Sales Training for SMBs: Sean Shannon on Revenue Growth | Ep. 206

Sean Shannon: 00:00:00

It's not about selling our products, about getting the client success. And the more we're committed to getting the client success, the more sales we're going to get.

Freddy D: 00:00:09

But I am the world's biggest super fan.

Sean Shannon: 00:00:12

You're like a super fan.

Freddy D: 00:00:14

Welcome to the Business Superfans podcast. We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially.

Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence in the world of commerce.

We discuss the invaluable insights of business owners who have successfully implemented the strategies in the book to build their own team of devoted super fans. Gain insightful knowledge from the experts who create applications to help you create passionate super fans.

This is the Business Super Fans podcast with your host, Freddy D. Freddy.

Sean Shannon: 00:00:50

Freddy.

Freddy D: 00:00:57

Foreign.

Freddy D: 00:01:03

Hey super fans. Freddy D. Here in this episode 206, we're joined by Sean Shannon, a sales leader who helps service based businesses solve a costly problem.

Too many teams pitch products before diagnosing what is really keeping the client up at 2am that leads to weak follow up stall deals and missed growth.

From building market making teams in local broadcasting to leadership roles at iHeart, Audacity and Cumulus Media, Sean has spent three decades turning sales conversations into business problem solving.

Now he brings that same roll up your sleeves approach to small and mid sized businesses, helping them strengthen sales culture, improve retention and grow revenue with far more intention.

Freddy D: 00:01:49

Welcome Sean to Business Superfans Advantage. Great conversation we had before we started recording. Welco from Atlanta and let's continue that conversation here on the show.

Sean Shannon: 00:01:59

Love it. Great to be here. Frank, tell us.

Freddy D: 00:02:02

Yeah, likewise. So tell me a little bit. You know, you told me before we started recording, but let's go back and you know, what's your, what's the backstory?

I know you were work, you focused in the radio space and I focused in the engineering space for many decades. But the fundamentals of sales is the fundamentals is the fundamentals.

Sean Shannon: 00:02:22

So yes.

Freddy D: 00:02:23

What's. Well, that's the story.

Sean Shannon: 00:02:24

So I think I got my, you know, my earned my chops in the hardest sale that's possible, which is we sold most intangible thing in the entire world. Sure. Right. You can't see it, you can't feel it. Right. You can only hear it.

And at the end of the day it was a value proposition that we went out, sold an ad campaign to a client and the expectation was that ad campaign was going to deliver a return on investment. If somebody gave me $10,000 in advertising investment, they're expecting a hundred thousand dollars of revenue back.

So, you know, imagine you're walking in with this incredibly intangible product. You're asking somebody to invest in this invisible thing that is going to return at the top of the funnel where they really can't measure it.

Freddy D: 00:03:08

There's no measuring tools back then.

Sean Shannon: 00:03:10

There were no measuring tools back then. So, you know, and it's not like they trained you on how to be a good business person.

They trained you, trained you on all about the audience and all about the radio station is I was out selling. I realized that really, you know, Peter Drucker's famous saying that the vast majority of businesses have no idea what their customers are buying.

They know what they're selling them. They don't know what's motivating the purchase.

And I learned early on that really all the only thing that business owner cared about was what is my revenue and my profitability look like year over year.

And before Google, I was at the library, you know, going through microfiche to learn about industries, to learn about how businesses competed in those industries and how consumers went about making purchases in those industries so they could sit down and have business conversation instead of a radio or a media conversation.

So as I endeavored as a sales leader to go out, I tried to, to the best extent I could, to train up good business minds that were then able to sell radio.

Freddy D: 00:04:11

Yeah, you bring up a really important point I want to emphasize there, Sean, is that you had business conversations with the owners. So you weren't selling a thingamajig or a service or whatchamacallit.

You were looking at what were their business challenges and how could you help them surpass those challenges and grow their business? And that's a completely different conversation than selling a widget.

Sean Shannon: 00:04:38

Yes, it's exactly it. Because really, you know, what we're trying to do is solve the 2am problem for the client.

What's keeping them up at 2 in the morning that we have the ability to help bring a solution to. And if I meet a client and you know, it's the hardest thing in the world to train a salesperson do this.

You meet a client, you find their 2am problem, you don't have a solution for it, your job at that moment is to stop that sales call and say, I can't help you, but I know somebody who can, and then help them find. Because at the end of the day, all we're about in sales is helping clients get successful.

It's not about selling our products, about getting the Client success. And the more we're committed to getting the client success, the more sales we're going to get.

