Show notes:
Here’s why making phone calls isn’t scary. Today I am chatting with the Telephone Assasin – Anthony Stears. In an age where we tend to avoid picking up the phone, Anthony shares why we don’t need to be scared and how we can make an impact with a simple phone call. Don’t be skeptical… just give it a listen.
The Telephone Assassin Website
Anthony’s phone number: 0800 008 7597
Time Stamps:
00:15 – Establishing Credibility in Communication
01:51 – The Rise of the Telephone Assassin
24:10 – The Art of Phone Conversations in Sales
41:12 – The Evolution of Sales Conversations
Transcript:
Anthony
00:00:00.240 – 00:00:14.980
Before somebody’s going to listen to you, you need to get them to like you, okay? If you want somebody to trust you, you need to establish your credibility, okay?
And only once you’ve established your credibility can you then try and create some form of urgency and get them to do something as a result of speaking to you.
Becca
00:00:15.680 – 00:01:07.790
I’m Becca Pountney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger, and you’re listening to the Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow podcast. I’m here to share with you actionable tips, strategies and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level.
If you are an ambitious wed business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business doing what you love, then you’re in the right place. Let’s get going with today’s episode. Today I’m chatting with Anthony Steers, otherwise known as the telephone assassin.
I first heard him speak at Guides for Brides event and I absolutely loved his energy and the way he got people excited about a topic many of us dread talking on the phone. Anthony is on a mission to get people talking again instead of hiding behind social media and their emails.
With the next generation of couples avoiding the phone more than ever, I’m looking forward to what he has to share with us today. Anthony, welcome to the podcast.
Anthony
00:01:07.870 – 00:01:11.010
Thank you very much for having me, Becca. I’m excited, I’m excited.
Becca
00:01:11.350 – 00:01:51.514
It has been a long time coming. We’ve gone backwards and forwards a couple of times over the last probably 18 months. I’m like, you really must come on my podcast.
But we finally made it happen. So I’m really thrilled to have you here.
And actually, I think the timing’s kind of perfect because I’ve been talking a lot at the beginning of this year about how consumers are changing, the marketing culture’s changing, people don’t like the phone anymore. So I’m excited to get into that a little bit more with you.
But before we get there, I always like to give people a bit of background on my guests because if they’re going to listen and learn from you, it’s important they understand why they should and where you came from. So just give us a very quick potted history of your career up to this point. How did you end up being the telephone assassin?
Anthony
00:01:51.562 – 00:04:23.050
Okay, well, please don’t hold it against me, but my first job when I left school, I was an estate agent. Unfortunately, I knew, I knew I was going to go into sales. I remember my dad sort of saying to me, so what are you thinking you’re going to do.
And I was like, well, I think think sales is the way forwards. And he was like, well, I think that’d be good for you. You like to talk a lot. And, and then sort of said, so what do you want to sell?
And I said, well, what will get me the biggest commission? It turned out houses were the biggest thing I could think of.
And it turns out they give you a company car as well, which is always nice as, as when you’re starting out in sales. But yeah, I pretty much learned it’s the biggest purchase of people’s lives, so it’s a really important thing to do. And I worked my way up.
I broke a lot of the sales records. I became a valuer quite quickly and I was blessed with quite youthful looks, shall we say.
So I remember turning up to a house in Ascot, rather posh around here, which is sort of bordered onto the town where I was based. And I valued a property went quite well. I remember turning up and it had an in and out drive.
And as I was driving in, the owner of the other, one of my competitors was driving out in his Jag and I had my Astra that I was really chuffed with.
And I remember turning up and a couple were really nice and I valued it accurately, a little bit lower than others because I was being honest and I did give a pretty high fee because we were the best in the town. But I remember as I left, they thanked me for their time, walked me to the door, she thanked me for the, for my time.
And he just before he closed the door, said, what does that kid know? And shut the door. And I remember it just rung in my ears the whole way back to the office.
And I remember telling my manager, Fiona, and she pretty much said to me, well, I suggest you prove you’re not a kid before you get there next time. To which I said, oh, that’s brilliant. How do I do that? And she said, well, that’s the thing you need to figure out.
And what I ended up learning was that the appointment was actually set up by somebody else in the office. So it was the first time I’d actually had any interaction with these people.
So what I started to do is I started to phone people I had an appointment with to have a five or ten minute chat before I went to meet them.
And then when I turned up, I noticed that people would say something along the lines of, you’re younger than I expected, which I could then take as a compliment rather than looking very young.
So that’s kind of how I started to realize that I could connect with people and make a really good impression over the telephone, which would make meeting them a little bit easier and smoother. So I suppose that’s kind of how I became the telephone assassin or started my journey.
Becca
00:04:23.710 – 00:04:43.804
I mean, what a great story, because again, a lot of people would have taken that to heart and then gone, I should just give up on this or it won’t work out for me. But actually, you totally flipped it round and found a solution with your manager’s help.
And hopefully people still think you’re too young when you go and meet them. Are you still. Do you still have that problem? I love it when someone IDs me now.
Anthony
00:04:43.892 – 00:05:48.564
I do. I do love that. I tend. I tend to think that when people are giving me compliments, they usually want a free copy of your book. But. Or a favor, but.
Yeah, but.
But it was actually that manager who said something that stuck with me still to this day, which was I started to get close to a couple of the other salespeople in the office who are a bit older than me, bit more experienced, and my manager pulled me to one side and said, it’s hard to sor like an eagle if you surround yourself with turkeys.
And what she was warning me about was the fact that these guys kind of cut corners a little bit and that they probably weren’t the best role models for me. But what I kind of learned in sport, I realized that as I played, my dad played golf, but I used to play golf with a few of my friends.
If I played with people who were better than me, it raised my game.
And then as I started to develop in my career, I realized that I got the chance to speak on stage, and somebody told me about the Professional Speaking association, the psa. So I thought if I want to be really good at speaking, then I better go and hang out with. With some speakers.
And that kind of led me on my sort of path to being the telephone assassin and getting up on stage and our paths crossing at a nice big conference, which was lovely.
Becca
00:05:48.612 – 00:06:30.304
Yeah, absolutely. And you were great on stage. I loved your energy. I see a lot of speakers.
I see a lot of speakers that I don’t rate very much and I think are terrible on stage. And you were definitely not one of them. I loved your session. I thought you were great. You had a great energy.
And like I said, you were tackling a topic that many of us in the wedding industry really struggle with, which isn’t the easiest gig, because immediately People. And there’ll be people listening, listening now that are like, what’s he know about the telephone? The telephone is like 20 years ago.
Why do I need to listen to this today? And if that is you with those thoughts, I encourage you listen until the end of the conversation and then make a judgment. Don’t switch off now.
So what does your day to day look like now? The Nancy, I assume you’re not still going out there and selling houses. So now you’re the telephone assassin.
Anthony
00:06:30.352 – 00:08:35.070
Yeah, so I suppose it kind of progressed. I my last proper job, as my dad likes to put it, was selling databases.
So I used to sell databases, but people used to ask me what do they say to people? So I wrote telesale scripts to do follow ups or reach out and then enough of them asked me if I would make calls for them.
So I tried to set up a telemarketing company with a friend who worked at the same business at the time. It turned out he was full of a lot of hot air and blew our biggest client. But I won’t go into that.
So I ended up sort of working for myself and picking up the phone for various different clients. I was sort of a salesman for hire and I got quickly locked into retainers. So some people, it was four hours a week.
I had a client who was two days a week, so it used to vary a little bit.
But I then built a waiting list of clients and my accountant asked me how much I made from that waiting list and I didn’t really have a smart answer for him. So he suggested that I stop selling fish and teach people to fish for themselves.
So I phoned everybody and said, look, my waiting list isn’t slowing up. My retainers are trying to lock me in for longer. I’m going to run a workshop to show you how to do this if you want to come along.
