How Chet Holmes Creates Follow-ups Leaving Nothing to Chance

by | Aug 9, 2024 | Blog, Business Guidance

Next week will be 12 years since our founder, Chet Holmes, passed. (August 12, 2012)
I’m sure many of you think about the legacy you want to leave behind.

Technology moves so fast these days, advice can become irrelevant within months let alone years.

And yet here we are, releasing another training from the vault where Chet trains on Follow Up.

To be able to articulate the present trends is observant, to be timeless is utter genius.

So here you go, another week of the CEO Mastery Show with Chet Holmes’ genius –

I wish for you that you take a moment this week to reconcile with yourself, if today was your last day -are you doing what matters to you?

We lost another great soul this week, one of the greatest salesman to have ever graced the Cutco company -John Ruhlin, author of Giftology.

At the young age of 44 he’s left behind four daughters and a wife.

Watching the outcry of love for such an adored man reminded me of the response we saw when my father passed.

I can’t help but think, life can be swept away at any moment.

So please make the moments matter. You’re the only one who loses if they don’t.

Enjoy this week’s episode, and live a little harder on behalf of Chet, and John this week.

 

Continued Learning: Chet Holmes Expert Sales Advice

TAKING ACTION:

  • Want to know what’s keeping you from doubling your sales in the next 12 months? Take our quick QUIZ to get answers: Howtodoublesales.com
  • If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
  • Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

TRANSCRIPT:

*this transcript was mostly generated by AI, please excuse any mistakes smile

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the CEO Mastery Conference with your host, Mr. Chet Holmes.

Chet Holmes: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. So the theme for today is all about mastery of your follow up and your follow up procedures and what that consists of. And I am a scientist. For those of you who know me well, you know that I think that sales and marketing is a precision like process or machine like process.

Hence the title of my book, The Ultimate Sales Machine. It’s all about having as much machine like Processes that you can have. And again, the mistake I think most companies make is they try to tell people what to do instead of asking them what to do. And so what I find is a very, very good exercise is to take a look at every action and activity going on with every client in every way at every level.

And I’m going to spell this out really well for you today and do a workshop. You know, module two of your training is all about workshops, workshops, workshops. And you want to get these people into a room, and you want to say, okay, from initial contact, what would be three suggestions that everybody has on what should be the most immediate follow up we should do, then the intermediate follow up, then the more advanced follow up, then the super advanced follow up.

And now the client responds and then what is your next follow up and your next now in the business growth master series, the module on follow up is short and it just runs you through 12 different follow up steps to help you bond with clients and when that’s B2B, that’s real obvious. In B2C, it’s not as obvious and I’m happy to work with you.

I do, we have three different people who have volunteered today to sort of interact with me a little bit, so that’ll be great. Make it kind of interesting. We get into some of your businesses and we will be doing that with Mark, with Patrick and with Howard who works for Jeffrey. And so anyway, before I do that, let’s, let’s set the premise here and I can use our organization as an example.

Right now, we’ve got an initiative going with Tony Robbins and most of you guys have probably seen the tons of emails we have out on that and we have an event that we’re doing with Tony. And so we set up this elaborate system. And his staff that’s involved with us on this are all like, Man, you guys are so buttoned down, we’ve never seen anything like it.

So we have a radio spot that generates leads to a voicemail, and I say voicemail, I prefer them to be answered live, but most of the time we can’t answer them live because we get too many calls. So the majority of them do go to voicemail. So now that leads in, and they call in thinking they’re going to get voicemail, and here’s the outgoing message.

I’m just trying to show you how thorough you can be with your follow up. So here’s the outgoing message that plays when someone calls in off of one of our Well, first, just for fun here, let me play the radio spot for you to get the whole These are all only a minute, so it’s not like it’s But just gives you an idea.

So here’s the way that generates the lead.

[00:03:13] Hi, this is Tony Robbins. If you’re a business owner, I’m sure you’re noticing the massive changes that are occurring in the marketplace. There are 26, 000 new products hitting the market every year, and up to 30 percent of consumers change brand loyalty in a single night of watching television.

Add to that the impact of our economic times, and boy, you better be proactive if you own a business. How would you like strategies that can make you bulletproof against the turmoil of our economy and these fast changing times? You’ve probably heard of Chet Holmes, best selling author and advisor to 60 Fortune 500 clients.

What you probably don’t know is that I’ve recruited Chet and a team of world leading business experts to help you grow your business in these tough times, and I’m doing it for free. We want to invest in you first by getting you bulletproof strategies that’ll astonish you. Seriously, I’m going to introduce you and business owners to concepts that are going to reshape commerce, and if you’re ahead of the curve, you’ll take market share before your competitors even know what hit them.

[00:04:03] Chet Holmes: So then that gives a call to action, call for your free information and here’s the phone number and that I wrote that copy, by the way, and the commerce shaping strategies talking about our mind, you know, so all this stuff that we teach on, you know, education based marketing and we’re following our own rules.

So I don’t point out to you guys that that starts with market data. Those of you listening, what’s the first thing he said? 26, 000 new products coming on the market. What’s the second thing he said? 30 percent of consumers change brand loyalty in a single night of watching television. So we use market data as a way of grabbing attention and as a way of establishing some authority.

And now you call in and you get the voicemail. So I’m gonna show you the whole system and then yours should be, I guess, in every way, you just have every kind of follow up you can. So now you call in and you get this.

[00:04:52] Tony Robbins: Hi, this is Tony Robbins. Congratulations on taking your first step into a more lucrative and prosperous world.

Yes, you can just leave us an email address and we’ll email you some of our business shaping content. But I’d like to invite you and challenge you to go a step further if you’d like. I’ve set up a handful of my Vice Presidents of Business Improvement, who are gonna talk to some of you and go deeper.

