Category: sales

087 Kevin Whelan on selling your expertise, not your labor

Kevin Whelan

Kevin Whelan was a philosophy major, but he had created a website about computer security in high school, just as a hobby.

Later, that experience led to creating websites as a freelancer and then a job in the marketing group at a law firm, where he saw how digital agencies operated from the client’s perspective.

He also started building an agency in his “spare time”.

Hear how Kevin:

  • Got his first clients
  • Moved from building 4 figure websites to 5 figure websites
  • Increased his productivity and effective hourly rate (without having to bill hourly)
  • Used specialization helped him get better, bigger projects
  • Moved from charging for implementation to consultation to advisory services (actor to director to producer)
  • Handles outsourcing pieces of project delivery, and why he doesn’t take a cut
  • Handles scheduling conflicts between different clients
  • Gives away as much of his expertise as possible, to attract people who appreciate the way he thinks

If you want to move from selling your expertise, to selling the results, don’t miss this episode, and connect with Kevin for more info.

The Wine & Whisky

Kevin is enjoying a Nikka Japanese Whisky (on the rocks).

Reuben has a glass of Youngberg Hill Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.

Where to find Kevin

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Where to find Reuben

@Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.You can also  listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, or Player.fm.

Want a way to make sales and marketing fun, without being “salesy”? Try Mimiran, the CRM for elite solo consultants who love serving clients but who hate “selling”.

It also has a “mad-libs” style wizard to help you lay our your mission and positioning, including your origin story and customer stories.

Get alerted when there are new episodes (1x/month):

086 Richard White on Taking Good Notes

Richard White, CEO of Fathom.video

Richard White is founder and CEO of Fathom, a Zoom plugin that helps you take notes, and that I use every day.

He solves problems that he has and ends up forming companies around the solutions… He started UserVoice, to get customer feedback at scale, because at the previous startup, they had more feedback than they could digest. At that company, he noticed that while he thought he took good notes, he often didn’t know which notes went with which calls, and he had trouble sharing notes with teammates. This lead to Fathom…

Fathom plugs into Zoom, and provides a transcript, and also lets you easily highlight a section of a conversation. (Since Richard and I spoke, they also released an AI Summary feature, which is amazing.)

Here are some notes best practices:

  • Rewatch highlights and last 3 minutes of the previous call right before you go into the next conversation.
  • Don’t obsess with what note-taking framework to use… just have a system that works for you. It’s hard to change your style, and very hard to change someone else’s style.
  • Some people take short notes and then fill them in later. Some people block out 10 minutes after each meeting to take your notes. Pick the system that works for you.
  • Richard has bad handwriting like me, so he used to take notes in Google Docs, with headings and indentations to organize.
  • He uses mnemonic to help remember things via single keywords. (If he’s focused on typing, he’s not fully listening, so it’s helpful to use these shortcuts that you can flesh out later.)
  • Use Voice Memos on your phone, if necessary, to capture key points from a meeting before you forget.

Here are Reuben’s Fathom highlight options:

Reuben's Fathom Highlight Options

This makes it easy to highlight key points for reference and/or future review. It also means that if I need to follow up with tasks, search later for introductions, or write a proposal, I can pull up the relevant info easily.

Just for reference:

CRM: is for when someone tells me what they’re doing for CRM now. You might want to have a different flag for your particular line of work.

D: Decision-making. (“I need to talk to my spouse”, “I’m reviewing these things with my marketing agency on Thursday.”, etc)

ICP: Ideal Client Profile. Helpful for making introductions.

ID: Ideal solution. (“What I’d really like is to be able to follow up and never forget someone.”)

NS: Next step. (“I’ll send you the info to book a time to be on my podcast.”)

P: Problem statement. (“It’s driving me nuts that…”, “I wish I could avoid…”, etc)

And if you’d like to watch the episode, here’s the video:

The Wine & “Athletic Beer”

Richard has an Oktoberfest “Athletic Beer”, because he’s in a clean living phase.

Reuben is not, so he had a glass of Brave Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.

Where to find Richard

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Where to find Reuben

@Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.You can also  listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, or Player.fm.

Want a way to make sales and marketing fun, without being “salesy”? Try Mimiran, the CRM for elite solo consultants who love serving clients but who hate “selling”.

It also has a “mad-libs” style wizard to help you lay our your mission and positioning, including your origin story and customer stories.

