Sales Is Not About Selling, It’s About This – Ryann Dowdy

Despite what some people think, sales is not about you, it’s about your customers. So in order to thrive in sales, you need to thrive in human-to-human connection. And who better to talk about social sales than Ryann Dowdy, an expert on building high-performing sales teams.

Meet Ryann. She is a sales coach, the founder of the $100k Sales Method, and CEO of Social Sellers Academy. She’s been in the industry for 15 years and has mentored, trained, and managed thousands of sales reps to improve their performance. Now she’s on a mission to build the next generation of successful CEOs. Throughout her programs and individual coaching, she’s dedicated to helping entrepreneurs improve their sales mindset, generate qualified leads, and above all, create genuine human connections with their prospects.

In this episode of the Think Business With Tyler podcast, we talk about the importance of having SOPs for sales, how to find the right salespeople even if you don’t know anything about recruitment, why you need to know your company’s values before finding people to represent you and how to measure the success of your business through metrics and KPIs.

If you’re a sales leader who wants to take their team’s performance to another level or you’re a sales rep who wants to improve their skills, this is the perfect episode for you! Enjoy.

Guest-At-A-Glance

 

💡 Name: Ryann Dowdy

💡 What she does: She’s a Sales Coach, Founder of the $100k Sales Method, and CEO of Social Sellers Academy. Ryann is a sales expert that helps 7 and 8 figure CEOs generate daily sales on-demand without more of their time, by building and training high-performing sales teams

💡 Noteworthy: Formerly the Director of Sales for a marketing agency, Ryann spent 15 years in the corporate world building multi-million dollar sales organizations for start-ups in the marketing space. She has mentored, managed, and trained thousands of sales reps to be high-performing rockstars.

💡 Key Quote: “Mindset is literally the difference between success and failure in sales. […] It’s the ability to control our emotions. That’s what we’re really successful at in sales. It’s the ability to make the phone calls. We don’t want to make the phone calls. It’s the ability to have somebody tell us they can’t afford it without getting defensive or panicking. So for me, it’s really about that emotional intelligence that emotional control is where true success is in sales.”

💡 Where to find Ryann: LinkedIn

Key Insights

 

Here’s why you need to standard operating procedures (SOPs) for sales. Most business owners are good at driving revenue in their business but struggle to figure out why they can’t get the same results for every sales process or why some salespeople are more successful than others. If you want to make your sales duplicatable and predictable, it’s time to document the sales process and create repeatable sales systems. Ryann explains the importance of creating SOPs for sales. “We know everything that it does and how it serves the story but all of it lives inside of our heads. So the first thing that we have to do is have to get it out of your head onto a piece of paper or onto a project management system however you manage systems in your business. […] If you have a standard operating procedure for onboarding clients, why would you not have it for selling?”

Hire for attitude, train for skills. Attracting and retaining top talent has become one of the biggest challenges in every industry, and the same goes for sales. Another reason why it’s tricky to find strong sales candidates is because of the nature of the job. What does define a good salesperson? Are they really born or made? And how do you ensure that you hire the right people for your sales team? Here’s what Ryann has to say. “I’m a big fan of ‘hire for attitude train for skill’. I have found that oftentimes, newer salespeople are a little bit better, a little bit hungrier than their work experience counterparts. But for me, it’s really about, do they align with the mission, vision, and values of the company? If all salespeople were created equal, they all had a similar skill set. I want somebody that has a heart for what we do as much as we have a heart for what we do. […] I’m looking for the attitude. I’m looking for the values alignment. I’m looking for great references. I’m looking for multiple conversations in the organization, and then I look for follow-up.”

If you don’t know who you are, how can you possibly find somebody to represent who you are in the world? The first step to attracting the right employees is to define your company’s values. As Ryann puts it, how are you going to find someone who’s going to be a good fit for your company, if you don’t know what your company is all about? Whether your culture is about casual Fridays or going to parties, at the end of the day, ask yourself how do you want to make your employees feel?  “I think it’s really understanding what is culture. What does that mean and it means something different to everyone and that’s okay. But what do you want to create? And what does that look like? And really being intentional in all of your hirings to line that up? So I think that we misunderstand culture and we think that’s what culture is right? We think culture is time off. And yeah, beer Friday and different things like that. When really culture is how do you want people to feel about working for your organization?”

Metrics and KPIs are the best way to measure success. If you want your company to thrive, you need to start paying more attention to your metrics and KPIs. For example, if there’s a salesperson on your team that’s underperforming, ask yourself if you’ve given your best to train them and teach them how to excel at their job. It’s time to take responsibility and look at some metrics from a different standpoint. “We need to decide what are the benchmarks? What are the goalposts? What does success look like other than revenue? Because if all we do is measure revenue or sales, we have no way to train, to coach, to manage, to help increase performance in any way and I made this mistake early on as a manager in my corporate career and try really hard not to make it as an entrepreneur, but I do sometimes where we just manage outcomes and we don’t manage activity.”

Top Quotes

 

“One of the things as soon as your business starts to make money, everybody’s like SOPs, SOPs. Nobody tells you about your sales SOP. What’s the standard operating procedure for sales and everyone’s like, What do you mean? If you have a standard operating procedure for onboarding clients, why would you not have it for selling clients?”

