Increase Sales With Communication Frequency
Written by Dave Lorenzo on August 15, 2016 / Archived Podcasts / Communication
Increase sales with communication frequency.
You don’t communicate with your clients often enough. That’s why you don’t sell as much as you should. This episode of The 60 Second Sales Show outlines a way you can boost sales, immediately, by increasing your frequency of communication.
Here is the transcript of this episode.
Hey they’re workplace warriors. Welcome to another edition of the sixty second sales show. I am Dave Lorenzo and I’m your host. Today we’re talking about the most important relationships in your life. That’s right. We’re talking about relationships you develop that can lead to long term business but our frame of reference for developing these relationships and the entire foundation that the sixty second sales process is built upon is a foundation of deep long lasting relationships that can be built through an external orientation. Through your focus on the person with whom you’re doing business. I’d like you to picture for a moment the most important relationship in your life. Think of that significant other, that spouse, that partner, your life partner. The person that you count on the most, the person that you spend the most time with. I want you to think about that relationship and think about how frequently you communicate with that person and now think about whether your relationship would be better with more communication or worse with more frequent communication.
In the back of your mind and maybe you’ve heard me say this before. In the back of your mind you may be kind of chuckling and saying honestly maybe my relationship would be better if we didn’t see each other, if we didn’t speak that often and frankly if your relationship would be better off if you didn’t speak that often or if you didn’t communicate that frequently, I’ll tell you then maybe you need deeper counseling that I’m going to be able to give you here on the sixty second sales show. Seriously frequency of communication is the cornerstone of building a foundation of trust and that’s what relationship based sales is all about. When we talk about selling something to someone it starts with a relationship. It starts with them and you having some sort of rapport. It starts with you both acting from a position of mutual interest not just self-interest. The entire sixty second sales process is built around you and the person with whom you are working connecting in that first sixty seconds and realizing that there is a foundation of a relationship here.
Let me take you back to a time in my career when I first realized the power of relationship development through frequent communication. I was working almost exclusively with lawyers in 2010 and I had developed a database. I had developed a list of lawyers over the two years that I was really in this business actively, 2008, 2009. I had database of lawyers and they would receive an email from me on a regular basis. They were receiving an email from me each week. It was Wednesday at noon. I still deliver that email. I now deliver it to all sorts of business leaders not just lawyers but at the time it was called The Rainmaker Minute and that email was going out once a week. It was something that I started in February of 2009 and nine and I started it in response to the need for me to develop deeper relationships with people who had met me let’s say at a speaking engagement or had kind of come to know me through reading an article that I had written or maybe just stumbled upon my website.
All these folks had interacted with me one time and they wanted additional information from me so I started sending out this weekly email newsletter and I would educate people on business strategy, practice management, productivity improvement. Everything that they didn’t teach lawyers in Law School I was covering in this weekly email newsletter. Around thanksgiving time in 2010 I had been doing the newsletter for almost two years. The weekly email newsletter. It was going out almost two years. Around thanksgiving time in 2010 I received an email from one of the readers of the newsletter. Someone who I didn’t know, someone who had stumbled upon my website and subscribed to it and the email said, “My husband is the leader of a small group of lawyers that gets together once a year. They need a speaker on business strategy and marketing. Would you be willing to do this?” I replied back absolutely I speak to groups all the time. Let me know what I can do to discuss this opportunity with you. Let me know how I can discuss this opportunity with you.
Well, I immediately received a phone call from this woman’s husband like within … I want to say two minutes of sending that email the lady’s husband called me and we had a very nice conversation. He told me about the group and he invited me to send a proposal and I said well I don’t really send proposals here’s what I charge for speaking engagements, here’s what I’d be willing to do, how does this meet with your expectations? I had to make some modifications and customize the engagement for him but we agreed in principle to a deal on the phone. I sent him a letter outlining that deal and within forty-eight hours I had been booked to speak at this event which was in the following February, so February 2011. This all came about from a simple weekly email newsletter that I had sent out that the woman’s wife had read.
You might be thinking to yourself okay Dave I see the value for you as a professional speaker and as someone who’s a consultant in sales. I see the value in sending out this newsletter, you’ve got a speaking engagement out of it that’s great. I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking to yourself Dave you probably wrote that newsletter at the time for two years, every Wednesday you were sending it out it probably took you two hours to write. Even if it only took you an hour to write you’re putting over one hundred hours and you’ve got a speaking engagement. Well that’s true. I’m telling you a story of how I booked one speaking engagement from it, but let me continue the story. It turns out that the gentleman who booked me to speak was a senior partner in the largest law firm in the country, Gibson Dunn and he was the head of the litigation Council of America. The litigation Council of America had a sub group called the complex commercial litigation Institute and that’s who booked me to speak.
