Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Hala Taha: AI-Powered Sales, How to Automate, Optimize, and Close More Deals | Sales

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Hala Taha built an eight-figure media company using data-driven sales strategies and activity-based selling to close high-value deals. As a successful entrepreneur, she knows that sales success isn’...t about luck. It comes from mastering the right tools, prospecting strategically, and developing a resilient mindset. In this episode, Hala breaks down how to scale smarter, optimize your funnel, and boost conversions. She also shares insights on leveraging AI in business, tracking your pipeline effectively, and managing deals seamlessly with CRM tools like Pipedrive. In this episode, Hala will discuss:  (00:00) Introduction (01:30) Webinar Overview (05:27) Understanding Bottoms Up Sales Strategy (07:48) Activity-Based Selling Explained (10:02) Driver Trees and Performance Metrics (19:39) Becoming a Sales Psychopath with Shelby Sapp (28:40) Pipedrive Demo and Features (34:44) Introduction to Pipedrive (35:48) Optimizing Sales Funnels with Sean Cannell (36:27) Improving Conversion Rates with Russell Brunson (43:13) Analyzing Competitor Funnels (46:44) Prioritizing Sales Calls (50:41) Identifying Fool or Favorite Clients (58:27) Leveraging AI in Sales Hala Taha is the host of Young and Profiting, the number one entrepreneurship and business podcast. She is the Founder and CEO of YAP Media, an award-winning social media and podcast production agency. She also founded YAP Media Podcast Network, a top business and self-improvement podcast network, where she helps business podcasters like Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, Neil Patel, and Russell Brunson grow and monetize their platforms. Resources Mentioned: Get a free 14-day trial and 20% off your membership with Pipedrive: youngandprofiting.co/sales  Pipedrive Slides: youngandprofiting.co/PipedriveSlides Sponsored By: Shopify - youngandprofiting.co/shopify Airbnb - airbnb.com/host Rocket Money - rocketmoney.com/profiting Indeed - indeed.com/profiting    RobinHood - robinhood.com/gold Factor - factormeals.com/factorpodcast   Rakuten - rakuten.com Microsoft Teams - aka.ms/profiting Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals   Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap  Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting  LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/  Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/  Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com  Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new  Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Online Selling, Economics, E-Commerce, Ecommerce, Negotiation, Persuasion, Inbound, Value Selling, Account Management, Scale, Sales Podcast.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's episode of Yap is sponsored in part by Microsoft Teams, Rakuten, Factor, Robinhood, Airbnb, Shopify, OpenPhone, and Indeed. If you're looking for a way to collaborate with remote workers, your co-founders, interns, volunteers, then you need to check out Microsoft Teams Free. Try Microsoft Teams Free today at aka.ms. Get the Rakuten app now and join the 17 million members who are already saving. Cashback rates change daily. See rakuten.com for more details.
Starting point is 00:00:30 Eat smart and fuel your wellness goals with Factor. Get started at factormeals.com slash factor podcast and use code factor podcast to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. With Robinhood Gold, you can now enjoy the VIP treatment, receiving a 3% IRA match on retirement contributions. To receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at robinhood.com slash gold. Hosting on Airbnb has never been easier with Airbnb's new co-host network. Find yourself a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. Shopify is the global
Starting point is 00:01:06 commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system. Build stronger customer relationships and respond faster with shared numbers, AI, and automations. Get 20% off your first six months when you go to openphone.com slash profiting. Attract, interview, and hire all in one place with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at young and profiting.com slash deals. Hey, YAP gang.
Starting point is 00:02:00 I always say that knowing how to sell is the most important skill that an entrepreneur can have. Selling is at the core of every business. It's how you connect with your customers, build your brand and grow your business. And today I'm going to be giving you a mini masterclass on how to sell. I recently partnered with PipeDrive, which is a CRM platform to host a webinar about how you can crush your sales goals. And we're going to be replaying it right now on the podcast for anybody who missed it. You're going to hear all about the benefits of activity selling,
Starting point is 00:02:26 how to hit your sales goals, optimize your funnels, boost conversions, leverage AI and more. I'll also go into how to visualize your sales pipeline with Pipe Drive. Now, this is a webinar where I presented a fancy slide deck with it. So if you want to follow along with the presentation and demo, go check out the show notes
Starting point is 00:02:42 and you can get the link to the presentation. If you enjoyed this webinar and you're ready to step up your game, I highly recommend that you get a free 14-day trial with Pipe Drive. It's 100% risk-free, no credit card required. You can just go to youngimprofiting.co.uk slash sales for a free 14-day trial and 20% off your membership. That's youngimprofiting.co.co slash sales for a free 14 day trial of Pipe Drive. All right, if you're ready to make it rain, let's get started. Welcome to our crush your sales goals webinar
Starting point is 00:03:17 presented by Pipe Drive. This is the first sales webinar that we've had for the year. If you just joined, I was mentioning that I totally updated all the content. So lots of new ideas and hopefully going to set you up for success at the top of the year here. So if you haven't yet,
Starting point is 00:03:34 let me know how many people are on your sales team. So far, it seems like it's all a lot of small sales teams, which is perfect for what we're going to go over to. Now, if you guys have ever been to any of my webinars, you know that it's real work, right? So this is not something, some fluff. We're going to go over real concepts. You're going to learn, you're going to want to take notes.
Starting point is 00:03:57 So what are you going to do to make the most out of today's class? Are you going to grab some tea or coffee? I've got tea, I've got water. My phone is on silent. I'm not checking my email. Get a snack. Make sure your kids are out of the way. Your pets are out of the way. You're gonna focus. We're gonna be here for about 75 minutes going through content. So want you guys to be focused. Let me know what you're gonna do in the chat to make the most out of
Starting point is 00:04:22 today's session. Drop your name and date to solidify your commitments in the comments. Yeah, you guys will get a replay of this. So you don't have like, but I still would take notes because it helps you like really remember things. So let me know what you're gonna do to make the most out of today's session, write your commitment in the chat. Well, you guys are gonna, something new that we're doing
Starting point is 00:04:45 is I'm pulling like the best content that I have from my podcast to make these a little bit more interactive, engaging. And so you're gonna hear from Chris Voss, you're gonna hear from Shelby Sapp and a few others in this webinar, so it should be fun. Okay. So before we are jumping into the contents,
Starting point is 00:05:06 we're going to have about 30 minutes of content. We're going to do a demo, another 30 or 40 minutes of content. Before we do that, so I don't have to interrupt in the middle of the session, since we've got a lot of the folks on already, is to sign up to the demo. Kate, if you can drop this link in here,
Starting point is 00:05:25 youngandprofiting.co.uk slash crushyoursales, I would join it on your computer because we're going to do a demo that you can follow along with. So Kate will drop that link in the chat, make sure you guys sign up. It's no credit card. There's no gotchas, just sign up so that you can try it for 14 days.
Starting point is 00:05:42 Okay, we're going to move on. So in case you don't know a little bit about me, I am the host of Young and Profiting podcast. It's the number one entrepreneurship and business podcast. I've been doing it for over six years. I'm the founder and CEO of YAP Media. It's an award-winning social media and podcast production agency.
Starting point is 00:06:02 And then most recently, a couple years ago, I founded the YAP Media Podcast Network, which is my main focus now. So essentially, I grow and monetize other top business podcasters like Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, Neil Patel, Russell Brunson. I've got a lot of legendary podcasters in my network and we're the number one business and self-improvement podcast network. I do a lot of sales. My main job at YAP is I'm the spokesperson of the company, and I really am taking most of the major brand sales calls, agency sales calls.
Starting point is 00:06:37 A lot of our agency retainer deals are like 10K minimum a month. Most of them are closer to 20 to 30K. Our brand deals, I'm closing million-dollar deals sometimes. So I've got a ton of experience with sales. I would say that's one of my main skill sets aside from marketing. So I love sales. I know a lot about it. I've interviewed every sales expert in the world that you could imagine.