“The interview process is the honeymoon phase. How they treat you in the interview process is how they’re going to treat your prospects and your clients. So if they don’t follow up, if their communication is unprofessional, if they’re late, all of those things. […] If you can’t follow up with me, and I’m the one paying you, are you really going to follow up with somebody who’s a prospect who said no or call me later or blew you off? Probably not.”

“The number one thing is I hear from entrepreneurs and business owners is that salespeople suck. And I’m like, nobody wakes up every morning and wants to suck. Nobody’s like, ‘hey, you know, I think it’d be really crappy at my job today!’, especially in jobs where their compensation is tied to their performance. So I think that we need to make that shift and take responsibility for what am I doing to set this person up for success and really looking at it from that lens.”

“It’s trial and error. All of a sudden we think because we’re hiring a person that we should know all the answers, but when you started, you didn’t know the answers. You’re like, I’m just gonna go get dirty and screw things up and try and then it happens or it doesn’t happen. So for me, it starts with a baseline, but try to back into it using averages.”

“It’s human nature. If you put them in control, they’re going to use that control to tell you why it’s not working.”

“We call it professional persistence. But that persistence is such a huge deal and most people downplay that. They think they have to say something interesting or they have to be really witty or they have to be the smartest person and I’m like, first of all, you need to be the most persistent person and you need to always make it about the other person. I think that’s the reason why especially in prospecting, so many people get it so wrong because they talk about themselves too much. And they look at it from a very self-serving lens. So oftentimes those touches and that call reluctance is coming from a place of are you making it about yourself.”

“Inside sales was the phone, outside sales face to face. Social sales is social media. So to me, it’s just the platform of which we leverage to create connections. To me, that is my definition of social selling.”

“You’re gonna get a lot farther if you make it about the other person and not yourself. I think that sales and business are all about service. It’s all about solving problems. It’s all about helping people make decisions. And all of that has nothing to do with me.”

Links

LinkedIn

Social Sellers Academy

Social Sellers Academy Instagram

 

TRANSCRIPTION

Ryann Dowdy 0:00
The number one thing is I hear from entrepreneurs and business owners that salespeople suck. And I’m like, nobody wakes up every morning and wants to suck like nobody’s like, hey, you know, I think it’d be really crappy at my job today, especially Jabra, their compensation is tied to their performance. So I think that we need to make that shift and take responsibility for what am I doing to set this person up for success? And really looking at it from that Blitz.

Announcer 0:23
Welcome to think business with Tyler sharing our methods and strategies for success. Join in on our conversations with business owners as we highlight their triumphs and detail how they overcame the challenges they faced while continuing to grow and scale their business. It’s time to think life think success and think business with your host Tyler Martin.

Tyler Martin 0:45
Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for listening to another show here. Today we’re talking about sales, the lifeblood of every business. My guest is Ryan dowdy. And Ryan is a sales coach, the founder of the 100k sales method, and the CEO of social sellers Academy. Ryan has been in the industry for 15 years, and has mentored trained and managed 1000s of sales reps to improve their performance. Now she is on a mission to help small businesses hire onboard and train high performing social sales teams. Ryan says her superpower is human to human connection, and social sales. In a world where everyone craves connection, it’s more important than ever to nurture relationships and sales and business. In this episode, we chat about why you need standard operating procedures for sales. How to Attract, hire and keep the right salespeople the importance of knowing your company’s values before going on a pursuit of the right talent. And last but not least, why you need to pay closer attention to metrics and KPIs. I know you’re gonna enjoy the show. There’s some real practical ideas to grow your business. Let me know your thoughts as always, and let’s start the show. Hey, Ryan, thanks so much for being on the think business with Tyler podcast show. How are you doing today?

Ryann Dowdy 2:03
I am great. Tyler. Thanks so much.

Tyler Martin 2:05
Yeah, I’m excited to have you. You are a sales expert is I’m labeling you that I hope I’m saying it right. So I’m super excited to have you. This is a fun conversation to me. Can we open up with first a little bit about you and what you do?

Ryann Dowdy 2:17
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks again, Tyler for the opportunity. So yeah, I started my sales career directly out of college, but completely inadvertently, I studied PR and marketing. And I interned at a PR firm when I was in college, and I really loved it. And when I moved like graduated, I moved from New York to Florida. And there were a lot of PR firms in Orlando, Florida at the time. And so I struggled to find a job in PR. And so I took a job in sales. And I learned that PR and sales were basically the same thing except for when you got somebody to say yes, in sales, you got paid commission. And I was like, This is amazing. This is what I shall do. And I will tell you, Tyler, I stumbled for years, I wish I could tell you like I was amazing right out of the gate. And I was not I stumbled for a really long time. It took me literally almost six years to work for a company who like really prioritized sales training. And that’s when I really fell in love. And then I kind of went through a stint where I was helping startups build sales organizations never intended to become an entrepreneur until one day I did. And then learned that that building sales organizations is really challenging for a lot of people, not so much driving revenue, right? Most business owners are pretty good at driving revenue in their own business, but it creates a bottleneck, and then they have a hard time duplicating themselves. And they can’t figure out why they can’t get the same results that they were getting in their sales process or why one salesperson is successful, and another one isn’t. And so my superpower is human to human connection, social sales, and really helping build out those sales systems and processes. So sales becomes duplicatable, and predictable. So that is what I do.

