Ari Galper on Selling Without Chasing Leads

Ari Galper0:00
Welcome everyone. Been looking forward to this all week long. I will warn you in advance that my ideas are very contrarian, very tip opposite of what you might be used to when it comes to selling. So hopefully you'll find that intriguing. Also, you probably caught the accent. I'm originally from California, the US, been here for 20 years now. I met my wife on a dating site and here I am, live near Bondi. Been here 20 years, 3 kids later. So in case you're wondering where that's from, that's the storey behind that. But if you don't know much about me, Christian did mention that I'm the author of quite a few books. I'll show a few of them here. Unlock the Sales Game, Are You Chasing Ghosts, Trust Authority, quite a few other ones. The essence of it is the concept of not having to chase anybody anymore who says they wanna think about it, how to compress your sales cycle down to one step versus multiple steps, and just stop playing the sales game altogether. That's our whole premise, and I'll tell you the storey behind that in a second. But our whole philosophy is the notion that your goal is trust building only, not the sale. When you focus on that, you have a much higher conversion rate and you differentiate your business because your approach is different than everybody else's. So that's kind of the big picture there. And just the one I'm— the book I'm most excited about, and I always have been since day one, is this one here about my son Toby. When he was born, we were told he had Down syndrome. And at first we didn't know what that meant to our lives, and we realised we had a gift on our hands. So if you know somebody who has Down syndrome, you know they're very special people. They're loving, they're transparent, they have no hidden agenda, and they give you lots of cuddles. So I said, if we can all be like that, then we just have conquered the world of trust. And so a lot of his— the way he is in life now is how I embedded my— developed my approach. He's now 21 years old, he's doing great. So That's a bit about me on the personal side, but I want to tell you the storey behind my pivot that happened about 2 decades ago. I was— sounds like a long time— 20 years ago, I was a sales manager in a software company. We were a high-tech business. We launched the first online website tracking software tools for websites. It's now called Google Analytics. You've probably heard of that before, but prior to that, we are the first ones out the gate with that product. And I was managing a team of 18 people. And the big opportunities, the leads that were the big opportunities came across my desk first. And one day I got a phone call from our website. It was a company with a huge amount of websites around the world. And my contact, really nice guy, asked if I can do a demo for him to show him how our services work. So of course I said yes. And we scheduled a time, I think it was 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon. And if I close this one sale, It would double turnover of the comp business in one go. That's how big the opportunity was. They had a huge amount of websites. So it was a big opportunity. So the day finally came, Friday, 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I'm in the conference room with my CEO. I closed the door behind me. There's a big long conference table. On the table is the old school speakerphones. You might remember a long time ago, they used to have like Star Trek looking phones with 3 legs on it called Polycom. And speaker button, mute button, that was about it, and volume. Just those 3 buttons. So I hit the, Speaker button, and dial tone came up. I dialled the phone number for my contact, called the number, and he says, "Hello." I said, "Hey, how's it going?" He says, "Great." Then he says to me, "Ari, let us share with you who's on the line with us today." I said, "Great." Next thing I hear is, "My name's John, I'm CEO." Perfect. "My name's Julie, I'm head of global marketing." Amazing. "My name's Chris, I'm head of global IT." Perfect. I mean, everybody on this call was a decision maker. If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen today 'cause they're all there. So I introduced myself, explain what we do. I had them log into an old school kind of webinar tool back then and to give 'em a live demo of their, one of the websites using our tool in advance. We prepared for this to show them their live data. They all log in with me. I start showing them all the information that I can see live and they can see it live as well. And I start to hear this noise on the phone call like, "Wow, this is great. This is amazing. We love this." They started asking me all kinds of questions. How does it work? How do we install it? Who's your supplier? What's the technology? And of course they had all the right kinds of questions and I had all the answers. I mean, it was like a love fest on the phone. If you've been there before, raise your hand or send Kirsten a note. You know what I'm talking about? When they got the questions, You've got the answers. You're saying to yourself, oh my God, this is like the perfect conversation. There is no resistance. And an hour goes by, they're loving it, I'm loving it. A call comes to a close and my contact says to me, Ari, we love this. Look, give us a call a couple weeks, follow up with us and we'll move this forward. I said to myself, oh, thank you God. This is like the dream sales call. I said my goodbyes. And I took my hand, reached for the speaker button on the phone, and by complete accident, instead of the speaker button, I hit the mute button instead. And a small click happened, and they thought I hung up the phone. In that split second, a voice inside of me said, "Ari, go to the dark side. Be a fly on the wall. Go where no one's ever gone before in the world of selling." So I pulled back for a moment. They started talking amongst themselves. Thinking I had left the call. Now, this is not a trick question, but what would you imagine they would've said after a call like that? What would you think they would've said? Maybe drop Kirsten a note in there. And I wouldn't be surprised if you might say things like, you know, well, let's move forward, we're excited. I expected to hear all the things that they were telling me, but let me share with you verbatim, word for word, what they said. That's why we're all here today. They said this, They said, "We're not gonna go with him. Keep using him for more information, and let's shop someplace else cheaper." Knife in heart twist. I was in a state of shock. I could not believe it. I hit the off button, I looked at the wall, and I said to myself, "What did I do wrong?" I was relationship-oriented. I was friendly. I was competent. I was nice, I wasn't aggressive, I wasn't selling, I was doing everything I was taught to do in the world of sales. And then I said to myself, this is all wrong. Why weren't they comfortable telling me the truth? Why the sales game? Why having me chase them? Why them to call me back? And I said to myself, I have to fix this. Selling has become a dysfunctional relationship. So I decided many years ago to launch my own philosophy, my own approach called Unlock the Sales Game that shifts the mindset away from the goal of selling to instead focusing only on trust building. When you do that, you stop selling, all the numbers change. And that became my concept. So I'm gonna, I'm zooming out right now, but I'm gonna zoom in in a few minutes now as we get closer and closer to show you how this works and what I mean by that. So what I wanna first do is cover something called the trust recession, which is a term I coined recently. Which really defines where I believe we are 20 years later now in this economy and what's changed. And I'm gonna walk you through a visual format that explains what, how I define the trust recession and where we are right now in terms of the economy, in terms of how we grow our businesses, especially in terms of selling. So first of all, I think, and I believe that we are in what I call a commoditized market where your buyers, people, your clients can't discern how you're different