Getting better at the close

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If you're listening to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah Neaderthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their B2B consulting and coaching businesses. But I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my first consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's so I taught myself how to do it, and I created a sales approach that feels comfortable, makes you feel confident, and it works consistently. And now I teach women how to land higher paying clients in their B2B consulting and coaching businesses. So whether your client contracts are $2,000 or $200,000 if you want to work with more of the clients you love, do more of the work you love, and get paid more than you ever imagined, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Welcome to Smart gets paid.

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Hey there, Leah here, and welcome to this episode of The Smart gets paid podcast. I hope you're doing well. I hope wherever you are, you are having a good week. You're doing well, you're feeling good, and you're getting some good work done on your business. So I wanted to fill you in on something kind of exciting that happened over here, like just yesterday afternoon. Actually, this podcast, this smart gets paid podcast, hit 5000 downloads. Amazing, which means that by the time you hear this, it's going to be well past 5000 downloads, which is also exciting. It may be a little bit past or a lot past, but either way, I'm glad you're here listening. You know, I feel like in the podcast world, 5000 downloads is not that many, but for me, it's a huge deal. If you've been listening for a while, you know how long it took me and how hard it was for me. And actually, in between when I announced it and when I actually launched it, it took 16 months, and I was not figuring out the technology. For those 16 months, I was hiding. I was afraid of doing this, and finally I hired a coach, actually, to help me sort of get out of my own way. And I actually shared that call with you guys in it's episode 14. It's like a bonus episode. It's called Leah gets coached. So when I finally launched it, and you guys were so supportive, I just realized, you know, of course, I'm going to look back and be like, why did it take me so long? Why was I so afraid? But I'd rather kind of just look forward and say, I'm so excited to be sharing this with you, and I'm so excited that you're here with me. So thank you. Actually, I have a lot of thank yous because if you've been listening, if you've shared it, if you have sent it to a friend, if you've left a review, if you've even just emailed me to tell me or the team how much you're enjoying it, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. You know, if you've learned something, if you've taken something from this podcast and you've applied it to your sales conversations or your pricing or your proposals, or even the way you're going into selling Thank you for listening and applying it. And of course, I want to send a huge thank you to my clients who have so graciously allowed me to share our conversations and take them and turn them into podcast episodes so that we can together help as many women as possible overcome their sales challenges. So thank you. Can I say thank you enough? No, I don't think so. Thank you. So it's been a fun couple of weeks, a more relaxing couple weeks, I guess, my wife and I went to Western Massachusetts in the Berkshires for a weekend with some of our friends, and it was awesome. We went hiking, we saw some foliage, we had some awesome meals, had some Awesome Cocktails, and we left my son with my sister and brother in law, who watched them. And they had a blast, like they had the best time, like they did pumpkin stuff. They went on a hay ride. It's very like fall e out here, which is, of course, like, adorable. And so they had a blast. And that meant that we could have a blast on our weekend with friends. And it's funny, because I came back and I was on the phone with my mom, and I was, you know, describing the weekend to her, and she was like, Well, do you feel rested? And I was like, Hmm, do I feel rested? Because, like, I definitely had a great time. It was restful. But I had to be honest with her, I was like, do I feel rested? Like, not really, because, you know, two days just can't erase the way I've been feeling for the past 18 plus months. You know, it's just impossible. It's like, when your whole room is messy and you pick up, like, the thing that's closest and you put it in the drawer. Like, that's kind of what this weekend did for me. Like, yes, I'm feeling great, I'm feeling good, but I still sort of like, live in this world, right? And I'm still tired, like all of us, and still a little burnt out, but making it through, you know? And so weekends like this really help. So I hope that over the past few weeks, you've had a chance to sort of get out you. In nature, and, you know, put that one sweater away and have a little more restful time. All right, so let's get into the episode. This one was a really fun one to put together because it took me back a little bit. I work with a lot of women in some type of communications or marketing PR, and I have a lot of love for PR and a lot of respect for PR, because PR is hard, like it's hard, you know, the work can be grinding, and, you know, client expectations can be a lot. But I do have a lot of love for PR, because, actually, my very first internship ever was at a PR firm. I was a sophomore, I think, at the University of Pennsylvania in beautiful West Philadelphia, and I was taking an undergrad class at the Annenberg School of Communications. I was a Communications major. If I think back to it, I'm pretty sure that the entire class was just have an internship and, like, write a paper about it. So I got this internship at a PR firm in downtown Philadelphia called Braithwaite communications. And I actually hadn't thought about them in years, and I actually looked them up recently. They're still going. They're still in business. And so a few times a week I would, you know, hop on the bus from West Philadelphia and go downtown to this internship. And, like, at this point, it's been some years, guys, it's been some years. So I can't remember, like, what I learned specifically, but I do remember having this feeling like, this is tough stuff. It's hard. And that part really made an impression on me. And then later on, that was reinforced to me when I was out of school and I moved to Chicago, and I had a bunch of friends who were like, Super Junior, just like me, you know, Super Junior at, you know, Edelman and other PR firms. And I was like, Oh, I see this is, like, tough. So anyway, I have so much love for people who do PR, which brings me to the woman that you're going to hear me talk to in this episode today. So she runs a small PR firm, and she's in the fourth year of her business. And as you'll hear her say, for the first few years, she was doing great, she was growing quickly, she was hiring. And then as you'll hear her describe, she sort of hit a plateau on really two levels. She hit a plateau emotionally, you know, four years she had also gone through some hiring issues, but also just on a business level, because as she started getting bigger and started working with clients that were outside of her network, that network that she had been sort of drawing on for the first few years, she found that she wasn't really winning as many clients as she had been, and the things that she had been doing in the sales process just weren't working anymore, and that's what brought her to me. So you're going to hear us talk through it today. This is a coaching call from a student in my signed program, so I want to send a special thank you to her for allowing me to share this conversation with you. And just as a heads up, this call was recorded in the first few months of the pandemic, when I had, like, no childcare. And so you're gonna hear in this call, I'm actually having the call and also holding my son, who was, like, nine months old at the time. I had him on my lap, like, you know, so many parents were doing, and some are still doing. So you're gonna hear at the beginning that he's a little fussy, and then I'm gonna give him something to play with, which he, of course, later proceeds to drop anyway. Thanks for listening to me and to my son on this call. So take a listen, and at the end, I'm going to come back with a lesson that you can apply to your business.

