Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Richard Moore on The Laws of Selling | Sales | YAPClassic | Part 1

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Richard Moore’s performance in school was not reflective of someone who would eventually achieve massive success. He flunked his high school exams, which forced him to settle for an average university. However, he cultivated a mindset of doing the best he could and fixing whatever stood in the way of what he couldn’t do. He then went on to work in corporate, where he made multiple millions in sales. Now, he’s a highly sought-after LinkedIn sales and conversion coach for businesses of all sizes. In this episode, you’ll learn what makes a great sales pitch, how to build trust with your prospects, how to successfully, cold-call your prospects, and other steps to becoming a master salesperson.  Richard is a sales guru and consultant with over 20 years of experience in online, in-person, and phone-based selling. His clients range from startups to 9-figure businesses, and he’s grown a massive influence on platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram. Rich has also been featured in publications like Forbes and The Huffington Post. He travels the world sharing his knowledge on sales and content strategy to help businesses turn leads into clients and close more deals.  In this episode, Hala and Richard will discuss:  - How tragedy breeds new perspectives  - How you can build yourself into a great salesperson   - Don’t write out cold-calling just yet  - The ingredients for a great sales pitch  - Turning a meaningful relationship or conversation into a sale  - Don’t ignore your lower-paying customers - turn them into advocates of your brand  - The biggest pitfalls you need to overcome as a salesperson  - Evaluating the quality of your prospects   - What most people get wrong about their content strategy  - And other topics… Richard Moore is a conversion coach who specializes in helping coaches and consultants convert on LinkedIn from their content. For nearly five years, Richard has successfully helped scores of businesses convert through their content on the platform. Before that, he did the same with Facebook. During his professional career, he has also converted multiple millions in sales from his previous corporate jobs in London.  Richard has taught nine-figure business owners and solopreneurs alike how to sell using LinkedIn through his coaching, courses, and lectures at prestigious institutions like Uni of Edinburgh, Oxford Uni, Pearson Business School, Uni of Warwick, Warwick Business School, EBS Business School, Uni of Nottingham and more. LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘masterclass’ for 25% off at yapmedia.io/course. Resources Mentioned:  Richard’s Website: https://www.therichardmoore.com/  Richard’s LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/richardjamesmoore?trk=public_post_feed-actor-image  Sponsored By:  Elo Health - Go to https://elo.health/ and enter code YAP for 50% off your first month More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/

Welcome back, Yap Bam. Today we're airing part one of a two-part Yap Classic series. We're replaying both of my interviews with Richard Moore, a sales guru with over 20 years of experience in online, in-person, and phone-based selling. His clients range from startups to nine-figure businesses. For the past several years, Richard has been focused on LinkedIn and helping businesses convert leads into sales on that platform. Just goes to show all the greats are prioritizing LinkedIn. If you want to generate more leads and grow your brand, take my May LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass.

The link to sign up is in my show notes, along with the discount code for all of my loyal young improfitors. In this episode, you'll learn how to cold call without annoying your customers, build meaningful relationships with your prospects, adjust your online content strategy to gain leads, and avoid some of the common pitfalls of sales. And stay tuned for part two,

which is coming out in a few weeks. Let's dive into part one of the laws of selling with Richard Moore. Hey Richard, thanks for joining Young and Profiting Podcasts. It's lovely to have you. Thank you so much, a real honor to be on here and a lot of amazing guests before me, so I hope I'd be proud. Awesome. So let's kick it off talking a little bit about your background. You used to work 12 hours a day in London before you decided to start your own company. And you also were a student who didn't do very well and you flunked out of your exams in high school and just barely got into college. So how did you end up, you know, leaving your traditional nine to five and how did you become a super seller when you couldn't even really manage high school very well?

Yeah, good points. The end part of work was a really bad space where I was doing crazy hours every week and I really just knew it was time to move on. And I think what it is is there's an interesting thread through my career and indeed this school and academia before that is that I've always tried to do the best. possibly can and if I can't then I do something about it and that's kind of the trend if you like so I flunked my exams at high school which meant I scraped into a very average university and my example of fixing that was that I then made sure I came top of the year at that university past that degree and then went to a really good university and got a degree from a great place so it was a top five university. So that was kind of my way of fixing it. And then it was the same of the career. It was like, you know, you can't do 60 to 80 hour weeks. And I was doing this for best part of a

