Optimize your b2c sales process for Customer Support

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hey guys what's up welcome to another episode of copies for closers me and james as usual again today good man we're going to talk about b2b versus b2c selling today yeah and some of the different strategies we use on on either of those calls like how we set it up in terms of structure just basically a general conversation right yeah so a b to b versus b to b transition is always a good one for sales people to make so there's a lot more money in b2b it's a bit of a different and i'll talk to you about the differences between like i guess some of the more technical differences between the two and also like the hybrid model that we find ourselves in a lot these days so with that being said cue the intro if you listen to this podcast you will make your first million within three years i'm going to repeat that you will make a million dollars within three years of the first episode you listen to we don't want pikers we're not here to save the manatees we're here to make podcasts you really want this you listen and review put that coffee down i think a lot of confusion is around like like oh no i sell b2b because i sort of businesses but it's like oh no you don't because like you're just selling to like solopreneurs and stuff yeah yeah yeah i wouldn't classify that as a debate so maybe like explain to start off like how do you classify one b to b verse b to c and whilst it could be selling to a business it's not typically a business unless they're purchasing multiples of that product i'd say that's a major defining factor it's more enterprise versus solar operators you know so like uh like most enterprise level sales have i think it's like 6.8 or something like that it's around between five and seven decision makers yeah and so then when you're at the enterprise level like you have to kind of there's different processes that you need to go through in order to kind of actually end up getting the sale whereas when you're talking about you know like a small business like a solopreneur or somebody with a really really flat owner operator model yeah or just also a really really flat orb chart where it's like maybe one guy at the top and then just a couple dudes under like there's not much of a you know pyramid going down and that's going to be more of a business to kind of solopreneur or individual which is different again from b2c which is business direct consumer like if you're selling business coaching to coaches you're doing you're doing like b2b if you're selling like business coaching to fitness coaches that's still b2b but it's like it's not enterprise b2b yeah those fitness coaches are selling direct to consumer yeah but you would take that b2c approach to that single yeah yeah so like it's slightly different like so really the big changes are one of the big myths is that you don't sell an emotion you you still do you still have a lot of emotive sellings still going through cost of an action and consequence but your pro the sales cycle is longer so usually you're going to have a minimum of three calls instead of a one to two call process and you're gonna have to have some sort of demonstration yeah of your deliverables instead of in like a b2c scenario where you're sort of you can just sell it off whatever you say but they're also contracts play a larger role and stuff like that of which they don't really play as big of a role in yeah i've sold thousands and thousands of things to you know in that business to individual business to consumer model where you know contracts are borderline or relevant really yeah and it also seems like um like the biggest hold up you know the b2c classic b2c deal is like funding whereas like the biggest hold up and getting the deal done in like the b2b is borderproof right is what sorry board approval yeah that's definitely one of them border-proof well not every company has a board obviously yeah like we don't have a board um but like it would it's sort of like working your way up that chain yeah yeah so it's like you might have like you might be talking to a manager so you know what what you think are relatively straightforward is like you have to be able to get to decision makers yes and you have to have a process where you can do one maybe two calls with like the manager but then like your third or your fourth call like that's going to want to have the people who can actually pull the trigger and even then what really freaks people out when they transition is then contracts are sent out once contracts are sent out then it's like waiting game yeah waiting good so yeah so the really hard part is getting through those decision makers and being able to navigate the corporate process and a lot of the time it ends up being like an advocacy building game so if you're doing like larger enterprise b2b really what you're trying to do is you're trying to get the person that you're initially in contact with sell them into the product or service really and like the benefit that it directly has to them which is the difficult part because you might they might not get any monetary benefit but it might be a status benefit by allowing them to like they're the person who introduces someone who saves the company you know 400 million dollars like that's that's a career trajectory thing for them so like you take them through the consequence of not if not being that person like not bringing this to the company what happens if they find out that you had this information you didn't bring it to your company so like you know it becomes a consequence of inaction there and then from there you just nurture that person as an advocate one of our one of my coaching clients his name is alex i helped him close like