than anybody else because everyone looks the same. Everyone has similar services, similar products. So how would they know you're different? So they, most of your buyers or potential clients are on what I call a shopping trip, right? They are look you up on social media, they saw your website, saw your LinkedIn profile, and they're like, okay, I know what he or she does. And then they wanna speak with you and they are in shopping mode mentally in their mindset trying to shop you. Now, when we finally meet with them for either a Zoom call or Teams call or phone call or meeting, whatever, we end up feeling it's our obligation to do what I call free consulting, where we educate them and give them information for free. Who finds themselves right now doing a lot of free consulting? Maybe let Kirsten know this, but you know what I'm talking about. We have to educate them, spend time with them, pour your heart out to educate them on their situation. You do the best you can do. And then after all that, at the end of that meeting, they say things to you like, "That's been so great. I'd like to think about it." You're like, "Think about it?" And you end up doing what I call chasing after that. We have to chase them, follow up with them, send a quote, a proposal, leave a voicemail, they don't call you back. Now they're gone in this other space where you're wondering, why is this so difficult? Why selling becomes so hard? Because we are stuck in this loop right now because things have changed since COVID where potential clients now know what we do in advance of meeting with us. And so I have figured out a way to crack the code in this and break this loop and help our clients get out of the cycle so you can differentiate yourself, convert more opportunities, and no longer ever again chase people. That's a big claim. And I'm claiming today, if you can mirror this and you can master this, the art of this, you will never have to chase a ghost ever again. And hopefully that sounds good to you 'cause it's almost a cathartic feeling to feel free to not have to do these things that you hate doing as it relates to selling. By the way, I'll admit to you, I hate selling. I hate selling myself, I hate selling products. I only wanna build trust with people 'cause I wanna build trust with people, then they buy from me automatically, okay? And I'm gonna teach you today how to do that. So here's the typical, typical basic sales process that most people use in their businesses. Now, sure, yours might be a bit different or more complex or more sophisticated, but in essence, this is the foundation. First, what happens is either someone contacts you or someone DMs you or whatever, or you contact someone, right? Then you schedule a time to have a chat and you discuss their issues, their business, or their challenges or their problems. Then in that session you also discuss what your solutions are, how you can help them, of course. And then they wanna think about it. And then next step is you follow up with them. And hopefully if all goes well in your follow-up process, what's supposed to happen at the end? Hopefully get a new client, right? So how many of you with a raise of hands or the, the symbol there are stuck somewhere at what I call the follow-up position where you're now chasing people who are qualified Had a great meeting with them, but now they've gone dark on you. Anybody have some of those floating around in your business somewhere where they're not calling you back and saying, "Let's get started." You're now in chase mode. The reason why it's happening is because somewhere along the way in your process, you are missing either trust between each step of your process or overlaid on top of it. And if you can build trust on top of your sales process and compress your cycle, then you'll get a massive breakthrough in your business. That's what I'm gonna share with you today, how to do that with a whole different mindset, different way of thinking about the process. 'Cause here's what happens a lot. We meet with people who are qualified and we say to ourselves, "Wow, what a great meeting. That was fantastic. High five everyone. We got a good opportunity here." 'Cause we feel like we demonstrated value. We gave them education. We show them that we're qualified. And then we get so excited, we get this hopium drug that goes through our bodies, it's like a joke about hopium, where you get super excited about the possibility of this working out. Then we end up having to chase them afterwards, the whole thing kind of drops out. So that's the cycle we're gonna work on breaking today. And I'll tell you, when I meet with clients a lot and potential opportunities to work with us, they always tell us things we have to kind of challenge them on. And I'm gonna challenge some of the myths right now in the back of your mind as you might think about your current business in terms of sales growth. The first myth is this one. Oh, Ari, we need to build a relationship first with our clients for them to get to know us and like us. I'll make the case today that no, a relationship is not required to create trust with leads, okay? It's a big concept, I'll break it down, I promise you, for you in a little bit. Also, I need to gather facts first, I need to qualify them before we begin the process. Well, no. You don't gather facts with people until after they trust you, not before they trust you. Also, but we need to discuss their goals, what their mission is, what they wanna accomplish, what their vision is. Well, the reality is in this day and age, most people can't think past tomorrow. So your goal is to focus on their current problems now, not their future objectives, because that's as far as people can really go in their current mindset. Last one's a big one. This is hard for us 'cause we believe that our clients, potential clients, need to like us first. They have to like us first, then trust us. And I'll make the case today also in many cases that they don't even have to like you to trust you. They just have to trust you. So I'm gonna kind of try and drop some bombs here and some of the old thinking we've been used to carrying this entire time and show you how it's, things have shifted in this new economy. And in this same concept vein, I wanna also challenge your thinking around the traditional sales and marketing models we've all grown up with to update that thinking to the current economy and day and age now. Now most of you probably heard of and probably use what I call a sales funnel, right? You know what that is, right? With your hands, what does that look like? A sales funnel. Looks like this, right? Wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. Now what are we supposed to do at the top of the funnel? Put what in the top of it? As much as possible, right? Be everywhere. Social media, direct mail, everywhere. Podcasts. Put as much at the top as possible. What do we do in the middle? Spend all of our time qualifying, following up, chasing, having meetings, and hopefully at the end a marble comes out, a client comes out, And we get a model that's called high volume, low conversion. To me, that feels very inefficient, and that feels like you're playing the numbers game and chasing people who are not qualified. So our, we've flipped the model. Our model is called a sales cylinder. It looks like this. And the way it works is you only put the top, your ideal client. You do not sell to them at all. You only build trust with them. And then they ask you for help. And then you get what I call a low volume, high conversion model where you're more efficient, you convert much higher than you are right now 'cause you're not chasing unqualified leads, you're not playing that game anymore, but you shifted your thinking and your process around a cylinder. That should give you a foundation of the marketing shift here. Now, to debunk some of the myths around this, people come to us and say, well, wait, Ari, "I just need more opportunities, more leads is all we need to grow our business." And I say, "No, you don't need more leads, you need a higher conversion rate." "But wait, wait, Ari, we're different. We have a long sales cycle. It takes a long time to get to a yes." Well, oftentimes a long sales cycle is indicative of a lack of trust somewhere in your process, right? 