Why Selling Less Could Be the Key to Earning More

0:08Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantz. My guest today is Chuck Blakeman. He's a successful entrepreneur, bestselling author, TEDx speaker, and business advisor. He built 13 businesses across 10 industries on four continents and has worked with companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Today, we're going to talk about his newest book, Sell Less, Earn More, Double Your Income in 90 Days with People You Already Know. Sounds like an amazing promise. Chuck, welcome to the show. Thanks, John. those things always sound like obituaries to me. Well, I've been doing this a long time and somebody found one of mine that like went back to second grade.

0:51It was really painful. But at any rate, you know, I want to talk about the book, of course, but I can't pass over the 13 businesses, 10 industries, four continents. Do you have like the two minute version of what all that was? Yeah. In high school, I was left-handed, right-brained, ADHD, and dyslexic. and they thought I was stupid. They wanted me to be a pinsmith because nobody knew what ADHD and dyslexic was back then. Sure, sure, sure. So I went into the Army. While I was in the Army, I stumbled into doing something for somebody else and they paid me. And fast forward 45 years later, I'd started 13 businesses and 10 industries on four continents.

1:27And so, yeah, I guess I have something to offer. But when I graduated from high school, I literally thought I'd be the only kid who wouldn't get a job. Well, so tell us about at least one of those exits. I mean, do you have a good, sexy story or were they all just meat and potatoes? Everybody has good, sexy stories. So I'll give you the ugly one because nobody ever gives us. We built a business that we bought it for a million. It was pretty much done. It had been losing business for 10 years. We bought it for a million and we grew it to nine and a half million in two years and had to sell it in a fire sale.

2:01Because I didn't understand that the faster you grow, the less money you have. Yeah, yeah. I just assumed that the faster you go, the more money you have. No, it's called cash flow. So I had, you know, the books, I've written four books now and the books I've read, I say most of them, this is not a book I wrote. This is a life I lived. You know, you bleed over this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was one of them. And then we had some more successful stories than that one. Awesome. Well, going to the title of the book, Sell Less, Earn More, sort of counterintuitive a little bit. You want to explain kind of what the core concept you're trying to get across there?

2:37Yes, John. People have accused me of being counterintuitive, and I realized I'm actually not. I'm counterlogical. It doesn't make sense. But intuitively, it does make sense. It's really for this book I wrote because I'm a business owner, and I'm a business owner advocate, and I do all kinds of stuff with business owners. This is the anti-sales book, specifically written for business owners, not for salespeople. and these are business owners who are looking for a permanent cure to the common cold call you know if you want to stop selling and still earn more this is the right book for you so we teach people to do the things i did because i don't i didn't like selling it was a rude awakening for me to wake up one morning you know if you're making chairs and they're piling up in your basement you figure out oh no i actually have to sell these darn things and you end up doing something you didn't want to do nobody very few business owners go into sale or into business to want to sell.

3:29So we teach them how to get out of sales and to stop doing it by building relationships with people they already know. So for the, you know, you hit on a very key point. A lot of people didn't go into business because they were great at selling and actually end up saying, I hate that part of it. Is there a reason they hate it? And does it really kind of lie in the way that sales is traditionally thought about and experienced and taught? Yeah, I love your book. And I love your approach to things. Absolutely. We inherited this funny thing from the industrial age called selling. Before the factory system, we produced what we needed.

4:04By 1850, most factories were producing way more than they needed. So they had to invent selling to sell you stuff you didn't need. And we call it stabbing strangers with your business card. You're doing all this kind of crazy stuff to try and gin up sales that people don't need. Welcome to consumerism. So absolutely, it goes back to the whole idea that we were sold this bill of goods, target marketing, selling to strangers, pitching, pain points. Why don't we find somebody's joy point instead? Cold calls, you know, cold calls. Controlling the conversation. This is my favorite. I hear this all the time.

4:41Someone very proudly will say to me, I contacted my database. Why don't you connect with a few people you know? So there's a, I mean, there's a message in those two statements. Sure. One is transactional and the other is relational. So we built, we've, we've inherited a transactional view of business and sales is the worst apparition of that. So I work with a lot of consultants, agencies that are, you know, they need three or four more clients, or maybe they're just getting started. They're, they're very drawn to the, I can have a thousand emails and I can automate a funnel and I can use AI to contact all these people.

