5-Minute Selling: The Proven, Simple System That Can Double Your Sales - Outside Sales Talk with Alex Goldfayn

Alex Goldfayn is the CEO of the Revenue Growth Consultancy, a company that helps organizations to implement systems of remote and proactive selling, generating 10%-20% in new overall sales annually. He is also a best-selling author and he recently published his 4th book “5 Minute Selling: The Proven, Simple System That Can Double Your Sales… Even When You Don’t Have Time”.

In this episode, Alex shares his tried and true simple daily actions that will help you double your sales.

Here are some of the topics covered in this episode:

• How to get started on proactive phone calls
• Tips to master silence and get prospects to reveal more information
• The 3 musts of compelling referrals
• How to ask powerful questions for effective cross-selling
• Top advice and true stats to deal with sales rejection

About the Guest:

Alex is a top-rated speaker that motivates sales teams, managers, executives and owners to take simple action to grow their business. He has worked with top companies like Cisco, Logitech, Lenovo, and T-Mobile. He is also the author of the bestselling books: “Selling Boldly”, “The Revenue Growth Habit”, and “Evangelist Marketing”.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgoldfayn/

Website: https://goldfayn.com/ - Includes free downloads from 5-Minute Selling, Planners & Trackers

Alex's Book on Amazon - 5-Minute Selling: The Proven, Simple System That Can Double Your Sales

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Transcript - 5-Minute Selling: The System That Can Double Your Sales with Alex Goldfayn

Introducing Alex Goldfayn [00:00]

Steve: Welcome to Outside Sales Talk, where we meet with industry experts to learn the strategies and tactics that make them successful. I’m your host Steve Benson, and I’ve helped thousands of salespeople all over the world crush their quota. Today, I’ll help you crush yours. Welcome back to Outside Sales Talk. Today I’ve got Alex Goldfayn with us, and we’re going to be talking about Five Minute Selling, the proven simple system that can double your sales. Alex, welcome to the show.

Alex: Steve, how are you? Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Steve: Absolutely. By way of introduction, Alex is the CEO of the Revenue Growth Consultancy, which works with organizations to implement systems of remote and proactive selling that routinely generate 10 to 20% in new overall sales annually. Alex is also a best-selling author, and he very recently published his fourth book, Five Minute Selling: The Proven Simple System That Can Double Your Sales Even When You Don’t Have Time. Great title, by the way. No one’s got enough time, right?

The Concept of Five Minute Selling [01:06]

Alex: That’s right. Thank you. You want me to talk about that?

Steve: Yeah, sure. Tell us about the book, the title, and why my people should read it.

Alex: As we talk to each other here on Wednesday the 26th, the book has been on the market for about 24 hours—it came out yesterday, the official launch day. My thinking behind it, the reason it’s called Five Minute Selling, is that in five minutes we can make an awful lot of proactive communications. I’ve seen salespeople who are clients of mine add 50% to their sales, 100% to their sales, even triple their sales in five proactive minutes a day, communicating with customers and prospects when nothing is wrong. That’s the key. We have to talk to them when nothing is wrong because most people only hear from salespeople when something’s wrong on the phone, right? I can’t get it to you in time. It’s going to be late. The price is going up—aren’t you glad I called? But if we reach them to help them, to honestly say—Steve, what are you working on these days that I might be able to help you with? I’d like to help you—they’re not getting phone calls like that. We’re all sitting by the phone. We’re all at home, at our desks, and nobody’s calling it. The only time it rings is when somebody’s announcing a problem to you. So if we can be present systematically—systematically is the key—sales will shoot up.

Proactive Communication in Sales [02:57]

Steve: Great concept. In your book, you mentioned this idea of proactive phone calls. Tell me a little bit about how field salespeople can be proactive when reaching out to prospects over the phone versus only reaching out when there are bad things, like you mentioned. How can they be more proactive? What does that mean?

Alex: Most salespeople live reactively, which means the phone rings all day long and we answer it. On the other end of the line are customers who need something—they have a problem or an urgency, right? They need it yesterday, or you screwed it up—where is it? You sent me the wrong product. I don’t have enough. My guys are standing around—you’re killing me. So 90% of salespeople live this way, reactively. We talk to people who have problems or urgencies all day. We’re busy as hell—I’m not suggesting anybody’s sitting around. Plus, they’re field salespeople, so they’re on the road, driving from one customer to the next, trying to cram as many visits as they can. Between that and answering the phone, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for picking up the phone and saying—Steve, it’s Alex. How you doing, man? I was thinking about you. How’s your family? How are the kids? What are they doing? How was their summer? Did it feel a little bit normal to them? What about school? Are they going into the building? My kids went to orientation today in the building for the first time in six months—that actually happened to them today, and I’m so happy they got to go in. We don’t really know each other, Steve, but we could talk for an hour about the things we have in common dealing with the pandemic. Then I’d pivot the conversation gently to business after five minutes of catching up. I’d say—what are you working on these days that I might be able to help you with? What projects do you have coming up? If you sell products—what do you need quoted? What are you having trouble getting quoted that I can help you with right now? When you pivot to the business like that and ask to help people, nobody’s going to get mad at you because they don’t have anybody in their lives offering to help them like that. They’re going to be grateful for it, and they’re going to look for ways to reward you for it.

