Continued Learning: How to Build a Masterful Sales Team Like Chet Holmes

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TRANSCRIPT:

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

Good day and welcome to your CEO Mastery conference call with your host, Chet Holmes. Hello, everybody. So again, the title of this conference is CEO Mastery and what I find that makes a difference between the companies that do really well in those that don’t is that CEO is committed to mastery at every level of your organization.

My personal companies that I run, there’s 12 of them. Now, again, as evolve and change, if you don’t evolve, then you devolve. They say if you’re not growing, you’re dying. But in my experience, with my own [00:01:00] companies, we have a weekly meeting with every single one of them, and the whole focus is improving some aspect of the business.

And then we have a meeting with all the. Department heads to look at synergies. And then there’s a couple of the divisions that work really well together, so now we’re merging a meeting with them. But the point is that there’s all this activity to work on improving the business, not just working in it.

Because we know you work in it. We know you’re working in it all the time, but you’ve got to stop and work on it. So congratulations to those of you who are joining us today because you’re here to work on your business. My question to you is, if you look at the bgm Business Growth Master series, and I ask you if I spot quizzed your salespeople today, would every one of them be able to name the seven steps to every sale?

Because that’s a minimum. That’s remember, the lowest level of learning is [00:02:00] memorization. So that’s where you start. Does every salesperson at work for, the seven steps to every sale? Could they tell me the six questions they would ask every prospect? Would they know how they create desire, build value what are the most common objections?

And what are the five different ways you have for overcoming the various objections? And then how do you close the sale? So like you’ve got that down, that’s mastery in your organization. Then the actual sales process in terms of what’s the first thing we do? What’s the second thing we do? What’s the third thing we do?

If the client says no, what’s the first thing we do? What’s the second thing we do? What’s the third thing we do? Each one of those levels. So in our companies, we are set up like that every single. Step that is taken by someone has been something that’s been expertly planned. That doesn’t mean you tell people what to do.

It could mean you ask them what to do. But then it becomes a policy, a [00:03:00] procedure, a set plan. And the people who are working in those areas every day are the most anxious to solve the problems and create a better company. So again most of you on this conference are not like, a one person army because this is a CEO Mastery conference, which means you’re at least a gold plus or platinum member in order to be even allowed on this conference, which means you probably have a pretty good size company.

So you made the commitment in your coaching to take your business to the next level. And my message to you is, what are you doing to achieve mastery? And at the very least, the place to start is with memorization. And of course that’s where I’m laying out the 10 follow up steps or the seven steps to every sale, or the six steps to time management.

And those are just three areas that if you had mastery in your organization, you’re gonna be better than any competitor you’re ever gonna come up against because they don’t have mastery in [00:04:00] their organizations. It’s a very rare thing that I see any company that’s really run well, at the level I’m talking about.

And again, remember that in addition to all the speaking that I do all over the world and in front of this week, it’s crazy. I have four speaking engagements and then next week, only two and, and some of these are in front of 2000 people. Some of these are in front of 600 people, and I always do q and a and interaction and.

When I get done, I have a two and a half hour standard speech that typically I will give. That’s an overview of the philosophies that, we teach in the bgm and at the end I’ll say to the audience, I say, is anybody in here have this kind of precision in their organization?

And not one hand will go up. And I’m talking whether I’m with small businesses or large businesses, and yet we have we as Chatham’s [00:05:00] International, we have that kind of mastery in our companies. Not all of them, because some of them are new, some of them are just developing, but in most of them it’s pretty carved in stone.

And the people are extremely well and expertly and regularly in training to improve their skill and of course to innovate. Yesterday feels like a week ago with how much I did yesterday. But yesterday I sat in on a training session where we were listening to recordings of the salespeople on the telephones with all the other salespeople listening and with their managers listening.

And I’m on there and I’m tuning the sales guy up, and he said something backwards of what we normally say, meaning that I know every word these guys are gonna say because we’ve tuned up every word. And then they know we’re gonna be listening to the conversation. But he said something backwards. When he was talking to the prospect, and this guy’s been with us a while, [00:06:00] so he knows his stuff pretty good.

He’s very good at what he does. And so he’s innovating and I don’t care if they innovate as long as it’s an improvement, but in some cases it’s not. And anyway, he innovate this one thing and he said it backwards and I liked it better. And so we changed that in all the scripts immediately. And, but that’s how well run your organization should be.

