Transcription
As of this morning, you can see that I made over $421,000 in just over 6 months without taking one single sales call. I, by accident, created a sales system which means that I can make sales at the touch of a button and save the time that most people spend on the phone doing other productive things like this video.
There are a few main problems I see with taking sales calls in 2024, so let's quickly look into them. Problem number one: when people say no, or they say they need more time, or need to think about it, or whatever reason they don't purchase your services, you've now wasted a pretty intense period of time which could have been used doing something so much better. There are literally 10x things that you could do instead, which I'll get on to in a second. Two: people that are ready to buy, and those of which that are A+ grade clients, don't particularly like taking sales calls.
Right next to me I have my dog, Alfie, and he is crazy. He's a breed of dog in Australia called a kelpy, and we had this problem that every time a bike went past with a dog, he was losing his pain point. So I come home, look at my misses, I go, "We need a dog trainer." I tried looking around on Google a little bit. Instead, I went to someone that I knew would have good dog training knowledge in the area. They recommended someone to me, so I reached out. When I reached out to this person, he sent me a list of all of his prices on a neat PDF, and he said, "Let me know which you would like and we can start." I looked through it; first thing I thought was, "Oh my God, this guy is expensive," which immediately made me think he was good. And second of all, I looked through his packages, found one that I thought would be perfect for us. I said, "I'd like to do this package." He goes, "Cool, send the payment and we'll pick a date." It's exactly how it worked, and he was great. However, in this process, if that dog trainer had said, "Hey mate, why don't we jump on a phone call together and we can discover what would be the right option for you moving forward, and we can talk pricing on the phone," I would have run a mile. One, I don't want to take a phone call; I don't want to chat to some random dog trainer. I want to know what it is you offer, how much it's going to cost me, and I want to get a general idea of whether or not you're good or not. I got those things from the PDF that he sent me; therefore, I'm not wasting his time, and he's not wasting mine.
Then there's another blatantly obvious issue that many of you are probably not even aware of, walking into headfirst; that's number three. It's something that I call the "diary effect." If your diary is wide open, they know you're desperate as hell. You've got all these calendar open slots: 8:30, 9:30. Hold on; if this person is quiet enough to be this available, they cannot be good at what they do. We've all walked past a quiet restaurant and thought the exact same thing: "That place must be..." And number four: there are just way better ways to make sales than jumping on a phone call.
So why is it that I despise, hate, loath sales calls altogether? Well, let's rewind a second. I used to work as a door-to-door salesperson for a company in the UK called Empower. My postcode was GL1, so I worked in Gloucester. It was absolutely freezing, and I was selling People Gas and Electric, and they already had gas and electric. I'd knock on their doors; I go, "Hi, my name is James Smith, and I'm from Empower." They go, "Empower? I thought we were with British Gas." I'd say, "Haha, exactly; that's why I'm here." I got door-slammed in my face. I was told to f*** off. People thought I was there to read the meter. And I stuck with this job for absolute months on end until the day that I nearly quit, and I actually tried to quit. I actually called up my manager and I said to him, "Hey mate, I can't do this anymore; I'm not enjoying it; it's absolutely freezing." I said to him, "I'm not really enjoying this, and to be honest, even though I'm making alright money, I can't see myself doing this for much longer." My manager at the time pulled over his car, opens his laptop, he goes, and he goes, "James Smith?" I went, "Yeah." He goes, "All right, yeah. According to averages, you make one sale per $100." He goes, "That's actually good; it's better than most of the people in your team." And in my head, I thought that was pretty terrible. And he goes, "James, can I ask you a question? How many more sales do you need for the day?" I said, "Two." He goes, "Drop my advice." I said, "Yeah." He goes, "Knock on 200 more doors."
That was probably one of the most influential lessons that I learned about the sale process. For the rest of the afternoon, I thought, instead of wanting every door to be a yes, instead I should just look for 100 nos, and one yes will appear. I shouldn't get too caught up about it. And let me tell you another thing: being a 21-year-old door-to-door salesman, I often thought that one day I'd knock on a door and some milf would open the door, and maybe I would have caught her right in the middle of a little home session of masturbation, you know where I'm going. She might have come out in like a velvety, silky dressing gown and gone, "Listen, you've just interrupted what I was getting up to, so why don't you come in here and finish me off." Never happened. I did get once invited in for a cup of tea by an old lady that had a dog with one eye, though. Only joking. But I learned a lot about the sales process through knocking on doors.