5:16And I really, I do the same thing. I say, why don't you just pick up the phone and call five people and see what happens? But people don't want to do that. They'd rather sit through agonizing days of setting up a funnel than to actually reach out. So how do you get people past that? Yes, so would I. I mean, most business owners, they don't want to talk to strangers. They love talking to customers, but they don't want to talk to strangers, go to networking events. Nobody wants to do that. So how do we get them past the idea? Well, they get themselves past it. Usually they come to the end of themselves either in time or in money because it takes a bucket load of money and time to get all that stuff moving for you.

5:57There's two ways to find clients. You can buy them, which is extremely expensive in time and money, or you can pick up the phone and say hello to people. But the key here, John, for me is I'm not asking you to go find people you don't know. I hate that. What if you could go to a friend and talk to them? We call it finding your lumberjacks. What if you, instead of going to the networking forest and finding the next tree and doing all the seasoning you have to do in that relationship, what if you found somebody who'd been to the forest and had 20 years with the trees in their database and they could see the value of giving their customers to you?

6:34Make friends with that person you already know and show them the benefit and off you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there are a lot of people that start a business and they really, again, I coach them. I was like, look at your contacts in your database. You got 100 people in there probably. That's where you start. But then they kind of come to this point of like, yeah, okay, they know me, but how do I warm them up? How do I get a conversation that actually has something to do with maybe them purchasing or maybe them referring? How do you do that? How do you get that contact who's not really expecting you to call them and talk to you about your new business?

7:10Yeah. So the first, the overriding principle of the book, Sell Less, Earn More is serve, don't sell. Yeah. Which you're, you know, you're all over that. And we teach people specific ways to get involved in that. We have the four buying questions. When you meet with someone individually, I challenge business owners to never talk about their business again in a one-to-one unless they are asked. Right. And almost always I'm asked because I have four buying questions where I'm asking them about things that have nothing to do with business. I'm showing interest as a human being. And, you know, trust is our number one asset.

7:47If you don't have trust, you're done. So asking four buying questions, how did you get into this business? Where is it taking you? What do you want out of it? And simple things like that will give them the idea that maybe this person actually cares about me as a human being. The guard goes down. Jeffrey Gitterman made this famous, but it was in the 1930s. People were saying, nobody wants to be sold. Everybody wants to buy. The four buying questions flip the script. Don't talk about your business. Ask them about them as human beings or about their business. Show interest. Stephen Covey, seek first to understand rather than be understood.

8:21I didn't make this stuff up. But we get all that. We all say, yeah, I understand. But we don't do it. What if we actually went in with four buying questions, and we never talked about our business again unless we were asked. I guarantee you we'll make more money. Do you want to share those? I mean, are they set questions? Yeah, they're set questions. And they're really different for individuals based on whether you're talking to consumers or businesses. I'll give you the business-to-business version. Past is the first question. So you can say something like, so tell me, John, what motivated you to leave your job and get into this business?

8:58That's the past. That's something John hasn't thought about for years. serves John. Why in the world did I do this? I couldn't get a job. That's why. Yeah. And then the second one is the future. You got that right. The second one is the future. So John, if this is why you got into business, what do you want out of it? What's your personal long-term desire for this thing? Most business owners never do that. They just figure out, hey, if I make a buck a load of money, somehow I'll be happy. I mean, no, it doesn't work. So that serves them to ask that question. And then the third question is present.

9:29So past, future and then present if this is why you got into it and this is what you want out of it what's the one thing we call it bottlenecks what's the one thing standing in your way right now to get you to that place that you want to be when you say this business has really served me most business owners are too busy in the day-to-day to even think about what is the one strategic thing i need to do i need more customers i need more space i need better training it what is the one thing that's holding me back right now and then the third fourth one if you ever get to because by then, usually they're asking you questions.

9:59But if you get to the fourth one, the fourth one is, John, who's your perfect client? And how could I find, you know, because I want to know who that is so I can send you some of those. So those are the four buying questions. My friend John was a wealth manager. He took our training. We've been doing this for 20 years. He took our fast track sales business development training course. And at the time he started, he had 2 ,200 clients and he was taking home a quarter million dollars a year. Now he has under 20 clients and he takes home way over a million dollars a year. Because he took the four buying questions and he started using that instead of, let me show you what I got.

