Am I missing sales by waiting 3 weeks
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Scott Greening: I'm afraid I'm losing people. What are other ways I can sell or do I need to shuffle something else in my calendar?
Brooke Greening: About 5% of the population trust you at this point in regards to sales professionals. About 3% trust us.
It feels like it's salesy or pushy and they don't wanna be doing that, or that's just not something that they really enjoy and they've never had. Practice and skill in regards to how to have sales conversations.
Scott Greening: The reality is that if we are under prioritizing sales yeah.
That, that's not a sustainable. Not a sustainable way to, to run a business and certainly not to keep growing a business.
Brooke Greening: If you keep pushing off sales conversations, you don't have a very strong pipeline.
somebody has to be working on your sales at all times. Otherwise it just starts to fall apart.
If someone is looking to talk to you. We wanna be able to figure that out in a timely manner, not three weeks later.
I just wanna say, I completely understand when you are having a service-based business and you have clients, which is amazing, and you're working with them and you also have to work on your business, it's not an easy thing.
You have to carve out time to work on your sales. It doesn't have to be you. You can get somebody else to come in, but somebody in the business has to be focused on sales.
Scott Greening: Welcome to Sipping Matcha and helping you make more sales. I am your host, Scott Greening, and also resident matcha maker, joined by sales expert and matcha drinker, my wife Brooke Greening.
Brooke Greening: I am so blessed. Yes, I've got my matcha. I'm ready to go.
Scott Greening: Excellent. So here is today's question. truly from anonymous.
I am a marketing service provider and I have busy seasons where I can't book a sales call out for three weeks out. I'm afraid I'm losing people. What are other ways I can sell or do I need to shuffle something else in my calendar? So anonymous is wondering what to do. What advice do you have?
Brooke Greening: Yeah, so I have so many questions.
My first question, I'm gonna ask a couple of my questions and then I'm gonna just go into how I would answer it. But my first question is in regards to what is it that you're actually selling? 'cause that makes a big deal in regards to when you need to be having these sales conversations and also other things that you can do to sell if you're truly booked three weeks out.
My next question is. On top of that. So one, what are you selling? But then I also want to know, is it really that busy that you do not have any time to be able to have sales calls? 'cause my question is, What is going on in those three weeks? Do you have that much business that it's happening or is there a lot of other things that are vying for your attention?
Those would be my first two questions that I would have, but if I, but to answer it quickly, I would say anytime you push a customer out three weeks, that is probably not a great strategy. Because people are coming to us when they're ready to talk. And especially because you say you're a marketing service provider.
This is just a fun fact. About 5% of the population trust you at this point in regards to sales professionals. About 3% trust us. And so it is a big deal for them to even say, Hey, I want to have a conversation with you. I want to talk with you. And so if we are pushing that out three weeks, you. Your fear is correct in regards that you're going to be losing some of those conversations.
My other concern for you is if you have so much business that's going on right now, but we're not doing anything to continue to. Have sales in the coming months. That's when we get on this like sales rollercoaster. And so we have a great month and then we don't have a great month and we have a great month and we don't have a great month.
And so you want to be able to have consistent sales conversations so that they may not be buying this month, but if they're getting ready to buy in the next couple of months, you've already started that relationship with them to be able to keep nurturing it through to the buying process.
Scott Greening: Yeah, we can keep talking about it.
I know, I think I may adopt this strategy and if you ask me a question, I'm gonna say I, I'm gonna get back to you in three weeks, so I don't think that'd probably go real well for me. Right. You wouldn't be super excited if I told you, like, that's a great question, Brooke. I really wanna to engage with you.
How about we talk about that in three weeks?
Brooke Greening: No, and that is true, and it's not, I'm not saying this in a judgy way 'cause I really appreciate you asking this question and the fact that someone is asking this question means that there are other people that are kind of struggling with this as well.