Starting point is 00:07:01 And so a lot of this learning is just things that I've come across on my podcast and my own personal experience. And so I'm excited to share with you. So today we're gonna talk about bottoms up sales strategy. We're gonna talk about driver trees, becoming a sales psychopath. We'll go through pipeline management with pipe drive. We'll talk about funnel optimization. We'll talk about funnel optimization.
Starting point is 00:07:25 We'll talk about the concept of the favorite and the full and halves and else which is just something that can help you identify your leads better. Then we'll talk about AI in the future and how AI is going to impact sales in the future and what you can do to prepare. Starting with bottoms up sales strategy and guys, I've got your chat up. So let's make this interactive. So if you have questions after I'm done with this section, I'll pause and kind of take a look and see if I can help answer anything.
Starting point is 00:07:58 But let's make this interactive and as fun as possible. So starting with bottoms up sales strategy. So first off, how would you guys all define the word selling? How would you define the word selling? Don't look it up, don't Google it. In your own words, what is selling? Okay, we got a lot of good answers. So we've got giving value, being of service, selling words, presenting a product, exchanging a service for money, got giving value, being of service, selling words, presenting a product, exchanging a service for money, providing true value,
Starting point is 00:08:29 helping somebody make a decision and change, convincing somebody what they need, creating value tied to client needs. Okay, so lots of good answers. Annoying for some people. Okay, so you guys gave a lot of good answers, but in my opinion, and technically selling refers to the actions that you take throughout the sales process and the closing of the deal. So a lot of people refer to sales as making money, making a sale, right?
Starting point is 00:09:06 Providing the value at the end of the sale. The value is really after the selling happens, right? Selling is all about the actions you take throughout the process. There's certain actions that you take that will cause a higher probability of getting more deals. So most people focus on the results rather than the actions and the process leading up to deals and you need to do the opposite. Okay. You need to focus on instead of results-based selling, activity-based selling. Okay. So you want to
Starting point is 00:09:38 go from results-based selling to activity-based selling. So a lot of people's go-to-market strategy are falling flat because they're doing it backwards. They've top-down approaches and it could be from the executive team, from the finance team, maybe you are the executive in the finance team, and you've got some goals. You have industry standards of growth percentages, you have broad metrics like the marketing spend
Starting point is 00:10:08 that you have, and it's essentially just not based in reality. You've got random goal-oriented metrics. They're set on different targets that you've created, but it's not actually based on tested outcomes. So that results in no realistic or actionable plans. So you actually, instead of wanting to take a top-down approach, you want to take a bottoms-up approach.
Starting point is 00:10:34 And essentially, what a bottoms-up approach strategy is, is that you work backwards from the close. So you go from close to the first sale activity. Now, this requires you tracking your data. So this means that if you haven't been tracking your actions, and a lot of you guys mentioned you've got a small team, you're solopreneurs, or you're just like a single entrepreneur, you've got to work backwards and start to track your data.
Starting point is 00:11:01 You've got to figure out what are the different sales funnels that I have and what are the actions that I take in these different sales funnels and which one of my sales funnels works best that I want to lean into. And so sales is really a volume game. How many clicks, calls, conversions do you need to hit your sales targets? And then you're going to want to track your data and figure out how many actions you need to complete each part of your sales process to hit your goals. Once you do that, you can set a stretch goal. And I'll go over an example. So if this is feeling cloudy, I'll go over an example in a second.
Starting point is 00:11:35 Once you do that, you can hit your stretch goal and make sure that your number is right. And then you can break the targets into easier chunks so that you know what you need to do and what your team needs to do to achieve that result. Okay? So, driver trees is how you do this. This is how you determine what actions you need to take, all of your different rates and things like that. And there's three steps to create a driver tree.
Starting point is 00:12:02 Number one, you determine your pipeline activities. So you determine the measurable actions that drive results in your best performing sales funnels. So this is all the calls that you've made, your email sent, your direct messages sent, your follow-up sent, the lunches that you've taken clients to. It's just any sort of action that you take to close a deal. And like I mentioned, you're going to want to think about
Starting point is 00:12:23 all the different ways that you get clients, because I'm sure it's not just one way. And you're going to want to figure out what are these separate funnels and map out the actions to each of these funnels. And then you'll actually be able to see which funnel is working better and what time which finally want to spend more time with and what actions you want to spend more time on. Okay? Then you have to collect the results. So, a spreadsheet or a CRM tool, a sales tracking tool,
Starting point is 00:12:52 you want to collect all your past results, and these can include things like clicks, webinar registrations, webinar attendees, emails opened, calls booked. Okay? Number three is you want to calculate your performance rate metrics. So that's analyzing your past data to collect all the key rates to help you
Starting point is 00:13:12 forecast future performance. So that's conversion rates, click through rates, average order value, attendance rate. So let me know. Do you guys understand how to like the general concepts steps one through 23 to create a driver trade? Okay, I'm gonna put it into, I'm gonna show you an example.
Starting point is 00:13:37 So do you guys know what the different sales funnels that you have that currently you're using in your business? Let me know, type it in the chat. What are the different types of sales? Are you doing webinars? Are you doing discovery calls? Are you going to live events? Okay.
Starting point is 00:13:57 And then do you know, out of all the different funnels that you have, do you know the best performing one? Or do you feel like you need to analyze your data and determine what the best performing sales funnel is? And do you guys know what key activities that you do in order to get that, all the different actions in your sales funnel? Do you guys know the different actions?
Starting point is 00:14:19 So for example, when we have a webinar, it includes DMs, it includes an opt-in to sign up, it includes a follow-up email, it includes a bunch of different things. Do you guys know those steps or do you need to actually map out those steps? That's great. So this is gonna be super relevant for all of you guys.
Starting point is 00:14:38 This is gonna be a game changer. It was a game changer for me when it came to selling my courses specifically. So I'm going to go over our driver tree example and we use webinars. So typically we have a webinar with a one month lead up for promotion. Okay. And so the first thing that you're going to do is analyze your past results. So like I said, you've got to be intentional. So now that means you've got to map out all your sales funnels. You've got to map out all the actions that you take,
Starting point is 00:15:05 and you're going to start to track that data. It could just be like in a spreadsheet, but you need some sort of past result in order to get started. And then you can keep adding onto it and start to get averages and things like that. So you map out your funnel, you use past data to determine your key rates to forecast future results. So in this example, we made 20,000 So you map out your funnel, you use past data to determine your key rates to forecast future results.
Starting point is 00:15:37 So in this example, we have, we made $21,000 in revenue. Okay. So we had 21 web course conversions at $1,000. So essentially when I, when I'm mapping this out, I start backwards from a past result. So $21,000 in revenue, that was 21 course conversions at $1,000. We had 350 webinar attendees, so it was a 6% conversion rate. We had 700 webinar registrants and emails, which was a 50% average attendance rate. We had 1,000 clicks, and it came from 10,000 direct messages. Once you understand all of your actions and the results that you got, the clicks, the people who actually registered and so on, you can start to get your performance metrics, which is the 10 percent average click-through rate,
Starting point is 00:16:17 the 70 percent average registration rate, the 50 percent average attendance rate. Then you can decide on a new team goal. So if I want to generate $35,000 on the next webinar, then all I need to do is plug in the performance metrics that I have and work backwards to get the result that I want. So I basically need 35 webinar conversions at $1,000. Then I just do the math.
Starting point is 00:16:48 That means we need 584 webinar attendees. That means we need 1,168 people to register. And then that also means we need about 1,700 clicks, which means we need to send about 1,000 direct messages total, and about 4,000 direct messages per week. Okay? So basically, I've just figured out how to get to my new team goal based on actual results. I didn't just point my finger in the air and say I want $35,000 next time, go do it. I have clear direction. Hey guys, I need us to move from 10,000 direct messages
Starting point is 00:17:28 to 17,000 direct messages if we wanna hit this goal. Does that mean that we need to extend the time to the webinar? Does that mean we need to add another salesperson to help us do more direct messages, right? And then you can also divide this by the day and give people what they have to do per day in order to hit that goal.
