TAKING ACTION:

• Want to know what’s keeping you from doubling your sales in the next 12 months? Take our quick QUIZ to get answers: Howtodoublesales.com
• If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
• Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL: Instagram.com/UltimateSalesMachine Facebook.com/UltimateSalesMachine Twitter.com/ChetHolmes Linkedin.com/company/chetholmesinternational/

TRANSCRIPT:

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

[00:00:00] Amanda: Welcome to the CEO Mastery Show. I am your host, Amanda Holmes, co author of The Ultimate Sales Machine. This week our topic is, we’re going to talk a little bit about how Last year, we were able to increase our core story sales by 63. 5%. 

Becoming a master is not about doing 4, 000 things. It’s about doing 12 things 4, 000 times. The Ultimate Sales Machine presents the CEO Mastery Show for entrepreneurs looking to grow faster, better, smarter. If you would like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, talk to our team live by visiting Chet Holmes.

com forward slash breakthrough. Good advice is contextual. Get your answers at Chet Holmes. com forward slash breakthrough. 

[00:00:53] Amanda: I’m going to break down how that was possible and talk to you a little bit about how you can think [00:01:00] about this next year and what you can do to have some great growth in your business.

So Jack Ma said this quote, never ever compete on prices, instead compete on services and innovation. And I have to agree with Jack Ma, thank you so much, because that is exactly what we did and have been doing for the last several years, is we’ve really focused on how can we innovate based on what’s going on in the marketplace to get our clients the best.

Results physically possible. It’s the goal. So we have done some intense work as a team and it’s been a really collaborative effort. And the reason why this is so important is because the data shows that 95 of companies Never make it to a million in annual sales. 

And then of that, 0.8% make it to 5 million.

Of that, your chances improve from [00:02:00] 5 million to 10 million. It jumps to 1.5 make it from 5 million to 10 million. And then 0.004 make it to 100 million and beyond.

I have to say that I’m very lucky that over the last 11 years, I’ve had personal experience watching hundreds, thousands of companies go from 7 figures to 8, from 8 figures to 9. 

I haven’t been a part of any of the billion dollar ones yet, but I look forward to it. 

So why is it that so few get to those different points of revenue? Well, very often it’s because what got you to 5 million in revenue will not get you to 15 in revenue, right? It takes a different skill set at each level. 

What got you to 20 million Will not get you to 100 million.

Very often we see the CEO run companies where the CEO is the driving force in the marketing and sales process.

And [00:03:00] here they are, maybe they managed to get their way over the 10 million mark with just that CEO driving, maybe even to the 20 million dollar mark, but to get from 20 million to 80 million or 100 million, it cannot be that sole force of that CEO that just has the pig headed discipline and determination to put everybody on their back and make it go.

It has to be a part of the team. It has to be a team effort. But then the skill set to train and systematize and give the right tools to the team to be able to take that next step, all in the skill set, right? So there’s different skills at every level of the revenue growth.

Now, very often companies come to us because they’re saying I’ve got big goals. I’m at 20 million now. I want to get to 100 million or I’m at 6 million and I know this can be a 50 million company. They have big aspirations and they’ve read ultimate sales machine and they say, yes, the roadmap to get there is here.

I know it’s clear. It’s made [00:04:00] sense to me. I’ve read it. I just don’t know how that works in my business. Or they’re selling B2B, very often we get a lot of clients that are selling B2B, have a longer sales cycle, have a more complex sale, very often we get clients that are in the higher price market compared to their competition. And they’re trying to figure out how to sell more, even though they’re at a higher price point. 

That’s one of our specialties.

We see time and time again that companies just have a hard time articulating what actually sets them apart from the competition. It’s not an easy thing. Everybody has a different way of explaining it. There’s no cohesion amidst the group.

We also get clients very often that are Just about to do a rebrand, or they’re just about to put, they want to put out a new website. So they’re looking for how they want to position themselves. 

maybe they’re going to a new market that they’ve never reached before, or they’re launching a product or service from what they already have, and they need some [00:05:00] better understanding of how to go to market stronger.

So like I said before, they read Ultimate Sales Machine, they go, Okay, the roadmap is here, I get it, I just don’t know how it works for me. And where we saw the growth this last year was in the, Okay, I don’t have time to continue to watch your courses, I just need you to do it for me. Can you do it for me?

So that’s where we saw some great, record breaking growth this last year was in the done for you services. 

The way that we’ve delivered this has changed immensely, and let me explain to you the innovations that have happened since my father, Chet Holmes, started.

Chet started writing core stories in the 80s.

