Please note: This is an automatically generated transcription. There are typos and the system may pick words or whole phrases up incorrectly.

Intro: I’m Paul Higgins, an ex-corporate executive turned business owner who, for five years, struggled to grow a cloud Consulting business whilst battling a chronic disease. With the help of mentors and experts, I got the business model right, built a sales and marketing engine, and developed a high-performing team that ended in a successful exit. I received a kidney transplant from a mate, and now on my second life, I dedicate my time to helping other Cloud Consultants go quickly with less effort to enjoy life. Detecting an accent, I'm an Aussie working globally from Melbourne, Australia. I interview successful Cloud Consultants sharing their scaling story to give you inspiration and practical tips. I have dedicated experts for Cloud Consultants on the show to save you time and money by working with the right people. If you want to scale quickly with less effort to enjoy life, you're in the right place. Let's get started.

Speaker 1 (0:55): Hi, I'm Paul Higgins and welcome to the cloud consultants show episode number 474. Today's topic is Do it Selling. And you'll learn first, how to research a potential client and there’s some little tips given. The second is the 5 sentence email that you can send and great themes around adding value. And you won’t believe how many times you should be adding value. So this is gonna surprise you in a nice way. And the third is the top three actions from a book which has 77 actions in it - it’s called Do It Selling. 

Speaker 1 (1:31): So if you’re a first-time listener, welcome. And if you love what you hear, please subscribe. It's for cloud consultants. If you consult and deploy a SaaS platform, you’re at the right place. If you're a regular, love to get those emails at [email protected], they mean the world to me. Often this is a bit lonely as a podcaster so it’s great to hear from you. And also if you’ve got a topic you like me to cover, please let me know. And you’ll get a summary in the notes on the podcast that you're listening to. And also, there’s a full transcript that you can get at paulhigginsmentoring.com/podcast. 

Speaker 1 (2:06): Before we go into the interview with David I'd like to thank our sponsors, the first is the Cloud Consultants Collective. It's the world's only revenue-focused collective for Cloud consultants. It’s peers answering peers for each other. So I think it is much better than Google and YouTube. But why don’t you check it out yourself? You can join free today at the cloudconsultantscollective.com. And the other is Workflow Academy. Are you top performers feeling overwhelmed workload? Do you worry about their performance, and even worse, the fact that they may even leave? Well we have partnered with Workflow Academy to provide you highly trained junior talent that can support your top performers to ensure that the team stays on track. You can learn more about this game changing solution at PaulHigginsMentoring.com/WFA today. Let us get support for you and your top talent so you can achieve your business results more. 

Speaker 1 (2:59): So our guest today is David Newman. He is known as one of the top revenue growth mentors for consultants, executive coaches, and B2B experts who want to get better clients, bigger deals, and higher fees. Don’t we all want that? His Do It! MBA mentoring program has successfully put through 800 graduates. He is the author of the #1 business bestsellers book - Do It! Marketing and also Do It! Speaking. And we’re going to talk today about his latest book which is Do It! Selling which is released in April 2023. So it’ll be out well and truly by this episode. So what I’ll do now is hand you over to David Newman. So great to have you here, David.

Speaker 2 (3:42): Thank you, Paul. It's great to be here.

Speaker 1 (3:45): Yeah, well, look, I've, you know, as with all guests, I do my research, but I must admit, when I researched you, I’m so excited to have you on the show. What you provide, and what we're going to talk about is what you really need. So why don't I kick off, though, with who your ideal clients are and what problems you love to solve for them?

Speaker 2 (4:02): Sure. So our ideal client is a professional services firm. So it could be a consulting firm, training firm, technology firm, marketing agency. And they typically suffer from being really great at the work of their work. And they just don't like the marketing and the sales part. And they will do anything. Typically, they will do anything other than prospecting, lead generation, and having conversations with the people who can hire them. And so what we hear a lot, and I'm sure you hear this too, Paul, it's our business is all referral. Our business is all word of mouth. And what that says to me is, we have abdicated our firm's growth potential, and we have abdicated our responsibility to grow this firm to its next level of success. So we're gonna fix all of that for everyone listening right here right now today.

