over the years I've delivered thousands of sales meetings and I've also trained hundreds of sales people and we've delivered tens of thousands of sales meetings as a team and I want to talk you through today what do we do in a sales meeting to get really high conversions I'm going to talk you through our framework step by step you know we don't believe that sales is about having a friendly chitchat we believe it's about going through a set of scientific steps to get to the outcome as fast as we can respecting everybody's time including our own so I know sales is one of those hot topics people feel a bit scared with it they feel a bit nervous if I ask people for a word association to sales a lot of people say sleazy or pushy or negative or high pressure I want you to completely eradicate that all of that goes back to the 1970s used car salesman hasn't been true for 50 years fast forward to today sales is about professionalism and high in luxury if we look at the businesses and the brands that spend the most time energy effort money on perfecting their sales conversations it's luxury Brands like lvmh and professional Brands like uh like the consulting firms or the big software companies and the old outdated ideas of pushy sales people that doesn't work it's not an effective strategy even if you were comfortable being pushy with people it wouldn't help you in any particular way sales is about professionalism and delivering a high-end experience so let's go through step by step what do we cover in a sales meeting to make sure that we get the result as quick as possible making sure that we respect our time and respect the person we're talking to his time and that we get the most done the first step is about framing so framing is about all the stuff that happens around the sale it's in the leadup to the sale it's the way that you present it's the way that you present yourself uh if you're on Zoom it's your background if you're in a live environment it's the room that you're in all of those things are part of the framing think about a beautiful Priceless uh painting when it's hanging in the National Portrait Gallery we know that it's expensive we know that it's a a magnificent Masterpiece if it was just hanging up in a local cafe we probably wouldn't recognize it for the full value that it is and that's because of the framing the frame literally the frame sets the scene that something great is about to happen some people mess up their entire sales process with poor framing I've actually sat in and looked at a lot of people's sales processes and I think hm this doesn't look high-end it doesn't look luxury it doesn't look professional something is giving away that it's not quite right and when we fix that we immediately get a better result so look at your sales meeting through fresh eyes imagine you zoom out and kind of look down and sort of have a look at the whole situation does it look like a professional high-end experience or is a little bit shabby and needs a little bit of an improvement okay so the next thing is about Rapport building we need to get on the same page Rapport means that we're in connection we're in Rhythm we've got chemistry together so we might break the ice with a little bit of chitchat a little bit of get to know you we might talk about how we know each other we might talk about um some of the things that we've got in common so that's a little bit of Rapport building typically this doesn't need to be more than say 3 or 4 minutes long it's just a little bit of ice breaking to make sure that we're in Rapport how do you know that you're in rapport typically you can feel a sense of chemistry the conversation starts to flow so once you're in Rapport you can move to the next step so the next step I like to ask permission and the permission that I like to ask is I like to say we can have a general chat today or I can take you through a little bit of a process that should speed things along and we can find out whether we can help each other or not or we can help you or not and would you like to just have a general chat or would you like me to kind of ask some key questions to be able to speed things up um I love to just ask permission and put it on the table that most people say they would love to go through a bit of a process so here's the process process is step one we need to find out what their present situation is then step two we need to find out what their future desired outcome looks like and then the third thing is we need to know what have they tried that hasn't worked what are the obstacles in the way what are the criteria that they've got um or what are the barriers to getting results so let's use an example of a fitness trainer trying to sign up a new client they need to know what's the current situation what's their current level of Fitness what's the design situation where do they want to get to and what have they tried what hasn't worked what are their barriers what are their criteria what are the some of the things that have to happen in order to get that result as far as they're concerned so that's kind of discovering the lay of the land that's figuring out what's their world look like in their head so that's what we want to do we want to piece together that understanding of what's going on in the customer's mind first once we do this we ask permission to change gears again this is where I would say I've got a good sense of your situation I understand where you are I understand what you want I understand what you've tried that hasn't worked understanding criteria and I'd say here's what I'd like to do I'd like to share with you some key insights that I have about your situation I'd like to share with you some big picture insights that I think apply to you now this is where I want to have some key insights and I want to share some expertise I want to tell people uh when I'm talking to them this is what I've noticed about your situation so these are Big Picture principles this is not trying to sell a product or a service just yet this is just summing up their situation giving people a higher level view of their situation than they came in with so this is a step that demonstrates Authority expertise it demonstrates you know what you're talking about and that you really understand their situation in some cases better than they do so let me give you an example let's say you went to a fitness trainer and they understood your whole situation imagine if they said to you can I share with you some insights about why you haven't been losing weight or can I share with you some insights about your body type and what that means for your training routine right you'd be amazed you'd be blown away and you go wow you're sharing with me