Consider this like a concierge level of service if you’re a high level entrepreneur. Imagine one of my vice presidents assessing your exact needs and getting you free materials on how to solve the challenges you’re facing right now in your business. I’m going to continue to invest in your learning curve, and hopefully that’ll lead us to a deeper relationship.

That’s my intent. So if you want to be a little more adventurous and courageous, then by all means, leave us your phone number. I’m not promising you’ll get called, but if you do, I promise you will be a vice president and not a salesperson, and they’ll be able to add significant value to you and your business at no cost to you.

In fact, I’ll arrange for you to get a 500 training program just for leaving your phone number. So leave us your name, spell out your email address very slowly and clearly if you would, and if you’re up for a real breakthrough, leave us your telephone number as well. Please wait for the beep.

[00:05:55] Chet Holmes: So, now, they leave their information, and immediately, a material service that we use pulls the lead off.

They’re in there every hour on the hour, and you get the email right away. And then the follow up starts, you know, so then there’s the first call, there’s the second call, there’s the third call. Now, our objective, ultimately, is to first drive a lot of leads, and so that ad you heard, that’s pretty dang good.

I mean, that’s pulling really, really well. But now, when we call you out If you don’t return the phone call, we have four different follow up phone calls. So what are yours? Do you leave that up to the salespeople? If you do. You’re crazy. No offense intended, but I don’t leave anything up to anybody that we aren’t architecting ourselves at the highest level.

And that doesn’t mean that I’m telling everybody what they should do. In my case, that is a skill of mine. Yes, I am a marketing and sales expert, so you can imagine that I want to make sure that everything we do at that level has got my thumbprint on it. But I’m not always the one telling people what we should do.

Oftentimes, we ask them. I say, what do you guys think? What do you think we should do? What do you think should be the four or five follow ups? And again, in my case, I have a benefit in that I have a natural ability here, so we do a very good job. But then comes the first voicemail, and if they don’t return your call, comes the second one, and then on the third one, I got him to record the voicemail.

Hi,

[00:07:17] Tony Robbins: this is Tony

[00:07:18] Chet Holmes: Robbins.

[00:07:19] Tony Robbins: Listen, if you’ve followed my work, you probably know that in addition to helping millions of people from practically every country on earth, I also have an extensive background in helping to shape commerce and how businesses manage, market, and sell to their advantage. I’m very happy to report that of late, I’ve put together a team of the world’s leading experts in business growth, and in every area you can imagine.

From maximizing the internet to leading experts on marketing trade shows, how to hire the very best, how to manage, and how you can market and sell better than anyone else you’re competing with. I’ve teamed up with a team of business growth experts, including best selling author and Fortune 500 strategist Chet Holmes.

If you qualify, I want to bring you to a landmark business growth summit that’s by invitation only. If you’re a fantastic entrepreneur looking to take your entire game to the next level, we may want you in this special and exclusive program.

[00:08:03] Chet Holmes: So that’s another fun. You see, he’s starting to see like every single piece is thought through and by the way I wrote all these the copy the radio message the radio spot the message you get when you call in this spot I composed all of these and of course, he’s Tony Robbins So, you know, he pitches it like a champion guy is so fantastic at you know persuasion.

That’s his greatest gift and Then you know, so what are your follow ups? Voicemail is a fantastic weapon for marketing today You Just picture that you get to leave little commercials about what it is that you’d like to make an offer on and in my case Every offer like you heard the 500 bribe just for leaving your phone number guess whose idea that was so it’s an ethical bribe Of course It’s a training program and it costs us nothing to give it to them because I just loaded it up on a website and then They just go download it, but it really is legitimately something we sell for 500 and now the client comes in and And by the way, you should ask your coach about a CRM system.

If you don’t have CRM, all of this can be managed for you. That we have a CRM system, we just spent a, my god, it must be three years, investigating 11 different CRM programs, because it’s a significant commitment if you do it right, and we found what I think is the most versatile, easiest to use, very important.

We went with another CRM system, and after the first training, everyone was looking at each other like, are you kidding me? Like, oh my god, this is so complicated. This is real easy to use. It’s extremely intuitive, but good news, it’s also the cheapest CRM system in the world. And it’s like 9 a person, as compared to other ones we’re looking at are 300 a person.

I mean, like, literally 30 times more expensive. So, this is a very inexpensive thing, and it gets even cheaper if you have a larger staff, it’s even cheaper than 9 a person. And, so ask your coach about that, and they can tell you all about it, and they can connect you with the proper people to get you, uh, demo that product.

But, you know, it manages everything about your activity, and so, This way you can set it up in advance, and this should be your case even if you don’t have this level of CRM, but the way it should be is that everything is literally spelled out. What’s the first follow up call? And then when they get that person on the phone, what are they going to say?

We even have in our voicemail approaches that I’ve designed for clients, where they’re calling and they get someone live on the phone, we have six ways to try and get the appointment. Because I found the average person will be brushed off on the first way. So, how many different ways that we build it right in.

I build it right into the scripts. And then, of course, we track, we monitor, we do everything. I look at everything we have, and all this, by the way, is just an hour a week of my time with each initiative. So the entire Tony Robbins thing, which is a massive project for us, I spend an hour a week, but that one hour a week is spent in the script.

Tuning up what the activities are of the salespeople. And so every little piece, if you sell B2B, then if they make a phone call and the prospect hangs up on them, you have a, you just hung up on me fax. If the prospect says, I’m interested, but can’t talk about it right now. Can you call me back? You have a fax that goes off immediately saying, I know that you said to call you back.

And I just wanted to tell you that when I do, this is what I will be talking about. You have a, wow that was great, sounds real interesting, we have an appointment, you have a fax that goes off that shores up that appointment. If the appointment is out more than a day or two, then you have another fax that goes a day of the appointment.