Steve: Makes a ton of sense. What would you say field salespeople should include in every one of these proactive phone calls? What are the ingredients? Obviously, you mentioned the relationship-building and keeping-in-touch discussion points, but what else is in there? If you were going to write me a recipe.

Alex: I don’t know that we need a strict recipe for every one of these. I think what we need is to say—I was thinking about you. That’s ingredient one. When you tell somebody that, it’s impossible to get mad at you—you’re honoring the person. When you tell me you’re thinking about me, that’s lovely. Then I’d say—how are you? How’s your family? Always ask about family, talk a little bit, react to what the customer is saying, listen. Then you pivot to the business—that’s the third thing—what do you got going on that I can help with? I’d like to help you. Then you have a conversation. So I’d say those three things. I’d also say that if you connect with those people, great, but there’s really good odds you’re going to be leaving a voicemail. In five minutes a day, I can leave a lot of voicemails—I can leave 10 voicemails in five minutes because that’s 30 seconds per effort. When I leave those voicemails with the script that’s in the book, about one half to two thirds call me back.

Steve: That’s amazing.

Alex: People who I know, right? I’m not cold calling. The key with these proactive calls for everybody listening is we need to call people who recognize our name and whose name we know. That doesn’t mean it has to be somebody you’re close to or even that you’ve been working with for a long time—it just needs to be somebody who recognizes your name or your company name. So I’m calling people who recognize me—they’re not cold calls. They know who I am. They’ve seen a speech, read my newsletter, follow my webinars, or read my books. At some point we talked about something, or they attended a talk and said—I want you to reach out to me. So I’m doing it. They might’ve said that three years ago, you know, and we didn’t connect then, so I’m trying again. The reason one half to two thirds call me back is because they know who’s calling them. If it was a cold call, they wouldn’t. It doesn’t even need to be that they know your name—they need to know the company’s. If they know Badger Mapping and don’t know who you are, knowing Badger Mapping is enough—that’s why they call back. Let’s think about the system of this. The key to sales success is the system—it’s not doing it once in a while when you happen to think about it. Those are snowflakes that fall to the cement and melt—fleeting. Done in system, however—10 voicemails a day in five minutes is 50 a week, 200 a month, 2,400 a year, if my math is right. Half to two thirds call me back out of 2,400—half of 2,400 is 1,200. Let’s say you’re really bad at it and only 1,000 call you back. That’s 1,000 proactive conversations with people when nothing is wrong. Five minutes a day sets that up. If you talk to 1,000 more people than you did last year, how could business not grow if you have positive, enthusiastic, connecting relationship conversations where you’re trying to help people? They’re going to be looking for excuses to do business with you and spend more money with you—they’re literally going to be thanking you with their money.

Crafting Effective Voicemails [10:07]

Steve: That’s what every salesperson’s looking for. Let’s make this tangible for our listeners. Pretend that you’re leaving me a voicemail. I’m the CEO of a software company, and we know each other from—we met at a conference a year and a half ago, sat at the same table, chit-chatted a bit. You learned a bit about me, I learned a bit about you. Then we never talked again. You might have sent me an email and called me then, but now we haven’t talked since. What’s the voicemail you’d leave in that situation? Then after you leave it, can you dissect what it was?

Alex: Here it is. Steve, hi, it’s Alex Goldfayn. I hope you’re well. I know it’s been a while since we talked, but I was thinking about you because, first of all, I remember our conversation back at the conference fondly—I enjoyed it, still remember it a year and a half later. Secondly, I was working with a client of mine on sales growth, and it made me think of you—it’s a business similar to yours. I’d love to tell you what’s happening there because they’re up 30% as a direct result of our work together. So listen, if you have a few minutes, I’d love to catch up with you. Here’s my number, and I’m excited to hear the latest in your world too. Look forward to talking—thank you.

Steve: Awesome. Break that down by elements—what was there?

Alex: If I remember everything right—remind me if I miss something, okay? First of all, I said hello like a human. Secondly, I told you I remember our conversation a year and a half ago fondly—I might have even spoken a detail of what I remember, but I didn’t do that. I should have set an example—where are you at in the world, Steve?

Steve: San Francisco.

Alex: So I’d say—I remember how we talked about the 49ers and the Bears, and your team sure had a better season than my team—something like that. Then I said—I thought of you because I was working with a customer who reminded me of you, and they’re similar to you. Now I’m telling you why I thought of you—I have somebody like you, and they’re up 30%, which I did for them, and I’d like to do that for you too. I’d like to help you that way. So I’d love to tell you what’s happening there and hear your latest—I’m not just saying call me back so I can sell to you. I’m saying—I have somebody like you, they’ve grown this much, I’d like to do that for you, call me, I’ll tell you what’s going on there, and I want to hear what’s happening with you. That’s why one half to two thirds call me back. The whole thing took 30 seconds.