'Cause all you're waiting for is to hear this, "Let's do this." Why does it take months, weeks, days to get that answer? Then there's, oh, well, we need to show them our value, present our proposition, show them our history of our company. Well, the irony of all this is value in itself has been commoditized. If you're showing people value all the time, that could be seen as selling because others do the same thing. They try and sell their value. The last one I kind of mentioned before is the idea of educating your prospects. And that turns into what I call free consulting. Be very careful of that 'cause they'll, they'll use you to get information for free to go somewhere else. So that kind of sets the, the scene for today about the shift in the model we're talking about. And I wanna begin to, begin to shift your mindset and your thinking to start getting new results. And I'll zoom in now and talk to you about how to think differently about your self-image of how you approach your market from a sales perspective. So I want to today change your view and your inner image from this concept to you selling, presenting, showing value, the old sales behaviors, to shifting to this new model, which is a doctor model where you're now all officially doctors. Congratulations. Um, I just made you all doctors. And, um, just for fun, what is the process you have to go through to see a doctor? What's step 1? Step 1 is you have to call to make an appointment, right? Then next step 2 is go to your diary and schedule extra half an hour each side in case of traffic, or 15 minutes in case of traffic or something like that. Then you show up at the office, doctor's office, you sit in the chair, and what do you do when you sit in the chair? You wait, and you wait, and you wonder why your name's not being called. Now, do you invoice him for your time or her? No. That's how it works. You comply. You're not happy, but you comply with the authority. He's the doctor or she's the doctor, right? Then they finally call your name and you're like, "Oh, finally. God, it's about time." You walk in the clinic office and what's the first thing they say to you? They say to you, "Where does it hurt?" They don't try to have lunch with you first, become your best friend first, show you value first, talk about where they went to school first, who their patients are, they don't talk about themselves. We talk about the problem. And you say, "My shoulder hurts." He says, "Let me take a look." "Ah, a little sore, let's get you an X-ray, see what's going on." He gets the X-ray, puts in the light bulb, and says, "Here's the problem you've got. You've got this going on, you got that going on, you got that going on." And you're like, "Oh, wow, I didn't realise that's what my problem was." He writes you a prescription, you say thank you, you walk out the door, you go to the front desk, and you do one last thing before you leave. You know what you do? You, what? You pay. You pay the doctor not for solving your problem, only for diagnosing your problem. Who solves it? The chemist. The chemist dispenses the medicine, not the doctor. I have a funny feeling a lot of you unknowingly right now are playing both roles at the same time. You're being the doctor and the pharmacist all in one, not even knowing it till today. My job is to help you break this down to help you see the process here. So you're the doctor first, the pharmacist second. Don't deliver the value, don't deliver the medicine too early. If you do that, you're gonna break that trust, okay? So I use the doctor metaphor to give you a simple way to see the process here. And then I'm gonna show you how to begin to use this in this model. Now, I mentioned earlier a big concept. I said to you that the big idea of this, Relationship building is not the same as trust building. Now, what does that mean? So I broke it down visually to show you what I mean by this to help you break the concepts apart, okay? So on one axis we have trust, on one axis we have time. So real relationships with real people take a lot of what? A lot of time. When you focus on relationship building only, it extends your sales cycle, You end up getting a lot of this. I wanna think about it. We're not ready yet. Talk to me next week. Call me next month. You know, chasing people and becomes very inefficient to focus only on trust building. Now, you do focus on trust building, yes, after they're a client, but not before they're a client. Before they're a client, the key is to only focus on trust building. Here's why. Because trust without relationship building be created very, very quickly. And it can compress your sales cycle down if you focus on trust building only and not relationship building, just like the doctor does. And there's no more chasing when you get this right. You don't have to sell yourself anymore and you can do what you do best, okay? So that's the separation of the two concepts in your mind to realise you can now parse them out. Now, how do we make this happen? So I've invented and developed a system called the one-call sale, okay? Now there's no chasing of leads anymore, there's no pressure, and there's no closing, and there's no sales techniques at all to have to use here, okay? When I mean one-call sale, I don't mean a signed contract on one call. What I mean is a commitment to schedule with you a next step in your process to move forward in your model, to onboard with you to begin working with you along whatever your process might be. So what I'm gonna do right now is I'm gonna walk you through a roadmap, a visual framework and tool of the system so you can see each phase of it, so you can begin to see it in your mind how you can use it for yourself, okay? So the first phase is the whole doctor-patient mindset shift. And in that shift, you have to reduce or eliminate the chitchat, socialising with your leads, and instead focus on what I call bedside manner and empathy, where they feel you care about them, not just become their, probably become their best friend. 'Cause they know it's fake. They know the sales stuff all the time, and they want to trust you, not like you at this stage of the game. Okay? Now another big shift here is your goal is to shift from what I call solution-centric thinking to problem-centric thinking. Where you only focus on their problem, not discuss your solution. It'll be hard for you at first 'cause a lot of you on this call love what you do. You're passionate. When you find someone who can, you can help, what do you want to do? You wanna tell 'em all about it. But when you do that, you bypass the problem area. You break trust with them. You end up in a sales cycle that never typically ends. And so your goal is to deep dive, unpack their problem, dimensionalize to a very deep level where no one ever has before. And I'll show you a little model around that, what I mean by that. So most business owners, here's what they do. They meet someone for the first time, a lead, and they have a dialogue with them, a conversation, and they spend about, say, 10, 25% of the conversation assessing the problem, qualifying them. Once they qualify them, In their mind they go, "Ooh, perfect client for me." They go right into solution mode. "Let me show you how I work. Let me show you how, what we can do for you." And we end up emphasising most of the conversation around the solution and not the problem. So the switch here is to be only problem-centric. We do not discuss your solution at all on the first meeting, but you only show 'em a process and a prescription for how to solve the problem without It's trying to offer your value. That's where you're problem-centric. And I'll show you how you do that in a second. Okay? That's just explaining the first pillar here, which is problem-centric thinking. Now from here, you wanna do what I call go down the iceberg with them. Okay? What that means is when you meet someone, let's do a role play right now. Let's just say you have a first lead and you meet them on Zoom or Teams, for instance. Okay? On LinkedIn, for instance, you get a lead.