Starting point is 00:17:48 It also helps you understand, like, if you're midway and you haven't hit a certain amount of registrants, you know that you're behind your goal. So all the time when I'm doing webinars, I'm like, hey, guys, we need X amount of registrants. We still don't have that. We need to do more. We need to do more DMs. We're behind. Maybe our message needs to be improved. Maybe our opt-in needs to be improved.
Starting point is 00:18:11 Something is broken because we're not hitting our average metrics, and we need to figure out what we can do better to get the result that we want. Once you have your team goal, you can then figure out your per rep metrics. If you have five sales reps, which is the example here, you can then work backwards and figure out how many direct messages they need to
Starting point is 00:18:35 do per week, per day, for the month-long period. You don't only want to figure out how many, you know, first step actions you want. You want them to understand that their ultimate goal is that they need to get 117 webinar attendees and ultimately seven hour webinar conversions. And the other thing when you're doing a per rep analysis to think about is that you can then see like who's doing something differently that's working better. You give two different reps the same goal. I need you to get 117 webinar attendees,
Starting point is 00:19:12 seven webinar conversions, and somebody does better even though they sent the same amount of direct messages. For example, it could be that their message was better. Maybe they did better follow-ups. Something about their process is different. You want to figure out why is this person performing better, and how can I then scale that to
Starting point is 00:19:32 my team and keep improving what we're doing. It's really cool to start tracking team-wide, to track per person, and really start to evaluate all the actions people are doing. and really start to evaluate all the actions people are doing. Okay. So one thing to remember with activity-based selling is that you are really focused on your actions. You're focused on what you can control. You're focused on the process.
Starting point is 00:19:59 And you know that if you do all the right actions, that sales is a volume game and you'll end up getting a good result. And you can't worry about the results while you're taking these actions. You want to have a really strong, confident mindset while your activity based selling. And we all know that sales is very stressful, right? Sales is the type of activity where most of the time you're going to fail. There's other professions out there where like, for example, if you're an accountant,
Starting point is 00:20:32 you learn the rules of accounting, you'll be a good accountant. If you're an electrician or a plumber, you learn the process of fixing something, you'll probably have a good result. But sales is based on other people's emotions. And you can control other people. You can do all the things you know will
Starting point is 00:20:51 tend to have a good result, but at the end, you don't really know what's going to happen. And so you need to approach every single sale, every single interaction with a mindset of confidence and that you are going to close the deal. You need to have a high level of competence and you need to be able to control your energy, control your emotions, and just do the actions that you know you need to do, even if you keep getting no's along the way.
Starting point is 00:21:20 You need to replace your anxiety with confidence. And here we have Shelby Sapp, who is a young sales influencer entrepreneur who's generated millions of dollars in sales. And she's gonna talk about becoming a sales psychopath. So you're like blowing up on social media. You're doing really well on Instagram and TikTok. And I thought one of your videos and you were talking about how you need to be a sales psychopath. Oh, yes, you do.
Starting point is 00:21:51 Talk to me about that. So I like to say you have to be a complete literal psychopath in sales because a lot of people think, he says it's super cool, the shiny thing, you can make a lot of money. It's like, yes, but you don't get paid to show up. You get paid to go the extra mile. And sales is something to where it's a direct reflection of your work ethic. So if you really want to make it worth it
Starting point is 00:22:14 and to be that top 1% cream of the crop, you have to be a little bit of a psycho, not only in your work ethic, but also in your ability to just know how to regulate your emotions throughout the day. Like for example, you're going to go call, call, call, door, door, door of no, no, no, no. But you have to go into every single encounter thinking, this is the sale, this is the person that's going to buy from me. When maybe the last 10 people told you to yourself, you know? So to me, that's so psychotic because that's not normal.
Starting point is 00:22:49 That's not normal human behavior. You have to trick yourself into being this psychopathic mentality in order to really reap, in my opinion, the true benefits of sales because that really does come from the top of the top, the best of the best. It's so true because like nobody really knows like what your track record is. Nobody knows how many sales you made before that day. The customer knows nothing about you. They don't know your ranking.
Starting point is 00:23:15 They don't know anything about you. So you can come there with good energy and just have the confidence and know your stuff. And they have no idea how well you've done in the past. Exactly, and it sounds so simple, but it's really not, because having that conviction in your voice and that sure tone and that confidence, that energy and the aura,
Starting point is 00:23:35 when you just got demolished by every single person before is so hard, but like you said, they really have no clue. So you almost have to like brainwash yourself into being like, this is the client that's going to buy. And that one client that buys that commission is going to make up for all of the nos that you had that day. So all it takes is the one you can't let the other people get to. Yeah. So you heard it from Shelby.
Starting point is 00:24:03 You've got to become a sales psychopath. That means approaching every opportunity like you're going to get the sale. That means not being worried about what happened before and just being in the moment, focusing on the process, like we said, focusing on the activities, the actions you have to take, having a really good work ethic and making you sure that you hit the actions no matter what the results were in the process. After the event is over, it's not about ignoring the results. We want to evaluate the results once it's over. Once the event is over, once the month is over, we evaluate what we did, how can we be better? But in the moment, it's all about the actions that you take and the volume of the actions and just being as positive and as confident as you can in that moment,
Starting point is 00:24:45 whether it's in DMs or on the phone or in person, okay? So we had some questions. So you're... So we had some questions. I'm going to just go back and clarify some things. So just to make sure that everybody is on the same page, somebody had a question, course conversions versus attendees.
Starting point is 00:25:07 So I'm gonna go back to this really quick. So conversions are people who actually bought the course, attendees are people who attended the webinars. So that's how granular you wanna get, okay? So you send a DM, the DM has an opt-in link, people click that link, then they go to an opt-in page for the webinar. They type in their name, their email, and they register for the event. They get a calendar event, there's probably some automated emails that happen because they give their email,
Starting point is 00:25:38 they register for the event, but then only 50% of the people show up to the webinar, right? Then you do the webinar and people show up to the webinar. Right? Then you do the webinar and if they buy on the webinar or afterwards, that's up to you to decide like what the time period is of tracking conversions associated with that webinar. And that's people who actually buy, right?
Starting point is 00:25:59 So that's hopefully that answers your question. How do you send 10K DMs efficiently? Hopefully that answers your question. How do you send 10K DMs efficiently? Virtual assistants on LinkedIn, your DMs are unlimited to your first connections. So it's just all about getting first connections and then you can DM them whenever you want. Question, if this is new Salesforce
Starting point is 00:26:19 and do not have much past history, do you use past sales from other salespeople? Yes, you can just use past sales data from other people, other events that you've had, and then you can try to tailor it once you have more realistic information about your new sales team. What strategies to manipulate conversion rate? We're going to talk about that later when we talk about optimizing funnels. All right, cool. I think those were all the questions. Okay, so do you guys wanna lean into activity-based selling?
Starting point is 00:26:51 Is this different from what you've already been doing? Yeah, this is also something that you've probably done before, but like things get busy and then you just kind of like are on a hamster wheel and it's always good to just like reset, especially in the beginning beginning of the year and also make sure you stop doing things that are not effective or you can kind of optimize like we were talking about we're going to talk about optimizing funnels
Starting point is 00:27:15 you can optimize a step that might not have like industry standard performance like for example let's say you say your conversion rate is 2%, but it should be 6%. So what do you need to do differently? So I think just evaluating what you're doing is always smart, slowing down, stepping back. Can you guys see yourself using a bottom-up strategy if you're not using one yet?
Starting point is 00:27:42 All right, so according to Pipe Drive, sales team use the following tracking, 4% pen and paper, 17% spreadsheets, 79% CRM software. What are you using today? Or are you not tracking at all? Let me know in the chat, are you using pen and paper, spreadsheets, CRMs? Well, that's what PipeDrive is.
