Sell them something, just don’t sell them anything.
Whether you’re recruiting for employment needs or trying to sell a product, the conversation looks the same: you’re trying to convince someone to do something.
Potential candidates shop your brand as much as potential customers and depending on the time of year or what’s going on in the economy, it can be feast or famine.
Sometimes, the first interaction was the right person but not the right time. It’s ok for a potential client to tell you no. What’s important is to nurture a qualified lead until they (or you) decide this is not the right relationship or you solve the right problem. (*disclaimer* we do not recommend this in regards to your ex.)
On this week’s episode of Growing a Fruitful Brand, Raj sits down with Fruitful friend Dave Miller to talk about the importance of filling your funnel and how to market in a way that serves others.
Miller is the founder of Leadership Pathway, an organization that is finding, developing and supporting the next generation of ministry leaders.
Check out the latest episode and past episodes wherever you get your podcasts and don’t forget to share, subscribe and drop us a comment about topics you would like to see us cover!
Ep.14: How to sell during a recession (without selling your soul).
Automated Transcript
Ben Lueders:
Welcome to Growing a Fruitful Brand where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers, and your employees. I'm Ben Lueders, founder and art director of Fruitful Design and Strategy here in Omaha, Nebraska. And today's guest is Dave Miller. Dave is the co-founder of Leadership Pathway, an organization dedicated to finding, supporting and developing the next generation of ministry leaders. But before that, however, Dave helped build a sales team and processes at a service industry company that went from two to 12 million while he was there. Today my co-host, Raj Lulla, talks to Dave about building an effective sales team. Some of us have so many sales that we can't hire enough people to get the work done, while some of us need more sales to keep everyone on our team busy. Full disclosure, Dave was actually a client of mine in the early days of Fruitful, and he was actually Raj's boss. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Dave Miller.
Raj Lulla:
Dave, thanks for being on Growing a Fruitful Brand.
Dave Miller:
Oh man, I'm honored. Honored to be asked Raj, and maybe between my ramblings today and your excellent questions, somebody will get something out of this, who knows.
Raj Lulla:
So I feel like we should disclose for everyone the nature of our relationship because you are the last boss so far that I have ever had, and if I work at Fruitful for the rest of my life, you will have the distinguished place of being the last boss I ever, ever had. So I feel like that either ruins-
Dave Miller:
Yeah I'm never going to do that again.
Raj Lulla:
I was going to say it either means that you helped me graduate from needing a boss or that you just soured me on bosses forever.
Dave Miller:
Wow.
Raj Lulla:
It's probably the former.
Dave Miller:
Depends on the podcast.
Raj Lulla:
But it's really great to have you. We've known each other for, what, 10 years now? Yeah. Because our oldest was a baby when we met and-
Dave Miller:
Yeah, that's right.
Raj Lulla:
...she's a fifth grader now, so it's great to have you.
Dave Miller:
Yeah, it's great to be here. It really is.
Raj Lulla:
As Ben mentioned, you have built sales organizations and I know that we're kind of going into a weird economy and I feel like people are either so full of leads that they need to recruit people and know how to train up a sales team quickly, or they're so hungry for leads that they need their salespeople to get on it. So right now you lead Leadership Pathway, but you've also built sales organizations. What's similar between trying to find people and trying to find leads or trying to sell products?
Dave Miller:
Yeah, that's a great question, man. I'm thinking of Daniel Pink's book to Sell as Human, which kind of made the circles a few months or a year ago or something. Everybody was reading it. Have you read this book? And he talks about how the digital age and the modern times that we live in, they had predicted that we wouldn't need salespeople, that we would just be direct consumers on everything. And there certainly some shining examples of that. But his argument is that no, actually it's gone from two out of 10 workers to nine out of 10 workers that you're either selling a product, you're pitching a client, or internally you're recruiting, you're selling your own ideas internally. And this idea that everybody's communicating, everybody's producing content of some sort. Even the nerdiest of engineers sitting in a cubicle deep in the bowels of a big organization has to be able to communicate, has to be able to sell his idea or her idea, right?