Freddy D: 00:05:19

Sure. And that's. You're creating a super fan right there off of that person. Because I've done the same thing. I said, you know, hey, Sean, you know what?

We've done the assessment, we've walked through the shop because I was selling manufacturing software. And for what you're looking at, our tool isn't going to do it completely. It'll do some of it, but not all of it. This is a better product.

And they'd be like, you're recommending a competitor says, yeah, it's a better solution.

Sean Shannon: 00:05:41

Yes.

Freddy D: 00:05:42

And that guy would give me referrals of other people that would fit my solution because of the fact of respect that I got from him, because I was genuine.

Sean Shannon: 00:05:52

I can remember from the early: 2000

One of the first questions that you know, after asking my favorite question is, tell me the story of your business, man. I will tell you. We built out a six question discovery call.

It was really actually 57 questions that we really wanted to understand about the business. In the early days we could answer maybe about 20 of them by doing our own research. Today I can answer about 50 of them by doing my own research.

ask advertisers in the early: 2000

But not much.

And I'd say, listen, I would love to talk more with you about buying some radio, but the reality is I have a friend and you could probably have a friend who can help you market to your existing database of customers.

Because the reality is that it's about seven to eight times cheaper to get an additional dollar on an existing client than to get a new dollar out of the new one. And that's what we do. Absolutely right.

Freddy D: 00:06:56

Absolutely.

Sean Shannon: 00:06:57

Yeah. And I would say once you've got your database email program in place, let's talk about going out and conquest new customers.

And how would salesperson, what are you doing? So just give it six months, I promise you.

And invariably, six months later they would call that salesperson and say, you guys did me the biggest favorite in the whole world. I am so glad that I'm networking. Guys, can I come talk to you? Can you come talk to me about doing some outreach on new customers now? Sure, yeah.

Freddy D: 00:07:23

's directory. My sic code was: 3544

It's burned into my brain forever and but I would say okay, let's go walk, take a walk through the shop. And so I would walk through the machining shop and so what are the challenges? What kind of equipment do you have?

You know, what's, what's going on with the equipment? So I would really get a whole feel of what that organization was.

And we weren't selling, we were just learning, you know, was the biggest challenge in that industry. Scrapping metal was the biggest challenge. And so I'd say, all right, well you know Sean, you know, how many, how often does that happen?

You know, maybe once every couple months. What do you do with the metal? Well, we can't do anything with it because it was for this particular project.

We leave it sit until we can repurpose it for someone else that needs that exact metal type. Well, what's that cost? 20, 30, 40,000 Bucks a chunk of metal. You know, so how many times that happened?

And so you know, you ended up with couple hundred thousand dollars worth of scrap metal that they can't use until first I says if we could solve, you know, two of those, would it be worth continuing the conversation? And I said yeah. And boom, we were in a whole different conversation.

Sean Shannon: 00:08:43

It's exactly it, it's just about being interested in the business itself rather than what you're trying to get out of it. So I mean it's just.

Freddy D: 00:08:49

And the people.

Right, but it's also the people inside because you need to understand what their aspirations are, what their personal goals are, which I think a lot of people, we've become too much trans and lost a relationship art. And that's okay. You know, Bob wants to become the head of the multi location company and the IT head of everything else.

Then my job really becomes to help him achieve his aspirations. Yeah, he'll take care of mine.

Sean Shannon: 00:09:18

That's exactly it.

In front of that small and medium sized business base, the question that very few people ask this is probably one of the more powerful ones you can is put your exit strategy here. When this whole thing gets to where you want to get it, what's going to happen?

Right now you've got a roadmap for how you can help them to get what they want to get ultimately, you know, and it just it elevates the level of conversation. And it changes the very nature of your relationship with that person when they know that you have a stake in what they ultimately want. Yeah, yeah.

Freddy D: 00:09:47

And before we started recording, we talked a little bit about sales training.

So let's get into a little bit about the sales training aspect, because I think too many businesses, you know, bring on somebody that's a salesperson.

Sean Shannon: 00:10:00

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:10:01

But they're really winging it. And they figured that they. And we've all hired, you know, the one that you think is the good one, and it turns out to be not so much.

But let's talk about a little bit about the importance of sales training and how transformative it can be.

Sean Shannon: 00:10:15

You know, the saddest thing to me is, is that, you know, I. I came up late 80s, early 90s, and the companies that brought us on invested in bringing in really great sales trainers. We had a guy named Ken Greenwood. He was a Wilson Learning licensee.

You know, we did two full days on it within the first six months of me being there. Two full days. Social styles training, understanding how to meet the client in the way and speak to them in the way that they understand.