I then made it into the warm and worked in an office, which was actually just a sales center where I'd have to call companies in the IT sector trying to get their business. Then I actually went to an IT security company where I'd have to qualify the size of different sales opportunities, and then I realized actually a lot of the time this could have just been done over email. And I didn't particularly like calling people; didn't particularly like knocking on people's doors, so I just sent them an email: "Hey, what's the size of your business? Are you interested?" I preferred that, because what I came to realize was most of the people I was emailing, they were either interested or they weren't. And when they got an email, they were like, "Yes," or they were like, "No." I was like, "Why am I calling these people, leaving voice notes, having them call me back, them missing me, me chatting to their VA, 'Hey, can I talk to...'?" It was all of this pissing around when in one email, "Hey, we've got this, you interested?" was more than enough. I would get in trouble for over-hitting my sales target because my phone calls weren't high enough: "James, you got to hit 100 calls a day." I was like, "I've hit my target 3 months early."
Then, after doing the whole sales thing, went into the world of recruitment, and everyone said to me, "James, if you want to work in recruitment, you will earn really good money, but you'll hate it." And I was like, "How can you earn really good money and hate it?" And then I started recruitment, and I earned really good money, and I hated it. And the worst thing about recruitment was many things, but I had to wear a suit and tie every day for like 2 years, and this was when I got into like my peak fitness phase, and I was trying to lean up. And there was one time that I took a load of clenbuterol, which is a fat stripper—not like a big girl dancing on a pole—like a stimulant, an asthma drug. And I didn't realize we were going into London for a meeting. We met with a big company called Ciro, and we get in there, and I'm sweating right; it's the hottest day of the year—a wrong day to take clenbuterol. We go in there, and I say to my boss, I'm like, "Look, can I can I take my jacket off?" He goes, "Only if they take their jacket off." And that person did not take his jacket off. He had the heat tolerance of someone that does a sauna three times a day, and I'm just sat there dripping sweat onto my notepad. And after that, was like, "I'm not doing recruitment; I'm not wearing clothes for the sake of wearing clothes," which is what people in corporate do. Like, what does a suit even do? You have way too many pockets, and there's too much stress, and you've got to iron stuff, like just—it's not for me.
Where were we? Okay, so in the process of trying to make you aware that you don't need to do sales calls, let's do like a reverse engineering of the entire sales system and structure that I would advise for your business without even knowing it. We need to get people's attention; that's what we live in right now; it's an attention economy. It wasn't the same when I worked in recruitment, but anyway, at the top we have organic and we have paid content; that's your two ways of getting in front of people. You can pay through paid ads and do it, or you can actually do organic and create content, build a social media following, over time reputation, whatever it is. Now, some people think if you've got subpar, crappy content that you can just do paid ads and you can skip the whole process having to get good at producing and talking to camera, and even I will do this edit myself, but the reality is if you just do paid ads with poor content, it's like trying to polish a turd. You're probably better off at mastering the organic content, and then when one post is a lot better than all the other posts that you've done, first of all you say, "Why was that?" and "Can I imitate and replicate that?" and two, maybe boost the post that's doing better than all the others. If one post that you've done is getting more email addresses or it's growing your account more than any others, that's the one to boost. You don't just take a crappy post that, "Hi, I'm selling this, please buy it," and put some money behind it and hope for the best, because then you have a bad experience with paid ads. But anyway, this isn't a paid ads video.
So once we master the ability of organic content, maybe a little bit of paid on top, we need to ask ourselves, "What do we do then?" Well, we don't really want to sell to people on social media because it's similar to going on the dance floor in a night out and going, "Hey, do you want to have sex with me?" Because although that person might want to actually have sex with you, they're probably going to say no, and they're going to say no because of the circumstances and the situation. They've just come out with their friends, having a good time, they're dancing. Although they might want to have sex with you, they would probably rather just give you a little bit of contact information so we can talk away from the dance floor at another time. And the person that walks away from the club with all these numbers on their phone is going to be able to message them, take people on dates, and from the dates they're going to, you know, if we were to look at the door-knocking days, we could say every 10 numbers, four dates; every four dates, going to get banged twice, whatever. But rather than asking for their number in this context, the best thing we're probably going to want to do is take their email address. And this is where I call it a squeeze page; some people call them lead magnets, but in essence, we want to squeeze that person in front of us for their contact information.
