Start With A Win - How To Win In Sales With Chris Pflueger

Episode Date: October 26, 2018

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Atop of the 12th floor of the RE-MAX World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With a Win with CEO Adam Kantos. Hello, it's Adam Kantos here. Today on the podcast, we're talking about sales today. The word sales, it scares some people though. So today we have with us the head of sales for Remax Holdings, Chris Pfluger. How you doing, Chris? Good morning. I'm doing great. Thanks, Adam. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Give us a little bit of your background because you have a great deep history of sales. Where do you come from on this? So I started out of school and I was doing insurance sales many, many years ago. And it was very tough. You know, sales is not so easy when you're out there telling people they need to purchase insurance products for themselves.

And so you learn a lot about human nature and what drives people and how to get those deals done. You know, that's got to be a rough conversation. It is. And also, you know, many comfortable people don't make good sales decisions. So if you want someone to buy something, you have to at least pose the right questions so they understand why they should go with you. To get the right answers, you got to ask the right questions, right? That's right. So what'd you do after insurance sales? So I've worked in operations. I've worked in real estate, obviously. I've worked in banking. I've worked in IT. So a lot of different backgrounds, but essentially in sales in some form or fashion

most of my career. Right. And you did real estate sales as a team, right? I did. I had a team here in Colorado and both with Remax and other brands. Oh, awesome. So what does sales mean to you? I think that, you know, everybody hears sales and thinks it's a very specific track, but I think everybody is in sales in some form or fashion. So most companies are either growing or they're not growing. And so in this case, you know, everybody is in sales in some form or fashion. So most companies are either growing or they're not growing. And so in this case, everybody is in sales and helping that force grow. And so really what I tell people is we're in the growth business.

We're not really specifically just in sales. We're helping both our agents grow, we're helping our broker owners grow, and we're helping our teams grow by having more units sold. That's kind of how we measure it. And again, in most of those cases, it's either the simplest job, but it's also the most difficult job in the company. Right. So you said something important there. So sales is, you know, you talked about growing or not growing.

So we know in business, if you're not growing, you're dying, right? You know, because it's about going and getting a new client every day. And if you're not getting a new client every day or trying to get a new client every day, which eventually leads to getting new clients over the repetition of those attempts, you're dying. You're going out of business slowly. That's something that you carry on your shoulders every day when you get up and hit the ground running is, I've got to grow this business, right? Correct. So tell me, what does that mean to you in your heart, in your drive? You've got to go out

and you've got to climb a hill every day. Sales is not easy. So how do you build that into your brain? So I think there's different type of people, obviously. Some people really like to be farmers and some people like to be hunters. We've used this a lot in the past. Some people really enjoy the day-to-day aspect of going out there, meeting new people, developing those relationships, and getting new clients. And some people want to just work those clients and be with them on a day-to-day basis and help them grow, but wouldn't like to talk to new people because they just wouldn't know what to say or don't feel comfortable. Let me jump in there. Why do you think that is? Why do you think people don't feel comfortable or don't want to go try and talk to new clients?

You know, I think it's a personality thing. It's also developed over a period of time. So I think, you know, some folks really enjoy the hunt. That's one of the things you miss when you get into sales management is the day-to-day interaction with the folks in the field. So I travel quite a bit, and I do meet with our salespeople. I do meet with our prospects in the field often just for that purpose to keep ahead of the game and to keep my head in with them on a day-to-day basis. So I understand what's going on in the field and I can get in their head as far as a salesperson to help them be as successful as possible. Okay. Do you think there's rejection in there? Some sort of the phobia of rejection?

There is. That's one of the big factors in sales is people talk to someone and they assume they have to get everything just right. And we know in sales, you need to have more no's than yes's in order to be successful. And so that's one of the key factors is really, you know, understanding that getting those no's is a key factor in your success. Okay. I mean, we keep peeling the onion here because you keep saying things that are really profound. The talking about getting the no's and the fear of those no's. What does that look like to somebody who's just getting the sales? And how do they overcome that? How do they get out there and know that when I go hunting, I'm going to get, like if you're fishing and you don't catch anything, you got skunked or whatever it is, and you didn't catch anything, but you went out there.

