Learn how to sell high value coaching, courses, and community with Wendell Scott in this episode of the LMScast podcast hosted by Chris Badgett from LifterLMS. Wendell breaks down some key tips for selling high-ticket programs and insights on the sales process in general that will help you as a course creator to get a clear vision of the sales process.
Chris first met Wendell from a program called SaaS Academy, which is a coaching program and a community that offers support for software entrepreneurs. Wendell works at SaaS Academy in their sales process, and after meeting Chris online found out they live very close to one another (only about a 45 minute drive apart).
If you haven’t yet considered selling a recurring membership option with a community component and a monthly live call component, you’re likely missing out on the recurring revenue value. Instead of constantly chasing new sales, with a recurring revenue model you can much more easily scale your business.
An important tip Wendell shares for having a great sales engine is having a very specific target customer. At SaaS Academy they have a very specific customer archetype of B2B SaaS Companies. They don’t work with B2B industrial supply companies or B2C service companies, just the B2B software companies.
Creating an offer that speaks directly to the pain points of your customers is also key. And if you don’t know their pain points, picking up the phone and talking to them is the best way to find out. If you ask your customer questions like:
- What is it difficult for you to do?
- What’s challenging for you in your life or business?
Those questions will get you the information you need to know in order to design solutions to their problems.
Once you have a clear product and target customer laid out, it’s important before even hopping on the phone with your prospects that they really understand who you are, what you do, and how you can help them. If you can lay out a clear statement of who your offer is for and who it is not for, it really helps to clarify to everyone who visits your page who your target customer is. Many online businesses struggle to get traction due to being over generalized and non-specific.
To learn more about Wendell Scott and SaaS Academy, be sure to head to DanMartell.com. They have a free Rocket Demo Builder there that will allow you to give better sales demos and get higher conversions in less time.
And at LifterLMS.com you can learn more about new developments and how you can use LifterLMS to build online courses and membership sites. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. If you like this episode of LMScast, you can browse more episodes here. Thank you for joining us!
Episode Transcript
Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high-value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. My name is Chris Badgett, and I’m joined by a special guest, his name is Wendell Scott. I first met Wendell through something called SaaS Academy, which is a coaching program, a community that I go to for support as a software entrepreneur. Before we dive into it Wendell, welcome to the show.
Wendell Scott: Thanks, Chris. Super excited to be here. I’m hoping I can deliver some value, some hard hitting tips, some tactical practical advice for your awesome community here.
Chris Badgett: Awesome, well, we’re going to talk about sales today and just to kind of set it up, I’m going to tell you about how I met Wendell. Wendell, I see you as a natural, when I’ve met you, you’re nice, you were helpful. Everything you said was spot on and you’re just like this natural salesperson. And this is a quality that the course creators, the coaches, the WordPress professionals out here could learn a lot from this episode.
Just to dial it back, I was on the internet myself with a WordPress, LMS plug-in business called LifterLMS. And I’m like, you know what? I’m just trying to increase my sales. I’m trying to increase my conversions. I have this free trial flow that I have, and it’s a demo of our product. I go to the search engine and I type in software demo template or playbook or something like that.
And lo and behold, his YouTube video pops up with Dan Martel. He does this thing, some presentation about how to do demos and trials or something. At the end he’s like, download, I have this free resource, especially for people just like you, software founders called the rocket demo builder that will help you build better demos. I was like I’m in, I opted in, but I didn’t get the demo right away. I went to a landing page and I got to schedule a 15 minute call or something with a scale specialist, which is exactly what I was trying to do as a software. The next thing like two days later, I’m on a phone call with you.
That’s how we met Wendell. Long story short within three or four days, less than a week I was inside SaaS Academy, which was a significant investment. And that was over a year ago. I’m continuing on in the program, learning so much, growing and it’s been a great investment. In my view, this is how sales is supposed to work. So I wanted to bring in the guy that sold me.
Wendell, take us play by play as a sales professional, and lead gen and how that happened. What was going on there in the beginning? I had a problem and I went to the internet and in less than a week, I’m in a high ticket program.
Wendell Scott: Well, first and foremost I want to say I was not a natural when you and I first talked. I think I had the natural ability to just talk to people, but very much so I followed a process. I followed a system. I learned everything I know from essentially getting in the weeds and learning this stuff from some of the best people in the industry. Anybody can learn sales, but I do think the root of it does start in being a people person, having great conversations, being able to connect on a human level.
But just to walk you through what you may have experienced and a lot of our clients tend to experience as they get into our world. First and foremost, we build high value content for our perfect audience. We only work with B2B SaaS founders. We don’t work with service companies. We don’t work with B2C. We don’t work with market places. We know who our ideal customers are, because of that we can speak to their biggest pain points.