Using Success Stories For More Sales Success [13:20]

Steve: Absolutely. I think it’s fantastic. Let’s dig into the part about telling them someone gained 30% from working with you. How do you choose what to tell customers about what you can do for them, and how do you shape that comment? Do you customize it? How do you decide and recognize what’s going to be an outcome they’ll be excited about?

Alex: I don’t even know that I think about it for as long as you just asked the question—maybe because I do it automatically, so I need to break it down. When I’m talking to a prospective client, I’m telling lots of stories about my current clients. I’ll give you an example—I have a client right now, a Canadian manufacturer of synthetic stone, a $300 million business when I started with them. This year, in a pandemic year, they’re up 60% on the West Coast US, 70% on the East Coast US. Now that’s not all our work, but much of it is because they got to proactively communicating in system with their 150 or so customer-facing people that went through my program. It’s no more complicated than the fact that they’re present in front of their customers and prospects way more. They’re asking lots of “did you know” questions and lots of reverse “did you know” questions—I plant these techniques of mine because I think they can help the person listening. I’ll plant—did you know, reverse did you know, quote follow-ups—and people will say—well, what is that? Tell me about that—and I do.

Steve: Could you explain that a little more? What is a “did you know”?

Alex: You see what just happened? That’s exactly what happens in a sales call—now we’re in a conversation. I’ll tell you a story about the “did you know.” I was at the Minneapolis airport buying an iced coffee—see, you asked me a factual question, I’m answering it with a story, I just did that automatically. There was a young lady behind the counter, probably 20 years old. She said to me—would you like a bottle of water with that? I said—my God, she just asked me the “did you know” question, which we’re going to talk about in a second. I said—do they teach you how to ask this question? She said—yes, it’s part of our training. I said—how many people buy a bottle of water? She said—almost everybody. I’m getting on the airplane—of course I need a bottle of water. Guess how much the water cost—it was one of those fat bottles, short and stout—five bucks.

Steve: Five bucks?

Alex: Guess how much the coffee cost—$3. The coffee costs three, the water costs five. With the simple question—would you like a bottle of water with that?—this coffee shop nearly triples its revenue from $3 to $8, not with coffee, but with water—not its main product, but an ancillary product. If they didn’t ask, almost nobody would buy. Why? Because I’ve got them niched for coffee—just as your customers, if you’re listening, have you niched for that thing they always buy from you. Further, you niche them—this is all they buy from me. I have a client that sells paint—they have customers that only buy black paint from them, but their white paint, they go to another supplier. So we say—did you know we can also help you with your white paint? That’s a “did you know” question. A reverse “did you know” question is—what other colors of paint do you buy? Coming back to the coffee story—they nearly tripled their revenue from $3 to $8 with a three-second question—would you like a bottle of water with that? The question for everybody listening, as you sit in your car driving to your next appointment, is—what is your bottle of water? What’s the bottle of water for this customer you’re going to see right now, and the next one, and the next one? Almost all of your customers are buying things from the competition that they could be buying from you—not only that, they’d like to buy it from you, and you’d like to sell it to them, but none of that’s possible because they don’t know. They niche you for the black paint only, for the coffee only. For the water, I’m going to walk five minutes down the terminal to the Hudson’s gift shop. For the white paint, I’m going to call my white paint guy. But if you say—why don’t you just let me help you with the white paint? We’re talking now—what do you need to go to four people like me for? Let me help you—you don’t need four headaches, I’ll handle the headaches for you, I want to help you—they’re going to say—somebody wants to save me time, here you go, get me my white paint too. That’s what “did you know” is.

The Power of “Did You Know” Questions and Quote Follow-Ups [18:47]

Steve: Yeah, I love this concept, and I also love what you mentioned about the reverse “did you know” question—asking what else they need that’s like this, asking your customer directly and eliciting their response, like—actually, I could use some green paint, I buy that all the time.

Alex: Because they’re going to say things you don’t even know—you don’t know what to ask about. I’ve got a chapter on each of these things in the book—they don’t need a chapter, you know, they need a paragraph, but I was writing a book, so they made me write chapters. Everybody knows these questions—the key is to ask them consistently all the time. I’ll give you another example—we know statistically that 20% of “did you know” questions close. Over millions of “did you know” questions over the years, 20% turn into business. Ask five—they’re about three seconds each—did you know we can help you with white paint? Would you like a bottle of water with that? Did you know we can help you with this add-on with your software? Three seconds each, 15 seconds, 20% close. Ask me five “did you know” questions—you’ll add one line item in no time. Ask 50, add 10. How many salespeople do you have—customer-facing people, Steve?

Steve: About 30.

Alex: Let’s say 30 people ask five “did you know” questions a day—because they talk to people. I can ask five “did you know” questions just to you, one person—30 people ask five a day, that’s 150 a day, 750 a week, 3,000 a month, 36,000 a year. We know 20% will turn into a new line item—20% of 36,000 is 7,200—7,200 new line items. If I buy your Badger Mapping software, is there an add-on, a service, additional things I can do with you?

