Hey, you savages. It's Dave Lorenzo. I'm the godfather of growth,
and this is your Saturday side hustle.
Today we've got a live talk I did just yesterday in front of an audience
at Icebox Cafe in Dale Beach, Florida.
This is a talk on selling to CEOs of mid-market companies and
selling to entrepreneurs, and it's all about the right mindset,
the mindset you need to be in and the things you need to do in order
to approach CEOs where they are, connect with them,
speak their language,
and eventually develop a relationship so that you can wind up working with them.
It's a live talk in front of a live audience in a working restaurant.
So there's some kitchen noise in the background.
You'll hear me talking on the PA system so it doesn't sound like
overproduced audio.
It sounds like an audio that you would hear if you were in the audience with
us live,
so enjoy this talk. We'll see you back at the end For the happy
recap, today's education session for 15 minutes,
we're going to talk about the seven questions you must
answer if you want to sell to CEOs.
I work with almost exclusively these days, mid-market CEOs,
and I define mid-market as $10 million in annual
revenue up to about $300 million in annual revenue. That's my sweet spot.
That's who I work with.
I still teach a handful of professionals how to sell to those people,
and here's what I found. The people who sell to CEOs,
especially professional service providers,
you need some help because the approach that you're
taking while educational and informative is not an approach
that really resonates.
So I'm going to give you today seven questions that
you can ask mostly yourself to refine your approach to sell
to entrepreneurs in that space. By the way,
just so that I make sure I'm on target here,
I can drop into a different routine if I'm not targeting the right folks here.
How many of you work with people in this market segment?
Raise your hands just about everybody. 10 million to 300 million.
Alright, question number one,
what problem can you solve and why
does the business owner, the C E O, why do they need to solve it?
What problem can you solve and why does the business owner need to solve it?
Now,
you need to have a good answer for this because this is the whole reason why
they would want to talk to you.
I got approached this week by someone,
and I'm not going to share who the person is. Maybe you know him,
maybe you don't. And they said to me, Hey, I see you work with CEOs, and I said,
yeah, and they said to me,
do you ever talk to them about cash balance retirement accounts?
And I don't know if you know what I do, but I'm a business strategy consultant.
I help people grow their businesses and that sort of thing.
On the list of the hundred things we talk about,
if I were to look for a cash balance retirement accounts,
it probably wouldn't be in the top like thousand things that we talk
about.
I have recommended one time a cash balance retirement account to a
client who had a fantastic year and needed to save money on their taxes. Now,
why do I tell you this story?
If your pitch to A C E O is walking up to them and handing them your business
card and going, do you know what a cash balance retirement account is?
One of two things is going to happen. Okay? If you're lucky,
the person will just turn and walk away. If you're not lucky,
it could be really, really ugly.
So three things you should do to answer this question, okay?
If you are targeting people in the B two B space, number one,
do your research on the industry.
Know the industry issues that are happening so that
you can walk up to them and say, Hey, I hear there's a crankshaft shortage.
I understand you're in manufacturing for the automotive industry. Yeah, I am.
Is that crankshaft shortage affecting you? Oh my gosh, you have no idea.
What does that do?
That immediately gives you credibility and it immediately shows that you
understand them and their business. The second thing
is if it's a company that's local and people who are doing
business with them, you can ask about a specific company challenge.
If you're a member of Provisor,
there's somebody in this room who knows a company that you want to work with,
you can sit down with that person and say, Hey, Nicola,
what are the three issues that Carlos Gutierrez is facing today?
I know you're friends with him. Oh,
Carlos is having trouble connecting with probate attorneys.
He loves to work with them.
The second thing he's having trouble with is people are afraid to list their
house because interest rates are high,
and the third thing he's having trouble with is he's having trouble getting the
people whose listings he does have to come down off of their top of the market
offers because the market has been so difficult. Those are three things that,
three challenges that Carlos is facing. I do it. Carlos nailed it. Yeah,
I nailed it.
So this is just a little bit of due diligence.
It's better for you if you're targeting CEOs as your clients.