I have not been inside of an organization in the last 15 to 20 years that invests in that kind of training anymore. It just. It's incredibly sad. We bring people in and, you know, going back to that Peter Drucker thing, we know what we're selling.

So we spend all our time training them on the product, training them with product knowledge and all of the key phrases that we want to do, and we do nothing in terms of training them on really the psychology of sales, on an understanding of. Of industries that you're selling into. It aggravates me.

And what it ends up doing is, is that you end up with organizations that are really great sales organizations because there is a superhero of a sales leader who takes it upon themselves to say, I will train these people up as I was invested in.

And I wonder what's going to happen with this next generation of salespeople, because I don't know that there are that many folks who are getting that kind of help.

Freddy D: 00:11:42

ent through sales training in: 1985

Spot Wall guns, the spot WAL,: 1982

And so that's one of the reasons I got into CAD Space, which then became CAD Cam, and I remember I got trained in a software, so I'm going to emphasize the story quickly.

I got trained in how to use the software and I said, okay, your presentation skills are not that good, so we're going to have you become the installer and trainer of the software. Because I was in engineering, wasn't my world, but I got into that world.

So I went to one company and trained them and I had the manual right in front of me and says, okay, Sean, this is the command string you need to do and you're sitting next to me. That's how bad it was. The next company was this little company called Eaton Corporation up in Milwaukee.

And now I'm doing it in front of a group of people. And I had never done a presentation, wasn't trained on any of that stuff, and I'm doing the same thing.

And that manager at the end of the day said, you know, come here, I want to talk to you. He goes, that was the worst effing training I've ever seen. He goes, I'm going to give you till tomorrow.

And I've shared the story many times, but I want to emphasize it for what we're talking about. I'm going to give you till tomorrow to figure it out. Otherwise I'm going to have your dumb f blank, blank, blank ass fired. I slept well that night.

Sean Shannon: 00:13:11

You did.

Freddy D: 00:13:12

And I created engagement training.

Sean Shannon: 00:13:15

Really?

Freddy D: 00:13:15

And yeah, which was basically, we had a marker board and I put up a command string that would design a 3D box. Okay. I go, sean, does that command string, you know, would be correct to create that 3D box? Well, I think so. Mike, do you agree with Sean?

Well, no, it's missing this and that. Well, Steve, do you agree with, you know, Sean and Mike? Which one do you agree?

And so I got everybody into the conversation and it says, okay, you know, John, you come up here and you put in a command string to create, put a circle into that box.

And I became the most sought after installer and trainer in the Midwest because I transformed myself, which is what you're really talking about, like that one individual and sales.

Sean Shannon: 00:13:57

That's completely it. And I'll point out a really important piece of the type of training that you did that neuroscience now supports is that study after study.

versity of Washington back in: 2010

The neural pathways that we create that are actually what is learning are most effectively and quite frankly, almost exclusively formed through struggle. So when you are in a classroom and you say Steve, does that look right to you? No. Mike, how about you?

You're creating neural pathways for people to learn through. That's how, that's how we work.

Freddy D: 00:14:40

And it puts, it puts them in the game. They're not sitting on the, they're not on the bleacher seats. They're in the game. You know, they're suited up and they're in the game.

I had the most sign up for the advanced class because people actually learned stuff right from it. And it goes back to, you know, when we're talking about sales.

You know, I didn't learn about personality types until I went to the sales training, you know, and just what you alluded to before.

And I think that affect not only sales, but it also affects cultures in companies that I think is way overlooked because you bring somebody in and they may be a type A, type B, type C, type D personality and you know, you get a type A talking to a type D. They're not, they're complete opposites.

Sean Shannon: 00:15:20

Yeah, it's exactly right.

And if they've all been through that kind of training, they have an understanding say okay, this person isn't an asshole, they're an analytical and I'm going to express it and I need to modify my communication style to communicate to it. And that analytical now knows I'm going to modify my communication style. It's. Yes, it's exactly right.

You know, culture is a hundred percent over overlooked. And as, as folks job hop every 18 months, man, it becomes even more difficult to drive culture into, into organizations.

And so I think one of the things that you know, specifically in sales that we misvalue is, is, is the importance of retention.

You know, if you are a hiring sales manager and you are not paying attention to what the retention rate is or the attrition rate for your new Salespeople are, after 18 months you're missing the mark because if you've got 70% of your people that join your company who leave within 18 months, you've got something wrong. You're doing something wrong. Got an onboarding and training problem. Yep.

Freddy D: 00:16:24

So Steve, share a story of how you stepped into a company that was kind of, you know, comboulated with their sales approach. And that's a nice word to say winging it.

