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What's up everyone? This is Mary Larsen and you're listening to the audio entrepreneur. I spent the last year and half doing podcasts and content creation for some of the fastest growing entrepreneurs today.
Their strategies and tests have been life changing once I took action, so I decided to take my audio industry to the next level by building a seven figure company that teaches people how to create, strategize, and repurpose their content like a throw. The question so new people are wondering is how is she going to do it?
This podcast is here to give you the answers. Join me as I explained marketing strategies to grow my online business. My name is Marie Larsen. And Welcome to the audio entrepreneur.
Marie Larsen: 00:00 Yo, what's up everyone in here? I'm excited because today I have a friend of mine who is really, really good at selling. Now a lot of you, you might be laughing and say, well, Marie, if you're in the digital marketing space, aren't you just naturally good at selling in? The answer is no, you are not. Um, there's actually an art form to it and I'm excited because today I have justin on here with me. Now Justin is a rockstar because he has gone through and really figured out how to sell and do it really well. You need to know your customers really well and know exactly how to sell and what's going to appeal to them and overdeliver like crazy. Now I'm, I was a long intro. Sorry Justin. But I'm so excited to have you on here. If you want to just jump in and introduce yourself to us a little bit, how you got started into all of this, that would be awesome.
Justin Stephens: 00:46 Good morning everybody. My name is Justin. How I got started in sales. So a little bit about me. I run a Samar training franchise here in Meridian Idaho. So we help people who are frustrated where they are, they want to get to that next level, but they're not quite sure how and we do it through giving them the process and the tools they need to communicate better because that's all sales. As sales as simply communicating, you have to get it out there, so you got to figure out how can I communicate without building barriers? Because too often this is what salespeople do. They come in and they think, in order for me to convince you to buy my crap, which most of your stuff is crap. People do not care about you. What they care about is how you can help them. So when you go into an appointment, a meeting, when you're building out your funnel, all of that, if you're talking about your crap, they are not listening. You've got to be talking to them. Sales is incredibly emotional. Nobody. Nobody makes a decision intellectually. They justify their decisions intellectually. Your selling, you have to figure out how to get them emotionally involved, emotionally involved, and you're not selling your features and benefits.
Marie Larsen: 02:23 Yeah, I have. I agree with that so much. I think of some of the big purchases or big investments that I've made, even the little ones, right? I'm hungry. I buy the Kit Kat bar or I don't want to be before I buy. Did you come club x coaching? Right? And so whatever it is, like a, it's more of the wants then understanding the needs. Right? And a lot of, um, a lot of sellers out there don't understand how emotionally we buy as customers. And we got through it and we emotionally buy like crazy. I can't tell you how many times I have jumped in and bought something because, um, I ice cream because of a breakup or something, whatever it is I emotionally bought, right? And I do that all the time and it's fantastic. And I am so grateful to understand that that is a part of selling. Now, as you've gone through and tried to figure out selling a little bit, um, what tricks and tips would you give to people as they go through and try and figure out how they could sell better? Um, so that it's not just that they're, you know, out there trying, trying all these different tricks and tips from all these people, from someone who is an expert in their field in selling. Um, how would you advise people to go about doing that?
Justin Stephens: 03:34 So the first thing you have to do, the first thing you have to do to become great at sales is stop trying to sell people.
Marie Larsen: 03:45 Yeah,
Justin Stephens: 03:47 there's only one person qualified to actually sell someone. And that's the prospect. That's the person looking to make a purchasing decision. So when you go in and you're talking about how great your stuff is, you're talking about the widgets and just the different stuff that comes with your program. What you're doing is your just telling features and benefits. If you really want to get great at sales, you've got to become a master at asking questions. Thing for any salesperson to do is ask great questions. And honestly you can come up with probably probably between 25 and 30 questions and just ask those over and over again. Don't. You don't need to be a unique because what happens is people get engaged emotionally when you're asking questions because everybody has this one radio station playing in their mind every time. This station, it's pretty amazing what's in it for me.
Justin Stephens: 05:05 That's what everybody is thinking about. So when you go in and say, Hey, I'm awesome, I've got this sales process and it's amazing and people tune out. It's like, I don't give a rip. I know stuff, but when you go in and say something like, I help people who are frustrated, they have a great product, I just don't know how to get it across the finish line when it comes to a sales role, more engaging, right? More engaging about them. They can mentally put themselves in those shoes and say, yeah, I do have a product and yeah, it should be easier than that. Right?