Starting point is 00:28:07 Just so you guys know, PipeDrive literally was started to revolve around activity-based selling. That's like their whole ethos is that sales is all about the actions you take and to be more activity focused rather than results focused. So pipeline management is an incredible way to visualize your sales process to track all your activities. Having the right CRM is crucial for your sales success. This is coming from Pipe Drive's website. We believe that in sales and marketing,
Starting point is 00:28:41 just like in life, you can't control the results, but you can control the actions that drive deals towards completion. So their whole thing is designed around helping you understand all the actions that you're taking, tracking that automatically, and being able to see like if there's anything going wrong. It actually has like AI that will tell you you need to do more emails, you need to do more calls, and you just basically input that historical data so that Pipe Drive knows how to guide you and your sales team along the way. Pipe Drive is a CRM that enables you to customize your sales process based on your specific
Starting point is 00:29:18 individualized sales funnels. It was specifically designed by salespeople for salespeople. It is both a sales tracking tool and a CRM. So there's lots of CRMs out there that are really focused on communications and contact management. PipeDrive is both a sales tracking activity, sales tracking tool, and a CRM, traditional CRM, where you can see every single email you've sent, every single DM you've sent, save all your contact information. PipeDrive also has a lot of automations.
Starting point is 00:29:50 They're really innovative and they've got lots of new AI tools that are really exciting that are coming out. You can do automated follow-ups, you can do AI-generated email templates, and then they have amazing reporting. I think my favorite part about PipeDrive is all the reporting that they have. In our demo, we're going to show you
Starting point is 00:30:10 what their reporting looks like. PipeDrive is also a very popular platform that's integrated with every single app that you can imagine. You can check out their integrations during your free trial. We have more content after this, about 45 minutes of educational content. But before we do that, we're going to start the demo.
Starting point is 00:30:35 You guys already signed up to the demo. If you guys have not yet, please go ahead and do that. Drop that link in the chat, Kate. We're not going to spend a ton of time because I had everybody who is on earlier sign up. I'm going to answer some questions while you guys do that. If you guys have not done it yet, please sign up.
Starting point is 00:30:54 Let me know done in the chat if you've done that. Mark is asking, if one only uses Pipe Drive, should that be the only tool to stay around to track your sales, or would you recommend also tracking in Excel as well? I think that if you set up PipeDrive properly, you won't need to use Excel. That's the whole point is that you want to get out of spreadsheets and move to PipeDrive to track all your sales.
Starting point is 00:31:15 PipeDrive on their blog has all this documentation of how you can basically make that transition. If you've been tracking in Sheets, that's great because you basically have the foundation to then upload that information into Pipe Drive. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
Starting point is 00:31:34 Yeah, Pam, when I first started this podcast, believe it or not, I had an all volunteer team to help me out. But as my business took off, I needed to hire a lot of new people and fast. It soon became pretty overwhelming because I had to sort through piles and piles of resumes, conduct countless interviews, and you know how it goes, hiring is a pain. But then I discovered the easiest way to hire the right people quickly.
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Starting point is 00:32:24 than non-sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Plus, with Indeed Sponsored Jobs, there's no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts, and you only pay for results. How fast is Indeed, you ask? In the minute I've been talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed data worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.
Starting point is 00:32:45 And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your job's more visibility at Indeed.com slash profiting. Just go to Indeed.com slash profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Hey, YapBam, do you guys know that feeling
Starting point is 00:33:08 when you're juggling a dozen sales leads with your team? You're trying to close all these deals and then suddenly you realize, wait, did we forget to follow up with so-and-so? Shoot, nobody did. And now we lost the deal because we weren't organized. YapBam, you've got to get the right system in place for your pipeline management
Starting point is 00:33:25 if you want to scale your business. And my favorite CRM and sales tracking tool is PipeDrive. They're the first CRM made by salespeople for salespeople. PipeDrive visualizes your sales process and it's really all you need to track your sales, communications, contacts, and run your team meetings. PipeDrive has a powerful pipeline management. You can see exactly where every lead stands at a glance. contacts and run your team meetings. Pipe Drive has a powerful pipeline management.
Starting point is 00:33:45 You can see exactly where every lead stands at a glance. They've got automated reminders and follow-ups to increase your productivity, and it eliminates repetitive time-consuming tasks. Pipe Drive CRM features were developed around the principle of activity-based selling. They have real-time reports and an AI assistant that helps you focus on the activities
Starting point is 00:34:04 that are most likely to lead to a sale. And Pipe Drive is always innovating. In fact, they're gearing up to launch a whole new suite of AI tools. With Pipe Drive, you're not just managing your sales, you're supercharging them. So if you're ready to take your sales game to the next level, head over to youngimprofiting.co.sales
Starting point is 00:34:21 and start your free 14-day trial today. That's youngimprofiting.co.sales for your free 14-day trial on Pipe Drive. Hello, young and profitors! Starting a small business means you're wearing a lot of hats. Your personal phone becomes your business phone and before you know it, you're juggling calls day and night. And when I started the app, I made the mistake of using my personal cell phone to handle all business inquiries.
Starting point is 00:34:46 I had my business and personal mixed up and it wasn't good for my mental health. That's where OpenPhone comes in. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system. They'll help you separate your personal life from your growing business. For just $15 a month, the cost of a few coffees, you'll get complete visibility into everything happening with your business phone number. $15 bucks a month, the cost of a few coffees, you'll get complete visibility into everything happening with your business phone number. OpenPhone works through an app on your phone
Starting point is 00:35:09 or your computer, and it can integrate with HubSpot and hundreds of other systems. They use AI-powered call transcripts and summaries. So basically what that means is you get a summary of your phone call with action items as soon as you hang up. And if you miss a call, automated messages are sent to your customer directly. OpenPhone is awesome.
Starting point is 00:35:28 It's affordable, it's easy to use, and whether you're a solopreneur, one-person operation, or you need help managing a team with better tools for efficient collaboration, OpenPhone is the solution for you. And right now, OpenPhone is offering 20% off your first six months when you go to openphone.com slash profiting.
Starting point is 00:35:47 That's O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E dot com slash profiting for 20% off six months. And if you have an existing phone number with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge. That's openphone.com slash profiting. Okay. All right, so if you guys wanna sign in
Starting point is 00:36:12 and follow along the demo, you can. If you wanna just pay attention and play with it later, go for it, it's up to you. But if you have access, you can actually follow along during the demo. And now I have Aiman from my sales team going over a demo account of Pipe Drive to just show you guys specifically how you can use Pipe Drive for activity-based
Starting point is 00:36:31 selling. We're not going to go into too much of the contact stuff that is traditional CRM. We're really focused on how this is related to activity-based selling. Hello everyone, I'm Eamon and today I'm going to walk you through how our sales team uses the core features at Pipe Drive to crush sales every year. Let's get started. So the first step in Pipe Drive is to set up your pipeline stages. Link of your pipeline as a visual representation of every step a deal goes through before it closes.
Starting point is 00:37:01 Pipe Drive allows you to fully customize these stages so they match your specific sales process. Here is how to do it. Click on the pipeline button in the right corner of your dashboard. Create or rename your stages to reflect your steps you typically take, such as prospecting, qualifying leads, closing the deal, signing the contract, and so on.