And I think 21 out of 23 people said yes. I made a month’s worth of money in a day. Was like, oh my God, I need to do more of this. So that’s kind of how I then transitioned across.
So my day to day life. Well, I suppose week to week it varies quite a lot.
Obviously I’ve worked from home since well before COVID so having the home office wasn’t a big surprise to me. It was lovely to go on site and train either with companies internally or to go to a big conference or event where I get to go on stage and network.
Network and do all of that stuff too. So yeah, it really varies.
I’m at I think at the moment I’m split between about 50% of my time is training, 30% is usually at events and then I do about 20% of coaching or consulting. And I’ve launched an online academy recently as well. So I’m kind of keeping busy. Yes.
Becca
00:08:35.410 – 00:08:38.522
So this non proper job of yours is actually going quite well.
Anthony
00:08:38.626 – 00:11:28.786
Yes, absolutely.
And it’s funny because I’ve got the brand and one of my clients nicknamed me early on I said stop giving me these databases that have been stolen from somewhere or brought along with a new employee. I said just give me a wish list or a hit list. And he, he referred to me as being his telephone assassin.
And then about two or three weeks later another client said it to me. So I went back to my original client and he said I think you’ve got the name of your book. So yeah, that’s kind of where it all came came from.
But it’s interesting because like you say, it’s a topic that a lot of people are a bit scared of. Sales is sort of seen as a bit of a dirty word and, and telesales. Oh, that’s the lowest of the low.
And when people hear telephone assassin they kind of think it could be aggressive closing tactics and that kind of stuff. And it’s so not that hopefully you can confirm a lot of this is just really good manners, okay?
If you’ve got good manners, people will enjoy talking to you. And then I refer to it as advanced common sense, but it’s actually emotional intelligence.
It’s understanding that before somebody’s going to listen to you, you need to get them to like you, okay? If you want somebody to trust you, you need to establish your credibility, okay?
And only once you’ve established your credibility can you then try and create some form of urgency and get them to do something as a result of speaking to you. So once people understand that and they slow down a little bit, it just makes the whole process a lot, a lot less daunting.
And a lot of what I do now with marketing being so effective and so trackable, a lot of what I do now isn’t cold calling, it’s actually lead conversion. It’s catching those leads and converting as many of them as possible and as quickly as possible as well.
And once people realize that it’s more about helping people to buy as opposed to selling to people, they realize that actually this is really softly, softly way of it’s conversational strategy as opposed to sales tactics and a lot of it’s for your own mindset so you don’t feel like a cold caller and you dread picking up the phone and your hand shakes as you dial and your mouth goes dry. I want you to enjoy talking to people. There’s.
In my mind, there’s opportunity in nearly every conversation that we have, but quite often it’s not for us, which is why we don’t notice it. And yeah, the more people we talk to, the more enriched our lives are. I think we all remember when Covid hit and we were all stuck inside.
Everybody started talking to their postman was amusing. My postie was telling me his round was taking him so much longer.
All of a sudden, everybody was friendly and wanted a quick chat because they were craving that kind of human interaction. So don’t get me wrong, sending emails and doing marketing campaigns has huge reach, but having a conversation makes a real connection.
And yeah, my view is an email usually gets it off your desk. It doesn’t complete the task. Whereas a conversation lets you know where you stand.
Becca
00:11:28.938 – 00:12:02.634
So why do we think then that people are so scared about using the phone? Because we are now living in a digital age. We can WhatsApp people, we can DM people. I mean, I am just as bad as the next person.
I was just talking about this earlier to someone how now when someone leaves me a voicemail, I don’t even listen to it. I just read the transcript of what the voicemail said, right? So I am really in the bracket of like, I don’t like the phone, but I love zoom, right?
That, to me, is a totally different thing than picking up my phone. So why is it that we think that today’s consumers and us as business owners are so scared or don’t like the phone?
Anthony
00:12:02.762 – 00:16:47.130
It’s usually because we’ve had some bad experiences of receiving horrible sales calls that went really wrong. That where people were sometimes rude to you because you weren’t interested or and you just think, I don’t want to be like that.
And once you’ve had those bad experiences, then the thought of picking up the phone becomes almost worse. In much older generations, some of them often say that when they hear a phone ring, they just assume it’s bad news.
Because back in the day, like when the phone rang, we all used to only have one in the hallway of our houses. And when it rang, usually something had happened. Okay.
Or those of my generation, you’d be trying to talk to your girlfriend or your friends on the phone, whisper, whispering on the stairs, trying to have a conversation that the whole house could hear. So I think that there’s an element of the bad experience of receiving horrible sales calls and we don’t want to be like that.
But now we are so much, technically so much more reachable. Most of us have this mobile phone in our hand, in our pocket or our bags all of the time.
But it becomes a great screen because we’re, we’re bombarded with messages. We get so many direct mails, emails, messages coming through all the time. We are a little bit desensitized and we try and block and not.
There’s too much going on to listen to everything. So there are certain instances where, so for example, I get told that younger people are petrified off the phone and they, they are.
But I’ve been doing this training for over 10 years now and it happens to older people as much as younger people. However, there are a few little tricks and things that I’ve learned when you’re dealing with, with younger generations.
For example, there’s some lecturers who I know quite well who quite often need to speak to their students and they say if I just phone a student randomly, they’re not going to answer. Okay.
Whereas if I send them a message so that they know who I am and the numbers in their phone and they know that I’m going to be calling, then there’s a good chance that they will either answer or respond to that message. Okay. So sometimes they just need a little bit of warning. You mentioned that you, you quite like zoom calls.
Well, most people like a face to face or I know zoom isn’t quite the same, but it’s pretty damn close. I prefer that as well. But a lot of people prefer that method of communicating.
Because when I ask you to justify it, you’ll usually say, well, well, I can see if they’re interested. Basically. I can read body language. It’s much easier. I get visual cues, okay, which help, which I totally understand.
But I often say to people that when you start getting into the phone, close your eyes when you, when you pick up the phone and I believe you can read body language down the phone. If you never met them, your brain will automatically create a picture of what you think they look. And they’re never that good looking, I promise you.
Okay. Because they’re never as angry as you think they sound. But, but you will start to notice some of their mannerisms.
You’ll pick up from their breathing, whether they’ve kind of run to get to the phone.
You’ll, you’ll notice from the ambient noise whether they’re at a train station or whether they’re somewhere quiet where they can talk or if they’re driving and on a car kit, something like that. So you can pick up quite a lot, I think, down the phone, which a lot of people underestimate.
And I think that in a busy environment it’s hard to close off one of your senses and focus on, on the hearing and really listening and tun. And that’s the beauty of great conversations that if you fully tune in and listen, the right thing to say next will pop into your head.
The problem is most of us are waiting for our turn to talk. So quite often we’ll say something that kind of takes the. It distorts the flow of the conversation a little bit.
And this is where sales scripts, for example, don’t really work because people either tend to read them, they don’t learn them like an actor would, they read them. And I think we’ve all received that phone call of somebody reading a pitch down the phone.
Yes, you’re not nodding there and with a grimace on your face as if to go, yes, he’s not very enjoyable. So yeah, people don’t learn a script like an actor would. So it doesn’t sound natural. You kind of sound like you’re talking to a robot or an idiot.
And I suppose the biggest issue with scripts is that, or particularly with sales scripts is that the person that you’re phoning hasn’t been sent their copy. So quite often they’ll say something that isn’t on the script and that you’re not expecting.
And if you return to your script again, you’ll distort the flow of the conversation that will make you think something’s not right here, what’s going on. So yeah, it’s a simple process that I think most people overcomplicate.
Once people learn the etiquette that goes around it that frames the beginning and end of conversations, they start to realize they’re not intrusive, it’s actually very well mannered.