But you enjoyed fishing, but people don't enjoy going out and hunting for sales. They come don't come back and go, I got nothing today, but I loved it. I mean, how do you get over that? So I think that's one of the big rookie mistakes that people make is they go out and they develop, you know, kind of a contact list, or they've been given a lead, and they're afraid to contact that person first, because they may waste the lead. And that's the big mistake, that person won't remember you anyway. So why not give them a call and give it a shot. And the really successful people will take a little bit of information and go out there and learn as they go and really develop their sales skills. And they run forward, they just they fall forward in many cases.

And that failure is fine. It's, it's really, you develop a, I guess, thicker skin, but an expectation that, Hey, that one didn't work out, but there's two more down the road. It's really that, that abundance, you know, mindset. Right. So there's, there's always, you're not going to run out of people to talk to if you go out and talk to more, right? No, that's impossible. I love it. And it's, because so many people, they get going and they go, all right, here's my list. My list is empty. I've used them all up. Oh my gosh. The river ran dry. There's no more. The world is over, whatever it is. So that abundant mindset of there's always more to talk to. And you also mentioned getting out there and talking to them.

What do you do when you talk to them? I mean, do I walk up to you and go, hey, Chris, you want to buy this? Yeah, not if you want to sell anything. Right? That doesn't work anymore? No, it doesn't work anymore. Okay. What we do here is we ask a lot of questions.

What would you envision the best possible office to be? Or what are you looking for in possible office to be? Or, you know, what would you, what are you looking for in the next five to 10 years to get someone in that mindset of thinking what growth looks like for them? And then you take that and you kind of spin it toward, you know, what we're doing or what we're offering and see if that's a fit. And most of the time, that first meeting you have with someone is kind of like a blind date. It's a, I'm going to find out if, you a fit for me, and you're going to find out if I'm a fit for you. And if not, we part ways as friends. If so, we move to the next step. Okay, interesting. So you're almost kind of activating their entrepreneurial mindset, right? Absolutely. Because that's what I'm kind of getting here

is you're going, you're making me think of things through your questions that I normally wouldn't think about and realizing opportunities I normally wouldn't realize, right? That's correct. And most of the time, everybody's fairly comfortable. I mean, we live in the United States. I mean, everybody's doing okay. It's not like you have to hunt for food for the next day. It's more of the fact that you're okay and you've adapted to your own lifestyle, but are you willing to take that next step? And that makes you uncomfortable. So you have to get them a little uncomfortable and think about what the future really could be rather than what it is today. So you have to get uncomfortable and get them to get uncomfortable.

And you've got to be comfortable doing it. That makes it worse. All right. Wow. A lot of uncomfortable there going on. I look at it like you're a performer, if you will. You're getting on stage and you're going like, like you're a performer, if you will, you know, you're getting on stage, and you're going to go and you're going to, you know, kind of put yourself out there and people are going to have opinions of you. Oh, yeah. You know, a lot of them are going to go, eh, not for me, or no, I don't want to hear from you. No, I want I don't want to talk to you or stop selling me something, whatever. You know, it's you just kind of close your eyes and you think, how would I, if I had to, if I had to sell you know, I've, I've penned in my hand right now. If I had to sell this pen,

how would I do that? And you can't sell it if you don't talk to anybody, right? Exactly. So, so tell me, I mean, it's always, it of kind of the sales masters out there, the sales gurus. Chris, I consider you to be one of those sales masters, sales gurus. You know, you enter a market and you have to sell something. How does that start? How would you start doing that if you entered a market and had to sell something? So, obviously, I identify, you know, my prospective list of people that would be a

target for that, whatever that might be. And then I would enter into a lot of conversations. So I'd be talking to people. And for me, when you say, hey, that's a rejection, I talked to someone, and they didn't want to buy my pen. Well, that doesn't mean that's not a success for me. That means I've had a conversation with someone, I found out what the objections may be on the surface. And then I've taken those objections. I've repurposed them for my next conversation. Or I've now had that person refer me to someone else who may be interested in exactly what I'm selling. So you don't, I mean, let me make sure I got this right. You don't realize what the customer's challenges are until you go talk to a customer, right? Exactly. And if I go forward with the first no every time, we wouldn't sell anything.