Starting point is 00:37:23 As you can see, PipeDrive already gives you a template that you can use. So once you set up your stages, you can start adding deals into the appropriate stage right away. The visual approach keeps your team aligned and ensures nothing slips through the cracks. Next, let's talk about focusing on actions that move the deal forward. It's easy to get caught up in the final outcome causing the deal, but really the day-to-day activities are what makes the difference in the sales process. So a sales activity in Pipe Drive can be anything from a phone call, an email, or a scheduled meeting to a lunch maybe, for example, with a potential client. Whatever you
Starting point is 00:38:04 need to do to nurture that deal, you can log it in and schedule it in PipeDrive. Here's a quick example. Let's say you have a new lead, you might schedule a discovery call, then follow it up with an e-mail and confirm the next steps. PipeDrive will book these times in your calendar and remind you of these activities,
Starting point is 00:38:23 so you're always on top of your tasks and never miss an opportunity to connect. As you work on deals and complete activities, PipeDrive will provide you with real-time tracking and insights to help you crush your sales and refine your approach. If you need to adjust course, let's say you notice conversion rate drops when moving the deal to qualified stage. With Pipe Drive reports, you can spot these trends early and take correctional actions, maybe offering a more compelling proposal, dedicating more time to customer needs in that stage. This kind of feasibility ensures that you and your team can pivot quickly and
Starting point is 00:39:06 keep hitting your goals. Finally, when you have your pipeline set up, you're focusing on the right actions and your tracking progress, it's time to optimize and grow. Pipe Drive's automations help you scale your Sys process and achieve even bigger goals. For example, the automations can take care of administrative tasks like sending follow-up emails. You can schedule the follow-ups beforehand
Starting point is 00:39:31 or updating deal stages, saving you time and efforts. As you refine your winning formula, you can set even bigger sales goals and continue to push your team to new heights. All right, this is Pipe Tribe in a nutshell. Hope you got some insights and back to the webinar. Yeah. So as you can see, super effective especially those of you who are not using a CRM yet,
Starting point is 00:39:57 even if you are using a CRM, one that is designed specifically around your sales process, is super helpful so that you can do activity-based selling, not have to work in spreadsheets and be able to see your dashboard to evaluate how things are going. Hello, everyone. I'm Ayman. Yeah, I think Pipe Drive would definitely be good for a recruitment agency.
Starting point is 00:40:19 It would work for any sales funnel. And the beauty of Pipe Drive compared to other CRMs is that you can totally customize your steps in the process. But like I said, you need to just outline what your sales steps are first. So if you guys aren't using Pipe Drive right now, are you excited to give it a try? You've got a 14 free day free trial. Are you excited to give it a try and see if it will work for you guys? Okay. We see a lot of yeses. What about forecasting? Yes. Pipe drive has forecasting abilities. Pipe drive is one of the most reputable CRMs in the industry.
Starting point is 00:40:56 So anything that like HubSpot would have or any other CRMs Pipe Drive has, and it's more of like a nimble tool. And I'd also say that it's really great for small teams. It's more affordable, HubSpot's very expensive, but yeah, so I feel like it's just a really, really great option for smaller businesses and sales teams. Okay, so if you guys want to sign up to Pipe Drive, you can click that link if you already haven't yet.
Starting point is 00:41:28 You already get the 20% off your annual if you end up signing up. And right now you have a free 14 day trial to give it a spin. That's how we started with Pipe Drive before they were even a sponsor or a partner. We just used it for 14 days and we loved it. And we just moved all our sales ops to Pipe Drive. Give it a try. You don't really have anything to lose. You don't have to put your credit card. I would just set up some sales funnels,
Starting point is 00:41:52 try to see if you like the ease of use. It's a really intuitive tool. It's very easy to use. Let's move on to optimizing our funnels. Here is Sean Cannell. Now we're going to move on into how do we actually improve our conversions, how do we improve all the different activities that we're doing and continue to get better.
Starting point is 00:42:16 Because it's not only about taking more actions, it's also about stepping back and figuring out what is broken, how can I improve so that I can ultimately get more conversions and better results. And this is what you do once the period of sales is over when you're analyzing everything that you've done in the past. So here's Sean Cannell on your funnels being broken. And then it's kind of like online marketing best practices. I think the naming of whatever you're giving away free, the desire of what you're giving away free,
Starting point is 00:42:46 alignment on the entire thing, and congruency. Congruency is that when they land on the page, they're on the right page, people have horrible landing pages, navigation above, it doesn't even seem like it's them, there's not authority there, it doesn't load, it's like malware notification, there's all kinds, I mean, it's just kind of stressful.
Starting point is 00:43:03 Someone's like, man, there's so many things. You just want to remove friction. Sometimes the biggest mistake is like, you're making a video that have people thinking one way and giving a call to action that's not related. Think about what video would attract the ideal person for your opt-in. What opt-in would attract the ideal person for your offer?
Starting point is 00:43:27 And those things are broken all the time in people's businesses. Like someone opts in but they're not the right psychology, psychographics, demographics, because it was a cool free thing but did it really align? And then the YouTube videos, if you were talking about how to hire team members in a video, and then you were like, and by the way, if you want to download my 21 tax savings guide, like not horrible, because maybe some people are like, that does sound interesting. The reason they're there, the better guide would be a freebie that's like, you know, and if you want to get my scripts, my job interview scripts for how to really filter out the wrong candidates
Starting point is 00:44:11 and lock in the right candidates, just go to think filter, think hiring scripts.com or click the link in the description. So that would be my biggest thing is like, I think the strategy of the content that attracts right people then the opt-in that ties together, concurrency and the whole thing. And then again, a good sales process and funnels, you know, you probably have endless episodes in your own library of some good stuff on making great funnels. But what's powerful about that is it is a psychology, everybody listening to this needs to know, thinking about their whole, you could call it sales journey, the whole customer journey, thinking about the entire thing start to finish.
Starting point is 00:44:50 And that is a never ending process of tweaking. All of us can improve it. Ours is probably a six out of 10. And we've done pretty well. There's so many things that small tweaks lead to giant peaks. And so just being willing to be like, can I change my opt-in in the future? Can I change my offer page? It's not even just my offer page, the checkout page and the thank you page and then follow up and what do I want to do next? And is that all a line? And usually when things are not working, it's just because a piece is
Starting point is 00:45:19 broken and there's some kind of like cognitive dissonance that happens or something. Sometimes from YouTube to your landing page, it's not quite what it looked like and all these little details like that. What am I? So hopefully that gets you in the mindset of being willing to analyze your entire funnel. So not only the activities you do,
Starting point is 00:45:39 but what is the language on the page? What does it look like? Is anything broken, right? So that should be helpful. And then it's kind of like online. is the language on the page? What does it look like? Is anything broken? Right? So that should be helpful. And then it's kind of like online. And Russell is gonna talk about actual strategies for optimizing these content pages.
Starting point is 00:45:58 I love that. And I can just hear all the passion in your voice. And I teach marketing too. And something that I always tell my students is like, it's all about the nuance, right? It's like these little tiny tweaks that get people to make the decisions that you want them to make.
Starting point is 00:46:13 So can you talk about subtle nuances that people can do within their funnels that can make or break their funnels? Yeah. So first off, because of that, I mentioned earlier, so there's always three things in every page of a funnel. So hook a story to offer. And I always tell people like, if you were to hire me, I do console days for 100 grand a day, people fly out here. Like, I was telling like, the only
Starting point is 00:46:33 thing I'm going to do is I'm going to look at every page of the funnel and see they're going to be a hook a story or they offer. Like one of those things is, is always off, right? So good example, I have someone that's in my inner circle and they had a webinar that was teaching people how to like, make money with local reviews or something like that. Right. And they had this webinar and they had a webinar that was really good. They had a landing page, registered, everything was there. Right. But it was costing them, I think on average it cost them like $25 per lead to get someone to register for a webinar. And then from that, it was like, I think they're like 12% of people who registered actually showed up. So it's costing them like $150
Starting point is 00:47:03 for every person to show up on this webinar. And then the webinars actually converted really good. Like they're teaching the process, they sold a really good offer and they did really well. But it was just, the conversions were bad. And so they wanted me to help them rebuild the entire funnel and the webinar and everything. And I was like, I don't think it's that big.