Dan will do that. He will create high value content that speaks to your pain points of your perfect customers. Hint, if you need to figure out those pain points, you pick up a phone, you talk to some of your customers today. You asked them questions like what is difficult about what you do? What’s challenging? They’ll tell you all the information you need to know.
But often times, there’s a call to action. In our funnel, you must’ve found one of the sales piece of content. And that means the next call to action for that is the rocket demo builder, which is how to give a better sales pitch, sales demo for software founders. It’s a free download. We say, it’s like you never want to ask for marriage on the first date, same thing when it comes to lead generation.
You never want to just try to get somebody to book a demo or book a trial without really understanding who you are, what you do and how you can help them. Like I said, we build high value content. We always get people to download some free resource and we call this chocolate broccoli. Everybody wants a chocolate, they need the broccoli. We’re giving them a little piece of chocolate. Here’s a quick win. Here’s a rocket demo builder, download this, give us your email address, now you’re on our email list.
There’s always a call to action at the end. Hey, do you need even more help with sales conversions? Let’s hop on a quick call. Let’s do a growth audit. We’ll figure out what’s broken in your business. What isn’t, isn’t working. We’ll together come up with a three step action plan to help you overcome those challenges. That’s a little bit about our funnel and essentially the next step is always to hop on a demo with us. That’s a bit about what happens prior to the sales call and it’s all about giving value.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Well, once we’re on the sales call and there’s a conversation that’s about to happen and you have a prospect who maybe they’re a little nervous and they don’t want to be sold to, or they don’t know if they can trust you yet, but the content was good. We got a little leeway here. We’re headed in the right direction. What happens on a sales call? Because I think people have a lot of misconceptions around what sales is, or what it can look like when it’s not some high pressure manipulating thing. What is the actual sales call?
Wendell Scott: Yeah, I’ll give you one better. I’ll walk you through a sales process that anybody here can replicate to your perfect audience. But I do think you’re right, there is this misconception about sales that first and foremost, you need to break. It’s not some sleazy used car salesman trying to get you into the broken down Chevy that you don’t need. To be really masterful at sales, we say it’s serve over sell.
At the end of the day, our job is to serve our clients, whether or not it means to work with us, or to refer them to somebody who may be a better fit. At the end of the day, that’s the intention that everybody on your team needs to have, is how do I provide value on this call? I’ll walk you through our process from beginning to end. This is a crash course. If we’re training somebody new, this is the high level overview.
We always set up the agenda and the rapport. Agenda is essentially this is what we’re going to do on the call. We’re going to cover what is, and isn’t working in your business. I tell them straight up, my job is to try to get you clarity around what may be holding you back for growth. If you want to work with us, I’ll let you know what that looks like. If not, that’s okay too.
If it’s not a fit, I’m going to let you know as soon as possible. If it is, I’ll let you know if it that is a fit and then we can talk next steps if that’s the case, but either way, my job is to get you clarity. That’s the truth. The last call that I just got off of before I spoke with you, there was three executives on the call. They were thanking me by the end of the call, because I helped them get clarity around some things that they were already trying to figure out and trying to consider. Best sales call you can have is going to provide value.
That’s a little bit about the agenda. The rapport is know where they’re from, do a little bit of homework.
Chris Badgett: I’ve made it easy on you.
Wendell Scott: You were [crosstalk]
Chris Badgett: We were 45 minutes apart, which is practically neighbors on the internet.
Wendell Scott: Right, yeah. Totally small world, because I talk to people from all around the world, it’s like almost rare to talk to a software founder from Maine. You got to find the common threads. Go onto their profile. Let’s say we weren’t next door to each other. It’s like, “Hey, I see you’re big into hiking. I saw a couple of posts about that. That’s awesome. Where have you hiked? Have you ever been in Maine and hiked up here?”
It’s quick. It’s two minutes of really breaking the wall down and letting them realize that this is just two humans having a conversation and that your goal really is to provide value. Next is getting into essentially with us, we ask why them? What was it about our content, our situation that made you want to hop on the call? What that does is gives your client the opportunity to sell themselves on you.
They might be saying, geez, I saw this article that you posted Chris about LifterLMS. I’ve always been interested in creating a course for myself. This piece of content you made really resonated with me. You’re giving them an opportunity to sell themselves. Maybe they have zero context on you. And they’re like, “I don’t know, my VP of marketing told me to get on this call.” In which case you want to give a little bit of a background.
Have a little prepared 32nd background to give that context. Maybe it’s a referral where now you can bring back, hey, and just like Chris at LifterLMS, we’re going to help you do X, Y, and Z. That’s the whole why Dan or why us? Next thing I get into is why now? What are the immediate challenges you’re having in the business that made you want to book this call? Again, our job is to find what’s painful.