And so recruiting, getting a proposal signed or convincing someone to think about a job, very similar in its woo, I think very similar in the conversation of helping convince them to do something with the client. You're just hanging on. This morning I saw one click, the accept button and a team I'm working with everyone cheered. Same thing on the recruiting side. We're recruiting right now like everybody else for our own team, trying to get people interested in that. What do they see when they go to our web? What do they see when they go to our social channels? And I believe they are shopping us as hard as a potential client is shopping us and we don't even know it
Raj Lulla:
That tracks exactly with what we're experiencing right now. Most of our business is helping people get leads and sell their product. I would say probably maybe another 30% is helping people recruit. But it was interesting that you brought up that internal communications piece because I would say probably about 10 or so percent of our business is helping people build internal tools to communicate. Sure. Whether it's sharpen a pitch deck or build an employee dashboard or something like that. For sure. Yeah. It is all kind of the same world because yeah, it's about positioning the other person for their success. And so whether that's helping your boss invest in your ideas so that the company can succeed, or whether that's helping somebody find a job that they'll be really successful in, or whether that's, or that's selling someone a product that's going to help them do whatever they're trying to do better. All of those things have very, very similar facets to them. So yeah. That's fascinating.
Dave Miller:
Well, I didn't, Raj, I did not set out when I was 19 to become a traveling sales guy or become a sales leader of an organization or something. I began selling because it beat doing what I was educated to do, which was be a janitor. My trajectory from 19 to 34 came to an end. It was done with me or I was done with it. I still don't know. I'll work that out someday. And someone says to me, "Hey, do you want to go consult this organization with me?" And I'm like, yeah, yeah. I have no idea what we're doing. And flying home, he pitches me, how's this number sound and this and that? And I got a list of leads, I need you to call him and set up some meetings. And I literally came home and told my wife, I found something to do for six months while we figured this out.
And I am not exaggerating. I'm condensing a painful 18 months into that scene. But I will tell you, I thought I would do this for six months, and that was 15 years ago at this point. And I've been convincing someone of something ever since. But I would say, what did my dad do for a living? He was a traveling sales guy. What did I say I would never do? I said I would never travel for a living and I would never sell. And I guess this apple didn't fall far from that tree. But when I think back Raj to third grade, I brought the kickball. We were playing kickball, I was convincing everyone we're going to play kickball. And the only question in my mind was, "Who's the other captain who's going to pick teams real quick?" I was just an idiot.
And I think of the trajectory from that moment through school. I was never brave enough to do crazy things, but I could talk my friends into doing crazy things and that's why I got in trouble. And I think Daniel Pink in that book speaks to this. That really there's not a personality that's the perfect sales guy. There's not a personality that's that's a bad salesperson. Anyone can do this. It's learned. Most of it is metric driven, which is what has been new to me the last decade or so, which I didn't want to pay attention to. But I've learned to pay attention to lead metrics and not just did they sign it or not, how did we sign it? Every salesperson I know wants to know we lose. And I want to know we win. I want to get good at knowing both of those and it will really help you take steps forward. But this idea that everyone has the tools, everyone knows what good communication is, everyone is convincing someone about something. And I think whether you're selling life-changing services or ball bearings, you have to... That's going to be my example by the way, through this, ball bearings. I don't know why I said that. You usually say brake pads because I think of Tommy Boy.
Raj Lulla:
Used to be brake pads. Yeah.
Dave Miller:
So if you're selling ball bearings or a life-changing health services, I think the skill is similar.
Raj Lulla:
You talked about your first sales role being starting out as a consulting just one session, really. Yeah. And that's something that I personally have learned from you of just how to be helpful to people before they ever buy from you. Can you talk about that a little bit of how you started that approach? Or was it just what you were exposed to first and what can be valuable to people in taking that approach?
Dave Miller:
I think in the earliest days, that guy said to me, do whatever's in the best interest of the client. Now, like every true thing that's on a bumper sticker, Raj, you can take that to extremes and it can be unhealthy. And I've seen it be unhealthy where a sales individual is now identifying more with the client than they are our team. And that's going to lead you to a bad deal. And I know this because I've done it. As almost like a sick, obsessive compulsive, I'm identifying more with them than I am what is profitable and a good deal for us and work we can actually do. And I just keep doing what... So I don't mean that. So back it up 20% for all the people that are just like, "Well, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." No, you do what's in the best interest of the client as long as it's within the bounds and the business rules that you've set.
