The title of today's presentation is How to Build Rejection Armor and Close More Deals. I need to remind you as we get started that everything that we cover today, including but not limited to the text, graphics, images, and content is the property of Exit Success Lab. We have protected this and any unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

If you'd like to have your request for authorized use considered, you reach out to Nicola Gelarmino. Her information is there in blue on the screen. Okay, so our objectives from today's session is to help you understand what it takes to close deals, to desensitize you to potential negative outcomes, and to provide you with a mental framework that you can use to make things happen from a business development, business growth perspective.

Now, the reason that this information is so important and the reason that it's one of the first things that I share with salespeople with whom I work, whether they're part of my team or whether they're clients of mine, is because I would venture to say that 90%, 90% of sales is a battle for who's going to win the day when it comes to convincing people that they should be trusted. Your clients have to give you their trust in order for you to sell something to them. Referral sources have to trust you in order to connect you with prospective clients.

Most of what we're going to talk about today is you breaking down the barriers of distrust between you and the client. I'm going to share with you not only the mental framework, but the exact language you can use in order to do that. What I found over the years is that people are hesitant, resistant to sales and selling for seven specific reasons.

I will include those reasons why most people are resistant to sales and selling. They're also concerned that some sort of objection is going to come up that they don't have the answer to. By the end of our time together today, we will not only disabuse you of those seven specific things that everybody's afraid of in sales and selling, but I'm also going to show you how you could handle any possible objection, any possible objection that comes up during the sales process.

Even if I've never worked in your industry, even if I've never worked in your profession, I will demonstrate to you today how you can overcome any objection that comes up in the sales process. In addition, as a bonus or more like as a foundation, I'm going to share with you how to get over any type of fear of rejection. In fact, if I do my job and then you follow the instructions that I'm going to give you today and you do the exercise I'm going to share with you at the end of our time together today, not only will you no longer fear rejection, but you will welcome rejection as a friend because rejection will be the nice warm blanket that you cuddle up with before you go to sleep at night because it will make you feel so safe and secure because you will understand, not just know, but understand, but feel in your bones that rejection means that you're so much closer to your goal that all you need to do is keep moving forward.

So those are our learning objectives here today, and I know what some of you are thinking. Some of you are thinking, this guy has set the bar really high, but I really haven't because I'm not going to impart on you anything new today. That's right.

I'm committing the first and probably most fatal law of consulting. I am the magician revealing how the trick is done. I am not teaching you anything new.

All I'm doing is like Michelangelo creating the sculpture of David. I'm just removing everything that's around what already exists in you. You already have everything you need to be successful in sales.

You got it already. It's already there. I'm just going to take away all the superfluous garbage that's blocking the view of it so that you, by the end of our time together today, will clearly see that you are actually a wonderful salesperson dressed like a normal everyday citizen.

You are the proverbial Superman or superwoman dressed like Clark Kent. So without further ado, let me get into this so that I can share with you the keys that will unlock the door to the kingdom for you. What does it take to close a deal? This is the dummy version.

It's listed as bullet points, but it reads like a narrative. So if you want to close a deal, what closing a deal is essentially it's having a conversation with a person who looks like your ideal client, who has money and decision-making authority and a problem you can solve now. I'm going to read that again because it's important that you know this is all it takes to close a deal.

You need to be sitting across from or standing across from or on the phone with someone who looks like your ideal client and has money and decision authority and has a problem that you can solve right now. So if I'm Jessica Porta-Latine, I need to be sitting across from a business owner who needs some type of business transactional work done, legal work done, and they can afford to pay her fees, which are quite reasonable. And they are the person who has access to and authority to sign a check.

And I have to have this done by the end of the week. That's the right person for Jessica to be talking to. And I'm confident right now because I know Jessica and I've worked with Jessica, I'm confident right now that if Jessica was across from that person, she'd be able to talk to them in a way that would win over their trust and get them to sign the check and start the work before the deadline.

I mean, think about it for a minute. If you don't have the confidence in yourself, if you're sitting across from a person who looks like your ideal client with money and decision authority, who has a problem you can solve, and they need that problem solved right now, if you're sitting across from that person and you can't get them to work with you, we all got problems. You're in the wrong place.

You're in the wrong business. So the lazy people who tell us they hate selling are people who are having trouble getting in front of a person who looks like their ideal client, who has money and decision authority with a problem they need to be solved right now. What I'm going to teach you today is what you do and what you say to make sure you're in front of these people, and then once you're in front of these people, what you do and what you say not to blow it.

The reason this is the dummy version of what it takes to close a deal is because the minute you think about what's written on this slide right here, you think to yourself, why am I such a dummy? Why am I wasting my time talking to people who don't look like my ideal client? Why am I wasting my time talking to people who have no money? Why am I wasting my time talking to people who do not have decision making authority? Why am I wasting my time talking to people who do not have problems I can solve? Why am I wasting my time talking to people who do not want to solve these problems right now? Your mission in life is to find these people and then put yourself in their way and have conversations with them. So what we're going to talk about is finding qualified prospects, understanding their problems, offering a timely solution in return for financial compensation. The definition of sales and you're going to want to write this down.