I received a fee for that speaking engagement but I also developed business with a few of their members afterwards. That one speaking engagement was worth over two hundred thousand dollars in business to me. Now I want you to think about if that’s the only thing I had booked for two years of communicating with my list of folks with frequency, so if I had invested one hundred four hours to get that two hundred thousand dollars plus worth of the business … By the way I still do business with some people who were in that room so it’s way more than that now. If that’s all I had gotten from this, would it have been worth it? The answer is unequivocally yes. Absolutely it was worth me investing the time and doing that newsletter but I feel like an infomercial, but wait there’s more. That’s not the only piece of business I’ve ever gotten. In fact I receive eighty to ninety percent of my business. I’m not exaggerating, from people who have been in my database who receive my weekly email newsletter. What’s the point? The point is that frequency of communication helps to build trust. Frequency of communication helps to build trust and that trust is the foundation of your relationship. That’s what leads to the long term business that you’re going to do with folks.
Those of you who are out there in the in the sales world here’s what I want you to do. I don’t care what you sell, I don’t care what your product or service is, when you meet someone. I want you to connect with them and I want you to send them an email as a follow up and say it was a pleasure meeting you. Each week I communicate with the folks who are most important to me and I send them a weekly email newsletter. This newsletter is designed to educate, inform, and entertain. I’d like to put you on the list you can unsubscribe at any time. I hope you find it valuable and I welcome your feedback. That’s the email you’re going to send out. I don’t care if you sell copiers or you sell jet planes, this strategy is something that I practice and it’s something that I teach my clients and it works extremely well. The reason is because people we communicate with develop a bond with us and they expect that communication over time but more importantly that communication builds trust.
I’m going to give you right now the keys to developing trust by using this powerfully phenomenal tool, the weekly email newsletter. I’m going to give you three areas to focus on. The first area are the topics that you’re going to write about. Let’s say that you’re a car mechanic. You own an auto body repair shop. People coming to you for oil changes, they’re coming to you for tune-ups, they’re coming to you for major repairs on their car. When they come in to you obviously get their contact information. I want you to start writing a weekly email newsletter and I want you to educate people on things that are going on with their car. Again I’m inside your head I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking people don’t want to hear about car issues every single week and that’s fine. You’re a member of the community as a car mechanic you’re a powerful important member of the community. Everybody needs a service you have at one time or another. You’re going to write about things that are going on in the community, you’re going to inform. Once every four or five weeks you’re going to educate on a car topic and you’re always going to entertain.
You’re going to occasionally use humor. You’re going to occasionally include a video in there that may show people something that you’re working on or maybe kids playing baseball or you discussing the local Little League standings. The topic can be varied as long as you educate, inform, and entertain. Now let’s talk about the tone of this weekly email newsletter you’re going to send out. The tone is conversational. When people read it I want them to feel like they’re having a conversation with a friend. When you write you should write it in a familiar way. Forget about everything you were taught in your composition class in grammar school. Forget about how you were graded on your essays in high school and especially if you went to college you have to throw out everything they taught you about writing in college. Write the way you speak. I’m having a conversation with you right now on this podcast, that’s exactly the way you should be writing your newsletter, your weekly email newsletter.
Now let’s talk about the timing. Why do I like Weekly? Why am harping on weekly? Well this day in age we’re in a social media dominated world. I want you to think about how often you check social media. Many of us check social media multiple times a day. You’re on let’s say Facebook or Twitter multiple times a day and you’re actually having asynchronous conversations. Somebody is writing something to you, you see it you respond you write something back, you check later. There’s a whole dating world. There’s a whole group of people that are participating in the dating world using this type of communication now. All these dating sites people send messages back and forth and those are taking the place of real conversations before people actually meet. That’s multiple times a day and that’s how relationships are developed.
Now think about how often you enter into let’s say discussion forums. I belong to a discussion forum for consultants run by my mentor. A gentleman by the name of Alan Weiss and the forum contains fantastic topics that help me grow my business that educate me that focus me on my professional development as well as my personal development and I visit that forum multiple times a week to see what people have to say and to communicate with people. I’m sure you do the same with your industry, your profession. I’m sure you sharpen the saw multiple times a week in some way.
Now I want you to think about houses of worship or religious services. People who are religious go to services at least once a week or multiple times a month. You communicate with your community, you connect with your community multiple times a month. The point is this frequency it builds a sense of community, it lays the foundation for relationships. In your business I’d like you to take the time to communicate with the most important people to you. Your clients, your prospective clients. I’d like to take the time to communicate with them once so week In a way that’s meaningful and powerful. There you have your topic, your tone, and your timing.