There’s a saying in sales, it’s called people are going to tune into wii.fm. What’s in it for me? That’s all they care about. They don’t care about how cool you are and how many podcasts you’ve been on, and how awesome your product is. They care about their challenges and solving those. If you can figure out those pieces, you’re going to be closer to getting to that sale.
After that, this is a concept from a book called Gap Selling and it’s stretching the gap. We always ask, let’s say, we do work together and we help you crush it out of the park this year Chris. What does that incredible year look like? We always want to figure out what the goals are, where they want to be, then we can reverse engineer where they’re at today and really stretch the gap between, okay, so you want to be at 50,000 in monthly recurring revenue, but you’re only at 5,000 today, is that what I’m hearing?
We get into where they want to be. After that, it’s really unpacking where they’re at today. We say it’s actually results, reality, roadblocks. Results that you want to achieve in the next 12 months, reality of your situation today. What are the roadblocks that are holding you back? I might ask a question like, all right, perfect, let’s say the goal is to 10 X business this year Chris, go from 5K to 50K monthly recurring revenue.
What’s holding you back from doing that on your own? Notice the little nuance here from doing that on your own. You’re already preceding, what’s holding you back from doing that on your own? You’re again, trying to boil down what is painful to them. There’s three reasons you’ll get a sale. There’s three piece of information you need to get to get that sale.
What is their rational impact? What is the rational reason why this would be good for their business? The emotional impact? Why is it good for them as a person or individual, critical event. How much time do they have? How much money have they spent? How much runway do they have? You get those three pieces of information, you’re going to be much closer to getting them to say yes.
We break down, we talk about their funnel. We try to break down what’s broken about that? To identify what the top three to five pains are that are the immediate challenges. We don’t want like, yeah I need to hire more people, but wait, you don’t even have the revenue to hire them today. We want to talk about what is immediate and painful. And at that point in time, once you boil down these three to five pains, you repeat it back to them.
“All right, Chris, it sounds like you need repeatable process to acquire new leads. You need a sales process, so then we can systemize that sales process and now hire more sales team. Move away from founder led sales. We need to figure out your packaging and pricing so you have more tiers of pricing. Is that what I’m hearing?” You have them confirm 100% that’s what I need. Perfect, I’ve been asking a lot of questions, where do you want to go from here?
Chris Badgett: There’s no hard close?
Wendell Scott: You’re literally unpacking what is broken, what their challenges are and asking them where they want to go.
Chris Badgett: Let me just ask a nuance question here which is, and I know because I’ve been inside SaaS Academy, that the value, the goods are there to fix all these problems. I would imagine as a sales person, you’re just getting more and more excited and confident because you know you will have the solution to help exactly this kind of person. But they need to choose to go forward, right?
Wendell Scott: Exactly. We can have all the blueprints in the world. We can have all the processes in the world, but even we, one thing we tell our clients is we’re a lighthouse, not a tugboat. You need to swim towards us, not away from us to get the best results. We’re not going to do it for you, but it’s kind of like a personal trainer will evaluate your health, figure out what’s broken, show you exactly what you need to do, but it’s still up to you and your team to do the reps, is that you?
Part of this serving over selling is literally saying if that’s not you that’s okay, but this may not be the right service for you. Especially if you’re talking about coaches, if they’re not looking to solve their challenges, I can’t want to solve them more than you want to solve them. At the end of the day, especially in the coaching world, it’s about being a great coach, providing great value, but also making sure you have the right clients.
Because, Chris, if you didn’t implement anything that we gave you, if you didn’t ask for help, whenever you got stuck, if you didn’t come to the coaching calls, show up to the sessions, implement these strategies, it wouldn’t have mattered, it would have been a moot point. Again, that’s part of serve over sell. Our goal and our job is not to get them into something that they’re not going to use.
It’s to get them committed to the outcome. Do you want to hit 50K monthly recurring revenue? That’s why you figure out and stretch the gap of where they want to be. I don’t know about you, but even with me, if I’m not super overweight, but I’m just a little chunky, I might not be committed to losing weight. Sometimes people don’t want to make a decision until they get to the point of no return, where they’re about their situation, where then they want to make a change.
We need to get them committed to what does perfect look like? Where are you at now? How bad do you want to get there? But yeah, that’s a big part of the sales process. I think for any coach, especially as the conversation progresses, we’ll talk about moving from founder led sales to team led sales. But you have to have a process for sales or you’re going to be introduced to their process for not buying.
Chris Badgett: I love that. Let’s look at the clothes specifically. This is a big question I had for you. And especially for coaches out there, or even the WordPress professional who’s doing this very high value web platform for somebody. There’s a lot of sales books out there and clothes and sign right here, take the card stuff. But there’s also like this thing where you walk away from the call with no pressure and they close themselves after the call.