The definition of sales is helping people in exchange for financial compensation. That's sales. Helping people in exchange for financial compensation.

The definition of marketing is finding people to help. Marketing is finding people to help. I do not want to hear any of you sitting here with me now or any of you watching this describing sales as anything else except for helping people in exchange for financial compensation.

When I share this information with lawyers, it is like I am showing fire to cavemen because they think of sales as a big Amway rally in a stadium where everybody's going to leave with some bottles of soap that they have to sell out of the trunk of their car. Or they think of it like a Tupperware party in a living room where everybody's going to leave with somebody with the patented burping seal lid. Or they think of it like the Mary Kay lady driving around town in her pink Cadillac because she sold enough, I don't know, fuchsia lipstick to earn the pink Cadillac.

Well, all of those people, all of those people provided a much needed product or service for the people who exchanged their money for that product or service. So the definition of sales is helping people in exchange for financial compensation. So when you're having business development conversations, we all love this word, right? Because it's not sales and it's not marketing.

So business development. When you as a professional are having business development conversations, there's only two types of people you should talk to. That's it.

Only two types of people. Qualified prospects and qualified referral sources. I will explain what each is.

The qualities of a qualified prospect. What qualifies a prospect? By the way, prospect is short for prospective client. So substitute in wherever you see the word prospect, substitute in an image of your best client or your ideal client, and you know what we're talking about.

The qualities of a qualified prospect. They can afford you. They have money.

They have a problem that we can solve. So I mentioned Jessica Portolatine, who's a corporate transactional lawyer. She also does trademark intellectual property work.

If somebody came to her and they needed a will drawn up, that would not be a qualified prospect because to my knowledge, Jessica does not do wills. Somebody went to Jessica and they needed a divorce. That would not be a qualified prospect because Jessica does not do divorces.

If I go to Hakeem Lactar with a flat tire and I ask him to change the tire, I am not a qualified prospect for his leadership coaching services. I'm a qualified prospect for a mechanic. So they not only have to be able to afford us, but they have to have a problem we can solve.

So often we try and fit a square peg in a round hole. So Jessica may be tempted to try and do an estate plan. I mean, she's a lawyer, right? Lawyers do estate plans.

But if she's not going to do 50 of them or 100 of them, is it really worth her learning to do it just for me? And what's the odds that she's going to make it perfectly correct if she's just doing it for me? Hakeem may be able to change a tire on his own car, but is he going to really want to accept 30 bucks to change the tire on my car? I mean, what if he forgets to tighten the lug nuts because this is not something he does all the time and the wheel falls off and I kill myself? We're going to go back to Hakeem and go, dude, you didn't put the tire on, right? We compensated you for doing it. Now you're in trouble. So we need to look for a problem that we can solve and preferably a problem that we solve better than 90 percent of the population.

Decision-making authority, this is an easy one, right? You've heard me say a million times you'll have the best conversations you've ever had with people who have no decision-making authority whatsoever. Why is that? Because they don't have anything to lose. They can't spend any money.

So we got to find out whether this person is authorized to spend the money or not. And then urgency. If they don't have the urgency, this is the one thing of the four that we might be able to create, but they're coming to you for a reason.

They're having the conversation for a reason. So there probably is some urgency there somewhere. We need to make sure because that's going to determine whether or not the deal will potentially close.

So your attitude about qualified prospects, qualified prospective clients, should be what you see here on three bullet points but could have been summed up by the first bullet point. We don't sell to anyone else. Most of the time you get rejected because you're selling to somebody who's not qualified to work with you.

Somebody with no money is going to reject you. Somebody who doesn't have a problem you can solve is going to reject you. Somebody who has no decision-making authority absolutely will reject you.

And somebody who has no urgency, more likely than not, will reject you. So if they don't qualify, don't sell to them. You have to reject people who don't meet that criteria.

It's easy to be lazy and to try your sales skills out with people who are unqualified because there's no risk to you just like there's no risk to them. They're not going to buy anything, so let me just practice. You don't need to practice this.

It is a waste of your time. Don't sell to people who are not qualified. Let's talk about referral sources really quick.

All of you spend way too much time with unqualified referral sources. The people you should be talking to, if you belong to provisors, if you belong to BNI, if you belong to a chamber leads group, you should only be talking to referral sources who target your ideal clients. The chances of somebody tripping and falling into a shopping center owner to introduce to Sheldon or the chances of somebody walking into a barber shop to get their hair cut and going, hey, Mr. Barber, I want to introduce you to Sheldon Pond.

He's going to save you money on your rent. Chances are they're going to screw up that intro because they don't know what the hell they're talking about. So when you're looking for referral sources, you can accept a referral from anyone.

God bless the uninitiated who refer us. I love those people, but I don't go looking for supermarket owners to refer me work to help people grow their businesses. I target people who are targeting my ideal clients for their business.