A lot of people ask me questions about the delivery. They want to know the technical aspects of this and quite frankly the delivery so simple. Go to one of these services that are available right now. Constant contact, Icontact, Mail Chimp, Awebber, there are a whole host of email service providers. They have templates. Drop your information into that template once a week and upload your list, set a day and a time for it to go out. The day and the time is unimportant as long as it’s consistent and you’re off to the races. You’re often running and you’re communicating with your most important folks in your business life each and every single week.
I do have a confession to make about this. Some people are going to unsubscribe and that may hurt your feelings. It doesn’t matter. The people who unsubscribe are not going to be long term clients of yours anyway or if they weren’t reading it it’s better for you not to think that they’re out there and maybe will do business with you at some point. People who unsubscribe are fine let them go. Yes there are some people who will respond with nasty things. People sometimes have a visceral reaction to getting information in their inbox that says more about them than it says about you, don’t worry about it. This is one of the most important strategies that I teach. Communicate with your clients and your prospective clients each and every single week. If you do this and you give it three months you will find out how powerful it can be within ninety days. That’s twelve weekly news letters. You will start to see some results. I promise you this will be one of the most powerful things you do to boost your sales.
Now it’s time for us to turn to our mailbag. It’s time for our mailbag segment and today I’m thrilled that we actually have a question from Facebook. We got a question from one of the viewers of my Facebook live videos. I’m doing a Facebook live video every day. We just set the time for it every day at 3:00 eastern time. Visit me on Facebook @_the_DaveLorenzo. That’s @_the_Dave Lorenzo that’s my business profile page and once a day at 3 pm eastern time I’m live. You can chat with me on Facebook. We cover a topic and usually in about ten minutes or less it’s usually a lot less than ten minutes and we talk about things that will boost your sales. We talk about the sixty second sales process. Today’s question comes from a gentleman by the name of Adam and Adam asks … I want to read it to make sure I get it right. Adam asks, “How do I sell something nobody needs? How do I approach people who don’t know they need my services and offer my services to them?”
Well the first thing I have to say Adam is you shouldn’t be selling something that nobody needs to somebody who doesn’t need it. The questions I have for you before I give you the answer. Number one: Do you make a difference in the lives or the businesses of the people that you work with? Do you make a difference in the lives or the businesses of the people that you work with? If the answer is yes we can move on. Question number two: Are you exchanging fair value for the compensation you’re being paid? Are you exchanging fair value for the compensation you’re being paid? If the answer is yes, we can move on. Question three? Do you have a passion for whatever it is you’re selling? Do you have a passion for whatever it is you’re selling? If the answer is yes then I can give you the answer to this question, but if you answered no to any of those three questions then quite frankly we need to have you move to a different product or service that you can sell where the answers to those three questions are yes.
Do you make a difference in the lives or businesses of the people that you work with? Are you exchanging fair value for the compensation you receive and do you have a passion for what you’re selling? If the answer is yes to those three questions then my friend I can tell you that the people that you’re speaking with need your products or services, but before you ever sell anything to anyone you should find out what’s going on in their business, find out what’s going on in their life and find out what their biggest challenge is and help them or at least try to help them solve that challenge. I’m going to say that again because it’s really important. Before you sell anything to anybody ever you should find out what’s going on in their life, find out what’s going on their business, ask what their biggest challenge is, what they’re currently facing and see if you can help them solve that problem. Introduce them to someone who can make things a little better. Offer them a direct solution, see if there’s a way you can help them solve their biggest challenge first then you can talk about your product or your service.
Why do we do this? This is the essence of the sixty seconds sale. The sixty second sale is you essentially selling yourself to the person as someone who cares about them. That’s the sixty second sale. If you can do that within the first minute then you’ve earned the right to talk about how your product or service can make their life or their business better even if it’s unrelated to whatever their biggest challenge is because you’ve offered to help take away their biggest challenge, to help take away their pain essentially on something else first. You’ve demonstrated that you care. You’ve laid a foundation of trust first, then you can sell them something that you have to offer. That’s how you get into a sales conversation with someone who doesn’t need what you have, but if you have a solution you believe in and you’re sitting across the table from someone who you believe you can help with your product or service then that person is really someone who needs what you have. That resetting of our mindset is so important. That’s what you need to do before you approach anyone from a sales perspective.
Adam thank you so much for your question. I sincerely appreciate it. Those of you who would like to interact with us or ask me a question again you can reach out to me on Facebook @the_DaveLorenzo on Twitter same handle @theDaveLorenzo and also you can find me of course on Instagram where we post a great sales quote every day and one minute videos to engage inform and entertain you. My Instagram handle is the same as the other two @the Dave Lorenzo. This is the sixty second sales show. Again I thank you for joining us and I look forward to speaking with you right back here next week. Make sure you join us on iTunes. The sixty second sales show I’m Dave Lorenzo and until next week I hope you make a great living and live a great life.
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