year at times, like really horrible, horrible space I was in. And it was, you know, I had a difficult time because I, you know, I had mortgages, cars. I had a wife and a young child as well. So I had to kind of be responsible. But, but I backed myself and I knew that I could sell because that's something I'd done so well in my career and all of my career as being different forms of selling roles and taking that with me, it was a case of saying, you know, I'm not going to have this dialogue of can I do it? I hope it works out. Let's hope it doesn't go wrong. It was just, it is happening. It's going to work, force it through. And I'm quite aggressive with myself when I need to be in order to get the outcome I'm after, I suppose. So I suppose your short version of that is it doesn't

match if you stumble, get up and fix it. And that's very much my theme through my life, I suppose. So you started after college working a corporate job and then you transitioned to become an entrepreneur. So what was that thought process like? Why did you decide to kind of take the plunge and did you start it as a side hustle or did you cut your day job cold turkey? Yeah. So I'm very lucky in a way. My first job in 2002 was actually selling internet marketing. So it was a long time ago and people were like really, the internet, but I really learnt how to back myself

and what it meant was that when it came to taking the plunge about 10 years later, I was able to say, you've got this, go do it. And so I went cold turkey and as I was drawing to a close with my corporate jobs, some people were asking me to do some offline consulting. But rather than transitioning and doing it part-time,

I was like, let's go, all in, and you can just go for it. And in fact, my first thing, other than a bit of consulting, was I launched two Taekwondo Academy. because I'd been coaching that in London for a while and I thought maybe this is something to start with. And, you know, to answer your question directly, the thought process was one born of perspective. I'd had a very, very hard year before that.

I'd lost two very close family members. And when my daughter was born, she almost died a lot. And we actually lived literally in the hospital for three months. So I was commuting to London from there. So very hard time. and you've probably seen this more than most in your interviews on your podcast is that out of adversity often come new perspectives on the world and I just stop you know what I mean I stopped moaning and complaining or looking for pity and started fixing stuff and just being a bit more grateful about where I was in my life

I'm very able-bodied I have the capability to do great things I think and so I was like let's just go for it and it's a nice thing when you know you've got responsibility as well because it means you don't drop the because I'm accountable to a family as well as just to myself. So I had all the right motivations and I just wanted to make sure that I made the most of my life when some people weren't able to. They were kind of snuffed out early. So I don't want to go too deep on that if you don't need me to. But that was important for me. Yeah, that's amazing. And congrats on all your success. Thank you. So let's get into the crux of your expertise. You are known to be an incredible seller. Do you think that great salespeople are born or made?

I think they are made. I really do. I don't think they're born. I think there are circumstances that can happen to people. And to be fair, I suppose it's kind of been in my DNA that I've often looked for angles on things. When I was like 13, I built my first computer and sold it for £100 and I was a bit of a nerd. And I did like the taste of like trying to look for the angle and how I make a close on something. But I do feel that people are made and its exposure to scenarios where you might need to sell that get you comfortable in doing it. Both my degrees are in history, not in business, right? I didn't do an entrepreneurship course or anything like that. I just had time on the pitch. And the reason why I believe that selling is something you learn is that although I had personality traits that might have helped a bit, I was always a very shy and introverted person, not the classical skill set you'd expect in someone who's selling, right? Yeah.

And the first job was one where I had to sell because otherwise I hadn't got enough money. And my mother was very much the kind of person who pushed me. She said after university, you're not coming home, by the way. You need to go and get a job. And I didn't get funding for a PhD, so I had to find a job. And the first one I went for was simply a phone-based selling job. And so I went, okay, let's try this then.

But in terms of the nuances and how I got good at selling, it's just making sure I had that contact time. You couldn't get me off the phone because I needed to crack it and spending money on books or on courses and things like that. I'm very much a student of it as opposed to someone who's had it intrinsically built into me as I was born. So what are some of the skills that people should try to hone if they're trying to improve their selling?

Like what is it that they should try to learn? Yeah, really good question. It sounds cliche, but often the cliché to truth. Selling is a people sport. People hate being sold to. They hate being gamed, the feeling of being gamed. Imagine, think about all those ads you see on your mobile or when you're on Facebook.

It really winds you up a bit. So people need to feel a little bit more like it's an organic process. People love to buy, though. And what you need to do is position yourself as someone who can offer value to sufficiently relevant and enough people that some people then pick themselves off and buy. And the skills really are grounded in interpersonal skills.

So for me, as an introvert, as a shy person to start with someone who naturally wouldn't be able to open people up, the way to do it was have contact time. And I started by doing it on the phone. I actually do a lot of work now with shy and introverted people and helping them kind of learn those first steps and just exposure to. people who might be interested parties or just simply other people is essential. Sitting behind your keyboard is a dangerous place to be because you're losing touch with those nuances and subtleties that actually are quite valuable when it comes to selling.