So here's the definition of a qualified referral source. They are targeting our ideal clients. They do not compete with us.

We regularly provide them with value and their clients trust them. Now, the second bullet point up there, they do not compete with us. You will hear a lot about coopetition and sitting around the campfire and singing Kumbaya about how, oh, we can all help one another out.

I want you to want to destroy your competitors, OK? I am not a fan of working with my competition. Now, if you and I compete in 10 percent of what I do, I don't consider you a competitor. But if you do 80 to 90 percent of what I do, I want to slit your throat and leave you bleeding out in the alley because you're taking food out of my family's mouth.

That's my attitude toward competition. And I hope to God you're not competing with me. So the reason that I don't believe in this coopetition among people who are 90 percent similar in their work, and by the way, I draw the line at about 50-50.

If 50 percent of what you do overlaps with me, you're a competitor. If less than 50 percent overlaps with me, you're not a competitor. It's very cut and dry for me.

We don't want to target our competitors as referral sources because the minute that we send them someone, they're going to expand their work into an area that we could have done. They're never going to send that client back to us. Why would they? It's not in their self-interest to do so.

The objective of a business is to make as much money as possible and to enrich its owner. So if I refer somebody to you and then you're going to send them right back to me to do something that you also do, you are not doing the right thing for your business. So I'm not going to pretend that my competitor and I are going to get along swimmingly.

What I want to do is I want to hasten my competitor's exit from our industry as quickly as possible. And the minute that my competitor becomes a realtor, I will feed him all the work he can stand in the real estate space. So I do not believe in targeting competitive sources.

I do not believe in coopetition. I believe that suckers believe that. It's just the way I feel.

Now we regularly provide them with value. What am I talking about here? We need to feed our referral sources referrals as quickly and as frequently as possible. And we need to give until it hurts to people who are qualified to refer us.

So if you and I are targeting the same client and you just haven't been quick on the uptake to get that I could be a good referral source for you, I'm going to send you two, three, four referrals. And then after the fourth referral, you're going to come back to me and you're going to say to me, hey, Dave, thank you so much for the referrals. I really appreciate it.

And I'm going to say, Schmecki, thank you for thanking me. I really appreciate that you appreciate it. Here's the thing.

I know you would do the same for me. And then Schmecki is going to turn to me and he's going to say, of course, I would, Dave. And then I'm going to say, would you like to hear who I'd like to meet? And then he'll say, yes.

And I'll say, get a pen and I'll give him the exact name of someone he knows that I want him to introduce me to. So regularly, regularly providing value to people who are not competitive with us and targeting our ideal clients is a great way to make sure that we're sending work to qualified people, great way to show goodwill, great way to connect with them at a level that is not only intimate but providing significant value. And then finally, their clients trust them.

We all know people who clients work with because they're the only game in town. This is not somebody who's going to be a good referral source for you if the clients aren't working with them because they trust them. If the clients only go to the mechanic in town and the mechanic might be a referral source for you, if they only go to the mechanic because it's convenient and they don't necessarily trust them and they have to go home and take the wheel off to check the brakes to make sure the brakes were really changed, you might not want that person to be a referral source for you because people are only using them because they're convenient.

And by the way, I actually had a mechanic who was in my hometown. We would go home and take the wheels off the car to make sure that he actually changed the brakes. So when you think it doesn't happen, it really happens.

So these folks are qualified to be referral sources for you if they target your ideal clients, if they do not compete with you, if we regularly are providing them with value. It's got to be easy and convenient for us to provide them with value and their clients trust them. That is a qualified referral source.

I will pause here to see if there are any questions about any of the direct, categorical, and polarizing statements that I've made so far. Do we have any questions? Sheldon Pond? Comment on your list of things that qualify the prospect that you started out with. I trust you'll acknowledge there are certain situations where we don't have answers to to be able to check all of those boxes before we have met with that person.

So it is both a sales gig perspective and also a discovery gig for us. Sheldon, I'm going to take you on the road with me because my next set of slides will lead us down that path to ask the questions that will get us to the answers so that we know we're in front of the right people. One of the things that I will say, though, is if it looks like a duck and it quacks, there's a pretty good chance it is a duck.

So if it looks like your best client and it sounds like your best client, then, you know, those are people you should spend time talking to. My polarizing statements, the reason that I go to such extremes when I share this information is specifically to make sure that people are crossing off the easy stuff first. They're essentially picking the low-hanging fruit, if you will.

All of us have enough people in our universe, in our natural network, that we can fall back on and say, these people look exactly like my best client. Why am I not trying to have a conversation with them to determine that? So to Sheldon's point, let us get on with looking at the qualifying criteria. Well, let's, before we get to that, here are the four main reasons why people don't refer you.

This is only, I think it's one of two slides on referrals in this presentation. People don't refer to you for four main reasons, okay? So if you're not, by the way, if you're, this is not a promotional call for any specific networking group, but if you're in a networking group and you're not getting referrals, it's your fault. It's not the group's fault.