And then that phrase over time for me kind of became this brand position of how can I help you do your thing? It's not about my thing, it's about your thing. I've been involved with a group now. They actually use a tagline, your vision, our passion or something like your vision, our passion. And it's true. You get under the hood of that company and that thing, it's eight years old, there's 45 people, they live all over the country. And this comes out of the owner who so desperately wants to elevate the goodness of the clients and their organization stays under the surface. And the hero of their story is that person. One of the great things about the StoryBrand stuff is it puts language to that who the hero of the story is. And when the first time I read that I was like, oh yeah, we didn't say it that way but definitely we're trying to meet these people where they are.
The old fashioned word is serving as a person of faith. This goes to the core of this stuff. And I deal with a lot of people of faith who consult and who sell things and they sell things in a religious context or a faith context. I'm like, you think you're flying across the country to be the expert on it, you might be flying across the country just to wipe the sink off in the plane and encourage the flight attendant. You have to be super open about this stuff. Super open handed about it, I think, and your first brand position to me, if you're going to work around is serving one another and serving clients, how can I help you do your thing?
And I've used that in higher ed recruiting teams. I've used that with people who are asking people for money, even. Donors, funding situations and certainly on the sales side. And we all want to live in a dreamy land where we have so much business happening we can pick and choose who we want to work with and I want to live there too. Wink, wink, as if I've ever really had that luxury. Not with anything I've leading. I've had that luxury with some other stuff. But in terms of what's going on, I would just say, but if you're not going to serve, if it's not about them going to, from my perspective, that's going to be a bad deal for everybody by the time you get there. The ribbon cutting or the end of that project, if you don't start with it's about them, it's not about me or us, you're going to be disappointed. And I think you're going to have a disappointed client at the end of it.
Raj Lulla:
One of the things that you've talked about is that when the economy gets tough, we have to get creative with our terms. You said it a little bit more earlier about getting creative with what you sell. Can you tell us a little bit about how do you identify when you have maybe stepped too far into that world? Yes, this would be good for the customer, but not necessarily for the business.
Dave Miller:
Yeah. I think I've got this thing my friends would call, I won't tell you what they really call it, but it's Miller, Miller wisdom, Miller Wisdoms. Give us some of that Miller stuff. And it's misspelled, but profoundly impactful. Of course, Raj and I had a baker's dozen and I've put a good consultant wood, I just keep changing the logo at the top and giving it to people, baker's dozen. And one of them is sell them something. Just don't sell them anything. And this is tough in startup world, you got to have guardrails. And if you're, you're listening to this and you're a solo entrepreneur or solopreneur or a gig person like Seth Godin would say, I would encourage you to do this as well, because it keeps you out of trouble. If a solo entrepreneur could sit for an hour, maybe 30 minutes, half sheet of paper, put rules in place, some guardrails that keep you from selling something that you should not sell. And then I tell people when they talk to me like, Hey, my... I'm like, "Well, what's your gut telling you right now?" They're like, "Well, I don't know. I don't trust my gut." I'm like, "Okay, whose gut can you trust then?"
And I would tell anyone to pay attention to if their gut reaction to something, I shouldn't sell this, but I'm going to because I got to pay the power bill or whatever. I got to meet payroll. If that thing is going off in your gut and that thing has served you well in the past, you better pay attention to it.
Raj Lulla:
Earlier you talked about the '08 recession and there are those of us who lived through it and learned some lessons through that. But a lot of our salespeople, a lot of the younger people that we're hiring were in ninth grade or whatever when that happened. And so they maybe watched their older brother or sister or their parents struggle through it, but they don't have any firsthand knowledge of that. For somebody who's either going through it for the first time selling into a tough economy or they're leading a team of people who are selling into a tough economy, what are some real quick hits? What would be the bullet point list that you'd give them of okay, buckle in for this next season, here's what you do.