And that once people give you permission to speak, you get to breathe out and then have a breath and you can talk to people, not quickly blurt out a pitch.
And I suppose that’s what I try and do, build people’s confidence so that they pick up the phone and that they can kind of control where it’s going to go.
Becca
00:16:47.230 – 00:17:39.294
Interesting as well, because I’ve been self reflecting while you’ve been talking and thinking about it because obviously I open with I don’t like the phone. So I was thinking, well, why is it that I don’t like that, because I love to talk and I love zoom calls and I love this.
And I realized, actually, I don’t think it’s to do with being on the phone. I think it’s to do with that feeling of being interrupted in my day when I don’t want to be. So it’s actually the cold calling.
It’s the non appointment, because if I’m having a zoom call with someone, I’ve made an appointment. So, like, now we’re having a conversation. We made an appointment to have this conversation now. And I’m really enjoying have the conversation.
But if I’m in the middle of my child’s dance class or at the side of the football pitch and I get a call, I’m like, why are they ringing me now? I don’t want to speak to you now.
And so I just don’t answer or I don’t listen to the voicemail, because if I listen to the voicemail, then I might suddenly start thinking about that thing. So actually it’s interesting to think. It’s not that I don’t like the phone. I think it’s, I just don’t like being interrupted when I’m not expecting.
Anthony
00:17:39.342 – 00:21:41.538
And therefore you don’t want to interrupt other people. So that actually tells me that you’ve got impeccable manners and that you’re going to be amazing on the phone.
Because the first technique or the first step, step in a conversation, I sort of referenced it a few minutes ago, was around getting permission to speak. Okay, so at the beginning of the call, you need to get permission to speak. And some people might do this by saying, oh, is now a good time?
Or have you got a couple of minutes? Or something along those lines.
But I just wrap it in great manners or great customer service, and I phone with the assumption that I probably called at a bad time. And I’m asking if there’s a better time to call back.
So if you were that busy, okay, you were distracted, like you say, the children’s dance lesson, you wouldn’t answer. Okay, let’s just say the lesson started. Now you’re checking your emails and the phone does ring. Okay, you’re now able to answer it.
So let’s just say you do. It’s not the perfect time, but if I started the call off to go, hey, Becca, my name’s Anthony Steers.
I was just hoping to chat to you for a couple of minutes, but I’m guessing I probably called at a bad time. Is there a better time to call you back? Okay, I’m now making it really easy for you to get out of this call. I’m not trying to interrupt your day.
I’m just trying to connect.
And what a lot of people tend to do is in that environment, you’d probably say, well, look, I’m actually at a dance lesson at the moment, but I’ll be back in the office tomorrow. Could you give me a call around this time? And you’d give me an indication of a more convenient time. Okay.
But we are all quite busy people, so there’s a good chance that when you’re on the move, when you hear that and you know somebody’s making it really easy for you to get off the call, you think, well, I don’t think this is a sales call. Right. Because. Because if it is, they’re not very good at it, are they? Right. They’re making it right.
That’s what you instantly think is, I don’t think this is a sales call. So what a lot of people tend to do is that they’ll answer the phone and they’ll think, well, they’ve made it really easy for me to get out of this.
They only want two minutes, and I’m not really too sure what it’s about. And there’s never really a good time to catch me because I’m a busy person. And all of that happens in about half a second.
And they go, I quite like this. I don’t dislike this person. And there’s never a good time to catch me. So occasionally you get, well, go on then, Anthony, I’ve got two minutes.
Now, what’s the call about? And that is what you want.
You’ll even hear the phone creak slightly as they push it closer to their ear because they’re now curious about why you are calling. Okay? That’s what you want.
Whereas a lot of salespeople, you’ll answer the phone and they’ll go, hey, Becca, this is my name and this is my company, and I’m going to speak really quickly so you can’t interrupt me. And I’m going to hit you with a feature followed by a benefit, and then another feature followed by a benefit.
And if you haven’t hung up by the time I finish speaking, there’s a really small chance that you might say yes. And you can almost hear them out of breath. Okay? Now, I joke. I call that premature elaboration. Okay?
It’s usually an overexcited or slightly desperate salesperson who. Who hasn’t got past a gatekeeper in hours and just blurts a pitch over anybody.
Whereas if you can rein it right back and you take out that feeling of I don’t want to intrude and start it by not intruding, then actually you’ll find that quite a few people will quite happily tell you a more convenient time to call back. In which case you’ll probably want to send them a calendar invite. Get it, try and firm it up in the diary.
Or you’ll find that actually busy people are willing to have a quick chat with you. And as long as you’re not going to go straight into a sales pitch in your two minutes, then hopefully you’ve got chance for them to engage with you.
So I love the fact that you’ve that sort of epiphany thing of, well, I think I now know why I don’t like it. It’s more, I don’t like being interrupted, therefore I don’t want to interrupt. Well, pts or permission to speak.
If you do that nicely at the beginning, hopefully it will take that feeling away. Okay.
And once you realize that the people who do give you permission to speak and you end up talking with, when you realize that over thirds of people thank you for phoning them at the end, most people don’t hear it, right? But listen out for it.
Once you realize that 2/3 of people that you phone randomly thank you for phoning, you then realize that actually is appreciated.
And then I turn up, I turn on the screws on people and, and the emotional thing of saying, so Becca, you’re, you’re getting famous now in this world, but not everybody knows who you are. So it’s down to you to reach out and let people know who you are. Otherwise you’re depriving your market of being able to work with you. Right.
So then I turn it back on you and say, well, look, you’re not going to intrude and actually owe it to your market to let them know who you are. You’re brilliant and they need to know how you can help them. So, yeah, that, that’s kind of how I would flip, flip the mindset a little bit there.
Becca
00:21:41.594 – 00:22:10.046
I love it.
And it’s so true because actually now sometimes I will pick up the phone very occasionally if I’ve got, you know, if, say I’m at a venue and that venue’s like, becca, do you know any really great DJs? And I’m so excited to, to send that person on that I want to pick up the phone to said DJ and say, guess what? I’ve just sent you onto this person.
And it blows my mind when I do ring them and they’re like, becca, I can’t believe you called me. I can’t believe you took the time to call me beck. Apparently you’re really busy. And I’m like, oh, you actually want to hear from me?
Because I’m just really excited to tell you this news.
Anthony
00:22:10.118 – 00:24:01.842
Well, that is the other thing that speakers. So I mentioned the Professional Speaking Association. A lot of them don’t want to pick up the phone because then they might look desperate. Okay.
You don’t look too keen.
Now what I find is, is that where people see you on stage and they think, oh my God, you must be part of a much, but you must have minions working for you. Right? You. Right. They don’t realize that a lot of the stuff is. Is us. Okay.
So if you want to, you can do a pre frame at the beginning where, let’s just say somebody looks at you on LinkedIn and you thought, oh, that’d be a really good person to speak to. Okay. You could just pick up the phone randomly and go, hey, Becca, sorry for the random phone call.
It would normally be one of my team that would reach out. But I noticed you on LinkedIn and I see that you liked an event that I spoke at. I just figured it might be worth having a coffee at some point. Okay.
So you can make yourself sound like you’re not just sat there twiddling your thumbs, looking on LinkedIn for somebody to talk to because you’re really bored. It’s a proactive way of kind of framing it.
And, and I just remember there was a speake called Katie Balmacook who was on the Apprentice many years ago.
And I remember doing some coaching with her and she used to phone people up because she sold this sort of group program and they would all go, oh my God, it’s actually you who’s called me. I wasn’t expecting that. And she had almost 100% close rate because they just weren’t expecting her to be the one to pick up the phone.
So I know you don’t want to look desperate like you’re sat there and as soon as the email comes in, you don’t want to pick up the phone. Like you’re sat there doing nothing. But at the same time, there’s the early bird catches the worm sort of phrase. You, you do need to react.