And I think from there, you know, you can learn structure. You can learn a process of selling. But really, if you get people, you hone the empathy side and being able to see things from their perspective and therefore react in a way that the prospect, would like is where success lies at the moment, in my opinion. So you just mentioned a lot about getting that personal contact. And based on some of the research that we've done, I see that you're still a champion of cold calling,

despite that it has a reputation of a method that's really going out of style. I personally hate when people cold call me. Absolutely. So tell me, why do you still encourage it? Well, the short answer is because a lot of people still use it and pay me to help them with it. And I think that doesn't mean that I'm championing something I don't believe in. The good thing about it is that there are ways in which you can separate yourself from those who give it a bad name. There is a right way of doing cold calling.

And what we've got to be is really clear here. If you're starting a business and you have no inbound traffic, if you haven't done content creation, if you've got no one who's warm as a lead, you have to go and manually close people. And learning how to open people up in a way that isn't irritating or parasitic is really wonderful because it allows you to move process along nice and swiftly. But again, when it comes down to is how to really understand the position, the mindset of that person who is cold from whom you've earned nothing and how you're going to relate to that person in the first few seconds. and it's all about sharing great wins for them, rather than sounding cliche or like some kind of game show host, just a little bit of well-placed research.

And doing it right means that you can warm them up. And probably the best bit of advice is if you can find someone who has a mutual contact of yours or where you have something in common, then everyone knows, sure, you know, this person's probably calling me to sell something, but at least you've got something in common or something to work off. Do you see what I mean? So, you know, for instance, when I first, spoken to you before we recorded this podcast, I saw that you lived in Brooklyn and, you know,

my sister had lived there for a few years. Even something on that high level is just at least something to break the ice. I'm a big fan of it because it can get you results in the moment. Something like Facebook ads can be really effective, but that might take you a lot longer. And a lot of the sales methods out there are softer and more fulfilling in the stimulating sense, but they need a lot more runway, you know. Do I call call? No, I don't. I don't. I use inbound. But for those who still use it, I think it can be applicable, but only if you recognize that it is dying because mostly people are irritated by it if you do it wrong.

Yeah. Cool. Great advice. I like your perspective. Thank you. So let's talk about having the right pitch. So in sales, I know that having the right pitch and kind of earning someone's attention is very important.

So what's your recipe for that? Yeah. There's a nice little formula. I often give people. There's lots of different ways of doing it. But if people are taking notes, then it is something along the lines of wins plus peer or mutual equals interest straight away. And just to explain that, a win is like some kind of a benefit for that person.

It's an explanation of the fact that you might be able to help them look good, make money, save money, save time, something along those lines. The problem is that on its own is met with cynicism, right? It's, you know, we're skeptical about someone who says, hey, I can make you lots of money. what's known as the big fat claim and it doesn't work and now you sound like everyone else who cold calls. But if you combine that with a person or a contact or a connection or a business that has got the buy-in of that prospect, then you're in a better place. So what I'm saying is if I was to cold call you, Huller, and say, hi, can I sell you something? It doesn't work.

If I say, hi, I'd like to sell you something that can get you this win. It can help save you time. It probably still won't work because I've not earned the right. You're not willing to buy into me. I've got to earn that right first. If I was to become the messenger and position this from a different perspective of maybe someone you know, so if I was to mention one of your team that I've worked with, but if I said something like, you know, hi, you don't know me, but I've worked with Timothy Tan,

your business development manager, okay? and Timothy and I've worked together for two years and I've been helping save him a lot of time with his business leads I'd just love to take a couple of minutes grab a coffee with you to speak about it I'm validated by proxy through Timothy Tan

you've gone through the pain of working out if he's a crazy guy or if he's all right and if I'm good enough for him then by proxy I'm good enough for you do you see what I mean and it's yeah and what it is is it's taking cues from the offline world

because you wouldn't sell to someone in the pub the first time you meet them, what you do is you ask them how they're doing and it's a little bit awkward but if you had a mutual contact my goodness it's easy and it's just funny because the evidence of this working is staring everyone in the face

when you went to the last wedding you attended the person sitting next to you at that table was the first thing you ask so how do you know the bride or groom you know and you'd laugh and joke about what they did at university or how crazy they were on their stag do or whatever And the reason why you can do that and you open up and the barrier is dropped because you have that mutual connection.