And if it’s out two weeks, you have three. Different things that you send them, including endorsements from other clients along the way that encourage them to meet with you when we do the hot seats. I will get very, very specific with some of you on these things. So I just want to stay global for a minute.

Just trying to show you that that’s the level of follow up that you should have in trying to build that relationship with that client. And again, if you have CRM, It does all this for you. You actually can manage your salespeople by building into the CRM what you want it to do, including it emails the rep when they’re supposed to call the person and say, Yep, you’re supposed to call Joe Smith today.

And then it tracks if they did or they didn’t, they have to enter it, so you as a management team, you get expert information on exactly what your people have done or have not done. So, there’s a whole other level of follow up possible when you have terrific CRM. And we’ve had sort of homegrown CRMs as sort of our own little homegrown thing.

But this, this new program is like, it leaves anything we’ve ever created in the dust and as good as we are at it, this program is going to make us probably two or three times better. But more importantly, what we track really well is when the client comes into our world. That is our homegrown system.

You’ve come into our world. You’re all here. I can tell you everything that happened to you because I expertly, along with the team, architected every little piece of follow up that happened with you. Everything from the way you came in, how you were dealt with, how you were reminded, what kind of reminders we sent you, what kind of documents we sent you in advance, what your experience was when you first had an interaction with us, whether it was on the webinar or however you came into our world.

And then the follow up after the webinar, what the coach says, how they, everything that happens with you, what the operations people do, what customer service is like, every little piece and part of interaction with you has been expertly planned, there is nothing left to chance. And that’s how it should be with you.

Now, I cannot say for sure that everything that. Humans are supposed to do. They actually do do, but I know that I know what they’re supposed to do because there’s nothing that we have done. That’s accidental. Every little thing that happens with you is been heavily trained, monitored, role played, rehearsed, so that it is machine like in its precision and that’s how it really should be with you.

You should have that level of followup at every single level in your business. And you want to try and bring some intensity to that. So what are the connection points with the client? Write them down. What are the connection points with the client? And then what is the precise follow up you’re going to do in every single case with every single client?

Like I said, even if they hang up on you, you should have five follow up pieces that go after that. And then five phone calls that go after that. And one of the things that you can do is psychologically you can prepare your team for the amount of rejection they will get as a result of their interaction with the client because what happens is most people don’t realize that 52 percent of all salespeople never even call a prospect back who rejects them even one time.

So, like I said, what we do is we’ve got, the client is trying to brush you off, we have six ways of trying to stop the client from brushing you off. Then, once you’re off the phone with them, the follow up is immediate. It’s instant. In fact, if you call in off of our radio spots, you’re receiving the email while you’re still on the phone with one of our people.

And then if we catch you live and that’s what we prefer to do, but I just can’t handle the amount of response we get. We get a thousand leads a week from the radio driving into our organization. We get 8, 000 hits on our website. Those are unique visitors. And then we have all these other methods with affiliates and things like that.

So we are flooded with leads. That’s the, the. The easy part for us, we’re flooded with leads. The hard part is keeping enough talent in place to handle all of that and that’s a constant and ongoing process with us. All right, so what I’d like to do now is there are several people who wanted to sort of get into a little interaction, what’s going on in their business and see if we can get some very specific things going.

There’s three different ones and I know that they sent some information in, but let’s just start cold so that everybody hears what’s going on. So, Mark. If you’re there, hit 1 on your phone one time. Hey, Mark!

[00:16:27] Mark Wood: Good.

[00:16:29] Chet Holmes: How you doin

[00:16:30] Mark Wood: Never better.

[00:16:32] Chet Holmes: I love that expression. I love that. That’s Are you from Canada?

[00:16:37] Mark Wood: No.

No. Boston.

[00:16:39] Chet Holmes: Okay, because I have a client in Canada and he always says that. Never been better. Anyway, tell us what’s going on with you, bud.

[00:16:45] Mark Wood: Well, we are in the retail, the hotel floor covering business. We have some retail locations. And we have a follow up after the sale. We do not follow up. Have a process that’s in place for cold calling or setting up to attract potential clients.

The challenges in our industry for us in a follow up scenario is to, which is what I want to evade. I want to take it to the next level in that we can get in the face of most CEOs or leaders in the construction world, whether it’s commercial or residential. In their markets, it’s all about price. We want to take it to the next level.

and create the relationship first and figure out a follow up system that develops the relationship so that the price isn’t the most important thing and that obviously builds value to our business. So

[00:17:34] Chet Holmes: let me ask, you have people who are stopping in the stores, the retail stores.

[00:17:39] Mark Wood: Correct.

[00:17:40] Chet Holmes: Excuse me, are these, um, you’ve, you know, home fix it people or are these, you know, contractors and, you know, Who’s coming into the store?

Let’s start

[00:17:53] Mark Wood: there. Retail customer. Both facilities are about 30, 000 feet apiece. You know, they’re big. They’re retail floor covering stores like you would see in your own neighborhood. Huge.

[00:18:03] Chet Holmes: But, so it’s anybody who’s looking for floor covering, whether it’s

[00:18:08] Mark Wood: Contractor, homeowner

[00:18:11] Chet Holmes: Okay. And then what’s the training like on that floor?

The floor staff?

[00:18:16] Mark Wood: Well, the floor staff is, um, professionally trained, technically, and we’ve got a procedure to tell our story and to break it down before they get to the carpet, like before you get to the furniture, they’ve already bought the product. Based upon the story, that system’s down pretty good.

And the followup to the retail consumer after the purchase, you know, we’ve got it down, we’ve got a note personalized note that goes out to them, must touch on three things, nothing to do with the business other than to say, support what they purchased, the color, the style, the fashion, the durability, whatever that was important to them at that time.

Touching on a personal happening that happened between the salesperson and that client, whether the kids went to school together, or you know, something personal. And then thanking them for their trust and assisting them in accomplishing their flooring needs, as opposed to thanking them for buying to us.