And if do spot stuff when it comes in, I tend to pick up the phone and say, hey, look, I’ve just, I’ve just jumped off zoom and seen this. Come in. I’ve not looked at your website yet, but thanks for your message. I’ve got 15 minutes.
If you want to have a chat now or should we book something else in? Right. And I literally, it’s that if you want to chat, we can. I’m responsive, I’m right and, and people like that.
But if they can’t talk right then, then it gets teed up for a proper conversation at the right time.
Becca
00:24:01.866 – 00:24:28.558
Okay, you’re convincing me already. This is why I told people to keep on listening, even if they were cynical.
You’re convincing me already that there is still a place in the world for this phone call. So let’s think then about the wedding sales process, because obviously all my listeners are in the wedding industry. They might be working at a venue.
They may be a photographer, a florist, a cake maker. Do you think there is still a place in that sales journey for a phone call?
And if so, which part of the piece of the puzzle, where does that phone call come?
Anthony
00:24:28.694 – 00:33:02.360
So yes is the answer. It will vary depending on what it is you sell and your process.
So maybe I might give a couple of different examples of the sorts of listeners that we have here. Most people tend to go on the assumption, well, if they’ve emailed the inquiry, then that’s their preferred method of communication.
I should email them back. Okay. What they don’t do is go, oh, look, they emailed me at half past nine at night. That’s why they didn’t pick up the phone.
It was because it was out of hours. Okay.
But you can convince yourself that perhaps link that sending them an email response is good, but when you send that email to them of some answering their questions or sending them some prices, you then don’t hear back from them sometimes. Right. And you don’t know if it got through your spam filter, how many other people they spoke to.
If you kind of got you, you hit the mark with what it was they asked for. So as soon as an inquiry comes in, typically I’d like a phone call.
And so as a venue, if somebody picks a venue that they, they’re thinking that they, they really like, okay, they’ve just been proposed to and they go, oh, wow, yes, we need to find a venue. Okay. When you go to a venue, you might reach out and say, hey there.
In fact, I suppose with venues they do get emails, but I know they also get a few, quite a few telephone inquiries as well. Okay. And one of the things that say to them is whenever you talk to somebody, it’s really important to tee up your next conversation.
So even if you’re going to send them information, if they’ve sort of said, oh, could you send me some quote? And our and your different packages and blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, no worries. I can put that all together by the end of the day.
But realistically, when do you think you’re going to get a chance to look at it by?
Because I’d love to have 15 minutes with you and your partner where you can just go through it and let me know if there’s anything I’ve missed or any questions or concerns. And I just want to make sure by the end of that conversation you have all the information you need from us to decide if you think will be a good fit.
Right. So I’d always be teeing up the next conversation. When you get an inquiry for a venue, I often say that you need to offer people a test drive.
This is about that creating urgency. And most test drives are heading towards you giving them a quote or a proposal. Okay.
Sometimes if you, if you’re a florist, you might invite them to the shop and they can see some different bouquets and designs and that kind of thing.
If you’re a dj, you might invite them to one of your gigs, send them a playlist, something along those lines, just to give them a flavor of what it is you do at a venue.
There are two test drives that people always want, but it’s kind of interesting because they’re usually quite adamant in the order in which they want them, but not everybody’s the same.
And those two things are, is they want to quote because they want to know the prices and they want to go and visit because they want to have a look around. And it’s interesting because some people, you’ll say, well, why don’t you come and have a look?
And they’ll say, well, what I’d like to get a quote first. I want to know if I can afford it before I come. Okay?
Then you’ll get somebody else that you’ll say to them, well, why don’t I put some prices together? And they go, well, hold on a second, let me come have a look and see if I like it first. Right, so. So you don’t quite.
Buyers are, are very individual, okay. And you need to listen to what it is they’re looking for to help them get over the next hurdle.
And this is why sometimes when you talked about the process, you do want to have conversations with people, but you want to have a selection of test Drives that, that kind of help them to qualify you and you to qualify them. And that’s the, the key thing is if, if I get an inquiry, come in. Okay. Somebody says, anthony, you’ve been recommended, I’d like to talk to training.
Can I get some information and some costs? Okay. Get emails like that every now and then. Now I’ll be honest with you. I always think, oh man, you are so close. You are one click away.
There’s a group training page on my website where you can see all of my prices. You can download my programs. But don’t worry, I’m not going to highlight that because that would be kind of passive aggressive.
So what I need to do now is I would phone them. Okay. And if you didn’t answer, Becca, my first message would be, hey, Becca, thanks ever so much for your inquiry through my website.
More than happy to send you some information about training, but I would really love to know a little bit more about your team and what it is you’re trying to achieve.
If you get a moment, can you give me a call back on this number and I’ll leave my mobile and then I’ll say to them, but don’t worry, I’ll make a note to give you a call back end of tomorrow if I haven’t heard from you. Okay? That’s my TFR at the end saying if you don’t call me back, I will call again at this time. Okay? Now let’s say you don’t call me back, okay?
My second message would be, hey, Becca, it’s Anthony Steers here, the telephone assassin chap. I don’t know if you got my message yesterday. Right. That’s my first bit of concern, customer service.
So if you got my message yesterday, but more than happy to send you information, but would love to find out a bit more about your team and what you’re trying to achieve. If you get a moment, please give me a call on this number. I’ll send you a little text message now as well in case it’s easier to respond.
And I’ll send you a LinkedIn message so we can connect on there too. I look forward to hearing from you, but don’t worry, I’ve made a note to give you a call on Friday afternoon if I haven’t heard back from you. Okay?
So I’m trying to be polite, persistent and patient and I will keep nudging to try and get that information from you so that until I’ve qualified this, that’s a very vague inquiry, they can see information on my website, I could just send them some program overviews and cross my fingers and hope they come back to me. But I know my chances of converting those are going to be much lower.
And sometimes people, although I’m recommended, they have to get two or three prices and I want to know that when they do the inquiry so I can pre warn them I’m going to be the most expensive. Because if I haven’t pre warned them and they are having to get prices, then I’m not going to win it anyway. Okay.
So I then need to explain to them, can I just check, are you talking to sales training companies to get your other prices? And they say yes. And I go, brilliant. And you do know that I’m not sales trainer, right?
And they’ll go, oh, but it’s our sales team and you were recommended. I’ll say, yeah, but I’m more of a conversational strategist. I do work with sales teams.
But if you’re comparing me to sales trainers, their day rate’s going to be a lot, lot lower than mine. So if you’re going to come, if, if you’re doing this based on price, I don’t want to waste your time or mine. Okay.
I want to disqualify people who can’t afford me early on. Right. It’s the reason I have my prices on my website. Even though a lot of my colleagues say you’re an idiot for doing it. Okay.
But that’s kind of how I work.
So I suppose the way I would build in calls process is you need to map out what are all of the touch points you need to make with a client from that initial inquiry, right the way through to not only winning them over, but getting a testimonial at the end of it. And that’s where you need to go. So my inquiry comes in, I make a phone call.
If I don’t get a phone call back, I make another phone call and I send an email telling them I’m going to phone again. And then I phone again after two days or three days.
And polite persistence and patience, if you do it with good manners, you’ll find it’s just great customer service people appreciate you following up with them. And I think that’s the thing that most people are scared of, is if I keep following up, am I going to scare you away by being too persistent?
So there is a stat that I often quote on stage, which Is they say 80% of people require five follow ups after your initial meeting with them. Okay. Now, I used to think that those five attempts were because you. It was bad timing and you weren’t getting hold of people, okay?
That does play into it. But apparently there’s some psychology in there that says, on the fifth attempt, you know, I want, want the business. Okay?
It shows that I want the business. So people like to be chased. They like to play hard to get, okay? So you’ve got to follow up and follow up and follow up.
