Conversations with Good Humans

Five Steps to Stand Out From the Crowd

• Catherine Brown • Episode 17

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I'm doing something a little different in this episode. I got some encouraging feedback about an email I sent this week and I wanted to dig a little deeper into the topic on this platform. It's not a Tuesday Tip and it's not an interview! At the end, you'll have a blueprint for making the following up process easier on you and your clients. If you feel nervous, remind yourself what you REALLY sell: a way to work, live, and serve others better. What you do matters. Don't give up.

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Music composed and arranged by Luke Brown. Find him on TikTok @lukasaftermidnight

Do you think sales is a bad word? When you hear the word sales, I wonder what images come to mind, whatever your relationship is with selling. I'm glad you're here. Let's have a conversation about how to sell like a good human. Hi, welcome to conversations with good humans. I'm your host, Catherine Brown.

And I'm. Of the book called how good humans sell for the podcast this week, instead of sharing a conversation I had with another person who was a good human. I have decided that I'm going to share some information that came from an email that we did. That's gotten a great response. It was called five steps to stand out from the crowd.

And it went out as a part of my weekly email marketing series. If you do not receive my weekly email and you feel like this content is helpful, please look in the show notes for the hyperlink to.  subscribe to receive those emails. So this is a little bit unusual because. It's going to be just me talking and it's not a Tuesday tip.

It's actually me sharing a little bit more detail than what was in five steps to stand out from the crowd and having a teaching moment, sharing what is resonating so well with my clients, my prospects and my listeners. Let me dive right in. If you follow me on LinkedIn. You already know that I love what I call follow up Friday.

Most Fridays, I encourage my followers to initiate with past present and potential clients. And the reason I named it follow up Friday and picked Fridays, because going all the way back to the days when I was a corporate recruiter, it's been my experience. That Fridays are a great day to reach people.

Now I, I want people to sell every day and I love what Craig Ballantyne says about sales. He says, if you have under $1 million in revenue, one of your main jobs is to sell every single day. So I definitely want people to do their revenue generating activities. Regularly frequently daily, if possible. I do think Fridays are a great particular day both to wrap up the week as well as just real standouts because they're days that our prospects and clients tend to have lower energy for their regular tasks.

my experience is that they often say yes to sales meetings because they're literally sitting at their desk. They're wishing that it were already the weekend. They're working through emails. And in some cases they're looking for ways to avoid the work that they don't wanna do. So I had, I just have great success reaching people even in the summer.

I would say, give it a try. So whether it is for a successful follow up Friday, or you want to implement these tools for your own selling activity on other days, here's my five steps of what to do. Number one, be prepared. So let's face it. You're also tired on a Friday.  right. We, we all have these low energy moments and keeping yourself organized in your own CRM.

So you do not have to try to remember who you wanted to reach and why let that CRM do the heavy lifting for you. And this means presetting tasks. I know and respect people who spend some time on Monday getting their week organized. I know some people who spend end of day Thursday getting the next six days organized.

I know people who spend part of Friday getting the, the, you know, the following week organized. You can have it be an end of the day activity where you document your notes and preset tasks. It really doesn't matter. I keep my CRM open and I just do it all as I go. I try not to get behind in notating what happened because then I start to feel a little bit overwhelmed with, with getting behind.

So presetting some tasks and being prepared is number one, number two, have something of value to share, rather than having to say I'm touching base. I have touching base in air quotes,  sharing something of value can be a blog that you wrote a blog. Someone else wrote. It could be a marketing PDF that you're actually using in a sales context and saying, I don't know if you've seen this checklist.

It's really cool. It could be. That you speak on video to your prospect or client and go into a little bit more detail than, than, and sort of shake things up versus, um, you know, just writing or leaving a voice memo, but thinking about what they will find relevant and, um, or, or noting something that's happening in their industry, this can really.

Set you up as a trusted resource and as a guide, and as you all know, I love the metaphor of a guide with the capital G we're sharing things of value we're ahead of them in this, in this thought process about how you get better in this particular area, that ties to what we sell. So we wanna be generous in what we give and we wanna avoid saying things like just touching base, especially using the word, just cause that's not powerful.

So number one, be prepared. Number two, have something of value to share rather. Just touching base. All right. Number three, know your CTA that stands for your call to action. Stating a clear call to action makes it easy for everyone to be prepared for what is happening next and for you to hold yourself accountable for the next.

So here are some examples of good specific calls to action saying something like I'll call you again Tuesday afternoon or. I will look for your email with that report by end of day on the 12th, or I will look for your signature on the contract. By the end of the day to day, these are specific days and times, and they are better than quote.

Let me know if you're interested, people say, let me know what, if you're interested when they feel nervous. And what I have observed is if we feel insecure in the sales process, we're new at representing the product or service, because maybe we've just changed jobs or we're new to selling overall. We tend to be vague.

and being vague is not a gift. Now I was doing some training just this last week. And I had a salesperson at a client company who really pushed back on me on this point. And he said, as you know, if you're a good human and your brand is about good human, he said, I do not wanna be too pushy. And I really do understand that perspective.

I understand that he's a nice person and that he wants to give agency to his prospect. I also made the point that being clear is a gift and being a good guide in the process, simplifies life for me, which is a good human thing to do because I'm busy. So I really appreciate when people are very clear about what they will do next and what they want me to do next.

Number four, remind yourself of the value you provide. So I literally wanna prime myself. This is a topic I'll be discussing soon in the Tuesday. Tips priming is getting yourself in optimal mindset. So reminding yourself of the value you provide might be done by rereading your affirmations. About what sales is or about what your, your, your goals, rereading client testimonials, or Google reviews about how you've helped others take a look at your marble jar.

I have talked before about how I drop a marble. In a bowl that sits on my bookshelf right by my desk. And I like to have that visual representation. When someone does a book review for me, when they tell me they enjoyed something on the podcast. When I have a successful sales call, when I close a piece of business, I put a marble in the jar and I love to look at my marble jar as a symbol of progress and success.

You're going to need to coach yourself and figure out what works for you to remind yourself of the value you provide that will help you stand. Finally, most importantly, do not give up too soon. Most business owners who sell and full-time sales professionals avoid prospecting on Fridays and many just don't prospect enough to begin with.

They do not initiate with enough people reaching out regularly will set you apart from others. Most salespeople only try reaching their ideal client one or two times business owners do this as well. After two times they'll make up a story in their head and they'll say, well, if they were interested, they'd get back to me.

But I don't believe that because people are busy and they don't know us yet trying to get an appointment with someone only one or two times is just not enough touches to get a reply. There's all kinds of research about. Marketing averages and sales averages, and you're just going to really have to increase your outreach to get people's attention, even with great marketing, even with great copy.

People are busy. If you have a follow up Friday success story that you can share, drop me a message at Catherine at extra bold sales. That's what the C C a T H E R I N E. At extra bold sales.com. I'd love to hear about. If you have found this helpful, don't forget to go to the show notes and sign up for my Friday emails because I share things like this, and I've got all kinds of classes, as well as my keynote.

How good humans sell that's modeled after some of the key lessons of my book that I would be happy to bring to your organization if you'd like to talk about things like this more. So don't hesitate to reach out on any of my channels and I'll talk to you next time.