Steve: Nope, we just have the one app. I was thinking as you were saying this—huh, too bad I don’t have another app. We’re a little different than a lot of companies—we’ve bundled everything into one application. We could have made the initial application cheaper and then had a bunch of add-ons that most people would get, but instead, we do four or five major things for customers, and it’s all in one application, all rolled together, bundled. In software, that happens a lot—you can’t buy just Word but not Excel from Microsoft, you get the entire suite.

Alex: So if you had something unbundled or additional options and asked “did you knows” about them, you’d expect a lot of extra business closed.

Steve: Maybe I should just sell water—water bottles or paint—I could add that on.

Alex: Everybody needs water.

Steve: Who doesn’t need water? The other thing you mentioned was quote follow-ups. Tell me about a quote follow-up—what is it, and how does it help?

Alex: This is a great thing for people who are in the car. A quote follow-up is the last 1% of the work. If you’ve done all the work—built your relationship with your customers, serviced them well, they like you, appreciate you, value you—and then they asked you for a quote or a proposal, you sent it to them, and now they’re silent, you’ve got to do the last 1%—the follow-up. Steve—where are you at on that quote? I was thinking about you, I’d like to help you. If we do that, we’re going to close a lot more quotes—in my experience, 20 to 30% of outstanding quotes will also close. I had a client, a salesperson, who told this story—every time he got in his car, he printed off a stack of yesterday’s and last week’s quotes—yesterday’s first, then last week’s beneath it. He called as he was in the car—what happened to the close rate? Before he started following up, he said 20 to 25%, a normal close rate for distributors. When he started calling to follow up, he said upwards of 80%—where are you at on that quote? I was thinking about you, I’d like to help you. They’re not quiet and silent because they don’t want it—they’re quiet because they’re busy and you’re not asking. If you ask—they asked you for the quote, right? You didn’t send it against their will—they asked for it. So call them—listen, I’d like to help you with that—ask for the business—when can we start? How would you like to pay? I’d like to get moving on this—I have 10 in my warehouse, should we lock them up for you? I could have a delivery truck there Tuesday or Thursday—what’s better for you? When can I expect the PO? Another technique of ours—a pivot to the sale—asking for the business. When you follow up on quotes systematically—not once in a while, all the time—your sales will shoot through the roof.

The Role of Stories and Silence in Sales [24:26]

Steve: You also mentioned using stories a second ago. Can you talk a little bit about your tips for using stories?

Alex: How many have I told so far in the 20 minutes we’ve talked—probably five or six already, right? The sales guy in the car following up on quotes, the water and the coffee, the paint—others I can’t remember anymore, but I know we talked about others. When you tell people success stories, you’re doing a bunch of things. First, you’re showing them what you can do instead of telling them—instead of speaking about facts and specs, you’re showing them somebody like them that you helped. You’re adding color, energy, enthusiasm, entertainment—that’s number one, showing instead of telling. Number two, you’re showing them you have people you work with like them—you’ve helped peers of theirs. I’d try to think of client names my prospects would recognize—maybe it’s name-dropping, but I want them to know who I’m talking about. If they don’t know who I’m talking about, I’d say—look, it’s a multi-generational business just like you—grandpa started it, then dad ran it, now the third generation’s in it, just like you. I’d describe the business and connect it to them—you’re giving a reference to your prospect actively. After that, the content of the story doesn’t matter much—you just want it to be interesting. Have a library of stories you can fall back on that you’ve told before that get a nice reaction from people. If I can tell you a story, I can get you to picture what I do—if I just tell you what I do, we’re talking about dry facts and specs. That’s the power of a story.

Steve: What about three-second actions? Can you explain three-second actions and how you use them?

Alex: A “did you know” question is a three-second action—did you know we can also help you with this or that? A reverse “did you know” question—what else do you need that I can help you with? I had a client salesperson stand up in a workshop I was doing with the company—a follow-up second workshop. He said—I asked the reverse “did you know” question to my customer—what’s on your wish list? The customer started rattling off things—she got to six or seven, and I couldn’t keep up because he was writing them. He said—why don’t you think about it for a minute and email me the whole list, and I’ll tell you what I can help you with? She said—okay, good idea. They hung up—15 minutes later, the list showed up—24 things. I said—how many did you sell? He’s standing up telling the story in front of his peers—he said—only 18. I’m like—dude, get to work, you’ve got six more to go. These are repeat purchases—if somebody buys from him once, as probably most of our people listening right now, when you sell somebody something for the first time, it’s likely the first of many orders of that thing. With these three-second actions, we’re stacking repeat business, one on top of the other—“did you know,” reverse “did you know,” pivot to the sale—when would you like to start? When can I expect the PO? Quote follow-up—where are you at on that quote? I’d like to help you. Asking for a referral—Steve, who do you know like yourself that I could help the way I help you? The key is not one or two three-second actions—it’s give me five minutes of three-second actions. In five minutes, I can do 100 three-second actions—20 in a minute, 100 in five minutes. Instead of once in a while—a snowflake falling to the ground melting—if I do it all the time, it’s a blizzard of activity, of value, of connecting with customers and prospects, and of helping them in tremendous ways.