So if they're good enough for one of us, they must be good enough for the other. Do you see what I mean? Yeah. So leveraging that benefit and the win, great. Good for you. You're talking about how the product can help. But no one believes it because we've been conditioned against it nowadays. But when it's attached to someone or a person that we believe in and we trust, then it goes a long way.

And the thing is, even if you don't have a mutual connection, you could use a business that. that's well known. And that's why, for example, the Star Wars franchise, if they release a film that's terrible, everyone goes to watches it still, not because the film it might be good or not, it's because it's a Star Wars film and there's a bunch of fans.

And it's the same principle, you know. So you can leverage a brand that's well known and of course you can leverage people that are connected. And so that little extra bit of research, you know, can go a long way. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Cool. So then how do we switch from this relationship building to then selling our actual product? Yeah, I think this is the important part is that people have this issue of connecting with people, building a network, even a community.

And they're like, how do I pivot that into a monetized moment? The way you do it is you're looking for what's known as a queue. Okay. So a cue is like a compliment or some form of engagement from that person that suggests that you're being used. So if I focus on them, if I focus on giving them some wins and talking about how I've helped Timothy Tan and all the, a few anecdotes or war stories, that might help a bit. But what I need to do is get you talking. So ask some questions along the lines of if you think that might be useful.

And if I get any form of positivity from you, then that's you essentially saying you've earned the right Richard to now ask me something. And that's the point where I can say, do you know, I really think I can help you. would you like to explore what that might look like? And you don't have to be pushy. You just simply have to position it in front of someone who's receptive. And if someone's not receptive, work harder at that front end of building rapport and taking your time

and opening them up with more questions. And then there was a lot of other techniques. But that's a really important part is kind of being a bit more patient. Don't try and hard pivot into, right now let me talk about my thing. Try and have it more conversational. And again, that's what people would prefer these days. Like, what's an example of a cue that your prospect would give you? Totally.

And this is how I started doing online consulting. I would open 20 new conversations per day when I started out. And I would start them on Facebook Messenger. And I would just get engaged with people, just have a chat, talk about things we had in common. I would make sure, you know, I'm maybe in the same group or something. And we'd talk about what we did because you naturally do. And for some of them, they might ask something about what I do. And then I would give them a bit of value and some ideas.

say, do you know what? I'd never looked at it that way. Or wow, that's really inspiring. Or oh my God, that's a really good way of putting it, Richard. And what it is, is if you're genuinely good at what you do, or if you have a product that genuinely can help, then that will come through. And that earns you the right to get these compliments. And that compliment is the moment when that person's saying, you know what, you've earned now the opportunity to ask me something. And that ask is, would you like to explore it a bit more? Or even something like back then, I would say, well, look, I know I can help you here. Thanks so much for that compliment. I know I can help here. Why don't we hop on a call or why don't we meet up or something like that? And there's no

pressure because, you know, I'm not going to win with every single one, but it's about exploring those things. And no need for pressure at all. Just simply keep them feeling good. The advice I give to those who are nervous about this or lack a bit of confidence is no problem, go for the second cue. And by the time you get the second cue, it's like, okay, that person is like screaming out now. Okay, I really think you're great and valuable. So now's the time. Got it. And you know what? If you don't get the queue, so work harder. So be more useful. And if you screw it up, well, then that's that. Try again with someone else. And I think being cool with the fact that you're not going to win them all is important as well. Speaking of that, you have an interesting story about a customer in one of your

Taekwondo academies. And you talk about how they're not your highest paying customer. but they're great advocates of your business and they earn you a lot of income indirectly. And you still say that people who don't buy from you still have an opportunity to become your advocate. So can you explain that principle on how we can leverage it? This is so important nowadays. A customer is no longer a single entity. It really isn't. And someone who doesn't buy is not a lost cause.

If I look at my profile on LinkedIn, it will say this many thousands of people have viewed your profile. file this month and they haven't all converted to sales but plenty of them stick and turn into something and it was the same with this customer she was paying a lower level of subscription to my taekwondo academy this is a few years back and she loved it so much she was never going to buy more because she was a mom she had children she wasn't going to attend more classes but because she loved it so much she told her friends and the thing you got to remember especially online is if you do something good for a single person they might share your stuff amongst loads in their network. I've got people who have followed my live Q&As for almost three years now since they started.

I've got some of them who are broke and they would never buy a thing, right? But they share everything, they love everything, they do everything they can because they love being part of the ecosystem. And so building those advocates are essential because everyone has a network nowadays. If you post something about me online, some of your network who've never heard of me will see me. And that's why even though doing something like a podcast isn't something you necessarily get paid for,

it's worth doing because there are more people than just you hearing me speak. Do you see what I mean? So thinking about that network's essential. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day.