Speaker 1 (5:03): Brilliant, well, we can't wait. I'm gonna dive into that in a moment, but yeah, look, I've got to agree with you. It's such a common thing. And I was supposed to me, I was a little lucky because I had a corporate background of sales, Coca-Cola taught us fairly well, and obviously marketing as well. So for me, when I had my business partner, he was definitely what you just described. He was brilliant at the technology, brilliant at solving complex, client problems, but didn't really do the front end. So we worked well together and that sort of helped us get a nice exit because of that. But there's so often I meet people and I say, yeah, what's your number one lead source? And they normally say referrals. I said, who's it from? And it's normally from their SaaS partner. And I'm like, okay, so how consistent are they? How much of a window do you get before they come in? Are they who you actually really want to work with? And as we dive into it, I'm sure you've heard it before as well. It's not right. They want to deal with these type of people and they just get sent everything right. And then their business is so complicated. It's hard to manage. They're constantly changing processes. And if you're sitting here, you know, watching or listening to David and I, you're nodding your head like David is. It's like, yes. Okay. We've got a solution. So I know that you've just put out a book, do it selling. So why don't we just dive into what's the key premise of the book and how's that going to help me as a cloud consultant to get out of my little hole of not being in sales into sales?

Speaker 2 (6:29): Well, that's actually the very first among the very first ideas in the book is that in the book, literally, I've written Paul, you are a salesperson. And anytime where you see or hear salesperson or sales people, I am talking to you. Because yes, you are a cloud consultant. Yes, you are a professional expert. But you don't get to do what you want to do until you start to do what you have to do in order to get clients and in order to get revenue. So one of the things that I talk about also early in the book is if you really don't like sales and selling, and there's a whole series of legitimate reasons why people might not like sales and selling, it's the way you've been sold to in the past, it's bad sales people, it's bad sales training, and it's bad sales experiences. So now when you put on your cloud consultant hat, and it's like, oh, and now you have to sell all of these yucky and unpleasant memories and the stimuli start to come back to you. I'm gonna invite people to remove the word sales and remove the word selling from their vocabulary. And let's put an entirely new context around this. I believe that in order to get clients, all you have to do is you have to send out enough invitations to conversations. So let's break down both parts of that. Generally, when I say to a cloud consultant, hey, how do you feel about invitations? Not many of them are going to be scared of invitations. Invitations are usually good. On the other end of an invitation is a party or bourbon or barbecue or cookies or something that's going to be fun. Let's talk about the second part. Conversation. Are most people afraid of conversations? Not really. Conversations is where you get to exchange ideas. You get to meet new friends. Some of these new friends might become lifelong relationships and generally, a conversation is something to be looked forward to and something that is fun and enjoyable. And in the case of a sales conversation, it could be profitable. So if you literally strike out the word sales and selling, the question becomes, are you sending enough invitations to conversations to people that you have a strong feeling you might be able to help? And almost always the answer is no. So I'm going to use a little dental floss analogy. I go to the dentist. I'm not a big flosser. I brush my teeth, but I hate flossing, just like many people hate sales. The doctor sits me down in the chair, the dentist, and he says, so, David, he looks around in there and he sees what's going on. David, how much are you flossing? And Paul, my answer for years was, well, Doc, not as much as I should. The real answer was never, never. I never flossed my teeth. But I wanted to avoid the lecture about only floss the teeth you want to keep. So my answer was not as much as I should. When we turn around, do we ask our cloud consultant friends, so how much proactive prospecting are you doing? Now they can no longer hide behind, well, not as much as I should, because David Newman taught me that not as much as I should answer, the answer is not enough or nothing, or it's the wrong kind of prospecting that is very frustrating because it's blind cold calling or spamming or seeming like an ambulance chaser. It is the opposite of intelligent prospecting. And one of the things that we go deep into with the do it selling book, because prospecting is such a fraught subject is we don't want people cold calling. We don't want you spamming strangers. We don't want you batch and blasting your LinkedIn network. We want you to do intelligent prospecting based on research, based on relevance, and based on finding people that you want to open a genuine relationship with. And if you can do that, then you will start to have enough invitations to conversations and those conversations will start to convert.