Asking for Referrals Effectively [29:42]

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. About that helping them—why do you think people love to give referrals?

Alex: Have you ever stood in a circle with a group of people and asked for a chiropractor referral or a painter for the walls—does anybody have a good chiropractor? My back’s been bothering me—at a cocktail thing when that used to happen. What did the other three people do? Everybody’s got a recommendation—they fight with each other—no, you’ve got to use my guy, my guy’s better because—and they want you to use their guy. They open their phone and shoot you the contact—let me shoot you the contact. We used to hand business cards back in the day—now we shoot contacts. All of a sudden, you’ve got a contact from everybody—if you don’t use their guy, they get upset—why did I give you the referral ifContain up to 300 characters: People love giving referrals to help friends and connect them with good providers, gain favor for future help, and look good when the referral succeeds—yet salespeople fear asking due to rejection.

Steve: When we do ask for a referral, what should salespeople include when they’re trying to get someone to give them referrals?

Alex: It’s one question and a little follow-up—who do you know like yourself who I can help the way that I help you? Or—who would benefit from my work the way that you do? Then you zip it, be quiet, let the person answer—because I’ve been thinking about asking you for a referral, but you haven’t been thinking about it because I just asked you—you don’t know what’s coming, so you’ve got to think about it. Too many salespeople nervous-chatter their way out of a referral or business—when it’s quiet and the customer’s thinking, we talk through it, we lose it. Don’t interrupt them—I’ll count to a hundred in my head, sing a song in my head, whatever—I’m not going to talk until you talk. Either you give me a name—if you do, I’ll continue the conversation—or you say—well, let’s do that another time. If you give me a name—Joe at ABC Company—I say—great, what does Joe do there? Is he the owner? You tell me what he does—I say—would you prefer to connect us, or is it better for you if I reach out to Joe and use your name? What do you like better? Just having the name isn’t enough—I don’t know how to reach Joe yet—are you going to connect us, or do you want me to reach out and use your name? What’s better for you? You’ll give me an answer—90% want credit for the referral—I’ll send an email connecting you guys—great. Then—when do you think you might get to that? I don’t want to bug you—you’re busy, I’m busy—when might you get to it? You say—Friday. I say—okay, so let me recap—Joe at ABC Company, you’re going to email us by Friday, which is awesome. If I don’t hear from you by Tuesday next week, is it okay to follow up with you about this? You’ll say—of course it is. That’s how to ask for a referral—it’s a conversation—we need the who, the how, and the when—not—do you know anybody who can use me?—that’s a yes-or-no question—it’s—who do you know who I can help the way I help you?—so you’re thinking of a name instead of yes or no. After you give me a name, I need to know how you’re going to connect us—if you don’t tell me what you want me to do, I don’t know what to do—that’s how complicated my stuff is—I need to know what you want me to do—then when—when do you think you might get to it? I don’t want to bug you.

Steve: Great advice. You mentioned salespeople talking too much—what role does silence play in sales, and how can it help salespeople be more successful if used appropriately?

Alex: It plays a huge role in selling—a gigantic role—and it’s rare. Because of our discomfort—not the customer’s discomfort, ours—with pauses and silence, we chatter away out of business, out of referrals, out of yeses. We think silence means they’re mad at us or uncomfortable—they’re just thinking, you know? When we talk, we interrupt them. There’s two kinds of silences—the first is when you ask a question and let the customer answer—macro silence—where you ask something direct and wait for an answer. The other kind is in a conversation—when you finish your sentence, I don’t start talking right away—I give it two beats—one thousand one, one thousand two—and see if you think of anything else to share with me. Oftentimes, the customer will jump into those pauses with more information I wouldn’t even know to ask about—they volunteer things because you’re giving them oxygen to think. Many times, I’m having a conversation, somebody finishes, I pause, and they keep going—they give me valuable stuff. So there’s the bigger silence and the little one.

Steve: How does rejection play into all this? Why do salespeople fear rejection, and what would you recommend they do to deal with it?