What is working today in your view from what you see working for the actual moment where the credit card goes in. Is this something that happens on the call, or something that they do in the quiet of their own home office once maybe there’s been a couple of follow-ups or something? How does closing happen for high value programs?
Wendell Scott: Yeah. At the end of the day, as soon as you start putting pressure on that person, you’re going to start losing the sale. You’re actually getting further away from the sale. We say this concept, it’s selling on your heels versus selling on your toes. If you’re selling on your toes, you’re leaning in. Hey, how fast do you want to do that? Hey you should join now. That’s going to push people away fast.
Again, if you’ve done a really great job, figuring out the personal motivation, the business motivation, the critical event. You only have three months and then you have to go get your full-time job again? Got it. You have essentially the ammunition you need to close the sale at the end. Again, the sales process is about almost listening to what the objections are and starting to overcome those through the entire sales process.
If they are at the beginning saying, time is my biggest challenge. I’m wearing all hats. I’m working 70 hours a week. I have a family at home. I want to spend more time with them. My husband or my wife is getting really frustrated with the amount of hours I’m working. You already know what the objection is going to be. The sales pro is going to start seeding how they can help them overcome those challenges before they even mention the objection.
I’d say that’s one part of it is recognizing the patterns and starting to prepare for it before it comes. As you’re getting into it though again, the process is everything because right after we talk about, so these are the challenges, where do you want to go from here? The next step is hey, if there’s a catch, it’s this. We don’t work with just anybody.
You have to be humble and hungry. This is not a silver bullet that’s going to overnight solve all your challenges. I want you to understand that that’s not what this is. It’s a very pragmatic approach to growth. You have to implement, you have to execute. You have to ask for questions, ask for help if you need it. That’s how you’re going to get the results is that you?
Again, instead of trying to have them qualify, if you’re the right service or coach or software for them, you need to qualify. Are you the right buyer for us? Are you going to implement to get the results out of this? That’s part of it. After that, we always had go into a model. We talk about what we do with coaching content and community. At the end, we always present a price and immediately ask for the credit card.
The real sale begins when you ask for the credit card. And it’s not, hey, are you interested? It’s what credit card do you want to put that on? I tell my reps, it’s the difference between asking my daughter, I have a 10 year old daughter. Do you want vegetables tonight, or do you want peas, or carrots tonight? What card do you want to put that on? Is that a Visa or a MasterCard?
Assume the sale. Just like if you’re a grocery store clerk and you just rang somebody up, is that cash or card? How do you want to pay for that? You’re not asking, do you want to pay for that? Really, I think a big part of sales is getting over that fear of even asking, because we can’t help people until they get into our world. And then we’re going to over deliver for them.
Now, getting to the root of the question, which is handling the objection and whether or not to do card on the call or a follow up. I would say probably 20% to 25% of our sales come from card on the call.
Chris Badgett: First call?
Wendell Scott: Yeah, first call. We’re also doing a lot to qualify that audience before they-
Chris Badgett: Which is a big difference than just any call. It’s a qualified call.
Wendell Scott: Yeah. If you’re doing cold outbound or if this is kind of a colder audience, you typically do a discovery call first and then the demo. But again, different circumstances. We present the offer. What card do you want to put that on Chris? To start with three or four? That’s when the sales starts, that’s when it begins. Most people and it’s not their fault, Most people are going to give you a smoke screen. They’re going to tell you-
Chris Badgett: I got to check with the wife.
Wendell Scott: Yeah. I need to talk to my wife. I need to think about it. It’s almost you never actually try to handle the first thing that they say. You want to test for the smoke screen. You say if money is the challenge, all right, let’s say money wasn’t a challenge, is there any other reason that you wouldn’t get started? If they say no, you know that that’s the real reason and that’s the objection to handle.
Time. I don’t know if I have enough time to implement this. Perfect, let’s say you had all the time in the world to implement this, would there be any other reason that we wouldn’t get you started today? That’s really where you’re starting to boil down is this the actual reason?
Chris Badgett: I just want to key in here for common objections. You said money, time, decision maker, what else is common reasons that people put up the smoke screen?
Wendell Scott: Co-Founder, not enough money, not enough time to implement. They’re interested, but now isn’t the right time. I already said co-founder. Decision maker, they’re not the key decision maker, which is really on the sales person to make sure that they are the key decision maker within that line of questioning. How do you and your partner make decisions? Again, you want to try to overcome these as you’re going through this consultative sales process.
Those are, I’d say the big five that you’re going to hear. Let’s say time wasn’t a challenge. Let’s say now was the right time Chris, would there be any other reason you wouldn’t get started? Usually that’s when they’re going to start to uncover and say, okay, well I really don’t know if finances, if we have this in the bank. Perfect Chris, let’s say you had it in the bank, would there be any other reason you wouldn’t get started?
