Continued Learning: Core Story Case Study: How Troy Aberle Sold $8.4M in Two Weeks Using This Exact Education-based Sales Pitch

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TRANSCRIPT:

*this transcript was mostly generated by AI, please excuse any mistakes

Here is your dose of the Ultimate Sales machine coming to you from the new edition. Visit ultimate sales machine.com to get your copy or multiple copies. Hi, I’m your host, Amanda Holmes, CEO of Chet Homes International. What you’re about to learn has assisted a quarter of a million businesses to generate billions

of dollars working faster, better, smarter.

Amanda: Welcome to your weekly dose of the Ultimate Sales Machine on the C E O Mastery Show. I have

with me are intern Luke Aberle and his father Troy Aberle, who we’re going to share a story that some of you have heard, but there’s some really critical pieces that you haven’t, that would really make the difference between.

We’re in such an unstable market and we’re heading into even more of that, and I wanna. The struggles and the difficulties behind overcoming it when it seems like it’s not even possible. So I have Troy, who was, who came in as a client. He implemented what he [00:01:00] learned from the bootcamps and then had such great success.

We decided, oh, it’d be so good if you came and worked for CHI. So now he’s the executive strategy officer, but 

we’re taking it back to this story. 

We talked about how Troy, you generated 8.4 million in six weeks and everybody’s like, wow, that’s pretty, pretty awesome. But the update now is how much did you generate over the that?

Seven months after that, 

Troy Luke’s Dad: what? 42 million Amanda? Woo. 

Amanda: And how much did you spend on marketing to make that happen? 

Troy Luke’s Dad: Well, about a dollar 25 plus maybe a little bit of training, but , cause I really just had to make a brochure that, that, uh, organized the, the, the information on it. Right. So, and there it is. 

Amanda: I still have to frame it in my office.

So I, I wanna talk about, because, um, 

so much of the time we get an idea and we think, okay, this is gonna be a great idea. This is gonna [00:02:00] revolutionize my business. And then we get one hiccup and then we stop the idea because somebody put it down or, or, uh, there was difficulties. 

So what market difficulties were happening for this particular John Deere dealership that you were working?

Troy Luke’s Dad: Well, there’s two parts, Amanda, that wa that was faced that was creating the struggle. One is, is on the customer part. If, if you’re okay with that. I’ll start off with the customer. Yeah. The customer, you know, was a, where, you know, for the most part corporate, uh, type farms where they, you know, have multiple, uh, pieces of equipment they have, um, , you know, multiple, uh, people who work for them.

Um, you know, these are large enterprises and, you know, 10,000 plus acres for, for the most part. Mm-hmm. . Um, and so the parts of the, but unanimously in that region, people were worried about or drought, um, hadn’t been raining for several years. Cash flow was definitely under, under a lot of pressure. Um, commodity prices, you know, up and down, but.

[00:03:00] they weren’t able to actually ship a lot of commodities. There was problems with railways and shipping companies. 

Amanda: Supply chain was really affecting your prospects. 

Troy Luke’s Dad: Yes, they might have bins full of grain and can’t get them from farm to to port and you know, oh my God, they’re offered a big number but can’t get it there.

And then when they can get it there, the number comes down and, you know, it does add a lot of stress. I, you know, a lot of widespread, uh, uh, hail and different things from other weather events. Um, disease. Pest problems with, uh, rodents or, or, or grasshoppers and all kinds of things. You know, like, so these, these people are under a lot of stress.

They’ve, they’ve went out and planted a, a great crop. Mm. And they’re typically wanting to, you know, keep their equipment up to date. And they’re seeing the prices go through the roof, through inflation and, and all of these things. But so they’re trying to get in back in the game before the inflation gets it to a point where it’s un unreasonable or, you know, out of sorts of what they [00:04:00] were used to buying.

And so, you know, they see now is just multiple things coming up. 

Amanda: Ugh. And then I know, uh, Luke, you had mentioned, which I thought was really interesting about all the competition. Can you share about. 

Luke: Yeah, so, uh, we were talking about, so his two, he managed two of the four stores that were in southern Alberta here.

And, uh, in two of those stores, actually, after he went through the bootcamp and actually implemented his, with his brochures of the top five reasons why your farm could lose revenue, actually generated more revenue than eight stores of their competition, which I thought was. That’s pretty cool. And one thing more to add too, again, with inflation, all that, but the last year actually had hail damage, which was really catastrophic for lots of crops.

Yeah. 

Amanda: I love how you both had said, and you had said this to me earlier, Luke, about how in just a short area, wasn’t it like 50 kilometers or something, there were four different stores all in this one area. So you’re, it’s not just that you’re competing with [00:05:00] your competition, you’re competing within your own company.