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restrictions apply. Cool. So the next question is really to calibrate for those who may not be so familiar with sales. I've got listeners who do all different kinds of things. So can you describe one of your sales funnels for any of your businesses just to like walk through what a

sales funnel is and kind of give a live example. The concept is really simple. Imagine the shape of a funnel. Obviously, the bottom being the thinner part. At the bottom of the funnel is where your customers drop out. At the very top, it's wider to receive a volume of people. And that's crucial at the start. So what you need to do at the beginning of your sales funnel is create something that's going to attract a mass, so a large number of ideally fairly relevant people. From that set of fairly relevant people, they'll go through a number of hoops or jump through a number of gates and the consume number of types of content or whatever it might be and move to a place where less and lesser than come through, but ultimately there's a piece of business or whatever

conversion you're after. So an example of that, I'm going to use this one because this is one that everyone can do is one that is free, okay, and that's using the power of your social media platforms. And the best organic traffic online in 2019 is on LinkedIn. It's better than Facebook and Instagram and so on. It is LinkedIn right now. So as a content platform, if you post a piece of content and you do it the right way in terms of working your community and connecting with contacts and showing appreciation

by engaging with those who write comments and so on, what happens is you're leveraging one of the most useful parts of human psychology, which is curiosity. Human curiosity is so powerful. It's the reason, why car slow down when there's an accident at the other side of the road. People can't help themselves. They have to look. It's the reason why when you meet someone in the bar, when you go home, you check out their Facebook to see what they're really like. Or when you meet someone in

business, you have a look at their LinkedIn profile. So just by being interesting and of value and having something to say in your space, it means that people, as I call it, they come into orbit around you. You're providing a sense of gravity against a topic. At the top of your fun, it's essentially that you have some sense of pure signal that you're going to put out. So maybe for me, for instance, I'll talk a lot about how to generate engagement online because that's one of my sweet spots or how to do well on LinkedIn or how to sell, for instance, just tips and ideas. More people will check that out than anything else. But some of them, because they can't help themselves, and that's because they're people, they will say, who's this Richard guy?

Some will say I don't care and I'll move on, no problem, but some will say, let's just click on his link. Now they're on my profile. So that's a step further down the funnel. And then a few of them will look through the actual information. Oh, look, he's got this basics of sales course, or they'll click on my website for more information. So, you know, you might have 4,000 people look at a piece of content, 570 look at the profile, then 89 go to my website, 16 look at the landing page for basics of sales. and then four buy it. And that might seem like terrible numbers,

but do that every day and you soon move to a wonderful place where people like you invite people like me on to podcast. That's great. Thanks for that advice. So let's move on to some of the pitfalls of sales. What are some big mistakes that people typically make and how can we avoid them?

One of the biggest issues is also to do with being a human, is that you have to manage your head. head and to stop it's a very emotional thing because you invest a lot in it and ultimately you might be selling a product for the right reason my events raise money for charity and I'm really doing my best to educate and help people but ultimately there is a money component there as well that I'm trying to sell and you know if you don't get a sell it can really hurt you especially if it's a big one you've worked on and so on so a way in which you can handle this is to recognize that you won't win them all. You simply don't. I'm really fortunate that I've worked with some of the greatest salespeople,

some that make huge amounts of money. And for all of them, none of them are infallible. They make mistakes. And you've got to kind of be at peace with the fact that they're not always going to go your way. And the best way to hack that, well, there's kind of two ways. One is to have enough prospects in what's known as your pipeline, enough people you're speaking to that it doesn't really matter if you lose some, you know? It's like that thing of if you win the lottery, it doesn't matter if you lose $50, right? If you only have $50 in the world, now it really matters. So it's the same here. Enough prospects helps you a lot. And the other thing as well is harder, but it's so essential is ironically don't focus on the money so much, focus on doing a really good job. And I

know this might sound cheesy, but if you look at the reason why you're really doing it, look at the reason, you know, the reason why the person at the other end of the desk or phone might be wanting to buy, like, what's the relationship or outcome they might be after? Do it for good reasons and you'll end up, you know, focusing on the reasons why someone should be involved rather than your deal and your money. And ultimately, the reason why I feel I do well in sales now is because I'm, of course, I'm interested in closing things, but at the same time, I'm patient and some people will be a deal or a sale within 10 minutes and some people will take months, you know, and that's cool.