Tyler Martin 3:47
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, something you just mentioned, there’s a term I use, it’s called the rainmakers dilemma. And you typically for a business owner, they’re the Rainmaker, and they have this dilemma of how do I replicate what I do? Or how do I get out of doing that? Having someone else do it? So I just be curious, like, what are your thoughts on that like so you got Joe, business owner, Jane business owner, doing really well, but their stock like their business doesn’t happen unless they’re doing it? What’s that first step to get out of that in your mind?

Ryann Dowdy 4:17
Document the process? Love it. The first step is what what happens because we do this and again, I’ve done it in my businesses as well, right? Like we’ve got like back of a cocktail napkin deals like we know that stuff inside and out. We know we’ve just done it said it, we built it. It’s our baby. We know everything that it does and how it serves the story. But all of it lives inside of our head. Right? So the first thing that we have to do is we have to get it out of our head onto a piece of paper or onto into a project management system. However you manage systems in your business. That’s so interesting, Tyler and you can tell me if this is your experience. One of the things as soon as your business starts to take make money everybody’s like SOP is SOPs, so nobody tells you about your sales SOPs. Right, right? Like, what’s the standard operating procedure for sales? And everyone’s like, What do you mean? I like if you have a standard operating procedure for onboarding clients, why would you not have it for selling clients? So to me, that’s step one is document the process, and then start recording as much as you can. Meaning if you take your sales calls via zoom, ask your clients, hey, do you mind if I record this for training purposes, any activity that you do if you send emails, or DMS, or whatever your process is, like, record as much of that as possible, so you can start to build a little bit of a training library for someone when you bring them on?

Tyler Martin 5:31
Yeah, that’s cool. Okay, so we document our processes. And now we’re like, okay, let’s hire the first person. Or maybe it’s the second person. What’s the criteria like, because this is a challenge I’ve always had in so saying I use is, you know, if someone applies for a sales job, usually you expect them to sound great, like they’re usually pretty quick and how they sound. They’re usually pretty verbally strong. So by kind of just by the fact that they’re interviewing, you’re probably going to be likable. In most cases, they’re probably going to sound good. But that doesn’t necessarily give you a profile for a great salesperson, in my experience, because sometimes thought talking is the easy part. Actually doing the other levels is the hard part. How can you eliminate? So let’s say we get past the likability factor? How do we how do we increase our chance for someone being successful and new to arbitration in a sales role?

Ryann Dowdy 6:17
So the first thing is I always say like, I’m a big fan for you know, hire for attitude train for skill. I have found that oftentimes, newer salespeople are a little bit better, a little bit hungrier than their work experience, counterparts. Yeah. But for me, it’s really about do they align with the mission, vision and values of the company? Right, if all salespeople were created equal, they all had a similar skill set, I want somebody that has a heart for what we do as much as we have a heart for what we do. So to me, that’s, I think, really important. And something Tyler that often gets overlooked in small businesses. Because we’re looking for a ringer, we’re like, I just need the ringer, I just need the ringer, like, I just need the person who can replace me as quickly as possible. And for me, I would rather you know, I would rather take the underdog that is aligned with the mission, vision values of the company and what we’re creating and what we want to build and turn them into a ringer, rather than hire a ringer. So to me, those are things that are important, like values, alignment, mission alignment. But oftentimes, sometimes it’s as simple as checking references. I think we’ve gotten really lazy on checking references. I know that I did like in my corporate career when I was hiring, because my assumption was always like, Well, why would somebody put somebody on their references that doesn’t like them, but people sometimes don’t realize that those people don’t like them. checking references is a great way to do it. Also have multiple people on your team interview that person, if possible, what vibe do they get because sometimes, you know, you’re the business owner. And if you’re the business owner, people will bring their A game. But oftentimes, if they feel like they’re talking to somebody else, even somebody who’s like an admin, or something along those lines that they don’t deem as important. And obviously, using air quotes, as the business owner, a different persona will show up. So I look for things like that, right, I’m looking for the attitude, I’m looking for the values alignment, I’m looking for great references, I’m looking for multiple conversations in the organization. And then I look for follow up, right, I always say that the sales process is the honeymoon phase, the interview process is the honeymoon phase, how they treat you in the interview process is how they’re going to treat your prospects. So if they don’t, and your client, so if they don’t follow up if their communication is unprofessional, if they’re late, all of those things, and this is so hard, you know, many times I’ve had to like close the door on salespeople that I wanted to love so bad, because their follow up was terrible. And I was like, if you can’t follow up with me, and I’m the one paying you, are you really gonna follow up with somebody with a prospect who said no, or call me later or believe you off? Probably not.

Tyler Martin 8:33
Right? That’s crazy stuff. Man, there’s so much stuff to unpack there. So the first one, I saw agree with you on references. Like, even if someone’s not ready to necessarily say something as a as a person giving the reference, let’s say bad, you can get into that discussion. And I find that if you ask creative questions, sometimes people will say things that maybe they didn’t intend to say that are a little bit more transparent, and gives you a little bit of a better look into maybe how that person is on the front lines. And that’s a great one. And then the other question I have around this vision, do you find sometimes your clients are they already established where they have this where they don’t have clarity of vision, culture, and they’re not in a position to convey that to their bringing into the organization? Do you run into that often? Yes. Yeah. How do you deal with it?