Paul23:33
Okay?

Ari Galper23:34
And they show up on Zoom, meet you for the first time. First thing you say is this, you say, "Nice to meet you." "Nice to meet you as well." That's it, no more chitchat after that. No, "How you heard about us?" "I love your shoes." No more socialisation at all. 'Cause the next thing you're gonna say is this, you're gonna say, "If it's okay with you, if it's okay with you, if you wouldn't mind, take a step back for a moment and walk me through your background." your situation, and up to your current blank concerns you have, and we'll go from there. Is that okay with you? And I'll say it again, asking permission twice. If it's okay with you, if you wouldn't mind, take a step back for a moment, walk me through your background, your situation, your business model, and your current challenges that you have right now, and we'll go from there. And what you do after that is take your fingers like this, sit back in your chair like a doctor, like a therapist, you go like that. Put your fingers over your mouth. What does this do first of all for you? Tells you to stop doing what? Don't talk. That's gonna be hard at first 'cause we're so used to engaging, chemistry, dialogue, relationship building. Just listen. It'll be hard at first, but you'll get used to it. Just be listen to the problem. Once you're done downloading on you, then you crystallise the core issue. Okay? And you summarise the core problem. You say, "So what I'm hearing from you is your core issue is X, Y, and Z. Is that right?" And they go, "Exactly." Tick box number 1, you are listening, not trying to sell yourself. Now the second layer below that is called cost of inaction. This is where you're gonna find out and help them understand the impact of not solving it. So you might say questions like, Have you considered the impact of this to your team? Are you aware of what you could be losing in the market by not having this in place? Are you aware of the fact that if you don't plan out your exit of your business ahead of time, you could lose your value? This is where you help them understand the impact of the problem, help them dimensionalize it, and this is where trust is built, where they feel like you are going deeper with them than anyone else they met that day. Because the key around this is your differentiation in this current economy will become your process for how you sell, not what you sell. 'Cause others do what we all do. This gives you a differentiation, an edge to show them you are not gonna be like everybody else. You're gonna trust build with them and relationship with them afterwards. And the last question you're gonna ask is this one. It's, is Is this a priority for you to address and solve once and for all so you can move on and fix the problem? Now, if they say no, well, that tells you right away they're not really very qualified or ready. But if they say yes, great. Then the last phase is you walk 'em through, or one more phase after that, but your next phase is you walk 'em through what I call a roadmap, a visual tool just like this you're seeing on the screen. A process map that shows them what your process is to solve their problem. Not your solutions, not your pricing, not your offer. It's a meta step, it's a framework where you walk them through what your process is for how you solve their problem. 'Cause I'm sure a lot of you have your own process, of course you do. And you probably verbalise it now to your potential prospects. The difference here is you're gonna visualise it. When they see it, They believe it. When you say it, it goes in one ear, out the other ear. They can't compute it. So if you can map out what you do in a process like this and show them, here's my process, phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, then they're buying your process first before they're buying you. This is the part everyone skips and misses, ends up having to chase people later on because of it. Then from here, You can then do, move into what I call onboarding phase, okay? Where you onboard them to a next step in your process, which is phase 1 of your roadmap. So here's what you say. You walk them through it and you say, well, what are your thoughts on the roadmap? They go, makes sense. And you say, where would you like to go from here? Take your figures. You put over your mouth, again, like a doctor, and sit back. Create space. Let them walk into it. Don't try to move them forward on your own. If they feel like you're trying to put momentum in the call with them, they'll feel pressure from you. So allow the space to build trust with them. Slow down, stay calm, and most importantly, at the end of the call, schedule them to the next step on your diary to begin the process or continue the conversation, here's how you say it. You say this, you say, "If you'd be open to it, it might make sense for us to schedule a time in our diaries to meet up again 'cause you may have more questions for me, I have more questions for you. We can brainstorm together and go from there. Would you be open to that?" That's the trust-based languaging that filters out the real ones or the ones that are not real. And you schedule them for next step 'cause your goal is to become what I call a buy appointment only business. Like a doctor's office. You only schedule appointments. You don't chase patients or leads. You don't chase people, follow up with people. You just stay in your process. So the big picture here is, You must have a process in mind to show them because what I've done here is decomplexed the sales process to make it so simple they can trust you without you having to sell yourself ever again because they're buying the way you're approaching them, not buying your solution 'cause they already know what you do. It's not a mystery, okay? So here's the big ideas from today. Number 1, be the doctor and stop being the pharmacist too early in the process 'cause you're breaking the trust process with them. Go down the iceberg and don't sell your value anymore 'cause they wanna buy trust from you, not your value. Value's been commoditized, others do what we do, we can't win in saying, "Hey, we're different. We've been around longer, we have more staff." They're not gonna believe you. They have to see that you have a process in place that you won't drop the ball, they can see you around that corner, and they feel comfortable, they're buying a structure that feels safe for them. And help them see the full impact of their problem, 'cause you gotta help them build a business case for them to justify your fee. And one big tip for you, one last tip, okay? One big takeaway. I'm gonna ask all of you to remove one phrase forever as of today and never use it ever again. Hopefully you're ready for this one, and if you've been in selling for a long time, This might hurt just a bit, okay? I'm gonna ask you all to never again use the word or phrase, feed, sorry, follow up ever again. Don't ever call someone and say, "I'm calling to follow up." Who's emailed someone in the last few weeks honestly and said, "I'm writing you to follow up"? If you've been doing that, you're caught in the sales game because follow up is a sales word. That puts pressure on people to move things forward. Never use that phrase ever again. Here's what you say instead. You say, "I'm just giving you a call," or a ring, "to see if you have any feedback on our previous conversation, any feedback on our last meeting, any feedback on our proposal." Feedback's going backwards, not forwards. If you use language that moves them forwards, that puts pressure on them. So your job is to strip out everything from what you do that feels like selling. Consult free consulting, education, relationship building, and make it simple of the doctor model to build that trust. If you master this, then you really ace the game. So real quickly, if this resonates with you and you like this concept, I'm happy to send all of you my books, my latest ones that I've just got published, complimentary in the mail, old school with a, with a stamp on it in a box. So if you want to do that, feel free to scan or go to that site to order my books. And you're on your way out, if you want, there's an option to schedule time with myself and my partner to chat about your business and analyse the holes you might have and figure out a way to solve it. Voluntarily, it's up to you, but you have a chance to learn the concept and master the art of trust before the world goes crazy as it is right now. So on that note, Kirsten, I think we're there.