Speaker 1 (10:52): Yeah, I think that's fantastic. And often I'll talk to cloud consultants. So look, how do you do your exposure when you go into a project, right? And they take me through the process, and I’m like that’s exactly what you’re doing on the front end, right. It's just, it's just before you get to the project, but you've got all the skills, but you've got all the skills there, like you said. AndI agree with you that, you know, bad training, etc, but what I find with most people, I ask the simple question - how much sales training have you actually had in your life, right? And you're not in, you know, the answer. Most people say hardly any or if nothing at all. I'm like, well, stop being so hard on yourself, right. You know, I've spent, you know, 28 years doing selling. I'd spent 18 years at Coca-Cola. You spent time at Oracle, you spent time at Microsoft, etc. We were trained by some of the biggest and best companies in the world, right. And we still find it difficult. So give yourself a bit of a break. And that's why I brought David on because with his book, you don't have to go and spend time in corporate getting trained on sales. You can just get this book, follow the principles and it's going to make it a lot easier for you, right. So don't be too hard on yourself. So I totally get the research piece, right. So what am I researching before I'm at actually talking to some of them going to help. 

Speaker 2 (12:04): Well, so you can research a couple of ways. I mean, obviously there's all kinds of information at our fingertips. 20 years ago, salespeople would kill for the information that's available to us now with a few clicks of the mouse. So literally you're going to their LinkedIn, you're going to their website, you're going to any industry or trade and professional publication, you're searching for that executives name or that company's name, you're figuring out what are they up to, what's important to them, what's not important to them, where have they been, where are they today, where are they going, you're using all sorts of resources, could be the media page on their website, could be press releases, could be searching on YouTube for videos, could be searching on Listennotes, listennotes.com. Paul and I know that because of course it's the podcast search engine. So where have their executives been interviewed? What are those executives saying? And any even in the local media, look at your local business journal, look in the business section of your local newspaper if they happen to be a local company in your metropolitan area. There is so much intelligence out there that for us to approach a prospect and not have done that research is almost sales malpractice. And this is what professional buyers really hate about professional sellers is they're lazy. They don't do their homework. They don't know what we're up against. They don't know our situation. They literally walk in and say, so what do you guys have going on here? And you sound like an idiot. So buyers don't want you to sound like an idiot. Obviously you don't want to sound like an idiot. So doing 15 minutes, and I outline how to do this in the book, it's literally 15 minutes of research. And then people say, but David, that takes time. That takes work. It's like, of course it takes time. Of course it takes work. But you know, unlike if we're selling widgets, we don't need to make 100 sales a month. We don't need a thousand clients every year. You probably need three, four, five sales a month, maybe between 30 and 50 clients a year. The research pays for itself. That 15 minutes of research on the website, the trade and professional publications, the associations they belong to, the conferences that they probably attend, the publications that they probably read, their website, their press releases, their media page. It's 15 minutes so you can approach them like a trusted advisor and not like a peddler and a cold coller.

Speaker 1 (14:33): Spot on. And you can get your team to do it. So I've got my team do it for me. So then I'm only just taking me two minutes to go over the 15 minutes that it's taken them. And also, like you said, Google alerts is also bringing you can just do a Google alert on the company and it will bring all the information in you. So that's pretty much it. So I've got my 15 minutes of research. Then what's next?

