Selling the Cost of Doing Nothing w/ Charlotte Lloyd | Ep 458

0:00It's healthy to look for some disagreement. It's healthy to not expect the deal to come in, but be optimistic that it will. But if you need it more than they need it, that does not sell. I am Charlotte Lloyd and you are listening to The Future.

0:17Chris Do: Charlotte Lloyd is a seasoned B2B sales strategist who turns conversations into revenue, not just content clicks. In this episode, we dive into how to diagnose the cost of inaction, move beyond ROI alone, and close the decision by making the cost of staying the same emotionally and financially undeniable. So rather than teaching louder pitching techniques or generic ROI claims, she focuses on buyer psychology, helping sellers uncover the real cost of inaction, spot premium buying signals, and guide hesitant prospects toward a confident decision. Charlotte, welcome to the show. Thank you, Chris.

0:56I am really stoked to be here and it's a pleasure.

1:00Chris Do: Now, there's something that you refer to as the jolt effect, which is you're not losing business to the competition, you're losing it to something else. What is that thing that we're losing it to? Yeah, the jolt effect is actually a book which came out a couple of years after COVID and the authors did some research on actual calls where deals were being discussed. and obviously with revenue intelligence platforms like Gong or Fathom, you know, these kind of call recorders, they could analyze what was happening on calls and where, let's say, they initially did it with sales reps, were sales reps, they wanted to identify where they were losing deals, like what part in the call, was it something they were saying, was it something they were not saying?

1:45And when they analyzed, I think it was over a thousand different calls, they came back with this observation based on their research that most deals were not being lost to the competition. They were being lost to no decision. The buyer or the buyers, if there were several decision makers, felt safer staying where they are than actually making a change. And this is something that always surprises people, especially people who are entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, you know, running their own businesses, their solo operators. And I see this play out with my own clients. Most of the time, it's not that they decide to go with someone else, the buyer.

2:32It's that they would rather do nothing. The status quo is where they would prefer to stay. And they realized after this that actually the reason that the buyers would rather make no decision was because the rep hadn't articulated what the cost of them actually staying the same was costing them. So they would sell perhaps, hey, you know, this is the return on investment you get if you work with us. And that was not enough to move them from the current state, the status quo. So they would choose no decision.

3:10Chris Do: I can relate to what you're saying, because oftentimes when somebody's pitching me something, I'm like, yeah, I'm all right. So let me give you an example. This morning I was driving out from my garage to go to the office to do this podcast with you. I noticed the garage wasn't fully closed. And I'm like, oh yeah, because the chain on the garage opener broke months ago and I haven't fixed it. And then I had called a repair guy to come and the quote he gave me was ridiculous in my opinion. So I'm like, whatever if i need to lift it up i'll manually pull it up right now just sitting there it's not bothering me what could he have done differently understanding the concepts that you're talking about yeah 100 and the thing is is that yeah he sold the repair without selling what the damage would be essentially right so the longer you leave that the more it's going to cost But the thing is, is that so many don't know how to articulate that and ask the right questions that would uncover the cost of inaction.

4:13So when you understand that it's actually going to cost you less now than what it would cost you in the future, there's a logical path to that. But it's also the emotional path. I use the roof repair. Don't sell the roof repair. Sell the damage from the water leakage if it carries on, because that's going to cost a lot more money. So you have a leaking roof and there's water coming into a little bit and you think, oh, I can deal with it. It's not that bad. Maybe I'll patch it up a bit. But yeah, it's expensive to fix it. It might be$2 ,000. Think Think of it as, yeah, if you leave it, a$2 ,000 fixing your garage now or fixing your roof, we're talking about the reeking roof, would become potentially$6 ,000, maybe$8 ,000, right?

5:05So that's the cost of inaction. The let me think about it comes and it's like you're thinking I'll do it in the spring. I'll leave it another few months. That's when it's going to cost the$6 ,000 or$8 ,000. dollars. The questions is that roofer who wants to fix your roof is walking you into the loft with a torch. And basically he's showing you, okay, if you come into the roof, feel this, it's soft. The leak is here. And if you don't fix it, this is what's going to happen. So you're realizing what could happen in the future if you don't do this, if you don't get it fixed now. And the closes, yeah, we've agreed that the timber's soft.

5:50Do you want to sort it now at$2 ,000 or would you rather do it at$8 ,000 in a few months? Because that's what's going to happen. A good roofer shows you the damp joist. A bad one invents one.

6:03Chris Do: Well, now I want to do this because you talk about ROI and then you said there's something about COI, which is an important phrase we all need to learn, which is the cost of inaction. in the instance of the garage repair person, I would just suggest to people, you can't really sell the cost of inaction there because there's really nothing. If they don't use it, just walk away. And you do talk about this too, to kind of say, you know what? You don't have to sell. You don't have to close the deal. And this might have been one of those ones where you don't need to close. Exactly. And that's really important because you have to be able to really understand your buyer and where they are.