Dave Miller:
Yeah. Well I would say the old fashioned funnel, which I know a lot of us don't want to talk about a sales funnel anymore, but it's about a conversation and things that are nice like clouds and unicorns. But I would just say in a recession, and I don't know if we're in one, I'm not that smart. If we're in one, we're going into one or if it's new and different than ever before, I don't understand. I don't get it right. But I would just say, you're going to have more and more clients out of the blue be like, "Bro, I hate to say this to you, but we just came through budgeting or I just lost.." The big quit. I learned in learned recruiting, you got to be five or six people deep with these organizations too. So you not only have to top load the funnel and get that thing at the top really laden with real people that you're talking to that might do something in six to 12 months.
You got to get multiple people in these organizations because that person quits moves on, starts their own thing. It happening at alarming rates. Of course. Yeah. It's driving the staffing industry by the way. But it's really hurting on the sales side. Because I flew there, we went to lunch, it was great. I know of his kids and he knows my kid we know... And now he's gone. And this person's like, "Who are you?" "I'm the guy you're going to sign a contract with." "We're not signing, we don't have any money." It happens a lot. So you have to increase the metric at the top. If you don't know how many qualified leads it takes to get to a sale in your world, you should go reverse engineer this and pick a number. That's another one of these. We just kind of picked a number 18 months ago, started shooting at it and it proved out how many qualified leads does it take for them to begin to advance to get a proposal from us and to get signed?
What is that metric? And if you don't know it, go make one up and tell everyone. If you do know it, you just need to double to get through your downturn of economy, you have to double the thing at the top for everybody. If you have a sales team, you should reward them. Great salespeople have daddy issues. They want to win. They want the trophy. They act like they don't want to be called up in front of everyone, but they actually do, I know this because I am one. Reward them in your CRM or whatever you're using. Homespun, I don't care. Doesn't matter to me, but is their name there and the biggest number are the qualified leads. And I would reward that stuff, especially for the next six months if we're going into recession.
Raj Lulla:
Something you said that that stood out to me was salespeople love lag measures and they want the trophy, they want the bonus, whatever for that. And I think that the salesperson who loves lag measures gets the award. They get the bonus, but the salesperson who masters lead measures, they get a promotion, they get a career. Because that's what I've seen is that the ones who like the win, they're competitive in the room, yeah, they're going to hit their goals and then you do have to wonder how to motivate them right after the fact. But the ones who master, what do I need to do as a discipline to make this sustainable so that I am hitting my goals ahead of schedule because we don't know whether there's going to be a bad quarter.
No one had it on their bingo go card. That's right at the end of 2019 that they're going to not be able to talk to anyone except for on Zoom three months later. And so the people who were ahead of Target at that point were the ones who survived that pretty well. The world normalized pretty quickly into Zoom calls and whatever. And the people who were pushing the right behaviors ahead of that were the ones who survived or at least recovered more quickly. What are some other things that, again, the younger salesperson or the person leading younger salespeople, what are some other things that they should be adopting right now? You gave me six or eight of them over text the other day when we were talking. What are some of those things that younger salespeople should be adopting right now?
Dave Miller:
I think potential clients are in pain. If it's true we're in a recession or going, they're in pain. They're in pain. They're more freaked out than you are supposedly in this conversation. So you got to meet their need, back to that about them, it's not about you. Are you serving them? This is where you might discover something you could sell them that is a good deal for you that they actually need because they're in a recession. And I learned that back in '08. Yeah, I would say, you got to be clear, the stuff I've learned from you guys, you got to be clear on brand more. Never. Because if you don't, you'll pivot into stupid. We've already talked about that a little bit, but who are you doing this in the first place? And you have to stay clear on that. And I wouldn't stay clear on it to the point that you lose your house.