Marie Larsen: 05:48 Absolutely. Yeah, and I, I have to say that there have been times where I have thought that I know exactly what the customer wants, you know, and I think I know what they want. I'm going to create it because this is going to solve their problem. When in all actuality, I didn't go through and ask them what they wanted or what they needed by going through for myself and figuring that out. I was better able to sell my, not that you're trying to sell people, but I was better to sell my products and services to someone because I figured out what their pain points were and what specifically would be of most benefit to them of most value and what they would pay top dollar for. As soon as I figured that out, that's when I started to make money. Right. It wasn't beforehand when I went through and just said, I think so and so wants this, and I think so, and someone says, no. I went and I asked them what they wanted and as soon as I did that, it completely was a game changer and people came to buy from me rather than me trying to sell to them.
Justin Stephens: 06:44 Yeah. It's more rewarding that way too. Right. They're super excited. They're like, you are solving this problem for me. Right.
Marie Larsen: 07:07 Money. I guess. Actually I want it back in a month.
Justin Stephens: 07:11 Exactly. That's when you start getting chargebacks. That's when you start getting returns and not about the problems you solve.
Marie Larsen: 07:25 Absolutely. Now going off of that, I'm segwaying. I wanted to ask you a little bit about your customer service area and how you go through and help people when they need help with customer service and how to build out better support teams and everything like that because there have been some support teams where they're just awful and I've left products or services or whatever, just because their, uh, their customer service was awful and I was not getting the help that I needed. Um, and so what suggestions would you give to people to go through and build out better customer service?
Justin Stephens: 08:04 Great question. So when it comes to customer service, people get stuck in trying to be right. So I think it was Steven Cubby said, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care and when you create a customer support team that is centered around how do I be right, how do I prove that the customer was wrong? It was not my service, it was not the product, it was urine idiot. When that's what your customer service is centered on, right? We've all called places like a table one direct TV, plug your line forever, so you got to. When it, when it comes to building your customer service team out, you've got to realize that the number one thing, and by the way an angry customer is a gift. It is a gift that you have an issue that you can solve, right? Most angry customers do not tell you. They just never show up and tell everyone else.
Marie Larsen: 09:15 Yup. It's interesting that you said that. I did a podcast episode just awhile back called Psi love my haters group and um, people, I got a lot of flak. All of a sudden as I started getting my voice out there, people started to get into my products and my services, everything like that. And I had majority of people say, I love you Marie. This is awesome. And then I had that small percentage that, you know, just had a little tiff with me or something. Right? And so I started getting messages on facebook and all this kind of stuff. And at first it hit me really hard, like Dang it, like there's this small little percentage of individuals that don't like me, like this stinks, you know, like I must not be doing my stuff right. I must be awful. And I really, really had a hard time with it.
Marie Larsen: 09:59 Um, but eventually, um, I came to the conclusion, I started asking some other influencers that I have within my circle and they said, Marie, this is awesome. Congratulations. And I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, people don't like me right now. Like, what does that mean? And they're like, yeah, but you have, you know, 97 percent of your customers and clients and stuff like that, love you. And that three percent, don't boo hoo, that stinks for you. But Marie, how great is that? You literally have a roadmap of people, the ones that are coming back to you or saying, Hey Marie, I don't like what you're doing. I don't like this, but I care enough about you to tell you what I don't like. And that to me was huge in order to understand. That's right. People, people who are going to come back and reach back out to me and tell me specifically what they didn't like about my products, my services or whatever. That's actually a gift for me to know exactly how I'm supposed to improve in the future and that was a huge lesson for me and so that podcast absolutely episode actually skyrocketed and did so well and people are like, yes, you love your haters group. And I was like, yes, I love them. Thank you so much for hating me enough, but loving me enough to come back and tell me what to improve on.
