Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Richard Moore [Part 2]: The Laws of Selling | E54

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

Get ready to amp up your sales skills! Today we have a return guest on the show, sales expert, Richard Moore. Richard was featured back in Episode #26, "The Laws of Selling." Listen to that episode first or even after this one to soak up all of Richard’s amazing sales tips. Richard is a sales and business coach with 17+ 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. In Laws of Selling Part 2, we’ll cover the difference between leads and prospects, the interplay between emotion and sales, his perspective on discounting and setting your price, and the art of closing a deal. Fivver: Get services like logo creation, whiteboard videos, animation and web development on Fivver: https://track.fiverr.com/visit/?bta=51570&brand=fiverrcpaIf you liked this episode, please write us a review! Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety Earn rewards for inviting your friends to YAP Society: bit.ly/sharethewealthyap Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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$0 delivery fee and percentage off discounts subject to older minimums and participating scores. Taxes and other fee still apply. This episode of YAP is sponsored by Fiverr, a marketplace that over 5 million entrepreneurs used to grow their business. I've been using Fiverr for years. In fact, I got the gap logo made on there, and if you've seen my cool audio grams with animated cartoons, I get those images from 5 or 2. They have affordable services like graphic design, web design, digital marketing, whiteboard explainer videos, programming, video editing, audio editing, and much more. They have over 100,000 talented freelancers to choose from and it's super affordable.

Prices just start at $5. If you're interested to give five or a shot, hit the link in our show notes. You're listening to YAHP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn and profit. I'm your host, Halitaha, and today we have a return guest on the show.

Sales expert Richard Moore. Richard was featured in episode number 26 the laws of selling. I'd suggest to listen to that episode first, or even after this one to soak up all of Richard's amazing sales tips. Richard is a sales and business coach with over 17 years of experience and online in-person and phone-based selling. His clients range from startups to nine-figure businesses and he's grown a massive influence on platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram. Richard has also been featured in publications like Forbes and The Huffington Post. In the laws of selling Part 2, we'll cover the difference between leads and prospects, the interplay between emotion and sales, his perspective

on discounting and setting your price and the art of closing a deal. Hey Richard, welcome back to Young & Profiting Podcast. Thank you so much for having me back. It's been like seven or eight months so it's really good to be here and I'm a big fan so thank you. Of course we're so lucky to have you on here. I'm really looking forward to putting out the laws of selling part two because when you came on last time, I was so impressed with your knowledge of sales and so were my listeners.

I got so much positive feedback about that episode. So I know everyone is gonna love part two. For context for people who don't know, you came on the show last May, and during the first 10 minutes of your episode, we covered your career journey in great detail. We talked about how you became an entrepreneur, what you were like as a student,

how you have over 17 years of selling experience. And so anybody who's interested in that detail, you can go back to listen to part one. It's episode number 26. And for my listeners who don't wanna go back to episode 26, could you just give a brief introduction of yourself and let us know what you do today? Absolutely. I won't go full-life story. So just in a nutshell, I kind of move between about two main areas at the moment, which one

is I mostly train corporate sales. So I'm going off and into London and I coach professional sales teams on you know face-to-face selling and often a lot of it being big ticket and really the art of getting it right and being effective in that. Kind of the other part of my world is whilst doing that online I also do a very big focus on the way in which people should be marketing themselves with a view to getting meaningful engagement, which actually stems very closely from sales as well. But then the other side is really for fun and a hobby, but also to drive money into local charities.

I run entrepreneur business live, which was a kind of half-fledgeding when we last spoke, but it's been a rocket last year, and I'm really enjoyed that, too. So it's nice to have these events around the world. Very cool, yeah. So Richard is a selling expert. He is a community building expert online. And now he's an expert on live events. So lots of cool things that you do.

Thank you. I thought a fun way to kick off this episode and for our audience to learn more about you and who you are would be to cover your reflections from 2019. So you put up this really neat post on LinkedIn. It was like a slideshow where you outlined six elements that helped you make 2019 a success. You called out cool, elaboration, community thinking,

partnerships, travel, and listening. Could you go through this with us? I think there were some great valuable lessons in this and I'd love to hear what you have to say. Thank you. Yeah, it was a good reflection, I at the end of the year and I always do a bit of an audit. My year actually, my head always ends at on my birthday, I always do my 12 months from there and it just means I don't get too wrapped up in the new year's resolutiony kind of thing. Still, on Calendia's it was really nice to look through what happened last year because it was a

very strong one for me and the thread running through most of it was working with different people and communities and the results have had totally have a foundation of I've got to be careful when I say building communities it's more inhabiting a community but having an audience that pays attention to me and it and sticks to me and I think I disproportionately spend a lot of time with the individuals. Strategically, I'm careful with who it is I focus on but I make a point of spending huge amount of time each day interacting with individuals because that really has driven

things like the awareness of events, people then saying, hey I'd love to host a event that would be an honor to speak at one of the events because you know you're putting the work in in terms of the human connection. I think another one of the things I put in that post was partnerships as well so doing intentional and carefully placed collaborations and partnerships with other businesses and with other people has been a really nice way of leveling the art because partnerships with businesses such as Zubtitle throughout with captions's been a really nice way of firstly funding some of the events but secondly it helped me my proposition. But then also collaborations with really important people and fantastic influences has meant that my ability

