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Welcome everybody to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in the history of podcasts.
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My name is Brian Neal.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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Here every week for your listening enjoyment.
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Those of you who joined us or are joining us for the business planning session.
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It s coming up this week.
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This is the time.
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Join us, would you?
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Bill details, December the.
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Yeah, December 6th, 12 to 2 Eastern.
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Let s go.
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And you ve got just a day or so to sign up.
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I think we re closing registrations on Tuesday, I believe.
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But we re limiting it to 100.
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So we were at 60-ish here a week ago.
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So if you try to get in and can t, we ll probably be doing another one.
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But try it anyway.
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We ll put the link in the show notes.
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And there s a website that has some of the information, but tuition is $97 and it s a two hour camp.
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It s kind of like a business planning camp.
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Yeah, love it.
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And you just need to be there.
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You just do.
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You need to carve out the time for yourself.
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And you heard us talk a little bit about planning last week.
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We re going to talk about what to do, because sooner than later, the calendar is going to flip.
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It s going to flip over, isn t it?
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Bill, you like my hat, by the way?
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Big goals require big plans.
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I m in trouble seeing it.
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What does it say?
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The listeners will know what this is.
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It says a symbol.
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That should be a hint.
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You know, I ve also got hints behind me back there.
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This is the symbol that Prince was when he went as a symbol.
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Oh, okay.
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I just felt like wearing a baseball hat.
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I usually don t wear baseball hats to work.
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Prince Albert?
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Who are you talking about?
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No, Prince Rogers Nelson.
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Minneapolis, Minnesota, First Avenue.
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The greatest musician that ever walked on the earth, in my opinion.
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Strong, bold statement.
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Do we need to debate this?
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Do we need to debate this?
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I m glad to debate it.
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I ll bring some evidence and samples.
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That s a strong, bold statement, though.
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So we ll take that to another episode.
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That would actually be a fun debate.
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I ll give you time to think about who you would put as the greatest musician.
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Yeah, give me a chance.
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I can tell you one person who it would not be.
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Prince.
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But I ve got to have somebody up there.
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So anyway, I ve got a quick story.
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You know, last week you talked about
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Yeah, I can t.
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I ve got one of those here today.
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I went to our local car wash here, which you know who it is.
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Well, I ll tell you who it is because I m pissed at him.
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Crew.
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I was too.
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I was pissed too.
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Really?
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Yes.
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Keep going.
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Well, one of their noodle thingers ripped my bumper off.
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Yeah.
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Not all the way off, but it pulled it out of the clips.
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Yeah.
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And so I went there and I said, look, look what this has done.
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I said, you know, I don t know if there s any damage, but come on.
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And so I filled out a claim.
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Yeah.
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I never heard back from him for two months, called him finally go, yeah, we sent it to the wrong email address, but it doesn t matter because that claim has been refuted.
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So I went then I, so in the meantime, I went again and this time it ripped it off to where it was broken in the back, the whole bumper.
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So anyway, um,
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So I ended my relationship with them, stormed out of their office.
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And anyway, so I took it to the BMW dealership, destroy it, took it to BMW dealership thinking that they could figure out a way, you know, quickly to kind of get it back in because there s clips on the, in the frame and there s clips in that rear bumper and you just have to clip it in.
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But I couldn t do it.
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I couldn t find a way to do it.
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And they, they don t want to do that there because they re not, it s not a body shop.
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And so they said, yeah, you need to take it to a body shop.
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Like, okay, so I went up to O Reilly.
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Oh yeah.
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Auto parts thinking, I wonder if they have a pretty good guys there.
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And they have, this guy comes out probably 50 years old, frazzled beard.
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And didn t say, I mean, had beady eyes.
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Didn t say like, Hey, sure.
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I ll come out.
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And he s like, okay.
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So he came out and he s looking at it, looking at it.
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He s feeling back in there, you know, up, up the, where the bumper is and he goes, Oh, you can fix that.
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I said, oh, really?
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How?
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He goes, just put a bolt.
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Put a bolt right in there.
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Put a bolt in a big washer and just fix it.
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I m like, OK.
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So I start feeling back there.
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I don t feel a bolt hole anywhere.
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But I said, I don t feel it.
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He goes, yeah, just once you get out of there, you ll see it.
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I said, is there something I can do?
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Great mistake.
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He said, oh, yeah.
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I said, do you know me?
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Do you know?
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somewhere in my toolbox at the very bottom of a pile of tools, there was probably a wrench that might fit that.