Until they say no, no other reason. It’s typically the last thing that they said, which is the actual objection to overcome. Now, is where the fun tactical piece of the game comes in. Our rule of thumb is always asked for the card twice. Ask for it initially, isolate the objection, try to overcome the objection and ask for the card again. If at that point in time they say, no, that’s when we back off.
If it’s a money objection, again, as long as you’ve done your homework and figured out what their rational motivation is, emotional impact, critical events, you can start to say, geez, Chris, I’m a little confused. You mentioned you only have four months of runway in business. You mentioned you’ve been trying to optimize paid ads for the last five months and your goal is to hit 50,000 monthly recurring revenue. When are you looking to solve that challenge?
Amazing objection handling is about asking amazing questions and it’s like tennis. You don’t want to keep the ball in your court too long. You always want to knock it back into their court with a great question. When are you looking to solve that challenge? What’s it going to cost you if we don’t work together now? How much time do you have to implement this? In terms of if we don’t work together, how much time is it going to take you? Analogies are also a great way.
I like to tell stories. Hey, I bought a piece of a Kia furniture a few weeks ago. I took two hours trying to put this piece of furniture together because silly me, I threw away the instructions. After that, I just pulled the instructions out of the trash, unwrinkled it. It took me 30 minutes once I followed the blueprints. How much faster is it going to get you to your goals, if you’re following a proven process, proven blueprints?
Again, knocking it back in their court to answer the question. Skillful objection handling is really about skillful listening. And if they trust you because you had a real genuine conversation, they feel that you actually care about their problems, you’re not just a number. That’s when they’re going to be open and honest and real. Again, it’s not going to work every time. Like I said, about 20% to 25% is card on the call for our team. All the rest it’s usually like, “Hey, no biggy, when can I circle back with you one way or the other just to see if this is going to be a good fit?”
Chris Badgett: What is a good follow-up process? That’s step one, ask for when should I come back, not I’ll hit you in a week, no matter what or whatever. How do you build a program around follow-up?
Wendell Scott: Great question and I’m sure you’ve already gone through our follow up formula, which are the 12 touch points that you have after every sale. But I’ll give you a high level overview for your clients here. Number one, is multi channel. Some people like to connect on LinkedIn and have conversations there. Some people it’s text message, some people it’s voicemail picking up the phone, some people it’s emails, some people it’s Facebook.
We use multiple channels for follow Up and it’s a very systematic cadence. Typically, we send the proposal email immediately after. The next day we send a case studies email that has a summary of what we spoke about. Whatever day that they said we’re following up on, they get both a text message from me and an email from me that says, Chris just sent you an email. Today’s the day we wanted to circle back, just let me know what you think.
We’re using multi channels. I’ll give you another key tip for emails. Like I said, on the sales process you don’t want to sell on your toes, you want to sell on your heels. You’ll get higher response rates if you do almost the takeaway close.
Chris Badgett: What’s that?
Wendell Scott: Oh yeah. It’s things like Chris sounds like this might not be the best time for you, should I close out your account? Or we actually just came up with this new template. It’s fire, it’s getting everybody to respond, but it’s am I being too much of a nuisance by continuing to follow up? It’s not pushy, it’s not salesy, it’s just you’re trying to get people to make a decision one way or the other.
I would rather somebody give me a no than a maybe. You never want the reason that you’re closing loss deals out of your CRM to be stopped responding. It means you did something wrong. You want it to be maybe now isn’t the right time. Whatever the reasons are, you never want it to be because they stopped responding. Because it typically means that you might’ve been too pushy.
Another key tip for those follow ups, keep it short and punchy. No more than three sentences. Make it seem like you’re writing to a friend. It’s never this lengthy long email trying to convince them why. If you’ve had a great conversation, they have everything they need. You need to sometimes let it simmer on them.
Chris Badgett: What about a risk reversal? How do you help the prospect relax and feel they could double back if it doesn’t work as they expected or whatever?
Wendell Scott: Big call. That’s actually part of our process. If we’re selling the lower tier program, we always give the full price. I’ll give you two, which is risk reversal and then if it’s a financial concern, financial concern first. We always give the full price. It’s 4,997, what card do you want to put that on to get you started Chris? If money is in objection, hey perfect, that’s actually why we offer installment plan.
12 months installments we’ll chop it up into 12 payments with a little bit of a finance fee, it ends up being $500 a month. What card do you want to put that on? And then last but not least is in SaaS Academy we offer a 60 day love it or leave it money back guarantee. In growth accelerator it’s a 30 day. Consider the financing, consider the guarantee, your ACEs in the hole. You never want to show all your cards at once.
It’s like 4,997 what card do you want to put that on Chris? I don’t know is this really going to work for me? Is it going to work for us? Hey, totally understand the concern, super valid. A lot of our clients have felt that way in the past, here’s what I could do for you. We’re going to give you a full 30 day love it or leave it guarantee.