It's better for you to have 10 targets that intimately
than a hundred targets nothing about,
because these people are human. They have real problems,
and the fact that you can solve their problems or be a solution to their problem
is what you're looking to do. Alright?
The second question you need to ask yourself is why do they need
to solve this problem now?
So they have a problem and they have a problem?
Why do they need to solve this problem? Now, why is it important?
Why is there urgency for solving this problem?
If you have a solution and they don't have a problem,
you're talking to the wrong person.
You need to find out what problem they have and why they need to solve it now.
Now here's the beauty of having a network like this.
If they have a problem and you can't solve it,
grab one of the people in this room, bring them with you.
If they're the solution to the CEO's problem,
why is that valuable to you?
Because it shows an external orientation.
It shows that you are concerned about the things that are going
on in their world and in their business. Think about that for a minute.
Somebody's got a problem, you don't have the solution,
but you want to work with them. They have a problem you can solve,
but they haven't realized it yet.
Help them solve the problem they do have.
Does that make sense? If you want to start a relationship with someone,
there's two ways to do it,
and this goes for any aspect of life. The first way is put some money in their
pocket, introduce 'em to a client.
The second way is solve a problem that's keeping 'em up at night.
So if you've uncovered a bunch of problems,
I can't help Carlos solve any of those problems that he has right now,
but I can probably introduce him to a new probate attorney that would help him.
So that wouldn't get me business from Carlos,
but it definitely would help Carlos out.
It would keep me top of mind with Carlos. So what problem do they have?
Why do they need to solve it? Now, question number three, why
are you the right person to solve this problem?
You got to have a good answer for this question,
and 30 years in business or 30 years as an attorney, 30 years as a C P A,
that's not a good enough reason to do business with anybody. This is called in
sales your unique selling proposition, or if you're afraid of the word sales,
you're an attorney, your unique value proposition.
So if you want to get people to do business with you,
you got to share something with them that's unique,
and if you can do it in a story that's really helpful, right?
I tell stories all the time. It's part of what I do for a living,
and that's what really brings people in.
My unique value proposition comes from building two businesses over the
course of the last 33 years,
one of which I took from startup to 50 million in three years.
The other one start up to 250 million in six years,
and then setting it all aside because my life was miserable. I was unhappy,
and I got struck by a taxi cab and was paralyzed from the armpits down.
That was my wake up call,
and my unique value proposition to the CEOs is you don't want to have to get
hit by a taxi to realize the value that you can extract from
your business. If you build systems and processes that can help you run it
efficiently and effectively, and that resonates with them,
you need to come up with a unique value proposition for your business that does
the same thing. Question number four,
that you need to ask yourself that, how can I get in?
How can I get the meeting with the C E O?
Most of us don't do enough work in this area. Most of us are not very creative.
What do we do?
We send an email or we go through our LinkedIn connections.
We don't really dig. If you have a list of say,
10 or 15 prospective clients that you want to connect with,
somebody knows people in that company. But even more importantly,
there's a lot of due diligence you can do to make sure that you're connected
to someone and that person can share the problem that the
company and the c e o is experiencing. If you look
hard enough,
you can find a way in publicly traded companies. It's easy, right?
Publicly traded companies, there are news articles.
There's a 10 K that's published.
The c o does a carefully scripted conference call with analysts every
month, privately traded companies.
What that looks like is that looks like them sitting down with their trusted
advisors and saying, these are the three things that are bothering me,
and I don't have someone who can solve those three things.
The best way for you to figure out how you can get in is talk to people who are
in similar businesses and see where they go and see what they do.
Industry trade shows. How many of you go to your own industry trade show?
Raise your hands. Okay, the best thing for you to do, I mean,
I'm not going to stop you from going to your own industry trade show. Go to the
trade shows your clients. Go to find out what your clients are talking about.
Speak the language, your clients speak,
your industry trade show is great for your own personal knowledge and benefit,
but if you are looking to work with a specific type of client,
you got to go to the events that they go to.