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Oh, I said, You mean I go to Ace hardware and get a bolt?
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Yeah, I m still not feeling goes out there.
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It s there.
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He was done.
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So I got tape on it now.
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Oh, you haven t fixed it yet.
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I think you re actually found the bolt hole.
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No washer.
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I can t do that.
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I mean, we should have we should have looked at this together.
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You should have called me over.
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video this thing and put it up.
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Oh my God, you talk about a disaster waiting to happen.
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That is funny.
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And you wonder, that guy s story is like, yeah, it s dumb ass in this BMW.
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One little.
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He s got his own podcast.
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Oh, that s so funny.
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And back to the, we had the same thing with that car wash.
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I m going to say a crew car wash in Indianapolis, who I love forever, had the worst experience.
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We canceled.
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We have five annual things with them.
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Now maybe, now they re huge and popular or whatever.
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Cancel them all.
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Cancel them all.
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We had two.
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We canceled them.
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Five.
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And the same thing.
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Was it damage?
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Was there damage?
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It took a, Steph got a new car and it s a Mercedes.
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And this little cover thing flew off, like by the wind, where the windshield is right there.
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And so it was blowing around in the thing, you know, and it wouldn t go back in.
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And to get, that went to the dealership, like, yeah, it snapped off.
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You got to get a new one.
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It was a 98 bucks at the Mercedes dealership.
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So she sends a claim in denied.
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They wouldn t pay for $90 and you re spending 30, 150 times 12, 30, $2,000, $2,000.
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So $2,000 for 10 years, you have, and then you will.
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And so they won t spend 98 bucks and they lose that.
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Yeah.
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$20,000 for 98 bucks.
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They don t care.
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You know, obviously if they cared, they would have done something, which is really off brand for them.
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But that s a great lesson for customer experience for all of us.
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The littlest things, you go the furthest way and you don t realize.
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And now we ve talked about it in front of millions and millions of listeners on the advanced link podcast.
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If you ever have a problem with Krug, good luck with that.
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Well, when I when I went to O Reilly, he goes, did you take it?
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I didn t tell him what car was she goes, you go over here to Mike s the crew used to be Mike s on screen.
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So yeah, he goes, Oh, they re terrible.
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Yeah, we get we get people in here all the time with Yeah, it s bad.
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It s bad, bad, bad.
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Okay.
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Here we go.
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We did last time, do your plan, do your plans.
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We did the marketing plan.
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We took one little version, one little input from the business planning session that Bill s going to do on the 6th.
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And then we put it down.
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We talked about email, we talked about LinkedIn.
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What we want to talk about today is
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We do all this planning in December.
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Then you have the holidays.
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You kind of, you know, very reflective and thinking about it.
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I m getting the plan done.
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And it seems like next year s forever.
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You know what I mean?
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Next year s going to wait.
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It s 2024.
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And then all of a sudden it s New Year s day.
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You re watching football and you re like, Oh my God, tomorrow s the second.
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I got to go back to work tomorrow.
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And you re looking at your calendar and like, Oh God, you get this Sunday scaries like you ve never had them before.
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And so we thought, what would be a great topic to bring that to action is, what do I do?
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How do I get the most of my start?
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What are some little ideas or little strategies we can employ that make sure that we get off to a really, really good start in 2024?
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Because the calendar is going to flip.
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Great topic.
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Yeah, it s a good one.
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You want to take a stab?
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Yeah, I ll take one stab.
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The background there is that time flies over these holiday seasons, and it becomes hard to see people.
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And people are, you know, so every year, it seems like for 17 years, we ve talked about this time of year and how hard it is.
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But I think there are some things you can do to prepare yourself.
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You know, you talked about this idea of getting out of bed on the second and a little foggy, a little blurry eyed, but I got to go back to work.
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I always feel like the best way to set yourself up for success there is to have a plan.
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Put your gym shoes out at night if you re going to want to work out in the morning.
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Just all you got to do is get your shoes on.
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Just get your shoes on, and then everything will start to momentum.
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And I think that s the power of a plan, is that when you hit the ground January 2, you ve got a track to run on.
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You know that day one, you ve got three appointments.
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You ve got to shoot one video.
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You ve got a meeting with the best client.
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So it s easier to get out of bed when there s a plan.
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Yes, absolutely.
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Yeah, which everyone will have after they come to the business planning session.
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And that s true.
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Not to over promote that, but 100 of you.