Right. And those are great stories to read in Inc magazine when they've then launched something else and made $1 billion dollars. Raj was a entrepreneur through his twenties and went through three marriages, lost two houses, spent a weekend in jail because he was a... But now he runs... That's great. I just think there's probably, you could have a much thicker magazine of the people that go insane and really put themselves... I'm not talking about doing that. I'm not talking about... Seth Godin would say shun the unbeliever, which I love. We talk about this a lot in our little world that we work in. We're trying to do dozens of things this year. There are hundreds of thousands of opportunities out there. We just have to find the right few dozen. So don't stay too long with somebody that doesn't want what you're selling. Most salespeople, I know this, once it enters proposed and it's sitting there, we go to some dreamy land.
Like they're reading this every day and obsessing over whether or not they're going to... And that's why I love using whatever it is we use that I can now see they've not opened it in 68. They haven't even looked at it. They're not... It's like the 10th grade kid who just dreams about the lead cheerleader. He's got a shot with her. He would rather not go over there and talk to her and have her just say, "Are you kidding me? I'm not dancing with you." Sales guys are old. I heard a thing two months ago. I sent to all of these people I'm working with. The whole point of the talk was use the phone. If sales guys would make three phone calls a day, they could easily be the top of their... You call your text. Wow. You move beyond CRM and automated marketing things once it's down to that level. Once it's down to they have a proposal, are we going to work together or not? And let them tell you no. So you can market in your CRM and move on. They don't want your sell. They don't want it. They either don't need it. They're too smart. That's okay. I don't like admitting that. But= some potential clients do not need us. Most salespeople don't want to admit that.
Raj Lulla:
I've been in front of clients before where one of a few things happens. One is if you do consultative selling, we do where we just offer value first. I've had people take that advice and run with it. They were able to execute on just what I said. And for the moment, that doesn't feel very good. But then if you kind of play it out in your mind, if those people are capable of doing that, then they would've been wasting money on you and they wouldn't have been very happy with it. The whole time they'd be sitting there looking saying, I could do all of this. I don't know why I'm paying for this.
Great. Go do it. The other one that I've experienced that is tough to swallow is, Hey, this thing's too big for us. They need something more complicated and more sophisticated than what we sell. And in fact, I was just telling our sales team this week that we really do well with companies that are two to 10 million or they're working on a project, they might be a larger company, but they're working on a project that's two to 10 million. And so sometimes we do get leads from larger organizations and it's flattering. But there are times that if a $1 hundred million company came to us and said, "We want you to do all of our marketing.", and they weren't willing to wait six months for us to go hire a big enough team to do that, then it would swamp us. And so knowing that it's not the right time for you to work with this client and just closing that out, like you said, moving on, it's healthier than going to that dreamland and pretending that something's going to happen. HubSpot's been a real eye-opener for us of that. Oh, that email didn't even get open. Okay. Well that shows how serious we are. Or you know, try a few more times to get through and then you close it out.
Dave Miller:
Yeah. In times of recession. It might be a handwritten note. I've really enjoyed the last couple months with you talking and they've got a proposal and you put a sticker, you put something cheap in it, you send that handwritten note to them. Nobody gets mail unless it's bad news or stupid ads. I don't even know. And I guess it's effective that the furniture store is going out of business and we need to go there this weekend. I guess that still works, but the only thing we get are bills, occasionally. Most of it's automated, but occasionally bad news from the IRS or a handwritten note from someone. I think I would continue to say, one of the things that we try to do is send handwritten notes of encouragement. Again, it's about them. It's not about us. It sticks out to people.
It's weird. Especially if you give them something that's going to lay around their desk and remind them that they have a proposal from you, would they please just click accept? So in recession times it doesn't mean all of the answers are very complex and very expensive. Find ways to combat this, calling on the phone. I hope we get to work together. They're not going to answer anyway by the way. They're not. So you're going to leave a voicemail and then you're going to text them. I just left you a voicemail and see what happens. If you could just make three or four days.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, that's such a great tip for younger salespeople to kind of get over that fear of calling is... Your odds of actually getting somebody to pick up the phone are probably 20%. If that.
Dave Miller:
Oh, if that, if that.
Raj Lulla:
And if so, just be prepared with a great voicemail. And if they do answer the phone, that means they want to talk to you. Especially if you were already on their caller ID and they know who's calling.