There should be scripts, and of course the best people are gonna get off those scripts. It depends on what you sell. Let’s see. We’ve got Joe Knop, he’s the fellow, I think I hot seated him a couple months ago and he was he sells to farmers and he’s out there selling to farmers and, and he has no leverage.

As I remember, Joe, if you’re listening I don’t think you had salespeople and I think I was encouraging you. You gotta get salespeople and you gotta get them out into the field and, you gotta get that kind of leverage. But, what’s the first thing they do? What’s the second thing they do?

What’s the third thing they do? What’s the fourth thing they do? Mark woods is another CEO on these conferences on a regular basis. And Mark, I am gonna try and tune up your [00:07:00] radio spot today, but mark has two store. And with the kind of training that we’ve done, I wonder, mark, and feel free to comment on this when I open up your line, how how well you’ve instilled mastery at the store level.

When someone walks in there or when someone calls in there, do you know exactly what your people are saying? Do you know the five questions they ask every single prospect? Do you then know what the process is that they take them through in creating desire and overcoming objections and, closing and, has all that mastery been instilled at every level in your company?

And then I’ve got a fellow on here named Andy, who owns a weightless weight loss clinic. And Andy, I will get to you too. And one of his competitors is undercutting his price, or all of his competitors are undercutting his prices by half. So I have to ask more questions before I can help you with that.

But the point is, Are you achieving mastery? Are you now masters of time [00:08:00] management? Because some of you’ve been in this program for six, seven months, a year. Are you a master of the seven steps every sale? Do you have your Dream 100 effort fully executing at the expert level on a daily basis?

Cuz those are the things that really make a difference. So I’m going to now start with some of the people who want to have questions answered. And again, I strongly encourage you, you can’t even buy my time, but if you could, it’s $5,000 an hour and I. Saying I’m great.

I’m just saying that, it’s supply and demand. As your time gets more and more precious and you have little or smaller amounts of it, you keep raising your prices and then you hit a ceiling at a certain point where you know that price levels off. And I started, I used to get $250 an hour and then you go to $500 an hour and people still keep paying and and right now I’m at $5,000 an hour, but I’m not even available.

You can’t, if you went [00:09:00] to my assistant and tried to buy an hour of my time, you’re gonna be out into mid-February. So I’m that crazy book solid. And And that just is maybe a testament to the fact that I have over the years with lots of practice and thousands of situations, gotten some experiences that enable me to help you maybe profoundly and sometimes in a very short period of time.

And sometimes I’ve just done 10 minutes with a company and just, check back a year later and the guy’s revolutionized his company based upon the 10 minutes of insights that you know, and it’s just like you and your business. You work in it all the time. So after a while you get to be quite the expert.

So if you were sitting where I’m sitting all day long, and all you did was help businesses grow, you know you’re gonna, even a blind squirrel’s gonna find a nut every now and then

 I’m gonna go over if there’s a Bruce Road  if you’re there, let’s hit one, one time. Here you go. Go ahead Bruce. There. Hey Bruce, how you doing buddy? Hey. [00:10:00] Hey, how good. How are you doing? I’m doing good. Good. Yeah. Quick question. I know we’re short on time here. I had a salesman that wasn’t doing his job and I let him go.

And now he’s out trying to sell the same thing that we’re selling and picking up my old accounts. Oh boy. Yeah. And he is probably underbidding you and so I’m trying to working on a defense for that. Working uh, there’s nothing like great follow up.

And the thing is you gotta have a reason that they would not do business with him and keep doing business with you, and I’ll give you a great one. But, again, I am not a lawyer. I am not giving you legal advice, and a lot of times too, by the way, even if you wouldn’t win, a lawyer can scare someone where they’d stop doing that.

So even if you wouldn’t win, you go to your lawyer and you say, look, I want to send this guy a letter and tell him he better not call even one of my accounts and that we will pursue to the fullest extent of the law for damages and anti-competitive, this and that. Even if you wouldn’t win, it doesn’t matter.