10:34Stop me when you see something. You're like, I got something up the sleeve. I got something. Nobody cares. So tell me, how much permission do you need for those questions? And the reason I ask that is, I have a lot of what I would... I mean, we all now have very... We all have networks of people who we know, but we've never met. we're connected on LinkedIn, maybe, you know? And so then I get that question where somebody says, what are you most excited about? I was like, I'm not telling you what I'm excited about. I mean, how much permission do we need to get into what might feel a little more personal?

11:09Well, and that is an intuitive question because you have to read the person book across you and say, is this a person who gets excited about sharing that stuff? Or so you might have to go a little slower, but in general, I've never found anybody who didn't want to talk about themselves. in some way. So even if they, when you ask them, why'd you get into this business? They won't tell you because they couldn't find a job, but they will tell you some other really good stuff about why they got into it because, and then that's fine. So tell me whatever you want. This can sound like an interrogation if you don't respond.

11:41So I'm always ready to say, well, let me tell you how I got in the business. And with somebody who's uncomfortable, I'll do that first. And in one of them, I will say, because I couldn't get a job. And it just opens them up. So I have to be transparent so they will be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and I think you really hit on this. And not everybody has the emotional quotient for this, quite frankly, but the whole goal is to serve, is not to sell, right? And if you're coming from that point of view, it eventually comes across, doesn't it? Yeah. You know, people think I make some of this stuff up and then I remind Zig Ziglar, 1970s, you know, if you help enough other people get to their goals, you'll get to yours.

12:17Yeah, yeah, yeah. You really believe that we all give lip service to these things, but I can show you hundreds, thousands of business owners who have done these things, have actually finally actually practiced this with passion and found that, yeah, you know, it actually does work if I just serve other people. I had a one-to-one with a woman once who I was going to do my dog and pony show and she showed up and said, hey, I got to find a babysitter. We just lost our babysitter for our 20th anniversary and it's four hours from now. We spent 45 minutes finding her a babysitter because that's what she needed.

12:49She didn't need my dog and pony show. I never talked to her again. A year later, her sister called me and she became a client for two years. I made a lot of money from that meeting because I served the other person. Do we really believe that that's the way to go? Yeah. And I think it really takes not only that serving, but a long-term mindset too, right? I mean, you have seen this play out. you knew at some time in the future, this babysitting job was going to pay off, didn't you? And I know your stuff well, but I don't know if you actually ever said this, but you live it out. You live out the idea of long-term decision-making, making decisions based on what will actually help you in the long-term, not today.

13:31And boy, when we take on that approach, it isn't actually harder for the first year because that's what people think. Oh, I'm going to start today if I actually take it. No, you'd be surprised. But boy, is it freeing to actually think in the long-term and and to work with people based on what is their long-term best interest. That's my definition of business love, putting the interest of the other person, the long-term best interest of that person. So a lot of times when you're having a conversation with your network, they don't need anything today. They can't think of anybody that they could refer you to.

14:01Where does this role of like staying top of mind, recency, frequency? I mean, how big are we part of that? You just nailed it. We use those two words, a recency and frequency, See, to build any relationship, whether it's with your dog, your pet orca whale, or your wife or your friend, you need to be recent and frequent. How recently did you talk to me and how frequently? So we have to have drip systems and we have to have drip systems. They actually want to open. So it's not about me. I have a realtor who sends me something on a regular basis and I open it because it's always interesting, fun stuff that I would want to hear.

14:35It's not how great am I as a realtor. and so we have to figure that out and do the recency and frequency. And you put together a simple little drip system. We got Microsoft as a client,$3 million a year client, because for a year and a half, I tickled the guy at Microsoft, who was my contact, with everything from a phone call to a press release to once in a while coming out to visit him. And he called me one day and said, hey, I got this press release from you yesterday. I'm glad I did because I'd forgotten all about you. It's like I've been pinging you forever, But if you're not recent and frequent, it's not going to work.

15:09So you got to have that as part of your deal. Plus, I mean, you know, we're all overloaded with information. So it's like, why did one thing work? You know, right? It's because they were ready to hear it that day, right? Yes. Yeah. So you have actually, and I love it when people have frameworks, four quadrants of marketing that you talk about when it comes to relationship marketing. You want to kind of unpack that idea for people? Yeah. So quadrant number one is advertising. That's what the big boys use. and quadrant number two is direct mail. Those, those two are more or direct marketing. Those two are more of the purview of people with a lot of money and not a lot of time.