Troy Luke’s Dad: Yes. Yeah, like the competition’s quite fierce and there’s people that are, you know, that are all trying to get the same customer’s attention. Um, in any of those locations. It’s, it’s quite, quite prevalent. And you also have to remember too is, is is not only just in that area, but now with the access to the internet, I mean, you can buy equipment from anywhere around the.

Amanda: Similar to cars, right?

Where it is, just the pricing is there, there’s no real change for it. Wow. Okay. So that sounds a little bit difficult. Uh, so what was the start to trying to implement this process? You, you went to the bootcamp. Can you talk a bit about that shift that you realized with the inverted buyer’s pyramid?

Troy Luke’s Dad: The one thing, as I realized what you were teaching in the bootcamp, was, we needed to be able to build more rapport. So if you take a look at chat holmes’s, uh, you know, uh, sales [00:06:00] process and just number one is rapport.

Mm-hmm. , right? And looking at creating desire and, and building value and, and handling objections, all those pieces. . Well, the salespeople are just simply going right after the, the, the, uh, the close. Like they’re pitching and closing. Mm-hmm. . So they’re not an establishing rapport. They’re not, you know, figuring out what the customer’s needs truly are.

Creating that desire, you know, um, and building value and overcoming objections. Um, I might be a little bit, you know, two of those things out of, uh, sync. , but it, but the thing was, is I realized the salespeople were simply full of commission breath, and it, it just smelled. And so what happens is, Is the customer, he’s calab, he or she is calibrated, and they know that they’re just being sold and pitched to hopefully, that they’re in the market, that they’re one of those 3%.

Mm-hmm. . So if you take a look at the buyer’s pyramid that you had presented to myself and, and our class, you were talking about the 3% and all the things that I was used [00:07:00] to with your father and mm-hmm. . And when you take that 3%, the problem is, is to get three customers, I gotta talk to a hundred. Well, now there’s a real problem and I, I just was kind of panicked.

If you remember my face. It was kinda Yes. Just to talk to a hundred people to get my three . That’s right. So if you flipped of the, the pyramid like you did, And I spend more time building rapport, which flipped that pyramid as Chet did as well, is spend more time building rapport and finding need and actually coming up with business solutions that make financial sense, right?

There you go. Yeah. 

Amanda: This right. So the average salesperson spends the least amount of time establishing a rapport in the most amount of time, trying to close the sale on follow up. What superstars do is they spend 65% of their time. Building, establishing rapport and finding the needs so that closing the sale and following up takes the least amount of time.

Troy Luke’s Dad: Yeah, exactly. And so if you, if you position that with, now all of a sudden [00:08:00] you, you reset the buying criteria because you’re talking a lot more about their pain and their pleasure. And when you flip that upside down and I realized, you know what, we’re only ever talking about the equipment. We’re not talking about the pain parts.

To get them to really sit down and talk sensible, um, business, uh, . 

So then I worked with, with one of, with, uh, one of the salespeople and I said, Hey, do you have a customer, um, who’s had actually a lot of. Um, re resentment or, you know, I had turned down your offer and he said, yeah, I have one client in particular.

They, they should be buying. They, they’re actually upset that they can’t and they’re upset. And he, and I said, well, that’s a problem. So, um, his name is, is Jake. And I said, well, Jake, You know, we have a problem here. You know, first of all, do you even know what you’re selling? Because Jake’s a brand new salesperson.

Mm-hmm. has no clue what he’s selling. He’s great at building rapport, but he doesn’t understand the [00:09:00] business and he doesn’t understand how to build that connection, right? And so what’s really happening is, 

Amanda: wait, Luke, Luke has said something about, what did Jake do before this?

Troy Luke’s Dad: Oh, he is painting firetruck. Yeah, firetrucks that Alto 

Luke: was and working in, uh, the 

Troy Luke’s Dad: oil and gas industry. Yeah. I had no clue what he was really selling. Great guy. That’s why, why we hired him, but you know, so like, yeah, no clue. So he’d get up in the cab of this thing and like literally shaking knees, right.

He didn’t know how to drive it. Not the, so the customers looking at ’em saying, you know, Hey, like, what’s your deal man? Right. . So, you know, you tried to sell me something you have no clue about, but when, so then when we took that remade the buyer’s guide, uh, brochure. Like what you showed up Yeah. You know, restarted to then be able to show people.

Here are the top five reasons why your farm could fail. And we got that information by studying the customer, going out to the customer, going out to influencers, [00:10:00] accountants, lawyers, anybody involved in agriculture to find out what the real things that were bothering people. And we found really important information.