8:33

Do you have an actual sales process? I'm talking about not a general sense of what you should be doing, but a real process where you know exactly what step comes next, who to follow up with, and when, and you can see at a glance where every potential client stands, if the answer is no, or if yours feels clunky, or you're reinventing the wheel, every single time I made something for you, it's called roadmap to clients. It's a free 20 minute video course, and in it, you'll map out your customized sales process step by step, from the very first contact with a potential client all the way to a signed proposal. It's the same foundational process we use with every Academy member, and it's completely free. Go to smart gets paid.com/roadmap to get started. Hi, hey, little fella. Hey, I usually he would not be with me on a call, but he really is feeling very needy right now. Yeah, he don't think he needs you. I'm good. I'm good. How are you today?

9:37

Yeah, good, good.

9:39

Well, welcome to your on behalf of my family. Welcome to your quick start call. Where do you want to focus today that we can sort of make some inroads on?

9:50

I think the biggest thing for me is really getting to the close and you know you'd run through in the kickoff call. You know, the three, I guess, different. Columns. And I had said, look, it's pretty much all the column in the middle, but definitely the close has been the most challenging for me. So in the I've had my business for four years this summer, and I would say for the first three it was like, grow, grow, grow, grow. Like last year, my business grew 50% we opened a second office in New York. I grew my team, but then I think I hit my plateau in q3 or so, where I had a couple of teammates that were in a good fit. I had to let go of two people because of performance reasons, and I think that also probably really just had implications for the rest of the business as well, because everything is interrelated. And so off the back of that, we had worked with a number of companies as well, where, at the end of last year, they actually didn't perform very well. They said, Look, you know, we aren't doing well as a business, so we're going to need to stop work Terminator contract, and a few companies have, you know, also continue not to do well in the covid 19 era. And so I think I'm already starting on the back foot and really needing to build up my pipeline, but I think that I've really hit like, that wall, you know, like, the first three years, I had, like, a whole process in terms of being able to get clients. We had a really good referral network, but now it's more important than ever to really have a strong pipeline. And I'm finding that in recent times, with some of the prospects that we're talking to, I'm getting more ghosting now than I ever have, and I'm not feeling that we necessarily are telling the most compelling, I guess, like vitamin painkiller, that maybe you've also been highlighting, that has been that will get us to the close. So right now, I have like, three prospects or so that I'm in discussions with. I'm also starting to do more kind of cold outreach, which I'd never done before. And actually, I think you might have been my lucky charm, because as we were going through, I was talking to Mandy about signing up one of my emails to somebody I had no relationship with. They actually signed with us, and I kicked off last week with a $10,000 per month ongoing retainer with a new client. So I feel, I feel like it's given me a bit of encouragement that there's opportunities, but I really want to replicate the ability to find the right companies and position us as the best option. And maybe some of that is just also getting out of this. Maybe, maybe, maybe our the way of positioning ourselves is also a little bit stale, so it could do with a bit of a reboot. Anyway, yeah, yeah.