Justin Stephens: 11:05 Right, right. That's awesome. Because again, if you don't know, you can't do anything about it. We have A. Okay. Not Okay scale. Okay. In general humans, I think it's like 98 percent of us humans want to be more okay than the next guy, right? We in our head, we want to feel more okay about our lives. Then their lives. When people call in to a customer service center, a lot of times what happens is the customer service rep has been trained to not take it personally and they've been trained to not let it be the company's fault and when that it makes the customer service rep more than the customer is why things escalate. That's why they're shouting. That's why we've seen that person got drug out of the plane. It's because of how they handled it. It's not the fact that it happened. Anything can happen. It's all in. How do you communicate it?
Justin Stephens: 12:18 Communicate it. So in customer service, the most important thing to do is take lane. So when someone calls and says, Justin, you're ridiculous. You're, you're the stupidest person on the planet. I don't say no, no, no, wait, you just didn't hear me right? Oh my gosh, I am so sorry. That must be awful, right? I go negative, which is the opposite of what people expect and it extinguishes the fire a lot quicker, so much faster. You've got to constantly be aware of are they okay or not okay and if you have to become more not okay than they are because that's how they judge. They judge it based on you, based on everybody they're talking to. That's where they judge. Okay, not okay at becoming not okay. And it brings me back. This is, oh my gosh, can I get into a topic that is huge but can be very difficult of everything we trained. This is my favorite and I think the most important topic that we train and we call it identity role theory, identity. Your identity as a person. That's who you are. So Marie, I'm. This is a trap exercise, but who are you? Tell me who you are.
Marie Larsen: 13:50 Uh, my name is Marie and I'm from Denver, Colorado. Um, I have six siblings in total. There are six of us. Um, I do digital marketing online. I don't know, that's like the baby basics. I mean that's who I am.
Justin Stephens: 14:10 That was awesome. It's a great example. So again, I said it was a trap. I worry about this at all. So identity, who she is, that's actually not who you are, what you listed, our roles, those are roles you feel you feel fill a role as a sister, as a daughter, as a podcast, as a digital marketer, right? These are all different roles, but who you are is different. When you were born on a scale of one to 10, you just, you were just born. What's your value? One is worthless. 10 is amazing.
Marie Larsen: 14:51 I mean
Justin Stephens: 14:52 in this, the roles of society, I am very dependent, right? As a baby. But as being, um, the role of a child to my parents, I was everything. Oh, you can do as group and scream. You're the most wonderful thing in the world. As we grow up, our value gets tied up or our identity gets tied up into what we do. So we start thinking about what we do in terms of our role in sales, our role as a father, our role as a mother or a sister or brother. Our role as a swimmer, a golfer that becomes our identity. Have you ever heard of people? They go and retire and then die out there. Their identity is so tied up in the role they play at work that when they retire, they lose their will to live. It's all subconscious, but you got to figure out how can I separate who I am as a person from what I do? Because as long as your identity is tied up in your role, if you fail in a role, you fail as a person and you will never be successful. You'll never take the risks you need in order to be successful,
Marie Larsen: 16:20 so your identity to that role then
Justin Stephens: 16:23 so you've got to shift your identity to the fact that you without any role at all, are awesome. On a scale of one to 10, you're a 10. No matter what. You can be a crappy digital marketer. You can be a crappy podcast, you can be a crappy friend, but you're still attend. You're still awesome because you were made in God's image. Your image. You have to do nothing to be amazing. You just. But we get so tied up in what we do and we tie what we do to who we are, that when we go out and we try something and fail, it ruins their lives. So once, once you can figure that out, it's so much easier to risk because now the risk doesn't make you a failure. You just failed at a role.
Marie Larsen: 17:19 No, no, no. I can't agree more with what Justin is saying. A lot of us do have these identity crisis, crisis, crisis. And I am so grateful for this conversation because guys, there have been so many times and a lot of, you know, that I am going to school, I am running my business. I'm, I'm still trying to have a normal college kid social life, which doesn't happen as much, but I am trying to do all these things at once and um, this is a good conversation for me. So more than anything, this is good conversation for me. I'm sure it will benefit others as well, but there have been times where I have identified my worst to the things that I'm doing. And um, and that's not true guys. Making sure that you know that 10 out of 10, that no matter what, no matter what you do, no matter what goes on in your life, that you're always going to be awesome, that you're gonna kill it.