Get alerted when there are new episodes (1x/month):

085 Tom Jackobs on selling with storytelling

Tom Jackobs

Tom Jackobs never set out to be a sales coach. He started a fitness business because fitness had made such a big difference in his life.

Unfortunately, he almost went broke because he didn’t know anything about sales.

Learn how he turned sales from a weakness to a strength, without becoming “sales-y”, by connecting via storytelling.

Storytelling isn’t a new topic for Sales for Nerds, but you’ll appreciate how Tom guides you to find the right stories for you, and how to tell them.

Tom joins from Taipei, where a 2 day layover turned into 3 years and counting, thanks to COVID.

In this episode, learn:

  • How to make sales about solving people’s problems. (No one wants to exercise, they want to lose weight, get in shape, etc.)
  • How he became a sales coach for the company that he hired to coach him in sales.
  • How having a process let him sell without stress and much more effectively.
  • How to use your story and your clients’ stories to help prospects.
  • How you can succeed in sales as an introvert
  • How to pick a story and tell it the right way.
  • Don’t forget to have 3 versions of that story– from about a minute, to about 5 minutes, to a 10-15 minute version, for different situations.

P.s. Here’s part of Tom’s story that made him good at selling personal training:

And if you’d like to watch the episode, here’s the video:

The Water

Due to scheduling challenges between Austin and Taipei, we are both drinking water. 😉

Where to find Tom

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Where to find Reuben

@Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.You can also  listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, or Player.fm.

Want a way to make sales and marketing fun, without being “salesy”? Try Mimiran, the CRM for elite solo consultants who love serving clients but who hate “selling”.

It also has a “mad-libs” style wizard to help you lay our your mission and positioning, including your origin story and customer stories.

Get alerted when there are new episodes (1x/month):

084 Steve Buzogany on Client Appreciation

Steve Buzogany

Steve actually started his career in sales– as a real estate agent. One of his mentors told him he was working too hard and being too transactional instead of focusing on the relationship, limiting his referrals. But as an introvert, Steve felt awkward calling people up to cultivate referrals.

To get around this, Steve started sending gifts to people to give him a reason to call someone. This led to organic conversations about real estate, without the ickiness. (It was also much more fun.)

Using this gifting strategy, Steve got his business to 73% referrals, and made good money while taking a month off. He didn’t have to chase cold leads, and he won business in about half the time it took the average agent. Other realtors asked him how he did it, but complained they did have time to give thoughtful gifts. Steve had the insight that he could provide gifts as a service for other people.

Steve’s first gifts were “cheap”– like little bottles of vodka around the holidays. Not always appropriate, and even if it was, it was gone quickly.

Over time, he developed a more intentional gifting strategy, that you can implement by following his 6 Rules of Gifting:

  1. Focus on the client, not you. This is a gift, not a promotion.
  2. The gift must be high quality.
  3. You must personalize the gift.
  4. It must provide deep emotional impact (painting of client’s dog?)
  5. It must have staying power and not be a one-time use item.
  6. It must increase your connection (come with a handwritten note, video, etc)

Here examples of bad gifts:

  1. Thank you email. This is just a transactional item.
  2. Consumables like food and wine, flowers, or events, which are one-time events. (This means don’t give a bottle of wine, or don’t just give a bottle of wine– give a personalized corkscrew or some fancy wine glasses.)
  3. Swag bags
  4. Promotional items
  5. Gift cards (lazy)

Here are some other tips:

  • “Attack the kitchen.” Things like ice cream scoopers, pizza cutters, etc get used repeatedly.
  • Take time to get to know your best clients and partners. Trying to figure out a great gift is a good perspective for asking good questions and getting more connected.
  • Focus on the top 20% of your clients and partners who provide 80% of the referrals.
  • Plan to spend 5-10% of the revenue these clients generate on the gift. Gift 1, 2, or 4 times per year.
  • Have fun doing radically nice things for your best clients and partners.

And if you’d like to watch the episode, here’s the video:

The Wine (& Beer)

Reuben enjoys Para Maria Syrah/Petit Verdot blend from Santa Barbara county. (The second half of the bottle from the Wayne Mullins episode.)

Steve has a UFO American Style White Ale.

Where to find Steve

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Where to find Reuben

@Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.You can also  listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, or Player.fm.