So most people give up after the second attempt, and most sales are made after your eighth attempt. So you can see that most salespeople will come in and say, well, I've asked them twice, and they've said no. I don't want to be a bother. Instead of repositioning those questions and asking them further, because everyone's conditioned when you call them up to say no. You're conditioned. I'm conditioned. When I get a phone call, I'm like, nope, not interested. And most of the time, we try to reposition it saying, listen, I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm trying to have a conversation with you about growth in this particular market. So tell me what you think is the best offices in your area or what you're looking for and why. So you're trying to get me to think of what

a successful option looks like here as opposed to just saying no. Correct. Well, I'm also trying to get a slice of your time. Okay. That's the hard part. Getting someone who's busy to get a slice of their time, that's tough these days. That's challenging. And so you've got to pay them for that time basically, right? I've got to give them some value or else why would they do it? Okay. So talk to me about that value. How does that value progression that uh you know we call it cultivating the client or you know uh moving them along through a a nurture track or something like that you know some of the different keywords in the in sales what might that look like um you know because you're you're reaching out once and you get a no or which i know you and i have discussed it's not a no it's a not

now right right and uh the um you know you you have to deliver some value to them to to be able to come back and and factor in you know them being grateful for that value the reciprocity factor how does that uh look in your mind in in your sales process so for me it depends on the personality of the of the prospect, too. If I'm talking to someone and they're very analytical, I may go into reasons why they didn't purchase. Hey, you're not interested in this because of these six factors. And then they automatically say, well, yeah, that's why. And that's why I can tell you their misconceptions and I can kind of turn that into a positive. If it's someone that's very emotional, I'm talking about high level future growth. I'm

talking about the emotion of the deal of what it looks like. If you put your name on a sign or you bought the right this and how you feel, how you look, if you got in the right car, it could be anything. I'm going to get you to feel it before we even talk about anything about the product. We may never, never talk about the product again. So you're going to understand what my personality type is pretty quick. I am. I'm hearing emotional and intellectual. Okay.

That's the approach. Am I a feelings guy or a numbers guy? Correct. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. So that's cool. We talk about delivering value, getting this eight times or whatever it might be.

Eight times, that's a lot of contact with somebody. It is. And that's, is that, you know, are you saying eight times, like you pick up the phone eight times and you get eight times and you get eight answering machine messages or, you know, voicemails or they're assisting eight times? I mean, what does that look like? You have to talk to them eight times?

Is that roughly? It's a mix. So our suggestion is obviously, you know, between text, a phone call, an email, and maybe even a video email. You know, some reason for them to stop, pause for a moment, and take a look at it. And as we know from working together for a while, that most people see something, and even though you may think you've seen it way too many times, I've contacted them way, way too many times, the reality of it is they may have only seen it the too many times. I've contacted them way, way too many times. The reality of it is they may have only seen it the first time on the seventh attempt.

So they just noticed it. They just noticed it. Interesting. Okay. And you just mentioned something that's been incredibly successful for us is video email. It is. Using video. Why do we use video? Because video allows you to see someone. It's's real then you see someone on the other end who's actually delivering a message it also is you know everybody clicks on the video we're just conditioned to after watching so many youtube videos um you know it moves for

two or three seconds so it gives you the it really draws your finger in to touch the the screen to make it you know launch so you can just see it and you're willing to give me 15 or 20 seconds for sure if it's a video so you've got 15 or 20 seconds to get their attention get them either emotionally or intellectually activated and start that process of value transference and you better be engaging at that point you either better be really funny or you better tell them something they've never heard of or you can flip the script and say, you know, this is not for you. Interesting. Then they want to say, why is it not for me?