Marie Larsen: 18:14 You're going to, you're going to be doing awesome things no matter what. And so make sure guys in this next little bit that you understand, you are not identifying what you do with your work. That is not the identity that you need to have. You need to be pushing directly to who you are and that you were at 10 a once upon a time when you were a baby and that's still to this day, although less, you know, you babyish or still awesome, you know, so I love it. That's so good. Now as people are going through and listening to Justin, what are some of the best places for them to find out more information about you so that they can not only have this identity, I guess this shift as well, but being able to learn how to sell a better to there or I guess find better buyers who want to buy. Um, and be a, you know, better at selling out to them where some of the best places for them to find your content and information.
Justin Stephens: 19:13 I'd love to connect with you guys on facebook or Linkedin. My name is Justin Stephens. Stevens is spelled with a Ph. connect with me. I tend to jump around and be kind of crazy on my videos. So for me, I don't know about anybody else.
Marie Larsen: 19:35 I love watching your videos on facebook. I always kills me because I was watch everyone's facebook stuff on like, you know, three times speed and then you're already going crazy already. So then it's like the energizer bunny, you know, and just like going crazy. It's so fun and a little bit.
Justin Stephens: 19:52 I've never heard of a couple of people who watch it without sound
Marie Larsen: 20:00 for sure.
Justin Stephens: 20:03 Three times speed. So that's a great way to connect with me. Ask any questions, I'm happy to answer them. You can visit our website, which is https://www.crossroads.sandler.com/. We actually have an event coming up November 15th, one day bootcamp, and in this one day bootcamp, what we're gonna do is we're going to go over the entire selling process that we teach our clients, so it's actually pretty interesting.
Traditional sales is you go in and you first start by qualifying, you qualify based off whatever the prospect is telling you after you qualify. Now you your solution to their whatever they've told you, their pain, their issue, and then you try to close the business.
So in Sandler, what we're going to teach you is we teach you to qualify, but you qualify on three very specific things. First, you've got to qualify on paint. If they do not have a compelling reason to take action, chances are they won't and they probably shouldn't.
So if they don't have pain, it's not gonna go anywhere...
The next thing we qualify on, we call it budget and the financial investment, but it's also the time investment. It takes a lot of time to, let's say you're selling a software. Anybody ever changed software platforms? That's fun, right?
Justin Stephens: 21:34 It takes time. It takes time to change these things so you've got to qualify not just on are they willing to invest the money, but also are they willing to invest the time, energy, the resources needed in order to make it as successful change thing we qualify on is the decision making process. The decision making process is not getting a yes or no decision. It's about how do they make decisions? Who's involved? Where does it happen? Is there a board of directors? Is it going to be next Thursday, next Monday, all of that information. Once you have those three in the sandler process, now we're going to close. We're going to close on. We have a solution that solves their problem. We're going to close on our solution, fits within their budget, and we're closing on our solution will work with their decision making process. After that, the natural conclusion is let's do a presentation and move forward. Takes all the pressure off of you as the salesperson because you don't deserve any pressure your purchase. It's then making the purchase. Quit making it hard on yourself.
Marie Larsen: 22:52 Oh, I love it. It's so good and so true. Now, so okay, so they can find you on facebook, your website and guys for this event, I'll be sure to put it in the blog as well so that you guys can go and make sure that you can jump in November 15th is when the event is so that you can jump in and really understand this selling process. It is so crucial. If you don't understand the art of selling, you're not going to be able to make the money that you're looking for within your company. It's just, that's how it is. And so there is an art and a science to selling for sure. Um, so make sure to check that out. Anyway, Justin, thank you so much for jumping on here with me. I really appreciate it. Um, and make sure to shoe over all of those links over to me and we're so excited to hear all about the good stuff that you're going to do. We appreciate it.
Justin Stephens: 23:41 Marie, thank you so much for having me. You are a gracious host and freaking awesome.
Marie Larsen: 23:48 Well, thank you. Have a good one.
Don't forget to rate and subscribe. Do you have questions for me? Go to the facebook group, profitable podcasting strategies https://www.facebook.com/groups/PodcastingStrategies/?ref=br_rs , and I'll be sure to do an episode to answer your next question. Again guys. My name is Marie Larsen, the audio entrepreneur.