Kirsten Scott32:15
Awesome. Thank you so much, Ari. We might stop sharing your screen and we'll jump into the Q&A.

Paul32:21
Sure.

Kirsten Scott32:22
So that was awesome. I know I definitely took a few notes myself. So the first person we've got is Krish, if you'd like to ask Ari a question. Thanks, Kirsten.

Krish32:31
Hi Ari, thank you so much for this session. I'm Krish, I'm the founder of Lunare, and I'm currently working on targeting B2B clients for helping with their corporate gifting. With everything you said about trust building, relationship building, and what I've been learning with sales, I think body language and tone of voice is really important to gauge the person on the other side. Um, what would you do if a client is resistant to get on a call? They just want to do comms over emails. Do you think it is still possible to build trust?

Ari Galper33:00
Very, very, very difficult because email is not a trust-building tool. It's just data and content only. You want to move them, if you can, to a face-to-face. So we can look at, if you want, your process, figure out what you're using now that causes them to want to stick only to Email. Are you getting leads inbound now? Is that what's happening via email? And you're responding back on email. Is that what you're doing? So you get— lead comes in, you reply back, they reply back. Is that what's going on?

Boa host33:27
Yeah.

Krish33:27
And in the initial email, I did say like, when's a good time we can, um, you know, have a call to discuss your requirements further? But they just kept responding on email.

Paul33:35
Okay.

Ari Galper33:35
So we gotta tighten up that languaging. It's just probably a bit too loose. So here's how you say it.

Krish33:41
Okay.

Ari Galper33:41
Lead comes in. Hi John, thank you so much for your inquiry about gifting and your project. If you'd be, here's the language, if you'd be open to it, comma, I'd be happy to have a brief consultation with you, complimentary, to better analyse and understand your situation so we can customise what might be best for you. That's how we work over here. Would you be open to that? Dot, dot, dot, send.

Krish34:10
Mm-hmm.