And if you think about a consumer, the average consumer saw anywhere between 500 to 1, 500 ads a day back in the 80s. Today, we now see an average of 4, 000 to 10, 000. 4, 000 ads a day. How many did you actually remember of those 4, 000 [00:06:00] to 10, 000? Very few. We are blocking out. We are, we are so inundated that we’re having to push out.

We hate ads more than ever before. It’s up to a shocking 63 percent from, it was like 30 percent just a few years ago. It’s insane how much we vehemently hate being marketed and sold to. It’s because there’s just too much of it, right? That’s just what ads are doing. That’s not even counting the 3. 8 billion people on social media now that have a voice that everybody is sharing their voice.

So you’re competing with all the consumer traffic and you’re also competing with all of the commercial traffic and every mom and pop shop can now put ads on Facebook.

My father called it the clutter factor. The clutter factor is to a height where it’s almost ad nauseam. People don’t want to be marketed to.

It also affects how they remember you and you piercing through that clutter factor. 

[00:07:00] So 20 years ago it would take seven different, um, impressions with your prospect for them to remember you. We’re seeing studies that are citing it takes over a hundred Impressions for your prospect to remember you. A hundred impressions.

That is absurd with the amount of information, right? They’re scrolling through their Facebook feed. They have to see it a hundred times before they go, Oh yeah, remember. Oh yeah. That’s catching my attention. I might actually take action on this. 

So you have to be reminded, you have to remind them over a hundred times. And yet when we look at the average sales rep, well, 90 percent of sales reps give up after three attempts. 90%? And we have to get to 100? What are we doing? It’s insane. So one of the things that we have recommended more and more, we’ve gotten more vigilant about with our clients, is we tell them when you market to everyone, you market to no one.

It is so hard to [00:08:00] do just the spray and pray model today. Let’s just go out and talk to everyone. And eventually the people that we need will come to us. The more that you can get very clear who your ideal buyer is, who is that better buyer, who are the ones you love to work with, who are the ones that are actually a good fit for what you sell for the product or service that you provide.

When we get more in alignment on who that is, then there are so many gifts that technology has given us, and the advent of the internet, to be able to hyper focus and target them. Then, when we build out the messaging for what that person, what’s keeping them up at night, we can speak to them as if they, we were in bed with them, trying to coax them down from their nightmare.

Right? We’re so clear on that messaging because there’s more data than ever before. There’s so much more information happening every single day that we [00:09:00] can pull from. So with the advent of the clutter factor getting so crazy, we have to hone in on who, then what are we saying is critical because there’s so much information out there.

We’ve become hyper tactical and remember. That a strategist will outperform the tactician every time. They will slaughter them, right? 

If you think about the, the basics of the buyer’s pyramid, right? My father’s famous buyer’s pyramid where 3 percent of the marketplace at any given time, you’re sending cold emails, you’re putting something online, you’re posting on social media, you’re cold calling.

3 percent are in that buying now category, 7 percent are open to it, but then 90 percent of them are not thinking about you. They’re 30 percent are not thinking about you. 30 percent think that they’re not interested in the last 30 percent are definitely not interested. So majority. of people are deciding, okay, I’m going to [00:10:00] talk about my product or service, and I’m going to do it on the 21 different marketing mediums that we have today, because there’s so many more than what there were just 15 years ago.

And I’ll just go after that 3 percent of the marketplace, because that’s what everyone else is competing for. But what we teach and what true strategists do is they educate the entire buyer’s pyramid to bring them from, I wasn’t thinking about it, but now I know and I’m going to buy, right, into the buying now category.

So then you’re not competing with all your competition if you’re speaking to the 90 percent that majority aren’t. That takes becoming a strategist. 

I’ll give you an example of this. We had a client that, uh, sold, it was a pharmaceutical company that had started a new product line in consumer goods, and they were selling an all natural cramp cream. It’s called Control. And, uh, They didn’t really know much about the [00:11:00] marketplace. They’d spend quite a lot of money, um, on ads, trying to pierce the marketplace and let people know about this new product that had come to, uh, market.

Then, They identified their, that box stores were the most important for them to go to because when people needed, when women needed help with their cramps, they weren’t ordering something on Amazon or online, they were actually just going to a Walmart or going to a CVS and picking up the product right then and there.

That was the best place for them. So, we did a Dream 100 with them. They identified that Walmart would be the great, a great place and they actually got an appointment to potentially be on the shelves of nationwide Walmart. So they hired us and said, we got to figure out what our stadium pitch is. We got to figure out what our messaging is because we don’t know what we should do in that meeting.

Um, and [00:12:00] we did all of this research. So instead of going to that meeting saying, hi, we are all about empowering women, we want to promote, we want. you to try this all natural cramp cream. It’s called control. Here are some of the ingredients. This is why we’re great, right? That’s one approach that’s a bit more tactical versus the strategic approach that we came up with through the core story.