Dave Miller:
I would bet Raj, most of us that are not making break pads or ball bearings, we're in consultatives. We're helping people down. Most of the time it's not just, no, I hate you don't ever.... It's not yet. It's a different kind of No, in our world.
Raj Lulla:
I will say, Dan, our sales guy who you and I have in common, actually from higher ed back way back in the day, he has brought back from the dead a couple of deals and it was really just about remembering to call somebody after the fact, even after they had told us no and gone with another firm. He just called to see how things were going and not the slimy "How's it going? Do you get your choice?" But just literally, "Hey, I'm curious how it went."
Dave Miller:
For your clients, solopreneurs or young cool agency that are creating market in whatever their world that they're in. A guy on our team, Simon was over three years old this week, and by the way, this should encourage people in these recession times. I looked back, it started with me, I got tired of it. I handed it off to him in 2019. He finally pitched them a thing about 12 months ago they said no to. He stayed with it. The thing, we sold them way better for us in the terms and the numbers and what it is. And we've learned a lot in a year two of course. So we're way better positioned to help them and we're going to make more money. Or in our world, we're going to lose less money on this one than we would've lost on the other one. So that should be encouraging. In these recession times, what you're doing, what you're selling is going to meet people's point of need. And they may have been listening to you for years and this is the month, this is the week they wake up and we got to do this. From our vantage point I'm like, you should have started this three years ago man, but here we are. So it was a win for him this week to get that closed.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. That goes back to the point you made earlier about not paying attention even to brands that what we love until we need them. And so that's why you have to stay in their emails. I told somebody's week that they were under emailing their clients by four times. That they should be doing four times as much email as they're doing. And they looked at me like I was insane. And I said, just look at open rates. Literally, if your open rate is 25 to 30%, then you can send four times as many email. And the odds are that you're not going to have somebody opening all four emails. Your biggest fans absolutely will open all four emails or maybe three of the four. But the people who are just thinking about it are going to open maybe one of the four or one of the eight that they get from you.
So you might as well send four times as much email because... I'd love to see an experiment. I'm not going to do it because I think it'd probably get us put in spam boxes. But I'd love to see an experiment if you just sent the same email twice in a row, how many people would even notice? Because I would bet that that number is going to be super low. Don't do it. It's not a good practice. But it's the point though that we're not reaching out enough. And especially for those deals that are warming over a year, two years, three years, those end up being your best qualified buyers because, if they're still thinking about it, if they've been thinking about you for three years, think about it. If you were thinking about a guy or a girl for three years and reached out, finally got the guts to reach out to them and say that you've liked them this whole time, it's like you're ready to get married. If the person on that's right, the other end of the phone says yeah we need to, like great.
Dave Miller:
Yes, we've been vetting this person, reading everything from them. For sure. I would say as salespeople, we will never ref recession proof what we're doing. Because if you're doing it well, it is a living and organic relationship with someone else. It's the potential client. So you can only do as much as you can do and own as much as you can own. But in times like this, you do have to look for things and maybe it's super cheap and sometimes even free that's going to set you apart. If you have a competitor, if you're not making market, a handwritten note and a phone call could turn that thing and are you looking for ways to mitigate as much of it as you can? So top load that funnel, man, put more up there than you think you're going to need because you're going to need it because these relationships are living and they're organic with real people called potential clients.
Raj Lulla:
You said the phrase everything is a lead. Can you unpack that for us?
Dave Miller:
Yeah, man. One of those, I call it the baker's dozen. I think I tried to do 10 commandments, but like a good Kentuckian. I couldn't edit myself. So wound up with 13 things. One of them is everything's a lead. People have asked me for what's the hardest part of the sales process, marketing to a qualified lead, to proposal to close. And I'm like, I think getting the lead is the hardest. It is the hardest thing to master. Getting that lead, quickly identifying is this real or not? So I don't spend resources I shouldn't be spending to our point earlier, but everything is a lead and teaching sales people and I'd have to... What industry are you in? And hear a few stories and then start thinking about how do people resource the life that they have? In some ways, in some ways you're just looking around at your own personal relationships and who all those people know. Your personal geographic space, what's out your window, by the way? Are you listening to this while you're on your peloton and across the street is a business sign and you've never walked in there and maybe you should go make a friend over there.