a 25 million dollar deal through just creating a series of corporate advocates and a large organization in australia yeah and and that's all he did and then he managed to snake his way in there and then got to the decision makers and got the deal yeah because everyone like in an enterprise everyone wants that status when they're you know out for friday night drinks at the end of the week and it's like i see steve's look at the deal steve got can't believe he bring this to the company that made us millions and millions you know what i mean like yeah everybody wants that level of respect amongst their colleagues so you can sort of well not everyone does but a lot of people do and if that's what they want you utilize that to build up to get to the next stage and then steve goes and has a chat with his boss who maybe is a decision maker then you get on a call with that person as steve has sold to him and move forward from that right yeah absolutely so yeah yeah yeah there are just there's a lot more layers to b2b selling and you have to get through a lot more rigmarole but the deals are a lot bigger and the commissions are usually a lot larger but like a really good way to practice it is doing those small b2b deals where like you know you might have like a little organizational structure where you can practice these things and then you can start sort of i guess like manipulating your sales process to be more b2b friendly to where you can transition into bigger and bigger deals yeah but also the framing of how you're introduced to the person so much more important like when you're doing like b2c deals or whatever like you can just have a title it's like you know a vp of sales and then it's like you know you get handed over or something like that but like how you're handed over and why that person should help even hold on the first call to begin with like it can be a chasing game of emails to even get them on and one of the things that we've found that's worked really well is once we have an initial time set in when we get on that one instead of doing what we're doing b2c which is try and book the call in the next 48 to 30 72 hours we just go same time next week and then they go yep and so we can all agree on the same time next week we get a book into the diaries that means we don't all have to go back and forth trying to find something so it allows us to get things in the diary because when you're talking to enterprise level people like there's obviously everyone's busy like everyone and so you just want to get them nailed down get them on a call and that means that your sales cycle will be at least three weeks yeah cool now just rewind back um you said like you know there's b to c then there's b non-enterprise b to b then that becomes enterprise b to b at which point in like that solopreneur where they have that organizational chart at which point do you move away from the b2c process into a b2b like where is like the okay this is sort of getting towards where it needs a longer drawn out process with the demo calls like i think the moment you're not talking directly to a decision maker gotcha like the moment you have a marketing manager or someone in a managerial position and you're not able to actually talk to the guy who can pull the trigger gotcha that's when i would go into that process because you're not really extending the process massively so even if it's overkill i'd rather have it be overkill than under kill cool cool and um all right so like if we look at like the process and structural change right we're at the b2c level non-enterprise b2b enterprise b2b what are some of the actual structural changes that you do when we're switching the structural changes so the first things you obviously you really you elongate the process right because that gives you time to get the decision makers in so you go to at least a three core close sometimes you'll pitch on the second call but most of the time you'll you'll end up doing like your actual okay let's send out contracts on that on the third call you have to have some sort of visual presentation to provide it doesn't mean they have to be able to take it home but it's like you want to be able to run them through like okay this is what we're doing this is your problems a competitor analysis is always a really strong thing to have it's not just necessarily the case but like for example for seventh level when we're doing like b2b sales training like for uh you know factory owners or for whatever business we're doing it for builders or whatever then it's like we would we'll take them through we identify the pain point we try and steer them into specific pain points whether it be just like a lack of sales or what we generally do is we do like the leadership have really let their team down by not providing them with very strong sales training frameworks to allow their team to ultimately be successful so that brings allows us to bring it back to a leadership framework which is very that's then very easy for us to get the guys to identify the problem as their own and not the problem of the sales staff and then it's like we can get the leadership on board and then that way like they'll do a good job of implementing the stuff they want them to implement but it also allows them to own the problem they go it's like what leaders do leaders take action they solve problems all right cool so like do you want to act as a leader or not right so and it allows us to tie in such a lot of cost of inaction there and yeah so we just we take them through that sort of that demonstration we have a couple of visual ways that we can do that that we've mapped out specific for the offer of how their sales people are feeling what they're going through because they don't have set structures in place