I think 

Amanda: This wasn’t a new job per you, you had been, you were very clear on this, uh, on this prospect. Been selling tractors for many years with this company. 

So the fact that you didn’t know what was keeping them up at night, what were their target pains? What was the global pains?

That there had a drought, that there was hail, that there were supply chain issues, that their stuff was sitting in crates. You didn’t know any of that even though you’d been selling for years. 

Troy Luke’s Dad: Well, that’s the thing cuz it’s easy for a salesperson to just. . Mm. And you assume that you, even if you say the right things, that you’re gonna be able to convince ’em to buy.

The truth was though, I was watching sales go down for everybody, you know, salespeople were, were not selling, um, in particular on combine harvesting [00:11:00] equipment, um, for, uh, small greens. There’s an overabundance, there’s no supply chain issues. Mm-hmm. Um, on those parts, but, but there’s supply chain on maintaining them, which are the ones that people currently own.

They couldn’t get parts to refurbish them or fix ’em when they broke. Ah. So, you know, you’re not, you, you know, you’re trying to figure all this, this piece out, and you’re trying to assume that, you know, the world’s gonna just get better. But the truth was, There was a lot of challenges that the salesperson only assumed.

So when you actually went out and studied them, you know, and you and I did a lot of studying. Yep. 

Luke: Only people around asking, you know, what are the biggest issues that they’re coming up with? All the way down to the lawyers and stuff.

 That they knew the farmer was dealing with. And so I think that’s just a key point there is actually researching that market. 

Amanda: Yeah. And you were the one online too, doing research on the dealers as well, right? 

Luke: Yeah. You know, knowing, you know what, uh, I even asked a few people from a certain dealership, you know, what was, what is [00:12:00] the biggest issues that you’re having there?

And some people said Time management, actually for the sales people. Yeah. Right. Just because they were spending, they figured out that they were spending time on things that weren’t actually doing much for. 

Amanda: Brilliant. Brilliant.

Okay, so, um, it was difficult for the farmers. It was difficult for you because commissions were coming down and you couldn’t sell because of the farmer’s difficulties.

Uh, you honed in on, uh, really understanding them so you could speak to them and meet them where they were at, and then what was that bridging of that gap to get them to actually say, okay, here’s. Uh, and tell the story of the one that, you know, sold in 30 minutes or something was, 

Troy Luke’s Dad: I wanna hear that one.

Yeah. You know, so it’s interesting. The one customer, the first one wasn’t perfectly easy, so I knew that if I built, I took all of the information, put it together, and I identified the five things that were gonna be. The biggest problems, number one was dealership support so that you had parts, um, were a big piece of [00:13:00] it.

Number two was, do I have the utmost up-to-date technology that can be efficient to getting the crop off with the best quality? Number three was actually getting training on how to use that technology. Number four was cost of ownership. How do people afford these great, big, expensive, you know, eight, $900,000 toys and, and being able to do that, right?

And in the, in the case of this particular four, first four average price would’ve probably been around 400,450 per unit. Okay. Okay. And so then what, what, what happened? . Um, and then number five was what is the value to having warranty and, and, uh, and some insurance behind this, this purchase. So renew, if we went back now and retold the customer exactly what we found out.

we’re gonna be able to be able to create a lot better rapport, be able to add some value so that they understood what was going on in the economy, and then be able to create that desire to wanna learn more. So [00:14:00] I, I phoned up the first customer of the four, cuz the, there was four salespeople who gave me four leads.

Okay. Um, Jake on the first one, his was so, like, he, he was so trying so hard and, and anyways, I phoned. his client, and he first said no to my offer to show him our case study. Hmm. And, uh, but he said, let get back to me. So then I went to the other salesperson, went to his client, and in about, uh, about 31 minutes I think it was, if I looked and I, there was even a little bit of talking, I presented the information based.

What the five things were for criteria. Hmm. Then I said, Hey, if we actually were able to achieve all of the things in here to show you that we understand that Hmm. What would that look like for a financial return? Hmm. When we were able to represent it in a way that they could make sense. , the, the, [00:15:00] the CFO said to the rest of the board said, normally we, nor we’d take a few days and, and sit around some private meetings and talk about this, but if the rest of the team actually thinks we need to waste time with making that decision versus just saying, yes, now I’m gonna quit my job if that’s the kind of process we need to follow.

And so it added a lot of humor to it, right? Then what happens is when we leave there, like maybe, well, let’s just call it a day later. That customer who first put me off had got. Yeah, they heard because it’s a tight network. Right? And they were upset with that other, with Jake’s, uh, as the sales guy and said, how come you didn’t push me harder?