Ari Galper34:11
So you're giving them a choice. Either they, it's your way or it's the highway. So when they see it, only the only option is the meeting or nothing, then that typically gets people to want to have a chat with you. But you leave the door open somehow, then they'll take the route which is easier for them and you're forced to be in their process versus your process. 'Cause what you're talking about, Krish, is you're at that moment in what I call a battle of control. They're trying to control it, or you're trying to control it, right? So you have to have a model there to move them to the next step, to know that you're the doctor and they're the patient. Otherwise, they'll treat you like a vendor.

Krish34:51
Gotcha. Thank you so much, that was great.

Kirsten Scott34:53
Thanks.

Ari Galper34:54
Sure thing.

Kirsten Scott34:56
Thanks, Krish. Um, Paul, and I'll get you to give just a quick overview of your business as well so I can better understand it.

Paul35:04
Yeah, so I do have two businesses, but this is really more for our e-commerce agency. And I've been working in a sort of an e-commerce sort of coaching group where they had very similar philosophies to what you have presented today, which is great. They sort of said, you know, to offer a paid discovery to sort of weed out the riffraff. What's your thoughts on a paid discovery, which is a nominal fee that would cover your time to have this deep dive, which would then potentially be sort of discounted from a proposal later on?

Ari Galper35:47
Have you tested that live yet?

Paul35:50
I have.

Ari Galper35:51
And how's it working?

Paul35:54
Crashed and burned.

Ari Galper35:55
How's it working?

Paul35:57
Not well.

Ari Galper35:57
That's what I thought. Okay, so don't do that. That's bad advice. Here's what you do instead.

Krish36:03
Okay?

Ari Galper36:04
You have the first call, which is no resistance, low threshold. They can talk to you, no problem. On that call, in your roadmap for phase 1, would be a discovery needs assessment stage 1. And you sell them that at the end of the call. So here's how you say it. Walk them through your process, you show them phase 1, which is discovery, which is a paid model, and you say, and they say, "Well, how do you work, Paul?" You say, "It's very simple. There's a one-time," here's the languaging, "nominal fee, nominal only, one-time only, of $2K." By the way, don't use the word thousands ever again. Use the letter K. $1K, $2K, $3K, $10K, $20K, $30K. K is much easier to visually conceptualise than the word thousands, okay? So you say a nominal fee of just $2K, that's it, to have us and my team work with you through this couple phases here to really spend our time to analyze, diagnose, and figure out the full breadth of your situation, to give you back insights that will help you. That's how we work from here. That's how you, that's how you frame it. And that fee will be a credit towards any future work we do after that. So you have to frame it in the right sequence to get that trust and then they agree to do it. I've got a lot of folks now are using that I just gave you right there, financial advisors, consultants, CEOs, entrepreneurs, 'cause we're now laying in the right sequence and it's working every time. Great question.

Boa host37:38
Awesome, thank you, Paul.

Kirsten Scott37:41
Um, Kevin Chu.

Kevin Chu37:44
Hi Ari, thank you so much for today's session, it's been amazing, I've loved it. Um, so I'm a youth mentor, which means trust needs to be made from both the parents, who are the first people that I speak to, and then again by the youth, um, who then need to agree to meet as well. And sometimes the youth aren't happy to jump on straight away, and so it might be tricky for parents to jump on with their youth. How would you approach this?

Ari Galper38:08
So you do mentorship for the— how old are these kids?

Kevin Chu38:13
Uh, 15 to 23 years old.

Ari Galper38:14
And you need the parent to— is a decision maker, right?

Kevin Chu38:18
The decision maker, because they're also paying.

Ari Galper38:20
They, they, they, they write the check, they, they pay for it. And you're trying to get the parent to bring the younger one on a call with you?

Kevin Chu38:29
Eventually, yes.

Ari Galper38:31
So what exactly is the constraint then? That, that's what's your challenge with that?

Kevin Chu38:36
So sometimes parents just reach out to me as a, oh, is this the right thing? But then I also need to have another chat with the youth to see, to get them to trust me.

Ari Galper38:45
And then always, and then the parents might not also trust me. I see. Okay, so what you need to do, the parents are reaching out to you first, first meet with them alone. Take them through the process and the model if they can trust you first, okay? Once they trust you, they'll be more motivated to bring in the younger one to meet with you. To try and pull them all together into one call and neither of them even know you or trust you yet, that's very difficult. But you got the decision maker who is coming inbound to talk to you. I would work with— it's like when you talk to different decision makers, like one partner shows up, and the partner's not on the call. Well, what do you do? Wait till they both come on? Well, you can, but it's difficult, like you're experiencing right now. So instead, take the one partner who's coming on and wants to talk to you, build trust with them, and then once they feel comfortable with you, they'll comply with what your process is. So your roadmap might say, phase 1 is, from here, Julie, we meet with you and your son. We talk about this, talk about that, talk about that. Phase 2 is we do a plan. So you have to show the parent what your process is, and the first phase includes bringing their son in to begin the process. Does that make sense? Yeah, you got to map it out so you see the sequence in their mind. Otherwise it's a black hole for them. They're just saying, you want me to show up and bring them along and then what? See, they're like, what's going to happen next? They don't— people won't do that anymore unless you can show them in advance what's going to happen.

Kevin Chu40:17
Yeah. So would you say, hey, you've booked a time, awesome. Could you make sure that your son or your daughter is also free in case we want to bring them on, or in case we have any—

Ari Galper40:27
If it was me, if it was me, I wouldn't force that. I would just have the call with them first. Have them trust you first, feel, 'cause they're paying for it. Have them comfortable with you first, and then say, from here is the next step. The next step is we'll have another call you bring in Johnny and we'll talk it through together based on the roadmap.