I don’t want you to just believe me when I say it, I want you to get in see the content for yourself, start implementing these frameworks, show up to the coaching calls, ask for help. If you don’t believe at that point in time, it’s the best investment of your time or money, we’ll give you a full financial refund. Again, keep it as that ACE in the hole. But always have a really strong value proposition. Have those guarantees that you’ve already vetted out that are in place. Use them as part of the objection handlers.
Chris Badgett: If somebody is not really used to qualifying and let’s just say they want to help everybody or whatever. Maybe they haven’t been burned yet by doing too many sales calls and not enough closes, or getting people into the program that maybe they shouldn’t have. How do you build or select your qualifying criteria? And how should people think about that?
Wendell Scott: The best way to think about qualifying is it’s the difference between a general doctor and a specialist. I’m telling you if your clients today are running coaching programs, if they’re running software programs, it’s so much better to be a specialist and I’ll make the argument as to why. A general doctor has to see everybody. Do you belong here? Do you belong in the ER? Can I treat you? Do you have a broken bone and I need to send you to the orthopedic surgeon?
They are a catchall for anybody and everybody they can’t dial in a message that really resonates. They’re charging less than what others do. Now look at the specialist. If I am an orthopedic surgeon, I know who my perfect customers are. You have a broken bone, that’s what I fix. If I have a broken bone and I’m the patient, I know I want to see an orthopedic surgeon to fix my broken bone.
I’ve seen clients that for instance field service workers, what is field service? That could be plumbers, it could be electricians, it could be lawn care technicians. But if I’m a plumber and I go to field service, crm.com versus plumbercrm.com, guess which one is going to resonate with me? Plumbercrm.com. It’s if you’re trying to serve everybody, you’re not going to really resonate a message, you’re not going to dial it in for anybody.
I would say first and foremost, that if you don’t know who your perfect customers are today, if you’re working with customers, start from that pool. Figure out of the five or 10 or 20 people that I do have as customers today, who is the easiest to sell to? Who is this value proposition, the strongest for? At that point in time, you can even dial in your marketing through what’s called Echo Marketing.
Talk to them, record a Zoom call, just like this. Say hey, how was LifterLMS changed your business? What impact has it had? How do you describe us to your friends or colleagues? It’s Echo Marketing because they’ll tell you everything you need to know to develop your hook, your promise, your value proposition. Ask the right questions to your audience, they’ll tell you what you need to do.
If you don’t have an audience today, that’s where you need to at least start with some theories. What you’re going to build, who you’re going to build it for and just get narrow in that. Start with what you’re good at already. Start with the field that you’re already familiar with. That’s always a great starting point because like I said, there’s everybody wants to be a generalist, but that’s what’s actually slowing people down from fast traction and growth, becoming a specialist. And then as you grow and grow, now you can maybe incorporate some new audiences. That’s the fastest way to get traction.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Do you have any advice for people to get in the zone for sales? For me, I like to be standing up. I work standing up, but sales calls sometimes if it’s on the phone, I just like to walk or smile, be outside. I’m super focused and I just get in the zone. It’s like a different head space. How can somebody get in the zone? What advice do you have?
Wendell Scott: Best advice I would give everybody is to develop your morning routine. What is your morning routine for success? To me, I like to connect with where I’m looking… Like I do with my clients on a call, where do I want to be in five years from now? Why am I doing this? What is my why? Because if I connect to that every single morning and I also use meditation, I read books, I write, I do a little exercise to get my blood working, blood pumping.
Those are the things that gets me into the zone. What gets you into the zone might be different than what gets me into the zone. I would say any person needs to develop their own routine based on what works for them. There are certain podcasts that I listen to and if they just get me in that right feeling space, because if you’re in the right head space, then it’s like your clients feel that. They feel the energy, they feel that you care, they feel you want to help.
If you’re in a negative head space, don’t expect to change other people’s worlds if you can’t change your own world. Start their, morning routine.
Chris Badgett: Do you have anything you could share around the different types of buyers? I don’t know, maybe some, one the super logical and others emotional, or what are these buyer personas that you run into?
Wendell Scott: I’m going to give you some next level stuff here, okay?
Chris Badgett: Okay.
Wendell Scott: And it’s even how we incorporate it into our sales process. First and foremost, what I’m going to tell your audience here is this isn’t a step one thing. This is like, when you’ve been doing this for a while and get super granular, you always start on that high level, 30,000 foot view and you work your way down.
Nowadays, we actually get pretty involved. Part of our sales process is right when they book a call, we add somebody on LinkedIn. There’s a service called Crystal Knows where you can actually do a disc analysis on your clients. Interestingly enough, I don’t know if this is just entrepreneurs in general, but what we’ve discovered is driver personalities and initiators. essentially D and I level personalities are 80% of the calls that we have.