And as long as you have enough, then you have the fun of engaging with different levels of people that take different amounts of time. So just try to not focus on just making money all the time, focus on doing a great job and have enough prospects out there that it is okay and you can be patient. I can hold my breath forever. And it means that if someone's like, no, not now, or, you know, they don't buy for a long time,

I'm okay with it because you have alternatives. And that's not the point anyway. I suppose what I'm saying is I enjoy the process of engaging with people. And if they turn into deals, then that's wonderful. And it's kind of a nicer organic way of selling, right? So do you like keep tabs on how many meetings or conversations you have with each person? I know that in the past you've mentioned it takes six to eight meetings for a cold prospect before they can turn into a sale.

Is there a point where you're like, this is just a waste of time and I can't talk to you anymore or do you just keep it going? Yeah, it's a really good question because the more you move towards corporates and businesses, the more they want to audit that kind of thing. And I get that. On average, it's six to eight touch points or points of contact on average that it takes to engage someone. And that might be messages.

That might be meetings. It depends on what you're selling, I suppose. I don't as much. What that number is is a reflection of the reality of how many times you'll probably be in touch with someone in some form or other, but in terms of taking a note of it, I don't tend to do it so much because it's organic.

Some things you can be robotic about, some things you should say to yourself, as I did, how many people am I starting new conversations with each day? So that you don't think a day's going really well because you had a nice chat with someone, but you feel like a day is going really well, because you had 10 nice chats with people and that's one of your kind of points of focus. But I do do my best to remember that when I'm in a process with someone, it's now down to the

individual. So doing a piece of business with you will be different to doing a piece of business with our celebrity Timothy Tan. So it might be that he takes six months. He might have been burnt in the past. It might be that he's just closed a big deal and's feeling really flush. and I think forgetting certain things like that is a good idea. Work with the person in front of you. You can nudge and you can create urgency, but ultimately you need to feel or they need to feel like they are kind of in control of the agenda to a degree.

Otherwise, they'll feel like they're being backed into a corner and again, then they feel like they're being sold to. Another mistake in sales is that sometimes people really focus on the product, like what's so cool about the product, and they forget about the customer needs and what the customer is trying to solve. So do you have any tips on how we can uncover what a prospect is actually trying to solve? This is absolutely huge. I'm thrilled you brought this up because this is something that's so overlooked.

It's so overlooked, especially by the kind of solopreneur and startup space. And the reason why they overlook it is because they are in love with their baby, which is the product that's been polishing and they really want everyone to love it and so naturally they want to evangelise about all the little bells and whistles but the fact is that no one cares and the answer to a point

is so fundamental to good selling and is also the reason salespeople can have a very bad name and it's because the product this might sound crazy but the product doesn't matter at all The reason why someone buys something is relevant to the product to about 10%. The rest is about the connection.

So if I take a perfect example, something you might have, like an iPhone. The iPhone is the device. You don't buy an iPhone. You buy looking good. The reason why you don't have a BlackBerry is that it's not cool right now. People buy an iPhone because it makes a statement of I have an $800 phone and I'm part of a tribe and I buy into the values of Apple. And you buy things because as a human, they make you look or feel good. They make you money.

They save you money, perhaps. They save you time. That's the reason why we buy stuff. The reason why people buy a Ferrari isn't to buy the Ferrari. They buy that device because it makes them look good. feel successful and probably get more attention from people and that's what you're actually buying and there's a very famous marketer called Seth Godin who says that the product is the souvenir of that process of buying these outcomes so in practical

terms what we need to be doing is remembering that if the product is just the device for someone to get these wins as I've called them so looking good making money, whatever, and everything does genuinely reduce down to those base things, then what we need to do is focus on those outcomes for that person. So like I suggested in the example earlier, if I talked to you about how I've helped Timothy Tan save time look good in not so many words, more of an elegant way, and make money, then that's compelling. If I talk about a product and how it works and, you know, whatever screen size it has and stuff

like that, that's just boring because people don't care unless you're part of a very, very small minority of people who are buying something for a particular set of product reasons. But in the main, it's about giving someone a set of outcomes, being a great connection as well. And so being someone who's cool and that's trustworthy and builds familiarity. And the product is, as I say, it's simply the device. I know it sounds crazy, but if you break it down to looking at the psychology and behaviour, that's actually why we buy stuff. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Very cool. I loved all that advice.

