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For Noah and Bella, who teach me how to live boldly and fearlessly every day.
Alex Goldfayn is the CEO of The Revenue Growth Consultancy, a seven‐figure solo consulting practice which adds 10 to 20 percent annual revenue growth to clients by systematically implementing the mindsets and actions in this book, with layers of accountability, recognition, and reward.
Alex engages with organizations over 6 to 24 months to create the right proactive communication habits among customer‐facing staff. The day Alex's clients launch their Selling Boldly revenue growth actions, they are communicating exponentially more with customers and prospects than they were the day before. And this goes on for years. This is how his clients attain and maintain such dramatic and rapid growth.
Alex does more than 50 speeches and workshops each year, and regularly keynotes large annual association meetings as well as sales kickoff events.
You can learn more about all this work at www.goldfayn.com.
Alex is the author of The Revenue Growth Habit: The Simple Art of Growing Your Business by 15% in 15 Minutes A Day (like the book you're reading now, also published by John Wiley & Sons). It was selected as the sales book of the year by 800‐CEO‐Read, and Forbes selected it as one of the top 15 business books of the year.
He is also the author of Evangelist Marketing: What Apple, Amazon and Netflix Understand About Their Customers (That Your Company Probably Doesn't), published by BenBella Books.
To learn more about growing your sales 10 to 20 percent annually with Alex, or to schedule him to speak at your next event, call him at 847‐459‐6322 or email him at alex@goldfayn.com.
Want to grow sales? Here is an executive summary of this book in two sentences and two steps:
That's the book in a nutshell. If you keep reading, you'll learn in deep detail how to dramatically increase your positivity, confidence, and joy by listening to your happy customers—and then, simply, offering to help them more.
That's how easy it is to grow sales.
We begin with three stories that lay out the single greatest killer of sales growth.
I was at the airport in Minneapolis, ordering an iced coffee, and the young woman behind the counter asked me if I would like a bottle of water with that.
This stopped me in my tracks because I teach all of my clients this technique—I call it the did you know question—and although it's an incredibly simple question that requires only a few seconds, almost nobody ever asks a question like this. Anywhere, ever.
I asked her, “Do they teach you to ask this question?”
“Yes, they do,” she said. “It's a part of our training.”
“How many people buy a bottle of water?”
You know what she said?
“Almost everybody.”
Guess how much the water cost? Five dollars!
The coffee?
It cost $3.
It's amazing.
With this simple question, this coffee shop nearly triples its sales, from $3 to $8.
With water!
Was I mad at her for trying to sell me a $5 bottle of water?
Of course not. She was trying to help me. And like everybody else she asks, I know that a $5 bottle of water is absurd.
So how was she being helpful?
I was getting on an airplane. I needed water, anyway.
If I didn't buy it from her, in a single transaction, I would have to take my coffee, and my rolling luggage down the terminal to a gift shop and procure my bottle of water. I'd have to set down my luggage, and my coffee, take a water out of the cooler, risk dropping my coffee on the floor because I'm now holding both the water and the coffee in one hand, as I try to get to the other, new, checkout line. Once I would get to the front of the line, I would have to set everything down again—luggage, coffee, and water—and pay. Again. And how much money have I saved? A dollar or two? Maybe? I could use that time to relax, or make a proactive phone call to a customer to check in (much more on this to come throughout the book).
The young checkout person at the coffee shop offered me water, which (1) saved me time, and (2) allowed me to complete my beverage acquisitions in one transaction. I valued that. I appreciated it. So, apparently, did nearly everybody else she asked. Remember, she asks everybody, and almost everybody buys the water.
And so, I ask you: What is your bottle of water?
What can you sell to your customers, who have been buying the same products and services from you for years, decades maybe, without considering what else they can buy from you? Right now, today, your customers are buying from the competition products or services they could be buying from you. These are products and services they should be buying from you. In fact, your customers would like to buy these things from you. After all, they've been with you for all these years for a reason. They're very happy doing business with you. And everybody knows one purchase order is better than two or three or four. They want to buy more from you and, of course, you would like to sell them additional products.
But none of that is possible, because they don't know.
We don't tell them what else they can buy.
And they're too busy to know. Or ask. They simply assume they can only buy from us that which they have bought for years. And we assume that that is all they need! They niche us, and we niche them.
They would buy, if we would ask. But we do not, so they do not.
In this book, in Chapter 27, I will teach you exactly how to ask your customers to buy your bottles of water.
Several years ago, my family moved into a new home.
We had a room over the garage, and it was colder than the rest of the house.
So I called three insulation companies. I'd never bought insulation services before.
They all came out, did some testing, and sent me their quotes.
I received quotes from all three of them.
But only one of the guys followed up with me after he sent the quote.
Guess who got the business?
That's right, the guy who followed up.