then from there it's like this is your problem this is what it's costing you and this is how much it costs to fix yeah yeah okay not from like what you present to everyone on a seventh level account right if you're doing b2b for sirhan as opposed to seventh floor like how do you still probably solve yeah so like you know like we have we have a particular way of doing things like for sure hand for example we sell team training for brokerages we sell speaking events so obviously we have to have different pitch decks for speaking events and for like team training or for in-person events we have to have a pitch deck for that and it's like basically the problem solving so all the time for like an in-person speaking gig the problem in solving could be uh internal team motivation and like retention right so it's like you know what are you investing into your guys so that they actually stick around and not go to one of the more competitive potentially cheaper brokerages that are taking 30 instead of 50 like what are you doing to to maintain that the second thing would would be just potentially like pure skill level like if we can come in provide them with some stuff and upskill them and have a level of specificity so it's like we just got to really figure out like what's the problem that we're solving and then from there like our pitch deck is going to be relatively generic with deliverables but then how we deliver that is going to be designed to solve a different problem for h so i'll give an example like i can have a pitch deck say i'm doing sales training but we don't provide one-on-one sales coaching we provide everything in a group or a boxer for example like we do with inner circle then it's like my pitch deck would be like we give you this because of this you know what i mean and so like you justify the way that you do things and then you potentially like give reasons as to why you wouldn't do it another way yeah but you don't do that unless they have an objection of like i wanted to do what like i want one-on-one potentially but sometimes you can just preempt it okay yeah yeah yeah all right so like basically you create a um a pitch deck and slides of deliverables based around one knowing the niche understanding like the objections you've had in the past of what they're looking for yeah and then that pitch deck is almost designed to pre-handle the potential objections from the pain points of those people right yeah which is the same for any pitch deck really your pitch deck just wants to give enough information to where they they know what they're getting but not so much information to where you introduce other objections like because you can do that you give someone 50 things like if i was to go to james and i was to try and sell him into something and i was like you get these 42 things yeah right well you just be like well given the given how busy you are there's no physical way that you can take advantage of those yeah yeah so like more is not better it's like if i sell you into three times a week training for fifty dollars or unlimited training for 55 like you can't do unlimited i want three so yeah you can't do unlimited yeah so if i just sell you into 55 for unlimited like you're never going to come unlimited now no one can ever utilize unlimited which is why it's a stupid model anyway it also really limits your scalability because you have to assume that everybody comes every day and then all of a sudden you capture membership but anyway that's a whole difference i also want to come three times a week if i've got unlimited because i'm not told when i'm where i need to be yeah but it's just like i'm selling you i'm i'm it's overwhelming how much you get so like you'll never feel like you're getting the value so like if i sell you three and you come three you're happy if i sell you unlimited and you come three you're dissatisfied right so you're like man i'm just not really utilizing it you know and so like then we have to have a dropship conversation but like if you just do unlimited anyway so it's just like i can't i can't present something to someone who's busy that has a perceived although you're giving a perceived value what you're doing is inducing an objection of like i don't know that i can actually utilize this because now i'm attaching that dollar figure to everything so yeah i'm thinking about it i don't need everything but you're giving me everything so now i'm like if you give me a hamper with 25 things in it i'm only like three of them you're not buying the hamper exactly yeah but if you just charge me the same price for those three things i'd probably be fine with it right like that's just the way that human beings work so you've got to be very careful when you're pitching in the b2b in whatever b2c environment is like you can't overdo it it can't be like you get all this and this the thud factor of back in the day when you used to order something online and get 17 kilograms or 20 you know 35 pounds of stuff like that's not good because if you're busy like that's a nightmare you know what i mean yeah so you got to be very careful with how you do things and i think a lot of people and a lot of like our competitors not just i won't say them but i know like one of the biggest problems that they have with their sales and if they just listen to me on this they would all make more sales as their pitches are so long and drawn out that like it it should they lose so many sales and i know because i've gone into those businesses train their head guys cut their pitch down and they've instantly dropped whatever yeah it's crazy so it brings up another question it's like you building that presentation with the demo or whatever you decide to call it in that process uh not enterprise b2b and b2c where do you stand