Kevin Chu40:48
Amazing. Thank you so much for that.

Ari Galper40:50
Yeah, sure thing, Kevin.

Boa host40:53
Awesome.

Kirsten Scott40:54
Sasha, I know you've got a little question there.

Paul40:59
Yeah, hi, sorry. Yeah, I was just going to say in terms of that one-on-one meeting or sorry, face-to-face meeting instead of doing it via email, does that include just doing it Through an online meeting, or do you have to physically be in the same place?

Ari Galper41:15
No, it's perfect for online, just like this Zoom. You can just show them the roadmap. But what I used to do when I used to go to physical corporate offices and boardrooms, I printed out my roadmap in a laminated large, extra large, and I put into a tube like an architect. And I walk in the meeting with under my arm this white tube, and they go, what's in that tube? I said, I'll show you in a few minutes. So I go through the iceberg with them, build trust, and I'd take out, pop up the tube, the cap, I'd roll out the roadmap. It was about, it was massive. They're like, what is that? I laid it on the conference table and I swear every head went like that. What is that? That's my roadmap process. Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3. They were so enthralled by this roadmap. And I said, where would you like to go from here? They go, what's the next step, Ari? Well, I'd like your roadmap. I would get them on board then right there and then. So if you're physically meeting with clients, carry with you your roadmap in a little tube like an architect and roll it out so extra large, they'll be blown away. You'll be the only one who's ever offered them that concept before.

Paul42:26
Mm-hmm, okay, that sounds good. Good idea. That sounds like, yeah.

Ari Galper42:30
And I'll give you one more, one more tip. When you go live to see a potential new client at their office, besides your roadmap, walk in hands-free. What I mean by that is don't bring a laptop, don't bring a pad, don't bring a contract, don't bring a pen. Leave everything in the car. When you walk in with only a tube in your hand, what goes through their mind when they see you walking in? What are they thinking? They're thinking, "Well, where's his stuff?

Kevin Chu43:00
Where's the laptop?

Ari Galper43:01
Where's the iPad? Where's the bag? Where's the salesman stuff that people who sell carry?" You have to change your whole perception of not selling. When I used to walk in with that tube in my hand, they said, "Armin, are you gonna present to us now what you do?" I said, "No, that's not kind of how we work. We wanna first figure out what the problem is that you have." we'll diagnose it and figure out where to go from there. Then I'll walk you through a roadmap for how you work. They go, oh, okay. See, I set the structure from the beginning and they just comply with me because I have a structure in advance. If not, I used to show up and go, nice to meet you. Oh yeah, let me show you what we do. Oh yeah. And it went like everywhere off the ski trails, what I call into the forest. And I was like lost.

Paul43:43
So if I'm doing it virtually though, 'cause I mean most of our meetings Just share screen. Yeah.

Ari Galper43:52
Just show them the roadmap.

Paul43:55
Okay.

Ari Galper43:56
They'll love it because don't forget on that call with them, you are not talking about yourself the entire time at all. So they're saying, yeah, can we see something? Yeah, here's the roadmap. Here's how I work from here. It's a doctor saying, here's the process. I'll give the prescription. You go pay me, then go get your medicine at the chemist. That's my process.

Paul44:20
Okay, cool. Nice, thank you.

Ari Galper44:22
Awesome. Thank you, Sasha.

Kirsten Scott44:24
Thank you. Ari, we do have a few more questions to get through, so we'll have to move a little bit quickly.

Paul44:28
Sure.

Kirsten Scott44:29
But Mark, you've got a great question, and maybe if you just want to give a quick overview of your business.

Audience member44:35
Yeah, hi Ari, thanks so much for sharing your framework. As someone who's come from a sales background, I think this is really really mind-blowing to flip it on its head and really just basically building trust first. Um, so my business, I'm a mortgage broker, so building trust is critical straight from the start. And my question was, would this work equally as well for social media posts and content where rather than talking about the services and what you do, you're more just basically drilling down into pain points of what, uh, clients would be facing because you're not talking one-on-one, but you're basically talking to the masses.

Ari Galper45:13
This is what I'll be talking about on my next presentation. Hopefully you'll sign up for that one, okay? So, yeah, the concept behind what you're getting to right now is the idea of— this is the shift— marketing the problems that you solve, not marketing your business or your solution, okay? So you're on the right track with that. All your social media content should always be problem-centric. Stories around the problems, around the issues, the complexity of the issues. 'Cause by default, they'll know you solve it 'cause you wrote it. You don't have to pitch yourself and say, oh, here's our logo, here's what we do, here's our services. Oh, my team's so wonderful. They don't really care about that. Nothing personal. What they care the most about is your ability to understand their issues and their world. When they see that, they can say to themselves, wow, She gets me. That guy exactly knows what's going on with me right now. And that's the chemistry you need to create what I call inbound demand, which I'll be talking about on our next presentation.

Audience member46:13
That's awesome. I'm just wondering, with your roadmap that you had on the big poster, that's a brilliant idea. Do you talk about that in your books, or is there something that you'll share with us next time in terms of what your process looks like?

Ari Galper46:25
I can talk about that, sure, no problem. We'll cover that. But my books will be in there. When you order my books, they'll talk about that in there as well, especially Trust in a Split Second, my latest one.

Audience member46:35
Great, thanks so much, Ari.

Ari Galper46:36
Sure.

Kirsten Scott46:38
Awesome, thank you, Mark.

Krish46:40
Sunny.

