New connections — meaning new opportunities and referrals. Just make it a rule to connect with new people every day. Ryan makes at least 3 new connections daily. He uses every opportunity: gym, coffee shop, holidays. I’ve never pushed myself to connect with people, although I knew that connections are a huge part of a successful business. These days I meet at least one new person every day: introducing myself and finding out what they do for a living. Then follow up on LinkedIn, Facebook or WhatsApp. I’m planning to increase the number when I become more confident.

Sales stages — From client’s view

If during a sale process something goes wrong, the salesperson is always blamed. Hence, it’s good to recognise the different stages the client may go through while purchasing something big:

1. Excitement. The client is excited about the purchase and wants to hear about the benefits only. The shortest stage.
2. Frustration. The customer gets easily frustrated by any obstacle during the process. E.g. slight delivery delay, the seller doesn’t want to give a better discount, etc. Expect to receive often emails or calls.
3. Fear of purchasing a wrong item or making not the best possible deal. There are even more emails/calls with an anxious tone and requests to cancel the agreement.
4. Disappointment in the purchased product. The purchase didn’t fill their expectations, and that purple button should be less shiny.
5. Acceptance. The client realises that they have no other options anyway. The deal has been done, and now they need to focus on the bright side of the purchase. Good time to help them with this task: sending them information about similar items which sold for bigger dollars than they paid, for example.
6. Happiness. The client recalls all the positive things about why they dipped into this deal.
7. Relief easy-to-recognise stage. It’s when the client says that was the best/great/good/fantastic deal, and THEY (not you who followed and supported them through the whole process) were right purchasing this product. This means you’ve done a great job, and it’s time to celebrate.

Quotes, snips and thoughts

“Keep more balls in the air,” Ryan suggests that we should not hyper-focus on one deal and work on as many deals at the same time as possible (more balls in the air). It takes as much energy to manage one deal as it does four, six, etc. But if you got more options, you’re not dependent on one deal, no desperation, and no pushy commission drops, no questions “what next?”

“You won’t recognise the secret to your success until you’ve already lived it.” — an exciting thought. I’ve seen that in a few books and heard that from a few successful friends. They also add: “And then you wonder why it took you so long to get there.”

“If you hit a bump along the way, don’t think it’s all over. You’ve decided on your final destination (being successful), then do whatever it takes to get there. There will be more bumps, but in the end, they don’t matter.” — if that was a straight road, everyone would be on the other end already.

“Yes, success is about how hard you work, but it is also about your endurance and how long you can keep those balls in the air.”

“Sales is like a race, except no one is going to tell you what kind of race it is until the gun goes off.” — for me, that means that trying to make everything perfect before approaching the clients is pointless. The rules and requirements may change many times before you even start.

“Face-to-face meetings are the best” — it’s harder to say NO in person, it’s easier to explain the WHY with all the gestures and your facial expressions, it’s pretty often that email or a call won’t work as good to close the sale.

“Objections will come with almost every deal” — learning how to overcome those objections and turn negatives to positives is the key to a successful sale.

“Many salespeople say no to an opportunity just because the idea of stepping into uncharted territory makes them uncomfortable,” saying “YES” will give you an advantage. It could be frightening, but you always have the option to figure it out later. I believe it’s better to have more options you said YES than fewer options at all?

“People don’t like being sold. They like to shop with friends.”

“The Wow effect”, Ryan shared how he learned this from a shoe seller. Ryan was shopping for budget snickers, but the seller showed him an expensive pair first, explaining all the benefits he would receive compared to the budget option. Ryan fell in love with those expensive shoes and forgot to think about the cheaper option. But he didn’t plan to spend so much money. The shoe guy showed him a more affordable alternative somewhere between budget and expensive options. Those shoes had almost the same benefits as the expensive ones, so Ryan got them, wondering that he happily spent hundreds more than he initially planned.

“People buy emotionally” — apart from the rational motivation, a successful sales professional could negotiate with customers’ feelings.

Follow the Finder-Keeper-Doer pattern. Ryan suggests that you allocate time to each hat despite how busy you’re. Finder — managing and planning, Keeper — finance and legal, Doer — the hardworker (most of the day, you’d wear this hat).

Identify your Four Tenets of Work

1. The Why: Why do you want to do this?
2. The Work: What would you do towards success?
3. The Wall: What are you running from? — Let fear drive you,
4. The Win: What are you doing this all for?

Balls will fall, and the reasons a ball may be dropped are:

1. You fail to communicate with the client.
2. You’re replying, not responding.
3. You’ve set unrealistic expectations.
4. You’ve not shown the required knowledge.
5. Wrong approach for this client.
6. You’re overly focused on the money.

Learn from it and move forward.

And the final thought, as Ryan says: “Your day should start a day before”, so plan the day in advance and strictly follow the plan. Start the day with the most challenging task while you’re full of energy and motivation.

Have a great day, and may success be with you always.