SFB Newsletter #20

Sales Deep Dive # 3 (mindset)

Ben Slater
February 06, 2024

Hey 👋,

Over the last two editions of the newsletter we’ve been talking about how to build your sales system to close more than 50% of the hot leads and applications that come through your business.

We covered…

How to Pre-Handle the 5 objections.
Building an Inbound Application Process.
Running Your Sales Calls & Making Offers.

If you’re not up to speed here are the previous two editions;

Sales Deep Dive # 1 >

Sales Deep Dive # 2 >

This edition of the newsletter is sponsored by the LeadFLOW implementation program. If you’re interested in growing your audience, improving your sales conversions and adding at least $10K/month to a business just reply to this email with ‘I’m interested’ and I’ll send you the details.

Once you have your basic systems built and you’re testing them… The next stage of your sales process is solving the problems and blockages as they come up.

No matter who you are, how talented you are at sales or what systems you use you will run into sales slumps.

Those sales slumps can be coming from structural problems - this could be over/under qualification of your leads, not removing the information / trust objections in the process, using the wrong script or making the wrong offer.

To solve this you need to test and re-test your systems to make sure you ‘fix all the holes in the bucket.’

For this I use a simple checklist based on the 5 objections that makes sure I’m doing everything in my power to pre-solve them and position myself appropriately.

But here is the problem…

You can be the most drilled person on earth with your sales systems, but if you’re still be missing the other side of the coin, you’ll struggle to maintain long term results.

Look you’ll know if you’ve tuned into the newsletter so far that I love systems.

I base almost everything I do in my business around them and I consider myself to be a systems thinker.

You might also notice that in many of my systems I include a yin/yang dynamic.

I also believe there is another side to the coin of business growth that applies to all of the pillars.

Mindset.

Mindset is not only the input function that you bring to the business and use create your vision and grow it…

It’s also the mirror function in that the blockages and issues in the business are reflections of you.

So I wanted to take some time to talk about the psychological and what could be considered… ‘the metaphysical side of sales,’ and how you can tap into this to produce real lasting results.

This is what I consider to be ‘the real work’ of sales.

Building a system is one thing.

But looking in the mirror and doing personal development… is something else. Not everyone is built for this work - because they are simply too attached to their ego and needing to be ‘right.’

I’d ask that you keep an open mind as we go through this.

I’ve seen more people ignore this work that I can count - and it’s the reason why they don’t excel and reach their potential when it comes to sales…

Now you’ll know by now my core sales belief is that there are 5 objections… and your goal is to remove those before you make an offer.

The objections that you give in your own life are the ones that come through your sales process.

Here is how I first discovered this.

Over the years I’ve had thousands of calls - and I’ve also had access to the data from my clients and I’ve seen the results of the systems we use and install.

On average we shoot for a 50% sales conversion.

There are also 5 objections that come up and we track them as they do.

Here is the exact sheet we use to do so >

Now you’d imagine that the sales objections would come up evenly spread across the calls… Sale / Objection / Sale etc…

Or at least a variation of this that resembles some kind of order…

But that’s not the reality.

I started to notice there were clear patterns in the way the objections would come up and there were clear streaks of wins and losses.

But the interesting thing is the losses.

Look objections are going to come up the process and that’s very natural - you probably won’t close 100% of your calls, and it’s normal that people will have them from time to time.

Think of it like this if you close 50% of your sales calls and the objections you receive over time are even at a 10% chance each.

If you receive the same objection twice in a row statistically that’s a 1% chance of that happening.

3 of the same objections in a row, there’s a 0.1% chance of this happening statistically.

But here is the strange thing.

In our forms I noticed… They’re almost always the same objections repeated 3-10 times.

If you’ve ever experienced this I’m sure you’ll understand when I say there is nothing worse in business than getting slammed with the same objection over and over.

By the end of it - excuse me but there’s no other way to say it - you’ll want to tell that 10th person to go fuck themselves…

The Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung once said, ‘Everything that irritates us about others leads us to an understanding of ourselves.’

Mindset wise I’ve followed this principle for the past 12 years. I believe the things that we experience in our lives have a lot more to do with our mindset than we realise.

After doing some digging into the objections I discovered that we get objections in the sales process when we are giving them in our own life.

Not paying that electricity bill? Pulling your punches with business investments? Or delaying payment..?

Expect money objections.

Delaying that decision? Waiting for ‘the perfect moment?’ or waiting until all of your ‘ducks are in a row.’

Expect time objections.

Thinking you’re missing a piece of the puzzle and using it as a crutch?

Expect information objections.

Not trusting yourself?

Trust objections.

And one of the worst…

Questioning your relationships?

Expect the partner objection to dominate.

Overall I don’t know exactly why this happens - but I can assure you there is a strong mindset influence in the sales environment. I have some theories that it could have something to do with ‘the shadow’ that has been referred to in Jungian psychology.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.

Carl Jung.

If seems as though: If you’re not a clear vessel you’ll ‘pollute the environment’ and your own weakly held objections will destroy your cashflow and momentum.

The work here is hard because you have to transcend the very thing you judge by becoming aware of it in your own life and taking action to fix it.

Seen this way sales becomes an incredibly powerful personal development tool.

But unfortunately, this type of thinking is rare.

But none the less, I wanted to share it with you, because there hasn’t been one sales blockage I haven’t been able to unclog with this system.

It simply works.

If you find yourself in the middle of a sales slump here is the system I use to address the mindset side.

Collect the last 5 calls.
List the outcome or objection you received. Make sure to capture specific language.
Find the Pattern.
Find the Area in Your Life You’re Giving the Objection.
Could be Health, Social, Family, Finance, Career, Intellect or Intimate Relationship.
Take Action Before Your Next Call to Clear It.

And when I say take action create a list of things to complete and do them. If you need to pay a bill pay it or if you’re not getting back to someone - do it.

You have to actually do the work here to solve the recurring issue.

I see this a lot with clients especially with things like time objections - if you believe your own objection you’re dead in the water and it may be costing you thousands of dollars per month to hold onto your belief.

Now - If you want to catch the sales slump even faster I have a principle called the law of two. If I get the same objection twice in a row - as I mentioned earlier there is less than a 1% chance of that happening.

My saying here is that ‘you can be 99% sure it’s you.’

I assume that my mindset isn’t clear and I get to work finding the objection and solving it in my own life.

Have a great day,

Ben.