on having demonstrations pitch decks visual representation of what you do in that sales process i think if you're good at it go for it like vanessa horn is amazing at it right because she sells for taki but she also sells for simon bowen now simon's bow and modeling selling those models is phenomenal right i don't really do it i don't i've never had to do it because i don't try it yeah like but marco loves all of his selling is done with an ipad mapping stuff out like i really see the value in doing it i'm just a bit old school and i just talk people into doing stuff yeah and now i think if you're good at it tremendous asset i think if you do it poorly and it looks like it was done with a four-year-old with a crayon like one of our old clients that is their pitch deck and it was like who the made this yeah yeah because this looks like it's like a four-year-old you may not make like a powerpoint yeah you know what i mean so it's like you know it needs to be good although like i think a really good one is really powerful i think a really bad one is reversible now just just for clarity like vanessa in that does she do that as a part of the entire sales process or does she pull out certain parts and go now i'm going to show screen and we're going to do this part together yeah i think she does it that way i've never been sold by her though so i've seen like we've had clients she does like classy clothes yeah and that whole process i've been spoken to like i've had clients where clients have come to us they didn't end up being clients because their entire thing is like slide deck so they're pitching the whole time from a powerpoint presentation yeah you know what i mean and i'm speaking to a guy that you know wanted to work with us last week and he's like oh you know we we close over like we do ourselves call over their presentation i was like why because that works really well like okay let's let's get into some of the numbers turns out they converted like 10 i'm like how interesting so it works really well you're not open to changing that but you're closing at 10 percent it's like okay you see see what i'm sort of coming up against here like it's i wouldn't really classify 10 percent as what do you say i'm working really well uh some sort of coaching package right yeah if it's a coaching package 10 is garbagio terrible i know if it's like a biz op 10 is like not horrible but yeah for sure not good yeah for our amazon offer we're closing over thirty percent okay we don't use it we don't need to but i was just like okay so like you see how that's a bit of a problem right now it's very monotonous so like i think one thing that i've like in the army right like they have 40 minute sessions yeah because the army has done extensive extensive uh research on how to teach people yeah right because they teach morons yeah right like so like some of the iq levels that you get they're not it's not quite an iq level it's good there's a certain score that you have to do and you like to test and like different jobs require different aptitudes right and some of the lower ones like one of the lowest one is um like truck driving right super low yeah doesn't mean truck drivers are dumb it just means for the army they've dictated that that is a low aptitude you just don't need to be smart exactly right sammy's artillery artillery like has the lowest point right which is terrifying but anyway yes and so like they're they have learned how to teach people very well which is one of the reasons why i think i'm a good teacher is because we don't do a style that is very like break down yeah like this do that that's what it's called and so 40 minutes was the limit that the military australian military dictated anyone could pay attention right and there's like limits to how much of that can be powerpoint yeah specifically limits and it's like i don't remember what it was but i think it was like seven which is going to be late to the next meeting so i'm letting them know yeah it's like 7 or 12 minutes at a time like you couldn't have more than a certain amount of slides per presentation so you couldn't do what we call death by light pro right and and the reason for that is because people just tune out so i think if you're just like it's very difficult because there's like a certain monotony to like changing slides you know yeah yeah and then like if all you're doing is like just showing people slides like it's very difficult for you to create any meaningful connection with that person yeah but i think there is real validity in having a really good presentation you have a really good one which is like short sharp to the point like i think it's a i think it can make a shitty salesperson pretty successful yeah yeah anyway the guy was like like also like if we could close at a higher rate than that and not use those slides is that something you'd be open to he's like oh no this is like the way that we do it don't like it people don't know i don't think we can work together yeah good day because like when you're forced to to use that presentation you're forced to go through each of those slides and you may not agree with the way that they're presented as the sales person that may interrupt your flow it may have so many negative connotations and you end up just skipping stuff then all of a sudden the prospect's like oh why are we skipping that slide that's not important why is it that you know what i mean and then there's instant sales it's like these guys can't even put together a proper slide deck how are they going to put together sucks yeah yeah so i think like when it's done well it's good i think when it's done bad i think that's done i think a 10 if you're selling a coaching offer you really need to have a look at your slide deck so if those guys