And I think that’s where a lot of people end up giving up too soon. And it just either goes cold or it goes to one of your competitors. So I feel like I probably didn’t answer your question that well then.
But I suppose, in summary, get as many conversations in with prospects as you can, because that’s how you really connect with them. And in the world of weddings, I remember, sorry to sort of keep going on here, but I think it was perfect.
Weddings Abroad, I met them through Guides for Brides, does kind of what it says on the tin.
But it was interesting because they were talking to a lot of people, but I told them I thought they were acting like a travel agent, not a wedding company. Okay?
So one of the key things I suggested that they started to do, which many of them told me they did when they first started, was at the beginning of the conversation, ask how the proposal happened. Okay? It’s as story that they’re going to have to retell. And it’s either a lovely story or a funny story, okay?
It helps build a picture of who they are. It shows an interest in their future. Okay.
And I remember a few of them messaging me after I spoke at their conference to go, oh, my God, my conversion rate has just gone through the roof. And it’s just because I’m doing that little nice bit at the beginning because people then like and trust you. And that’s kind of people.
People buy from people that they like or people like them. And yeah, if you can. If you can show an interest, it goes a really long way, as opposed to qualifying people and filling out boxes, I suppose.
Becca
00:33:02.440 – 00:33:48.266
And you absolutely did answer my question. You gave me loads of detail there.
And you’re right, because every sales process is different and it’s important to look at the touch points and it’s also to look at what’s going on out there.
Now, I know from myself again, I am talking a lot at the moment about WhatsApp, because this year in the wedding industry, we’re seeing a huge spike in people using WhatsApp and people wanting to inquire via WhatsApp and so if it was me and someone tried to call me instead of, and left a voicemail instead of emailing them, I would actually want them to WhatsApp me and go, I just tried to call you. Let me know when you’re free. And in fact, it’s funny because this is exactly when me and you spoke.
What happened is you called me and then I think either I whatsapped you or you WhatsApp me back. And that’s how it happened. So do you think there’s a place for that WhatsApp conversation to go in there as well as or instead of the email?
Anthony
00:33:48.338 – 00:35:43.860
Definitely. I definitely see a trend in people using WhatsApp, probably more so than text messaging. Nowadays, the ones that tend to use text.
Text messaging is if you know somebody is traveling or has bad search service.
So sometimes if, if you don’t get blue ticks on WhatsApp for a couple of messages, then people would tend to resort to a proper text message because it. The WhatsApps may not be going through.
Some people can change their settings, obviously, so that you can’t see when they’re online or when they were last online as well. So if you, if you want to keep that private, you’re. You’re welcome to do so. I’ve got a lot of clients that use it. There are a couple.
There are a small percentage of people who I’m starting to hear grumble about voice notes. But you kind of gave me a solution earlier because their big grumble was.
One thing I don’t like about WhatsApp is people send me voice notes that I can’t scan, read. Right. I have to listen to the thing. Right. But like you said, you can get them transcribed and actually you could save yourself.
So if that’s one of the things that frustrates you, that’s something that you can do to ease the process on WhatsApp. But I love WhatsApp. I do video messages to people as well too. And.
And yeah, I feel like an audio message has a slightly different dynamic to a voicemail. A voicemail is, you’ve missed my call. WhatsApp is, I’m thinking of you.
And I think that’s the sort of style that, that you can then become quite friendly with people. And there’s a lot of people who you’ll call and you’ll get that message back. Can’t speak right now. And then. And then carton. Yeah.
If it goes onto WhatsApp and it’s all, let me know when’s good. Brilliant. And then at 4:00, I usually set a reminder to go. I haven’t had a call back from Becca yet.
Let me just drop her a quick message saying, hey, just checking you haven’t forgotten about me. And a little smiley face. I can keep it friendly as a nudge and what have you. So absolute WhatsApp is.
Is probably one of the preferred platforms of communication that is. Is starting to grow and grow more. I’ve got a lot of clients who communicate with their clients through WhatsApp, for sure.
Becca
00:35:43.900 – 00:35:54.516
Yeah. And voice notes is an interesting one as well. Is it? Because I think people do love or hate them. I love a voice note.
I listen to all my voice notes though, on two times. So everyone talks like this because I don’t have the time to listen to it constantly.
Anthony
00:35:54.548 – 00:35:56.180
Get the chipmunk message. I like it.
Becca
00:35:56.220 – 00:36:18.832
Yeah, but I like that. But I know there’s some people that absolutely hate it as well. And it is interesting to see how the technology is changing and sh.
But actually we’re kind of doing the same thing, which is we do actually want to be talking to people, which is exactly what you want to do.
So even though we can text, we’re now actually going, actually, it’s nicer when I hear this person’s voice or when they send me a quick little video message.
Anthony
00:36:18.896 – 00:38:30.968
Yeah, yeah, it’s nice. Well, like I say, I think that I’m thinking of you kind of approach of it. It’s then friendly. It doesn’t feel as intrusive.
It’s not as pressured with regards to responses. But yeah, for example, my wife and her best friend will be on WhatsApp sending each other funny little things. I end up saying to her, just phone her.
Like, just. You sent her eight messages now, like, let’s just pause the movie. We’ll have 15 minutes. You chat like, we can do this.
You can do this properly and nicely. Right. But we’ve got to kind of see what people’s preferences are.
And I think that sometimes one of the things that you need to say is, well, look, obviously I will email you over the information that you want, but I noticed that you found me on Facebook, but you’ve given me your mobile number. What’s the best way to kind of send you a quick message on WhatsApp? Do you use Facebook messenger or text or whatever?
So you can kind of ask people what their preferences. And I suppose in the world of weddings, it is a B2C type thing. So it’s a very individual, personal thing and they are couples.
So ideally you want them to be together, which tends to be in the evenings. Okay.
So you may find that actually you end up sort of saying, well, I’ve sent you the information over, but let me know when you and Johnny are together and you’ve had dinner, let’s grab 15 minutes. I’m sure you’ll have some questions for me and I can send over anything else that I’ve missed. Right.
But by having that kind of respect for their time and when they most likely to want to talk to you and trying to aim at that is going to be much more effective than phoning them every day between nine and five and leaving voicemails and sending them another message. So I think that there’s a bit of common sense there where you.
Yeah, you might find somebody and, and, and they answer and they go, oh, yes, oh, oh, yes, I’m at work, but yeah, I’d love to talk weddings, let’s go. And they’re quite happy and they can get away with it. Right. If they’re working from home, brilliant. All right.
But if they’re in the office and they can’t, you might get it. Oh, hello. Oh, hey. You’re inquired about this. Oh, yeah, sorry, I can’t really talk now. Could you just email me? Yeah, no worries at all.
I was going to email you stuff. I just wanted to know when you’re around for a little chat one evening with your other half. Right. And it’s a nice softly, softly.
It’s not a sales pitch, I think, as you mentioned at the beginning, conversational, like it’s about having a chat with somebody, it’s not about delivering a pitch. Nobody likes that. Right. Which is interesting because we all love to buy, but nobody likes to be sold to. Right.
Becca
00:38:31.024 – 00:39:19.058
Which is really not directly sold to.
I think we do like to be sold to, but what we don’t like is when you pick up the phone and someone goes, so I see that you’ve got solar panels on your roof and you’re like, actually, I don’t even have solar panels on my roof and I don’t even have the time to breathe. Like, we don’t like that.
And I think whenever I talk about sales in my presentations, I actually, ironically, I normally put up a picture of an estate agent and I say, this is what you think selling is because you’ve got this caricature in your head. But actually it does.
It doesn’t need to be that, you know, I can go to the shop because I’m hungry and I need some bread and they are selling that to me, if they turned around to me at the counter and said, are you sure you want to buy that today? You sure you don’t want to go check somewhere else and see if it’s cheaper?