Speaker 2 (14:54): Well, then I think it's probably the scariest part of this whole thing. It's what does the initial approach look like? Now the initial approach, you can literally send a five sentence email. Two paragraphs, five sentences. And the subject line needs to indicate that you've done your homework and you're reaching out to exactly the right person for exactly the right reason at exactly the right time. So if I had done my research on Paul, for example, the subject line might be something like, Paul, cloud consultants problem, cloud consultants question, right? So it's like, oh, okay. So this is relevant. He's probably going to open that email. And then the email might be - Paul, I've listened to your fantastic podcast. I understand that cloud consultants have a big problem with sales and selling. I have a new book. I can be on your podcast. Whatever it is I'm pitching. Right. Would this be worth a short chat? So it's a couple of context setting statements. It is - I understand that you're in this situation, you may have this problem, you never assume, but you may have this problem. This may be something that I can help with. Would that be worth a short chat? And you always send that email with a question. Do not put anything after that question. When you end an email with a question, it's been proven that you get 60% more response than what if you had anything else. So don't say please do get back to me. Don't say looking forward to your response. Don't say anything other than we're worth a quick chat. And if I've made this relevant, I've made this personal and I've made this specific to Paul and his specific company or his specific needs. And here's the test, by the way, folks, if you can take your prospecting email and you can copy and paste it to 20 other prospects, you have not done this the right way. This is uncopy and pastable. The email to Paul is different than the email to Sally. The email to Sally is different than the email to Fred and the email to Fred is totally different than the email to Jane. So I'm doing a different subject line. I'm doing a different little intro piece. All that is meant to say or to show is I've done my homework. You may be someone that could benefit from what we do or what we sell. Would this be worth a short chat? Your objective in that initial email is not to make a sale. Your objective and initial email is not even to get an appointment. Your objective in that email is to get a reply. The reply is the magic. So in the do it selling book, I sort of break down the whole sales process and I have you focus on the sale of the moment. Don't try and do three steps in one. Right? What's the sale of the moment? Initial email sale of the moment is a reply. We get the reply, the sale of the moment is let's find a time. We find a time, we make an appointment. The sale of the moment is, are we a fit, right? Do I qualify for you? Do you qualify for me? The next sale of the moment is, well, we have some service offerings. We have some potential, right? Do you have the kind of problem that my firm solves with a cloud computing solution? Maybe you do. Maybe you don't, right? If you do, then we have the sale of the moment is, we can do option A, option B, option C, even before that probably, the sale of the moment is, can we do a deep dive discovery to really figure out what's the scale and size of your problem? What's the scale and size of the result that you want? And then every single step of this process has a sale of the moment. If you try and go out of sequence, you will totally screw this up. So the best path forward is nothing to hide, nothing to prove, take your time, and we are always judged as consultants. We're always judged on the questions that we ask far more than on the statements that we make. So coming in armed with amazing discovery questions, that is all you need to start totally revolutionizing your sales results.

Speaker 1 (19:16): Yeah, love it, love it, love that questions asked more than the statements made. I think that's absolutely perfect. And like I said, you're doing this, right? You're doing this in your discovery. You're doing this in the actual body of the work. Just take it to the front end. That's all that you're doing. And David's book is gonna help you do that, you know, better than if you've had no training at all, which most of you haven't. And I'm assuming is this via email, David? Are you recommending email?

Speaker 2 (19:42): I do recommend email. If for some reason the email doesn't get a response, then you might try, you know, hit them on LinkedIn, if you find them on Facebook, hit them on Facebook. So I'm a big believer in multi touch, multi mode. Cause some people live on Facebook. They don't touch LinkedIn. Some folks live on LinkedIn. They don't touch Facebook. Some people much prefer a LinkedIn message to an email. Some folks much prefer an email to a LinkedIn message. Here's the clue - The channel in which they respond is probably the channel they prefer.

Speaker 1 (20:13 ): Yes. Totally agree and like for me too, I've had good success WhatsApp. I don't think, you know, what's happened. People are spending more and more time on WhatsApp. You know, a lot of people are defected from Facebook into WhatsApp. So that's another really good channel to use. So, you know, totally agree. Email, I think is still, you know, what people read more than anything. And then you've got other ways. Are you doing any pre engagement? So are you, you know, doing anything to be in their world before you send that email?

Speaker 2 (20:43): Yes and no. So I mean, you can you can warm them up for it. So if they're active on LinkedIn, for example, you can start accidentally on purpose running into some of their posts, liking, leaving an intelligent comment, not just great job, nice article, right? Great job. Nice article. Nice. Not going to cut it. Put your own professional spin and your own professional opinion into the comment. And then start showing up as an intelligent commenter, like their stuff, share their stuff. That's one way to warm them up. But you know, I think if we start going down this path, Paul, of too much warm up, people then start to get obsessed with, I haven't warmed them up enough. And then we spend all this time warming up and not enough time inviting them to the dance.

Speaker 1 (21:33): Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love the thing around five sentences, you know, short and sweet, because ultimately most people reading on their mobile phone. And most people reading their email in between gaps. They might be in a taxi, they might be in a lift, they might be going up and down the stairs, they might be in the gym. They're often not dedicating specific time, but I'm gonna sit down and methodically read my emails now. We all adhoc reading our email. So you gotta keep it short and sweet. And I love the fact that you've just always been with that question, right? And I really like that. Would it be worth a chat? It's nice, open, simple. So this is great, right? But the elephant in the room, you've sent it. So you got all the courage, you finally sent it, and nothing, you get crickets, no reply. What happens there?