Guess who was the most expensive?
Right again, the guy who followed up.
So why did he get the business?
By following up with me, was he bothering me?
Was he annoying me?
Was he taking up my time when he called?
No, none of those things.
When he followed up, he was showing me he cared.
The other guys did the opposite.
When they did not follow up, they were showing me they did not care.
But their expensive competitor called me, and emailed me.
He even said to me, “Why don't you send me the other two quotes, and I'll see if I missed anything.”
I know this wasn't really fair to the other guys, but they weren't talking to me. In fact, they were nowhere to be found.
I teach my clients a three‐step follow‐up process that closes 20 percent of all outstanding quotes and proposals! Each follow‐up is a one‐line email that takes about five seconds to copy and paste. If you replace one of the emails with a phone call, we find that a whopping 30 percent of all outstanding proposals and quotes close. Can you imagine?
The customer asked you for a quote or proposal, and you sent it. You've done the work! But when the customer doesn't reply with a quick “yes,” we very rarely follow up. By the way, customers will rarely call to say “no,” they are not accepting your quote. They feel badly about saying no, and nobody really enjoys rejecting an offer.
When my clients follow up on quotes and proposals, they find that customers love it.
They appreciate it.
And best of all: as I experienced with the contractors, the competition isn't doing it.
Customers value our follow‐up, but we do not do it.
Much more on following up on quotes and proposals in Chapter 29.
Have you ever stood with a group of people in a social setting, perhaps with a drink in your hand where somebody asks for a recommendation for a service provider?
Perhaps they ask for a chiropractor who can help their ailing back, without making them sign up for a multi‐week plan that forces them to visit three times a week.
Or maybe they ask for a dentist who can clean their teeth without poking them and causing pain.
Or, possibly, they request a lawn service that knows not to cut the grass when it's raining.
What do other people in the group do when such a request is made? How do they react?
They almost trip over each other, in their haste to recommend their person.
“You need to use my chiropractor. He's fabulous.”
“No, listen, my chiropractor is different from everybody else. He needs only one visit to fix you up.”
“Wait, let me tell you about my guy. He's fabulous!”
Right?!
People are literally arguing with one another, making the case for their provider.
They want you to use their person.
People love giving referrals, but we do not ask for them.
Your customers are very happy with your work. Again, I know this because they've been with you for years, and they keep coming back.
Of course, they'd like to connect their friends and colleagues with a trusted, excellent provider of a product or service.
There are many reasons why people love giving referrals, which we will explore later in this book, but the big picture is that your happy customers would be more than pleased to refer you to people they know.
If only you asked.
But you rarely do.
And, in turn, they rarely do.
Much more on referrals in Chapter 32.
So, if we know our customers would like to buy more from us …
If we know they're buying products and services from our competition right now that they could buy from us, and we would like to sell to them …
If we know we should ask our customers about buying our other products and services …
If we know we should follow up on quotes and proposals more …
And if we know customers love giving referrals …
Why don't we ask the did you know question?
Why don't we follow up?
Why don't we ask for referrals?
Why don't we ask?
Come to think of it, why don't we ask for the business every time we talk to a customer? (See Chapter 26.)
And why don't we use the phone more? Most salespeople actually go out of their way to avoid the phone. (See Chapter 25.)
We would only benefit from making these communications.
And our customers would benefit a great deal!
So why don't we ask?
We don't ask because we are afraid.
We don't ask because of fear.
Fear of what?
A few chapters from now, we will go through these fears, one at a time.
Then we will reject them, one at a time.
But for now, understand that fear has cost you an awful lot of money.
And it has cost your customers some amazing opportunities to do more business with you. They've missed out on benefiting more from the wonderful value you can provide them.
Fear is the single greatest killer of sales growth, for individuals and companies alike.
And this book is about how to overcome it. Selling Boldly teaches you how to quickly and easily identify fear; how to develop the critical positive mindset shifts and attitudes, put forth by the incredibly valuable field of positive psychology, that will inoculate you against fear—these attitudes are the enemy of fear; and how to easily train yourself to think in a way that leaves no room for the insidiousness of fear, by immersing yourself in the glowing feedback, emotion, and experiences of your happy customers. Then we discuss the fast, simple, no‐cost sales techniques that have been proven, again and again, to quickly and significantly grow sales. And finally, we talk about rolling out this powerful Selling Boldly system for yourself, personally, and also what it looks like if done systematically at your organization.
Here's a more detailed overview:
Throughout the book, you will find planning forms and tools to help you implement the Selling Boldly system. To create strategic, dependable sales growth, we need to infuse some proactive sales actions (the ones detailed in Part IV) into our otherwise generally reactive day. Use the tools to organize and plan your thoughts and actions and also make them a launch point for implementing our simple but powerful revenue‐growing communications techniques.