Grow Without Hiring

[00:00:00] Ken: This is what no one has ever said in the history of sales. I can't wait for you to take me through your pitch. It's just not a thing. No prospect is sitting there waiting for you to walk them through a deck, show them your PowerPoint, go through a set of slides. Or how you wanted to be an entrepreneur since you were seven years old, yet for some reason, that is how we approach sales.
[00:00:28] Ken: That is how we approach closing deals. And I've been someone who's been doing this for decades now. I've done it in large global professional service firms, as well as a solo founder and a solopreneur. And no one ever is excited about you clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking, advancing slides, going back a slide.
[00:00:48] Ken: They absolutely want to hear from you. They absolutely need your help or you wouldn't get to that spot. But unfortunately this is what happens inside the prospect's head, they [00:01:00] start to hear this, the Imperial death march.
[00:01:03] Ken: I thought about playing it. I'm not gonna hum it for you either. I actually was someone who played this back in the day, but I'm not gonna do either of those. But you know the sound. You know that it's not a positive thing. So today we're gonna get into why it is that when we get into sales mode, as we try to grow without hiring, we turn into robots.
[00:01:24] Ken: We earn the right to get there, but then we blow it.
[00:01:27] Ken: We have prospects looking for the exit, looking for the mute button going off camera in the modern way of doing remote sales today. And we lose them before we ever get off the call. So let's talk about this death by PowerPoint.
[00:01:41] Ken: And And it doesn't matter whether you use Google Slides, you use more modern tools like Canva.
[00:01:47] Ken: The point is that often we actually want up using slides and tools as the crutch to get us through these conversations.
[00:01:56] Ken: And then don't understand why we are ghosted after the call [00:02:00] ends.
[00:02:00] Ken: So this idea of stopping being human is important. You stop listening and you start doing this. You start performing. You start trying to convince And I wish in some ways that I can say. That this was something that I had to learn over time. This is sometimes more about your nature than it is about something to learn. I do teach people this, but in some ways it's teaching someone to stop doing the things that they might even do in personal habits or to develop confidence that they don't have as a person, because everyone starts to clam up, get anxious when they start talking about money.
[00:02:37] Ken: And ironically, it doesn't actually matter how big your audience is. It doesn't matter if you're big online. I've had a lot of clients who I've helped grow over time. Some of them had large audiences before working with me, and other ones weren't known at all, became well-known due to our work together.
[00:02:55] Ken: But that doesn't always translate. Into someone who actually knows [00:03:00] how to navigate a sales call. I described it this way years ago, that marketers thrive because they can sit there and think about how something works in a broadcast fashion, something that works at scale.
[00:03:13] Ken: Sales is real time and requires you to recalibrate as you are working. With that prospect and possibly even people you had not spoken to until that call because a boss of a boss never came to a call previously during the discovery process.
[00:03:30] Ken: But the point is you can be someone who's established online and then when you go into moving from How can I help to, it's time to close. They do turn into a robot, confidence is gone. They get into process too soon. They get into boring details that again, create that sound, that theme of the imperial march within the prospect's mind.
[00:03:54] Ken: So really there are two camps when it comes to this. I call them on the first one, the timid deck [00:04:00] reader.
[00:04:00] Ken: the timid deck reader is the person that, whether it's a Google slide or it's one of those things, they get into that mode, they start focusing on stacking logos, talking about their bios, talking about their history, And it's so front loaded that it takes 25 to 30 minutes to get into the thing that your prospect actually cares about.
[00:04:22] Ken: But we do have another kind of sales person out there. We do have another person. By the way, we are salespeople, even though we're founders, consultants, and solopreneurs that are experts. But we also in these moments are salespeople. And the ones that really are the worst version of this, they traditionally come from a sales background, and I call them the hyper confident steam rollers.
[00:04:43] Ken: They bulldoze people, they talk over someone, they talk at, someone they use, I don't wanna call it a Jedi mind trick in this case, but they use things that are psychologically based. They might even use what are called upfront contracts, which I'm not gonna even describe because I don't want to give it [00:05:00] any credence, but they push so hard for the sale, they to try to close it.