You got to learn what problems they're facing in their industry.
You got to talk to the people who are there because you have to learn the
language. Question number five,
are you willing to play the long game? Now, again,
this is one of the things I find that is a huge competitive advantage for those
of us who do it. What percentage would you guess of people,
of my clients,
what percentage of the people they go after work with them immediately
upon first or second solicitation? What percentage do you think people up?
10.
10%? 1%. 1%. Who said 1%? Zero. Great.
1%. 1%. Okay,
so that means you call on a hundred people. How many sign up? Re Angelica,
how many is that? One? One. Thank you very much, right?
I had to find somebody who's in the accounting space in some way. Okay?
So for every a hundred people you call on,
that means one person signs up.
But how many people do you think sign up?
And this is in my entire client database since 2008,
the clients that tell me the truth.
How many people do you think sign up after three months,
after six months, after five years,
what percentage sign up after three months? So 1% immediately,
three months. What percentage of my database do you think?
5%. Three.
Four. 4%, right? That's three months, six months. And by the way,
this is with weekly follow up. Generic, not generic,
but educational email content, not solicitation,
educational email content. Six months, 1%, 4% after three months,
six months, what percentage do you think sign up?
15, 10, 10, 15.
Seven. 7%. 7%. Five years.
What percentage after five years?
30%.
Are you in my database? Yeah. It's about 28%.
It's about 28% after five years. 28%. Okay,
so if you round it up to 30, if you say it's a third,
so you go your Dave Lorenzo, you go and do a speech,
there's a hundred people in the room.
One person in that room is going to be a client.
They're going to come running from the back of the room and tackle me and hand
me money, okay? I love that person. Okay?
But then three months later, I'll get a few more. Six months later,
I'll get a few more. And I know over the next five years,
a third of that room is going to slowly become big fans of
Dave Lorenzo and they're going to invest.
If you want to build a sustainable business over time,
you got to play the long game. The model that I use for this in my mind,
in my warped mind is Apollo Creed from the first Rocky
movie, right? Those of you, a lot of you are really young.
I don't know if you ever saw Rocky the first movie, but Apollo Creed wants to.
Why are you looking at me like that? Some people might not have seen it.
Apollo Creed wants to fight Rocky,
and Rocky doesn't want to fight him a second time. He's done. I did it.
He's happy, right? That's good, right? He's happy.
The fight is over. It's done. But the crowd, the fans,
the people of Philadelphia want to see a second fight,
and Apollo Creed turns to his trainer and he says his manager, and he says,
we got to get the people around him talking.
If the people around him are talking and asking him why he won't fight me,
then he'll want to fight me.
And that's what persuades Rocky to do it everywhere. Rocky goes,
he goes to the pet store, he goes to the supermarket. Rocky,
why won't you fight Apollo? Why won't you fight Apollo? Right?
Everybody's talking. That's what happens when you follow up over the long term.
That's what you're looking to do. That's what you're looking to build.
Play the long game. Question number six,
can you handle rejection? It sucks.
It sucks, but you know what? You know how you make it better?
You desensitize yourself to the rejection.
Go out and try and get rejected for goofy stuff. Ask for,
let me tell you something. We could play a game,
and I do this with my clients sometimes.
What's the most outrageous thing you could ask someone for that you know?
You'll be rejected. Ask for it, and then Well, no, no,
I ask for money all the time. I love asking for money. No, no, no, no.
Money's not outrageous. No, no. Try this one time.
Go to a parking lot while somebody's pulling into a parking spot and stop them
and go, Hey,
can I have that parking spot? Can you go park over there and see what happens?
No. No, seriously, seriously, no.
Go and ask people for stupid crazy things and
get used to being rejected. This is, I wish we had a psychologist.
Is there a psychologist here? We don't have a psychologist here.
This is the best thing to ever come out of cognitive behavioral therapy.
It's like exposure therapy. The more you expose yourself to being rejected,
the less it bothers you. It's true. That's how I got through college time.