And you've kind of turned them around and they become one of your top superfans that's promoted you other business opportunities from helping them achieve their goals.

Sean Shannon: 00:16:43

of clients that we helped in: 2002

Now I heart to turn around a top 40 station that was top ranked in the market in terms of sales, but was like 13th, 14th in revenue.

And what I had figured out early on is that at the moment in time we were in, radio was one of five places you could find larger sizes of audiences, right? You could, you could find it with radio, tv, newspaper, outdoor, some kind of crack.

So we had an oligopoly on audience and 90% of our revenue was coming out of ad agencies. And this is a hip hop station. And so we needed to craft a story that, that, you know, transformed how people thought about it. And so we did.

It was really simple. Hip hop is to rock and roll what rock and roll was to Frank Sinatra.

And just that really simple explanation of hip hop really is what Top 40 was 10 years ago transformed in Seattle this group of buyers that said, well, how can an African American focused format and driven format be so appealing to a non African American market? And here's the story. So they then said, hey, listen, we got a failing sports station.

It costs about four and a half million dollars to open the doors every year. And we got three and a half billion dollars in revenue. We had recently been purchased by Clear Chung.

They'd given us nine months to get that thing of profitability. So go lead the sales out. I don't want to do that. I just got this top 40 station turn around. They said, no, go do it. So I did.

And what I came in and, you know, what I, what I uncovered was that we were misunderstanding what value we could bring to advertisers. You know, listen, this thing had no ratings.

And yet call after call with our direct clients, I would find out that they were huge fans of radio station. These business owners were never going to fill out a survey for Nielsen.

They were never going to spend the time to give us recognition in the ratings. And 90% of the revenue came through agencies.

So what we did was we designed this plan where we got our agency clients in front of our direct clients so that they could see that, you know, listen, the, the, the, the agency that handles the local Ford dealer group and is spending $5 million a quarter in the market and giving us zero comes to an event that we're holding down at Emerald Downs at the, at the racetrack. And there are 15 or dealers in there that are huge advertisers with us. It was transformative.

You know, within six months our agency revenue had doubled because they had been able to see, my goodness, these are our fans. Quite honestly, the, the biggest part of it was most of the media buyers were females.

We invite they and their husbands to come to these sporting events with us.

Their husbands would geek out with our personalities and they go, oh my goodness, yes, I know you don't have any ratings, but you have, you have a story here, there's a story to be told.

But the, the second piece of it was with our direct advertisers is we were, you know, we were getting an average of about $30,000 a year in investment out of. And you know, they, what they were doing was buying one particular sport that they were passionate about.

So we built Seasons Pass where they got a sponsorable feature in every, you know, we changed our uniform four times a year. Basketball into baseball into golf into football.

So we built this program out that gave them access to tickets, access to a spring training trip, access to a golf trip, access to a Husky away game football trip. And you know, but you're going to buy year round as opposed to just one quarter.

And again, what happened within a year is that our direct revenue had doubled. Station went from three and a half million in revenue to five and a half million revenue in a year went from unprofitable to profitable.

Just by understanding, untangling, what was the, you know, what was the client, what was the consumer purchasing versus what we were trying to sell.

Freddy D: 00:20:43

Sure. So those guys became super fans of your term, fans.

Sean Shannon: 00:20:46

And we began to measure aggregate attrition rate, which was as opposed to looking at simply the number of clients that were turned over year.

We looked at dollars that were turned over year over year and we aimed for an aggregate attrition rate which was when, when I took it over, about 30% left every single year in revenue. So we were leaking in a huge way. By year three, we had an aggregate attrition rate of actually negative. It was negative attrition.

In other words, our growth with our existing clients was 15% year over year, year.

Just, you know, data is clarifying and you know, as we think about managing salespeople and you've got a one on one, that one on one is either going to be a conversation that's driven by the stories that the salesperson wants to tell you or it can be driven by the data that reveals what's actually happening in their pipeline.

Freddy D: 00:21:35

Yeah, and a lot of times it's a combination of both because I Remember, I closed more sales. I had a Mac in the early days, and the Mac came out in 84. And so I had it. I had a little backpack I carried around.

I had Excel, which was originally on the Mac before Microsoft bought it. And I would sit down with somebody at an engineering or manufacturing company and we would put together an ROI that I had put together.

And I still have a printout of that document. And so when we put it together, whose ROI is it?

Sean Shannon: 00:22:11

Yours?

Freddy D: 00:22:12

Yeah, the guy that's putting it together, not mine.

Sean Shannon: 00:22:15

Yeah, exactly. It's theirs.