I say when a call is coming in and they're wanting to have a conversation that they need to respond within two hours of when they're talking to them. Definitely not three weeks, but you may not be able to have that sales call within two hours. You can do loom videos, you can send them a quick email. You can do things to start nurturing that relationship saying, Hey, I value you and I know you have questions and I wanna be able to talk with you in a timely manner.
So they also asked in regards to what could they do instead? So these are different things that you could do. One, you can truly look at your schedule and say, okay. What is vying for my attention that someone else could be doing? That's one thing to think about. So when you're looking at your day, you can say, okay, is it better for me to be doing this or are there things that only I can do that I need to do and I need to delegate it to somebody else?
If you're a one man show or a one woman show, that gets a little bit harder. And so then that's when you need to like truly block out times. So you could do tuesdays and Thursdays from two to four, those are your times to be able to talk to people. And as you share that with them, that is creating that urgency for them to be able to talk with you because you're not, it's not well, I can talk anytime, anywhere, but you're just saying, Hey, if you really wanna have a conversation with me, you can do, we can look at Tuesday or we can look at Thursday.
So those are things that you can do. In regards to rearranging your schedule. The other thing is if you have a bigger team and you're saying, I can't do this, or sometimes the reason people push out sales calls is 'cause they don't want to do it. They either don't feel entirely comfortable in regards to how that conversation's going to go.
It feels like it's salesy or pushy and they don't wanna be doing that, or that's just not something that they really enjoy and they've never had. Practice and skill in regards to how to have sales conversations. And so those are reasons why they can push things out as well. So if you don't wanna do that, there's two options.
One, you can hire someone to do that. You can work with an appointment setter or someone along that line and say, Hey, I want you to be able to have these conversations that first round. And then they're setting them up for you and you know that it's going to be a legitimate conversation that you're going to have.
Scott Greening: Yeah, I would just, I know it might be helpful for people to hear a little bit about it, like in other contexts the priority that you've placed on sales. And so I know you were in a circumstance where you had something called like all hands on deck and mm-hmm. Real. The reality is that if we are under prioritizing salesThat, that's not a sustainable. Not a sustainable way to, to run a business and certainly not to keep growing a business.
Brooke Greening: No. If I can encourage you there, this is what I use with my clients. It's this simple PDF, and it's just called like our customer bucket list, and it says, one to 30, buying timeframe, 30 to 60, buying timeframe, 60 to 90 day.
Buying timeframe. So people who are gonna buy in the first 30 days, people who are gonna buy in 30 to 60 days, people who are gonna buy in 60 to 90 days. If you keep pushing off sales conversations, you don't have a very strong pipeline. Because one, we're not saying everybody's gonna be buying from you when you're talking to them, but they may buy in the next quarter or whatever the case is, and you need to know where they're at so you can continue to keep working with them.
When we push things out, because everything is so busy right now, it just creates this feast and famine of this has been fantastic. I've had so many sales this month, it's going great. But if we're, if. It doesn't have to be you, but if no one in your business is actually working towards setting up sales conversations with you on a regular basis, that's when it starts fluctuating.
And it's not a fun time to be in. And so that's why you wanna continue to keep it be consistent. It may not have to be you. You can try to bring somebody else in to do that, but somebody has to be working on your sales at all times. Otherwise it just starts to fall apart.
Scott Greening: You haven't nurtured those relationship. You haven't done that. So if you're not able to connect with people for three weeks, then. You either have to have just a massive amount of leads that are just saying, Hey, we're ready to give you money. We're ready whenever you're available.
Brooke Greening: And that's amazing if that's what you're doing.
That's incredible.
Scott Greening: Yeah. Let's talk, let's, you can come on and do an episode of lead Generation on, we can sip some macha together, but for most people you're not gonna be able to just flick a switch and have a bunch of people that are ready to buy. Like at that moment that you're, okay, I got my work done.
Now I can do sales again. So you Yeah, you have to build it in all the time.