Ryann Dowdy 9:22
I tell them that they can’t hire until they know those things. That’s point blank. You’re just not ready. It’s gonna be an exercise in futility. Right? Like, if you don’t know who you are, how can you possibly find somebody to represent who you are in the world? Yeah, that’s

Tyler Martin 9:38
a great point. It’s true, I would

Ryann Dowdy 9:40
argue and you may have a different opinion like you’re not read admin stuff, maybe but like when you come to really truly going from, you know, solopreneur with a VA and a, you know, a contractor to like really, truly building a company, enterprise building a true business at that point in time. It’s going to be a challenge to hire across the board If those things aren’t not are not hashed out. Because like I said, if anybody else is interacting with the world on your behalf, and you don’t know who you are, and you don’t know, you’re those things, it’s going to be really hard for somebody else to a fit in with that and then be communicated. Yeah,

Tyler Martin 10:13
totally read you. Also on that whole topic of culture do you find sometimes entrepreneurs like view culture, as you know, Friday beer day or Friday P today are going to parties? Not necessarily really the fabric of the company itself? Do you find there’s a disconnect there? Occasionally?

Ryann Dowdy 10:30
I’m thinking there is across the world. I mean, like across the board, I don’t think it’s specific to entrepreneurs, I companies as a whole, because I’ve worked for bigger, more established companies that have that don’t really understand culture. And then you know, but I’ve worked with entrepreneurs have nailed it, and then vice versa, right? I think it’s really understanding what is culture? What does that mean? And it means something different to everyone. And that’s okay. But it’s like, what do you want to create? And what does that look like? And really being intentional in all of your hiring to line that up? So I think that we misunderstand culture. And we think that’s what culture is, right? We think culture is time off. And yeah, like beer Friday, and different things like that, when really culture is how do you want people to feel about working for your organization?

Tyler Martin 11:15
Yeah, I love that. That’s great. You said something a little bit earlier, too. So we’re going down this path. Okay. So we get our vision down, we lay out some processes, how do we ensure that that salesperson is successful? Because the other area that I see sometimes, and you said it so well, in another podcast, I listened to you, you talked about training, like we just expect, like we’re gonna put people in the seat, make your 50 calls a day, and here’s a brochure on our product, and get your five sales a month and leave me alone type thing? How do we avoid that? Can you can you fill in some of those blanks?

Ryann Dowdy 11:51
Does anybody else know like, How absurd that sounds? Like? Why can’t Why is this person not successful? And we treat them this way?

Tyler Martin 11:57
And it’s kind of true, right? I mean, it to some degree, right? I mean, yeah, it’s crazy, right? Totally true. Yeah.

Ryann Dowdy 12:03
So you know, how do we ensure people are gonna be successful? So I think the first thing is Tyler is let’s just like rip the band aid off that you’re gonna get it wrong sometimes. Right? Like not every hire anywhere, again, anywhere in your company is you’re going to nail the first time typically, I think the data says it’s like up to five hires to find like your long term like, right or die people in almost every rule in your company, role in your company. So that’s the first thing is we need to stop feeling like, oh, because I can’t hire a good salesperson or the people that I’ve hired aren’t a good fit or didn’t work out that there are no good salespeople that you’re bad for some reason, like I hear a lot of drama like and typically it is vilifying the salespeople, right? The number one thing is I hear from entrepreneurs and business owners that salespeople suck. And I’m like, nobody wakes up every morning and wants to suck like nobody’s like, hey, you know, I think it’d be really crappy at my job today, especially Jabra, their compensation is tied to their performance. So I think that we need to make that shift and take responsibility for what am I doing to set this person up for success, and really looking at it from that lens. So having a metrics and KPIs based way to measure success is really important. Because the data does tell us Tyler that it can take nine to 12 months for somebody to be at 100% capacity, meaning if your goal is that this person closes 10 deals every single day or every single month, that they’re not going to do that until they’ve been there for nine to 12 months. And I’m not saying that they’re not going to close any business in their first nine months on the job. But they’re not going to be at 100% capacity. So we need to decide what are the benchmarks? What are the goalposts? What does success look like other than revenue, because if all we do is measure revenue or sales, we have no way to train to coach to manage to help increase performance in any way. And I made this mistake early on as a manager in my corporate career and try really hard not to make it as an entrepreneur. But I do sometimes, where we just manage outcomes, and we don’t manage activity. And so I think the number one way that we can determine is this person getting it is to have really specific metrics and KPIs in place. So we can see, are they improving? Are they getting it? Are they moving faster? Or are they making like you said, 50 calls and they’re getting nowhere, right? Like, we need to know that because obviously something is wrong. If somebody else can make 50 calls and schedule three appointments, right? So what’s the disconnect? What went on in those 50 calls? Are they calling the right people? Are they saying the right thing, but we don’t know any of those things unless we manage and this is I think entrepreneurs biggest challenge Tyler and I have not yet figured out how to overcome it is once you start hiring a salesperson you then become sales manager and you don’t want to let go of that role too quickly.

Tyler Martin 14:40
Yeah, and you say so many cool things so the whole you’re opening about you’re not going to hit home right every time like setting that expectation cuz I think I think people expect and this is hiring in general, like you can do you know all your due diligence, you can really think you got just the right person and sometimes just it’s not it’s is not the right fit and doesn’t make the person bad. It doesn’t make the organization bad. What does make a bad is if you don’t you don’t deal with it, or you don’t deal with it effectively in terms of setting expectations and clarity of communication, but so that that really resonates with me. You mentioned metrics. So you got this business owner that wants to get out of the weeds being the only sales producer. And now that we brought on a salesperson, we’ve gone through the vetting process, we got clear vision culture, got that dialed in, we’ve got some basic of a training plan in place. How do you if you don’t really because you said something really smart, you said, Well, if you have 50 calls as a benchmark, and someone else is doing that, you do have some data that you can kind of, you know, scrub it against? What do you do when you don’t have that data, though? Or you don’t really have established metrics, any philosophies on that? Or how do you approach that?