And then they sign that personally, with nothing attached. Corporately to it. I’ve always been a believer that the personal notes screams sincerity and the corporate notes just screams policy.

[00:19:21] Chet Holmes: You sound like either A, we grew up together or B, you have really studied my stuff.

[00:19:27] Mark Wood: To be honest with you, I never studied your stuff, but I, I can honestly say that the radio ad grabbed me and you know, I drank the Kool Aid, Jim, so I’m, I’m on, I’m on board, but,

[00:19:38] Chet Holmes: but I mean, that’s impressive.

So at the wholesale level, now you’re manufacturing the flooring.

[00:19:45] Mark Wood: No.

[00:19:46] Chet Holmes: Oh, so you’re a distributor.

[00:19:48] Mark Wood: Yeah, yeah. Our wholesale side would be considered almost a, you know, a sub wholesaler in that it goes to the contractor, the home handyman, the pulties of the world. And they,

[00:19:58] Chet Holmes: they’re still regional in their buying, but they might still end up in the store.

[00:20:02] Mark Wood: Yes, exactly. They break it down to the local project management.

[00:20:07] Chet Holmes: Okay. And so now tell me again, what your objective is now that I understand the business a little bit more.

[00:20:12] Mark Wood: Well, and then finally, what happens with the sales staff? They have to do, they have to follow up within two days. Prior, prior to the installation to strategically time a critique sheet that goes out from me, you know, asking them short questions, uh, about the quality of the service and the sales and the whole thing.

And it goes out with a prepaid postage stamp and it comes addressed back to me. It’s my favorite mail other than a check. And when that happens, they get it in their hand, you know, right around the installation time and we get those critique sheets back. And frankly, I think that’s right about where we drop the ball when it comes to communication with the retail consumer.

We haven’t been touching into getting back to them or creating anything following, so we need to get the retail consumer on the post end. And stay in touch with them and become their friend. And then we need to definitely create a system that does this follow up procedure or both solicits and this follow up system that gets us in the door to dinner, that gets the guy to a ball game.

That gets the relationship so that in the construction world, many, many times these contractor developers, they don’t even have the project themselves. They’re bidding the job, so they’ll contact a contractor like us and send us the set of plans, and then we price the job, and then they’ll take the lowest price out of 10 guys that they sent the plans to.

I want to avoid all that and create the relationship with the guy that’s bringing the plans in so that we can bring our margins up and develop a relationship. Hence increasing the value of the company.

[00:21:42] Chet Holmes: And who is that person that brings the plans in? Are you talking about the architect or

[00:21:46] Mark Wood: Well, you know, typically what happens, you want to get to the architect, most certainly, but you gotta wear three hats.

You gotta have your architect hat on. You gotta have your CEO hat on for if you’re meeting with Tishman or any one of the national home contractors, and then you have to have your project manager hat on because he’s the guy that’s gonna be handling the plan. So it’s not a wine and dine one guy.

[00:22:10] Chet Holmes: Okay. So, you know, this is totally a core story sales model.

I do. How deep are, how deep are you on my stuff? Are you into that? Well.

[00:22:18] Mark Wood: Well, honestly speaking, only up until five weeks ago, I really had never read any of your stuff. It’s, it’s great, I finished the book, but five weeks ago, you know, I signed on, I did your webinar, we went platinum. We’re moving to have the core story done, we got your website guy doing our e commerce, and we, uh, Mitch, I can’t think of Mitch’s last name for the moment, right now, but, He’s one of the top producers, yeah.

Yeah, he’s, and he’s a local guy, too.

[00:22:42] Chet Holmes: Oh, yeah, you’re in Boston,

[00:22:44] Mark Wood: right? So,

[00:22:45] Chet Holmes: so let me give you a little direction on that core story because I invented the concept and I just want to make sure that you get served well in that process because there’s an exercise in module four where we do the suit salesman and then we do the home improvement center.

Right.

[00:23:06] Chet Holmes: Do you remember that? Right?

Yes.

[00:23:08] Chet Holmes: So it’s like, you know, what is your real role? And the wider and the broader and the more, you know, the more of a role you can serve, the more that opens the relationship with the client, the more valued you become to them. The biggest kill for you is a developer who’s going to put floors in 132 houses that he’s going to build in Boston.

Like, tell me, tell me what’s the big kill for you.

[00:23:32] Mark Wood: Well,

[00:23:32] Chet Holmes: yeah, I mean, you know, we Or is that impossible because they’re going

[00:23:34] Mark Wood: to buy direct? No, no, I mean, we just closed a deal in New York. It’s 250 HUD unit project, but it’s, you know, again, it’s so price sensitive. I mean, just imagine for a moment, if you take off the plate for a minute, think about what you see on television every day.

Out in your market, it’s Empire. You’ve heard of that, right? Mm hmm. Totally price driven. It’s national. Everything is price driven. So it’s, it’s very, very difficult and that’s where I get kind of, I kind of think about this core story and I say to myself, you know, are we going to be able to get this core story across and deliver a totally opposite message?

Then the entire industry sinks and be successful at it

[00:24:16] Chet Holmes: because it’s the five most dangerous trends facing. And in your case, you’d actually have a few different markets start with the biggest, best opportunity. And then from there you can pare down pretty easily. You know what I mean? Because whatever is going to be a concern to the big guys is also going to be more of a concern to the smaller guys.

So I would start wide with five biggest challenges facing construction people today, and then, you know, that’s Empire’s job to come up with all that. Research so you don’t have to worry. They’re the ones that have to come up with all that And then some of that information starts to pool down into the details.

And so, you know One part of it might be why it’s not a good idea to just buy for price alone And here are the five reasons why It’s Potentially dangerous to buy for price alone. And then you can work some material in there about, you know, you could have a couple of horror stories where someone bought for price alone and then, you know, two years later, the floor needed to be completely replaced or was substandard or the installation.