13:04

So, I mean, first of all, that's fantastic that you grew the way you did. When you say you hit a plateau, do you mean, like an emotional plateau, or you just the business, the people that you let go all of that, I think

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that, yeah, like I'm a sole founder, and so we got to like, 10 people. So we started off like this time last year with five, and then we got to 10 pretty quickly. And then I think for me, realizing that two of the people just were not the right fit, I think that sucked up a lot of my energy. And then also, I think my new business process is like a very it's quite long winded, right? So quite time consuming. So between the people side, the new business side, the client service side, I think it just got to be a lot. And I think maybe it's maybe a little bit mentally, probably a lot mentally, but also just didn't. I just didn't feel like our pitches were like slam dunks the way that they used to be. And I think it's also because we are going up against a lot more established players these days that may or just a broader spectrum of companies, that maybe is a reason why we aren't standing out as much, and maybe the way that we've done our business sales process to get to the close could do with a revision so that we, you know, can can get to a close much better or much more confidently?

14:45

Yeah, so where can we dive into that today? Is there something in particular that that feels like it's a stumbling block for you or, I mean, tell me where we can sort of make inroads. So I want. Make sure this is, you know, yeah.

15:03

So we, I mean, I think for me, it's really being able to get figure out the best way to start the sales journey. So again, I can kind of give you an example of where I am with some of my current discussions. So right now, I'm, you know, there's a few that I'm waiting for to that we've sent proposals to where they just haven't gone back to me. So I'm kind of like trying to figure out the right way to highlight in my follow up. Look, rather than saying I'm looking forward to working with you more like I'm looking forward to working with you to deliver the value that you need, like or to support your goals, right? So I'm still haven't heard anything back for the couple, and that's just making me anxious, because I want to make sure that we are chosen, or if they haven't given up entirely, that that's, you know, that we're prominent in their on their choice. So I think yes, that's the first thing, trying to figure out how to do an effective follow up with outstanding proposals. And then I think the second thing is, how do we also, I also make sure that I think about the sales process effectively from start to finish. So typically, what happens is, we'll have, you know, a call, and that will be to vet the opportunity and for them to hear about us. Most times, they'll say, Okay, that sounds great. Like, let's do a proposal. Proposals are also really time consuming endeavors. Sometimes I really try to push to have a conversation and talk through our proposal. Sometimes they'll just be like, hey, just send it over to me, which, to me, already sounds challenging, right? Because then it just could get lost in the ether. And we had had that the other week where did not respond to wanting a time to chat. We're just like, send it to us before the end of the week. And I'm like, you know this, we need, we need to have a discussion. But how, how can I encourage that to happen?

16:59

Yeah, I mean, that is a number one. That's a red flag, first of all. And so how could you possibly do a proposal if you can't, if you don't know what the value is that they're looking for, why, what's, what's seeking them to, you know, like a solution.

17:15

I mean, we have the initial vetting call, right? Like, that's so that's where they give us that. But then, you know, then they're like, Okay, send us a proposal. But I'd rather talk through the proposal rather than just sending it over.

17:28

Yeah. So the thing about making the clothes easier is you almost have to work like, backwards. So because it starts well before the actual, like, time to, you know, sign on the dotted line. So I would want to look at like, what what's in your vetting call? What happens? What do you talk about? Right? Are you talking about price in that call? Because if they, if they're not a fit on price, then they're not your clients. And then no wonder if you're sending over a proposal, and then they sort of ghost you. Most people would rather ghost than say, No, you know. And then what are you doing to move the process forward? And then it's what's in your proposal. Are you giving them people something to really say that they're dying to say yes to? Right? Because the proposal is, should be a summary of what's already agreed to. And so, because if you sort of send over a proposal, sort of lobbed over the fence, as we often do. You're really sort of crossing your fingers to be like, are they going to do this or not?