Like that would be a frustrating sales conversation because I want the bread, I want to go to the shop and I want them to sell me the bread. And sometimes we put these own barriers in the way. Are you sure about that? Are you sure you want to talk about it?
Anthony
00:39:19.114 – 00:41:12.848
Well, I think that’s where retail tend to have it, right. In most situations where it is all laid out for you and their job is to help you to buy, it’s not to sell to you, it’s to help you to buy.
And I think once you really switch into that mindset, it isn’t a scary process. Had the person at the till turn around to you and gone ever. Sorry, Ma.
And just before I scan this, I don’t know if you’re aware, but there was a 50% off or a buy one, get one free on this or something like that. You could have grabbed another one. Okay. So they might have informed you about another offer. That wasn’t her selling it to you.
It was just saying, oh, you do know it’s a pound each, but 1 pound 50 for 2, you could have saved 50p there. Right. You probably wouldn’t have been as offended by that. Right.
Because it feels like they’re trying to help you save money and get better value rather than sell to you and make you spend more. Right. So the world’s kind of moved on of sales.
And this is, is where the whole digital world thing really has its benefit is you can’t afford to do it the old fashioned way and sell down the phone and be aggressive with people and rude because you upset the wrong person. Let’s be honest, Becca, if somebody phoned you up and really wound you up, the likelihood is is you’re probably going to post something about them.
Right. And you’ve got a massive following.
All of a sudden they’re gonna, they’re gonna have to do loads of marketing to bury the bad stuff you’ve put out there that they’ve created. Okay.
And that’s where I think a lot of companies under whole, well, we just outsource it over here and it’s like, yeah, but they can’t really speak English and they don’t really understand the concept of this. And I know you’ve got them reading a script, but I’ve heard the recordings, people are hanging up and swearing at them.
You are just, you are just irritating people and you’ve only got to get to the wrong person that they’re going to make a lot of noise about it and then you’re going to look really bad. So, yeah, I think sales has become a lot more well mannered, I think and I’d like to think I’m slightly responsible for a little bit of it anyway.
Putting manners back into sales can’t be that hard, right?
Becca
00:41:12.904 – 00:41:43.158
Absolutely. We all need it. Okay.
The other thing I think people are scared of when it comes to being on the telephone with prospects is if they have objections that they have to try and overcome. So we’ve got through the right, we’re on the phone with them now. We’re now into a sales conversation.
We’re now talking about what we do and we’re finding out about them and we’ve done all that good stuff. I think people are scared. What if they ask me a question I don’t know the answer to?
What if they say to me something like, well, you’re just really expensive. Why are you charging that much? Have you, you got any tips of how we handle those kind of scenarios when we’re on a phone call?
Anthony
00:41:43.214 – 00:47:35.640
Absolutely. Firstly, there are certain questions. People will expect you to know the answer for what you offer, how much you charge, things like that.
They will, we will expect you to know certain bits of information. They don’t expect you to know everything. So I often say this when I’m training people. If there’s a team, there’s usually one or two newbies.
And I’ll say, look, are you worried like now they’ll have that same thing of what if they ask me a question, question I don’t know the answer to? And I always say to them, well, I tell you what, next time it happens, say to them, I’m not 100% sure of that answer.
Would you like me to have a guess or would you like me to go away and find out and come back to you? I can guarantee they’ll say no, no, no. If you can go and find out the actual answer, I’d really appreciate it.
Okay, so trying to bluff and guess is a bad move. But questions are buying signals. So if you don’t know the answer, then I would just say to them, I don’t really know that off the top of my head.
I would have to double check. But let me make a little note of that and I’ll come back to you. And then I would ask a question and I would move it on.
I wouldn’t Let that the end of it. I’d go, oh, hang on, I don’t know the answer. I’ll tell you what, let me call you back in five minutes. Let me find the answer, right?
If I then go away and come back with your answer and then you ask me another question I don’t know the answer to, I can’t go, oh, hold on, Becca. Let me just go off and talk to my manager again and I’ll call you back in it. Right? You just go, just pass me to your manager. Right, okay.
Or here’s three other questions I need the answer to, mate. Get them all answered and then come back to me. Right? So don’t worry if you don’t know all the answers. You have to tell people you’re not 100. Sure.
And that you’ll come back to them on that. Okay. So sometimes you might ask, can I ask why that’s so important? Right.
It’s a good follow up question is the best thing that you can do in those situations because it gets them thinking about why they’re asking that question in the first place. And usually there’s an ulterior motive or something else that they’re actually asking when they’re asking one particular question.
When it comes to objection handling, okay.
I often think that objection handling head on, particularly on a first call, is a risky thing to do in the fact that objection handling is arguing, it’s you telling them why the reason they don’t want to do something isn’t good enough. So if you win the argument and overcome the objection, they now think that you’re in control of the conversation or you’re twisting their words.
They don’t like the fact that you’ve just gone, oh, that’s a silly thing to ask. Don’t worry about that, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And you try and poo poo it.
The I suppose the way I’m going to reframe this is the best way to perfect your pitch and to sort of establish your credibility is to share success stories people can relate to. Okay.
And quite often the bit where we have to tell them how good we are is the bit where we kind of cringe a little bit because it’s a bit braggy where I have to tell you how good I am and justify my fee. Like you say, when we’re expensive, we kind of some feel like we have to justify it, right. What you’re best off doing.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer or a landscaper, a venue, a florist a photographer. It all works exactly the same, okay? The best way to do this is share a success story somebody can relate to, okay?
Share a success story that somebody can relate to. So if you’re listening to this and you’ve written it down, underline the word relate because it’s the most important.
What most sales people tend to do is they name drop their biggest client, okay? It basically is supposed to go, bam, look at me, I work for Microsoft. I’ve done this, right?
And it impresses people for about a second and then it intimidates them. Then they go, oh, well. Oh, well, I haven’t got a team as big as them and I haven’t got that kind of budget.
You’re probably not interested in working with me. So now me establishing my credibility and strutting around with my biggest client might scare you off, right?
So what I need to do is go, oh, okay, well, look, why don’t I share what somebody else who’s like you said about me? And you can do this to overcome objections.
So, for example, if somebody turns around and says, oh, well, I really want to work with you, but I’ve got a bit of a tight budget and what have you, you could turn around and say, oh, okay, well, let me share a couple of case studies of other marketing companies I’ve worked with who had a bit of a budget issue and we did a payment plan. Let me just share what they said about me, right?
All of a sudden you’re now talking about somebody else who had that same objection that you managed to get round. So you’ve actually shown them the solution to the problem that they’ve just told you that they have. Okay?
That’s typically overcome objections is I use my case studies to go, oh, I had somebody else who felt like that. Look, look at what happened with these guys. Yeah, look at what we did here, okay?
And the beauty of doing this is that your clients will believe far more what, what your, well, your prospects will be far more what your clients say about you than what you say about you. Because you have to say you’re good, right? Whereas your clients don’t have to.
So use those references and dropping them off like a pizza menu and sort of saying to people, if you’re going to send a proposal, well, look, yeah, I’ve, I’ve, I’ll send you the proposal for your Asian wedding for 300 people.
But I’ve also included two case studies of a couple of other Asian weddings that we’ve done recently just so you can see the kind of setup that we’ve done, the entertainment, how we did this and this and this. Yeah, there’s no point kind of going, oh, well, yes, we’ve just sent you a quote for your. The 300 person Asian wedding.
And I’ve sent you a case study of a bespoke 24. It was a very small, intimate wedding that we did in our garden recently. They’re going to be like, well, what’s that got to do with me? Right?
So you kind of got to match what they’re. What they’re looking for and show them what you’ve done already.
And I think that that bit then takes the pitching out of it and it makes objection handling much less combative. It’s not an argument of saying, oh, well, you think this is expensive? Let me try and justify it.