And do you get involved in installation?

[00:25:24] Mark Wood: We do.

[00:25:26] Chet Holmes: So maybe that can be another factor. And most people don’t know about that. It’s about you finding it again. It’s unfair in a way. To do, to try and do you on the fly like this with three other guys waiting because I need to like drill even deeper to find what the, you know, what that core story model would be.

But I’m just trying to say that you want to be as wide as possible when you first do the first one and you start wide. Because then within that, you’re going to find trends because it’s like one feet to the other. So you start to do the research and suddenly you find out, you know, like we’ve just done all this research for Tony Robbins and it’s scary, scary stuff out there.

Like you’ll hear one of his spots, you’re going to hear all these spots on the radio, but you know, it’s just, there’s 5 million children. On psychiatric drugs for psychological problems. 5 million, I see 7 percent increase over the last three years. I mean, it’s like, Oh my God, you know, but so what are the, Oh my God, that if I am a construction company or a builder or an architect, what are the things that would grab my attention, you know, the economy is an easy one.

So we can definitely go there. We can show about the slow down and how the, you know, the whole industry is coming to a grinding halt. You know, you can. Talk about that because that’s pain and that’s a good thing to have in your course story and you will get interest with that And you will be able to get appointments with that And not to ask you the name of your company, but it’s probably got the flooring in the title, right?

[00:26:49] Mark Wood: Yeah ideal floor

[00:26:51] Chet Holmes: Yeah, so you would say, you know Look, we here would be the conversation to that architect or to that construction work, you know worker or to the And you could have a three tier approach So you could have one tier is going after the really big deal like the one you just closed in new york you have another tier that’s going after the You know, local handyman construction guy, uh, you have another tier that’s going after the architect and actually could have a fourth tier that’s going after, you know, even the smaller, you know, homeowner and things like that.

And if you’re. If you plan it right, you can probably get a lot of this built into one core story, and it won’t cost you extra, you know, because you want to talk about starting at the high level, what are the issues around construction today, how much of your flooring is sold for remodeling versus new homes?

[00:27:37] Mark Wood: Well, right now, obviously, there’s been a dramatic change, but we would run 50 50, a nice split. Retail to, to contract sales. New contract sales.

[00:27:47] Chet Holmes: Well, there’s probably some things in there about value of home and how much the home increases when you replace the floors and, you know, do you sell carpeting?

[00:27:58] Mark Wood: We do.

Yeah, everything that goes on the floor. Okay.

[00:28:03] Chet Holmes: Because you’ve heard the whole carpet cleaning story and about the amount of bacteria and carpets and this and that. I mean, you could actually make a compelling case. You’d probably make way more money than someone puts in a wood floor or a parquet floor or something like that, right.

Over carpeting.

[00:28:17] Mark Wood: Well, you know, the dollars are bigger, but the margins are smaller. Gotcha. And you know, they typically, they don’t re, the greater profitable item is the carpet, the hardwood floor. You know, once, once we sell ’em, there’s uh, they’re not really tearing down that hardwood floor, you know.

Yeah,

[00:28:32] Mark Wood: the pain scenario works.

I’ve discovered that it’s, it’s going to work really, really well at the retail level. I mean, we, I, I have already gone to move to a, to a print marketing and cross radio marketing creating serious pain on the, in the print and it breaks next week. You know, we just show four women in lifestyles looking so disgusted.

With no price points in the ad. And I put the header to read seriously. Are you still living with those old, ugly floors? Isn’t it time for a change? Just do it. And it shows, it shows these, you know, these women in four different lifestyles. And with disgusted looks. And, well no, we’ll see what those results bring next week.

Well let me clean

[00:29:14] Chet Holmes: that up for you right now. No charge. I put, Below that, 73 percent of whether or not you’re emotionally satisfied in your life depends upon your living environment. Now I made that statistic up, but I guarantee you, make a note of that, that Empire will find that data for you. There’s data like that.

I’ve seen it. I’ve heard about it because that’s market data, and it’s way more motivational than product data. You’re going for a new floor, but, you know, wouldn’t you love to give the wife something she can put in front of her husband and go, See, honey? You know, you don’t like it that I’m unhappy, but, you know, and right there, it’s showing that 77 percent of happiness is based upon how well you like your environment.

The other thing I would do if I were you is I would study Feng Shui. Because Feng Shui interests people. Yeah, we have someone. Huh?

[00:30:03] Mark Wood: We do have someone.

[00:30:05] Chet Holmes: Yeah, because that’s about accumulation of wealth, it’s about balance in your life, and again, I’m not a Feng Shui expert at all, so I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I just know that when you have something that is of interest to people, and your people have more market data that gives them that kind of, like, on the sales floor, let’s just talk about, you know, and I’m sort of like, I’m off a follow up here, which I.

I probably shouldn’t have, but on the sales floor, if your person can say, well, you know, man, that, you know, 77%. And since the floor covers the entire area of the house, I mean, you know, you’d be much happier. I mean, here, look at this data. And then for retail environments, we’ve created an ask your coach for this.

We just did one for fitness center. I can, they can also show you one for shoe store where all at, you know, at the point of purchase, they have these little trifold brochures that they whip out and it’s got all this market data in it. We’ve got another client that sells homes in Mexico, so I can even show you one of those.

I mean, this is scary, scary data, like chance of infant death in a crowded household is 400 percent greater than it is in a non crowded household. Because in Mexico, they live like two and even three generations in a small 400 square foot house. So their market is booming right now, actually. They’re just going crazy in Mexico selling homes right now because and our market data is on the radio.

It’s on television. So I’m affecting the entire economic culture landscape in Mexico right now because we had the Empire guys go and find out all that data. So I would have, that’s going to be much stronger, you understand that? At the tactical level, if someone says something, it has one level of impact, but if the guy pulls out a little three fold brochure, a little tri fold thing, put right in your shirt pocket, your back pocket, your jacket pocket, you pull that thing out, you open it up, and you go, look, right here.