to penetrate further and and whip up an audience has been as been effective. I think the thing that I got the most from the year was just really trying to prove I was being legit by traveling. And I think I traveled about 10 times last year to different countries for different events of mine. And that really kind of made the point that I was serious about building the events. And when you build communities online, we've both experienced how powerful it is when you meet them face to face. And I remember the photo I put on that post was of, in fact, only about a week away from today, last year, January 24th was New York, our first international event,

and seeing so many familiar faces who've been, and part of this community I was building and interacting with online, flying in and having this event with them was really powerful, and the travel really reinforces the intent interacting with online, flying in and having this event with them was really powerful and the travel really reinforces the intent behind wanting to engage with people and really just kind of say it solidifies that community. It's been a really wonderful past 12 months.

Very cool and you know next time you're in New York let me know. I would love to attend one of your events. It's so much fun. We're looking at May so hopefully soon. Oh awesome. So we're going to continue on the sales theme of our previous episode. Selling is tricky. Everybody wants to have a technique and methodology, but then there's also a balance you have to take to be organic and natural. So from your perspective, you're selling guru. Do you think that selling is more of an art or a science? That's a great question. But for the record, I'm not called myself a guru, that's very kind of you to say. But yeah, I think that it can be made a science, but you really, really win when you understand that there is an artistry to it and there's an elegance that comes

through the experience. And if you think about it, if you've never done sales before, by the time you're, say, aged 20, a really good way of putting it is that you're a master of the art of communication by then. And like, I've got two young daughters and even the youngest who's four is phenomenal at understanding nuances and pattern in the way that people interact just alone understanding how people speak there's an artisty to it and and selling to develop the art side it's about a high amount of exposure to being on the pitch basically the more you can be doing it and interacting with people the more you will subconsciously pick up on those little nuances and things. Stuff that you're not aware of, that's something in your brain that understands and files away

and remembers for the next time and those little nuances develop. I can sit down and give people great formulas that will really level them up, you know, for instance, here's how you pre-qualify a lead and find the best person to speak to in a sea of a thousand people looking at your content online, for instance. And things like that will make a large difference to your results if you're coming from zero. But the truth is it's always a human sport. And so to move to a place where people are thankful that they get to buy from you and they're warmed up to the point where an onboarding phone call, if that's the way you do it, for instance,

is like a validation that they were going to buy from you anyway. That requires a lot of elegance. And I think that it does come from just feeding yourself with enough interactions with humans, just like if you're networking, if you get the hang of it. If you speak to people enough, you get the hang of it. All this stuff really is just practice and time on the pitch. So in many ways, my success now comes from the fact

of just been doing a very long time, whilst at the same time I'm a bit of a student of it all as well, so I'm a big fan of the formulas and the systems that do work. Yeah, so typically a sales process or formula is usually like five to seven steps. It varies slightly, but usually it's like prospecting, preparation, approach, presentation, objection handling, closing, and perhaps follow up. Let's start at the basics. What is prospecting? How do you define prospecting for people who are new to sales? Yeah, it's difficult because it's so different for every product and every type of sell you're after. But the idea with prospecting is, even if you go a little bit of a step further back, in fact, it's looking at pre-qualification. So how can I, in any way, possible before

I've even engaged with anyone, apply some kind of intelligent filters here to ensure I'm going to be as effective as possible? How do I essentially minimise the amount of approaches that won't take me anywhere. And it can be simple things like if you're approaching a business, are you actually speaking to the top person? Because whilst there's a number of roots in, if you do get the top person and the ultimate decision maker, you're always in a better place than someone who's going to go and internally sell on your behalf, for instance. So that can start. And then really when you've got the right person, it's doing a modicum of research to at least to make sure that

you're seeing what your angle is. If you can answer like these three questions, why now? Why us and why change? Those three things are innately being asked all the time by the person you're about to speak to. So when you can answer those in the first few sentences, they really get it. And before we get to that point of the pitch, we just need to be thinking how do we warm them up? And that's very 2020 now. I should say this idea of saying, how do I position myself that if I am to approach someone and get just someone, they're going to say, oh my god, yeah, I've seen you around, you know, we're already halfway there and I think that's where there's a whole world of exciting ways in which you can warn people up, but you know, be careful with the first message for perhaps, or how you deliver that, you maybe use a voice memo instead of text and maybe the things you say is a little bit more of a tease rather than just ramming a PDF down someone's throat as the first

point of contact. Really thinking about how you'll warm them up and get them saying, okay, I'm showing some receptivity now. Now let's move to that first point of conversation or a meeting or something along those lines. Yeah, let's dig into that warming up a little bit. What do you mean exactly by that for somebody who's unfamiliar with the term? Sure, so as much as possible, if I'm going to pitch someone, want them to feel warm and receptive to me. People have always hated being sold to, but because nowadays, if you approach them out of the blue, it tends to be a conditioned cynicism that you're going to sell them

and people don't want that, you have to gain a bit of trust first because everything hinges on trust and so the warming process is about you validating that you're someone who's going to bring them some value and that might be emotional value in that you're a good person and an interesting person to interact with or practical value because you can actually help them in their business. And it can take a number of forms and it can be as simple as leveraging a mutual contact. So if I say, I think I've mentioned this in the last talk we did, you know, if I talk about someone that I'm connected to that you know, that validates that I'm a bit more legit and you're more likely to want to lean in and listen to what I have to say. It might be that I tried the

approach of putting out content and directing it to people like you so that the content warms you up and makes you think, hey this person can really help and literally yesterday I received as usual DMs in response to my content which is part of the sales warming process. And the guy said, I see you as the person to come to in terms of sales and now's the time. And that's warming people up. It's so that they decide, they self-select, they decide that they want to buy from you, or at least they want to hear what you have to say.