Ryann Dowdy 15:50
Yeah, you make them up. I’m serious. It’s trial and error. You know, like, all of a sudden, we think, because we’re hiring a person that we should know all the answers, but like, when you started, you didn’t know the answers, right? You didn’t know you were like, I’m just gonna do I’m just gonna go get dirty and screw things up and try and then it happens, or it doesn’t happen, right? So for me, it’s start with a baseline, but try to back into it using averages. Right. So again, if the goal is a sale a week, and we know that an inexperienced sales rep is probably going to close at 25%, you know, so they need at least four sales calls to get their one sale call sale a week, right? So then how many people do they need to talk to you to book for sales calls, right, and then we have to just adjust, we might decide, oh, it’s, it’s 50. And then we’re like, 50 is not enough, we actually need to talk to 100. Because we get, you know, we get 80 voicemails, you know, we get 10 people to go fly a kite, we talked to 10. And then four of them will actually take the meeting. But in the beginning, it’s literally trial and error. And there is no secret sauce that I know of, other than to use averages, right things like, we learned that you know, 3% of our audience is ready to buy at any given time. So again, if I need three sales and your audience and 100 You know all of those different things, but oftentimes, we’re just working with averages, and then we’re taking the data and fine tuning the data.

Announcer 17:14
If you’re a business owner, feeling stuck in your business overwhelmed responsible for everything that happens and working long hours, Tyler helps his clients develop processes hire high performing team members and better understand their financial metrics and numbers to allow for a more predictable, less hands on business. To schedule a free no pressure consultation, head to think tyler.com and click the Meeting button. Tyler would love to see if he can help you work on your business, not in your business. schedule a consultation today at Think tyler.com Think life think success think business.

Ryann Dowdy 17:51
We learned that, you know 3% of our audience is ready to buy at any given time. So again, if I need three sales and an audience of 100, you know all of those different things. But oftentimes, we’re just working with averages, and then we’re taking the data and fine tuning the data.

Tyler Martin 18:05
Got it? Do you feel the salesperson should have some input into those metrics? Or especially when they’re not fully established? Like? Do you get them involved in that conversation too, when you’re coming up with your first line of metrics? No,

Ryann Dowdy 18:19
no, because it’s human nature. If you put them in control, they’re going to use that control to tell you why it’s not working. Yep. So if I’m in control of the numbers, you can’t tell me I think this or I think that it’s here’s the numbers and then I say okay, well let’s do this. So let’s do that. How is that going? And then adjust from there. So I asked them questions around how they feel they’re doing like, Okay, if you’re good if it’s 50 dials. If that’s the metric, Tyler then how do we feel about 50 dials? How long does it take us to get through 50 dials? What’s the longest part of the process because what I learned in building new sales organization seller that oftentimes the biggest time suck, if they’re doing Legion is actually identifying the leads. It’s not actually the phone calls, the emails, the the outbound messages, the whatever, it’s actually identifying the people. So for me, I’m like, alright, we didn’t get to our number this week. My goal was 50 a day. That’s 250. You only got to 190. Tell me more about that. And I want to know why didn’t get all 250 out? Was it a time issue? Was it identification issue? Was it? You know, they wanted booking three impromptu sales calls. And so that day, I didn’t hit my number, whatever it is, so then I’m just having conversations with why they think they did or didn’t hit those numbers. And then I’m looking for patterns.

Tyler Martin 19:28
So what do you you know, business owner, higher salesperson, they now have these metrics? What should those conversations look like? Are they weekly conversations? Are they turning in their metrics every week? How does that flow work? And is it constant communication of whether you’re hitting them or not? What’s that look

Ryann Dowdy 19:44
like? Sure. Weekly is probably about all you can handle. Okay? And like so run the business at same time. So for us, we do weekly one on ones with our people, and then they fill out their metrics daily, but I look at I look at them weekly. So what I mean by that is that us we just use a Google document every single week, they pop it open, they know what metrics they should be tracking. And they go in and they update them every day. But I don’t really start to look for trends until I have a whole week’s worth of data. Right? So if Tuesday was a light day, I’m not stressed out about that until the end of the week, when I realized we’re off because people, I give my people a lot of flexibility to work in a flow that works best for them. And so you know, I have some people that will spend like Monday is their day where they do a lot of new lead research, they do a lot of hot lead follow up from last week, like that’s their day, but then Tuesday, they get into new and so it just, I let them pick their flow. And so then they can work in averages, and it gives them flexibility to do that. So we talk about it every single weekend, a one on one. And we look at those numbers. And we look at those metrics in general, we also do am and pm check ins with our people, meaning like, Okay, what’s the objective for today? And at the end of the day, what, why tell me what happened, when did or didn’t happen, etc. I’ve done that both in person, like in a zoom environment identical, it’s just like, we’ve used a Slack channel to do that. It really a lot of the times has to do with your bandwidth and your ability to fit those calls in. But I find that the more frequently people feel like they’re being touched base with the more likely they are to stay on track.