Oh, okay, well, look, these guys thought it was expensive too, but look what they got for their return on investment. And at what point, okay, or this person had budgetary issues.
Oh, look how we did a payment plan and we actually spread what we did for them so that they could start making money at the early part of this to help fund it at the end. Or for me, people say, I, we need to book more meetings. I need to get past gatekeepers.
Okay, I then just do hashtag gatekeepers, hashtag meetings, hashtag appointments. Because people will use different language and it will pop up with all of my case studies that have those hashtags on the bottom of them.
And they say, well, look at what this person said who needed more meetings. Look at what this person said who was also in insurance, who was. So have a credibility library up your sleeve.
And pitching becomes very easy because you just start flicking through your catalog of success stories and making sure you highlight the ones that are relevant to them, where they go, oh, that’s like us. Oh, that’s what we want. Oh, that’s what we were thinking.
Becca
00:47:35.720 – 00:48:22.100
That’s bold. You kind of just dropped that in there at the end. But actually that.
We just need to pause there for a second because actually, that whole idea of having a success library, a resource on your computer that you’ve got these hashtags that you can search through with all your testimonials is an amazing idea. So let’s just pause there for a second because I think I want people to be able to write that down.
However, I know there will also be people still screaming at us, Anthony, that we have to overcome their objections because they’ll be going, well, this is all right for you and Becca. Like, you guys can Just talk all day. You can just pull out these case studies. You love having conversations. You, you just had this podcast episode.
You’ve been chit chatting away. I am not like that. I am nervous. I am worried about getting flustered. I go red when I’m on the phone.
What do you have to say to someone who is just not maybe the personality that we are, maybe is a bit more introverted but still wants to be able to do this?
Anthony
00:48:22.140 – 00:53:13.478
Okay, well, firstly, everybody goes, oh, it’s easy for you. You’re the telephone assassin.
Well, may I suggest one of you tries to phone somebody up and tell them you’re the telephone assassin at the beginning of the call and see what happens. Because they just go, ooh, what are you going to do to me? Right. So I’ve got to be very careful in what I do.
But I understand people would tend to think I am outgoing and love chatting. Therefore it must be easy for me.
I tend to, as I mentioned earlier on, I think that there’s opportunity in every conversation and the more conversations I have, the more opportunities I seem to find. So that’s my motivation for doing it.
However, for those that are really scared and nervous and what have you then, to begin with, start by phoning two or three people that you that are really easy calls. So phone a couple of clients and ask for testimonials. Okay. Phone one of your suppliers and just have a quick chat with them. Okay.
Ask them how they’re doing. Ask them if there’s anything that they could give you that will help you sell more of what they do. All right.
Basically, I would start the day or your call out session by creating a positive association with the telephone. Talk to people you want to talk to and that are going to say nice things to you.
Hopefully we’ll give you some great marketing material too, if you can get some feedback. So you need to build this positive association with the phone. And I’ve actually got this with a client who’s in my academy at the moment.
He runs an IT company.
And what I highlighted to him is people who were work in it, they get the shudder when the phone rings because it means there’s a problem that they have to fix. Okay. So his association with the phone is, oh my God.
That means there’s a problem and I have to try and fix it and they’re probably not going to be happy. So he has this negative association. So I always say start easy. Start with a few nice calls. Okay.
Particularly if you can do existing customers and you can get a couple of testimonials. Then once you have this positive association with the phone, then just try and phone three or four people. Basically, start easy. Okay.
Start with some follow ups.
Okay, do your three follow ups of people you sent proposals to last week and just say, hey, Becca, haven’t heard back from you since I sent that proposal. Hopefully I managed to cover everything. But don’t worry, we booked in our call for Tuesday next week, so we’ll talk about it then.
If you need to move that call or bring it forwards, please just let me know. Yeah, that kind of sort of outreach. So start easy.
But if you can start the day by getting a lovely testimonial, then your goal for the day should be to drop that off like a pizza menu to at least five, if not ten potential customers. Okay. And you can do it in a really softly, softly way. That pizza menu thing is the analogy I give.
It should feel like you’re dropping off a menu, pizza menu, not knocking on their door and trying to take an order. Okay. So if I was approaching you, Becca, to come and speak on your podcast, I’d say, hey, Becca, if you’ve given me permission to speak.
As I mentioned, my name’s Anthony Stiers. I’m known as the telephone Assassin. I’ve been on loads of podcasts. But my guess is, is you’re probably not looking for guests right now.
Is that correct? Right.
So I would reach out to you with the assumption that you’re not looking for my services right now, because that’s the most common objection I’m to get and it manages my expectations. Yeah. What typically people tend to do then is they confirm that I’m correct and then they justify it.
They’ll say, you’ll say something like, you’re right, Anthony, I’m not at the moment. I tend to book three months in advance, so I’ll be booking again at this point. So you’ll tell me when you’re going to be hungry for my services. Okay.
And at that point I’ll go, oh, fantastic. Well, in which case then I’ll get back in touch in August.
But in the meantime, can I just send you a bit of feedback I had on the last three podcasts I did just so you can see what they say about me. Right. And that would be me dropping off my pizza menu. I’m starting to establish. Establish my credibility. Okay.
And then I’d probably set a reminder for the month before I’m due to speak to you to send you another one that says, hey, Becca, this will be an email hey, Becca, I know we’re not due to catch up until next month. I’m really looking forward to it. But I’ve just had some more feedback from another podcast host recently.
Thought you’d be interested to see what they’re saying. Yeah, so just remind you that I’m good. Keep building my credibility. Gives me something to follow up with when I speak to you in August.
So, yeah, I, I, and I suppose the last tip I’m going to give just to your question, and I’m sorry to keep kind of going on here, but if you are really scared, go and lock yourself in a room where nobody can hear or see you. Okay. Turn on the music to begin with and, and relax a little bit. Okay. Keep the music on quietly. Right.
The, the person on the end of the phone can hear the beat, but if they can hear the words, it sounds like you’re at a party. But if they can hear the beat, that’s okay. It sounds like background noise. All right. And it will relax you a little bit. Okay.
And then just make a couple of calls. Right? It’s the. If you use the permission to speak at the beginning, you shouldn’t have any bad conversations. Okay.
And if into it, knowing you’ve got a case study up your sleeve that you think will be relevant to them, you’ll be quite confident that they’re probably going to prick their ears up and want to have a chat to you at some point in the future. Okay. And that’s all you really want to do. Every conversation, all you really want to find out is when should we speak next?
And if you boil it down to that, a 30 second conversation can be a really positive one with somebody who knows, who wants to talk to you at a certain point and agrees to an invite being sent. It firms it up, it gets it in the diary. Stop the wheels in motion.
Becca
00:53:13.574 – 00:53:50.948
Actually, sometimes a phone call can fast track when it’s done. Well, I’ll give you an example, a positive example. I had someone ring me last summer out the blue, and I decided to answer the phone call.
And it was a young girl, she was 17. And she said, I’m ringing you because I want to do work experience with you. And I was very taken aback by it.
But actually the reason I agreed to it and said yes was because I couldn’t believe that at 17 she was proactive enough to have found me and picked up the phone. And that’s what made me go, okay, this is actually quite difficult for me to organize, but I will do that because you picked up the phone and.
Because you showed me that you cared.
Anthony
00:53:51.044 – 00:54:41.296
Yeah, well, you showed kind of initiative, you showed courage in picking up the phone. They’re the kinds of skills you want on your team. Right.
And it’s interesting because next week I’m doing a little bit of sort of charity work with, I don’t know if you’ve got, you’ll know Chris Akabusi, back in the day, the Olympian we’re working with. Neat. So not in education, employment or, or training.
And I do a session about how to get work experience, because finding work experience is the same process as finding a job.