So let's move on to social selling. It's something you were mentioning before. Everyone's trying to do it, but not many people get it right. So what are the types of habits that we need to build into our social media strategy? And how do we actually convert engagement into leads? So to handle the first part, I have kind of a process I use called the care process, C-A-R-E, which I developed many years ago. and it's just a really solid way of getting it right. So C stands for consistency, which means you need to show up, you know, each day in a number of ways,

both in terms of content but also in terms of with the community. And community is far more important than content, far more. It's about the people that are in your network and keeping them warm. And, you know, people who will advocate for you, it's dropping them a DM every so often or seeing how they're doing or checking into their content. and supporting them and so on. So being consistent in that sense.

A is for abundance because you could be consistent and show up with one piece of content once a month, but that's not going to be enough because there is a thing called an algorithm plus also you drop off people's radar, right? So a level of frequency that's going to help you. For instance, LinkedIn I post about once-ish a day,

so maybe four or five times a week is all I do, but at least that's enough that I don't drop off people's radar. So that kind of level of abundance is important. And cumulatively across a day, I might spend between an hour and an hour and a half in that abundant space engaging with people's comments and on their posts and things like that. And R is for relevancy. You'll see there aren't any videos of cats playing xylophones because that would be a bit confusing, right? You need to put out their kind of pure signal about what it is you do. And so if you look at when people create lists,

here's a guy I know who does this kind of thing. People always talk about online engagement and sales. And now increasingly they talk about the events I do because that's the pure signal they get from me. If someone wants to speak to someone about finance, they don't naturally think of me because there's no content suggesting that. So you need to keep that clarity

and that constant pure signal about what it is you do. Relevancy is huge. And then the E of care is engagement. And this is one of the areas where people fail the most. And this is answering your second part, which is how you get conversion from, you know, from connections into leads. The engagement is everything. So many people post and run. Mm-hmm.

You know, so many people post and leave it at that. Some people even post and check in and they see they get a few likes and comments and don't engage. The game is in the comments and the community. Your content will not do the selling. The content is the gravity to get people into orbit around you. And if you don't validate their decision to like or comment or even share your stuff by giving something back such as a meaningful comment in return, they just won't show up again. And I've used this analogy before.

It sounds a bit awful, but if a dog does a trick, you give them a treat, right? So it's the same here. If someone shows up for you and writes, wow, I loved this post, this was really useful, to not give them something to validate that decision is absurd. It's almost rude, right? So give them a meaningful comment back. That engagement is the reason why people will then show up again. And again, it's algorithmic, but it's also you're treating them well, making them feel good. And it's like, wow, the person who did this content is now writing me a comment back. So don't write thanks. Right, that's really kind of you,

thanks very much. Maybe chuck him a DM. Go, When you're starting out, this is what I first did, my first ever bits of content. If someone dared like it, I would send them a message and say, thank you for liking it. And a lot of people overlook that. Like, I've just got a few likes. I've got no leads. It's like, no, man, likes are leads. They're sitting right there. You've just got to go and warm them up.

So what people need to do, and this is the mistake, I think, is that you need to come down from your throne, go into the people who are spending some time on your stuff, and have some kind of discourse with them. Do that every day, and then people will start showing up for you, and then they will convert. And the nice thing is that they convert themselves a lot of the time. They feel familiar. And again, this is a human thing.

Familiarity is where trust is bred, and trust is the thing you have to get, if anyone's going to ever convert, to a call, an opt-in, or a sale of something. So the game really is that community, and doing it really right is beyond comments, and conversations and threads in your content, it's over on other people's as well, you know?

Happy New Year, Yap, gang. I just love the unique energy of the new year. It's all about fresh starts. And fresh starts not only feel possible, but also feel encouraged. And if you've been thinking about starting a business, this is your sign. There's no better time than right now.

2026 can be the year that you build something that is truly yours, the year where you take control over your career. And it starts with shop. I've built plenty of my own businesses on Shopify, including my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. So it's a two-day workshop. People buy their tickets on Shopify. And then my mastermind subscription is also on Shopify.

I built my site quickly in just a couple of days, payments were set up super easily. And none of the technical stuff slowed me down like it usually does because Shopify is just so intuitive. And this choice of using Shopify helped me scale my masterclass to over $500,000 in revenue in our first year. and I'm launching some new podcast courses and can't wait to launch them on Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person, just like the millions of entrepreneurs that they power. You can build your dream story using hundreds of beautiful templates and set up as fast with built-in AI tools that help you write product descriptions and edit

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Well, this year, I'm focused on not missing any opportunities. And that starts with your business communications. A missed call is money and growth out the door. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled QUO, the smarter way to run your business communications. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2, and it works right from an app on your phone or computer. The way Quo works is magic for team alignment.