It's not the group leader's fault. It's your fault. And here are the reasons why people are not referring to you.

They don't know you want referrals. I've had more than one person tell me this. I didn't know that, Dave, I didn't know that you wanted referrals.

I had one person tell me, Dave, I didn't know that you wanted more clients. So shame on me for not letting them know, okay? There's just no other, there's nobody else to blame. They don't know what to say to the prospect to refer them to you.

This is far more common. Sheldon, I love you. I just don't know what to say to the shopping center owner to get into a conversation about you and your services.

So we got to educate them, right? They don't trust you with their reputation, okay? And as good as I am with what I do, I got to be careful with the way I talk to people. I got to be careful that my sense of humor, my sometimes warped sense of humor doesn't come off as, I don't know, being predatory or being too provocative because I don't want, I never want people to be embarrassed or ashamed to introduce me to someone. So we want people to trust us with their reputation.

And this is a reason why we may not get some referrals. There's one person that I'm thinking of. I got to be careful because I don't want to describe them because a handful of you may actually know them.

They're not in any groups that we have that overlap, but this person is phenomenal at what they do. They're one of the best at what they do. But I can't refer this person to anyone who is, I don't know, squeamish because this person tells the unvarnished truth.

And some people, well, as Nicola would say, some people can't handle the truth, right? So I got to be really careful who I refer this person to and make sure that they have their big boy or big girl pants on when they meet with them because they're going to hear things that are unflattering, I'll be them, I'll be they true. And then finally, the fourth reason that people don't refer you is because they forgot about you. There will be future sessions in which we will cover how to maximize your referrals.

But if you write these four things down and you leverage these four things in your business, this will cover about 75% of the referrals that you would miss out on. So make sure that people know you want referrals. You should put it in your signature line, put it in your newsletter that your business grows thanks to the kindness of others and sharing of referrals.

Make sure people know what to say to introduce you or what questions to ask to tee up a conversation where you would come up. Make sure people can trust you with their reputation. Make sure that they know that you're going to treat the clients that they send to you as if they were your family members.

And then don't let people forget about you. Be unforgettable. Remind people who you are.

You've all heard me tell the story of the personal injury attorney I worked with who got over a hundred thousand dollars for a client who was hit by a dumpster. So the garbage truck is dumping the dumpster. The dumpster is on wheels at the top of a hill.

Garbage truck puts the dumpster down. The driver of the garbage truck has a helper. The helper loads up the second dumpster.

First dumpster rolls down a hill, runs over a guy. Guy has all kinds of injuries. Some of them severe.

Some of them, you know, life altering, changing what he's capable of doing. He ends up suing the company that owns the dumpster, the garbage company, the company who was renting the restaurant that was renting the dumpster. He sues everyone.

He ends up settling for over a hundred thousand dollars. His attorney gets him what otherwise would be considered a phenomenal settlement. This is a guy who's minding his own business, gets hit by a dumpster, and he gets a hundred grand for it.

Three months later, his nephew is in a car accident. He refers the car accident case to a different lawyer. He got a hundred grand from this guy not three months ago.

And when the lawyer found out, he went to him and he said, what happened? I got you a hundred grand. You know, I just, I just didn't think of you. I forgot all about you.

Three months folks and a hundred grand. Okay. If people can forget about somebody who got them a hundred thousand dollars three months ago, they can forget about you and the kindness you did for them yesterday.

So these are the reasons why 75% of people out there are not referring your business. Now they don't know you want referrals. They don't know what to say to the prospect.

They don't trust you with their reputation and they forgot about you. You don't need me to help you fix these four things. You can fix them right after we're done here today.

And you'll probably get another referral by the end of the month that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. If you fix these four things. Okay.

So here's how you can, it says here overcome. It probably should say prevent referral rejection, right? So if you want to, if you want to, if you want to get more referrals, you need to give three referrals, a minimum of three referrals to the person you want to get referrals back from like a three to one ratio is nothing. I would say give till it hurts, give five times, give 10 times the number of referrals, because if they don't refer to you, other people are going to see you giving referrals to them and they're going to get the hint and they're going to refer to you when they thank you use the magic words.

And I use the magic words earlier, the magic. So when somebody, when Sheldon says, Dave, thank you so much for the referral, I would say, Sheldon, it's my pleasure. I know you would do the same for me.

That is the, that's, those are the magic words that you say when someone thanks you for a referral, write this down. It's my pleasure. I know you would do the same for me because more than likely the response you're going to get is, well, of course I would.

And then that opens the door for you to say, would you like to hear who I'd like to meet? And then you got to be ready with a specific person to ask for an intro from them. Tell people why clients work with you. Tell them why people need you.

People need me because I will increase the value of their business. So they have more options when they exit. So if you're working with a business owner who can't scale their business, I'm your guy.