Tyler Martin 21:11
Right? Yeah, that communication, I’m sure helps a lot. So let’s say business owner, environment CEO, they’re not going to have be able to do the morning in the afternoon. How do you deal with things like callers reluctance or seller’s reluctance, whatever you want to call it, where people will, you know, often say, Hey, I can’t get ahold of anyone or I, you know, if I call them in the morning, they’re in meetings, I call them in the evening their meetings of a club during the middle of the day, they’re in lunch. How do you like, is it just all about the metrics is like, dude, agenda day got to deliver on these metrics? end of the week, or how do you deal with that? Is it do you kind of say, Hey, this is just reluctance? I’m curious, because these are things that I’ve seen come up and I, how do you handle?

Ryann Dowdy 21:51
Yeah. So for us, and we play a lot on social media, you know, our name our company’s social sellers, Academy, socials what we do, but for us, we we bounce from platform to platform, right? Like, okay, if you can’t get ahold of them on LinkedIn, like, are they on Instagram? You can’t get a hold on. They’re like, are they on Facebook? Have you sent an email? Like, what are? You know? Yeah, I don’t propose that we just bang our head against the wall over and over and over again, and hope that something changes, you know, so for us, it’s varying those touch points. And then it’s also figuring out what’s going into those touch points, right? Because a lot of times people tell me, No, I’m not getting any response. And they’ll tell me their message that they’re sending, because again, we do a lot of outreach on like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and they’ll tell me that they’re not getting any outreach, or they’re not getting a response, I look at their message. And I’m like, dude, would you respond to that? Like, terrible? Right? So sometimes it’s figuring out what is the problem? What is the lack of response? And I’ll help them craft a response, we also look for an average, like 20% response rate. So I’m always looking at that as well. As long as the average is there, I’m not too distraught. But again, if we’re way below average, then we’re having a different conversation than we’re looking at what is the messaging? What is the engagement cadence? You know, how many touch points are you getting through with each lead? That sort of stuff?

Tyler Martin 23:00
Yeah, the name of it’s escaping me. But there’s a great book that talks about all those touch points being so critical to the process of your sales process. So you know, it might be commenting on someone’s LinkedIn post, it might be going on to their Instagram and connecting with them. It might be the phone, it might be email might be text, but all those touch points play in your process of building that engagement relationship. So it sounds like it’s really cool, the way you approach it that way, it definitely probably incrementally improves the odds of having some level of engagement, and hopefully, ultimately, a relationship of sales.

Ryann Dowdy 23:37
And I find it’s really not so much the engagements, or the cadence or the things, it’s the persistence. So I feel like and I don’t know, you can tell me your philosophy on this. As somebody who has any, you know, co founder or CEO and my title on LinkedIn, like, I get a decent amount of outreach, right. And the number of people Tyler that reached out to me once and only once is alarming. alarming. Like, I don’t understand how anybody’s making any money, alarming. And so to me, sometimes just that persistence, we call it professional persistence. But you know, that persistence is such a huge deal. And most people downplay that. They think they have to say something interesting, or they have to be really witty, or they have to be the smartest person and I’m like, first of all, you need to be the most persistent person and you need to always make it about the other person. I think that’s the reason why especially in prospecting, so many people get it so wrong, because they talk about themselves too much. They look at it from a very self serving lens. So oftentimes those touches and that call reluctance is coming from a place of are you making it about yourself, right? Like, that’s why the metrics are also so important, because I want you to tell me like, oh, Tyler never answers the phone. And I’m like, Well, let’s look how many times have we reached out to Tyler and so we’ve reached out to Tyler three times. So yeah, no, Tyler doesn’t trust you enough to take your phone call because most salespeople go away like we’ve trained business owners to not take our calls. Because typically they just don’t take the call two or three times will go away.

Tyler Martin 24:59
True. And you know, there are certain profile people to like, for example, me, I’ll never answer my phone. You could call me a zillion times I will. I won’t even answer the phone for my wife. It’s just I don’t know why I can’t explain it. I don’t know I, I’ll call out I have no problem calling people. But I don’t like to answer the phone. It’s like an interruption to me. But you text me, I’ll respond to you in two seconds, like maybe even one second other than right now with us talking? Sure you do it on LinkedIn, I’ll respond like that. You do it in my Instagram, I’ll respond within a day. So everybody has their own cadence of when they’re going on they’re medium of response. I think that’s another point to what you’re talking about is that, you know, getting different touch points, you kind of also connect with them in the way that they’re most likely going to interact with you. Yeah, that’s a great point. So I do have another question along those lines. Let’s go slowly into social selling. Because you had brought that up. And I’m fascinated by that. Before I asked you about social selling specifically, what about number of touch points? Like, many years ago, 10 years ago, they used to say seven touch points was the normal? I think most recently I heard 12? Do you guys have some diagnostic where you go? Really, you should be a good profile prospect. You should have X number of touch points.

Ryann Dowdy 26:09
The data Yeah, I used to always say 12 to 20. And now the data is 30 to 50. Oh, wow. Okay, because it’s due to the number of messages that we get in any given day, and not messages like DMS messages, just the amount of data we have to sift through, right. Like, from being on social media being overly available being living with the screen that like we just gloss things over. So the data now says 30 to 50. So you asked me before we hit record, and I know you’re gonna ask me later, my favorite book, sales book is fanatical prospecting. Oh, I love that Jeb blood, you wrote that book. And so a lot of my data and my stats are like, I’m a huge fan of Jeb, they, his company does a really great job of doing that research. So that’s where a lot of that comes from. And I actually went to Jeff’s event this year, his outbound event. And that’s, I think, where I got that that data is that that number is increasing. So it was it was 12 to 20, for a little while. And now they’re saying 30 to 50. Totally cold, no brand recognition.