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By Marie Larsen
Click Above To Listen In iTunes...
What's up everyone? This is Mary Larsen and you're listening to the audio entrepreneur. I spent the last year and half doing podcasts and content creation for some of the fastest growing entrepreneurs today.
Their strategies and tests have been life changing once I took action, so I decided to take my audio industry to the next level by building a seven figure company that teaches people how to create, strategize, and repurpose their content like a throw. The question so new people are wondering is how is she going to do it?
This podcast is here to give you the answers. Join me as I explained marketing strategies to grow my online business. My name is Marie Larsen. And Welcome to the audio entrepreneur.
Marie Larsen: 00:00 Yo, what's up everyone in here? I'm excited because today I have a friend of mine who is really, really good at selling. Now a lot of you, you might be laughing and say, well, Marie, if you're in the digital marketing space, aren't you just naturally good at selling in? The answer is no, you are not. Um, there's actually an art form to it and I'm excited because today I have justin on here with me. Now Justin is a rockstar because he has gone through and really figured out how to sell and do it really well. You need to know your customers really well and know exactly how to sell and what's going to appeal to them and overdeliver like crazy. Now I'm, I was a long intro. Sorry Justin. But I'm so excited to have you on here. If you want to just jump in and introduce yourself to us a little bit, how you got started into all of this, that would be awesome.
Justin Stephens: 00:46 Good morning everybody. My name is Justin. How I got started in sales. So a little bit about me. I run a Samar training franchise here in Meridian Idaho. So we help people who are frustrated where they are, they want to get to that next level, but they're not quite sure how and we do it through giving them the process and the tools they need to communicate better because that's all sales. As sales as simply communicating, you have to get it out there, so you got to figure out how can I communicate without building barriers? Because too often this is what salespeople do. They come in and they think, in order for me to convince you to buy my crap, which most of your stuff is crap. People do not care about you. What they care about is how you can help them. So when you go into an appointment, a meeting, when you're building out your funnel, all of that, if you're talking about your crap, they are not listening. You've got to be talking to them. Sales is incredibly emotional. Nobody. Nobody makes a decision intellectually. They justify their decisions intellectually. Your selling, you have to figure out how to get them emotionally involved, emotionally involved, and you're not selling your features and benefits.
Marie Larsen: 02:23 Yeah, I have. I agree with that so much. I think of some of the big purchases or big investments that I've made, even the little ones, right? I'm hungry. I buy the Kit Kat bar or I don't want to be before I buy. Did you come club x coaching? Right? And so whatever it is, like a, it's more of the wants then understanding the needs. Right? And a lot of, um, a lot of sellers out there don't understand how emotionally we buy as customers. And we got through it and we emotionally buy like crazy. I can't tell you how many times I have jumped in and bought something because, um, I ice cream because of a breakup or something, whatever it is I emotionally bought, right? And I do that all the time and it's fantastic. And I am so grateful to understand that that is a part of selling. Now, as you've gone through and tried to figure out selling a little bit, um, what tricks and tips would you give to people as they go through and try and figure out how they could sell better? Um, so that it's not just that they're, you know, out there trying, trying all these different tricks and tips from all these people, from someone who is an expert in their field in selling. Um, how would you advise people to go about doing that?
Justin Stephens: 03:34 So the first thing you have to do, the first thing you have to do to become great at sales is stop trying to sell people.
Marie Larsen: 03:45 Yeah,
Justin Stephens: 03:47 there's only one person qualified to actually sell someone. And that's the prospect. That's the person looking to make a purchasing decision. So when you go in and you're talking about how great your stuff is, you're talking about the widgets and just the different stuff that comes with your program. What you're doing is your just telling features and benefits. If you really want to get great at sales, you've got to become a master at asking questions. Thing for any salesperson to do is ask great questions. And honestly you can come up with probably probably between 25 and 30 questions and just ask those over and over again. Don't. You don't need to be a unique because what happens is people get engaged emotionally when you're asking questions because everybody has this one radio station playing in their mind every time. This station, it's pretty amazing what's in it for me.