You're working with a business owner who doesn't know what to do with the business when he's done, I'm your guy. If you're working with a business owner who doesn't have a plan for what would happen if he or she becomes disabled and they can no longer run their business, I'm your guy. If you're working with somebody who's just stuck at a million dollars in annual revenue or at five million in annual revenue or at 50 million in annual revenue, I'm your guy.

Tell them why people need you. And then when you're asking for a referral, ask for a specific introduction. Phil, I know you play golf with Ed Forto.

He's a great guy. He's exactly the person I want to meet. And I want to meet him because the clients that I work with could use his help with email marketing and I think I can help his business explode.

Would you make an introduction to Ed Forto? Ask for a specific intro. The reason you're asking for a specific intro is so that you put a person in their head. Now when I ask for an intro, I want to give the name, the person's position, the industry, and the reason why I want to meet them.

And here's the thing, if they are not comfortable, if Phil wasn't comfortable introducing me to Ed because maybe he and Ed, although they used to play golf, they don't play golf anymore because Phil thinks Ed cheats. So he doesn't want to play golf with him anymore. So Phil might know somebody else who does what Ed does and he'll say, listen, I'm not that close with Ed anymore, but here's the thing, I'm close with Joe and Joe does some similar stuff to what Ed does.

Would you be interested in meeting Joe? I'd probably say yes. So I give him the industry, I give him the person's position, the company name, and why I want to meet that person. And those are the specifics that people need in order to refer you.

And then step five is recognize and reward good behavior. When somebody refers me to somebody else, I always go back and thank them. And if the business closes, I try to thank them in a way that's a little bit unique.

I'm not talking about spending a lot of money. I'm not talking about putting cash in an envelope and sending it to them. You know, I'm talking about sending them something, you know, something interesting or something unique just to just to say thank you so that they would remember who I am.

And they think to themselves when they look at that thing, I got this because I sent a referral to Dave Lorenzo. There was a lawyer named Dan Weiss, who I worked with for years, who did property tax appeals here in Florida. He's a true gentleman.

Dan, he's no longer practicing. He now volunteers for the ACLU. But I sent him three people who were good referrals.

And at the end of the year, he bought me not an overly expensive, but a really nice watch that I really liked a lot. I liked it for a number of reasons. But every time I looked at the time on that watch and I looked at the time a couple of times an hour, I thought about Dan.

And I'm telling you this story now because I was so moved by the nice gift he gave me of that watch, which I which I really liked so much until until I started using an electronic watch, which measures more things than time. I wore that watch every single day. And I'm telling you the story now.

So it it was compelling enough for me to remark about it later. So recognizing and rewarding good behavior in return for for significant referrals is a great, great way to reinforce what we're talking about today. All right.

So that'll close the book on on referrals. Now let's talk about how you start a sales conversation, right? It's much the same as you would start a networking conversation. Here's how I do it.

This is this is my script. And you are free to use this script for your own purposes. Don't teach it to anybody else, but use it for your own purposes to to develop new business.

So somebody knew I always introduce myself. I say, hi, my name is Dave. What's your name? And if you don't ask them what their name is, they won't tell you.

So hi, my name is Dave. What's your name? What do you do for work? And they tell me and whatever they say, I say, that's fascinating. How did you get into that? And they tell me and then I'll say something like, hey, how's business or are you going to finish the year strong? What are your goals for the rest of the year? And then the question that everybody loves is I say to them, if you could change one, and I let them talk, by the way, this is now 15 minutes into the conversation.

If you could change one thing about your business, what would it be? And then they they talk about it. And then whether it's something that I can help them with or not, I always say, would you like some help with that? And here's the thing, my network is so good that if it's something that I don't do, I'm happy to offer the assistance of someone that I know or someone from our community to help them with that. These five questions right here, this is it.

This is all you need to start a sales conversation. Nothing fancy, no gimmicks. You introduce yourself.

What do you do for work? How'd you get into that? How's business? What are your goals? How are you going to finish the fourth quarter? Are interest rates impacting you? Whatever, whatever question you want specific about their business in there. And then, you know, that's really that's really cool. Let me ask you something.

If you could change one thing about your business, what would it be? And when they tell you what they would change, regardless of what they say, you ask them if they would like some help with that. And if you're not the right person to help them, you connect them with somebody from Exit Success Lab who is the right person. The reason that we're creating this community, folks, is so that when you ask that question, you always have an answer.

And if you don't know somebody and you get that, if you don't know somebody, I'm the person that you call because I damn sure know somebody. I can help people anywhere in the world with anything from suing people over water rights on Native American land to how to replace the O-rings on the space shuttle. And I am not joking.

I know people who do both of those things. So if you don't know the answer, if somebody needs help with something and you don't know the answer, you call Dave Lorenzo. You call Nicola Gellarmino.

We know somebody who knows the answer. You can help just about anybody with just about anything. This is how you start a sales conversation.

Don't overcomplicate it. This is what you need to do. Now, I'm going to leave this up here for a second.

Well, I'm kind of not going to leave it up here. I'm going to take it down and I'm going to see, I want you to look at this. I'm going to see if there are any questions about this, how to get into a sales conversation, because it really isn't that hard.