And I get them, many of them, picking up the phone and you can hear the shock and almost the, the, the pleasure in people’s voice that this person has bothered to pick up the phone. It, like I say, it shows courage, it shows initiative, it shows that they’re not, they’re not afraid to put themselves out there.
And like you say, you probably wouldn’t have said if you’d have got an email. Do you think you would have gone no?
Becca
00:54:41.368 – 00:54:44.732
I would have definitely said no. If I’d have got. I would have gone too hard.
Anthony
00:54:44.836 – 00:54:53.708
Too hard, absolutely. But it’s hard, but it’s hard to turn down a 17 year old girl who’s asking for a bit of a favor that you could technically help with.
Right, so she had emotionally got you with a bit of backstory.
Becca
00:54:53.804 – 00:55:38.740
Yeah, and that, that’s funny because it brings me on to my last question, actually, which is my other fear of using the phone myself. Right.
The other thing I’ve realized about why I don’t like phone calls is because I know I have a tendency to agree to things I don’t want to do on a phone call, whereas I’m much better at my boundaries when I’m behind an email.
And so I know if someone gets me on the call and convinces me of something, not to sell to me necessarily, but to say, oh, will you come and speak at this event? Or can you come and do this for me? I’m like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then I got off the call and I think, why did I say yes to that?
Because I should have, you know, I should have said yes, but it will cost you this or I should have said that. And so I think I avoid the phone sometimes because I’m scared of saying yes.
So have you got, as a final tip, any ways for me and other people to say no on the phone?
Anthony
00:55:39.560 – 00:57:40.950
You can just say it nice and polite, politely. I get invited to speak sometimes and it, there isn’t really a speaker fee. Okay.
I, there’s not really many events that I will do like that, if I’m perfectly honest with you. So I will turn around to them and say, well look, what’s the date? Firstly, can I make the date right?
If the date works for me, I’ll then say, who’s the audience? So then think what is the audience a good fit? If it’s not right for me, I tend to go, look, let me have a think about this.
I’ve got quite a bit going on at the moment, but I promise you, if you can send me an email today, I will respond by the end of tomorrow with a decision. But I can confirm firm date wise is possible at the moment. So, yeah, send me an email and I’ll come back to you. Right.
That way, if you then want to say no via email and do it not to their face, so to speak, you can then do that. Okay. The other thing that you can do is you can say, that sounds fantastic.
Send all the details, I’ll give it to my PA and see if I can get them to book it in right now. Blame somebody else and you can even create your own little ant. My executive assistant is in the office.
Set him up an email that you actually send on my behalf and you then send saying, I’m so sorry, I’ve checked Becca’s diary. She’s so busy that day without a fee. Unfortunately, unfortunately, she wouldn’t be able to speak for you today. Okay.
Or I am happy to confirm that that date is possible, but I need to get through some questions with you first. How many books would you like to order as part of this? Is it being professionally filmed? Can I get access to the footage?
So, yeah, sometimes you can say, it sounds great, I’m kind, you’ve caught me on the hop at the moment. Send me the details on.
Give them a deadline of when you’re going to get back to them by if you can keep it reasonable within a day or two, that tends to keep, keep most people happy.
And if you then get buyer’s remorse afterwards, as it’s known, and you go, actually, I wish I hadn’t said yes to that, you can then change your mind and send them a response in a couple of days, it will stop you being quite as impulsive. But as speakers, when people invite us to speak, it’s, it’s a lovely honor and it’s, it’s very often a very good opportunity.
So yeah, sometimes we, we get carried away and yeah, and we so Yeah, I suppose. I don’t know. Is that a couple of different ways that you could play it? You happy with that?
Becca
00:57:40.990 – 00:58:37.250
Yeah, absolutely. And I think key phrase there. And again, I think this is something that everyone listening can write down is let me think about it.
Because what you’re doing there is buying yourself some time. So when they’re on the other end of the phone saying, well, will you do this at a discount? Will you do this?
Can you add this into the package and you are feeling overwhelmed and you want the sale, I think that’s key. Let me think about it and I will give you an answer by the end of the day.
So, yes, Anthony, once again, you’ve given me some gold and I’m now going to be less afraid of saying no on the phone. I could talk to you all day. This episode is probably going to be qu. But there’s been so many great parts of it.
And I hope that people listening have really changed their mindset along with me as well.
They’ve kind of gone on the journey with me and thought, actually, yes, we are in a digital age, but there is definitely still a place for a phone call in there. Now, I always end my podcast with the same question, so I’m going to throw that at you right now, which is this.
What’s one thing in your own business you wish you’d known sooner?
Anthony
00:58:37.830 – 01:00:23.916
I think for me that running. I think I’ve been running a business now for nearly 15 years. I’m not the best at running a business.
And I wish somebody had told me to build a bit more of a team around me earlier on.
I think I could have got to where I am a little bit quicker had I of really thought about my skill set and where I should deploy my services and my time and what else should be going on in the background. And I think it’s a bit of a.
Can be a slow learning curve as an entrepreneur to realize that you have to sweep the floors and do the invoicing and doing do everything. But as you grow, you do need to start delegating. You need to embrace technology. I suppose I’m.
I’m a bit of a late adopter, so I think if there was one bit of advice, it would probably be use technology to help you in business as soon as you can, because the sooner you use it, the sooner it will accelerate your trajectory. And I think that’s. That’s probably one of the key things and that’s one of the things that I sort of learned from you.
If I’m Honest with you, I know that you kind of mentioned I’ve been speaking for quite a few years and you’ve, you’ve, been, you’re on the circuit for a while.
So let’s be honest, I’ve watched you online and actually your social media and how you do that and how you do your stories of, of the events that you’re speaking at. I showed them to my wife when I got back and went, that’s what I need to be doing more of if I can get 10% towards that. Right.
Because I don’t really embrace technology. You say you don’t want to interrupt people. I don’t want to be one of those people who puts pictures of my food on Facebook and all over the place.
Right. I don’t. I’m not that kind of chef error. But in the way that you do it, I kind of went, oh, wow, that’s. That’s where I need to up my game.
And that’s where I really love that. Soaring with eagles. When you get to talk to an eagle, you. You learn. You learn to fly a little bit higher.
Becca
01:00:23.988 – 01:00:35.644
Yeah, absolutely. A rising tide raises all ships. That’s definitely my mantra in my life as well.
Anthony, if people want to find out more about you, about your services, about your programs, where’s the best place for them to find you?
Anthony
01:00:35.732 – 01:01:14.396
Well, they can phone me, obviously. My phone number is very easy to find. I even have a free phone number. But you can find me online.
Anthony steers.co.uk UK or just Google the Telephone Assassin. If people want copies of my book again through my website or on Amazon.
And if you want to check out my new academy, Telephone Assassin Academy, there’s a free taster course on there too. Yeah. But I would love to talk to anybody listening, please connect with me on LinkedIn as well.
And if you try out any of these techniques, please get in touch afterwards and let me know if it worked for you. Because if it hasn’t, I want to try and give you some more tips.
But if it has, I might ask you to share that with a few of your colleagues and see if you can and rub that off on other people as well.
Becca
01:01:14.468 – 01:01:21.228
Love it, Anthony. It’s so fun chatting to you. I hope I get to see you or speak with you an event sometime very soon. Take care.
Anthony
01:01:21.284 – 01:01:23.196
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been great.
Becca
01:01:23.268 – 01:01:49.680
What a fantastic conversation that is. Definitely throughout the process of that conversation has got me thinking differently about the phone.
And if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking I’d like to know a bit more about Anthony. Why not use that as your opportunity to pick up the phone? Because what better person to pick up the phone to than Anthony himself?
Because you know that he’s more than happy to talk to you.
So if you need a practice run and you’re interested in his services, not go find his phone number, pick up the phone and try out some of his techniques on him. I’ll see you all next time.
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