So I’m going to read for you some data. 

So did you know that up to 40 percent of adult women suffer from PMS. It’s the number one reason women miss work, school, and activities, and it accounts for an average of 23. 2 days of suffering annually. That’s the equivalent of three weeks vacation ruined. Okay, what have I done there?

I have put together market data to make it so clear that this is a critical problem that a [00:13:00] huge percentage of their marketplace is having issue with that Walmart needs to think about. So what have I done? I’ve gone from I’m going to be a product pusher that’s just talking about crab cream to here’s a serious issue that your consumers are facing that you need to think about.

Then they went through an education on well then what do they do when they have this problem right and all of the ways that they go wrong with trying to find relief. And ultimately it leads them to still have so many issues. And then they educated about everything you need to think about when getting any kind of relief from cramps.

And every single one of those reset the buying criteria to explain why control was the best. And this was a very short presentation, some great market data to back up what they were saying. Not only. Did they get that product placement? So they went from four stores in [00:14:00] Walmart to 800 with one appointment.

But they also, because of their education, Walmart decided to kick off one of their competitions. One of their competitors kicked them off the shelves because of the education they gave on where people go wrong when they’re looking for solutions. That was a great example of changing the narrative.

Instead of feeling like I’m going to just push my product and I’m going to pitch why this product is the best, let me educate you about the problem that’s being faced. Let me tell you where people make mistakes and let me show you what you need to look for when purchasing a product like this one. It’s a strategic approach we call a core story.

So what is a core story? It blends story because that’s what grabs people’s attention and keeps them relevant. Then we add in market data because we’ve lost the trust as consumers. We’ve lost the trust in [00:15:00] society as a whole for the most part. So that market data blends the scientific logical side of the brain with the emotional side that wants to hear the story.

So between those two Grabs the attention of the prospects. You educate them through that market data and story. We have to reset the buying criteria during that process so that by the time you’re done, you are the only logical conclusion. And they know it. And you don’t even have to pitch. What a great course story would do is you don’t even have to pitch your services because through that education, they’ve come to the logical deduction that they need you.

Pretty magnificent. 

So it’s really about thinking strategically. And we’ve been doing this, right, for 30 years now. And seen successes in every kind of industry you could possibly imagine, which has been really wonderful to watch.

So what used to happen is our clients would buy a course story. We’d build this magnificent story of [00:16:00] market data and visuals that were very compelling and this deck that, you know, is like your bible for marketing and sales that you can use for the next decade and beyond. And they’d look at it, and some would engage with us for coaching ongoing to help them implement it, and others would just go on off by themselves.

And what we found is that people would get overwhelmed by all of the pieces and this plethora of information, and they wouldn’t know how to just take the bite sized pieces. So, very often, people would use a fraction of the potential of a core story because they didn’t have the step by step on how to implement.

So this is where we’ve had a critical and unbelievable turn of events. It actually started three years ago. Uh, I worked with Julianne Sim, uh, to create, once we finished the [00:17:00] new edition of the ultimate sales machine, then we created these boot camps. Cause I wanted to test my theories with, with a bunch of, a bunch of people in a room and I taught them how to write their own core stories.

So typically when somebody goes through a course. Only 3 percent of the people that buy a course actually finish them. And that’s just asking if you’re finishing it. That’s not asking, have you gotten results from it? So we were tracking, not just finish rate, we were tracking results. And I will tell you that 42 percent of them generated leads within the first 30 days and 30 percent generated sales within the first 30 days.

That is a 10% X response, right? That’s 10 X from what the industry standard is. Industry standard is have you completed it? 3 percent we’re seeing 30 percent closing deals. And very often we have clients that are in B2B, right? So their sales cycles a lot longer than just 30 days. So I would have, it would have been better to track it longer than 30 days, but.

So we realized that we had this [00:18:00] system for helping people take bite sized pieces of a very large concept, like becoming a strategist, and giving them actionable steps to start testing how to make that switch from tactician into strategist. Right?

A tactician is just purely focused on the task before them.

I have to write a Facebook post. I have to write an email. I have to do a sales call. I have to write a blog post. And they’re not, they’re thinking about just how do I pitch? How do I sell? How do I sell? How do I pitch? 

Versus a strategist thinks about the long term strategic objectives. 

Would you like to be considered number one in your marketplace?

Would you like to Uh, have every client refer you, become a raving fan and refer you lots of business everywhere they went. Would you like to, right, all of these strategic objectives, somebody that’s thinking about the long term creates a completely [00:19:00] different experience on the tactical level when they know that these strategies are in place.