These are drivers, these are people who are alpha type personalities. Again, we tailor to some degree to our personas that we know where we work best for, but here’s the other tip. We have a lot of case studies, handful of video testimonials, case studies. I’ve done disc analysis on the case studies. If I know that you’re a driver, guess what kind of case study you’re getting from me?
One that talks about your challenges with another driver personality. On a subconscious level, it’s even resonating with you that way. But I would definitely say that’s our persona. And I think just entrepreneur persona in general is typically D and I on the disc wheel. Interestingly enough, we’ve seen something similar for sales personas when we’re hiring.
There’s very much a persona that again, I’m not saying if you’re on the C side of the wheel that you’re not going to be a great sales person, but it’s just, we’re seeing the correlations, that’s kind of the next level stuff, but is that what you’re asking for?
Chris Badgett: Yeah, what are the patterns you see or fast to close, slow to close. I don’t know somebody who’s just more feeling based versus logical. How do you adapt on the fly? I’m originally from the south so I talk slow, but somebody from New York might be like really fast and more aggro. Talk about mirroring or what you do with the variety?
Wendell Scott: Sure. There’s a lot of concepts behind mirroring as in the last thing that they said, repeating back the last four or five word that somebody mentioned to you. Matching their tonality, matching body language. If they’re crossing their arms, maybe you start crossing your arms. Actually here’s how you know if they’re paying attention, if you do an action and then they start doing that same body language.
We do to some degree, but honestly, it’s more process driven, because when you have a really solid process, that’s just about serving, that’s going to beat out. I would rather teach all of my sales reps the process and how to get good at that. And then this is the kind of like the disc analysis. This is when you get really amazing at the process, you can start playing around with matching tonality, matching speed.
I’d say that’s a big one is like how many words per minute. If they’re slow and methodical, you might want to slow yourself down to some degree. If they’re fast paced and they just want answers, you don’t want to beat around the bush, you need to be able to deliver it fast and hard hitting. So I will say that we’ve definitely seen that correlation with driver personalities. They’re usually quicker to make decisions, whether it’s a yes or a no, they’re not leaving on the fence so you can play to those things. I would just say, I wouldn’t worry about that if you’re just doing founder led sales and you’re trying to escape better founder led sales and build a sales team. I would worry about the basics before I go from macro to micro.
Chris Badgett: What about in the process building, the function of, you mentioned case studies and story. What’s in the program like, hey, here’s what’s in the box, we’ve got some training, we’ve got these resources. But then let me tell you this story about this other person. It’s very powerful, in fact, I think when I was in your sales process, you sent me some case studies that I was looking at after the call. And it was really in that moment when I was looking at that story that I was like, “Yeah, I’m in.” It was like, the story is really powerful. Is it case studies really what we should be telling? Or how do we weave the story into the process in which stories are the best?
Wendell Scott: I mean, stories are what sells, kind of like why analogies sell. Sometimes it’s actually harder hitting than trying to logically explain something, because like you said, maybe there’s a feeling that you get when you can see yourself in somebody else’s shoes and see their story is similar to your story.
So essentially we do this in a couple of ways, during the sales process when we unpack those three to five challenges, we say, okay, activation rates are a challenge? All right, perfect, you actually sound just like one of our clients, Chris, at LifterLMS. He had a very similar challenge with poor activation rates, or whatever it is. I don’t think that was one of your challenges, but you tell the story about… And good storytelling is always what is the situation, the struggle and the solution? Here’s the situation, they had low activation rates.
It was a struggle because they weren’t converting enough of their clients. We used our activation builder framework. We used our UI/UX coach Joel. Now, actually they went from 7% conversions to 27% conversions. What would that do for you and your business if we could help you accomplish that?
So we tell stories in the sales process and really here’s the thing is. For any one of the coaches, for any one of the software components out here, there’s usually about five major pain points that you might solve. Five real value propositions. All you need to know is five stories for those main five that you might solve for them. Again, now go back to the case studies email that you’re getting later on. Now, we are super granular because we asked for case studies, we get tons of testimonials, but you might only need five major testimonials to talk about the five major pain points that you solve.
So again, that’s also the power of being a specialist versus a generalist. If you’re trying to solve everybody’s problems, it’s not going to be as easy to systematically build a process. If you’re just, we’re the best at these problems for this audience, now you can boil down your five case studies. It’s more meaningful for the clients that you can serve.
Chris Badgett: And what is the virtual close?
Wendell Scott: Ah, virtual close. Okay. Virtual close it’s two parts, in the agenda today Chris we’re going to talk about results, reality, roadblocks. Results you’re looking to achieve in the next 12 months, reality your situation today, roadblocks you might be experiencing. If I don’t think we can help, I’m going to let you know, because I don’t want to waste our time today. If I think we can help, I’m going to let you know what that looks like to work together. Does that sound cool?