Starting point is 00:47:17 I think you're just missing one thing. I said, when I look at the registration page, their headline was something like, learn how to make money with helping local businesses with local reviews. I was like the problem with that is there's no curiosity when I see that I'm like, oh, this is a webinar teach people how to make your teeth They're gonna teach me how to make money local reviews. And if you think you know the answer Already then first off you're not gonna register And if you do register you may or may not show up
Starting point is 00:47:40 But you're like, I think I know this is about registered and if I'm you know, if I'm bored, maybe I'll show up Right. And so all we did is we took that as like, let's just change the hook and make it more like, let's make more curiosity in the hook. And so we changed it from how to make money teaching people how to do local reviews or whatever to like, if something like this is the loophole we found to help make extra money, helping local businesses and this is not and we talked about all the things that wasn't. So it's not doing
Starting point is 00:48:04 Facebook ads, this is not doing Instagram, whatever all the things it wasn't. This is not doing Facebook ads, this is not doing Instagram, this is whatever all the things that people might think it was. We talked about what it was not and said register to find out exactly what this new thing is and then we'll show you how to use it inside your business. So we just made it more curiosity based. That's all we changed on the registration page and it went from like $25 per registrant and I started getting registrants at $5 a piece. So, drop the cost down to one-fifth. And then, because people didn't know what it was unless they showed up, their show-up rate went from like 12%, to like 26%. Wow.
Starting point is 00:48:32 So, between those two things, also the metrics of the business changed, and this funnel went on to make them millions of dollars just by changing a hook on a page. Right? So, that's how you talk about it. It's just like simple psychology, these little tiny tweaks, these little tiny changes have huge impact across the funnel. Right? And so, for me, that's what you talk about it. It's just like simple psychology, these little tiny tweaks, little tiny changes have huge impact across the funnel. Right. And so for me, that's what I'm always looking for.
Starting point is 00:48:49 That's why I look at so many people's funnels, just to get ideas of like, oh, look how they did that. Look how they did this. And the more I see people buying ads, like the telltale sign of like, people always ask me, how do you know a funnel's working? Like if the company is spending a lot of money on ads, you keep seeing it over and over and over again,
Starting point is 00:49:03 they're probably are doing something right. And so I'll click on it, I'll go look at it, like, oh, look how they did that, look how they framed that, look how they made this offer, look what, we're just looking at those little things and they'll come back and test them on our pages. And like I said, a little tweak like that
Starting point is 00:49:15 can dramatically change the metrics of a business. So it's like searching for buried treasure and then applying it back to your business, which is so much fun. So I love what Russell said, especially at the end of analyzing your competitor funnels. Who is your competitor? What are their funnels looking like? What activities do they do for top of funnel, for mid funnel? What are their landing pages look like? What is the language that they're using? And you can take the things that you think are
Starting point is 00:49:46 working well for them and apply it to your own business. And so not only optimizing your funnels, but optimizing, but analyzing your competitors' funnels. I love that. And I can. So an example of this is something that we do at YAP and that we've tried to fix, which is our attendance rate. Our attendance rate is great for webinars. We get a 50% average attendance rate. However, I interviewed Kat Norton and she told me that for webinar registrants, she gets a drastic increase in her attendance rate
Starting point is 00:50:21 by collecting people's phone numbers and then texting them. So an example of optimizing a funnel for us would be to start testing text. And so if we were to just not change anything, so if I just had the team continue doing 10,000 DMs, but we implemented text reminders, which can be automated and we're able to jump from 50 percent attendance rate to 80 percent attendance rate.
Starting point is 00:50:48 I can hit my 35Kish goal with that change and not necessarily sending out more DMs. It can really have big impacts and you want to see what part of your funnel can you actually improve? Is there a way that you can improve the click-through rate? Is there a way that you can improve the click-through rate? Is there a way that you can improve the conversion rate on the actual event? You always want to look at that and try to optimize. Based on everything you just heard,
Starting point is 00:51:16 are you inspired to start optimizing your funnels? If so, what's one idea that you will do after this call? Thank you guys. You can listen to all those episodes. idea that you will do after this call. Thank you guys. You can listen to all those episodes. Kate, maybe you can drop the episode links in the chat. That Russell Brunson episode was epic. I have so many sales episodes guys. I've interviewed every single human behavior and sales person in the world.
Starting point is 00:51:44 Okay, so benchmarks for conversion rates. They're going to be different by industry, but that's something you can go on chat GBT and check out. That's going to be totally different for every single activity. It's going to be totally different for every single type of event. So for example, like webinar events are going to have different conversion rates than a sales call. But you can find that information online. You can also use your own past results as
Starting point is 00:52:16 your benchmark and just keep improving from there. Working backwards, figuring out how to automate, laying out the funnel. The Hook Story offers brilliant. That the Hook Story offer is brilliant. That entire episode with Russell is amazing. Also, if you guys want more webinar content, I'll write this in the chat. I have a two-part series with Jason Fladline.
Starting point is 00:52:39 And we go over how to create the best webinar ever for like two hours. So if you guys wanna get into webinars, check that out. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Yeah, BAM, it's 2025 and a new year means new opportunities. For a lot of you out there, I know you've been thinking about one thing over the holidays, and that's starting your own business or side hustle. But of course, you've got so many questions.
Starting point is 00:53:06 How do I get started? How do I come up with a brand? How am I actually going to sell things to people? Well, yeah, Pam, I want you to take a deep breath because Shopify has got you. How do I know? Because I had the same questions when I first started selling online. But the best time to start your new business is right now because Shopify makes it simple to create your brand, open for business, and get your first sale.
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Starting point is 00:54:02 It's the small actions that add up in a big way. Start small with a trial of Shopify and I promise it's so easy to use that anything that felt scary about starting your online business will just melt away. With Shopify, your first sale is closer than you think. Established in 2025 has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for your $1 per
Starting point is 00:54:25 month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. That's all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash profiting to start selling on Shopify today. Shopify.com slash profiting. Hey, Young and Profiters. These days, I find myself with no time. I'm juggling work, dating, everything else that life throws in my way, and honestly, healthy eating has fallen to the wayside. There's just never enough time to plan, shop, cook, clean up after cooking. And what happens is that I end up ordering all these groceries, being optimistic because I want to eat healthy, but all the food goes bad before I get a chance to cook it.
Starting point is 00:55:03 So I knew that I had to make a change and I recently discovered Factor. It's been amazing because they've got chef-made gourmet meals that make eating well so easy. All the meals are dietitian approved, they're ready to heat in just two minutes, and so I can feel right and feel great no matter how much time that I have. And Factor arrives fresh to your doorstep. They've got 40 different options to choose from across all different types of dietary preferences. And so I personally like to have protein plus.
Starting point is 00:55:31 I work out every single day. So I like to have protein with every meal. But if that's not for you, you can try Calorie Smart or Keto. Factor helps you feel good all day. They've got breakfast options, snacks, wholesome smoothies, and I love the smoothie variety pack. It is perfect for me. So why not keep it simple and reach your nutrition
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Starting point is 00:56:19 slash deals. Young and profitors, I know so many of you are in your grind season. You're working your 9 to 5 and then your 5 to midnight building out that side hustle dream. And that's how I started Yap Media and now we are on track to hit 8 figures this year. If you're a side hustler, you know that it can be hard to find the right tools without breaking the bank.
Starting point is 00:56:39 And that's where Microsoft Teams Free comes in. With Teams, you get pro-level collaboration tools without the hefty price tag. For example, you can host free video meetings for up to 60 minutes. That is so professional for your client calls. You can also get unlimited chat for real-time collaboration with your team,
Starting point is 00:56:58 no matter where you are. It replaces so many apps. So for example, file storage. If you wanna keep your client documents, invoices, and brand assets organized, Microsoft Teams Free has you covered. You can have everything you need to access in one place. You can also create community spaces
Starting point is 00:57:15 to organize your teams, volunteers, or creative collaborators, making it easy to track your business or projects. Microsoft Teams seems like a dream come true for small businesses. It's secure, professional, reliable, and it is amazing to have all your tools in one place. Stop paying for your tools.