Justin Stephens: 05:05 That's what everybody is thinking about. So when you go in and say, Hey, I'm awesome, I've got this sales process and it's amazing and people tune out. It's like, I don't give a rip. I know stuff, but when you go in and say something like, I help people who are frustrated, they have a great product, I just don't know how to get it across the finish line when it comes to a sales role, more engaging, right? More engaging about them. They can mentally put themselves in those shoes and say, yeah, I do have a product and yeah, it should be easier than that. Right?
Marie Larsen: 05:48 Absolutely. Yeah, and I, I have to say that there have been times where I have thought that I know exactly what the customer wants, you know, and I think I know what they want. I'm going to create it because this is going to solve their problem. When in all actuality, I didn't go through and ask them what they wanted or what they needed by going through for myself and figuring that out. I was better able to sell my, not that you're trying to sell people, but I was better to sell my products and services to someone because I figured out what their pain points were and what specifically would be of most benefit to them of most value and what they would pay top dollar for. As soon as I figured that out, that's when I started to make money. Right. It wasn't beforehand when I went through and just said, I think so and so wants this, and I think so, and someone says, no. I went and I asked them what they wanted and as soon as I did that, it completely was a game changer and people came to buy from me rather than me trying to sell to them.
Justin Stephens: 06:44 Yeah. It's more rewarding that way too. Right. They're super excited. They're like, you are solving this problem for me. Right.
Marie Larsen: 07:07 Money. I guess. Actually I want it back in a month.
Justin Stephens: 07:11 Exactly. That's when you start getting chargebacks. That's when you start getting returns and not about the problems you solve.
Marie Larsen: 07:25 Absolutely. Now going off of that, I'm segwaying. I wanted to ask you a little bit about your customer service area and how you go through and help people when they need help with customer service and how to build out better support teams and everything like that because there have been some support teams where they're just awful and I've left products or services or whatever, just because their, uh, their customer service was awful and I was not getting the help that I needed. Um, and so what suggestions would you give to people to go through and build out better customer service?
Justin Stephens: 08:04 Great question. So when it comes to customer service, people get stuck in trying to be right. So I think it was Steven Cubby said, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care and when you create a customer support team that is centered around how do I be right, how do I prove that the customer was wrong? It was not my service, it was not the product, it was urine idiot. When that's what your customer service is centered on, right? We've all called places like a table one direct TV, plug your line forever, so you got to. When it, when it comes to building your customer service team out, you've got to realize that the number one thing, and by the way an angry customer is a gift. It is a gift that you have an issue that you can solve, right? Most angry customers do not tell you. They just never show up and tell everyone else.
Marie Larsen: 09:15 Yup. It's interesting that you said that. I did a podcast episode just awhile back called Psi love my haters group and um, people, I got a lot of flak. All of a sudden as I started getting my voice out there, people started to get into my products and my services, everything like that. And I had majority of people say, I love you Marie. This is awesome. And then I had that small percentage that, you know, just had a little tiff with me or something. Right? And so I started getting messages on facebook and all this kind of stuff. And at first it hit me really hard, like Dang it, like there's this small little percentage of individuals that don't like me, like this stinks, you know, like I must not be doing my stuff right. I must be awful. And I really, really had a hard time with it.
Marie Larsen: 09:59 Um, but eventually, um, I came to the conclusion, I started asking some other influencers that I have within my circle and they said, Marie, this is awesome. Congratulations. And I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, people don't like me right now. Like, what does that mean? And they're like, yeah, but you have, you know, 97 percent of your customers and clients and stuff like that, love you. And that three percent, don't boo hoo, that stinks for you. But Marie, how great is that? You literally have a roadmap of people, the ones that are coming back to you or saying, Hey Marie, I don't like what you're doing. I don't like this, but I care enough about you to tell you what I don't like. And that to me was huge in order to understand. That's right. People, people who are going to come back and reach back out to me and tell me specifically what they didn't like about my products, my services or whatever. That's actually a gift for me to know exactly how I'm supposed to improve in the future and that was a huge lesson for me and so that podcast absolutely episode actually skyrocketed and did so well and people are like, yes, you love your haters group. And I was like, yes, I love them. Thank you so much for hating me enough, but loving me enough to come back and tell me what to improve on.