Freddy D: 00:22:16

And so. So who's emotionally connected to it?

Sean Shannon: 00:22:19

They're. Because it's theirs.

Freddy D: 00:22:22

And so now when we went. He went to present or she went to present it to upper management. They had conviction.

Sean Shannon: 00:22:29

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:22:29

And they were confident that this was going to be the ROI that was my sales team because of the fact that they were able to go in and present it on my behalf to management.

Sean Shannon: 00:22:39

I love it. This master. Right. Helping the. Listen, it's never a good idea unless it's your idea. Correct.

Freddy D: 00:22:47

And that's our job as salespeople, is make it your idea. And you believe it's your idea because it is your idea.

Sean Shannon: 00:22:53

Yes, exactly. It's not magic, but it is in some ways. And if you haven't had.

If you haven't had great training and development, you're really going to struggle to figure that out.

Freddy D: 00:23:01

Because as a salesperson. Right.

Because it's really important to, you know, that goes back to learning about what the expectations of the company are, learning what the expectations of the individuals is, what's their biggest challenges. And then you work with them to come up with their own solution to the problem. And so now you're no longer selling, they're buying.

Sean Shannon: 00:23:23

Yeah, that's exactly it. You know, the thing that's interesting that I think has changed is the level and pace at which disruption occurs in value propositions.

Clayton Christians Christensen, Harvard Business Professor Great book. Competing with Luck. Make a little Recommendation there.

Came up with this idea of jobs theory, which is, is that people don't necessarily buy products and services as much as they hire. Hire them to do specific jobs in their lives.

If you can untangle what job they're hiring your product or service to do, you're in a much more powerful position to craft a really great value proposition. You've really unlocked sales and marketing at that point.

And the challenge I think we all face when a disruption occurs, the value proposition changes. So in radio, you know, Google came around and YouTube began to launch our value proposition.

As being one of the, you know, exclusive holders of large audiences. It completely changed.

It was no longer this wonderful thing that we could put in front of people because now there were thousands of places to reach thousands of people. And so, you know, my answer to it at that point was to say, well, listen, if audience is a commodity, what isn't creative isn't.

And we're sitting with advertisers who now have creative problems across dozens of platforms. Let's make ourselves the go to source for creative for not only audio, but for video, for display.

And you know, he who owns the creative and the advertising business owns the account. And so, you know, I built sales organizations for the next 15 years that were built on that value proposition.

And it lasted, you know, but once again got disrupted as we came into the age of digital marketing.

And so we were one of the first ones to go out, find partners that we can white label to help with SEO and SEM and OTT and CTV so that we could be offering to our advertisers all of the places that they want to place their advertisements. Value proposition is constantly changing, and yet at this moment in time, it seems to be changing every six months because disruption is occurring.

It's accelerated.

Freddy D: 00:25:30

You took the word before. That's what I was going to say. It's exponentially accelerated. Especially now with AI, Things are changing, you know, wait five minutes.

And it's different because it's a complete game changer.

And the people that don't adopt and pivot to incorporate the technologies from a marketing perspective, from a sales perspective, from a team building perspective, they're gonna be left behind. They're gonna be wondering, you know, what took place. I always say that there's three kinds of people.

Those that make things happen, those that watch things happen, and those that wonder what the muck happened.

Sean Shannon: 00:26:07

Yeah, that's exactly it.

And I'll tell you, here's my working thesis in this moment in time is that, you know, if we, if we think about the sales funnel, we always tend to think of it as being rather linear. And there's a series of McKinsey studies that showed that it actually about 10, 15 years ago, became a diamond.

We start with two or three in the initial consideration set and then it blows out to 10 to 12 as we out we research companies punch their way into the consideration set through organic search and paid search. Consumers starts to think about it and they come back down, they try one or two and buy one.

Well, these McKinsey studies found that those in the initial consideration set had a 300% better chance of closing the sale. And what it was was confirmation bias at work.

We start with those two or three, we go out and we research and we're asking really two simple questions. Is this company providing me all the benefits that I'm looking for and are they doing at a fair price?

And if there's two or three companies that are in the consideration set, don't poop the bed, they're going to end up with sale, right? And luck by luck, every once in a while those the company punches their way in and it flows down.

Well, what's happening with AI at this moment is that, you know, and so as, as a business in the B2B space, I can either punch my weight consideration set through organic search through paid search, or I can punch my way into consideration set through my sales channel. Just really great salespeople out there making contact with clients.

AI is making it really difficult on both of those because Google searches secularly have dropped 50% in the last six months. People are just not using it. They're often using quad or chat or alternately or perplexity.