Starting point is 00:57:35 Get everything you need for free with Microsoft Teams. It's a no-brainer. Try Microsoft Teams today and start growing your side hustle without extra cost. Head to aka.msslash profiting today to sign up for free. That's aka.msslash profiting to sign up for free to Microsoft Teams today. So let's talk about prioritizing your time. Now, a lot of us seem like we're selling services. It also sounded like you guys are
Starting point is 00:58:07 taking a lot of sales calls. I saw discovery calls a lot in the chat when I was asking what your different activities were. So when you're not selling one too many, you really have to be careful with your time. You've got to make sure that you're taking the right calls, that you're focused on the right thing, because time is the most precious asset that we have. Chris Voss told me once, it's not a sin to lose business, but it's a sin to take a long time losing business. You want to make sure when you're on these sales calls,
Starting point is 00:58:40 you're trying to disqualify whoever you're talking to as soon as possible so that you can focus your time on the people who are actually going to buy from you. You don't want to just be a busy bee taking calls that are like very low probability. You want to focus your time on your best case scenarios with your sales. So you want to think about are you the fool or the favorite? Okay. So you want to think about are you the fool or the favorite? Okay, so as soon as you get on a sales call, your number one goal is to figure out, are you the fool or the favorite?
Starting point is 00:59:12 Because when somebody gets on a sales call with you, they're 70% made up before they even get on the call. They know if they're going to work with you or not. And oftentimes they're just using you as a reference, like doing their due diligence. and oftentimes they're just using you as a reference, like doing their due diligence. They may not actually be like, intentionally like trying to waste their time.
Starting point is 00:59:32 They might think they should be getting three bids or whatever it is, but their mind is already made up and you need to decide like, are you the fool or the favorite? So you're the fool if they're asking you for free information, they just keep asking you for stuff. They're really unresponsive. They keep you waiting.
Starting point is 00:59:49 They miss the first call. They're late. They don't respect you. They don't respect your time. They're all about price, right? They're asking for the lowest price early on. Or they won't introduce you to any decision-makers. So they're just wasting your time, okay?
Starting point is 01:00:06 Your favorite on the other hand is they're treating you like an insider. They're sharing exclusive details. They're talking about how they're going to work with you, not if you can do something for them. They treat you with respect. They're seeking out your input. They're treating you like a trusted advisor. They're bringing the key decision-maker on the call,
Starting point is 01:00:27 they're negotiating what they're going to get in the deal, not necessarily the price. They respect your prices, they respect your work. You need to find out if you're the fool or favorite early on, and part of that is just paying attention, paying attention to what's happening, what happened before the call. And you can take a 15 minute call to like 100% solidify if you're the fool or the favorite.
Starting point is 01:00:52 If you're the fool, you wanna disqualify your week leads early. You wanna ask direct questions. You want to, instead of lowering price, shift the conversation to value differentiation. And you also could try to uncover gaps and ask like you know what what would it take for us to be your first choice, right? And you know if you've got a lot of options just sorry we're not a fit you know they could
Starting point is 01:01:16 come back to you and you can be the favorite because you put your foot down and stayed confident and assertive. Now for the favorite you want to stay confident, you want to stay assertive. Now, for the favorite, you want to stay confident, you want to stay assertive. You also don't want to give them time to basically reconvince them that you're not the favorite, so you want to close quickly. You don't want to let them second-guess. You want to push for the highest pricing, better terms.
Starting point is 01:01:42 You definitely don't want to throw out free promotions if you're already the favorite, right? So once you know you're the favorite, offer stands as it is, there's no flexibility in price, close quickly, and you'll do well. So there's a magic question, and we're going to hear about it from Chris Voss. So what questions should we ask ourselves to understand whether we're the fool or the favorite? Ask yourselves, how can I fearlessly find out early on without hurting anybody's feelings? Because I'm not going to ask the gentlemen questions.
Starting point is 01:02:19 How do I allow myself to find out early on whether or not I'm the favorite of the fool? If you don't wanna try, you're holding yourself hostage. I mean, release yourself, because you're the one that's holding you back. And this scares the heck out of so many people. If they can get over this hurdle, if they can just put themselves in a mindset to find out,
Starting point is 01:02:39 then they are going to be a long way towards using these skills, because it's about releasing yourself in many ways. Steve, would you agree? Absolutely. And this is a concept that I really resonated with because in football, this is what we were trained to do. Read the situation. Read and react.
Starting point is 01:03:00 Read and react. There's lots of clues. And you're looking for the clues. You just lots of clues and you're looking for the clues. You just have to know what you're looking for. No one knew that there was a favorite and a fool. The moment you start looking for the clues, they're all over the place. It's not a sin to lose business.
Starting point is 01:03:17 It's a sin to take a long time losing business. And the real reason why real estate agents work seven days a week is because they don't work five. If they actually work five days a week, actually work, rather than spending time chasing after business they're not going to get, they wouldn't have to work seven days a week. They wouldn't have to be on call 24-7. So I take sales calls all the time.
Starting point is 01:03:44 They usually start with some sort of discovery call where you try to figure out what's the client's problems? Can I help them? Can I not help them? So what are the things that we can do in that conversation to know whether we're the fool or the favorites? What are the things that people do or save that will give us clues?
Starting point is 01:04:00 Well, the first thing is to just ask what is the most horrifying question for everybody until they understand how good it is. And that's to say to the other person, you got a lot of options out there. I mean, I got solid competitors. You could go to them. They got great resumes.
Starting point is 01:04:20 Why me? That is like the magic phrase. I mean, it's an emotional intelligence surgical strike. Why does certain things to people that are vastly different than what is normally portrayed out there, why is like this, it's a emotional intelligence surgical strike.
Starting point is 01:04:43 You should never ask why, unless you want them to defend you, because why always triggers defensiveness, which is the bad advice. Find out their why is good advice, but it doesn't tell you that you shouldn't ask them why, except if the why's about you, and you are going to get an unguarded honest answer
Starting point is 01:05:06 or you're not gonna get an answer. And if you don't get an answer, why you, there ain't no why for you there at all. That's so interesting. So basically you're asking why me because you wanna get a gauge of how much they respect you and if they've picked you already and how much research is done.
Starting point is 01:05:24 So if they say, if I say, why me? And they're like, Holla, you're the number one LinkedIn expert, everybody knows you make all the influencers on LinkedIn. And I know, okay, I am the favorite. But if they say, I Googled you and you popped up and I'm interviewing three other people, then I might be the fool, right?
Starting point is 01:05:41 That one or, you know, what a lot of people throw back on you, the person who of people throw back on you, the person who either is taking advantage of you on purpose, and a lot of people are doing it by accident. They don't mean to be, you know, they're taught that it's okay, get three bits. But they're going to say, well, it's up to you to convince me. And if they throw it back on you like that or in some fashion,
Starting point is 01:06:04 you are the fool in the game. So good. Has that ever happened to anybody where they like somebody said you've got to convince me show me what you can do? So what question should we ask? Of course it's happening. So now you guys got this magic question in your pocket. The next time you hop on a discovery call, you can instantly find out if you're the fool or the favorite. You can say, hey, why me?
Starting point is 01:06:36 Why did you want to work with me? It also puts you in the power seat because it shows that you're not desperate, that you're asking such a vulnerable question to your sales lead. Exactly. You don't really want to work with somebody who you have to prove yourself. You want to start the relationship, especially a lot of you guys mentioned that you're like a small team, you might be working directly with a client. If you're not only selling, you're probably executing the offer afterwards too. You want to work
Starting point is 01:07:07 with somebody who already respects you. You don't want to work with somebody who like wants you to keep proving your proving yourself, right? They're going to be bad clients, which brings me to the next point. So also, when you're evaluating your clients, you want to think about are they haves or elves? So half is a hard, annoying, lame, frustrating client. These are high maintenance, low profit clients or deals. They require a lot of effort, they drain your energy, they often don't pay well, they're haggling you,
Starting point is 01:07:40 they cause stress, delays, endless negotiations, they might be like really unresponsive or too responsive. They always want your time. They think you work only for them and you have no other clients. Compared to elves, they're easy, they're lucrative, they're fun. These are your ideal clients that are profitable,
Starting point is 01:07:58 enjoyable, efficient. They respect your time and expertise. They don't haggle over price and cause unnecessary headaches. So if you go and you try to convince the person that believes you're a fool, they're going to be hard, annoying, lame, frustrating clients anyway. So you want to drop them early. You get that, you know, exactly when you get on a sales call, if you're doing dealing with a half or an L.