So you're opening that loop. Correct. That mind loop. Okay. Getting them to ask the question of themselves, and you're the resource to provide the answer. Absolutely. Awesome. So, cool.

A lot of good stuff here. What is your inside sales? You have inside Salesforce, you have outside here. What is your inside sales? You have inside Salesforce. You have outside Salesforce. What does the inside Salesforce do? So the inside Salesforce is just hardcore making the calls. So they're making the calls, sending the emails, developing the initial interest in very specific areas for us. And what they're doing is setting appointments for outside reps.

Okay. So they're making initial contacts, things like that because you're outside Salesforce. Those are the specialists, the closers, I guess you could say, or the value, the people who understand how to deliver value the best. Right. When we started this, we realized that, you know, for one salesperson to be really good at multiple areas, the three areas of filling the pipeline, managing the pipeline and closing the pipeline, that's, you know, asking a lot of someone when there's a lot of deals to be done. What I'd prefer those people to do in the field is meet with people and close deals, work them through the process and close deals. If they have

to also go back and create the marketing, send it out, make phone calls, it takes away too much time. And, you know, frankly, about 20% of them are good at that. And that's about it. So closers are not good at prospecting? They're not. No one loves it, but they're not good at it. Right. But prospectors are better at prospecting. That is their whole job.

That's like you don't see the guy, the jeweler that is polishing the diamond out in the field digging the diamond, right? That's exactly right. Okay. He's not digging it and then saying, this looks great and let let's go back and it would be too long of a process. So we're trying to streamline it and get interested parties in front of people who know what they're talking about and helping them make a decision. So that's why a lot of, a lot of salespeople, a lot of companies would have you buy the initial leads is basically they're, they're paying for the

inside sales force, like what you're using right now, in order to create that potential client list. Correct. Okay. Yep. Gotcha. Now, you mentioned three things, filling the pipeline, managing the pipeline, closing the pipeline. Tell us about that. Yeah, those are the three things that cause a salesperson to fail.

And so, as we know. Yes. And so, we're watching those very carefully to see, are you having difficulty filling the pipeline, which we know we try to outsource as much as we can, or are you having trouble in the middle? Are you having trouble managing the relationship with that particular individual or all the individuals and moving them forward through a process? Or do you get to the end and you just don't have anything to say? You can't get them to make that decision at the very end because you haven't provided enough value. And so as we watch those three steps, we can tell where you're as a salesperson, where you're breaking down and we can help you improve in those areas very specifically.

That's where you as a, as a sales leader, as a sales coach, um, you know, where you, you diagnose those three components and then you can dig a little deeper on, oh, okay. You're, you know, you're meeting with people and buying them a cup of coffee, but are you really giving them value every time so they want to say, tell me more? Right, so it really comes down to who's controlling the conversation. So if you're a professional sales individual out there working with people, you know that when someone's interested and you're moving them along your process, if it's working or if it's not, if you're providing enough value,

you can tell in that relationship and conversations and the engagement you get, you can tell if you're losing it and they're telling you, you know, it's not the right time right now. And you're taking that, that piece back and you're saying, okay, well then I'll get back to you in a couple weeks. That's not the strongest salesperson we have. They come back and they said, what's going to change between now and two weeks? And you just keep asking questions until they realize nothing's changing. And that was just another objection that I just didn't handle.

It's just easier not to do the deal than to do the deal right then. Right. Because it's easier to do nothing in life than it is to do something, right? Correct. You didn't make them uncomfortable enough or you didn't provide enough value. You weren't compelling enough in your argument to have them say, absolutely, I need to move forward today. So really, you know, and kind of when you dig it up a little deeper, sales is about seeing the opportunity presented to you, right? Exactly. And that salesperson has to show them the opportunity so well that they just can't resist it. Right.