Even the if they're going to Google and not getting past the Gemini search summary, your ability to punch in the consideration set through organic or paid search is really limited at this point.

Freddy D: 00:27:57

And with the gender, yeah, it's changed dramatically.

I mean, you know, you're right because I use Bing and Google because nobody, everybody always talks about Google, but they always Forget that the third largest search engine is Bing because the second is YouTube. So. But yeah, I read it. I read the AI summary and you know, sometimes I'm trying to figure out how to do something.

Sean Shannon: 00:28:17

Poof.

Freddy D: 00:28:17

It tells me click here, click there. I'm going holy moly. Right complete. The game's changed drastically.

Sean Shannon: 00:28:23

Drastically.

And in the on the sales channel, what agentic AI is able to do is create sales development reps that acting as ready to do that, go out and scrape LinkedIn for ICPS and make connection quest requests on your behalf. And once those connections, you know, accept it, they begin to drip linked in in mail campaigns.

It's identified your email address and now it's dripping email.

So now rather than the salesperson that's able to maybe prospect and start outreach with 15 or 20 clients, GenTech AI is doing it at 100 to 150 a day. So your ability of your salespeople to punch their way through is just, it's, it's really noisy and it's going to be really noisy.

You know, the number of emails that we all get that LinkedIn has become really polluted with, with, with just a lot of garbage.

And so I think at this moment in time, small, medium sized businesses in the B2B space need to take a real smart two two two prong strategy which is one, you got to get serious about your marketing. You know, most small and medium sized business owners look at marketing like a four letter word.

So what I got a sales team for, I don't need to do any marketing. Well, your sales team's going to be less and less effective at least for the next two years.

So you've got to make yourself world famous inside of your small, tiny little target market through thought leadership, through content development, through all the sorts of smart strategies that the large language models are learning on and picking up that also put you into that initial consideration set when that customer. So that when your salesperson calls, you're familiar but on the sales channel. Yeah.

And the sales channel, rather than having your, your salespeople focusing on out trying to conquest new clients in this really noisy space, what are you doing about growing your share of wallet with your existing clients? Right. That's.

Freddy D: 00:30:12

People overlook that all day long.

Sean Shannon: 00:30:16

You're.

Freddy D: 00:30:16

I always tell people the gold is in your backyard.

Sean Shannon: 00:30:19

Yes.

Freddy D: 00:30:19

You know, and turn, you know, that's one of the things I really talk about is turning all stakeholders into a growth engine. You know, most people talk about, you know, leadership and then talk about employee experience. They talk about customer experience. Okay.

And that's where it ends.

Sean Shannon: 00:30:33

Yes.

Freddy D: 00:30:34

And nobody talks about contractors, nobody talks about suppliers. And if you got distribution channel, nobody talks about them.

Nobody talks about complimentary business and they don't even think about the ancillary business.

And to me I look at that as a whole ecosystem that if you ignite that, that's a compounding growth sales team that's going to be just like, you know, I'm a Chicago Bears fan, lifetime. I've had beers with Walter Payton.

Sean Shannon: 00:31:00

For real. That's a good thing.

Freddy D: 00:31:02

Yeah, it was a cool moment.

Sean Shannon: 00:31:04

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:31:04

Yeah. And it was, it was a great thing. It was a place called the Snuggery in Schaumburg, Illinois twice.

But where I was going with this is that, you know, you've got to elevate that whole team just like sports super fans. And that's where I got this whole idea of business super fans.

Because you got the people that got the faces painted, the jerseys, the banners, the tailgate parties, they're promoting the team on their own dime.

Sean Shannon: 00:31:28

Yes.

Freddy D: 00:31:29

So if you can transform your whole ecosystem into a advocacy engine. Your business is just going to do one thing. It's just going to skyrocket.

Sean Shannon: 00:31:38

This is what we did with this little sports station was we created this community of business owners who looked forward every year to our opening day party at Emerald Downs, who looked forward to our spring training trip to see the Mariners, who looked forward to our August golf excursion. Right. And they became a community in and of themselves. Superfans, super fans around kjr. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:32:01

It's not rocket science.

Sean Shannon: 00:32:02

No. I mean, it's not like we invented fire gear.

Freddy D: 00:32:05

Right. And you know, let's talk how one and follow up. Because I really want to hit that.

Because I think a lot of salespeople quit way too early in a sales process and follow up is the key and speed of follow up is the secret. And you know, you can leverage AI today to help you with the follow up. Because most people drop the ball on the follow up aspect.

Sean Shannon: 00:32:30

Absolutely right.