Speaker 2 (22:24): So initial follow up is simply wait 48 hours. If you don't get any response, I would re-send the original email and say, Dear Paul just re-sending the below in case it got lost in the shuffle. Please do get back to me and let me know. So that's the second email. After that, however, I really don't recommend value-free follow-up. Value free, meaning it's worthless. Things like, Hey, just following up. Hey, just circling back. Hey, you haven't answered my email yet. This is what makes buyers crazy. It is value free. It's a complete waste of their time and it doesn't add anything to their day. So at that point, I would start doing a value rich follow up sequence where every touch point adds some insight or add some value or add some new information to that prospect saying, Hey, Bob, just came across this research thought it might be valuable. Feel free to share it with your team. and you're not saying, Hey, I've emailed you three times. You haven't gotten back to me. What about our call? What about setting up an appointment? It's just you start acting as if you're hired before you're hired. So set up your value items ahead of time. These can be links, blogs, resources, videos, white papers, checklists, PDFs. Some of them can be yours. Some of them can be from other sources that the buyer would recognize and respect. So you find things in the industry news, you find things in your email that might be of interest. I have literally sent things. I've subscribed to all kinds of the same things that my prospects subscribe to. And I was like, hey, Paul, this just came across my inbox this morning. It reminded me of firms like yours that may be wrestling with problems X, Y, and Z. Have a look.  I'm curious which one of these three problems in the article is most relevant for you right now. So I'm sending resources. I'm sending information. I'm sending insights. And again, it's not. All my stuff, I can send one or two pieces from me and then one or two pieces from the larger world that we're both connected to. And you'll be amazed how fast people get back to you because you're acting as if you're already hired before you're hired, right? So you're sharing insights, you're sharing data, you're sharing survey research, you're sharing some competitive research about their industry or what their competition is doing. People pay attention to that. So there was a survey, many, many surveys, but the one survey in particular that came out a couple of years ago that asked a whole bunch of professional services buyers, why do you engage with salespeople? Why do you engage with consultants when they call on you? The number one answer was to learn something new, to get insights about the industry that we're in, to get some competitive intelligence about what our competitors are doing or thinking that we might not be doing or thinking. And then they ask another question in the same survey, when do you stop responding to salespeople? When do you stop responding to consultants? No big surprise, the answers from these executives and the CEOs, when we stop learning anything new. That's when they go dark. That's when those emails go unanswered. Those voicemails go into a black hole and you never hear from them again. So I've had my clients follow up with a prospect, 11 times, 12 times, 13 times, always sending little tidbits of value, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. On the 14th contact, the CEO or the prospect sends back, let's talk. And so they usually close that deal because that, and so I just literally had this a couple of weeks ago, 14 contacts, nothing, one conversation, $30,000 deal. Because the person kept the adding value and kept the conversation moving forward with client education and client insights. They said, wow, this person is sending all of this value, all of these insights for free. Imagine what we would get when we hire them. 

Speaker 1 (26:48): And the spacing between those value added emails, David, like what's the spacing?

Speaker 2 (26:52): Every seven to 10 days. Every seven to 10 days. And so two, three times a month to keep them warm. And you know, think of ourselves as buyers. And this is something that's really, really important. One of my friends named David Primier has a fantastic book called Sell the Way You Buy. And it's all about, we're always wearing two hats. We have the cloud consultant hat, and then we have the regular person hat. The regular person hat, we get sold to all the time. We get marketed to all the time. Are you sending sales or marketing messages that when you take off your cloud consultant hat, would you respond to those messages? If it's just following up, just circling back, just seeing if you want to call, I've emailed you 17 times, you want to have a chat now, we ignore those, right? We two nos out, we unsubscribe, we get the heck out of their world. If someone every seven to 10 days, the message that you're sending is, I'm gonna stick with the game here. I'm gonna keep adding value, I'm gonna keep being helpful, I'm gonna keep being relevant, until you tell me to stop. So ignoring me is not an option. Having a call with me is an option, or saying, dude, I'm not a prospect, we're out, leave me alone. But it's the relentlessness of the high value follow up, it's not following up once or twice and then giving up, it's literally following up until you get a yes or a no. Yes is a beautiful answer. No is the second most beautiful answer. I will not be ignored as a professional salesperson and again, cloud consultants, you are now in my world, a professional salesperson. Professional salespeople do not tolerate being ignored. We get nos all the time, we get yeses all the time. It's just you have to make a pact with yourself. I will not be ignored. And guess what'll happen? You will stop being ignored. 