Survey shows 77 percent of women are really miserable if they hate the carpeting in their house. Now you might not be able to find that exact statistic, but I bet you can find things about how the environment affects people emotionally, and again, that’s at the retail level. So, you could start wide with all that stuff on construction, danger, danger, danger, bring it on down right into the store, with the end of your core story going right into how much the, you know, the environment is impacted and how much it impacts you emotionally.

But back to the follow up. You’re right that that in every level of this, it’s about building that relationship. So that’s why I said, if you had the core story sales model, it gives you an excuse to be in front of people who aren’t buying now, and then it’s about you having enough followup to continue that relationship so that these people will always think of you and you will always have top of mind.

So you have the architectural play where you’re calling those guys up saying, look, you know, we work with hundreds of architects over the years, it might even be thousands for all I know, and we know that you guys are having tough times right now, so we commissioned a study that shows, you know, there’s five dangerous trends facing the whole construction industry right now, and you know, we just want to make sure you’re successful, so we’re making this available to you at our expense.

And as a matter of fact, let me see who else is on my list. And then you would read off every other architect in town that you’re going to be showing that to. So, because nobody wants somebody to know something that they don’t know. And let me tell you, architects are fiercely competitive. Then you can use the same exact model of construction people and use the same exact model with the handyman local guy who’s doing that kind of work and arm the whole bunch of them with this information.

Because then they have that information as well, and your name’s all over it. And I just gave you a ton of really good ideas, I hope you, I hope you captured all that.

[00:33:43] Patrick: I did.

[00:33:44] Chet Holmes: Okay. Alright, Mark, I’m gonna go to the next person here, just to make sure I’ve got 20 minutes left, and I’ve got two more guys to do.

So I hope that was helpful, Mark. Excellent, And

[00:33:54] Mark Wood: certainly,

[00:33:54] Chet Holmes: this is recorded, so if you want to play this segment for the Empire guys to give them some good direction, unless you took very good notes, And who’s your coach?

[00:34:04] Mark Wood: Claudia Brown.

[00:34:05] Chet Holmes: Okay, so you’ve got a really good coach. So, Claudia If you’re listening, that’s some, that’s a lot of stuff for Mark to work on.

You get all that working and then you can even look at the superstar sales model for each one of those initiatives, pay a super low base and a nice commission. If they grow those industries and like, I have 12 companies. Every one of them is headed up by a superstar, and, like Mitch, who you talked to, so, he started out doing recruiting for us, and then, you know, we’re recruiting, like, 50 people a week, so, he was so dang good at it, I said, well, you know, I know people would really like to have this service, so why don’t we offer this to, uh, my, uh, clients, and we can barely keep up with that business, it’s just growing, but there’s a guy who doesn’t need me for anything.

[00:34:48] Mark Wood: Yeah, I just signed off on the page.

[00:34:51] Chet Holmes: Yeah, so he doesn’t need my help. He doesn’t need my direction. He doesn’t need my input. He was initially really well trained by me. You know what I’m saying? He’s using all my techniques, but you know, you want people in place who can grow each one of those initiatives and make themselves rich in the process.

I can’t tell you how many people we have working for us that’ll make a million dollars this year and God bless them because I can tell you I will make more than a million in every one of them. You know?

Fantastic.

[00:35:19] Chet Holmes: Lots of stuff there, Mark. And let’s go to Patrick. If you’re in, hit one one time on your phone.

Hey, Patrick.

[00:35:27] Patrick: Hey, welcome from San Francisco.

[00:35:29] Chet Holmes: Thanks, neighbor. So tell me about your company, Patrick.

[00:35:33] Patrick: We’re a San Francisco based wholesale insurance brokerage, so we are a niche brokerage. broker to the commercial insurance agents and brokers. I’ve got two people with me, but it’s, I’m pretty much just a one man army.

The services I provide is you’ve got your insurance agents and brokers that sell workers, cough insurance and property and auto liability to businesses, but they don’t know about. Director’s and officer’s liability or other types of professional liability. We’ve got a lot of malpractice insurance specialists that can ensure a doctor’s malpractice, but if the doctor gets into other financial ventures or wants to do other business related stuff, those malpractice guys need a specialist for director’s and officer’s or other executive liability products.

So over the past eight years. I opened my firm up in 2000, we’ve been catering and targeting those brokers that are very adept in the commercial side but need a niche player to assist them and enhance and round out their insurance portfolio for their clients. And I will tell you that when I got on your webinar, I physically curled and crouched in pain because that effective.

Because in my industry, what we’re facing is we’re facing. Markets are shrinking, the number of buyers are shrinking, competition is heating up, and nobody has an original idea on what to do about it. Nobody does. And until I heard your webinar, I am deep, deep, deep in your programs, because you guys are showing a different view on how to, you know, address this thing called marketing, which has been absent in our industry for decades.

Everybody is doing the same old thing, and getting the same old results. And this is real, will really set us apart. I’m eight weeks into the core story. I’ve just had our first full length presentation prepared. And it is changing us from Feature, feature, feature, and talking about insurance, details of an insurance product, which everybody else does, to we are now going to rebrand ourselves as a marketing strategist for insurance agents and brokers.

And so it, it, it has gone, it’s going very nicely. The, the thing that, the question I really have is that we’ve put together this great core story talking about, The, we don’t say five, but we do have five disturbing trends in the commercial insurance brokerage community. And the title is Insurance Brokers Falling from Owner to Employee.

Because our target are the medium sized insurance brokerages where you have an individual owner, not the big national marshes or aeons, but these regional guys where you’ve got probably a generation or a second generation owner, and all they’ve known is working for themselves. And they’re being forced to merge or sell up short because, you know, the economy is bad and they don’t know how to grow.