Want a way to make sales and marketing fun, without being “salesy”? Try Mimiran, the CRM for elite solo consultants who love serving clients but who hate “selling”. (It also tracks referrals and how much business you get from them and makes it easy to follow up and have conversations, just like Steve suggests.)

Get alerted when there are new episodes (1x/month):

082 Jay Kingley on Referrability

Jay Kingley on Sales for Nerds to talk about referrals

Jay was a chemical engineer who went into management consulting, because he loved solving problems. His family was in business, so he grew up with this.

He joined a firm that had spun out of Bain in London and loved the work. But as he moved up and became a partner, he had to sell, which he didn’t find interesting at all.

He looked at what the other partners did– they entertained clients. Jay didn’t want to do that.

He wanted to solve problems. So he’d read about what was going on in his clients’ industries, then he’d call the CEO and talk about what was happening.

Jay decided to start helping smaller companies. He tried the networking groups and all that. It worked but was not a good use of time.

In this episode, learned what Jay learned, including:

  • How the 98% Typical elevator pitch (I solve these problems, for these types of clients, by providing this type of service) differs from the 2% elevator pitch, which makes the client the hero. This goes back to the great Christmas movie of all time (Die Hard– this is why Jay and I get along)– you have to be able to identify with, and root for, the hero.
  • Don’t confuse marketing (1 to many) with sales (1 to 1).
  • How to get someone to really listen to your advice.

Plus the 3 stages of marketing:

  • 0: Spray and pray (“random acts of marketing”)
  • 1: Targeted outbound prospecting. Can work quickly– in about 90 days, but not efficient.
  • 2: Referrals. (Introductions are often a waste of time. Referrals are a bit better, but if you are one of 3 referrals, you’re going to waste a lot of time.
  • 3: Provocative Perspective. Offer a contrarian perspective that people can tell to their network. Then the people who find the story resonates want to talk to you. Simon Sinek is a great example of this strategy.

Why should people help share your Provocative Perspective? Because these people know they need to nurture their relationships and provide a lot of value, but they need something to say.

The Wine

Reuben enjoys Sorpasso Italian red.

Jay has a (giant glass of) California Merlot.

Where to find Jay

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Where to find Reuben

@Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.You can also  listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, or Player.fm.

Want a way to make sales and marketing fun, without being “salesy”? Try Mimiran, the CRM for elite solo consultants who love serving clients but who hate “selling”. (It also tracks referrals and how much business you get from them.)

Get alerted when there are new episodes (1x/month):

077 Jonathan Stark on Ditching Hourly Billing

Jonathan Stark is a former software developer turned consultant who hates hourly billing and helps people “ditch hourly” and do value-based pricing.

And somehow, I didn’t know about him until recently. (Jonathan made the observation that we’re climbing up the same mountain from different sides.)

If you’ve ever stressed about pricing a project proposal, don’t miss this episode, where Jonathan shares:

  • How he had an epiphany when he worked for a consulting firm about why hourly billing had to go. He spent weeks trying to figure out why his “best” consultant was the least profitable.
  • Why the problem was hourly billing.
  • How he started his own firm because he needed to get rid of hourly billing, and made more money in his first year.
  • How hourly billing transforms your client relationships.
  • Why hourly billing goes sideways (and why it tends to start sideways, because you ask different questions in the initial meeting)
  • How to do things in the right order– figure out the value first, including the success criteria (and can you even satisfy them?), then the price, then scope.
  • How to let people unburden themselves– let them brain dump, then ask the structured questions, as needed, to fill in the details.
  • How do paid roadmapping sessions to gather information
  • How to get 100% payment upfront (and what to do if you can’t)
  • Fixed price is not the same as cost-plus
  • How do deal with unknown scopes (and the real scopes are always unknown), v
  • How to use explicit guarantees to reduce risk for the buyer, without changing how you operate.
  • How to ask questions like a doctor. (Doctors don’t tell you to jump on the operating table when they first meet you.)

The Wine

It’s a California Pinot Noir kind of episode, with Jonathan enjoying some La Cream and Reuben having a glass of Grevino.

Books

Hourly Billing Is Nuts, by Jonathan.

Value-Based Fees: How to Charge and Get What You’re Worth, by Alan Weiss. (Catch Alan’s Sales for Nerds interview here.)