Your whole team can handle calls and text from one shared number, and everyone sees the full conversation. It's like having access to a shared. email inbox, but on a phone. And also, Quo's AI can even qualify leads or respond after hours, ensuring your business stays responsive even when you finally logged off. It makes doing business so much easier. Make this the year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash profiting. That's QUO.com slash profiting. Quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. Yeah, that's amazing. I think you brought up so

many good points. And personally, through my podcast, the only reason why my podcast has become successful is because I grew a community on LinkedIn. And everybody shares my content. I have advocates. And it's so important to build that community and take the time to get to know people all across the world. Like you said, step off your throne and take some time to get to know the people who are supporting you. So last question before we go, you have a monetize you course where you say you're so convinced this course will generate income for your clients that you guarantee at least two paying customers within two weeks of completing the lessons. And you actually offer to give their money back if you don't make good on your promise. Yes, with the caveat that you

actually have to do what it says. It's not like magic gift. But yes, 100%. Of course. Of course. Helping to give money back if it didn't work. And no one's ever done that. Yeah. And I had Mike win it on my show who is a really interesting guest. I don't know if you've heard of him. He's a UK's number one demotivational speaker and he uncovers entrepreneurs. So people who make false promises and prey on those who lack skills like motivation or follow through. You don't seem to be a entrepreneur at all. In fact, you seem like the opposite, like your course actually works. So can you tell us about your course, any success stories that came out of it and where people can bind it? Yeah, well, thank you. There's been other courses as well. And I love this one. It's one of my

babies because I was getting a bit sick and tired a while back about people selling courses and essentially people weren't buying the course. What they were buying was the hype. And the problem is that you have someone who has learned something really difficult or niche like Bitcoin or, you know, cryptocurrency or MLM or Forex trading and something that you have to learn and they're like, oh, you can do it too, you can make lots of money. But the problem is that not only do you have to learn the process, you also have to learn this new skill. The concept monetised you, because I was doing so much consulting with solopreneurs and startups, is that you already know something, probably really well, that you could monetise. And this isn't to make

you a millionaire necessarily. This might be that it makes you $700 or something like that. And so what's essential about it is it's leveraging knowledge you already have. And what I show is the process, literally the language, so in the direct messages, at this moment, when this thing happens, here's what you say, you know, and how you convert. So literally the template itself. And it's so transparent that there's been wonderful success stories. And one of my favorites was a guy over in Australia. And he actually kind of, I think he did the course, but I was coaching through it. It was very early days. And he was an Uber driver. And he wanted to be a relationship coach to women. And the reason why was because he had always been, you know what it's like

this, it was always that guy that everyone confided in. He always had great advice. And he was like, I'm just innately good at this. Everyone always comes to me for help. And it's like, here are some processes and steps that will just simply move you from a guy who knows stuff and knows it really well and gives good advice to how to monetize it. And I think within like two or three weeks and he was like, I've just made $2,000 here onboarding people. And the other one I've got to share was a guy who's, I think he was 21, and he was like, he was just dabbling in trading on his phone. He was really good at it. You know, he made good profit every day. And all he did was using the course, he opened a Facebook group, like a private Facebook group, and people paid like, I think it was like $20 a month to watch him. And he said, it's great because I'm literally doing all I was doing before. There are difference is I'm saying it to a camera. So right now I'm going to make this trade. Here's the reason why. And $20 a month is nothing. But when you've got 50 people doing it, then 60, then 90 and then so on. And more people who are watching it. Now you've got this recurring revenue. And he's like,

now I've got funds I can invest as well. So it doesn't matter what it is. There's been people who play video games and make money doing it. Or someone I've worked with who makes flowers out of card. And it's the same kind of principles. So I love those. And if you do it right, as in if you follow the steps and actually put effort in, you get results because it's not difficult, because it's knowing how to work with people. It's none of the rubbish, oh, you can do it motivational stuff, because that's not particularly useful when you need the practical, right? Done right, you get results. That's why all my courses have money back guarantees, because if you do them properly, you do get results, simple as that. But I'm very kind of focused on the practical, I suppose.

Cool. Well, that sounds awesome. So where can our listeners go to learn more about you and keep up with your latest content? Thank you. So I am probably most active now on LinkedIn. So if you're LinkedIn.com slash in slash Richard James Moore. Richard Moore was taken annoyingly. Or you can go to my website and it's the richardmore.com. Again, richardmore.com was taken. So it's The Richard Moore. And you can see all of my social places in there. But I'm happy to take any emails or questions. So you can DM me or Richard at therichidmore.com. No problem. Awesome. Cool. Well, thanks so much. I love this interview. Appreciate your time. Been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on here.