This is all it takes. So I'm going to look out over the virtual crowd. What questions do you have about starting a sales conversation based on what I just shared with you? Is there anything there, any words or phrases there that are difficult for you or that would be a challenge or would be a problem for you? Anyone? Dave? Sir? On the thing about making referrals, if it's outside your area of expertise, I admit that I'm a contrarian.

I only, I will insist on referring only one person because anytime you give more than one, then, oh, who's the best? I don't want to get so... Is that run contrary to your religion or what's your take on that? No, thank you for asking. I give a list of names. It implies that you don't trust anybody.

If I give you three names, that means that I don't trust any one of these schmucks enough to give you their name, right? If I trust you, I'm going to give you a name. Why wouldn't I? Who's the best urologist? Well, I'm going to give you the guy that I went to. I'm not going to give you three names.

Why would I give you somebody that I didn't go to? I understand why. Let's flat out say who this is. This is CPAs, right? CPAs are guilty of this every day, all day.

The reason that CPAs give three names is because they don't want to get fired, right? They give three names out in case one person is on drugs, in case the other person left town with their client's money, maybe the third guy works out, right? So CPAs are so overwhelmingly busy from January 1st until the end of April that they don't have time to develop relationships. So they give out three names of people and they keep their fingers crossed that one of those three won't be convicted of the crimes that they committed, right? So, I mean, if we do our job as good referral partners and we invest in these relationships and we meet these people and we really vet these people, we trust these people, we like them, we should have no problem giving their names. We should have no problem giving their names.

Everybody who's on this call who I can see out here now, I would never hesitate to give out because I've spent time with them. I know them. I trust them.

If you're giving three names, then the response should be, well, which one should I call first? Call whoever you want. What does that say? It says you don't trust somebody enough, right? So I give the one name and sometimes, listen, you know, sometimes stuff happens and people blow it. Like we're human, right? Sometimes you forget to call somebody back or sometimes the deal goes sideways for reasons that are, you know, out of your control but you get blamed for it.

So, you know, I mean, you got to be, you got to accept the fact that I trust these people. I realize they're human. I trust them.

That's why I only give the one name. If you give three names, here's the other reason. You know what the golden rule is, right? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Well, it's also the golden rule of referrals. The way I refer people is how I'm teaching them to refer me. So if I write down three names and I give three names to people, then they're going to put me on a list with three names, right? And unless, you know, the other two names are like Nicola Gelarmino and one of my kids, I don't want to be on that list of three names.

Like I only, I want to be the only person they recommend. So I'm not a fan of the three names. And if things ever go sideways, my response is, listen, I've referred Joe Smith a hundred times.

I'm really sorry you had a bad experience. This is the first time I've heard of a bad experience with Joe Smith. I will follow up with him, make sure there's nothing going on in his personal life that kept him from giving, you know, that kept him from giving the kind of service that I'm accustomed to seeing out of him.

I'm really sorry that went that way. But I only, thank you for asking. I only give the, I only give the one name.

I never do the, I never do the three name thing. Thank you. Is there anything in the chat that I need to see? Nicola, go ahead.

I'm just going to pick up on what you said, Dave. I always give one name and I field a lot of requests for attorneys in South Florida. And the reason that I do it is because I always know there's one person who is best suited for that need because I know them so well.

So in my view, when you, you recommend one person, it's a reflection of how well you know them and you ought to know them well enough to say, this is the best fit based upon what you're describing. And I always add, if for some reason this person is not able to assist you, reach back out to me. That way, if something, they're not the right personality fit or something else is wrong, then I have the opportunity to help them and continue to make sure they get in the right place.

Okay. So Randy has a question. Randy, is it the same question you put in the chat? Yes.

Okay. Why don't you, so state your question for the record. Okay.

So I love this as I could getting to know the other person and I agree, keep them talking and then they feel good. But how do you sway that into what you do? And, you know, because what you might be helping them with may have nothing to do with our business. Yes.

Excellent question. What do we sell before we, before we sell a product or a service? What Who said that? Who said that? Angel. Angel speak up.

That's the right answer. What do we sell before we sell a product or a service? Ourselves. Thank you.

So Randy, here's what you're doing, right? Thank you. Angel. What you're doing is you're, you're winning these people over, right? So they're, they're, they're, they're going to raise an issue that you, that you, you've got nothing to do with, right? Would you like, and you say, would you like some help with that? You're going to go out of your way, finding somebody to help them.

No, you're no benefit to you. And then you're going to follow up, make sure they were helped. And they're going to go, thank you so much.

Would you like to grab some lunch? And then we can get further down the road and we can talk about how you can sell your stuff. We are in professional services, right? We're not, so this is, like I said, in the beginning, this is not Amway. This is not Tupperware.

We're not selling vacuums. We're, we're in the relationship business. So the reason that this is the start of a sales conversation is because it's the start of a relationship and the best relationships start with us being of service to other people, with us showing that we're people of goodwill.