So I, I have a whole theory around the half life of a sale during each stage of the sales process that, you know, it began with looking at when we went out and made a presentation to a client. How many days did it take for a client to give us a yes or a no? Because there are three answers you can get in the sales call.

You can get a yes, that's great and get a no, that's okay. And you can get a maybe, which.

Freddy D: 00:32:53

Is 10, the worst one you want.

Sean Shannon: 00:32:54

Worst one you want.

And so what we found was is that if, if we had not gotten a yes or a no within five business days, if that salesperson had said, I got a 60% close chance on this. On day six, it was 30. Day seven, 15, day eight, seven and a half percent.

We began to just wash opportunities out on day 10 so the pipelines weren't stuffed full of garbage that was never going to happen. What we discovered was, is that there are three reasons why person says no to or does not make a decision. Whichever.

Either you didn't solve for the right problem, overpriced it, you did not grow the size of the problem to make it larger than the cost and the, you know, size of problem, cost, solution or ultimately the problem changed and you weren't aware of it. And most things that, that when clients say this looks great and then you don't get a yes or a no out of them, another fire popped up.

Something that is now, you know, got their attention. It's a new problem that they're trying to solve. And if you are allowing them to live in pending hell.

You are missing out on the opportunity to help solve that new problem. And so I tried. I trained salespeople, said, listen, closing is not getting a yes. Closing is getting a yes or a no. It's closing the sales process.

So you've got to tighten that thing down.

Well, then we began to look at the stages in the pipeline, began to say, well, listen, if we went out on a discovery call and we did not get back to that client with a presentation within three business days, there was a good chance that that discovery call, what we found out in it was no longer valid. It was no longer the problem that needed to be solved. So you've got to have. It's about not only volume in your pipeline, it's about velocity.

How quickly moving them through, how purposeful are you in it? Right. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:34:37

It's really part of that is closing for the next step before you get out of there. So that there's, you know, that there's a commitment that says, okay, yes, you guys need three days to review it. I'll call you on day four.

And let's talk about what the review process was. So you keep the thing moving forward.

Sean Shannon: 00:34:55

Yeah, well, in Neil Rackham, spin selling, you know, talks about demonstrating an advance in the continuation. You know, an advance is a commitment on the part of the client to an action that moves the sales process forward.

Continuation is just a bunch of nice words. And quite frankly, you know that you've got the continuation when the commitment to action is on your part. Right?

Freddy D: 00:35:14

Yep. They want you to do something back to them now. Now the conversation is real. This is going to happen. It's just a matter of making it happen.

Sean Shannon: 00:35:23

Precisely.

Freddy D: 00:35:24

You know, one of the things I'll just share as a tactic for our listeners that I've used and I talked about on the show in the past is I would take the time to recognize everybody that was in the meeting to talk about that technology. So I got everybody's name, everybody. And back then, it was no emails, you know, so I got snail mail. I would snail mail. But you know what?

It's still the most powerful marketing engine that people overlooked all day long.

Sean Shannon: 00:35:50

Authenticity is the currency in this environment.

Freddy D: 00:35:53

Yep.

Sean Shannon: 00:35:54

How can I know that you're real? I'll tell you. You send a handwritten snail mail. That's powerful.

Freddy D: 00:35:59

It's on people's desk.

Sean Shannon: 00:36:00

It's on people's desk and it's. It's real. It came. I can see it. The handwriting is really crummy. Right. I know, this is a real person.

Freddy D: 00:36:08

Or even, you know, I would send, you know, I mentioned earlier, I had a Mac and carry it around. So I had a. I wrote my own CRM and then I used another tool that was called Contacts Activity.

And time doesn't exist anymore, but I would have boilerplate letters. And then I would basically print them out and tweak it for each person in a mold shop, for example.

And the guy running the milling machine or the wire EDM stuff never recognizes that person. And so everybody got a letter, said, hey, Sean, thank you so much for being part of the meeting. I really appreciate your input, blah, blah, blah.

And I'm excited to start implementing this system with you. Key words right there. I was assuming the sale. So my verbology. And I still have those printed in the closet there.

I still have all the sales training books and videos and cassettes back there. But that whole strategy was that, you know, Mike, Steve, Sean, that are on a shop floor, Wow. I got a letter, I got recognized, and.

And I had some value.

Sean Shannon: 00:37:12

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:37:12

And we would win the sale because in the mindset, they felt we would provide the best support after the sale because they positioned it that way.

Sean Shannon: 00:37:23

So this is the way back in the day when people still had media kits. So we had media kits for the radio stations. We did a trade with a guy that owned a bunch of UPS stores.

And this is back in, you know, early, early days of those types of stores.

