BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: How Well Do You Know the People Who Matter to You Most?

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BRX Pro Tip: How Well Do You Know the People Who Matter to You Most?

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, here’s an important question that I think we should all be asking ourselves, how well do you know the people who matter to you most?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:15] Yeah. I think this is the heart of any professional service business, is, you have to know your clients and you have to know a lot more about them than you probably know about them right now. So, some of the questions you should be asking yourself about your clients are, Do you know what keeps them up at night? You know, that’s obvious. Do you know what groups they’re members of? Do you know who buys what they sell? Do you know who their ideal client is? Do you know who they respect and look up to? Do you know who they aspire to be? Do you know what they’re afraid of?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:52] The more you know about what drives your clients, the better it is for you so you can help them more. And remember, if you can help make their dreams come true by kind of basic math, then that will help you make your own dreams come true. So, I would be really getting in the weeds when it comes to your clients and really understand, you know, what they’re afraid of, what they need more of, what will get them high fiving you. The more you know about them, the better you can serve them. And the better you can serve them, the longer you will keep them and the bigger your practice will grow.

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Strengths Over Weaknesses

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BRX Pro Tip: Strengths Over Weaknesses

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, when it comes to incremental or even quantum improvement, your thinking is it’s better to focus on strengths over weaknesses, yeah?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Yeah. I’m a big believer in maximizing your strengths rather than just focusing on maximizing your weaknesses and making your weaknesses go away. Now, I don’t think that you should ignore your weaknesses. I think you should invest some time in shoring up your weaknesses. But I find that you will be much more fulfilled and you’ll be much better served if you can make your strengths even stronger.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] I think that if you have some natural proclivities to a certain strength or whatever it is, whether it’s your curiosity, or whatever it is you’re thinking about when it comes to the value you’re providing for people, I think it’s better to become deeper, stronger about whatever that is, rather than try to shore up all of the weaknesses or perceived weaknesses you think that you have.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:09] So, what that means is become a true subject matter expert in whatever interests you and serves your clients. Because if you’re really interested and excited about this, you’re going to be inclined to go deeper into these areas because you already like it and you’re already curious about it. So, that makes you that much more valuable to the people who are interested in that as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:30] But if you have a weakness that is holding you back, you should definitely kind of shore it up. But I wouldn’t be spending an inordinate amount of time just focusing in on weakness, weakness, weakness. I would, you know, spend maybe 20 percent of your time or less than 20 percent of your time working on your weaknesses and 80 percent of your time making your strengths stronger, rather than 80 percent of the time trying to improve your weaknesses and 20 percent of the time trying to just keep your strengths going.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:01] So, invest time on your strengths, become the best at that, and that’s going to help you differentiate yourself from all the other service providers in the area that you serve.

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Success and Failure Are Not Binary

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BRX Pro Tip: Success and Failure Are Not Binary

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, I like success better than failure. It seems to be a lot more fun. But the truth of the matter is, at least in business, success and failure really are not binary.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] No, of course not. In most cases, there’s a spectrum of success. You may not get the ultimate prize, but you could still be winning. You may not go all the way out of business, but you could be trending that way. So, the key to all of this is to just keep trying.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Like we had someone, Katy Galli, who used to work for us that said, “Keep moving forward.” That’s what you have to be doing every day. You can’t be paralyzed by inaction. And I think that people want to wait, a lot of the times, to see what’s what. And you just don’t have time to wait because it’s moving. The ground is moving beneath your feet. So, you cannot just wait things out. You’ve got to kind of do something.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] Business realities are always a moving target. There’s a saying, “People plan and the universe laughs.” Next time you’re uncertain, instead of waiting, try something. Try something crazy. What do you have to lose? And especially if things are trending in the wrong direction for you, take some shots. You don’t have anything to lose, but you have to take action.