6:39Is this cost of inaction? is this where they are now with the broken chain in the garage? Is it where they might want to stay there? They might not want to do anything.

6:48Chris Do: Clearly. You can't force somebody to make a decision. You have to get them to realize themselves that is the cost of change greater than the pain of staying the same? Is the pain big enough to solve? Then yes. And if you're selling to one person, you've got to realize that if you're selling to smaller businesses or medium sized businesses or even bigger businesses, the cost of inaction will be different for the different people who are in that organization. You're looking for an agreed consensus, but you're also looking for what I say, disagreement in that. Do we agree that this is a problem? Do we agree that the cost of this problem is so big that if we stay where we are, it's going to get bigger and bigger?

7:37Or is it just that it isn't that big? It's not a priority to solve right now. So we're going to stay the same. And the more that you can identify this and call it out, ideally before you get on a call, you want to be able to spot if there is a big enough problem to solve. The better it is, the more trust that you build.

7:57Chris Do: I want to see this COI in action in something that is a lane that you know we can role play and it's going to work out just fine. What should we try? I sell to founders. I also sell to B2B teams. Uncovering the cost of inaction with either, let's say a founder who has want to obviously make more money in their business and right now their stock. So let me be an SMB and I sell what I sell today, coaching, products, whatever, retreats, workshops. Okay. Yeah. And you're going to sell me sales training? Yeah. But first of all, I need to assess whether you're a right fit or not. Okay. Ring, ring. Hi, Charlotte.

8:42Hi, Chris. Good to have you on the call. Thanks for, you've provided me a little bit of context in where you are with the business. I know that you've got a lot of business from referral, from networking, from word of mouth. It sounds to me like you've never self-generated leads or pipeline and closed deals, or I could be wrong.

9:03Chris Do: No, actually we do. We're pretty active on social media. We do a lot of content marketing. There's CTAs. There's an email list of over 100 ,000 people. And we do run ads too. Okay. So it sounds like those sales are working and they are what I would define as more marketing techniques, which is great. You've got a newsletter list, you've got ads, deals are coming in. Are you or your team actually getting into conversations, maybe on LinkedIn or email, where you're identifying those leads before they come to you? And is that something that, because obviously what you're doing now is working and you're happy with it.

9:42Chris Do: No, we're not happy with it. When you say that you're not happy with it, where do you feel that the gap is in that all of your leads now are coming from marketing. They're coming to you rather than you going to them. So it sounds like there's a missing piece here, which is you haven't really done the sales outreach part. There is. I'll give you a real example right now. So we do a two-day retreat. It's$5 ,000. We call it Casa Dojo. So people come here and try and help them. We do these once a month. So there's high interest or intent from people. So I do a CTA. They respond. They fill out the applications.

10:20Chris Do: But then they don't put down a deposit. They're not paying. Definitely, there's way more people have expressed interest than the people have paid to be a part of the event. Do you know what that gap is costing you, if you could put a number on it? Yeah, I can tell you right now. So we cap the event in 10 people. it's five thousand dollars a person so the total revenue from this would be 50k and it's important for our business to have this firing on all cylinders so say the last one we had a small number of people show up it was four so yeah that potentially we're leaving 30k on the table why does this matter to you to fix right now rather than say in the next three or six months it matters because we're running the retreats every single month when you look at the next three months and then we can say six and 12 months what do you feel that that is costing you if it's 30k each month tell me what that's costing you in those different time frames yeah i say like between the first month and the second month we had 12 people so like our average would be six people so you can multiply that if we're leaving four people that would be twenty thousand dollars on average.

11:33Chris Do: So every month we don't hit our goal, we are potentially leaving 20K on the table. Okay. So it's 20K multiplied by 12 is 240 ,000. From what you're saying, there's$240 ,000 worth of revenue that you're missing because there's an issue with them not signing up when they're sent the emails and something is dropping off. Have you tried to fix that? We don't know how to fix it. We believe we need to insert a salesperson so they can talk to somebody to guide them through the process. They need a little help. And I believe you do sales training, right? Yes, correct. That's why we're reaching out. You're missing out potentially on 20K a month.

12:16And this has been going on for approximately how long?

12:20Chris Do: Two months. Two months. Okay, so that's 40K. We're just in our third month now. Do you accept that the longer you carry on like this, the more costly it's going to become? Yeah, I'm losing money every single month. Okay. So$20 ,000 a month is your cost of inaction. Every month that you wait, that adds up to$240 ,000 a year. You accept that? Yes, I'm ready to take action. When you look at installing a sales process, what would you want to see happen? Obviously, you want to be able to get those four people turning up. so you're getting back that 20K that you're not making from your marketing. But what else does success look like when you have the right sales system in place?