Now, listen, lightning has struck a number of times where people will say to me, where I'll say, if you could change one thing about your business, what would that be? And they would say, I would love more clients. And I would go, would you like some help with that? Because that's what I do. You know, I mean, one time out of 10, Randy, somebody's going to say to you, I got this gizmo and I'm worried about people stealing, stealing it.

I would love somebody to help me protect it. Right. And when that happens, you're ready.

But the other nine times you're introducing them to people who do other things. But what does that show them? It shows them, number one, you're interested in them. Number two, you're a person of goodwill.

You're looking to help people out who you have no relationship with. Number three, you're advocating for the people with whom you work, the people who are friends of yours, because it's going to come up and they're going to go, how do you know this person? And you're going to say, oh, I do all their trademark work for them. Right.

That's how I know them. You can trust them. I work with them all the time.

They just gave me another matter I'm working on. Or maybe you wouldn't say that because of confidentiality, but you'll say, you know, I've worked with them for a number of years. That's, you know, you're you're generating goodwill.

You're starting a relationship. I'll get into the details as we as we continue to move along here. So.

All right. So let's say you're sitting across from somebody now. And you think you're you're anticipating that they look like your ideal client.

Right. So now we have to qualify. We have to do that.

We have to look for the four things. We have to qualify the problem. Right.

So one of the things I ask clients if they if they say they have a problem that I can solve is I would say to them, listen, I've you know, I've come across this problem before. I've worked on it. My partner and I, Nicola, we work in this area.

I'd love to talk to you about this and see if there's a way that we can be helpful. Would you invite me over? And, you know, we can we can sit across the across the boardroom table or have a cup of coffee and talk about it. And they say yes.

And then we get there and I say, why did you invite me over? You know, what are you looking to do? And they tell me what the problem is. Or if we're on the phone, I'll say, why are we speaking? What are you hoping I could do for you? And then when they share the problem with me, I ask them why solving that problem is important to them personally. What's your personal investment in this? Why is this solving this problem important personally? And here's why starting the conversation that's talking about your services is is so important.

Starting it this way is so important. When you say, what are you hoping I can do for you? You're not projecting your solution onto them right in the beginning. Why do people do things? Do they do things for our reasons or do they do things for their reasons? Angel, why do people do things? Why do people do things? Do they do things for our reasons or for their reasons? For selfish reasons.

Right. Exactly. Thank you, Angel.

Angel and I, if you haven't noticed, we're working together now. So Angel's right. People act in their own self-interest, right? So when we start this conversation, if it's on the phone and we don't know anything about them other than they have a problem we can solve, we think, because they said, you know, we said, would you like some help with that? They said yes.

We set the appointment. We're in their office. We're on the phone with them.

Why did you invite me over? What are you hoping I could do for you? We need to hear them say it. I need more business. I got a piece of intellectual property.

I need to protect it. I named my service this great name, but I'm not sure that I want to make sure nobody else has it and I want to make sure nobody else can ever use it. So that's why we're speaking.

So when you say, why are we speaking? That's why we're speaking. And then I always ask, why is this problem important to you personally? Because regardless of what you learned from the movie, The Godfather, it's all personal. People act out of their own, Angel said it, they act out of their own self-interest.

They act to take care of themselves personally. So I'm a business owner. When my business makes money, I make money.

So they act to fulfill their own selfish needs and God bless them for doing so. If they didn't do it, we all wouldn't have any work, right? So why is this important to you personally, even if they work at a Fortune 500 company? This was always my money question when I sold to people in a Fortune 500 company. If we don't fix this, if you and I don't fix this together, what happens to you? Well, I won't get fired, but I won't get the promotion that I want.

And, you know, the promotion comes with a hefty raise and my wife's never been to Europe. So I really want that promotion, right? That's what you're looking for. You're looking for why this is important personally.

Well, you know, if I, if I don't get this done, my boss will look really bad. And it's important for me that my boss looks good because that makes my life a lot easier. Okay, I understand.

Now, I want to uncover that because if an objection comes up down the road, I want to use that information to address the objection. And I'm going to say that again because it's really important. These qualifying questions are also the way you're going to address objections down the road.

When somebody says something down the road about, oh, this might not be the right time, you're going to say, hey, Harry, this is not the right time. You told me that if you don't get this done, you won't get that promotion. And, you know, the raise that comes with it.

And your wife's never been to Europe. Do you really want to tell your wife she's not going to Europe again? Let's get this done. So you get the promotion and the raise.

Hey, Joan, you told me that if you don't get this done, it's going to be a problem for your boss. And if your boss is miserable, he makes your life miserable. So let's make sure that we don't allow your life to get miserable and let's get this done.

The money phrase that I'm going to share with you later in the presentation is that we don't overcome anyone's objections. We use their own motivation. We use their own words to overcome the objections.