Where to find Jonathan Stark

  • LinkedIn (he doesn’t really do LinkedIn)
  • valuepricingbootcamp.com— 6 day free email course
  • JonathanStark.com (by the way– check out this website not just for the awesome info, but the awesome example of how to create a great consulting website.)
listen-on-apple-podcasts-sales-for-nerds

Where to find Reuben

@Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.You can also  listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, or Player.fm.

Want a way to make sales and marketing fun, without being “salesy”? Try Mimiran, the CRM for elite solo consultants who love serving clients but who hate “selling”. It tracks referrals and helps you grow and nurture your network. And it can help you implement Jonathan’s ideas about offering different options, crafting a value-based story in your proposal (you can get a free proposal template, too).

Get alerted when there are new episodes (1x/month):

076 Corrie Loguidice on starting a new business

Corrie has a “very expensive piece of paper that says she can draw well.” An art degree. So instead of waiting tables, she came to join the family electronics reseller business as a graphic designer.

Instead of getting disintermediated by the internet, Corrie was able to use her graphic design skills to promote her customers, the mom and pop electronics dealers.

Corrie realized she was in an abusive marriage and got a divorce with a 5-month-old. Then she realized she was commuting 20 hours per week and paying someone to watch her son part time, just for the commute. Then, she lost her post-divorce partner to suicide.

At this point, she knew she was strong enough to keep going, but she decided to reevaluate her life.

She knew she had to leave the family business, but this was harder than all the other trials.

But Corrie got clients, a social media following, and, within a year, was on a TEDx stage. So now she teaches other people how to start their own consulting businesses.

In this episode learn:

  • That websites don’t get you leads (I disagree!), conversations get you leads (I agree!). “Conversations are what lead to revenue.”
  • How to set yourself up for financial success and handling the stress of starting your practice.
  • How to figure out who you help, what you do for them, and why they should care, including how to hone your niche, and even how to pivot from one niche to another.
  • How do this with conversations, because if you can’t do it in a conversation, how will your website do it for you? (And stop worrying about colors and brands and logos– focus on the real conversations.)
  • Why you shouldn’t discount, and what to do instead.
  • Why the gold is in the follow up.
  • How to feel confident when having conversations with prospects and partners, including sales conversations.
  • Why you don’t need to waste time and money on expensive marketing campaigns.

The Wine (& Vodka)

Corrie enjoys a cocktail of vodka, water, and watermelon juice.

Reuben enjoys a Contina di Montelcino sangiovesi. Yumm, tastes like Italy.

Where to find Corrie

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Where to find Reuben

@Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.You can also  listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, or Player.fm.

Want a way to make sales and marketing fun, without being “salesy”? Try Mimiran, the CRM for elite solo consultants who love serving clients but who hate “selling”. It tracks referrals and helps you grow and nurture your network.

(Including the more powerful than ever Free Edition.) Mimiran can help you implement a lot of Shaily’s ideas not only more efficiently, but more effectively, including telling your Origin Story, coming up with your Superhero Name so you’re unforgettable and more referrable, and much more.

Get alerted when there are new episodes (1x/month):

075 Julie Brown on networking the right way

“Networking” evokes thoughts of small talk and getting stabbed in the eye with business cards, at least for some of us. But it’s essential to so many relationship-based businesses. How can we grow and nurture an awesome, helpful, fun network without feeling icky?

In this episode, Julie Brown, author of This Shit Works: A No-Nonsense Guide to Networking Your Way to More Friends, More Adventures, and More Success (and host of the This Shit Works podcast), teaches you how to grow a great network while having fun and staying true to yourself, including:

  • You can build a big network– over time, not over night.
  • How Julie treats friends and colleagues
  • The “shortcut” to meeting lots of the right people.
  • How Julie’s network helped her husband launch his architecture firm, amidst the 2008 crash, how it helped Julie launch her business, and how you can apply it your business.
  • Why traditional icebreaker questions are terrible, and what to ask instead.
  • How to handle follow up.
  • Whether we should be happy and/or sad about the Celtics season (OK, that’s a bit of a tangent).

The Wine

Julie enjoys some “cougar juice” (how have I not heard this term before?), in other words, some buttery chardonnay, while I have some Nine Hats Pinot Gris from Washington (it’s over 100 in Texas, and I’m drinking white).

Where to find Julie

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Where to find Reuben

@Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.You can also  listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, or Player.fm.