And people say people buy people, but what it really means is when there's trust from one person to another, there is the platform for receptivity to happen, and that's the best place to begin a pitch. And without warming up, the pitch is very difficult and awkward for both. Yeah, that makes total sense. Sticking on some definitions, what's the difference between a lead and a prospect? I feel like a lot of people get these terms confused. Yeah, it is hard because it's semantics,

and I can go to two companies in London that I coach, and they will use different terms for me, different things, but Lucy speaking, a lead in my world represents someone who technically could be sold. So there's an element of pre-qualification, but probably I've not engaged with them. So if you, for instance, said to me, Richard, I know someone who totally could benefit from whatever it is you do, or if I said, how I know someone who'd be a great guest on your podcast, that would be class as a lead. For me, a prospect is something of an opportunity.

And that's where I've taken the lead to a level where, maybe I've engaged with them a bit, and it's looking like there's a level of receptivity. And then of course, we have other non-clature for when they've gone further into the sales process and have been pitched for instance. But essentially for me a lead is technically that person is of applied a couple of filters, the demographic is right, the role in the businesses right, and probably there's an element of need there. And essentially I'm looking for can they control budget?

Do they have the authority to spend it? And is there probable need for what I have to sell? Got it, makes sense. And so you talk about something called a power base, your sales power base. I thought this was really cool. Could you explain that to our listeners? Yeah, a power base in basic terms. And this is kind of a bit of a borrowed phrase

from many other people and from Grant Cardone to anyone else uses this term in ourselves. The idea is that's your closest circle of people. And if you look at, for instance, the entrepreneur business group on Facebook that I've run, this will be its fifth year in August They'll be running that group. That's group of 4,000 plus people who are part of it, but within that there's a tighter group like a hardcore of maybe fans, but certainly those who are receptive to what's put into the group. And that's like that that's a power base. That's one where I if I'm stuck for leads, I'm stuck for business, for example, I could go there and that would be stuck for business for example I could go there and that would be what other people might call low hanging fruit. A power base when you start a business is probably friends and family and what that means really is hitting up the people again who are easy to speak

to or already receptive to you because you've earned the right to speak to them and ask them if they could do your favor because you've lived with them or whatever and say, you know, hey, do know someone who might be able to help. And so a power base ideally will grow virus-like as you experience more and more communities in habit them and engage with people. But your power base is always a place you can go back to. If you're pipelines looking a little thin for the month and you feel like business might be a bit low, who would you send a message to? And you know, the message wouldn't be, hey, do you need some work? What you would say is something like, you know, do know anyone who

might need help with this. The people you naturally could go to first, you're in a circle, that's the power base. It's always worth checking in with them and keeping them on side, perhaps once a month or so. That is really great advice. Let's move on to the sales approach, focusing on emotion and sales for a few minutes. Dale Carnegie once said, when dealing with people, remember,

you're not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion. And while the logical details of a sale are important, your buyers really make decisions based on how they feel about you and your product. And so your proponent of starting the sales process with emotional value and not practical value. Could you explain the difference between the two

and why you choose to start off with emotional value? The reason why is because I'm selling to people and I'm selling to creatures that operate in a particular way. And it seems intuitive to give someone an intelligent grown-up decision maker. It seems intuitive to give them the logic and the facts, right? We're trying to be helpful, we're trying to be clear. But the truth is that not how the human animal's brain works. The human brain starts with a real kind of animal instinctive and emotional center that is like the gatekeeper to use sales analogy before getting to the logic center.

So if I want to interface with anyone, I have to go through the emotional part of the brain first. No matter how logical that person is, they might be famous for it. It all starts with emotion. And very loosely speaking, and I'm not a psychologist, but I just have gleaned this from being around enough people over the years. If you're approaching someone cold, they're subconscious, because it's a subconscious part. This isn't an internal conscious dialogue. They're subconscious part of their brain will receive whatever approach you give them. This is moments into the first second and make a judgment on if you are a threat or if they might win here

in some form or if they should be indifferent to you. And the reaction is chemical and it's happening inside their brain and that's where they decide if they need to leverage the intelligent center of the brain, the logical part, because that actually takes a lot more energy and your status of your brain is always trying to keep it like minimal use of energy essentially.