Audience member46:42
Thank you, Ari, great presentation, and I love the fact that you're stressing on trust. I run a property business, so it's very crowded, and we generally don't have a control on who comes and really talk to us. So, and that's generally the method used by most of us anyways. So, but I like the fact that you are moving, you're stressing on moving from the whole funnel to the cylinder. So for cylinder, you need to obviously have very clear, crisp leads. How do you ensure Is there a pre-step that you recommend before that sort of point happens or?

Ari Galper47:26
Very smart question. My whole talk about is next time is all about this, but I will tell you right now. Yes, you have to create what I call a trust asset. Something in advance of the first meeting that pre-sells you without you verbally selling yourself. And I'll be talking about that in the next session that will break down a what I call inbound demand model where you move people from step 1 to step 2 by the mere fact you are the trusted authority in your market because of the asset that you have. And I'll break that down in the next session 'cause it's more of a system that I'll break down for you, but you're right 'cause today was about conversion. The next talk's about lead generation. If you get those 2 right, it's game over. Nothing else you need to do in your whole business. Just get those 2 pieces together into a system you can scale. If you have holes in those processes somewhere, poor quality leads, chasing people, long sales cycles, you're going to struggle and struggle against the wave of commoditization.

Paul48:26
Sure.

Audience member48:26
Thank you, Ari. And is it covered in your books?

Ari Galper48:29
Yes, there's a book in there. I'll drop my— it's called Trust Authority. I'll drop one in there for you as well. Just order it and I'll drop one in for you, no problem.

Paul48:37
Thank you. Sure.

Boa host48:40
Awesome.

Kirsten Scott48:41
Thank you. And sorry if I don't pronounce this right. Is it Maika?

Boa host48:46
Maika.

Kirsten Scott48:47
Maika. Sorry.

Boa host48:48
All good. Thank you. Hi. So I've got an e-commerce, mainly e-commerce business, Mama's Beans Coffee. So it's coffee, but also coffee skincare, which are sort of lower value but repeat purchases. Yeah. And so my question was, you know, e-commerce Obviously you don't really have that personal trust building with individual customers, but how can you still build that trust over time to encourage people to just keep coming back to buy more? And maybe as well try, you know, skincare, Coffee Skincare, very different from coffee, but potentially get, you know, customers as well to buy your other products.

Ari Galper49:24
Well, are they not buying them now? What's the problem you have right now that you're seeing that's holding your business back? What's the constraint there?

Boa host49:31
The constraint is, well, it's very hard. People come mainly to our business for coffee, and you know, if I'm looking, I mean, it's a low acidity, lower caffeine coffee, so they might have health issues, etc. And so some might buy the skincare just to get like free shipping or as an add-on, but you know, if I'm looking for coffee, I'm not necessarily looking for skincare.

Ari Galper49:55
I see.

Boa host49:57
In the ranking, you know, Google ranking, et cetera, we come up for coffee, not so much for skincare.

Kevin Chu50:01
I see.

Boa host50:01
But really building that trust that people just say, okay, well, I like what they do, the natural aspect, the coffee, and so I just want to buy.

Ari Galper50:08
I see.

Boa host50:08
Continue to come back and not buy my next coffee from there and the next skincare from there. But I build the trust because I believe in that brand and I want to continue to buy more from them.

Ari Galper50:17
Got it. So you're looking for a bridge from the first purchase to the second purchase in a different category, but your same brand, is that right?

Boa host50:25
Yeah, okay, so that people like, people just choose— understand, they're not as loyal, brand loyal.

Ari Galper50:31
I get it, I get it. So here's what you do. When you ship out the coffee product, you create a newsletter, a physical newsletter that you drop inside that box. I'm talking like 3 or 4 pages that talks about the connection between coffee and skincare. And in that newsletter is where you have a coupon in there to get their first one to try it. Do you need some way for them to consume the con— See, you are trying to shift their mindset, change their thinking around skincare and coffee. That's an odd combination at first, but you probably have a rationale for that. Of course you do. But you can't do that on the webpage. Like there's not enough time to consume the concepts. You need some physical device that's inserted in your package that they can consume and read and go, that makes sense. And oh, look at this, there's a coupon followed at the bottom of this thing. The first one's for free, why not? That's how you make that upsell happen without you having to send more emails out, which get lost in spam filters anyway.

Boa host51:32
Yeah, 'cause I do have that in the email flow, but I feel like it's—

Ari Galper51:35
Emails, do you know where most emails go?

Boa host51:39
Spam.

Ari Galper51:41
You can't win the battle in the inbox anymore, I'm sorry guys, gals. You know where you're gonna win it? It sounds kind of weird. In the mailbox. And I'll be talking about that in our next session.

Boa host51:53
Right, thank you.

Ari Galper51:54
Especially in your business, because you ship them something physical. It's perfect for this.

Kirsten Scott51:59
Okay, cool.

Boa host52:00
I'll try that.

Ari Galper52:01
All right, sounds good.

Boa host52:05
Awesome.

Kirsten Scott52:05
Well, that was amazing. Um, if you want to get even more value, definitely make sure you are here for next week's session where we'll dive a little bit deeper. Before I do, I do want to get a little photo with everyone waving just so we can show how much our community is growing. So if you're ready and if you're comfortable to pop your cameras on. Ready, guys? Thank you.

Boa host52:27
Awesome.

Kirsten Scott52:27
I'll see you all next week. See you later.

Ari Galper52:30
Thanks, everybody. Appreciate it. Thanks for being open-minded.