Want a way to make sales and marketing fun, without being “salesy”? Try Mimiran, the CRM for elite solo consultants who love serving clients but who hate “selling”. It tracks referrals and helps you grow and nurture your network.

(Including the more powerful than ever Free Edition.) Mimiran can help you implement a lot of Shaily’s ideas not only more efficiently, but more effectively, including telling your Origin Story, coming up with your Superhero Name so you’re unforgettable and more referrable, and much more.

Get alerted when there are new episodes (1x/month):

074 Cynthia Zhai on using your voice effectively

We spend a lot of time and energy finding the right words (we do, right?), but how we say them matters at least as much.

In this episode, executive voice coach Cynthia Zhai joins from Singapore (thanks for being willing to have some wine on a Saturday morning) to talk about how to talk.

Cynthia recounts some of her own struggles with confidence in meetings, how she developed her voice to overcome those challenges, and how she helps others do the same thing.

Learn how:

  • You can change your voice– it’s not just something you’re born with.
  • To project confidence to others (and yourself)
  • To breathe and speak from your core, not just your throat (building nicely on some of the breathing tips Ashley DePaulis discussed). Cynthia demonstrates “Kung Fu Breathing” techniques that you can practice yourself (see video below).
  • To break out of the vicious cycle of non feeling confidence and then not sounding confident
  • To handle speaking too aggressively
  • To build habits so that even when you get nervous, your habits will keep you speaking the way you practiced
  • To listen to others’ voices, and to detect nervousness and dishonesty

Check out this short clip on Kung Fu breathing:

Or catch the whole interview on video:

The Wine

Cynthia has some Jacob’s Creek Australian red wine. Reuben is enjoying some Averaen Pinot Noir from Oregon.

Where to find Cynthia

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Where to find Reuben

@Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.You can also  listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, or Player.fm.

Note, speaking of stories, a good proposal is a story, not a brochure– get your “Fill in the Blank” Consulting Proposal Template.

Want a way to make sales and marketing fun, without being “salesy”? Try Mimiran, the CRM for elite solo consultants who love serving clients but who hate “selling”. (Including the more powerful than ever Free Edition.) Mimiran can help you implement a lot of Shaily’s ideas not only more efficiently, but more effectively, including telling your Origin Story, coming up with your Superhero Name so you’re unforgettable and more referrable, and much more.

Get alerted when there are new episodes (1x/month):

071 Melisa Liberman on going from an employee to owner mindset

Melisa Liberman loved working at a Big 4 consulting firm, but life had other plans and she ended up starting out on her own. (Listen to what happened and why “no one should have sympathy for me”.)

Even as a successful, hard-charging corporate consultant and executive, it took years for Melisa to make the mindset shift to being a business owner, with all the different hats that involves.

Fortunately, she learned a lot on the way, and found people asking her to help them transition to independent consulting, for more freedom, better work-life balance, more impact, and more money. She realized that a lot of the issues she struggled with started with mindset.

And she’s here to help you get your head in order the easy way, including:

  • The differences between consulting and coaching.
  • How to think like a strategic business owner, while you’re also an employee (of your own firm).
  • How to be proactive about client acquisition– you have much more control than you think– and avoid becoming staff augmentation for someone else’s business.
  • How to create a 3-year vision for your practice that gives you practical things to do today.
  • How to think about your own thinking, so you can get out of your own way.

(This episode builds on Liz Steblay’s wonderful advice on leaving the corporate world for independent consulting in episode 70.)

The Wine

Reuben is enjoying some Chateau Graves de Pez Bordeaux from St. Estephe (aren’t we snooty?), while Melisa enjoys some “house red” pinot noir.

Where to find Melisa

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Where to find Reuben

@Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com.You can also  listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, or Player.fm.

Note, speaking of stories, a good proposal is a story, not a brochure– get your “Fill in the Blank” Consulting Proposal Template.

Want a way to make sales and marketing fun, without being “salesy”? Try Mimiran, the CRM for elite solo consultants who love serving clients but who hate “selling”. (Including the more powerful than ever Free Edition.) Mimiran can help you implement a lot of Shaily’s ideas not only more efficiently, but more effectively, including telling your Origin Story, coming up with your Superhero Name so you’re unforgettable and more referrable, and much more.

Get alerted when there are new episodes (1x/month):