So whenever part of your brain is, I think it's called the limbic brain, the old part of your brain, the kind of the, some people call it the lizard brain or the crock brain or the chimp brain, the real animal part that's not evolved from, you know, 100,000 years ago, whatever. Basically says, am I in trouble? Or could this be really great for me? If it's neither of those, then discard and lose interest. So when you do something or say something that lights that up, you access the logical part

and now you've earned the right to speak to someone because now they are receptive and paying attention, it insurvises the brain is switched off. And that's why logic first is a mistake because the animal brain doesn't respond to that so it is indifferent to it. And that's why great example haller is recently I worked with someone who started their sales process through emails they were trying to be helpful their first email to call prospects was over a page long loads of stats underline bits cute little urls an attached PDF

bold writing here there and everywhere and no one was bothered to look at it. We broke it down and it ended up being two lines along the line of would you like to be published in this thing? I'm around tomorrow for a coffee between these times as that work from you. The reason why that first line worked is because that instant win of oh I get to look good. I get to be published, this would be amazing. And I remember she came to me, she was like, I've only sent three of them so far and I'm three of three. They're literally like, cool, let's go, let's try this.

And that has to be done the right way. So you've got to understand with empathy how the person the other side of the table is going to receive you. And when you get that bit right and it is psychology and it is understanding behavior, you can be so much more penetrative and you don't make an idea of yourself because you're having people going, oh this is all cruel, I don't want to engage with you and then you know people don't ghost you and things like that and

it's the world's a nicer place when you engage people emotionally first. So essentially you're proposing that whether it's an email or an in-person conversation like the first couple lines you say is really trying to get the person to feel better right? Yeah. To elevate their emotional state. So I call them the wins. There are four main ones I think I've come up with this before but save time, save money, make money, sure that can help but really the main one is look good or an extentional variation of look good because that feeds the ego and a nice way to do this is to leverage a peer or a mutual contact okay because if I was

to say I can make you look better online halloween the problem is we've got too much cynicism there but if I talk about how I've worked with a mutual contact then that makes it much more believable as well, but I'm playing to your emotional center of wanting to do better in this world, look good and be accepted by people. Now I know you're not that shallow, but the emotional side of your brain is, everyone's brain reacts in the same way, can I look better in some way? Not necessarily in terms of fashion labels or whatever, but generally speaking, does this improve social status for me? And if there's any kind of inclination towards that, then that gets a little bit of a light

flash in the brain. And so those winds are crucial to gently put in at the entry point. Totally. And so there's lots of emotions that drive buying behavior. For example, like greed. If I make a decision now, I will be rewarded. Fear, if I don't make a decision now, I'm toast or I'm going to be fired. Autism, if I make a decision now, I'm going to help others.

So everybody has these different motives to buy something. How do you suggest that you uncover what those motives are? Yeah, it's always interesting because you will understand what makes people tick is different each time and some people are motivated by money or saving time and others just don't care. And that happens over the process of engaging with people and as soon as is possible once you've earned the right to speak a bit more as in you've got some sense that they're acknowledging you're a value here you need to get into questions and get the person speaking really again this comes down to

warming them up and ideally if I was for instance sending an email I'd want to do that little win and start and suggest you know that we meet or speak on a phone or something like that. And when we get on the phone there's that receptivity because we've decided to have this and never agreed to it and now I can ask them. So there's some really light questions to get the ball rolling. Because there's an in conversation if you study the way people interact, not just in business but in general, in conversation there's an in-conversation if you study the way people interact, not just in business, but in general, in-conversation, there's momentum. And momentum comes from both people. It's kind

of difficult when we have an interview because it's not entirely the same as an average conversation would be, but typically there's momentum in that there's ebb and flow and back and forth and dynamics and so on, but in essence, if you're approaching someone, you want to condition them to speaking and naturalize them to the idea that they are going to be speaking. Because if you talk at the non-stop, you condition them that they're not going to be speaking. So the way you do this, the way you open people up

is with closed questions. So you close questions being simple, yes no answers or singular word answers, just to begin with. And the more specific, simplistic questions you ask someone, the more they will answer them. And the more they answer questions, the more they answer the next question, and the larger question. And you can appreciate that the more interest they take because they're speaking and more you earn the right to ask the bigger questions. So what's like an example of asking a question in the right way and then asking a question in the wrong way? Well in fact the best thing to do is think about the smallest

possible questions because they're the ones that nudge it along nicely and the smallest questions you can ask are what's known as acknowledgement questions and that acknowledgement questions are ones where it's almost not actually a question, it's just things like, does that make sense or right, or it can be in just tonality or or a pause. And I've just done it there to get that mmm from you. So it's things that inside what I'm saying, so the way you do it is you ask, so does that make sense? Or you put tonality at the end, like that, so it goes up at the end of a sentence to suggest a question, or you leave a pause. And those two things can almost pop it, master

someone into speaking, and just the little noises to start with can get the ball rolling. But ideally, I want to move to a place where I'm asking something slightly larger than an acknowledgement question Which can be almost anything like within 10 and meaning. How are you and how are things or did you see? I'd send that email or do you know HALA who I spoke to the other day or you know whatever it might be that you're in I would use that and and that's the that's your I would use that and that's your commonality that you use to begin with. And this is no different to if I sit down with someone at a wedding and next to that person and I've never met them before, I use the commonality of the fact we're at the wedding. And my in is, you know, how do you know the bride or something like that?