Starting point is 01:08:21 Okay. So you want to be able to attract the else. Not all good revenue, not all revenue is good revenue. We are so picky with our clients at Yap Media. If somebody just gives me a tough time on a sales call and I'm like, this person is going to be a headache. I know that they're going to take away time from my elves and I want to retain my elf
Starting point is 01:08:40 clients. Right? You want to retain your good clients. You don't want to bring in people that that are gonna suck up all your time. You're gonna work twice as hard for all your profit. So part of this is also just thinking about the fact that like not all clients are good clients, okay? So one of the things that you could do in Pipe Drive
Starting point is 01:08:59 related to making sure you're taking the right clients is that you can label all of your leads however you want. You could even label them full favorites, half else. You can have whatever titles that you want to help guide how you're gonna spend time with these clients. And when you draw the line and when you drop them in the sales process,
Starting point is 01:09:21 once you've identified if they're not a good fit for your company. A lot of people will waste their time, you know, bringing people all the way to the finish line only to discover that they're the fool. So you want to figure that out as early as possible and you want to figure out how interested they're actually in your product before you spend so much time with them. The other thing with Pipe Drive, and we're going to move on to our AI section of today, is that you can automate a lot of repetitive tasks. So you can trigger personalized emails, you can transfer ownership to another rep once a deal reaches a certain stage.
Starting point is 01:09:58 They've got AI powered prompts, and they've got a lot of new AI features that are coming soon like deal summariesaries where it will take all the conversations that you've had in the past and summarize what the current status of the deal is. It also summarize emails for you. So they're coming out with all these new like beta AI. That's one of my favorite things about PipeDrive is that they're always
Starting point is 01:10:21 innovating and they're really fast to innovate. They have an AI sales assistant. is that they're always innovating and they're really fast to innovate. They have an AI sales assistant. So like I had mentioned on your actual reporting, it will identify patterns, it will recommend high potential deals, next actions to prioritize. They've got an email generation, email deals, AI deal summaries, like I was saying.
Starting point is 01:10:42 And they also are coming out with AI agents. So who here has heard of the concept of AI agents? Some of you guys heard of it, some of you haven't. I interviewed Reid Hoffman, who is the founder of LinkedIn and he's also the co-founder of, I think it's OpenAI, and he talked to me about AI agents. It blew my mind and it's important for everybody to hear this,
Starting point is 01:11:04 because this is going to be our future in the very near future. So when you say super agency, basically what you're saying is we have human agency with AI, they'll be helping us become better humans and that's why we have super agency. And then AI itself is going to be able to do things on its own, right? So can you talk to us about how AI will have agency? And then how do we imagine humans actually interacting with AI? I talked to Mustafa Suleyman, who I know is your colleague, and he told me that every human is going to have an AI companion
Starting point is 01:11:36 and it's going to help them, you know, go on job interviews, start companies. So talk to us about those kinds of concepts. So part of what freaks people out a little bit is like, we are going to this agentic universe where all of a sudden as opposed to having phones and PCs, which we'll still have, we'll have agents. And by the way, we'll have more than one. We may have one that we're,
Starting point is 01:11:57 particularly the hollow read, ongoing companion, always around us and helping us with things. But there's gonna be a suite of them, you know, with kind of different specialties and different engagements. And by the way, your office is gonna have one, your working group's gonna have one, and probably your podcast is gonna have one, et cetera.
Starting point is 01:12:18 And we hear fairly soon and people say, well, if they're agentic, does that take my agency away? And the answer is no, the same way that when you work with colleagues and you work with employees and everything else, that doesn't actually that expands your agency that doesn't take it away. And by the way, you know, these agents will be making predictions off all the data, which is a lot more than any of us have about what things will be really good for us. And agents are going gonna be the primary mode
Starting point is 01:12:45 of kind of navigation. What we describe in super agency is an informational GPS. So in this entire informational digital world, we'll do that. And there will be more agents than there are people. One of the things that I think people haven't really fully tracked yet, but I think what would be interesting
Starting point is 01:13:04 is how agents end up talking to each other. Because when we have that many agents, you know, part of how you and I are going to coordinate, like we say, Hey, what should we talk about in the podcast? Well, our preps will be your agent will talk to my agent. And they'll kind of go, well, you know, these topics will be really good. And you know, hey, when you when you ask a question this way, it'd be great. And when you answer it this way, it'll be great, you know, and da da da da and you know, that kind of thing. Or this could be a really new, interesting thing to try. And that will be part of the world we will be.
Starting point is 01:13:35 Yeah, thinking about agents is so mind blowing. And when I think about AI and all the talks that I've had, a lot of people talk about it as being like a great equalizer. Now, as I've thought about it more, I realized that it's like, you have to be the best trainer of the AI. Like I kind of imagine everybody being an entrepreneur having agents that work at their personal company, you basically have to be the best at coordinating your agents and figuring out how to like mobilize all that AI and all your AI support. And so smart people are going to be smarter at that, right? And creative and innovative people are going to be more creative and innovative when it comes to their own agents.
Starting point is 01:14:13 And so I just feel like a lot of people are probably worried that like, you know, there's not going to be any room for them to your point as humans, but I really think it's going to be how you manage your AI. In addition to training, it's also deploying, organizing, executing, strategizing, all of the above. And that's part of the reason why, kind of with Super Agency and the other kind of content that I've been trying to get out there and people say, it's like, start playing with it, start exploring, because you want to start building the muscles and getting engaged with it is really important. And that's the most central thing.
Starting point is 01:14:47 And again, part of the reason I call it agency, because it's like, you know, own your agency and go do it. And part of the super agency is when millions of us all start doing that, it benefits all of us much more than just even the technology benefits each of us individually by ourselves. What are your thoughts around hearing that, especially if you haven't heard of this concept before, even if you have heard of it, I'm sure Reed gave you a different perspective of how we're gonna use AI in the future.
Starting point is 01:15:19 What are your initial thoughts when you hear about AI agents and how they're gonna help us with all these different activities? You might have an AI agent that helps you drive, an AI agent that helps you with your email, an AI agent that helps you with your calendar. Yeah, it's exciting, but we've got to get used to it now. And that means interacting with tools that also embrace AI. So if you're on a CRM that's not talking about AI and not giving you features and not constantly improving with the technology that we have today,
Starting point is 01:15:53 you're gonna be behind. If you're not leveraging AI to create your content and create the best content, I use AI for hours, I use AI, my chat GBT is open with me all day, and it's saving me so much time. If you're not doing that, there's probably something wrong because you need to
Starting point is 01:16:13 start working with it and getting used to working with AI. Right now, one of the best things to do is to just use Chat GBT and use tools that are leveraging AI and OpenAI. How are you going to leverage AI for your sales strategy? What are some initial ideas that you guys have of how you're going to leverage AI? Well, that's great. Keep leaning into it. It's going to be a wild ride the next few years. Like I mentioned, you want to work with
Starting point is 01:16:43 a sales tool that is embracing it. And Pipe Drive is coming out with AI agents, which is really, really exciting. All right, guys. Well, that concludes our webinar on sales. I appreciate everybody showing up today. If you haven't yet, make sure you sign up for your 14 day trial on Pipe Drive. You get 20% off if you guys like it. Let me know how you like it. And I look forward to seeing you guys on the next webinars. I've got a lot of different webinars coming up. So I hope to see you guys there. Thank you. Thank you that you guys like the session. I appreciate it. We will send out the recording. Awesome. Appreciate you guys so much and looking forward to the next one. Awesome guys. Have a great day. I'm glad
Starting point is 01:17:33 you guys liked it. Bye all. you

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