If someone said, hey, I'm going to give you $1,000 if you sign this form, you'd probably sign the form. There's the opportunity. It's $1,000. Yeah. But if you sat there and go, you know, maybe it's not a good day for me to receive $1,000, you'd wonder if you've explained it correctly. Right, right. So you have to explain it correctly, and you have to provide enough of that compelling argument for someone to say, I don't even know why I'm waiting. Gotcha.

Gotcha. Good stuff. So do you have any secrets of sales success for us? Give us a few things that when you look at a salesperson, you go, I want you to think about these three things or whatever that might be that will help you do more deals, close more sales, build more relationships, add more clients to your pipeline, things like that. Give us a few tips here, Chris, some of your best ones. So that's easy. So I'm more of a blocking and tackling kind of guy.

So I try to avoid the shiny thing. I see too many things come out and saying, well, if you did this one thing, it'll solve all your problems. So shiny thing, meaning the distraction it could be you know here's a new you know way to plug this into your phone or if you use slide dial then you can call the person and leave a message without them even know you called so you're not bugging them all that's great it's really the blocking and tackling so the three things i always tell people is it comes down to clarity consistency and passion and so those were also my initial CCP. So that's how I

can remember. Clarity, consistency, and passion. So let's, let's unpack those real quick. So clarity, obviously communication is clarity and clarity of, of, you know, it's, it's the clarity of as a salesperson knowing exactly what you need to do. Okay. You've organized yourself. You've planned your day, your week, your month out in advance. You know what you're offering. You know what the value of it is, and you're ready to go. You're clear as a bell on what you're doing all the time. Oh, I love it.

I love it. So you know you're going to start with a win each day, and here's how you're going to do it. Exactly. Excellent. And then it's consistency. That's where everybody in sales breaks down. So I've seen it in my neighborhood from people mailing flyers to, you know, for real estate. And you see them send one flyer and two weeks later send another flyer.

And they say, well, I didn't get a deal. So I'm not going to waste any money on that neighborhood. Twice is not consistent. Twice is not, you know. So you see the people that send it for three years in a row. They've got six, you know, sales in that neighborhood. All of a sudden you go, wow, you know, so you see the people that sent it for three years in a row. They've got six, you know, sales in that neighborhood. All of a sudden you go, wow, you know, I can attribute that to my consistency. People recognize my name.

Right. Consistency is the key and everything. It's also consistency on, you know, are you putting forth that effort every day or did you do it for two months? And then the rest of the year, you're like, wow, that was a good few months. I'm going to really rest on my laurels and let it, you know, and then I'll have to really gear up at the end of the year again. It's doing it every day. And you see that across almost everything from, you know, guys who work out to the rock to, you know, almost anything. You can ask them what their key to success is and its consistency.

It's waking up every morning and doing the same thing the right way, even when you don't want to. Wow. Good stuff. And now the P, passion. So passion, if you deliver any kind of message flat to anyone, they're not interested. So if you love that pen so much and you told 100 people how great this pen is, I guarantee you there's a percentage of them

who'll buy that pen just because you said so. Interesting. And it's because you delivered it with such excitement and passion that you believe it. If you don't believe it, they won't believe it. Hey, Chris, have I told you how much I love our podcast? It is fantastic. It is. Yes. I'm passionate about it. Yes, you are. So yeah, the passion part is all three of those come together to really create

a good salesperson. Cool. Awesome. Hey, Chris, I got a question for you. How do you start with a win? I'm very consistent. I get up every day about 4.30. I like to go to the gym. I eat the same things every day. And then I like to clear my mind before I start. So I'm pretty much hitting reset every morning. Good for you. Awesome. This is Adam Kantos from the 12th floor of RE-MAX World Headquarters overlooking Denver, Colorado,

signing off with Start With A Win. Thank you so much for joining us today. Make sure to head over to startwithawin.com to get more great content. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Adam on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And remember, Start With A Win.