Brooke Greening: I did fractional work one time with a gentleman, and that was his mentality. He was like, hold off, hold off, hold off. I don't wanna do a whole lot of marketing and sales until I'm ready to go, because we don't necessarily have the system to support it.
But it does not usually work that way. You need to continue to keep building those relationships. It needs to be on a consistent basis. Especially when we're in the service industry. That's just the way that it is. And you said that the person that asked the question said that they were in marketing services.
Is that right? Is that marketing agency? Yeah, they
Scott Greening: said that marketing marketing service provider. So I it's not, yeah, crystal clear. Let's pull up the question here again. I'm a marketing service provider, so I don't know if they're a solo entrepreneur or if they're an agency. Yeah. But that's what it's, but no
Brooke Greening: matter what, you probably have higher ticket items, so you have to have conversations with people.
And if we push it out for three weeks, in reality, the person that you've pushed out to three weeks, honestly, if they are truly looking for something, they have probably already found it within those three weeks. 'cause they're gonna talk to somebody else and they're gonna be able to start creating that urgency and helping them and working through it.
And then by the time you get there three weeks later, it's not, I'm not saying this to put fear inside of you. I'm not saying this to manipulate you. I am just saying this is the reality. If someone is looking to talk to you. We wanna be able to figure that out in a timely manner, not three weeks later.
Scott Greening: Right. So if I heard you correctly, to wrap things up and put a bow on the answer for anonymous here your answer to, should I wait three weeks? Probably not. No don't wait three, no, don't wait. Three weeks. And then what you can do instead is to either. Get somebody to help you start qualifying, having appointment setting type of questions to begin the sales process because maybe it's a longer sales cycle and it does require a little bit of time.
Mm-hmm. But then two, also like you probably should carve out. Two hours, four hours, like yes. Twice a week to, to have a block of time where you can point people towards. Mm-hmm. And those slots. And the advantage of having a smaller set of time besides protecting the time to do the work is that it does create an urgency.
'cause like, hey, this is when I can take sales calls. Yeah. And people will do that if you wanna. I think you threw it in there at some point, but just how do you tell, how do you suggest to someone like, Hey, these are the times that I have.
Brooke Greening: No, I just tell 'em I, so you can either have it in regards to your calendar link.
So when people say, here's just a quick tip, I don't just send my calendar link. So we're not just you get a calendar link and you get a calendar, like that's annoying. But if someone is truly saying, Hey, I wanna talk with you, I ask them and I say, Hey, the best way is probably for you to be able to pick a time.
So we're not going. Back and forth. Would you like me to send it to you? And I have 'em blocked out. I have specific times blocked out for each of the things that I talk about in regards with our sales lab or fractional sales. There are specific calendars connected to each of those conversations. And so you can do that easily, have that set up.
Then just tell them, Hey, these are the times that I have reserved to be able to talk to people who are interested in working with me. Which day works best for you? And to go from there. And I just wanna say, I completely understand when you are having a service-based business and you have clients, which is amazing, and you're working with them and you also have to work on your business, it's not an easy thing.
So it was a great question to have, and there is this huge. Tug and pull. And a lot of times we push off building our business because we have clients who are saying, okay, I need these things and they have deadlines, but we don't give ourselves deadlines in regards to how we want to continue to grow our business and grow our sales.
So that's what you wanna do. You give them their, you give them their deliverables, you're focused on them. You have to do the same for yourself. You have to carve out time to work on your sales. It doesn't have to be you. You can get somebody else to come in, but somebody in the business has to be focused on sales.
Scott Greening: Great. Awesome. This has been super helpful. Thank you, anonymous, wherever you are. Yes. For your great question. We appreciate it. If this has been helpful, if you could give us a share, give us a, like, follow us, whatever is appropriate. We'd love for your help in getting the word out and you can always connect with us and share your anonymous question.
We'll put the link in the description and on the comments below. Thanks so much. We'll talk to you next time. Bye.