And so what I’m trying to do is, you know, want to address that thing. You need an outside marketing strategist. Instead of hiring a marketing guy and then teach him insurance, why don’t you hire somebody who’s been in insurance for 20 years that’s really well trained in marketing to help you specifically so I can cut the learning curve and get you guys going.

The challenge I have right now with this great course story is that I’m trying to develop what the call to action is. I’m going to lead them down the path, showing them all the problems. They’re very familiar with them. We are giving them some solutions on, you can come up with all this stuff yourself to give yourself a unique value proposition or a unique selling proposition.

Or you could have somebody come in and help you guys develop it and work that way. And then that leads them to conclude that, the obvious conclusion, maybe we should look at this Rubicon guy, which is me. and see if he can help us. Well, the call to action, I can’t really ask him to do an audit. My competitors would say, well, why don’t you start sending us some submissions, some applications on some clients, and we’ll dowsy you and show you how well we work on them.

It’s like, you know, I, that, that’s kind of routine. And I’m wondering if I should just try to have a stage for Do the core story, and then after that, engage the CEO to say, Let’s set up a follow up meeting, and I’ll do a brief education session. What I would be introducing would be complete Chet Holmes stuff, worked in with marketing, with an insurance flavor, but it would be all credited to you.

I mean, your triangle on the types of buyers, you know, who’s buying now, who’s open to buying, and so forth, brilliant.

[00:39:51] Chet Holmes: So let’s go fast here, because there’s one more file I want to get in. So what, first of all, are you restricted regionally?

[00:39:58] Patrick: No.

[00:39:59] Chet Holmes: Okay. So you can sell nationally to any broker, anytime, anywhere.

[00:40:03] Patrick: Yes.

[00:40:04] Chet Holmes: So, I take it you would use the webinar model because then you, you know, severely reduce your costs and probably dramatically increase your, uh, flow through. So, in other words, instead of your salespeople calling and trying to sell one person one at a time, they would call and sell, I did this with another client recently, they had six salespeople and each person was trying to make their own appointments every week.

Some of them could present, some of them really couldn’t, and some of them really shouldn’t be presenting at all. And we got those six salespeople, With a really killer call to action calling and they were able to increase their appointments tenfold from like six appointments to 60 appointments. And the other thing they stopped doing was going live because they just put people into webinars.

So there’s a couple of. Spins on this and I’m just going to go really fast and just hope that you can take it all down. And, and so one spin would be where you call up the insurance broker and you go, you know, listen, we’re Rubicon and we’ve been in the insurance business for 20 some years. And we recently commissioned a study from a fortune 500 research firm.

And it shows that there’s five emerging trends that are going to literally put insurance companies out of business. Now, since we rely heavily on insurance brokers like yourself, we felt it was our obligation to bring this information. Now, while this is over 3 million worth of data, that you’ll see in under an hour right over the web, we make this available to you for only 49.

And that 49, you only pay after you attend and only if you think it’s worth it. So, what this is, is a highly interactive web seminar. Have you ever been on a web seminar? No? Okay, well let me tell you how they go. And now we’re already off of talking about you, we’re already talking about just the Web Seminar.

The way the Web Seminar works is if you can be on your phone and the internet at the same time, which I’m sure that’s possible for you, right? Yeah, okay, well you’ll be on the phone like you are with me now, but you’ll also be on the internet, and what we used to do is we used to do these live. And, or another model for doing these, because you always want to be telling the truth, you say, another way we could do these, we could do them live, and you’d have to travel, and that would cost you a lot more money, and it would cost us a lot more money.

So, by doing this over the web, we found that we can do it very inexpensively, or this might cost you 500 to go to a live, all day seminar. Now we reduced it down to only 90 minutes, and it’s over the internet, and it’s only 49. And we’re so confident that the information is going to be of value to you, that what we’re going to do is we’re going to register you, and then we’re going to allow you to pay only after you attend, and only if you think it’s worth it.

So if you can actually have a way to get them to tell you what their challenges are, then that’s going to be a lot more potent. So some part of your script should be, you know, look, I’m calling on behalf of Rubicon. You know what else you should do? Here’s another, this is in, this is all in the training program.

But you should have a magazine. Call it, you know, Insurance Industry Today, or something, you know, as long as there is no, go do a URL search on it, make sure there is no other magazine called it. And then you can just call on behalf of your magazine, and your magazine can be an e zine, so you actually don’t even have to Print a physical magazine.

You can just do it on the web, but just make sure that you everything is the truth that you say. So you say, you know, look, I’m calling on behalf of XYZ magazine. We’re doing a survey with insurance brokers about, you know, some of the trends going on because a recent fortune 500 study shows you guys have some pretty serious problems.

So if you participate in the study, we’ll give you the results of the survey for free, and it should help you find some. Terrific and innovative ways to get new clients or to make a lot more money from the current clients you already have. How does that sound? Oh, that sounds good. Okay, well, the first question is, what would you say is the biggest challenge facing your industry today?

What would you say is the second biggest challenge? And then, now you get them talking about their pain, and then after you do that, you say, okay, that’s great, I’m gonna use that in the article, and when I get the results of all this, and then what’s the most innovative marketing idea you’ve had? And some of them may not want to be able to tell you, and I’m sorry, I’m going really fast right now, but just, just, just bear with me.

And it’s, if you can get a webinar that people will pay for, And it’s so good. And this challenge I would put to empire that you’ve got such good information, that webinar, that you can sell that thing every day for 49. Now you have a self funding growth strategy like us. You can be hiring 50 salespeople a week because it doesn’t matter.

Give them the 50, 40 of the 49. And if some guy can get 10 people on. Onto the webinar. And then of course they have the extra backend too. So you could have insurance agents signing up other insurance agents to get on the webinar. They get 40 bucks. Hey, it’s, you know, it’s not bad. And then after you get to the end of that, then you get to the point where you’ve actually given them a lot of really good information, a lot of good ideas.