Now, there's a principle in sales that I learned from my shirt-wearing days called "WIIFM"—What's in it for me? If there is nothing in it for me, I'm not going to do it. Like this video; what's in it for me? Well, within the last 30 seconds of this video, I'm going to present an offer that you would be silly to take up. In the world of absolutely everything around us, if we do not give something of value, we will not get anything back. If I didn't provide people with a calorie calculator or free trial on my app or with years of content generating goodwill, I wouldn't have got anything back from them. So you need to decide what to give someone. And now, if you were to list out 10 problems that your avatar faces—which is the person you would most likely to do business with—you could probably strip away five that aren't that good. You're left with five really big problems. Now you can create five really big solutions for those, and then pick which is the easiest one to deliver and find a way to deliver it. You're probably thinking, "I'll make a nice PDF." Don't do PDFs, right? It's 2024; people are sick to death of PDFs. Do something a bit more creative. Something that's really doing well at the moment is something called an email autoresponder, which is a series of emails that you get. So let's say you like sign up to a list; sometimes it's, "Oh, it's been seven days, how did you...?" For instance, you're a business owner; you probably like more sales; probably like the ability to work remote one day; you probably would like the audience that you feel like you deserve because you work so hard. Cool. So for me, rather than going, "Download my PDF. I've got this PDF. Take my PDF," it would make way more sense for me to say, "Hey, why don't I give you 30 ways in 30 days to revolutionize your business," and we send them to you every day via email, and they will take no more than a minute to read. You're going, "Oh, it sounds kind of cool. For my email address, that's some good value. This handsome bugger in front of me has done quite well with his relative businesses, so I can access that information for just an email address. Wow. Well, I'll put a link in the description for that," but don't get distracted. You must have something of value you can give to someone for their email address in return.
Now, a brief introduction to why email marketing is probably bigger in 2024 than it was in 2014 when everyone thought it was going to be dead. I'm at my desk now. Now, anything that needs to be paid—pay off my credit card, pay my council rates, whatever it is—I do it at my desk. So if I get an email about something, chances are if I buy it, I'm going to buy it at my desk when I'm doing my emails. If you try and sell to me on my phone when I'm out and about and I'm having a poo, not going to happen. I've got ADHD; it's not going to happen. If you want my attention, you've got to send it to me via email. I even send myself messages via email so that I don't forget. We've also got something called "The Right Time effect," that if you sell to someone and they're just not interested at that time, you can keep peppering them as long as your emails have enough value or they're entertaining or they're fun to read. You can just keep sending them, and some people literally have read my emails for months on end before they join, which probably leads you on to thinking, "Okay, if you're going to email them, then what do we send them?" A buy now button? No. We send them to something called a landing page. Now, our landing page isn't necessarily a website; it's a page with one purpose: to convert someone to buy from us. On this page, we do not need loads and loads of copy, loads and loads of text; we don't need your life story; we certainly don't need a small book. Ultimately, the page must tell us what it is they're selling, why they need it, how much it costs, what they get, why they should trust us. And in 2024, one of the biggest things I think that I would recommend for you guys to have on your page is called a VSL; it's called a video sales letter, but really it's a head of video of you explaining what it is that you're selling. The second link in my description is to my business mentorship. Now, at the end of this video, if you want to sniff that out, you can have a look at not only my landing page but my VSL at the top, which is a well-put-together video of me telling you exactly what it is that I do.
So here's the beautiful thing, right? If you're someone that's done sales calls and had them as a massive part of your regime for ages, you know the objections that people have; you're almost ready for them the second they jump on the call, where you're going to go, "Okay, cool. I get it that you're worried about price; you're worried about this; you're worried about that." You can take every single objection from the people that you know they have and put it in your VSL. I could turn around right now and go, "Are you overworked, underpaid, and frustrated because you haven't got a real social media strategy to get sales for your business? Well, I've created a course called 'The No Sales Course System' that you can implement to your business, and you..." You know, I talk to your problems, and then I could say, "I know you think that this course is going to be too expensive; I have a feeling that you're going to want to talk to your partner first, so how about this: I give you a money-back guarantee." You are dismantling the things that they they have and the objections they have, so you don't have to get on that sales call with them; they just need to watch the video, and it does it for it. It's like having a robot doing the sales call for you. You could then have some social proof underneath it, maybe some testimonials from your clients. And I know a lot of you are like, "Oh, but James, I'm not very confident on the camera; I'm not very confident on the camera." Well, have you ever noticed—don't know about you—but back in my day when I was single, when I was on Hinge or Tinder or Bumble, whatever it was, a lot of the girls, they look fit in pictures, and you meet them in real life and you're like, "Oh my God, you look nothing like it," and it gave me real absolute trust issues. And what I'd have to do is try and find videos on their socials, because when you see someone move, you get a better understanding for what's going on. When you can see them move... Here's a case in point: Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Aniston were not hot enough to be supermodels—static pictures of them. They're still fit, but it's only when you see them move, it's only when you see them interact with people, it's only when you see them in video format that you go, "Oh my God, these people are beautiful." That's why a lot of the dating world is right now, because people are... That's the dog that needed the trainer. That's why the social dating world is right now, because people are reduced down to a picture, to a static image, when really... So much... Even the trust in you watching me right now, telling these stories and trying to get you away from sales calls, we are accumulating trust, I hope, between each other, where I'm giving you value, and in return you're getting to see me do my thing in my office, in my home.