And as that person starts the first few words of speaking, I'm not over the top with it but a little bit of encouragement and those acknowledgement questions are right and things like that just to merge them along. And so what you're doing is you're setting a little spark and you're starting the process of tenderly stoking a little fire, it really is how it should work because in the main when you approach someone in business cold to sell them you need to take this approach of a kind of really nurturing the little flame of a fire of a conversation if you like because after a while it really blossoms but you're gonna put the work in essentially

Totally and so I know that when you're building a relationship in sales, your main focus is really to build trust. And you say, it's really everything to get the human in front of the prospect. And now it is online. It's very impersonal. A lot of it is automated, text-based. So how can we be more human online? What's your perspective on that?

One of the things I'm really behind is because people are trying to leverage direct message or private messages to warn people up is to use voice memos because all the platforms, even the likes are linked in now, you can voice them all out and it's the way I operate. Firstly, you are so much more productive when you use voice memos because you can get so many more done rather than sitting around typing all day. But secondly, those little nuances, so intent, emphasis, dynamics, meaning, emotion, it comes through when you speak. And that's why we're not doing this interview via text. We're doing it

through audio so people can hear what I really mean and we can really get the meaning behind your questions as well. So voice memos are massive because they're very positively disruptive because firstly no one can make a judgment on if they will even bother responding to it by reading it because they can't. They have to click on play and it's like a little treat that you gave someone when they get that little voice memo so they click on play and it's a nice little bespoke message just for them you know that we're not quite in a world yet where people are automating that and using bots for them so using voice memos is a really good example of giving yourself and showing more of the human because the more of

the person, the face, the voice, the way you move, so video as well, is a great way of building familiarity. And if there's familiarity, that's like the seed of trust. And that's why I do my live shows and that's why I do video because someone who's never met me, just like you and I, if we watch in our films and TV, we have a sense of who that celebrity is. We have a sense almost like we know them. That's where the connection is far more rapidly made than if I just did text. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success.

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So don't wait, now's the time to turn your business idea into a reality by listening to the Millionaire University podcast. New episodes drop Mondays and Thursdays, find the Millionaire University podcast on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, you're leading me to my next question, which was about your live stream. So I noticed that you leveraged live stream in such a cool way. You end up going live on multiple platforms at the same time and you actually take that content and turn it into microcontent. How has live streaming worked out for you? Has it been effective for you so far? It has, because although you don't directly get ROI in the sense that someone goes, hey,

can you sign me up and can I buy something in the actual life sum itself? It does happen, if I'm promoting an event, people then go and buy, or I use it often to promote like sign up to the newsletter or the soft stuff, but I don't sell high ticket courses or anything like that. But the reason why it's worked so well is precisely what I've just been saying. It validates who I really am. We've done 181 weeks of it now, consecutively. I'm not that good an actor to sustain being someone different or to front as a certain type of Richard. I am totally just me and basically I'm there for those who want to show up each week for the person that I am.

And so I love to riff. I love it when it's raw, because I'm just, for an hour every week, I'm just being me. And if that works for people, it's not a surprise at all actually that those people tend to be the ones who follow me elsewhere and end up buying things as well.

So it's the best way of showing people what you're really like. And that is what is probably the main upside to doing lives. Yeah, I think that live stream is the closest thing that we can get to human connection online until like VR is commercialized, right? Yeah. And so if you can leverage it, you definitely should. I'm really excited because I just got access to LinkedIn live.

Do you think that? And so I'm going to start, yeah, thank you. So I'm going to start doing some of my interviews live and I'm going to be doing a similar strategy to you where you kind of have your long videos and then turn it into short form content. Yeah. Thanks for the inspiration. You're welcome.

And the thing with LinkedIn is like, I've been doing it for years on Facebook and Instagram and a bit on YouTube. But the thing about LinkedIn is it really is a nice place to court a business audience as well. And it's just that much closer to the kind of, if you're going at things from anything to do with a commercial aspect at all, then it is a really great place to win.

But the bandwidth is better on LinkedIn too. You get a lot more people by comparison to the other platform. So I'm pleased with it. Yeah. Let's stick on social media for a bit. Let's talk about your connections, right? You've built a big community on multiple social platforms.

How do you actually go about taking those connections and following and turning them into clients? What's your strategy with that? So, it's an interesting one because a lot of the people who I interface with are the entry points to their own network. So there's a lot of content creators and people who are maybe doing something similar to me who are not necessarily going to close. But the reason why I still engage with them is that knowing that they have a network, some of their people will be going through to see my content and they will kind of sell themselves a bit. To kind of answer your question directly, I don't do outbound. I create a map back from a situation where people can't help themselves

and want to send me that message to say, I really love what you do and I've essentially self-selected myself to need help from someone like you while the next steps and what that looks like is being everywhere as much as you can through a system of repurposing and microcontent so that it appears that I have this abundance of them, not actually online all the time and being useful to people against a very particular subject area. So it takes time, you know, it's been almost two years have been doing on LinkedIn now but it moves you to a place where you're in people's conversations, you're in people's posts they post about you, they tag you and so on, and you create that name and it takes time.