Speaker 1 (28:48): Yeah. And if someone threw the sequence and most of us are using a sales CRM that we can see whether they've opened their emails or not. If someone is opening and checking your emails, you change any of the scripts based or the messages based on that or you just keep continuing to send value?

Speaker 2 (29:07): Well, it's so funny that you say this and this freaks some people out because it seems creepy or like a stalker. If you have sent multiple messages and you can see on your CRM, they've opened it. Maybe they forwarded it to someone else. They've opened it multiple times over a short period of time. That is the time I Hope everyone's sitting down. That is the time to actually pick up the phone, pick up the phone and actually give them a call. You'll probably get voicemail, but the voicemail is super simple. It's like, Hey, Paul, I've been sending you some resources. I'm not sure if they've landed because you don't say, I know that you opened it at 3.07 p.m. Right. I'm not sure if they landed, but if some of those value items resonated with you, I would love to invite you to and give it a strange number, like a 7-minute chat, you know, 9.5 minute chat, you know, a 9-minute coffee break. I would love to invite you to a 9-minute coffee break to see if some of these ideas might be relevant for your specific situation and goals. I can be reached at blah, blah, blah, blah. They will never call you back or not expecting a call back, but just as a courtesy, you leave your number, you leave your email, you will be amazed because they're in the rhythm of opening your digital communication, then they hear your voice. So you can do that with either a voicemail on the phone, you can do it with a video email like Vidyard or BombBomb or some of these video email platforms. You can even if they're active on LinkedIn, you can see if they're active on LinkedIn or not, you can leave a voice memo as a LinkedIn message or even a short video if you do it from your phone, you can now leave a video message on LinkedIn and it just humanizes the whole connection that way.

Speaker 1 (30:52): Yeah, yeah and as David said, you know you're finding where they're responding most to, so where they're responding most to, that's breadcrumbs to where the best place to reach out to them is which is great and the, I know I'm assuming they're gonna do research on you, right, like you know that they are interested in going to do research so you know, where does you know your LinkedIn profile and your website, where does that sort of fit into the mix here?

Speaker 2 (31:17): Yeah, really really great. So the LinkedIn profile and the website and really any piece of content. Even the emails that you send. That would be email newsletter or you have broadcast emails that go out, you want to have the prospect that you really want to do business with front and center of all your communication. So here's how you know that you did it right because they will go to your website, they will go to your LinkedIn. When they go to any digital home base that you have, the response that you want to elicit is Paul, I spent five minutes on your website, I flipped through a couple of pages and wow, I felt like you were talking to me. I felt like you wrote that homepage for me or for my company. I felt that email that you sent me last week, Oh my gosh, it was like you read my mind, you must have installed video cameras in our offices, you must have installed listening devices on our phones because you are totally singing our song. When can we meet? So everything needs to be prospect centric, not you, not company centric, and certainly not service centric, because the moment you talk about your services, you commoditize yourself. If you talk about your prospects and their problems, pains, heartaches, headaches, challenges, gaps, goals, aspirations, results, outcomes, and you've got multiple pieces of content on your blog, on your website, if your company has a podcast, on your podcast, and you are totally talking prospect language about prospect problems, they will start to line up to talk to you, because people wanna know two things. Number one, you know what I'm up against as a prospect, you know what I'm up against as a prospect, number two, you can fix it. If you convey those two, and only those two messages in every piece of digital content, meaning your website, your blog, and your LinkedIn profile, you will start to unleash an amazing source of leads and prospects and sales.