And, you know, when we would do cold outreach and send our media kit out to a group of targeted clients that fit our icp, you know, you'd send it in the mail, it get buried at the bottom. We'd send it via ups, had a little trade deal, wasn't costing us anything.

And guess what happened back in the days when we all got big stacks of mail and there were only a couple of ups, that one always got open. And that client would say, holy this I must be really important to these people. It's been 10 bucks to send this to me.

Yes, you are important to us, but no, I didn't spend $10. I traded for it.

Freddy D: 00:38:08

Yeah, it's a cleverness. Some. You know, sales is also always about being clever and being different and a way to stand yourself out from the crowd.

And that's a great way I would. Like I said, I sent letters or today I send emails, but I still send it to anybody who's been part of the presentation.

And I tweak it specifically to incorporate whatever they had their input. So it's personalized 85% is generic.

But that one personalization is the game changer because it shows I was listening, participating and everything else.

Sean Shannon: 00:38:43

First year that we had the Husky, University of Washington Husky, big deal in Seattle, we had the play by play. We're not a flagship station.

on would come in through that: 2003

Every single presentation. We had the Husky marching band sneak in behind us as we were presenting so the client couldn't see him.

At a, at a moment during the presentation, we just start playing tequila. And I tell you, it was just. People still talk about it to me to this day. I can't.

I still remember the time that you brought the Husky marching band in to the Coors annual presentation. That was awesome. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:39:36

And that's how you created those super fans out of those people. Because you made a memorable moment.

Sean Shannon: 00:39:42

Yes.

Freddy D: 00:39:42

In there, Sean, as we kind of come to the close here. Been a great conversation. You and I could talk about this all day long.

Sean Shannon: 00:39:49

I think we could.

Freddy D: 00:39:50

And so how can people find you? Tell us a little bit about that.

Sean Shannon: 00:39:53

They can hit strategic growth design dot com. I've got a 30 minute founder diagnostic that they can jump on. Talk about what's going on in your sales organization.

I've got a 48 point sales assessment that you, if you want to take the time, you can jump in, have your entire sales organization ticket. We'll uncover where you've got alignment, where you don't have alignment, and where you have opportunities to improve.

My promise is, is that in 30 minutes you'll walk away with actionable insights that you can go to improve your sales organization. I also do fixed sales organizations and if you want to pay me and hire me, I'm great with that.

My, my, really at this moment in my life, I just want to help small medium businesses grow. I just. That is my passion. It's my mission and I'm just giving my time away to it.

Freddy D: 00:40:40

We'll make sure that's in show notes. Great passion. You and I have the same. Same. We're cut from the same cloth.

Sean Shannon: 00:40:46

Yes, we are. Yes, we are. So I think you're a little bit more of a master of it than I am.

Freddy D: 00:40:52

I appreciate it and I appreciate your time on the show. And like I say, we'd love to have you on the show down the road again.

Sean Shannon: 00:40:58

Love it. Thanks Brady.

Freddy D: 00:41:01

Sean reminded us that great sales start by diagnosing the real 2am problem before you ever pitch a solution. That matters for service based business owners.

Because when you lead with business problem solving instead of product pushing, you create better follow up, stronger retention and more trust. And that's exactly what I believe too. I'm not here to help you chase transactions.

I'm here to help you build real relationships that turn clients into super fans. If this episode brought you some value, leave a quick 5 star review. It helps other service based business owners find the show.

And if you're ready to take what you heard today and actually put it to work, come join me inside the Referral Revenue Lab, my private community where service based business owners are Learn how to turn happy customers and six overlooked groups in their ecosystem into predictable referral revenue.

When you join@referralrevenuelab.com I hand you a free copy of my book, the Entrepreneur Prosperity Playbook, plus access to the Dynamic Superfans to Authority Scorecard so you can see exactly where your business stands today and what to work on next.

And if today's conversation sparked a vision of where your business could be not just this year, but 10 years from now, don't let the spark fade when this episode ends.

That's why every week I share one practical insight pulled from years in the trenches and more than 200 guests on this show in my Prosperity Pathway newsletter. Sign up@ProsperityPathway.com tips thanks for tuning in today. I'm grateful you're part of the Business Super Fans movement.

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We've got another great guest coming up that's going to drop some valuable insight, so I'll talk to you in the next episode. Cultivate superfans. Build authority. Own your market.

Freddy D: 00:43:09

We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Business Super Fans Podcast. The path to success relies on taking action. So go over to businesssuperfans.com and get your hands on the book.

If you haven't already, join the accelerator community and take that first step in generating a team of passionate supporters for your business. Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.