So what we did was we took the bootcamp and we implemented it into our done for you core story process. So just because we built the core story and handed it to them didn’t mean that the clients would know how to implement it. So I actually said we need to increase our prices and we need to add in that it is mandatory to go through this training on how to use a core story, how to become strategic, how to use market data to make you the most relevant logical option, how to reset the buy in criteria, how to get in up to nine times more doors.

So just taking the bite sized pieces. So when I first said we’re going to increase our prices, I had one of our team, um, come back to me and said, no one will ever buy a core story at that price. Um, and they were pretty adamant [00:20:00] that my idea would never go anywhere. And I said, you know, okay, thank you. Well, we’ll see how it goes.

And I am proud to say that this last year for core story, we had 50 percent more clients than we had the year prior. at a higher price point. And, um, we had an increase of 63. 5 percent in our revenue. And the best part is that our clients are getting better results. How freaking awesome is that? They’re winning.

Even they’re winning. We’re winning this whole process has been such a great it’s it’s really the biggest success that I had in 2023 was seeing the success of our clients with this process. 

So what used to be a plethora of information we’d hand it off to a client and say, okay. Let’s say the end product turned out to be, uh, a [00:21:00] hundred slides of market data and story and analysis the market and how to reset your buying criteria and how to pitch and how to, you know, uh, walk them through a process for understanding the ROI of your system.

And I mean, there weren’t so many great things, but they just didn’t know how to take it one step at a time. 

we now have, okay, the writing team meets, pulls from you what they need to, they come back and deliver you something, then the implementation team comes and says, okay, what’s going on with your marketing right now?

What’s going on with your sales right now? What campaigns do you have that are running? Where, where are some clients in the pipeline? Okay. Let’s see from what was given from the writing team. Let’s see how we can implement it now. Then the writing team comes back and says, okay, here’s another piece. Then the implementation team comes and says, okay, let’s figure out where we can get more sales with this.

Okay. Where can we test it? Okay. Let’s get some feedback. How did that work? [00:22:00] So it went from taking. Two months to five months, depending on how long it takes to get feedback from our clients, right? Two to five months to build the story, then hand it off and say, Okay, now you figure out how to use your story to, Now within weeks, our clients are getting traction.

They’re shifting the way that they’re thinking about They’re speaking about their business. They’re getting more appointments. They’re getting their clients to, to, their prospects to understand them quicker with greater ease. They’re able to sell not based on price. There’s all these shifts that keep happening as we go through because the blend of, I took the implementation team and the writing team and we worked hand in hand in hand, which had never happened before in the organization.

Hence why we had to increase the price and hence why we’ve had better successes than we’ve had in the last, I’d say 10 years.[00:23:00] 

I can’t speak to before I was a part of the company, so I don’t, I don’t know, but our success rate with the amount of clients that are coming through, it’s just very exciting.

So what we’ve realized, we boiled it down to just four steps that very often. It’s what people are actually missing. It’s what majority of organizations are missing. It’s where your strategies are, are failing. It’s where you’re, you know, wasting money and resources. Uh, and that gap of how to actually grow with more simplicity.

Gets very clearly defined in this four part process that we have. So we have this just, it’s very simple, four steps. I mean, it’s so simple. People just laugh, but, but majority of organizations come back to us and say, yeah, I actually can’t answer your four, four part framework. It’s the four part framework for the ultimate sales machine.

Um, so if any of you are hearing this and going, wow, that sounds interesting. [00:24:00] I wonder how this applies to my business. Well, actually. hop on a call with you and go through that four part framework and find out in under 20 minutes what’s going on. Are there some holes in your process that you’re wasting money on that could be improved?

We can make some suggestions of how you could actually better systematize your growth and your strategic objectives to reach greater heights faster. It’s what we do all day, every day. And we’d love to be a resource for you. So if that’s something that you’d like a little help on, it’s compliments of the house, all you have to do is go to HowToDoubleSales.

com HowToDoubleSales. com And we’ll help you with that four part framework. 

So, in total, what am I trying to say here? Yes, you can grow your sales. Yes, you can do it. With still increasing pricing. Yes, as long [00:25:00] as you are coming from that place of I am here to serve my clientele. And there is a balance there, where you know. When I think about pricing, I think about it as a karmic exchange.

What you give is what you get. So when people pay more, they pay more attention. And it just so happened that we have this good place of balance, where we’re giving a better experience that looks at all of the pieces. That a client needs to help support them better than just one piece of the puzzle.

We’ve seen great results from that. 

So, hope this inspires you to think about your marketing and sales process and how you plan to grow in 2024. It’s an exciting year with a lot of opportunity ahead. So you have heard from the ultimate sales machine once again, stay tuned for our next episode. And again, you can visit howtodoublesales.com to find out your four part framework to create [00:26:00] your ultimate sales machine.