Speaker 1(33:26): Totally agree. And I love the saying that, you know, they've only got to trust you more than themselves to solve the problem they have. Right? That's fundamentally it. And it goes back to that great segue into the research. If you're doing your research right and you really understand in the client and you understand and you know their problem, you can fix it. That's all they want, right? Because ultimately people only have enough time to think about themselves. They don't have enough time to think about you. Right? But they've got plenty of time to think about the problems they've got. So you're right. It's about, can you solve that problem? And if you want an example, go to David's profile. So his profile, LinkedIn profile is going to be in the notes. It's a fantastic profile. And you can see practices, what he preaches. And just reminder that you’re listening to David Newman. This is episode 474. And you can find out more at doitmarketing.com. And also doitsselling.com, which is the latest book. He's got two books out, but that's the latest. So in the book itself, Do It! Selling, you've got 77 actions that you can take, right? So I'm gonna put you on the spot here. It's a bit like picking your favorite child or children. But what are three key actions that you haven't spoken about today that we can take and implement before we go and get and listen to the book.

Speaker 2 (34:45): Excellent. I was hoping this wasn't gonna be a pop quiz. Okay, what's chapter 47? What's 29? What's 76? 

Speaker 1 (34:52): Yeah, no, thinking to myself I think no one’s ever want that.

Speaker 2 (34:55): I know, I wanna know what's that. But let's talk about three specific things people can start to do immediately. On that initial conversation, one of the best opening questions after some initial niceties, about 20 seconds, hi, how are you? Great to talk to you. Would you mind if for the duration of our call today, may I treat you like a fee paid client? May I treat you like a fee paid client? And people will usually say, well, sure, but I'm curious, what does that mean? And your answer is what that means is, I'm gonna ask for your permission to redirect our conversation if necessary, interrupt if I noticed that we're going off track. And the third thing is, just like with our paying clients, I will tell you what you need to hear, not necessarily what you want to hear. Is that okay with you? And that sets the ground rules for a completely different kind of sales conversation where you've got nothing to prove and nothing to hide and you are getting the real deal diagnostic conversation of what's going on. So that, I would say that is absolutely number one. The second thing that I would recommend is what we talk about in the Do It Selling book, rain everything in the context of now. Now is your urgency word. So when you say something like, well, tell me about your IT infrastructure right now. What's not working now? What are some of the bottlenecks now? What are some of the reasons that you wanted to book this call now? What are some of the reasons that you may want to fix this sooner rather than later? Right? So using time bound now based questions, what's wrong now? Why are you fixing it now? What's prompting you to call me now? What, you know, what is going on now? What are the results that you're after right now? The now frame is really, really critical. We spend a few pages on that in the book and then closing. Let's talk about closing - the only thing you hate more than opening a sales conversation is the closing part. So if you do everything the way that we've talked about in the book, clients literally will close themselves. Now you still have to ask the prompting question. The prompting questions and these are so tricky and so manipulative.I hope you're taking notes. Here they are. Paul does this sound like something you'd like to do? Paul does what we've talked about so far make sense? Paul does this sound like something you'd like to move ahead with? Oh so tricky, so manipulative you know, what you're doing It's like you just served a beautiful seven course meal. You're the waiter, and you come up to the couple, and you say would you like coffee? Would you like dessert? No one throws down their fork and rage going I can't believe you're selling me coffee. You're selling me dessert. Why is it totally okay for the waiter to say would you like coffee? Would you like dessert? Because it's a natural extension of everything that has come before. So if you do everything right in the sales process, clients simply close themselves. And when you ask does this sound like something you'd like to do? They go yeah, yes, yes it does. When can we start? Because you've talked about the problem, the outcome, the investment, the process. Now, there's no more mystery. And it's like, would you like to go ahead? One of my favorite closing lines, and I probably shouldn't say this because of course, we have prospects that hear this all day, every day. But I will say to a prospect, if this is really true. And by the way, you never want to lie in any sales conversation, much less the closing conversation. Here's the closing line I have used to make millions and millions of dollars over the years. Paul, this is based on everything that you've shared with me, it's a green light from me. Is it a green light from you? And people love this question. So a green light from me means that you tick all the boxes for a fantastic client and a fantastic outcome and a fantastic project. So I'm admitting you to my university, are you willing to pay the tuition? It's a green light from me. Is it a green light from you? And people will literally look into the Zoom camera if you're doing this on Zoom, and they go, it is a total green light from me. Let's get started. And it's an amazing, amazing power dynamic where you're entering this beautiful sales relationship as peers and as partners. No one is superior, no one is inferior. No one's doing anything to anyone else. We are embarking on this together.