As I say, it moves you to place where you get known, not just reputation, but you get known for being the guy that does that thing. Yeah, so it's almost like word of mouth. Yeah, and I'm relying on that, and the truth is that I could gain it more. I could get into more DMs and close more, more people, but actually it is really fulfilling game it more I could get into more DMs and close more more people but

Actually, it is really fulfilling to create a world where I'm being useful to people and Validating that I'm good at what I'm doing and so those that would buy from me Decide when it's right for them to reach out and that is the best organic way to do it. And you see if you're okay, you know, if you have enough money to survive, I suggest this speedy approach. You can do outbound, but it's far better to say I'm actually good, so let's focus on being useful to people and then come to me. And of course when they do come to me, I will then move to a sales or closing process but in the main I kind of create as much as possible a

situation where they take the first step because I think that feels good for everyone. I love that advice I think it's great. How about we go back to the sales conversation? As we are doing your research, we notice that one of your favorite phrases to use is, I'm your man. Why is this phrase so powerful? Because it short circuits that bright part of the brain we talked about that suggests there might be some fear or over thinks things and worries. I'm your man requires a microsecond of thought, but you basically say it if it's technically something you could do, then it's it's yes, and it's a great way of learning how to jump. Too much over thinking paralyzes you and throws up the old but what if this happened and that happened,

and I personally find it exhilarating to work a lot of things out as I go, but also back myself to be able to deliver certain things really well. And in the main, if someone comes to me and says, hey Richard, are you available to come to our company and speak about this? This is what our company does. It's like, yeah, I'm your man. And then I'll work it out from there. And that doesn't mean I'm winging it or making up fully as I go. It's that I know the answer will be I can do it in the end and I know that I will do a good job and so let's jump because that saves me going through any hassle and thinking about the downside too much. I am very much a jump and build the plan on the way down kind of person. So what I'm trying to articulate here is

that the amount of thought I do put in is small, yet it is focused on, is this technically in my sphere? If it is it's a yes, right? Rather than, oh I don't know because there are different ways in which we could look at this and therefore I might not be quite right. It's like, no come on, let's make this right for me and if it off piece then totally not what I do. Then of course it would be a no, but I tend to be asked stuff around what I do and the best thing to do is jump and say, yep, I'm your man, and that's fine, it takes you to some really exciting places. Yeah, so it basically just eases the person's concern, right? Yeah, because time fuels fear. The more you think about stuff, the more that

animal part of your brain says, you don't want to do that because you might be socially ostracized and that would be bad because your tribe wouldn't be there to look after doing it. All of these instincts that are against you that actually aren't relevant in 2020 in the world we live. So you want a short circuit of that so you don't have the fearful animal talking to you and make decisions. Sales people often get a rap that they can be really aggressive, right? And I think

that the aggressive approach really never works. It's such a turn-off. How do you advise that people be aggressive in terms of being proactive, but not necessarily turning off their customers with this aggression? Totally. The answer is that you need to be aggressive, but you're aggressive with yourself. Well, that means is you push yourself and drive yourself to engage with as many people as possible. You're aggressive with your research,

you're aggressive with making sure you're displaying some empathy that you plan how you say those first few lines and so on, you know, spend as much time as possible training yourself too. And that's the key, is that aggression lies within you for yourself and being ambitious, but it certainly shouldn't go out to the people you're trying to engage with. The difficulty we have here, and this is why people get spammed. People always say, you know, well, why are they doing it? Why are people starting a message when they've never heard of me before, and never met me before, with the cell? The reason why is because that if you get one point

of receptivity in 800 approaches, that's confirmation bias for many. And rather than auditing the effectiveness, they're saying, do you know what? I've got a yes, therefore do another 800, and I'll get another yes. It's a, in that confirmation bias, drives the kind of work with companies where it's hundreds and hundreds of phone calls every week per person, and the majority of people aren't interested,

but to a day will show an interest, and one a week will buy, therefore do it at all time and it's kind of sold-destroying, but if it makes you some money at the end of each month, then that confirmation bias perpetuates it. But we really need to think is rather than doing volume, put more stock in in being effective. It's far more fulfilling. But you know, the truth is that sales typically is a money game as well and when commissions involve people don't want to put work in, they want their money. And so they cut corners and in a world like

LinkedIn for instance you've got 600 million people there so because volume is a feature you can afford to be an irritant because enough people will say yes. If there were only 13 people on LinkedIn, you'd appreciate the approaches to be far more effective and that's the problem is that people know that there's always another phone number they can call or another person they can email and you should act as though there is maybe only a handful and treat them like they're going to be your best ever customer. The truth is, though, everyone knows this, it's just that it takes time and it requires effort and the very, very best salespeople that I've been fortunate enough to engage with and meet and see an action over the years, those that make millions every year. None of them do the spammy volume approach, all of them put the effort in and

understand the importance of empathy for the actual individual research individual that they're trying to reach out to. Totally. How about we talk about closing a deal? There's so many differing opinions on how to close a deal. What are your top tips for that? Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of people feel that you should always close and you should always ask regardless of how it's going. And the classic approach, which is so out of date, is ask for the deal and that will throw up the objections and then you can handle them.

But what that is is a very reactive way of selling in that you're basically you're just throwing an author at someone expecting a problem and then trying to handle the problem itself. It's far better to be more preemptive and the best closes come when you've already warmed up person up and you've courted the emotion a bit more and you've got them feeling that you're someone worth trusting in, someone that's confident and that's got this and someone who can look after them. One of the most crucial elements in closing is that idea that you're going to look after that person and it's interesting that the natural human approach is often one of a butler, right? So I'll do everything for you.