Alex: Who gets rejected more than us? In baseball, if you fail 70% of the time, you go to the Hall of Fame—in sales, we don’t come close to a 30% success rate—the best of us succeed 10% of the time, maybe 15%—which means nine out of ten efforts, we’re getting rejected. It’s immense, you know—we live amidst rejection, and there’s no choice—you have to go through the rejection to get to the yeses. If you’re not getting nos in sales, you know what you’re doing? You’re emailing—that’s what you’re doing—you say—that’s it, I’ve sent it, I’ve succeeded—what? Did they get it? You don’t know. Did they see it? Did they open it? Did they reply? No—so we avoid rejection with email. If no rejection, no success in our business—we’re the most rejected species on the planet. With that comes gigantic discomfort—it sucks to be rejected all the time, and to many of us, it’s painful if we’re not thinking about it the right way—we do everything we can to avoid it. There comes a time where you do everything to avoid rejection—those are the people who email instead of call, who won’t ask for the business even though they know they should, who don’t follow up on quotes, who don’t ask the “did you knows” or reverse “did you knows” because—God forbid they’ll say no and then I’ll die—it’s death if I don’t need the white paint—if I’m good with the black paint—after I die, my kids will go hungry, nobody will pay the mortgage—of course none of that happens, but that’s the enormity of the fear—it’s enormous, and it’s automatic—we don’t take the time to think through that nonsense—well, that sounds stupid, of course that’s not going to happen—but because it’s automatic, we don’t even know it’s there—it’s in our subconscious. It’s the great defining characteristic of salespeople—90% behave this way—for the vast majority, they’d rather avoid the risk of rejection than ask for the business—the need to feed their family is smaller than their need to avoid rejection, if that makes sense.

Steve: Right, we act emotionally—if we thought it through, we’d all ask for the business more often, but because we react emotionally to the fear of rejection in our lizard brain, there are few things worse than being rejected—we could get kicked out of our tribe, you know, and that could be life or death—so it’s probably injected into our lizard brain as it evolved. It’s funny you bring up the baseball Hall of Fame versus salespeople—I’m the president of the Sales Hall of Fame, and it’s harder to get into the Sales Hall of Fame than the baseball Hall of Fame right now.

Alex: I didn’t even know there was such a thing.

Steve: I’m the president of it—it’s a great thing—we bring in a sales leader or thought leader who gets nominated, give a synopsis of their work, collect things they’d like to show people—it’s become a way for people to check out a bunch of sales thought leaders, flip through 100 of them, see the hand-selected ones and a synopsis of their work. Google Sales Hall of Fame—it’ll come right up.

Alex: Cool, I’d love to learn more about that. One more point about rejection, if that’s okay? Our behavior in sales follows our mindsets—we can’t outperform our thinking—you can only behave how you think. If you think you’re bothering the customer, annoying them, they’re going to reject you, and then you’re going to die—you’re going to behave accordingly to avoid death. I’m exaggerating—we don’t think those words—but that’s how big the fear is.

Steve: Absolutely—that’s what I’m saying—the fear is enormous because when our lizard brain evolved, rejection was a really big deal.

Alex: And we have to be rejected to succeed, right? I was having a drink with a friend—mostly a friend because of what happened in this story—we’re having a drink, and I’ve written five books—this is my fifth we’re talking about here. He said—Alex, I want to write a book—what should I do? I said—well, you’ve got to start pitching agents and publishers and be prepared to get rejected a lot—you’re going to fail, then you’ll succeed eventually, probably. He said—no, because I’ve never failed at anything in my life—a 44-year-old dude. It took everything I had, Steve, not to say—well, then you’ve never tried anything interesting, man.

Steve: He’s either out of his mind or massively underperforming compared to what he’s capable of—I’ve failed like six times today—couldn’t comprehend it—it’s like asking me how many meals I’ve eaten in the last 20 years.

Alex: How can you do anything of interest without failing—or massive risk of failure? You don’t always fail when you try things, but there’s certainly the risk.

Steve: Nobody teaches us how to deal with rejection—it’s not taught anywhere.

Alex: When we go to school—not all salespeople go to college—but even if you do, nobody teaches you what the hell to do when you’re rejected—frankly, there should be courses on this. If you’re ambitious in any way—whether it’s climbing the ladder in your job, your sales work, or not even in sales and you have ideas of what you want to do in life—you’re going to get pounded by rejection, and you’ve got to be able to deal with it. Most of us end up having to learn it as we go and deal with the byproduct. The first time my first business blew up—I was 24, running a computer training business, had 12 people—for me, it was a big company—people in their 40s and 50s working for me, managing me—I wasn’t managing them. That business blew up with the internet bubble in ’01—started in the late ’90s, lasted two or three years—disaster in my head and in real life—the first big failure—everything else had worked, you know. Nobody teaches you how to deal with that—you’ve got to get through that crap on your own—anybody who’s a really successful salesperson has figured that out—we have to. But 90 to 95% of us have it—and so we avoid it. If you can be proactive in system—the thing that stops us is fear—if you can just do the work, grind it, get on the phone—you’ll be in that top 5 to 10% pretty much by default—it’s not a crowded place—it’s really easy to stand out just by being present.

The Art of Three-Second Actions [48:05]

Steve: Absolutely. You’ve talked about how using this five-minute selling system and these three-second actions can quickly stack up a lot more valuable customer interactions—how do you track it? How do you plan and track your success with the five-minute selling system? How do you track revenue from things like your three-second actions?