I met my wife. No, really, the more you expose yourself to rejection,
the less it bothers you. So I have to tell you,
if you only ask for business one or two times a month,
you're going to feel really,
really bad because you're going to get rejected If you ask for business a
hundred times a month, or even better yet,
if you have a gateway product or a service,
very low barrier to entry product or service that you feel comfortable talking
to people about and they sign up for it,
most of the time you're not going to care about the rejection because every time
somebody says no,
there's a yes right around the corner. People ask me all the time,
and I know they ask you, Nicola, this all the time,
how did you get 56 people to sign up for your Provisor group?
You know how we did it? Here's the formula.
Ask 300 people to join a Provisor group.
That's how you get 56 people in a provisor group.
How many times did I get rejected for Angelica?
Rejected, not.
Provisor. I'm not talking about your own personal baggage.
I wanted you to do the math for me. I got rejected 250 some odd times.
Thank you, Maria. Angelica, we'll meet later. We'll, commiserate.
That's the thing, folks.
You got to ask for business a lot so that the rejection
doesn't bother you. Final point.
Do you know when to shut up? I was working with somebody yesterday.
I'm sitting in an in-person sales meeting with this person,
and she sold past the close. Okay? She sold past the close,
she had the client convinced,
and then she went on to talk about this feature of her service,
and the client was like, oh,
I can't do that because I have these three people in my company that would
absolutely not agree with that principle.
And we ended the meeting, we finished our breakfast,
and I looked at her and I'm like, the money was right there.
It was on the table. You just couldn't shut up.
So those seven questions again, okay, just so that we make sure we got 'em,
and if you want the notes from this,
they'll accompany the Saturday side hustle tomorrow. Number one,
what problem do you solve and why should the c e o solve it?
Why does this need to be addressed Now?
How can you get in? Are you willing to play the long game? That's number five.
Can you take rejection? And then number seven, do you know when to shut up?
So these seven questions are things that we go over all the time.
I go over all the time with my clients. If you are interested
in really getting good at connecting with CEOs and
selling to CEOs, we've got something for you.
Many of you have already signed up for this.
Nicole Gel Armino and I have created a community called the Exit
Success Lab. Three words altogether, exit Success Lab.
And we are working with CEOs to help them improve their
business strategy so that they have more options when they want to sell their
business. Okay?
I meet with probably between 50 and 250 CEOs every month.
I do half day seminars for them,
and we are helping these CEOs with their business strategy so they have more
options when they exit. There are 10 key value drivers,
and we help them with each of the value drivers along the way.
We don't do it ourselves.
We put them in front of professionals who help them with these value drivers.
We are sourcing the professionals from our community, from provisors,
from my high net Worth Client Attraction group, and from this breakfast group,
if you are interested in being one of the subject matter experts in one of the
10 areas, go to exit success lab.com.
There are two big red boxes. The one on the left says Professionals click here.
That's for you. You click that box, read through the website,
and then apply. If you've already applied,
we're contacting people next week to discuss this with them.
So if you haven't heard from us, we still love you.
We haven't contacted people yet. We're contacting them next week.
Why do you think we give away such great information? Go ahead.
Pretty much the analogy is when you go to Lowe's or Home Depot,
you see the guy do it yourself, guy on the floor, and he makes it look really,
really easy. And then you think to yourself,
the first minute you think to yourself, he did that. So I can do that.
And then you put five more minutes to fall into it,
and you realize he does that same floor demonstration every single night.
So no matter what information he gave you five minutes.
So dawn on you that that guy can do it better than you,
and you hire that guy to come to your house and take care of it.
That's as simple as.
And tell us who you are and what you do, please.
I'm Eric Johns, and I'm an officer, consultant. Come up with semi,
my company is Superior Corporation.
Thank you very much. Perfectly said. Thank you so much.
I'm taking him on the road with me. Hey folks,
thanks for listening to this edition of the Saturday Side Hustle.
I'm Dave Lorenzo.
I'll see you back here tomorrow for the Sunday special with my partner Nikki G.
We're here every day with a brand new episode of the Inside BSS Show.
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