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Now here, this is very timely, also, because now we re in December.
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So I would tell all of you listeners, to spend part of your weeks, the next three weeks, not focused on closing stuff for Kefauver, it s what everybody does, but focused on setting appointments for January when you come back.
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Because if you wait to start trying to get appointments when you get back, people,
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use the excuse, I am busy.
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If you call someone or email them right now, it s pretty wide open.
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Say I m kind of wrapped up for the year here.
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I m kind of trying to build up some stuff for first quarter next.
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I want to see what the calendar looks like the week of January 8th.
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You ll see people open up and go, Oh my God, wide open.
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Well, you pick the day we ll do lunch or whatever.
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Um, yeah, you need to start, start seeding your calendar now and not don t wait till January 2nd or 3rd when you go back to work.
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You got to do it now.
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So you want to leave with appointments booked is the point into the holidays.
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So here s another, here s another tip.
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And I don t know if this fits under your, the, the topic that you were obsessed with.
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What s that?
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kidding.
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I don t know if it fits under this topic of what do I need to do.
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But I do think this time of year is a good time to go into creation mode.
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So let s say that one of your goals for next year and the planning session that we re doing is you want to do 12 webinars for CEOs of your target clients.
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And you ve got maybe somebody else inside the company that you re going to tag team this, and you want to write this up, and you want to start promoting it, and you re going to do the same webinar for the first three months, and then you re going to switch.
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But you want to have, and that s one of our goals, I think you need to have something that you re doing that people can access virtually every month.
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And so this is a good time of year to plan that, to start to work on the messaging.
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And I wouldn t even worry about it from a slide standpoint.
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I just think, open a Google Doc and start thinking, OK, what are the first five minutes of the webinar?
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Well, I want to welcome people.
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I want to introduce myself.
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And I want to talk about what we re going to do today.
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OK, what s the second five minutes?
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Well, the second five, I want to talk about the problems that people are experiencing right now and how, if they don t fix them, they re going to be dead and whatever.
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You can start to map that out.
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This is a great time of year for that, and I know it gets busy, but the worst thing you can do is say, well, I want to start my webinar in January, and then January 2nd hits, and you haven t done anything on it.
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It does take, and I know I m going down the webinar path here, but it does take some time.
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There s a lot of loose ends to it, and it s why people give up on them.
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because it s a lot of detail.
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And if you can get a head start on that and start to build some momentum, to me, that s what this is all about, just building some momentum.
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That s great.
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It becomes a thing.
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That s one of my little cheeky phrases.
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People have an idea, and then they do something.
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I m like, now it s a thing.
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It s not a thing, though, until you do that.
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That s right.
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You do it.
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It s a thing.
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I m going to go even a step before what Bill s talking about.
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I would also sit now, between now and the time you break for the holidays, and I would calendar these events before I even started creating them.
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Hold the space on your calendar for 2024.
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I m doing, I was looking at my calendar.
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I actually have a meeting with my, her name is Christine, who is our chief of staff, and she manages my calendar.
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We re gonna plan the entire 2024 in December.
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And then all these, we ve got webinar days, we ve got some travel days, we re going to go do events in other cities and stuff, and all that s going to be put on the calendar.
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So if I m doing an event in Chicago, all I ve done is blocked out two days for Chicago first.
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Now, if you said, what are you going to do?
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I m like, I m not sure yet.
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I just know I m going to Chicago those two days in June.
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Then we go to Bill s steps, like, OK, we re going to do a live event, half days for sales leaders.
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We re going to come in, and we re going to do a back half of the year, finish strong session.
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And then you do a Bill saying you do the Google Doc.
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So now you ve got it all.
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You ve got the date set and the plan made.
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Now your odds go way up.
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That s right.
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Execute, right?
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Way up.
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I think a lot of people get stuck either in your point, the creative process, they don t know what to do or say.
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It never comes to them.
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So you just got to start writing it.
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You can always delete it and edit it.
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Right?
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That s right.
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It s exactly right.
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And you, if you re doing webinars, for example, next year, you need to be doing them.
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You audience members of the Advanced Selling Podcast, you need to be doing them.
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Don t hand them off to, now if you re a CEO, that s great, but don t hand them off to somebody who doesn t understand how to talk to people, how to communicate your value, how to reference pains when you re talking.
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I mean, we talk about these things on the podcast all the time.
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You guys, of anybody,
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should be the ones creating this, outlining this, and delivering it.