Chris Badgett: Yeah.
Wendell Scott: Yeah. You just gave me permission now that if we find that it is a good fit, that I can give you the offer. That’s opening up a loop. Now, let’s close the loop. Yeah. So Chris, what I’m hearing is this is a problem, this is a problem, this is a problem. Is that right?
Chris Badgett: Yeah.
Wendell Scott: Perfect. I’ll let you know if I thought we could help you, then I would let you know what that looks like. Luckily I do believe that we can help. These are challenges we help our clients solve each and every day. Where do you want to go from here, Chris? I opened the loop, I told you if we could help, I’d let you know, you gave me permission, later on I closed the loop by saying, yep. I mentioned in the beginning of the call, if I thought we could help, I’d let you know. Luckily I do think we can help. Where do you want to go from here?
Okay, here’s what we do. It’s very like, non-pushy just like, “Hey, where do you want to go from here?” If you say, “Wendell, this was super awesome, but I’m not interested.” “Perfect, Chris, have a good one. We’re here when you’re ready for us.”
You can’t be needy in a sale, at the end of the day it’s like you have to be certain, certain of what you can accomplish, certain what you can help them accomplish, certainty sells. And it’s one person is more certain than the other. Either you’re certain you can help and this is the best thing in the world for them. They’re certain that this isn’t a good fit. So a sale is always made and it’s typically the most certain person that’s going to make that sale. They’re going to sell you on why it’s not a fate, you’re going to sell them on why it is.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. My last question for you today, Wendell. If you could speak to listening as a sales person, what are you listening for? How do you think about listening when you’re engaged in a sale process?
Wendell Scott: Yeah. At the end of the day, kind of like what I said before, W-I-F-M, what’s in it for me. Our job in sales is to be amazing at listening to what is frustrating, listening to what the true pains are. Because even the smokescreen with the objection sometimes they give me a smokescreen on what’s actually painful. Like they might say, it’s I need a hire a VP of marketing, but really the thing that’s painful is they don’t have a repeatable process around how to generate leads. So it’s you need to dig and ask the right questions and confirm with them. So is that what I’m hearing, Chris? If we could help you build this repeatable customer acquisition engine, a dollar in the funnel turns into $5 at the bottom of the funnel. Is that going to solve your challenges? Is that what you’re looking to achieve?
Yeah, 100%. Why is that important to you? What would that help you accomplish if we could do that? Do you think we could help you hit that 50K monthly recurring revenue if you had a repeatable process around lead gen? Listening is about really boiling it down and not telling them what their challenges and problems are. Listening and then using that as to shine the mirror in their face and to say, okay, look, this is what you said is the challenge. Is that something you’re looking to fix? How soon are you looking to solve those challenges? I mean, at the end of the day, sales is about asking the right questions and it’s that whole like you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. You’re really leading them down a path because people don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy.
You’re leading them down this thought exercise that’s all about, where do you want to be? Where are you at today? What’s holding you back from getting there? Okay. Let’s say we could help you accomplish that. What would that do for you? You’re getting them to think about these things, but again, it’s using their information. It’s not using mine. It’s not about me. It’s not about what I can do. It’s not about Dan, it’s about them and what they want. And if you can listen to that message, that’s how you’re going to convert people and essentially get them into the thing that you do exceptionally well.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Well, Wendell Scott, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for sharing your sales wisdom with us. It’s been on my list to, I want to do this for a long time, and you have to understand that the first time I met Wendell through a sales process for a coaching program called SaaS Academy, which is designed for B2B software founders, looking to scale quickly, I went through a sales process with Wendell, happened to learn. He was 40 minutes away from where I lived. So the next time I was in his area, go into an airport and had some extra time I actually called the salesperson and invited him out to dinner together. That’s what happens in a good sales experience.
Once I got inside the program, it was awesome. I was sold something that was even better than what I thought I was buying. And that’s how sales is supposed to work. And you’re such a great example of just approachable human sales process and just believing in the product and understanding the product, understanding the market, empathetic, listening that I wanted to bring you on so others can see how it’s really done. Go check out SaaS Academy, if and only if you’re a B2B software founder looking to scale quickly. So thanks for coming on Wendell. Any final words for the people?
Wendell Scott: Hey, if you’re looking for help scaling your B2B SAAS company, just follow us online, Danmartell.com. If you want to download our rocket demo builder, which is going to show you how to give better sales demos, get higher conversions, do it in less time, it’s Danmartell.com/rocket-demo. So download that free resource, you’ll get some amazing value and keep on listening to LifterLMS Podcast, because it’s one of the best, if not the best learning management system out there for the WordPress community.
Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends, and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at lifterlms.com/gift. Go to lifterlms.com/gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.