Alex: The book is based on two planners and two trackers—these are in the book, but you can go to my website and download them and print them out. Here’s the proactive call planner—I want you to spend five minutes here—eight different categories of people you can call—I want you to write down who to call. The reason we don’t make calls is we don’t know who to call—we have a lot of things in our lives with names and numbers, but nothing telling us who we should call today. If we take five minutes and think through who to call, when it’s time to make the calls, you’ll have a list in front of you and you’ll do it—customers who used to buy but stopped—try thinking of five who used to buy from you but went away—it’s hard—they’re not in our head, they’re not calling us, we’re not calling them. Another one—customers I haven’t talked to in three months or more—try to think of five—can’t do it—they’re not calling us, we’re not calling them. We need to choreograph proactivity with this planner. Then we track it—this is an action tracker—room to write down what did you do, who was the customer, what did you say, what did they say—one line—two main parts—what did you say, what did they say—then a little column at the end for dollar amounts. I want you to write down how much your three-second effort can be worth—if you ask me a “did you know” question about white paint—how much can that deal be valued at? How much white paint do I need? How much does it cost? How many times a year will I buy it? Give me a value to your three-second question—connect thousands of dollars to your three-second effort. When you fill up this piece of paper—whether it’s sales opened, progressed, or closed—any of the three are fair game—I want a dollar value estimate next to it. When you fill up this paper, then the next one on top, and the next—you have a gold mine of opportunities to follow up on, dig into, chase—plus proof of your success written down—I did it, here’s the results I generated—you get energy from that, motivation to go do it some more.

Steve: It reminds me of a practice I used to have when I was in field sales—whenever I had a drive more than 15 minutes, I’d whip out my to-do list—on paper at the time—write down the phone number and name of a bunch of people right into my phone—I must have had a cell phone because I was making calls from the car—writing down all the numbers onto a piece of paper, dialing them on a flip phone—pulling off all the people from my to-do list—scanning through, grabbing 10 or 15 things where the next step was to call them and have a conversation—I’d drill through that list driving back from the airport or to the next customer meeting.

Alex: If you’re a field sales rep, you’ve got all the time in the world in that car—instead of emailing before or after you get in the car—or in addition to your audiobook or whatever SiriusXM you listen to—get a pile of quotes to follow up on, a list of customers you haven’t talked to in six months or more to call while you sit in the car—just leave a message—chances are they’re not going to pick up—I was thinking about you—we did the whole script already—how you doing? I miss talking to you—what’s going on with you? Let’s connect—I’ve got a good story for you from a customer similar to you.

Sales in 60 Seconds - Quickfire Sales Tips [53:33]

Steve: Yeah, it was a fantastic thing and really helped me—I guess I was doing a mini, informal version of what you’re describing here—it seems like a fantastic process. The next piece of our show today is Sales in 60 Seconds—I’ll ask you quick questions with the hope of getting quick answers. First—what’s the most important question sales reps should ask when qualifying?

Alex: I’d say—do you need what I sell? Even better—where do you buy what I sell now?

Steve: Do you have an app or tool you use daily and couldn’t live without? It doesn’t have to be Badger Maps—you can be honest.

Alex: I love the Pomodoro timer—familiar with this? Want me to elaborate?

Steve: Yeah, tell the audience.

Alex: A Pomodoro timer started as a kitchen timer—pomodoro means tomato in Italian—you turn the top half, and it ticks down. There’s apps now—if your goal is to make your proactive phone calls first thing in the morning, which is when they should be—or sometime during the day—you sit down, start your timer for whatever amount of time—I set 15 or 20 minutes—and start calling people. As long as the timer’s running, I’m calling and leaving messages—when it’s done, my break timer starts—I get up, walk around—if I’m in the middle of a conversation, I’ll finish it—then come back and do the next thing. I used it to write Five Minute Selling in a month—left the days relatively open, wrote it in 20-minute sprints.

Steve: Which movie should every salesperson watch and learn from?

Alex: Good grief—do you know the movie that affected me more in the work I was doing back then? The Shipping News with Kevin Costner—early 2000s, I think—heard of it?

Steve: I have not, no.

Alex: It’s about a guy, Kevin Costner, who works in a tiny town in Newfoundland—his job is to cover in the newspaper what’s shipped in on the boats. He said—the stuff on the boats isn’t interesting—what’s interesting is the people who own the stuff, buy the stuff, own the boats, do the shipping. He started writing about people—those stories in my early to mid-20s planted a seed in how I sell.

Steve: I was checking—my marketing team did a top 25 list of best sales movies—I hadn’t heard of this one—it wasn’t on the list.

Alex: It’s out of the box—it’s not a sales movie—it’s about how stories affect the process—it stuck with me—telling stories, giving examples—it’s the people stories you want.

Steve: You do a fantastic job of that—I see how you weave stories into everything—we could all learn from that.

Alex: Thank you—you sell an app, I sell sales growth services—we could both benefit from telling stories of our customers and how they improve from our product or service to prospective customers.

Steve: Absolutely—what’s the greatest sales lesson you’ve learned over the years?

Alex: Never, ever, ever give up—Thomas Edison said—many of life’s failures are people who didn’t realize how close they were to success when they gave up—the next step might be the one—if you stop, you’ll never know, and you might always wonder.