listen yeah it's probably very very professional yeah get a graphic designer to go through it and just like read every deck and say the same way that like we teach to evaluate your script like ask every question that you ask evaluate what is the purpose of this question and does it lead closer towards my goal yeah you need to go through that process and look at every single slide does this flow from the last one to the next one is there a point is there an am i getting what i want from this slide is it eliciting something yeah if the answer is no then cut those lights out thank you i think yeah presentative selling is it's pretty garbage yeah i don't think you have the ability to build any consequences and i believe that really what makes people buy is a consequence because conversations float right you can't flow in a presentation you know like a direct presentation you call me the floor master again yeah yeah okay um well anyway like it's pretty straightforward like b2b to bc is there anything else that you want to talk about regarding that uh not really like i think like as a salesperson career progresses like i think one thing that i've really been focusing from a sales management even like a recruitment standpoint from when we do some recruitment is um better guys want bigger deals like you know you can't pitch and hold a sales person in a position because they're good at sales right like if like one of the biggest worst decisions that i could make is take someone like marco who we've recently pretty much taken off sales calls he's doing some b2b stuff but like he's he's really more strategic managing he's still doing sales but you know it's like if i was just a pigeon holder i could just put him in jeremy's account i could honestly just fill him up with 50 calls a week he would close 45 of them we'd take very large commissions on that we would make a load of money eventually yeah he would get bored of it there'd be a lack of fulfillment there and so like when i'm placing sales people or into it into a business or when i'm you know doing sales for people like and when we have our own sales people i need to understand the career path of that sales person because like that sales person's career is more important in like in the long term if you want to keep that person we want to be able to make them happy and fulfill them it's like i need to make sure that like i'm managing that process um and b2b is a good next step for people towards management or towards because it's a more complicated sales environment there's more things to think about it's more interesting the deals are bigger the commissions are bigger the sales cycle is slower but yeah so i think it's a good like it's a good transition phase for someone to go through if they're looking to sort of like staying around the sales but potentially not be directly selling all the time and uh because you don't really all you take is like b the big hops like what do you enjoy about that as opposed to like straight basically that's a good question i prefer i feel like i have a more intelligent higher level people yeah i think the average prospect is probably of a higher quality yeah yeah i think finances are not as much the issue and more about like can we solve the problem and i feel like you can you can still drop hammers on people which is good not like you cannot be a cbdc is fun because you can really drop some hammers but yeah i think it's it's a more i just like more complicated puzzles yeah yeah you've learned how to solve the b2c puzzle yeah and it's like okay how do i get a harder puzzle and one for me when we're selling our stuff i sell with pure authority like i do whatever i tell everyone not to do but it's because i am the guy on the camera so i can really sell people on like hardcore authority frames which again is not replicatable although it's getting to the stage where marco can replicate it because he has the authority as well and same as you but yeah like it's interesting like if i'm selling for sirhan like we definitely haven't figured that out yet like we're we're figuring it out but like every offer they're harder to figure out i think b2b deals it gets horrible i think once you figure it out it's really easy yeah it's like just taking through the process and jeremy's been really instrumental in sort of helping to figure out how to do stuff and we've figured out some things that we're not doing like you can't shoot from the hip and b to b you can't just go in there and wing it whereas with b to c like i can just go on there you give me any offer i'll just make it work would be to be like there has to be very specific problems they have to have and we have to have very specific solutions because a 250 000 3-month consulting deal has to solve a very serious problem yes and you have to understand that problem well enough yeah to be able to explain it and it's the only thing where if you're not expensive enough they'll just say no because i think you should exactly yeah if you go in there anymore not a problem a million dollar problem and you want to fix it for 20 grand they're gonna be like what the somebody else will pitch something worse for 300 and they'll pay the 300 because there's a higher perceived value exactly so yeah man it's um it's it's interesting sorry yeah so all right um i don't think we have much more no i think if you guys like it make sure you if you're watching this on youtube you like subscribe with the notification bell if you guys are uh watching this anywhere else make sure you're listening make sure you subscribe shoot us any comments we have a couple cool things right now we have the closing code facebook group we also have like a wallet card for your apple wallet google 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