18:28

Yeah. And I guess with some of the companies like I have found that a lot of them just want that. I'm trying to figure out how to get them to to not just say hey, like, send it over to me. So actually, even though I'm behind the behind the eight ball in terms of what I want to be revenue wise, actually did turn down the prospect, which to me sounds kind of in like a month ago before I talked to you, would have sounded ridiculous. But their price was like, but they'd allocated budget wise, was half of what I would do as my minimum. And I was like, no, like, I'm still gonna invest the time in developing something so when I want to spend that time doing something more meaningful. So that was the first thing. The second thing is, so, you know, if they are only asking to get people to send over proposals, and you know, is there a way to cut through that and be like, hey, no, but we, as part of our, I guess, our standard procedure, we we talk through our proposals like, I don't know how to phrase that, as a way to really cut through. Would that be the best way, or is this a different way to make it make that suggestion? Yeah.

19:36

Well, so first, are you in your in that vetting call are, what type of questions are you asking?

19:44

So, you know, a lot of it is really focused on the business as well. So it'd be like, who are you? What problem do you solve? What's your traction? Know, who are your competitors? Like, what are your PR goals? How will that? How are you looking at PR? Support your business. Have you done PR before? What's worked, what hasn't? And then, you know, like, get an insight of what the scope, what their scope is. And then from there, they typically also ask us about who we are, how we like to operate, how we measure our success, how we would typically work with them. And then I typically like to say, hey, like, based on, you know, the goals that you've outlined, what you're looking to achieve, like, to meet those goals, our minimum would be, like, 11 and a half or something. And so then some, sometimes, then they'll say, okay, like, let's, you know, put together for a proposal. And so in recent times, I've been like, okay, great. And then can, you know, and then some, I don't find that they are always wanting to have a call. I try to push to have that, but it's not always as successful. And then we talk through the proposal, and maybe that's probably actually where, where I would want you to look at the proposals we put together, because they I feel like maybe they're too long. It takes me a really long time to put them together. The feedback that we always get is that we've obviously done our homework and we really know this space, but maybe we're just not getting really to the heart of solving their problem.

21:20

That's often what I find because, well, a couple things, I think it's great that you're talking price in that first conversation, because if you know, if they really say that's not anything that we can pay, then they're not your client. What I would encourage you to do is think about questions in that call that really establish value, really get to not just like, What do you want us to do, but why is this important to your business? What will happen if this fails? What is why must this be successful, right? And then we're going to use that throughout the whole sales process, everything from, you know, as you mentioned, the follow up, right? Like, I want to follow up on your goal to, you know, become a household name in the next six months, right? And then we're also going to use that in the proposal and every touch point. The other thing is, the proposal is in the way that we're going to do it in this program. It should be it should help people fall in love with their future. So I think it sounds like you've probably done a great job of saying why this work is important, but I want the proposal to help them. They should be salivating over the future that you can help them achieve, right? And that helps make the clothes easier, because it's something that they're dying to say yes to, you know, I'm letting him play with my Yeah, no problem. Coffee Mug talk, yeah, it's trying to keep him occupied. Yeah. Problems. So those are two things that that we're going to talk about, you know, that you're going to learn how to do. And then to your question of, how do I make it sound like they have to get on the phone? Or, how do they, you know, how do I make it sound like this is part of our process. Two things. The first is, you do just say this is our process, right? As soon as you say it, it is so. So you can say, okay, great. So as a next step, this is what happens, and you're going to sort of frame that in terms of in terms of benefit them, right? So it's not just talking through the proposal that sounds like work, but we're going to, you know, really flesh out how, how to put these pieces in place for you, perhaps. And that's just one example. I don't really position it in terms of benefit the client. And the other part is understanding how they make decisions so and what's really typical is somebody comes on and they say, We want to, you know, talk to you about PR. Let's talk about PR. Here's the things we need. Great. Here's a proposal. And then, and then you just sort of wait, right? Yeah, but as part of your discovery process, really understanding and like literally asking the questions, how do decisions get made? Who's involved in this decision? Okay, then what happens next, and then what happens next, and over and over, until, first of all, the client walks through their own decision process inside the company. Then with that data, you can help them through that, because 90% of selling actually happens when you're not even there. So if you can say things like, maybe they, you know, maybe this is the head of marketing, and they have to talk to the founder, right? Or maybe they have to talk to whoever, right, instead of saying, you know, all right, here's a proposal or whatever, just sort of throwing it over the fence. You can say, why don't we set up a call with you and Joe, right? You and so and so. And that can be part of your, you know, your follow up, your process. Because the thing is, that oftentimes your client might not even know how to get this. Done. And so you and it's your job. I mean, you're the expert in how to, how to buy from you, so you have to help them. And so getting a little more involved in, okay, what is their process? Okay, great, like, and then helping them sell in so now you're not, you're not actually selling to the client, this main contact, you're helping the main contact sell into their company. Is this going to happen a lot more, especially as the companies that you work with get more sophisticated, as you work with bigger, bigger, more established tech companies? Because I think what's what served you well so far is