Tyler Martin 27:05
It doesn’t surprise me. I mean, given all the mediums, and to your point, like everybody just glosses over anything. I’m even amazed in my own appointment setting, you know, I’ll get a lead. And I have some helpers that helped me too, in terms of appointment setting. And, you know, we’ll contact someone maybe, like 10 plus times, and this is someone that actually expressed interest. And around that 10th or 15th time, there’ll be like, oh, yeah, sorry, I’ve been super busy. And even at sometimes they even miss appointments, I have to be gentle about this, because I don’t want to just chase my tail. But sometimes, you know, they don’t make the first appointment. If they reach out to me and reschedule it’s no big deal. If they just ghost me, I might try once. But it’s amazing. Just that additional follow up and catching people at the right time. And being in the right place at the right time, does actually lead to client generation, and it’s just his patients, and it’s part of the process. And I agree with you like I always chuckle because I get emails to me a lot I get, you know, when you’re visible on social media, I’m sure that’s true for you, you get so many solicitations. And so many are just like one offs. And it’s like, I kind of feel bad. Like I don’t take time to respond. But I’m kind of like thinking just no chance. It’s not. It’s not gonna work. So social selling, how does that differ from just general sales? Like what What’s your perspective on that? So to

Ryann Dowdy 28:21
me, it’s just the platform. Okay? Right. So inside sales was the phone, outside sales, face to face. Social sales is social media. So to me, it’s just the platform of which we leverage to create connection. To me, that is my definition of social selling. And to me, if we can be omnipresent, like do it. I think a lot of companies feel like it’s gotta be one way or the other, like, Oh, I got a social like, no, what if it ain’t broke? Don’t fix it. But can you add in an additional touchpoint, and additional way to get people’s attention and additional way to expose people to your brand, by leveraging that social media touchpoint as well. So for us, our primary training tool is like how to how to do it on social media. But how do we teach you how to connect with somebody on social media? I would suggest you do it the exact same way on the phone. Right? Don’t call people and vomit on them and tell them how bright you are. And like all the other things, right? Like, it’s the exact same process. It’s just what medium are you using to create connection?

Tyler Martin 29:19
Do you feel with COVID? In particular, now we’re coming out of COVID? A lot of things move to zoom, as opposed to in person meetings when when it made sense. And when it was that type of business where they used to be in person meetings. What’s your take on that? Like, is it still good to stay in a zoom environment? Obviously, it’s more efficient. Do you feel that you lose some level of personal touch in doing that? Do you have any clients in that situation and how do you advise them?

Ryann Dowdy 29:43
I think it just totally depends upon the product, the service, the clients, the price point. I mean, I think there’s a lot of factors. I think there are some people Tyler that’ll never go back to nearly as much face to face as they did previously. But I do think or I also think that sales processes have changed. So again, thinking through like your really big enterprise sales used to be a lot of in person, like my guess is now you can probably get your first 234 touches your, you know, your different stakeholder meetings done via zoom. And then your in person meeting, you have all the players at the table, right? Where previously it was like, oh, in person meeting with this stakeholder, the stakeholder, the stakeholder, the stakeholder, remember at the table. So I think that there’s probably some nuances there. I think that people especially right now are really craving that human to human connection. I know me, like I make anytime you can make there’s an event can I go? But, I mean, I think it’s gonna be about I think my my very unofficial hypothesis is that it balances out right that it’s still people still live in person, the people who live in person live in person, the people who don’t want and we just have to kind of ebb and flow based on our clients and what they tell us they want.

Tyler Martin 30:47
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So you already gave me your book. So I don’t know if by chance you have to have another book in line. I’d love to know if you do Jobs got a whole series. I love reading his books. He’s, you know, I don’t know, does this name Jeffrey Gitomer, Does that ring a bell to you? He was kind of like in my day, like the kind of probably Jeb blunt equivalent. So that’s kind of my big one that goes from the past. Is there anybody else that kind of really resonates with you?

Ryann Dowdy 31:12
You know, from a sales author perspective, Jeff’s kind of my go to but like, I actually saw General Jeffrey Gitomer was the keynote at a sales conference for a company I worked for, like back in 2012. Yeah.

Tyler Martin 31:24
Yeah, I don’t know, does he even I’ve even seen his name like he used to, he had all these little books of sales, different topics. And he used to see one like every year, this was quite a few years ago, but I don’t think he’s had a published book, or at least not one that I’ve seen in a long time.

Ryann Dowdy 31:38
Not that I’ve seen. I mean, he’s still around, like, I’m still on his email list. He’s still I think he does a lot of like, courses and coaching and stuff like that. I haven’t seen a book in a while from him. But other books, you know, I really do like, Brian Tracy is the psychology of selling. Yeah,

Tyler Martin 31:55
he’s a classic.

Ryann Dowdy 31:56
That’s a good one that I recommend to a lot of people, what my sales team and I spend a lot of time reading though, as we dig around a lot in mindset. So like right now they’re reading The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. And the next book will probably read is the magic of thinking big, you know, the How to sales really doesn’t vary too much from person to person. Any perspectives always great. So we’re probably two or three like really, mindset perception style books before and then to one tactical when we do like book clubs.