I love the stories of we got this proposal signed. I love even more when I open and look in our CRM, where was it sourced from? And it's that guy's brother's, cousin, priest who had a friend who knew a... And I love that stuff because we are six degrees away from our little... You taught me, well you were the first person I think ever... Our little echo chamber that bounces the same hundred people love everything we put out. How do you get beyond that echo chamber and build beyond it? And I love it when the salesperson, in a classic sense, it's outbound. They're going out and prospecting this. Not the old fashioned knocking on doors, which we don't do anymore, but they're not just waiting on everything to come inbound you guys and your brilliance of how to market and how to market in a way that actually serves other people is really, really helpful.
And we need smart marketing people to do that. I need the smart sales people that don't just look at you and rely on that for their pipeline. This person read everything from us for three years and then finally clicked and said, "Please contact me." I love that client because they're smart. We have educated them, they know exactly what we're going to do with them, but we also have to have a sales energy that it starts at the talking. When it enters the funnel and we've just met them because we had lunch together yesterday, spent four hours and they got a proposal last night while I was at the hotel. I like that mentality. If everything's a lead, then the potential client that told you no two years ago, that's a lead. You might go dumpster diving and resurrect them from the dead.
It might be this might be the month. They're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you called me. I'd forgotten you." Don't forget current clients who love you. Most people like being the hookup guy. Most people like being the person that says, "I got a guy. You need a plumber, you need a priest? I got a guy. I got a guy. You need a car wash, you need a taco restaurant? You need a agency that does exactly what your company does? I know a guy." Asking for leads. I have an auto reminder set to ask current clients, who else do you know in your town? We've got this weird, we're super small, but we're all over the country. It's not easy. I'm assuming most people listening to this, it's virtual. It doesn't matter where you live asking people, do you have three friends? What if I came to town and I could buy us all lunch? Everybody likes being that guy, but they got to sit still for 10 minutes and be quiet and think about who do they know. Right. Sometimes we have to teach our clients if, I bet if you sat still, you'd think of someone else we could serve that's awesome just like you.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. Well Dave, thank you so much for being with us. Where can people find you? What you're doing? I know you got a couple different things going on and would love to help people find if they want to get more sales coaching from you or...
Dave Miller:
Or Yeah. davemilleronline.com and then it won't make any sense to you when you go there, but there is something called the group. I needed a really great, Raj to our point earlier, I had an idea and had a landing page and a few hours need to call it something. So I called it the group, how creative. And so that's where I try to get like-minded sales people together. It's been very... I've learned a lot and I think sometimes the solo-
Raj Lulla:
Dan from our-
Dave Miller:
Yeah, absolutely.
Raj Lulla:
Dan from our group from Fruitful's has been there.
Dave Miller:
Yeah. Fruitful has been there. The solo entrepreneur learning from the big company guy and vice versa. And so that's been good. Dave Miller online, there's contact there I think too as well. It's my favorite topic. Selling and keeping your soul. Nobody wants to be mad men. John Draper. I don't want to be John Draper drinking, drinking at 10:00 AM and going through marriages. That's not what I'm talking about. But selling, serving people, meeting their needs and in a recession time like we're in, finding ways to do that. Yeah. It could launch the future. It launched mine through that '08 thing I would say.
Raj Lulla:
I think you might have just titled your own episode here. Selling and Keeping Your Soul in a Recession.
Dave Miller:
There you go.
Raj Lulla:
That's a tough needle to thread. And you've helped me a ton. Yeah. I was changing careers when we worked together and you're still somebody I'll reach out to. So yeah, I highly recommend if you want to level up your sales game, go to Dave Miller online, join the group and you won't regret it. So Dave, thank you so much and we'll be in touch soon.
Dave Miller:
Okay. Thanks.
Ben Lueders:
Thanks for joining us today on Growing a Fruitful Brand. If you found today's show helpful, don't forget to subscribe and consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it. If you'd like to work with Fruitful on a branding website or messaging project of your own, you can always reach out on our website fruitful.design. So until next time, don't forget to grow something good.