Justin Stephens: 11:05 Right, right. That's awesome. Because again, if you don't know, you can't do anything about it. We have A. Okay. Not Okay scale. Okay. In general humans, I think it's like 98 percent of us humans want to be more okay than the next guy, right? We in our head, we want to feel more okay about our lives. Then their lives. When people call in to a customer service center, a lot of times what happens is the customer service rep has been trained to not take it personally and they've been trained to not let it be the company's fault and when that it makes the customer service rep more than the customer is why things escalate. That's why they're shouting. That's why we've seen that person got drug out of the plane. It's because of how they handled it. It's not the fact that it happened. Anything can happen. It's all in. How do you communicate it?
Justin Stephens: 12:18 Communicate it. So in customer service, the most important thing to do is take lane. So when someone calls and says, Justin, you're ridiculous. You're, you're the stupidest person on the planet. I don't say no, no, no, wait, you just didn't hear me right? Oh my gosh, I am so sorry. That must be awful, right? I go negative, which is the opposite of what people expect and it extinguishes the fire a lot quicker, so much faster. You've got to constantly be aware of are they okay or not okay and if you have to become more not okay than they are because that's how they judge. They judge it based on you, based on everybody they're talking to. That's where they judge. Okay, not okay at becoming not okay. And it brings me back. This is, oh my gosh, can I get into a topic that is huge but can be very difficult of everything we trained. This is my favorite and I think the most important topic that we train and we call it identity role theory, identity. Your identity as a person. That's who you are. So Marie, I'm. This is a trap exercise, but who are you? Tell me who you are.
Marie Larsen: 13:50 Uh, my name is Marie and I'm from Denver, Colorado. Um, I have six siblings in total. There are six of us. Um, I do digital marketing online. I don't know, that's like the baby basics. I mean that's who I am.
Justin Stephens: 14:10 That was awesome. It's a great example. So again, I said it was a trap. I worry about this at all. So identity, who she is, that's actually not who you are, what you listed, our roles, those are roles you feel you feel fill a role as a sister, as a daughter, as a podcast, as a digital marketer, right? These are all different roles, but who you are is different. When you were born on a scale of one to 10, you just, you were just born. What's your value? One is worthless. 10 is amazing.
Marie Larsen: 14:51 I mean
Justin Stephens: 14:52 in this, the roles of society, I am very dependent, right? As a baby. But as being, um, the role of a child to my parents, I was everything. Oh, you can do as group and scream. You're the most wonderful thing in the world. As we grow up, our value gets tied up or our identity gets tied up into what we do. So we start thinking about what we do in terms of our role in sales, our role as a father, our role as a mother or a sister or brother. Our role as a swimmer, a golfer that becomes our identity. Have you ever heard of people? They go and retire and then die out there. Their identity is so tied up in the role they play at work that when they retire, they lose their will to live. It's all subconscious, but you got to figure out how can I separate who I am as a person from what I do? Because as long as your identity is tied up in your role, if you fail in a role, you fail as a person and you will never be successful. You'll never take the risks you need in order to be successful,
Marie Larsen: 16:20 so your identity to that role then
Justin Stephens: 16:23 so you've got to shift your identity to the fact that you without any role at all, are awesome. On a scale of one to 10, you're a 10. No matter what. You can be a crappy digital marketer. You can be a crappy podcast, you can be a crappy friend, but you're still attend. You're still awesome because you were made in God's image. Your image. You have to do nothing to be amazing. You just. But we get so tied up in what we do and we tie what we do to who we are, that when we go out and we try something and fail, it ruins their lives. So once, once you can figure that out, it's so much easier to risk because now the risk doesn't make you a failure. You just failed at a role.
Marie Larsen: 17:19 No, no, no. I can't agree more with what Justin is saying. A lot of us do have these identity crisis, crisis, crisis. And I am so grateful for this conversation because guys, there have been so many times and a lot of, you know, that I am going to school, I am running my business. I'm, I'm still trying to have a normal college kid social life, which doesn't happen as much, but I am trying to do all these things at once and um, this is a good conversation for me. So more than anything, this is good conversation for me. I'm sure it will benefit others as well, but there have been times where I have identified my worst to the things that I'm doing. And um, and that's not true guys. Making sure that you know that 10 out of 10, that no matter what, no matter what you do, no matter what goes on in your life, that you're always going to be awesome, that you're gonna kill it.