Steve: It’s one of the reasons Badger is the name of the company—the badger is a tenacious animal that never gives up.

Alex: Nice.

Steve: What should all salespeople do every day to become more successful?

Alex: Call five people a day on the phone when nothing is wrong—ask them how you can help them, catch up with them, look for ways your products or services can help them—even if you just leave voicemails, there’s no way your business won’t grow.

Steve: As an actionable takeaway, what should the field salespeople listening today do as a first step to get started on the five-minute selling methodology?

Alex: The easy answer is go buy the book—I’d love you to buy the book, but I don’t want to be that guy.

Steve: No, tell them—these are field salespeople—they make a lot of money—they want to get better—if your book’s going to make them better, they should go buy it.

Alex: If you feel like you’ve got some value from listening to our conversation here—hopefully you do—the book, Five Minute Selling, is a silver platter—everything you need to grow your sales significantly and very quickly is in there. It’s a system—chapter two is called—Don’t Want You to Read This Book, I Want You to Do This Book. If you have half an interest in selling more and you’re listening to this podcast—I’d guess you do—get the book, man—it’s all there. It’s not theory in some professor’s office—it’s things we know work—more than 10,000 people do this in system now as we sit here, clients of mine doing this—we know what works, the statistics around how it works—I don’t hope or wonder if this will work for you, I know it will. If you want to take more money home to your family and help your customers, just do some of these things that are in the book—that’s the answer, right?

Summary and Conclusion [01:01:38]

Steve: Absolutely—that’s why I’ve set the podcast up like this—people get a taste of you and your ideas, the philosophy behind them—if it resonates, there’s an easy way to get more—we’re not out of Alex Goldfayn, there’s more Alex you can have—this is a sampler platter of Alex, but there’s more. I’m going to attempt to summarize all the wisdom you’ve dropped on us today for all the folks out here. Fortunately for me, it’s only 2:30 Pacific time—I feel ready. A lot of our listeners listen to this in the car, so it’s helpful to get the summary. In summary, with Alex Goldfayn here today—have proactive conversations with your prospects or customers to see how you can help them when absolutely nothing is wrong—that’s the crux of what he’s trying to get you to do—reach out to people when nothing’s wrong. Call people who recognize your name or your company name—in the voicemail, include three elements—your greeting, reference past conversations or interactions you’ve had, and that you thought of them because you recently worked with or helped a similar customer—show them how you helped that person with a stat or evidence—like, they sold 20% more. Ask “did you know” questions to see how you can further help your customer with solutions or products you provide—between these three actions—proactive conversations, leaving that voicemail, and “did you know” questions—you’ll stack and repeat more purchases. Don’t be scared to ask your happy customers for referrals—ask—who do you know like yourself who could benefit from my work like you benefit from it?—then be silent, let them think—figure out the who, how, and when of that referral—who they know, how you’re going to get connected, when they’re going to connect you. Always give your customers time to think after you ask a question—add gaps of silence so they can tell you things you may not know to ask about. Salespeople fear rejection—no one teaches us how to deal with it—but in sales, you need to be rejected to succeed—you have to take risks—so be proactive—you can’t get after things if you fear rejection—it’s key to get past it. Take five minutes to plan who to call—might be customers who used to buy or haven’t spoken with in three months—track what you said, what they said, and how much your three-second question might be worth—this will help you come up with a gold mine of opportunities for follow-up and provide proof of your success that’s motivating to keep doing it. Alex, this has been so valuable—your insights and the stuff you’ve shared with our listeners today. Where can they read more about your work? How do they reach out and connect with you?

Alex: My website—goldfayn.com—has all the details on my work if you’re interested in help growing your team’s sales. The planners and trackers we talked about are available as a free download there—so when you get the book, go get your planners and trackers—it’s a system, and you have it. My latest work appears on LinkedIn—videos, audio, articles—it’s all there. Those are the two places—and if you want the book, go to Amazon and buy it—that’s the best place, you’ll get it the fastest.

Steve: Excellent. This has been a great episode of Outside Sales Talk. Really appreciate your time.

Alex: I’m grateful—can I ask a question real quick? Sorry to interrupt your sign-off—how did you capture all that summary you just read back? Were you typing it or writing it?

Steve: No, it’s fine—typing—I don’t write with pens or pencils, that’s hard—just notes on it, then I fill it in.

Alex: So you were typing all that as we talked? That was well done.

Steve: Just send your prospects this podcast—it’s a nice little summary of your work—I try to get people to do summaries of their work, then I summarize the summaries—like drilling down to a two-minute attention span, giving people this nice nugget.

Alex: I’ll do it—nice—thank you so much for having me—I’m really grateful to try to help some of your listeners—I hope we did some of that today, Steve—thank you.

Steve: We absolutely did—if our listeners can think of any other sales reps out there who would benefit from learning the skills Alex has taught us today, share the love and forward this episode on to them. Take care until next time, everybody.