13:10Chris Do: Close the sale so I can worry about programming for the event. You can fix this now. Do you want to hear how we can work together? Absolutely. I've been waiting for you to say this. Here's what I recommend that needs to happen. First of all, before you outsource to an actual salesperson and bring somebody in external, what I see work better is training one of your team to be able to do this because obviously hiring somebody else is going to cost you three times more each month. And what we need to do is ensure that your team are, or a member of your team can do this and they're willing to put in the work and learn the techniques that are going to be able to close those deals.

13:59So we're not looking at taking a volume approach here. We're looking about having conversations with, first of all, the people who haven't signed up. Nobody's reached out to them, I guess, and asked them why. Or try to get them onto a call to close them.

14:13Chris Do: Yes, I'm on board. Here's what I recommend. And it's the process that we would take is building a system that will work, that will, first of all, approach those people who we have the information, we have their email. We need to outreach to them to invite them to a call. And then we build a process to identify potential leads that are perhaps not coming onto your radar via the marketing funnels where there's probably, let's say, other revenue sitting there that you're not reaching because you don't have an outreach system. And nobody in your team is, you're doing one-to-many marketing, but not one-to-one conversations.

14:56I don't recommend that you go out and spend$30 ,000 on putting in a sales system. This is going to be, to fix this,$3 ,000 a month. And this is going to be over six months.

15:10Chris Do: So investment of$18 ,000? Yeah. $3 ,000 to make$20 ,000 is no problem for me. Let me just ask you, what levels of certainty or guarantees can you make that if we implement the system that we'll be closing that? I have no problems to spend 3K to make 20. I don't offer guarantees because I have to know that the team are going to do it and that they're willing to do it. It won't work if that's not there in place. Right. So would it make sense for me to put you in touch with a person who's going to be trained to do this, to ascertain if they're the right person, if they can be committed before we proceed?

15:45Correct.

15:46Chris Do: Okay. So if you talk to them and they're committed, you in your assessment think that they can do this, what kind of assurance can you provide to me? because we've been down this road before with lots of service providers who tell us it's going to happen and then they can't deliver and it's just frustrating as a business owner. Yeah, so this is what we can do. Let's de-risk this because my concern is that you're going to throw money at this and you're like, when's the result coming? Instead of six months, let's work together for 12 weeks or even let's style this back to a month. I come into the business, have a look at what I feel, well, you've told me what's not being done.

16:24You pay the first month. If we get a result, then it's a natural, okay, let's keep this going. Let's work together further.

16:34Chris Do: Yeah, 100%. I appreciate you meeting me there. I feel much better. And I think you should talk to my person if you feel good or you want to make recommendations. Otherwise, I'm good to proceed. Fantastic. And if the worst came to the worst and you didn't get a result, I'd refund you your money. Even better. You got yourself a deal. and scene.

17:03Chris Do: Why at the end did you offer the money back guarantee? I already agreed to go for it. Yeah, I think it was just like, well, if you don't do this, I'll give you a money back guarantee. But also I'm so confident that it works. Yes, yes. People need to know this. What I want to pinpoint for everybody, let's just pull it back. Zoom 30 ,000 feet and we're going to look at the planet and like, oh, I see all the ants now. I get it. Okay. when you made the concession to reduce and de-risk the engagement from six months to one month i felt like i can throw 3k at this and i'm not worried and i i don't even need you to get me four or five or six new customers one new customer would pay for the thing and then that person can apply that knowledge moving forward so when you met me there i was like i'm good to go and then you threw in the and if it don't work i'll give you money i'm like oh my god she really believes and what she's doing.

17:50Chris Do: And I have to say this, if you're a sales trainer and you approve the person that you're going to train, if you can't help to close one deal for 5K, you're not a sales trainer. I know what you're doing. Let's just put it like that. Unfortunately, for a lot of people who listen to the pod here, they're not confident they can get a result. In fact, they rarely ever talk about results. So that's usually where the problem begins. So everybody, I want you to think about this. Number one, what results are you promising? Number two, how confident are you at achieving said result? If you're not, just work on those two things, You don't have a sales problem.

18:20Chris Do: You have a delivery problem right now. Yes. So many people, when they come to work with me, sometimes they're not clear on the tangible outcome. Depends where they are in the business. There's a tangible outcome with everything. Even if it's emotional, it's usually tied to money or revenue or something financial, emotional. You have to be very clear on what your service does and the results that it gets. You've got to be asking the right questions, being a doctor to really understand what is going on. before you prescribe what might work. You told me that you had a really frustrating time. Why do you feel that didn't work?