[00:05:04] Ken: Essentially, before the conversation's even over, neither one of these are good. We have to find the middle ground here, and I have a process that I call Pitch to Win. And Pitch to Win, or what my clients call PTW. It does include six specific elements that you need to include to navigate to a close. And if you don't include these things, it is precisely why you get ghosted or you hear, we'll think about it or we'll check with our boss. Last week I had a conversation with someone and they politely told me no. They said, I love everything I've heard. They were really energized by what I was doing. They even knew that it probably could help them, but they had this idea in their head that they already had put down on paper what it was that they were gonna go work on.
[00:05:51] Ken: I got this message while I was out. I quickly responded and provided some framing for them. Or really some reframing of, [00:06:00] Hey, are you gonna be working on these things? Because if you are gonna be working on these things, why don't you let me just help you work on them and get to ROI faster in a short period of time?
[00:06:09] Ken: They went from, you're absolutely right, I'm in. Let's go forward. Now, this isn't something that I do every time, but this starts in the quote unquote pitch conversation. And there are plenty of times. In fact, earlier that day, I had another person get back to me and said, Hey, you obviously know what you're doing.
[00:06:26] Ken: Timing just isn't very aligned. But all I wrote back was three folded hand emojis because I read the situation, I read the energy, and I knew the difference between this person and the one that closed later that day.
[00:06:40] Ken: And I can tell you that I have reviewed hundreds of offers and decks. I've created more than that over the course of my career, across industries. Doesn't matter whether you are a solo consultant or an agency doing millions, I have helped both. I've run both same mistakes and same outcomes.
[00:06:58] Ken: And again, not about the tool. [00:07:00] Obviously we're knocking PowerPoint today, but it doesn't matter about PowerPoint, unfortunately. It just was a thing that led the industry, so it's gotten a bad rap,
[00:07:07] Ken: but the rule is simple outside of not being able to cover all of the exact parts of the Pitch To Win methodology, you cannot use your deck as a crutch. I talk about it instead as what I say is a six figure closing asset. And it's not the thing that closes a deal, it's the takeaway. It's the proof that the prospect leaves with but the other reason why I call it a closing asset is that you must take your offer, which we've talked about in other conversations.
[00:07:38] Ken: So go back through the episode catalog. And align it specifically to the kind of closing asset that you need based on that offer. What I mean is that today running the kinds of deal sizes that I have as a solo consultant and an advisor is very different than when I was selling $500,000 deals in an [00:08:00] agency.
[00:08:00] Ken: The amount of detail, the amount of complexity is different. I used to have a creative director who actually sometimes would help. Add some elements into a deck, for example. But today I don't need all of those things and I have different kinds of closing assets depending on the offer.
[00:08:15] Ken: The point being that the close doesn't happen in your six figure closing asset. It happens in the conversation. It happens as much in the moments that you say things. As the moment that you don't. I do demo runs of pitches with my clients, and often what I have to help them learn is that moment of marination. You articulate an important point. And then you need to just do this. Be quiet. Let that sit with them for a minute. Let them wrestle with it. Let that prospect struggle with it.
[00:08:50] Ken: And remember that when you are in a closing call and a pitch, I'm not going through the entire discovery process today, but when you are in the conversation [00:09:00] where someone's assessing whether or not to work with you, the psychology there also is quite a bit different. If you're selling directly to a founder.
[00:09:08] Ken: Or a budget stakeholder But especially the higher dollar the sale, the more complex the sale is, the more you need to understand this.
[00:09:18] Ken: Those kinds of prospects, especially are mostly afraid of you making them look stupid in front of their boss.
[00:09:26] Ken: it's not about. You having knocked it out of the park. For a lot of other people it's about the risk mitigation. The more complex the sale, the more they are worried about bringing you in and then rebooting later, or them even getting fired because of that effort.
[00:09:42] Ken: I was talking with a customer last week as well. And they were having a situation where someone said, Hey, why don't you just go ahead and send this over to me and then I'll go and review it with my boss. And this is sort of a very typical situation, and ultimately what they're saying to you is, I [00:10:00] don't trust you enough to put you in front of my boss.
[00:10:02] Ken: So you need to get those kinds of people especially aligned with you because they don't want you to embarrass them And I want you to eventually have that level of trust with them so that they actually are excited to have you do this pitch and it not be a death by PowerPoint moment.
[00:10:17] Ken: If we can't remove that fear, if we can't instill the confidence inside the prospect. If we don't know precisely why it is that they actually will go with you, what they're struggling with, that's when people ghost you and that's why your deal stalled. They actually don't have something to motivate them.
[00:10:35] Ken: They don't have an incentive. There's no urgency.