15:45So you can buy a gecko or a, or a duck or a funny comedian and, and put them on the airways for millions and millions of dollars for years. And we just love, we fall in love with that insurance company because we fell in love with fill in the blank, the guy. Well, good luck with that. I don't have that kind of money as a business owner. And the second one is direct marketing. That one I can do a little bit more of and a lot more of in some ways, but still it's expensive. The third quadrant is public relations. We told a guy who wanted to do rugby vacations, set up rugby vacations with a guy and his wife and 30 guys and go on a 10-day vacation to Brazil and play two or three rugby games.

16:24We told him, go kick a rugby ball across America. He figured out he could get$150 ,000 in sponsors and it would take him like three months to kick the ball across and he'd get news in every town. It's paid marketing if you do it right. But the one that really works for us is what we call, everybody calls relationship marketing. That's the one that costs the least amount of money and the most amount of time. But I say this all the time and you say it in your stuff, you just don't say it with this phrase. The closer you get to a hug, the more likely you are to sell something. So sit across the table from somebody and watch what happens.

17:04And again, don't do it one customer at a time. Find the lumberjack who has all those customers who will just open their database to you. You got a hundred people in your database, you're going to wear them out. He or she has 300 and you have two or three of those, you got a thousand person database. Let's just do it that way. Make friends with a few people. So let's say I am somebody getting started maybe in a new business and I come to you and I say, look, I want to get this. I love what you're talking about. I want to get this going. Like, what's the checklist? Like, what are the 10 things I need to do to kind of set this in motion?

17:38I know it's not going to happen overnight, but how do I set it in motion? Yeah. Yeah. So we have a, these are all things I did to build my businesses. We didn't make anything up to sell on the internet or any of that kind of stuff. You know, we just feel like people need a specific set of tools. So we talk about what we call the lumberjack buying system. It's a simple way to alliterate the three different places in your database that a person might be living. They're either a new contact or you're in a conversation or they're on the fire or they're a new client. Things like gold veins where you can show up on a regular basis and you'll see the same people over and over again.

18:14Very different than network. Yeah. And they're all the ideal clients of yours. The catalyst events, tier three listening, the four buying questions, the four walking in commitments. So there's some mindset things that people have to do to shift out of the industrial age. Mindset is that guilt trip that we've been giving, you know, stabbing people with their business cards. That's mindset stuff. And then there's a few simple tools that people have. We have a 10-week training course that we use. And there's about six tools that we give people over those 10 weeks. And you don't have to use all of them.

18:44This is one of the other problems with sales is that we give people these really rigid sales processes that are built for nobody or 70 % and not for me. How do some of the new-ish, been around for a while now, but new-ish platforms like LinkedIn, you know, how do they play into, you know, this game? Yeah, well, you know, 10 years ago, somebody in one of our courses said, I'm going to use LinkedIn to develop my relationships. Right after I had said, the closer you get to a hug, the more likely you are to sell something. Right, right. And, but she went in 10 weeks, she doubled her income by just talking to people on LinkedIn that she knew in alphabetical order.

19:27And she didn't get past E. Yeah. Now, now if you looked at what she had, she had good, a lot of good existing relationships on LinkedIn. So it wasn't a cold call. She was talking to people she already knew. So it doesn't matter what medium you're on. I, I made a hundred thousand dollars plus in about a year and a half off of Twitter 15 years ago. So you can do that, but it's still the same principles. Nothing changes. The closer you get to a hug, the more likely you are to sell something. Serve, don't sell. Tier three listening, it's all the same. Well, Chuck, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by.

20:02Is there a place you'd invite people to connect to you, learn more about Sell Less, Earn More? Yeah, they can find it on Amazon, Sell Less, Earn More. They can also go to 3to5club.com, the number 3TO5club.com, or just find me, Chuck, at cranksetgroup.com. I also have a webpage, chuckblakeman.com. So any of that stuff, if you look up Chuck Blakeman, you're going to find me, unfortunately, if that's your thing. Awesome. Again, I appreciate you stopping by. Hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road, Chuck. Look forward to it, John. Thank you.