Marie Larsen: 18:14 You're going to, you're going to be doing awesome things no matter what. And so make sure guys in this next little bit that you understand, you are not identifying what you do with your work. That is not the identity that you need to have. You need to be pushing directly to who you are and that you were at 10 a once upon a time when you were a baby and that's still to this day, although less, you know, you babyish or still awesome, you know, so I love it. That's so good. Now as people are going through and listening to Justin, what are some of the best places for them to find out more information about you so that they can not only have this identity, I guess this shift as well, but being able to learn how to sell a better to there or I guess find better buyers who want to buy. Um, and be a, you know, better at selling out to them where some of the best places for them to find your content and information.
Justin Stephens: 19:13 I'd love to connect with you guys on facebook or Linkedin. My name is Justin Stephens. Stevens is spelled with a Ph. connect with me. I tend to jump around and be kind of crazy on my videos. So for me, I don't know about anybody else.
Marie Larsen: 19:35 I love watching your videos on facebook. I always kills me because I was watch everyone's facebook stuff on like, you know, three times speed and then you're already going crazy already. So then it's like the energizer bunny, you know, and just like going crazy. It's so fun and a little bit.
Justin Stephens: 19:52 I've never heard of a couple of people who watch it without sound
Marie Larsen: 20:00 for sure.
Justin Stephens: 20:03 Three times speed. So that's a great way to connect with me. Ask any questions, I'm happy to answer them. You can visit our website, which is https://www.crossroads.sandler.com/. We actually have an event coming up November 15th, one day bootcamp, and in this one day bootcamp, what we're gonna do is we're going to go over the entire selling process that we teach our clients, so it's actually pretty interesting.
Traditional sales is you go in and you first start by qualifying, you qualify based off whatever the prospect is telling you after you qualify. Now you your solution to their whatever they've told you, their pain, their issue, and then you try to close the business.
So in Sandler, what we're going to teach you is we teach you to qualify, but you qualify on three very specific things. First, you've got to qualify on paint. If they do not have a compelling reason to take action, chances are they won't and they probably shouldn't.
So if they don't have pain, it's not gonna go anywhere...
The next thing we qualify on, we call it budget and the financial investment, but it's also the time investment. It takes a lot of time to, let's say you're selling a software. Anybody ever changed software platforms? That's fun, right?
Justin Stephens: 21:34 It takes time. It takes time to change these things so you've got to qualify not just on are they willing to invest the money, but also are they willing to invest the time, energy, the resources needed in order to make it as successful change thing we qualify on is the decision making process. The decision making process is not getting a yes or no decision. It's about how do they make decisions? Who's involved? Where does it happen? Is there a board of directors? Is it going to be next Thursday, next Monday, all of that information. Once you have those three in the sandler process, now we're going to close. We're going to close on. We have a solution that solves their problem. We're going to close on our solution, fits within their budget, and we're closing on our solution will work with their decision making process. After that, the natural conclusion is let's do a presentation and move forward. Takes all the pressure off of you as the salesperson because you don't deserve any pressure your purchase. It's then making the purchase. Quit making it hard on yourself.
Marie Larsen: 22:52 Oh, I love it. It's so good and so true. Now, so okay, so they can find you on facebook, your website and guys for this event, I'll be sure to put it in the blog as well so that you guys can go and make sure that you can jump in November 15th is when the event is so that you can jump in and really understand this selling process. It is so crucial. If you don't understand the art of selling, you're not going to be able to make the money that you're looking for within your company. It's just, that's how it is. And so there is an art and a science to selling for sure. Um, so make sure to check that out. Anyway, Justin, thank you so much for jumping on here with me. I really appreciate it. Um, and make sure to shoe over all of those links over to me and we're so excited to hear all about the good stuff that you're going to do. We appreciate it.
Justin Stephens: 23:41 Marie, thank you so much for having me. You are a gracious host and freaking awesome.
Marie Larsen: 23:48 Well, thank you. Have a good one.
Don't forget to rate and subscribe. Do you have questions for me? Go to the facebook group, profitable podcasting strategies https://www.facebook.com/groups/PodcastingStrategies/?ref=br_rs , and I'll be sure to do an episode to answer your next question. Again guys. My name is Marie Larsen, the audio entrepreneur.