something of value straight away so those insights are an important part of the process that most people leave out now the next thing is that once we've got those insights we move to the next step which is to share a methodology a methodology is a step-by-step approach from going from where you are to where you want to be and this is where you break it down into steps for people you say based on what you've told me this is what I think we need to do Step One is this step two is this step three is this step four is this these are the key things that would make the biggest difference to you these are the steps for you getting what it is that you want and you outline those steps in the language of the customer so they understand what's going to happen they understand the order of things they understand that you've put a bit of thought into the process that would get them what they want and then finally we packaged that up into a solution so we actually tell the customer that the way to access all of that methodology that steps those insights is through this particular product or service and you might say that there are different versions of that product or service there's a gold silver and bronze version or there's a particular price point that you recommend um or there's a recommendation of products and services all packaged up for them so this is where you tell them what they should buy in order to get what it is that they want at this point the customer is going to want to stop and pause and reflect and this is where you move into the next step which is to discuss so the way that I normally do this is I would say is it okay to present you with a solution that I think uh would be suitable and I present the solution I say how does that land for you or does that fit what you had in mind and people then open up for discussion sometimes I invite uh negative feedback I might say that's the big picture of the solution is there anything about that you don't like right cuz I want to invite a discussion what I'm looking for is not to force something onto someone I'm inviting a discussion about whether that fits I don't want to sell anything to anyone if it's not a perfect fit for what they're trying to achieve so I want to open up that discussion I've clearly articulated what I think is the recommended solution and now I want them to sort of explore whether it fits what they've got in mind what most customers tend to do is they typically list the things that they like about the solution and they might list two or three things that aren't perfect maybe they say Oh I thought it was going to be a little bit cheaper or I thought we could have done that faster uh or I thought that it would involve more or involve less uh or I wish that it came in blue or I wish that we could do it in purple right whatever it is that they say you can discuss that as a professional you can say oh we do have it in Blue uh you could say actually we could tailor this to meet your needs we could uh adjust this we could remove this and it would fit within your budget so this is where you have a discussion about making sure that it fits with their expectations finally people get to the point where they say you know what I think that's right and you say would you like to go ahead or another great closing question is when would you like to get started and what you do is you put the ball into the customers court so they can say yes I do want to go ahead or I'd like to get started ASAP and then you can say great let's get all of this organized for you and then you can do whatever it is you need to do to Uno that customer now one of the things that I like to do is make sure that there's a lot of momentum around Ford motion into a smooth onboarding I don't want to kind of like fill in the price and the credit card or whatever it is the payment related stuff and then freeze I want to say great let's fill in the payment related stuff and then we'll actually get all the information that we need for the next steps which is the onboarding so we can get started straight away I know that you as a business owner a big emotional moment for you might be collecting that payment but for the customer the emotional uplift is in getting started so we want to make sure that the focus is on getting started and that the formality of getting things paid for is just the formality so that we can get started at the end we complete the sale and we make sure that we end on an emotional uplift and we want to finish on a positive and we want to get uh a customer started or if someone says that it's not the right time or it's not the right budget we still want to finish on a positive experience we want to conduct ourselves in such a way that if the whole thing had been filmed and put onto YouTube that we would have no problems with people watching it that that we we conducted ourselves respectfully and we were thoughtful and considerate and that we were professional and that we delivered a high-end experience for every single person that we connected with and whether they go ahead or not we're always looking after people and we're always finishing on a high point um so it's important to make sure that you end all your sales meetings regardless of outcome on a positive and prioritize the relationship over the transaction regardless of what happens so I hope you like that it's a quick flyth through we normally do that sales training in about 6 hours but I wanted to give you a little bit of a snapshot as to what we're thinking about when we do sales training I think it's really important for every entrepreneur or early stage founding team to do sales training because it's so aligned to creating great products that people love and it's so aligned to what you have to do as an entrepreneur which is to sell your business or sell your stuff to sell your products and services it's a core component of being a successful entrepreneur if you've not done sales training in a while I hope this is a good little starting point for you to just kind of reconnect with that importance of a great sales process so I hope you've enjoyed that video normally we would do that sales training in about 6 hours uh but I hope that's given you a good flyth through of what a successful professional sales approach entails here's what I'd like you to do leave me a comment below what is your view of sales how do you feel about sales has this video changed your view of sales what are you going to work on to improve your sales process leave it all in the comments below I I read every single comment so I'd love to see your comment as well give it a like give it a subscribe and I look forward to sharing even more with you on your entrepreneurial journey ahead