[00:10:38] Ken: And it's precisely why as well, when other people do that, they are the ones that win that client instead of you.
[00:10:44] Ken: Last week I did a workshop with non-clients and I walked them through four big mistakes where people get stuck in closing bigger, scalable offers where leads die off early in the process, and [00:11:00] ultimately doing this pitch to win process. And I now have dozens and dozens of data points. That those people that actually succeed, they're not superheroes, they're not lucky, they are you.
[00:11:12] Ken: They also just didn't have a system. They didn't have confidence and it's why precisely I have people who have gone from zero to 20 K to 50 K months. It's also why I have people that went from, I don't know how to get a lead or I don't know what to do in this situation.
[00:11:27] Ken: When someone starts saying this thing to me, how do I progress it to closing those kinds of clients consistently, or what I call lighthouse clients? Or even someone more recently joined and said, I'm going with you because I keep offering discounts or offering these kinds of incentives that don't really get people aligned with me as a expert.
[00:11:48] Ken: They simply get aligned with me as someone who can get that widget done or that thing done.
[00:11:52] Ken: When I think about death by PowerPoint
[00:11:54] Ken: I have this idea in my head that if you've ever seen the meme of [00:12:00] you were the chosen one, because in the prequels, that is what OB one is saying to Anakin that your prospects actually wanted to work with you. You were the chosen one.
[00:12:12] Ken: Before death by PowerPoint, before you put them to sleep, before you made them look silly or embarrassed in front of their boss.
[00:12:21] Ken: So please don't keep boring your prospects to tears with decks. That drag on longer than that Star Wars prequel instead be a human throughout the entire process, not just when you ask them questions through a discovery process where you are feeling confident and you're feeling in command, but also when you are asking for the sale, if you remember.
[00:12:43] Ken: Last week's conversation was about being more salesy, which doesn't mean slimy or sleazy. It just means someone who actually is willing to say, I provided you value so far. I know what I'm doing, and here's what it looks like to work together. I will not be put into the friend zone.
[00:12:58] Ken: And ultimately, [00:13:00] our ability to grow without hiring, which also has the optionality to get people to help you at some point. Is in what we talked about many conversations ago, having a consistent way to generate leads and nurture those leads to a close. There are so many people, and that's why I've worked with a lot of marketers.
[00:13:18] Ken: That's why I've worked with a lot of people with large audiences, but not everyone does. It's just happened to be their setup that they didn't know how to convert. They didn't know how to monetize, they didn't know how to. Take that attention and bring it to a close. But even if they did, they weren't still confident enough to capture the value of what they actually should in the market.
[00:13:38] Ken: And that's also the benefit of me having so many data points, having so many clients, knowing the rates across different industries and being able to say, you're absolutely undercharging here.
[00:13:50] Ken: So imagine for a minute you had to ditch your deck and had to pitch someone from memory from the talking [00:14:00] points that you had. Could you actually close that deal? Could you walk someone through it? Have a process that actually gave you confidence? And if you don't have that, then you are relying on tools and you're relying on your credentials.
[00:14:15] Ken: . And when you do that,
[00:14:16] Ken: You're watching someone else walk away with the deals you should have closed. As opposed to having a process to pitch the win.
[00:14:24] Ken: Maybe put a whole different way. I don't want you to be Anakin. I want you to be Luke.
[00:14:29] Ken: So that is gonna be where we end it for today. Gave you a couple of different episode pointers. Go back through the catalog, spend a lot of time making sure these are actionable, making sure that they're pointed, they don't drag on and on every single sentence. Every single part of this conversation. Has meaning for you and has an impact to allow you to do what you wanna do, which is to grow your business and do it in a way that matches your philosophy versus what society tells you, which is bigger is better.
[00:14:56] Ken: Hire all the people, have the big offices, and so forth. If you [00:15:00] did learn something today, just one thing. Please leave a rating or review. Really helps me understand what's hitting for you, what's not, and I base these conversations on your feedback and your input.
[00:15:11] Ken: You can also hit me up in the show notes where I point you to both my weekly briefing as well as connecting with me on LinkedIn. If you do find me on LinkedIn, please let me know You're listening to the podcast by sending that in the connection request. Be happy to get connected there. That's where we're gonna end it though for this week.
[00:15:27] Ken: Love these conversations. Going deep with you, staying tactical, and I can't wait to have another conversation with you on how to grow without hiring.