We want Troy’s presentation as well, cuz we heard that there was a lot to learn from . 

Amanda: I think I heard, I think I heard this from Luke actually. Luke came to me and said, yeah, these people are asking for. Story to be shown. 

Were you a, were you there, Luke? Or you would just hear it from your dad when he came 

Luke: back from work?

Just hearing it from my [00:16:00] dad or when he was on, on 

Troy Luke’s Dad: phone calls. 

Amanda: That’s awesome. But he involved you in the, in the, uh, research of it. And I love that. I love how you guys work together. So that’s why I was 

Troy Luke’s Dad: curious for the one, for the one client into the 42 million. Luke sat with us, uh, for that present. . Um, it was a, about a 16 or 18 million conversation.

It was a little more lengthier, but, but, uh, same thing. And, uh, yeah, they actually, Luke brought a lot of information for them that, uh, made them change their mind. Really. 

Luke: It’s that educational part, right? To, you’re not just telling ’em about your product. You’re telling them about, you know, what problems they do have and how your product can help them in certain situations to, uh, you know, to, to get ’em a better crop.

And, and that type of, 

Amanda: I love it. Oh my gosh. I, uh, 

so, um, in the final finale of questions, um, the last one that I have for you is, you had said that, that [00:17:00] one of the key distinctions that was problematic with the sales team was that they didn’t understand the business of a farmer. So how did that change your sales pitch and your sales process, uh, when you found this out doing your research?

Troy Luke’s Dad: Well, because when you’re teaching a salesperson to follow the, the seven steps, so I mean, there’s a lot of sales trainers that teach that, that process. But when you take more time to build rapport, the best way to building a rapport is really, truly understanding the person’s problems and being able for them to feel like they know, like, and trust you.

Right? And so if you’re just simply there just to talk with a quote in your hand, nothing happens. But when you take, go back and you take Educat, . That’s what happens. And when you write it out and you’re basing all of that research that applies to what’s gonna make them more money or cost them more money, mm.

Now it becomes a lot more real. And when you can supercharge that with the statistics from core story type talk, [00:18:00] now the customer knows, man, I’m not the only one who feels like. These guys would look at it totally different. And you have to remember, two of those customers were not John Deere customers.

Two of those customers were buying from competitors. Hmm. So when they went back to ask the, their current trusted advisor, if you will, to answer the same questions that I just taught them. They didn’t know how to answer it, so now they don’t look very educated. Right. And so now when the customer comes back, they feel like the salesperson just gets them.

Hmm. Any industry is like that. It’s not agriculture, it’s, it’s about anything. And if you look at. What’s really happening in the world today? We are not spending any time building rapport anymore. Amazon doesn’t spend rapport time with you. They’re not asking how you’re doing, they’re not asking about your kids and, and, uh, and the things that are going on in your life, right?

And figuring out the business part. They’re just simply giving you an answer. [00:19:00] The problem is, is how do you differentiate that part? And when I realize that new salespeople or salespeople that are become comfortable or conditioned are not following that process, it’s one thing for me to tell ’em to follow the process, but I need to give them information in the framework to make that process as impactful as possible.

Amanda: I love it. Ugh. So good. Luke, anything you wanna add you think that people need to know about? This process that led to such great success in sales? 

Luke: Well, I think, just like my dad said, you know, educating them to wear a more personal level instead of just selling the combine, right? Like my dad always said to, you know, the farmer in the end, they can buy any combine, but which one is actually, or tractor or whatever, which one’s actually gonna generate them the most revenue?

Right? Getting into their shoes and actually, you know, advising them instead of just selling them. 

Amanda: Ah. And there you have it. The Aberly father, [00:20:00] son team. So good. Thank you so much. You both. This is, I want this to be an inspiration for everyone out there that is feeling that, you know, I can’t get over the fact that people are spending less, or it’s so difficult because of supply chain issues that are happening, and I hear.

What are, what people coming into our world are saying, and it can be daunting sometimes. So to hear all of the hurdles and all of the difficulties that you went through and how you were able to just be thoughtful and smart and strategic and follow a framework that led you to success, I’m sure it inspires everybody that heard this interview.

So thank you so much for not only just talking about it, but living it and breath. 

Troy Luke’s Dad: You’re very welcome. Thank you for the opportunity to impact more people. Yeah, this has been great. Absolutely. 

Amanda: Okay. Until next time. 

Troy Luke’s Dad: Bye everybody. Bye.[00:21:00] 

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