Tyler Martin 32:24
Yeah, I’m so glad you brought that up. Because mindset to me is cool. Like, don’t get me wrong. Like I think it has a place in almost every area of business. I don’t really focus on it heavily in my own personal coaching. But it is the one area where I will say sales, you really do have to condition your mind from a mindset standpoint. And I’ll give you an example. I had recently a client asked me to meet with their salesperson because he was struggling. And so we sat down and met and what I quickly realized is this guy was giving like a label to every prospect. So he’d called one prospect to looky loo, and another one, a tire kicker. And another one, I forget what the word was for, but they were cheap. You know, they weren’t gonna pay the fee, basically. So he was immediately labeling every prospect. And to me, that’s mindset like the dude going in with like a losing attitude. What’s your thoughts on that? Because I think this is a huge topic for sales.

Ryann Dowdy 33:17
Yeah, I mean, I think mindset is, is literally the difference between success and failure in sales. Because it is I mean, it’s the prejudgment is the thing, it’s the belief is a really, really, really big thing. I think it’s actually a lot of money mindset, which I did not know, until many years later, when I realized that yeah, oftentimes people that think that what you sell is expensive, really struggle to sell it, right? Because they believe the prospects when the prospect says, oh, you know, Tyler, this sounds really great, but I just can’t afford to invest right now. They’re like me, I mean, either, you know, so if that level, like I think it’s it’s all mindset, and taking it one step further, it’s almost emotional. Who said this recently, I don’t even know, I consume a lot of content. I’m just a junkie for it. I love it. But it’s the ability to control our emotions, like that’s what we’re really successful at in sales. It’s the ability to make the phone calls, we don’t want to make the phone calls, it’s the ability to have somebody tell us they can’t afford it without getting defensive or panicking, right. So for me, it’s really about that emotional intelligence, that emotional control is where true successes in sales and actually it was it was a Jeb book book. It’s his book objections. And like, if you read through the reviews of that book, a lot of people are mad that there’s no how to overcome objections, because all he’s talking about is like it’s rain, right? Like you have to be practiced enough in your sales process to not freak out when you get an objection.

Tyler Martin 34:37
I’ll have to read that one. I didn’t read that. But that that’s cool, because you’re right, like objections. I thought it was just gonna be like, if someone says it’s too expensive. You say this. And I’m like, I’ve heard that but that’s interesting. I’ll have to check that out. That it is true. It’s even I have to struggle with this. Like I’ll have someone that’s somewhat committed to me. And I fight with like, do I want to call them and hear them say no, but there’s just this mental conditioning, I have to like, kind of get psyched up a little bit and go, You know what we want closure here we want, I want to help them if they’re ready to be helped, cool. If they’re not ready to be helped, that’s cool too. But I want to know, I don’t want to leave them in a situation where I can’t help them. And that’s kind of how I kind of dialed in in my head to get to the point of getting that no, if you will. I mean, hopefully that’s a yes. But I’m totally cognizant and prepared when I make the call that it might be a no and that’s cool. When should we talk again? That’s kind of where I go with that conversation. Yeah, that’s good stuff. Man. You got a lot of wisdom. So hey, I want to before we wrap up here, can you give me a life tip or a business tip that we can apply? You got anything off? Top your head?

Ryann Dowdy 35:39
Yes. My best piece of advice, business life, anything else is really, you know, you’re gonna get a lot farther if you make it about the other person and not yourself. Mm hmm. You know, I think that sales and business is all about service. It’s all about solving problems. It’s all about helping people make decisions. And all of that has nothing to do with me. And it kind of some of the some of the principles of like the How to Win Friends and Influence People, right? Like, you’re never gonna win an argument by arguing with somebody and telling them they’re wrong. It’s just never gonna happen. You know, yeah, I

Tyler Martin 36:11
had a guest not too long ago, just a great guest had a really good story. And one his comments very high, high, very successful commercial real estate salesperson made a ton of money, I think, a billion dollars of profit, a billion dollars of property he sold. And one of his comments was I asked him, I said, You must do when you had a property, you knew probably a six figure check was coming along the way. He must be just had those numbers dialed in, in your head. And he said, you know, Tyler, I never once did the math in my head, like I didn’t even want to know, it was all about helping my client. And so until the deal was done, I didn’t even think about it. And I really believe he was being sincere, that it was really more about getting the client what they needed. And that was good fit, and then the money would drop. Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Hey, so I’ll put these in the show notes. Your main website is daily sales on demand for ceos.com. I’ll say that one more time, daily sales on demand for ceos.com. If there’s anywhere else, someone wanted to reach out to you or connect with you, is there another place you’d like them to do it? Sure.

Ryann Dowdy 37:11
We are obviously as you know, so social selling is kind of our jam. So we’re very active on social ciros. Welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn. And it’s Ryan with two ends dowdy. And we are on Instagram at social sellers Academy. And we’re also at Social Science Academy on Facebook as well.

Tyler Martin 37:27
Awesome. Well, hey, thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and being part of the show. I hope I can have you on again in the future.

Ryann Dowdy 37:33
Awesome. Thanks so much, Tyler. Thank you.

Announcer 37:36
That’s all for this episode of Think business with Tyler. But we have plenty more resources to help you in your pursuit of business excellence on our website at think tyler.com If you’d like to be featured in a future episode of the show, feel free to reach out to us on social media at think underscore Tyler, we look forward to helping you think life think success and think business

Transcribed by https://otter.ai