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You can have other people on as guests or whatever, but you don t realize how much you have in the bank and knowledge and expertise, given the fact that you ve listened to this podcast here for the last six months to a year.
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You ve got what it takes.
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Now it s a matter of you documenting it.
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Absolutely.
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And all this stuff.
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It sounds weird to say this, but all this matters and none of it matters, meaning
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Don t get over yourself about how many people come to the event or all that other stuff.
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You ve got to do the content stuff, and you ve got to execute it and be the hub.
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We call it hub selling sometimes.
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Be the center of the hub.
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Be the one that invites people to something and facilitates an interview.
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Like, well, I wouldn t know how to do that.
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OK, pick a date first.
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Pick a date.
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When s that going to be?
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OK, boom, April 15.
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Perfect.
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We ve got plenty of time.
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Now, let s sketch out.
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Open the Google Doc.
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Topic and framework for April 18 event.
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whatever you sell and whoever you re going to talk to, and then start going.
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Then you start inviting people.
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Well, no one shows up.
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Who gives a crap?
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Just do it anyway, interview the person, and then you get the video and the audio to use in more marketing.
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If it s your first one, you don t want people to show up, to be honest.
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That s so true, isn t it?
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Sometimes I m glad no one showed up.
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If you re going to do one in April, maybe do one in February and expect nobody to show up and hope nobody shows up and just get bad at it, then get better at it.
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By the time April comes, you re going to be really good.
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That s funny.
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I m in a webinar training program right now and some marketing training, but we re focused on webinars.
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And they say, if you haven t done 10 webinars and had somebody critique it and send the notes back to you, you re not really getting any better.
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Oh, wow.
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And sometimes we think, oh, I ll do a quick dry run.
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I ll do a dry run tonight.
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Right.
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Yeah, but the dry run, the run is going to be different than the dry run.
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He said, you need, you need somebody there to coach.
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And so just make sure that if you re going to do these things and whatever that is, maybe it s a speech.
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I mean, speech is the same thing.
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It s repetition.
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You got to work on your speech.
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Yes.
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And just do it.
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Just get them started.
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That s the main thing that people, they either never start or they do one and they see like no immediate results and think, well, that didn t work.
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Yeah.
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You know, like, well, I did a podcast and, you know, we only got, you know, 48 downloads.
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Well, so did Bill and I 17 years ago.
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Yeah.
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But now we have a story to tell with 16 or 18 million billion or gajillion, whatever it is, whatever it is.
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You just gotta, you gotta keep doing it.
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And the people that keep putting this stuff off, I m telling you, you gotta do it.
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You gotta plan.
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I love your idea of just putting it in the calendar, you know, even if it s a, if it s a pipe dream, that s cool.
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Put it in, put it in and then start to work your way back.
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Say, okay, if we re going to do that on April 1st, we need to have this thing done by March 1st.
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March 1st needs a February 1st and January 1st.
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Oh, hell, I got to get that in here soon.
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I mean, you just create, again, like Brian said, create some velocity, some momentum, so that you re hitting the ground January 2nd, saying to yourself, with the plan completed and with January planned, I m going to crush it this year.
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It s going to be extraordinary for me.
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Don t worry about politics.
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Don t worry about the media.
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Don t worry about culture.
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Don t worry about external environment.
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Doesn t matter.
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Doesn t matter.
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Just control your own stuff.
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And it s a big abundant world, even with any negative stuff going on.
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So just control your own stuff.
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Don t let this stuff control you.
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This is how to do it, what we re talking about here.
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It s good.
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Good.
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All right, man.
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Good stuff.
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I don t know what happened there.
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OK.
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If you re interested in the business planning session on December 6th, coming up here in a couple of days, look at the show notes.
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The link will be in there as an information page.
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Very simple.
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Yay or nay at the bottom.
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And we d love to see you.
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And Brian, see you in a week or so.
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Birthday episode next time, I believe.
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Oh, yeah.
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On my birthday.
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It s released on the birthday, right?
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December 11th.
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It s a Monday.
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Oh, yeah.
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Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
So we ll be recording.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
OK.
SPEAKER_00
Well, yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Well, it s a little party where we can have our debate about who s the greatest musician to walk here.
SPEAKER_01
Plenty of time for you to think about that.
SPEAKER_01
Knowing the years isn t Prince.
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I ll think about that.
SPEAKER_00
That s good.
SPEAKER_00
We ve got to make sure we remember that.
SPEAKER_00
All right.
SPEAKER_01
OK, see you next time.