We don't have a magic wand. There's no hocus pocus that will be done to get past any obstacle that the prospect throws in our way. We need to do this qualifying not only to make sure we're sitting across from the right people, but we need to do it in order to unearth the objections, the solutions to the objections that will come down the road.

So in qualifying the problem, asking this third question, why is solving this problem important to you personally? We want to make careful note of the answer to that question because it will be useful to us down the road. My friends, selling is not something that stupid people do well. You have to be very smart to be a really good salesperson because you have to be able to uncover the issues and the needs of the client and help them understand what's good for them.

Now I saw something pop up in the chat, so I want to make sure I address it before we move on. So Randy asks, what about showing them another problem if they delay? Okay, so delays. So you know, in sales parlance that's called like a stall or it's called a put off.

And a delay means two things, Randy. A delay means that we haven't qualified the person, and we'll get to urgency in a minute. We haven't qualified the person well enough.

So we never want to show them something else because I don't want to confuse the person. So in professional services, this isn't like a haberdashery, right? We're not showing them different outfits that they can choose from. This is specific problem, specific solution.

So a delay means that we probably haven't given them enough reason to go with us now, or they didn't have enough urgency in the first place. So stick with me while I go through the entire qualifying sequence here, and we'll see if we get to the heart of the problem that you're raising with the delay, okay? Second step. So we uncovered the problem.

The second step is to qualify whether or not they have the money. So I do a whole presentation, which I will be sharing with you shortly, on how to present your fees. But the way we get into it is by contrasting what they're paying us for the value that they're receiving.

So the questions I like to ask are, how much is this problem costing you? So Mr. Smith, you have this problem. How much is this problem costing you? Or if you solve this problem, how much would you save? Or if you fix this, how much would you take to the bottom line? And then the personal question, does this impact your compensation? If you're talking to the business owner, you better believe it obviously impacts that person's compensation, right? So you want to really dig into what the problem is costing them. Jessica raised her hand.

Sorry to interrupt, Dave, but I had a question regarding those and how I can apply them. Can you put the slide back on just so I can... Certainly. Because I was trying to apply it in trademarks, right? How much is this costing you? The client will probably say nothing.

I can either get a trademark or not, right? If you solve this, how much it can save you? I just don't know how to apply these to the trademark conversation. Great. Thank you for asking.

Except the last one, that it can make you money. But the first three, so okay, I can answer. But let me see if anybody out there in TV land has the answer before I answer.

Anybody want to take a shot at answering Jessica's question before I do? Randy, go ahead. Just shout it out. I'm not looking at the screen here because for some reason I'm spotlit.

So Randy, go for it. Yeah. So I have that question come up as well because I also do trademarks.

And Jessica, my big thing is I have clients that I file trademarks for. I also have clients who come to me after they've gotten a demand letter and a cease and desist and their brand is out there. So when I'm talking financially with someone who's trying to decide what to do or isn't sure, I really focus on the cost that will incur if you don't do this.

Right. If you have to risk the risk. Gotcha.

Yeah. And that affects their marketing costs, that affects their reputation, affects everything. Right.

Perfect. Thank you. Yeah.

I love that. I mean, I would always say, what if somebody opened up next door and used the thing that you're trying to trademark, like right next door to you. Right.

Perfect example. My tagline that I use all over the place is the godfather of growth. I'm the godfather of growth.

Well, I got such a reaction from that somebody in Chicago, a woman in Chicago started calling herself the godmother of growth in provisor's meetings. And I was like, I was, I was, you know, it's, it's not a dirt, there's nothing I could do. There's no, there's nothing I could say to prevent that from happening.

But it was, it was creating confusion. So, you know, I called her. You could say, hey, shithead, stop that.

Shame on you. So, I should have just introduced her to Sheldon. My bad.

So I said, listen, it's creating, you know, it's creating legitimate confusion in the marketplace. And confusion is not good for either one of us. Right.

But think about that from a business owner's perspective. If I was making money off of that, I would want to have protected that so that I could preclude other people from, from doing it. Right.

Another, another great example is the, the whole gateway thing. Right. Where the, my group, Nicola and my group is the gateway to Latin America.

Well, we got another person in our region who's now the gateway to the Northeast. Right. And so, you know, it's creating legitimate, people are calling me going, I thought you were the gateway.

And I'm like, well, I'm the gateway to, you know, to an entire, to an entire segment of the global population. This guy will get you, he'll get you a seat on the subway in New York. I mean, you know, but those things create confusion among people.

So, you know, I would, I would say to them, what if your brand got confused with somebody else who is a nefarious actor and it costs you all of your business. Right. So it's not just the current confusion, it's the potential.

Right. I mean, you know, imagine, imagine somebody going to a bar using your business card, handing it out and punching people in the mouth. Would that damage your reputation? Yes.

That's what somebody who's infringing on your trademark does. And it would cost you your entire business. I hate to be so overly, you know, I would say this to the client, I hate to be so overly dramatic, but it only takes one bad actor to ruin your reputation.

And there's no way for you to stop it unless you do this. Awesome. Thank you.