25:39

doing great work, but now it's going to be harder. Now you have to help your main contact say yes and really make the case so and you're going to learn how to do that more as we go along in the program. And I think if you can do all those things, if you can establish the value, if you can understand how they make decisions, if you can help them make decisions, you know, and help them navigate their company's own sales process. If you can use the value as the tool that sort of moves the process along, and then if you can write proposals that people are dying to say yes to, then you don't need to get sort of, quote, unquote better at closing, right, like you have led the process successfully and given people something that they're so excited to buy. All right? So we touched on a lot in that conversation, but there's one thing that I want to sort of put a bow on, which is this idea of the clothes. And the clothes is something that, you know, and I'm sort of saying it like the clothes, like capital T, capital C, here, right? Like the close, asking for the business, asking for the sale, is something that makes my clients, and makes a lot of people so anxious. You know, it feels like this moment that you either do it well and you win, or you sort of flub it and you lose. And in the sales world, there's this acronym, ABC, always be closing, which is like the worst, you know? I mean, I think it's one of the things that makes people, just like, hate slimy salespeople, not all salespeople, but slimy salespeople, because it feels like if you're going to sell, if you're going to do business development, you have to do it with the end goal in mind, right? You should always be thinking with the clothes in mind, like getting that signature on the proposal, or getting that signed contract. And so for a lot of women business owners, when you think about having to get good at the close, and especially if you've heard that always be closing, it makes you feel like you have to be a little salesy. You know, you have to be a little pushy because you have to get to that close. And what I hope you gleaned from our conversation is that the close isn't an event, closing, right? Getting the signature, getting your clients to be like, yes, we'd like to move forward. It isn't like a tactic you need a strategy for. It's really actually the natural result of a process that actually starts long before those later conversations. It starts in the first conversation. You know. It starts with how you message your business around value. It continues with how you do discovery and your ability to lead a sales process and writing proposals and then getting the signature. So it's the result of doing all of these things well. And when you can do that, you know, not only can you actually get more yeses, but it takes the fear out of what we would previously consider the clothes, right? And it takes a lot of the weight out of it, all, right? But there's also one other little thing I want to pull out of that conversation, and it's the evolution that my client touched on. You know, as her company has grown, she's sort of gone beyond those clients that have come to her through her network, right? And I would call those like the low hanging fruit, people who might know her or come through referrals or what have you. And as her companies evolved, she started to work with companies that are outside of that network. And the thing about those clients, people who come from outside your network, is they may not be as warm as they would have been if they had come through a referral, or they were in your network already. And so it's a really common inflection point that women experience in their business, because the selling skills that you need for super warm people are actually different than the selling skills you need for people who come in less warm or even a little cold. Basically, they need a little more selling. They need to be led through the process more. They need to build the relationship more. And those are the skills in the sales process that you need to deploy, like starting to sell to and you want to work with people who are outside of your network. And so the woman that you heard me talk to today is sort of in the middle, or sort of coming through that inflection point, because what got her here won't work for this next level of client. Right? And that was, you know, another key point of our call. And this inflection point happens anywhere from, you know, 12 to 24 months into your business. So if you're in this place right now, don't worry. It's natural. Just might be time to learn how to get the clients that you'll encounter in this next phase of your business. Because when you have the skills to get these clients that you're going to encounter, then the next phase of your business can be really exciting.

30:30

Hey, everything we're talking about in this episode is part of the system. Women like you are learning in the academy. In the Academy, we help women consultants install the two systems every B to B consultant needs a marketing system to consistently attract the right clients, and a sales system to lead a sales process to a yes and get paid more for every contract. So even if you've only gotten clients through referrals or word of mouth in the academy, you'll learn how to attract and sign clients outside your network, how to lead a sales process with confidence, and how to get paid for your value, not your time, and there's no cold calling or cold emailing involved, no changing your services or making a course, and you won't use any pushy sales tactics. That's just not our vibe. So if you like what you've heard here, the academy may be your right next step to learn how you can get these two systems in your consulting business and make progress faster and with fewer roadblocks. Head to smart gets paid.com/academy and apply and we can chat about next steps. All right. See you over there. You. Transcribed by https://otter.ai