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Help Your Client Aim Higher

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BRX Pro Tip: Help Your Client Aim Higher

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, a lot of responsibilities, a lot of obligation for those of us, not just in the Business RadioX business, but for all of us who are out there genuinely trying to serve our market, and our community, and our profession. But I think it’s incumbent upon us. I think we should be helping our client aim higher.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:26] Yeah. And not only do you have to deliver a service that helped your client make more money or save some time, you have to really, almost, be more ambitious than your client. Push them to be better than they think is possible. You know, be their biggest cheerleader, support them, really root for them, do what you can to help them aim higher, push them to be bolder.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:50] If you can do this, if you can really encourage and support them taking kind of bold chances and risks that can help them catapult their business to new levels that they didn’t even dream possible, then you have a chance to have a customer for life. And that’s what we’re all trying to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:08] Every person in professional services would much rather have fewer clients that is perfectly aligned, a perfect fit that you really love working with, that you’re helping achieve enormous things and make great impact in order to grow their practice.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:25] So, if you’re in professional services, if you can help your client be more ambitious, be bigger, have greater impact, then you have a chance to make a customer for life. And it’ll help you in your practice. It will help you grow your practice and help you get better clients.

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Follow Through Until No

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BRX Pro Tip: Follow Through Until No

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with BRX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, an important selling discipline, I guess you would call it, is to follow up, follow through. But I think we have to have the resolve to follow through until no.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:19] Yeah, I think a lot of people follow up till no contact or being ignored. And I think it’s much better to follow up until you get no. And remember, you have control of the no. You can be the first to say no and tell the prospect, “Sorry, it didn’t work out.”

Lee Kantor: [00:00:35] We use that method all the time. We have a confirmed release date that’s part of our tactic in order to get an answer one way or another. And we highly recommend that you have some tactic to get an answer. Otherwise you’re going to be waiting for this phantom phone call. You’re going to have them on your sales projection list way too long. And that phantom phone call never comes. So, it’s better to just kind of push for it now, and then get to no and move on rather than just hope that they’re going to call me at some point.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:06] Now, if you’re getting a no contact, or no answer, or they’re ignoring you, you can still kind of drip them information but that you should be treating them as if it’s a no. And the sooner you do that, the better, so you can move on to somebody who might buy.

Stone Payton: [00:01:25] And to your point, it doesn’t have to be – in fact, it specifically should not be a bridge-burning, get-out-of-my-life no. It’s more along those lines of what you described, “Hey, sorry it didn’t work out for right now. Maybe down the road, we can revisit the idea,” right?

Lee Kantor: [00:01:42] Absolutely. It should never be a burn-the-bridge no, but it should be a “Are you going to buy this today or not? And if you’re not, we can still be friends. And we’re going to still be around in six months when you decide to contact us again.”

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: 3 Tips from the Book Demand Side Sales 101

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BRX Pro Tip: 3 Tips from the Book Demand Side Sales 101

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, you’ve got some notes from the book Demand-Side Sales 101.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:12] Yeah. This is one of my new favorite books, Demand-Side Sales 101 by Bob Moesta, M-O-E-S-T-A. He has a lot of great information. He’s on a lot of podcasts. And he’s written this great book that I highly recommend.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:29] One of his kind of foundational tenants are a better way to sell is to help people make progress in solving their problem rather than selling anybody anything. All you’re trying to do is help them make progress in solving their problem. So, think of yourself as a helper, not an order taker. So, you’re going to be asking a lot more questions. You’re going to be kind of just really helping them get clear on what they want. And the clearer they are for them articulating what they want, then you can see if you’re a good fit for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:05] So, the second tip in this is, you’re really not trying to convince anybody to buy anything. That’s really the key of all this. All you’re doing is asking questions and presenting information until the prospect convinces themselves that you’re the right fit for them. So, it kind of changes your lens and kind of the prism that you’re looking at sales as.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:32] You’re not trying to sell anybody anything. All you’re doing is just asking a bunch of questions. Getting super duper clear on what it is they want, what is the outcome they desire. And then, you’re together deciding if you can help them achieve that goal. So, again, at the end of the day, the prospect is going to convince themselves to buy your services if you’re asking the right questions.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:00] Now, Bob, is the brains behind the concept of Jobs-to-be-Done and that kind of thinking, which I don’t know if you’re familiar with, but I highly recommend you become familiar with it. The basic tenet of Jobs-to-be-Done thinking says people don’t buy things. They buy solutions to make progress on solving a problem they have. So, everything has a job to be done. It’s like that old saying that people don’t buy drills, they buy holes. They want a hole and the drill is just a means to give them the hole that they desire.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:38] So, the more you’re clear on what is the job to be done, the more effectively you can communicate the value you provide to help your prospect achieve that goal.