You understand? If he’s [00:11:00] just a salesman, he might get a letter from your lawyer and go, oh, and. And now he’ll go sell shoes at the mall or something and get outta your hair, right? Yep. Yep. I’m, and I’m working on that already. So it’s worth it just to threaten the crap out of him. We will proceed this to the fullest extent of the law, but in addition to that what I do is I have twice as much follow up as normal with your current clients.

And and then if you lose somebody to him you can say to them, have you asked him if he’s bonded and insured and licensed? Because, there is a case in New York State where somebody who bought something from somebody else, and I’m making up some stuff here, but we had a client that had a lawn care business, and stop me if you know this story.

And every year he, and he got to be really big, like most lawn care business, two guys in a truck. We all have lawn care people in California. They’re all solopreneurs, or it’s two guys and they come in the truck and but this guy has let’s say a thousand clients and 50 guys in trucks.

[00:12:00] He really built a heck of a business. But what happened is every year at the end of the year, a couple of those guys who are a little more ambitious would go to their clients and say, Hey, you’re paying my boss $50 a month. I’ll do this for 45. And hey, I’m the one doing it anyway, so do you want to pay less money and hire me?

And so the average person goes sure. Yeah, why wouldn’t I? Yeah, go ahead. Boom. . And so every year he’d lose a couple hundred clients like this. So we, the Empire Research Group, to their credit, they found a case where some guy had fallen on a lawn care guy had fallen on somebody’s lawn.

And the state of New York, this is a New York state, went after the owner of the property and made him pay the worker’s compensation on that guy because he didn’t have his own worker’s compensation insurance. So then all he did every year was go to anybody that would leave him and say you, I know you’re saving $5 a month or $10, or whatever, but have you seen this case where they made this guy pay, [00:13:00] $58,000 over two years for workers’ compensation for this guy?

Because, and as long as you’re inuring him and you have workers’ compensation insurance and you have all that stuff, then I think it’s fine to save $10 a month. But if you don’t, you might want to be with a license and bonded company. I don’t know how much of that can apply to you, but maybe some aspect of it where you’re a real business, you’re not just a salesman, you have customer service, you have support, you have, what can you say that this guy doesn’t have, and I wouldn’t bring attention to it first.

I try and stop him legally. And what I, but what I would do is have lots of follow up. I might even do a survey with clients, like just some reason to touch base. Sure. Hi, this is company? Company, yeah. And we’re calling you because, every couple of years we do a survey of offices like yours and we look for breakthroughs that can be valuable to you.

And in fact, if you just answer five questions for us, we’ll give you the results of the survey, which is a $25,000 survey, and [00:14:00] some of it will contain insights to help you save money and make your office run more effective. Can you answer five questions in five minutes? and most people will say yes. And when you call it a $25,000 survey, if you call every one of your clients and you put the time, the man hours and management and the database and all that go into that, you could easily say that in your time and manpower and, staff and this and that.

But a survey is a great way to get into conversations with all your clients. And if you ask questions that like what’s the biggest time saving trick in your company? Or what’s the biggest way that you have found to reduce costs in the struggling economy? And and you ask every person five questions and maybe one or two of them talk about in cartridges, how sophisticated are you and your knowledge and insight on what’s going on in the in cartridge business.

Most people are gonna say, not at. And that’s your opportunity. Maybe that’s your fifth question to say, okay, then you know, that’s why it is valuable because actually we’ve done this for you, we’ve done that for you, we’ve done these things for you, [00:15:00] you don’t even know it. But we’ve gone out, we’ve reduced your costs.

We make sure that we’re licensed and insured. We make sure that if there’s a problem, you get an answer within 24 hours, just so you know. But I’ll have the results of the survey soon and I’ll get them back to you and they’re gonna be really terrific. But if you have any questions or issues by the way, around your in Cartes or anything like that, I just want you to know my name is Joe and call me back and call me anytime.

But it’s a way for you to touch base, get deeper, maybe get some insights that will help you sell more, pitch yourself strategically right at the end, and maybe get some tips and, money saving devices so that when you go back to these guys, you can actually give them a report that helps them save money.

Yeah, great. Yeah, that’s an excellent idea. All right. Good luck with that one. Alright, thank you.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, I did go over today, which I normally don’t have the time, but I’m about to jump on an airplane, so I do have to get outta here. Thank you. And I can’t wait to speak to you all next month. Bye. 

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