Here are all the options. You decide you're in control. But the truth is invariably buyers emotionally prefer a seller to know what's what and to know what to do and to be able to prescribe a solution. If you think about a doctor or an airline pilot or a barber or a tailor, all these people, you don't look for options as much as someone who is in control of those what they're doing. So that assurance emotionally that you have got this in terms of understanding our sphere goes a very long way. In addition to that I think it's very important to understand that being on the same kind of wavelength as that person, so being able to get

along with them, banter if there is some there and having an awareness of the little things that is going on between the two of you. So maybe there might be some things to research, you have some commonality, maybe you went to the same university, or you lived in the same place, or you know a bar around the corn from where their office is, all the extra research is so available

online, and having that to really make the point that you're here as a trustworthy person goes so far when it comes to the closing side that there's this element of do you know what you seem like a person who's not going to take my money and run so that trust thread is running through it all. But if I can be really practical because I feel like I feel that this could be a really good opportunity to give your listeners some real direct advice in terms of stuff they can do. There's a really important point which is that you should separate the value from the price when it comes to closing. So what I'm saying here is really simply

once you've described and summarized what it is you want to offer someone at that point you should just check in and say you know in principle what do you think? As a concept, does this feel good? Before you give them the price, you get them to say, Richard, this is awesome. You know what, this is just what I'm after. They have to earn the right to hear your price. Here's a good way to look at it. Rather than giving them the price and the package altogether, it makes far more sense to get them sold on the point and the value in principle. Because if they're not sold at that point, you're just going

to give them a price for something they're not sold on. And they will subjectively then say, well that's too expensive. So you check first that they emotionally and maybe logically as well feel solid that this is a great value proposition. Then they earn the right to hear, great, so that runs for 12 months at this price. Sound good, and now you're seeing the contrast or difference on now, you know, how they feel about something based on the price.

So in short, if I'm getting someone saying, this is exactly what I'm after, then I've legitimized giving them the price because I know they'll say, yeah, I totally see why you charge that. But if I've got someone who's like, I suppose I mean, I don't really, I don't know, it kind of could help, I suppose there's no way I should be giving them the price. That's not going to progress the call. It's going to ruin it. And what it will do is it will take the level of interest down and it's definitely turning them off. I'm not there yet. I need to loop back and be a bit more candid and just understand

like where did I drop the ball? So be careful, don't close on the price until they've earned the right to hear it and that's them selling you that they're convinced that your values worth taking the conversation further. Speaking of price, I came across something very interesting that you've said in the past. Essentially, you say that people should raise the price point every time you get a sale. What's the logic behind that? Because you could just get infinitely high in your price and become uncompetitive, so tell us about that.

Yeah, let me put some parameters in there. It certainly is for certain types of product, because you may be in an industry where actually, that's not a good way to do it. So if I sold, you know, forward focus every time I sell when I put the price up, because someone's willing to pay it, is going to soon get me to a point where I get a lot of resistance on it.

Well, I'm going with that. It's certainly with the high-to-get products and services side of things. And what I have experienced is if someone's keen on coaching, for instance, and someone's seen huge value in it, then giving them a price point where they're like, yes, sure, that makes a lot of sense. It's validated that someone's willing to pay that. So you should test. Well, what about if I went up by another $500? Or what about if I went up by another $500? Or what about if I went up by another $2000 or something? You should test it because it's a really good way

of seeing what your price should really be. It's a good bit of market research, really. And when I started doing online consulting with startups, I started at quite a low price point, simply to validate to myself that I could close sales in this way. And then every time I got a sale I just put the price up until I got to this point and I thought, okay, do you know what, that's the kind of price point this deserves because

that's the bit where people like, yeah, totally get that, I'll pay that. And it's just a good way of testing if you're going too low or too high. But it requires a volume of sales to really get a handle on it, if that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great a great strategy like you said to find the right price point and to also not sell yourself too short. You could be charging a lot more for your services but you'll never know if you don't ask right? Exactly and I think it's important to understand that it's all about the individual because value is a subjective thing, it's a perception, it's in the eye of the beholder, and I've been in meetings where I've done, you know,

two hours of coaching to a senior team of salespeople, and they thought it was worth every single penny, and I charged more than I were charged for a month of coaching because I knew that this was solving this one problem I had right now, it was literally putting out their fires right now. So the value to them was totally worth it. And of course there are other ones where it's maybe not quite as necessary and so the price point reflects that as well. It's always ebb and flow with this

kind of thing. It depends on the individual and their certain circumstances right there and there. Continuing on the topic of price, what's your perspective on discounting your products? Is that ever an effective strategy? It's the case, typically, that everyone technically can afford your product. Unless you haven't done that pre-qualification we talked about it earlier. So if I'm approaching, you know, people with a very low level of income with Lamborghinis, I'd not do my pre-collification correctly, but in the main, if you've done that bit right, people can afford your product. So therefore, it's feedback if they say your

price points too much, that subjectively they feel your value doesn't match what you're asking them. It's your fault you haven't sold them properly. And so I'm very happy that I've got a system that works where I massively go all in on warming the audience first and they organically choose themselves and come to me and say I'd like to buy your product. That means that the discount thing doesn't come up really at all. The reason why discount typically is thrown at a seller is because if you don't have any point of differentiation, then you tend to find that the person looking for a point of differentiation, so looking, well say something like, well, what about if it was lower price

point? If you don't resonate with that person, if you don't get on with them on the same wavelength, or maybe if the need for your product in and of itself isn't entirely there, that's where sometimes a discount kind of makes sense to the buyer. Again, to basically differentiate and say, you know what, maybe we could make this in some way valuable or interesting, because if they're not sold on you or and all the products, then lowering the price might make it feel a bit more validated. But in truth, you shouldn't have to discount someone who is a qualified lead. So someone who technically could buy totally the case.