They’re thinking, wow, that’s really great ideas. And then you say, okay, who here got some value outta this? Oh, I did go back on our webinar again. Tell your coach that I said you can go as our guest and go back on the webinar again and watch how we take the money. There’s a point where we take the money.

Prior to even selling anything, we then go into a sales mode, but it’s after we take that money and then if it’s done properly, the way I designed it, that presenter should say, and by the way, that money goes to the person who got you here, because we give the majority, just like I told you, keep 40 and give them, you know, give them 40 and you keep 9 just to pay your hard costs.

And, but it’s a self funding growth strategy. Because now if you can sell that webinar and it’s got real value and people will pay for it every day, you’ve got a self funding growth strategy. Somebody signs three, four people a day, they can make 120, 160 every single day. They can make 600 just by getting people to the webinar and you don’t even care about the money.

That way, because what you really want to do is get these people selling your insurance and if your webinar is compelling as hell, at the end, every single person on there is going to want to sign up with you. So that’s a really good way for you to go. And then what I would do is I’d have the call to action be, so let us show you teen ways or nine ways or six ways to maximize all of your current relationships.

And so, as a matter of fact, you could probably even charge for that. You can say, I know that you have opportunities laying at your feet that you don’t even realize, and the most expensive thing we do today is to get clients in the first place. How many clients do you have, Bill? Oh, I, you know, I don’t know, 300?

Or, I don’t even know what an average insurance agent has. Go in those 300 clients, there’s probably, you know, at least a million dollars in, uh, commissions over the lifetime of those clients that you’re not getting right now that we can show you how to get. So, would you be interested in that? Oh, heck yes, I’d be interested in that.

Okay, well, what we do is we start with a 100 fee, and we’ll audit six clients of your choosing. We should start with the ones you think have the biggest opportunity. And, by the way, if, in fact, we help you, that 100 can be given back to you in commissions from those clients, and you can blah, blah, blah. So, anyway, there, I’m out of time.

Ha, ha. Okay, then, let’s go with Patrick as he opens his line again and see if you have a question, Patrick.

[00:47:05] Patrick: Well, so what I will say about follow up though, is that in the insurance industry, the follow up, the whole system, they don’t even do it. So, I think if I just, as one of my training seminars for the Build that

for them, yep.

[00:47:16] Patrick: Yeah, you know, I just, can I, real silly, but for years, I’ve always, you know, as a one man army, I’ve always addressed myself as we and, you know, in the plural and everything. But I always, when I’m speaking with people, I immediately call the habitants, Hi, Patrick Stroth, Rubicon Insurance. And, should I just, you know, in, in the calling, your, how to get an appointment, I mean, which is brilliant, you just, you’ll say, hey, you know, Chet Holmes called.

Just tell him, Chet Holmes. When is it appropriate to be using my company name right after my name, or should I just always just say Patrick and wait for them to say, Patrick Struth, who, who are you with?

[00:47:50] Chet Holmes: Right. If you have sent a letter in advance, remember what I say, always be telling the truth, then you can just say, hey, it’s Patrick, is Joe there?

Okay. You have four ways to send the gatekeeper back, and you should plan them expertly in advance. I’ll give you all four real fast and easy. The first is, hi, this is Patrick, is Joe in? I’m sorry, Patrick, will he know what this ref do? You go say, yeah, because you sent him a letter. Then you can just say, yeah, I sent you a letter.

Don’t you remember? I mean, even if he doesn’t remember, it doesn’t matter. You did send them a letter so that you need to have the letter go first. So this is a way of softening the market and Hey, you know what? The letter might actually work even, and you’ll get some leads from it. And then the second time the gatekeeper comes back, you say, you told them, Patrick, Oh, just tell him, Patrick.

Yeah.

[00:48:32] Chet Holmes: Okay. And then she goes back and she comes back and says, I’m sorry, that didn’t ring a bell. Oh, you know what? Tell him from Rubicon. That should ring a bell. Now she goes back again. So, you know, you want to be able to send the gatekeeper back three or four times. And then you want to have a script in advance of six ways.

You can talk that guy into going on your webinar, like let me, let me see how he turns you down six different ways and his objection is, I’m too busy, I don’t have the time, I don’t understand, I won’t spend the money, what are you actually sell, selling, and you’ve got great comebacks written in advance for all of that, and then you can put, if you’re selling a webinar, I don’t think they need insurance licenses for that.

I think the guy presenting the webinar needs an insurance license.

[00:49:12] Patrick: Oh, yeah.

[00:49:12] Chet Holmes: And even that guy, actually, if you’re not selling insurance, if you’re selling the chance to teach them how to maximize at least six, ten, take ten, why take six? We’ll show you how to maximize ten different relationships you already have.

Give us your ten biggest clients, and we’ll do it for only ten dollars each. So the guy thinks, oh, in ten dollars each, I’ll pay a hundred dollars to have this guy show me how to maximize my relationship with my clients. And now, you’re in the door with him paying you for you to advise him the six different more insurance policies and plans and types of things he can sell to every one of these guys, and how to sell it.

[00:49:44] Patrick: Gotcha.

[00:49:44] Chet Holmes: Anyway, hope that’s helpful, bro.

[00:49:46] Patrick: Great, great work. Great stuff.

[00:49:49] Chet Holmes: I would love to have more time with you. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, we are out of time. And Chante, you can end the phone call.

Yes,

[00:49:55] Chante: sir. Have a great afternoon.

[00:49:57] Amanda Holmes: Make sure to get your copy, or copies, at TheUltimateSalesMachine. com There’s a lot of special bonuses that you can’t get going to Amazon.

So make sure you check it out at TheUltimateSalesMachine. com

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