Speaker 1 (39:38): Yeah, and David's book, you definitely got to go and read it. I've read it, the 77 actions are fantastic. You've got a sense for what it is here. But what you'll realise by listening to David is it's not that difficult. You naturally do this, right? You naturally do this. It's just getting some reframing, some context and taking David's all his experience where he's been trained in large companies, like I said before, he's gone and helped lots of lots of people. So he's tested lots and lots of things that work. And now he's just feeding it to you all in a beautifully short presented book that you can go and take. And the most important thing is to go and do the action. Right. No use listening to this and thinking, okay, that's fantastic. I'll get to that one day. One day never happens. Right. The only person that's going to move the needle on your business is you. The only thing that's getting in the road of you actually having more sales is you. Right. And here's a golden opportunity to take all of this research that David's done, put it into this book and go and implement it. So that's what you're going to do. But before we go and do that, David's going to answer the four questions at the end, which these are rapid fire, David. So you're ready for these?

Speaker 2 (40:52): I am ready.

Speaker 1 (40:54): All right. So the first one is, what are the daily habits that you do to help you scale Do It Marketing?

Speaker 2 (41:00): One of the mantras that I teach and preach, and live with is you have to put fresh targets on your radar daily. So literally daily prospecting, daily prospecting research, daily prospecting outreach.

Speaker 1 (41:15): Brilliant. And where do you find more about how to grow your business? Like you're an expert, you help lots of people who's helping you.

Speaker 2 (41:23): So I read a ton of books, business books, sales books, marketing books. I love Seth Godin, of course, you know, very inspirational, big picture, not necessarily nuts and bolts tactical, but man, oh man, I challenge you to read Seth's blog. I challenge you to read any of his books and not get some business building inspiration.

Speaker 1 (41:45): Brilliant. And the next is what's one wish we can grant you or do at marketing?

Speaker 2 (41:51): A hundred thousand copies sold of Do It! Selling. Not for the revenue, but knowing that a hundred thousand cloud consultants and professional services firms now have this handbook and they're profiting from the ideas, it's really for me about impact. And that would be my dream.

Speaker 1 (42:10): Brilliant. And the last question is, what do you know now that you wish you had known earlier?

Speaker 2 (42:15): Well, so everything. I was the most sales resistant. I was the most sales frightened person. I was like, hey, I'm really good at what I do. People should just knock on my door and life would be fantastic. And my friends, no matter how great this is me talking to my old self, no matter how great the product or service, nothing sells itself, nothing. And I wish, dearly wish, that I had internalized that fact earlier and learned to sell smarter sooner.

Speaker 1 (42:51): Yeah, brilliant. And you can get the books because David has got the book Do It selling, which is the current one, but he's also got do it marketing. So those two go hand in hand sogo and grab those. But David, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on today. Thanks for sharing your sales wisdom that is practical. And then we can go and apply. And we'll have to have you back on the show again sometime.So David, thanks all for being here today. 

Speaker 2 (43:15): Thank you, Paul. Great to be here.

Speaker 1 (43:18): That was a great interview with David Newman and why don’t you share like a said he’s got a brilliant LinkedIn profile. So why don't you first connect with David to follow his material, but also share a photo of this episode with him. He'll love you for that as a bit of a thank you. Also share it with some of your peers. They’ll think you're a rock star because most of them would like to get these tips that David has shared on how to sell. Check out our solo show. And also if you're a cloud consultant, you're looking into scale and you want a bit of a benchmark, I've got a fantastic book for you. Just go to Paulhigginsmentoring.com/blueprint to get your free copy today. And as always, please take action to scale quickly with less effort to enjoy life more.

Outro: Learning is just one piece of the puzzle. it is now time for action. Head to Today's show page at paulhigginsmentoring.com/podcast, get the links, and put it into action. Head to your favorite podcast platform, subscribe, rate, and review the show. Suggest topics for me to cover at [email protected], and don't wait one more minute to gain access to content, especially for you, a cloud consultant at paulhigginsmentoring.com/newsletter. This could be the difference between wasting time figuring it out yourself or scaling quickly with less effort to enjoy life.