So when we get to the end of this landing page, we've hopefully created a lot of trust in that person. So where do we send them? A link to book in a sales call? No. To buy. You shouldn't be talking to people without having their money first. It's just a simple principle because it'll make you a lot happier to talk to them: "Hey John, thank you very much for joining in; I really appreciate you..." The second I got PayPal payments from my clients back in the day, I get my phone, I send them an individualized video: "John, may really appreciate it; glad to have you signing me up," because they will have something called buyer's regret. And buyer's regret is why so many of you, after you've done a sales call with someone, they message you and ask, "Okay, sorry, I'm backtracking," whatever. But if you get the payment first, you can disintegrate their buyer's regret: "Really appreciate you being here; can't wait to have you as part of my program." And there's a really, really incredible way to get rid of buyer's regret, which I'm going to get on to after this very next point. The other reason you want them to buy is because they could be ready to buy right now. Very case in point: yesterday, took my car in for service. I love my car—Audi RS6, best car in the world. Uh, I don't think there is a better car where practicality meets... Anyway, so I go to the service; passes with flying colors, but they say, "James, you have one tire that's got 1 millimeter left on it; it's probably got a month left on it." And I was like, "Sake," because I've got ADHD, right? Things like this will just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding in my head forever. I'll be like trying to fall asleep in two weeks' time, and I go, "James, 'cause short-term memory serial, don't forget you've got to get that tire changed." And then if I got a flat tire, it wouldn't just ruin my day or my week; it ruined my month, 'cause I go, "James, you had the responsibility to remember that you had one mil left on your tire, and because you didn't remember that, you've now got a flat; now I'm stuck by the side of the road waiting for break..." I don't even know if I've got breakdown cover; I've got to get my tire replaced; I've got to get... I don't know if you get towed; have I got a spare tire? I don't even know if I've got a spare tire. So I go straight from the service place straight to a tire place near me. I go there; I go, "Look, I know there's tread left on this tire, but I want them both replaced; I'll pay you now because I want this done; I want this out my life; I want it to be not something that's just pinging around in my brain; I want it dealt with." Go in there; £450 per tire. "450, is that it?" I said, "Is that it?" But I paid for it; they're getting put on in a couple of days; it's dealt with. I don't want to get on a call with you; I just want my problems to go away. And I tell you what, the second I paid £450 a tire, I felt good; it's dealt with; the money's gone, but my problem is dealt with. And that's what a lot of people are going to be facing when they come to you. So don't think, "Oh, let's book in a call for next week." No. Let them deal with the problem and let them pay you.
And the way that you can eradicate any buyer's regret and make people confident in paying you is: there's something you can do very easily that's probably going to five- to tenfold the amount of sales you get: offer them a money-back guarantee for a week, two weeks, one month. Because at the end of the day, if they hate the service you've provided, they probably should get their money back. You've got consumer rights in a lot of countries where they're legally entitled to get it back anyway. Not to mention, if someone has a bad experience with you, through whatever—their fault, your fault, whatever—if you refund them, they will only have good things to say about you. If you don't, you've just got poisonous people out there that will go to your Trip Advisor, Trustpilot, and give you a bad review, which you just don't want. Not only that, wouldn't you like the confident say to someone, "Hey, look, if you don't absolutely love what I'm offering, I'll give you your money back." Then people go, "Oh, I don't need to try it; I don't need to jump on a phone call; I'm just going to pay, and if I don't like it, I get my money back." There's a mattress that I bought called "Eight Sleep." I'm doing a YouTube video on it in a few weeks; best mattress I've ever used in my life, but it was like $25,000 US, and I was thinking, "Wow, can I really spend that on a mattress?" 30-day no-quals money-back guarantee. I was like, "Fine; it's win-win." Now either it's...
The best mattress in my life, or I'm getting my money back. I might have an annoying trip to the post office, or some freight. It was amazing. If they hadn't have offered that, I probably wouldn't have had the mattress. I wouldn't be making YouTube videos about it, and I wouldn't be sleeping as well as I am at the moment.
Now, if you want to be wealthy enough to afford an Eight Sleep mattress, well, your business is going to have to level up a little bit. So, that 30-day business information, every 30 days, look at your inbox for free; it's one of the links in the description.
And if you're ready to work with me, where we can do deep dives into content strategy, squeeze pages, landing pages—all of the above—my mentorship is horrendously underpriced, and I'm in there every day. I even critique people's landing pages individually. You post a video in there, and I'll be like, "Oh, your hook, your setup was wrong; camera angle's not right; your lighting's poo; your audio is not good enough." I literally just kind of bully a group of 1250 people, but it's good bullying—constructive bullying, tough love, some could say. And some of them are absolutely killing it.
So, if you want that 30 days free business advice, or you just want to jump straight into the mentorship, the link's there. If not, feel free to comment in the comments, and I'll be more than happy to give you advice for free, because I'm a nice guy. Thanks for watching.