That makes sense. So I have a lot of friends who are in sales and sometimes I hear the excuse that they think that their product isn't good enough or it's not sexy, it's boring and that's why they have trouble meeting their quota each month. What is your advice to people who claim that their product is too boring? Work on the basis that that's an excuse, okay? Always work on the basis that that's an excuse. Okay, always work on the basis that that's an excuse. I've had some really tough stuff to sell in the past and still managed it because sometimes you've got to take a step back

and say I need a different approach. Let's go and do some research, find some other people, get some different opinions from good salespeople on how they might attack it. And you've always got to map back from the wins for the buyer. How would they win as a result of making use of your product or service? And are they going to look good? Are they going to save time or give them the convenience? Are you going to make it the case that they make them on money or save money? That's something to think about. But you give them a specific example here and I think it's really good one. Those that feel their product or industry is boring and it's such an important one. The truth is people by people. So if you feel your product is boring, no problem. Don't talk about the product. Talk about you.

Express yourself. Do skits about the sub-culture of your industry, poke fun at it. Whatever it is, do something that's going to draw people to you because one of the most powerful things you can leverage is human curiosity. And it's the same as when you meet, think about it in the social context, because this is where I got the idea from, in the social context, if I meet someone at a bar or whatever in just in social environment that I find interesting or stimulating, drop one when you say goodbye to them is you check them out online, you go to Instagram, you go to Facebook, what this person is like, and it's no different in business. If you can do things that make people think, who's this guy?

This is interesting. Good number of them won't be able to help themselves. They will click on your name, now they're on your profile. And if you signpost it enough, they will find their way to what you do. Those that might need you for the thing you sell, the widget you sell that's really boring, when they need you, you're the one and the reason why you're the one is because buying your product, boring though it is, is at a time when they need it and it's an example of another way in which they can consume you. So

people show up for instance for my show and for some it's like deathly, deadly boring. Like how are you doing a show every week on selling and business? It's so dull for some. But for those who enjoy the way in which I do it and my vibe, when if the time comes they need something, I'm the one they think of because they like me more. And so the science shows it's best part of 60, 65% of the reason why someone decides to buy something, boring or not, is down to how they're interfaced with the brand or person.

So the advice is really simple. Do things that make you more stimulating to them, and it might be a longer play in terms of content or if you're approaching people directly one on one, be the fun, interesting guy and that earns you the right to talk about the boring thing because if you've identified the right person and they technically could need that and win from it, well then now they will want to hear from you because you're a cool guy or an interesting woman. You see what I mean? So, lead with being interesting. Yeah, it's really great advice and just to hit it home for my listeners, if you think you have a

boring product, you yourself, you need to be the interesting one, right? And you're the one who's going to draw on the customers and then if they need your product, you'll be the right person to contact. So makes total sense. Richard, this was such a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. We always end our show now with this last question. What is your secret to profiting in life? OK, I think a good question.

It's thinking a lot about how my future self would act, but also thinking a lot about how my past self would act. If they were in the room with me right now, watching what I'm doing. So my past self, the one who had to graft and grind and bleed through his eyes to get here. Imagine if that person's sitting here right now watching whatever task I'm working on, or not, and to get ahead in life, I feel you need to ask yourself,

because that's the greatest accountability to yourself. If past Richard was sitting right here right now, would he say, good, I'm glad you're honouring all the work I put in, would he be really annoyed at, I'm glad you're honouring all the work I put in. Would he be really annoyed at how I'm slacking off? Likewise, is the future Richard also saying, like seriously, can you just get on with it so that I can start to exist? Or would he say, awesome work, well done, you're going to make me a reality. So thinking in a weird way about these multiple Richard's has been a really good way of deciding if the thing I'm doing right now is a worthwhile

task to be working on. I love that we've never heard that one before and where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do? Sure so it can all stem from my website the hub if you like so theRichardMore.com or I'm very active on LinkedIn so I'd love to make some of your guests there. If you go to Richard James Moore or on Word, or on LinkedIn, I'll be there as well. I'd love to speak to some of them. Awesome, thanks so much Richard.

You're welcome. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to leave us a review or comment on your favorite platform. Follow Yapp on Instagram at Young and profiting podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to leave us a review or comment on your favorite platform. Follow YAP on Instagram at Young & Profiting and check us out at Young & Profiting.com. And now you can chat live with us every single day on YAP Society on Slack. Check out our show notes or Young & Profiting.com for the registration link. And if you're already active on YAP Society,

share the wealth and invite your friends. You can find me on Instagram at YAP with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search for my name, Hala Taha. Big thanks to the YAP team, as always, stay blessed, and I'll catch you next time. This is Hala, signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben Podcast.

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