18:55Like, what happened? You need to know what the ROI of your service is. I'm not saying that you don't sell with the ROI, but you can't lead with that and expect to get a result. You almost have to look for trouble. Like, where do you think? I'm thinking, oh, Chris is saying he's losing like four clients a month, not coming to the retreat and it's 20K, right? Okay, but does he really want that money? Because he could carry on doing his marketing. So I'm almost disbelieving you and thinking, well, he's saying this, but somehow maybe there's something else that's true. Maybe it doesn't. Nobody wants to really invest in.

19:29I say to myself, and I have this, people would rather get clients for their business via marketing, via personal branding, because it's easier in a lot of ways. Right. It's more unpredictable. It's easier. So I almost disbelieve that people want to have a sales system and understand how that works and implement it. So I think I'm just so conditioned to look for trouble and look for the reasons that you would say no before I go, hey, Chris, I can make you 20K a month with my techniques and you're going to spend 5K a month for three months or six months or whatever, but you're going to make 240K a year.

20:00Now, I could have dived in and hit you with my pitch then. I just didn't want to because it wouldn't have it would have landed really badly.

20:07Chris Do: you spent a god-awful amount of time reiterating this 20k a month and i'm telling you right now i was ready to proceed to like what's the offer what's the deal i'm ready to go but you maybe you're i'll let you explain because i don't know why you spent a lot of time reiterating the same thing 20k six months 120k i get it i'm ready to go i'm ready to go how come it's healthy to look for what i say disagreement or i said look for trouble like really understand is this something that it's almost frustrating, right? Because you are pushing me to give my offer, but I'm like, Chris has to really earn the right to hear it.

20:45And I have to really understand that this is something that he really, really wants to do. So I want to identify, is it the higher end of my service that you need, or is it the lower end or the medium or the lower end, right? So I'm asking those questions. I asked you about other leads. Did you want anyone else to come to your retreat? And you were saying, no, I just want to keep it like intimate and the people know each other. I would rather people, if they're closing a 5K deal, if they're closing it, and if they're closing a 20, 30K deal, you're going to have to have another call probably and present the proposal to other people, depending on what it is that you sell.

21:18And the thing is, is 45 minutes with a buffer for 60 minutes is enough to do a really good call where you can get a close on the call or yes, in principle, and that's it. Anything longer than that. And it's too much.

21:32Chris Do: my business coach taught me this before what is the point of a sales call it's to get them to say yes so once they say yes and it's a real yes not a fake yes then anything after that is going past the sale so how do you resolve this part where i'm like yes yes and at some point i'm like girl if you don't tell me the deal i'm kind of done i'm cooked yeah you need to be able to look for the cues. But when someone is always enthusiastic and saying, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, in my head, I'm going, wait a minute, they're getting really excited. Surely there's a no. 23 years in B2B selling and like, you know, I'm five years doing my own business now.

22:13I am taught to look for the no. I'm taught to look for it not to happen because that allows me to do a better discovery and ask better questions and really understand what does this person want to achieve? I'm only going to take their money if I feel that, okay, this is the thing that they really want to do. And this is enough pain. There's enough cost of inaction. There's a tangible kind of ROI that they want and success outcome. So yeah, I'd rather be more annoying in some ways to build trust. I know the kind of team or person that will get success as well. So I want to make sure that that will happen.

22:50And I'd rather do that in a slightly, I'm not going to do it in 30 minutes. It might take 60 minutes, but ultimately, yeah, it's, we're doing this or we're not doing it. And that's the end of the call.

23:00Chris Do: Okay. Well, you've given me something to think about because I haven't recommended people spend any more time than necessary. Once they get a firm, real positive, yes, stop talking, stop selling, move into the, what next steps look like. So you're giving me a lot to think about. Now I imagine if you're doing B2B sales and it's like large teams and procurement and a lot of decision makers, everything you're saying applies. But when you're talking about a small mom and pop, it's like, oh, how much for a logo? 30K. When do we start? Here's the money. You're like, well, let me make sure you're fully committed to this.

23:33Chris Do: It's like, I don't recommend people do this. So I need to go back in my cave and think about why Charlotte, who's a sales training expert, is recommending this. I'm gonna have to like, sit on this and pontificate. You've got to be healthy about this, right? It's healthy to look the deal to come in, but be optimistic that it will. But if you need it more than they need it, that does not sell. I understand. I'm 100 % for that. So I want to make a point of clarification because I do have to wrap this conversation with you. There is a difference between a buyer who's, I want to move forward, please tell me.

24:11Chris Do: And my feelings as of today, maybe it will change over time, is please don't continue selling. There is a difference between that and a person's like, yeah, go ahead and send me the proposal. There's a big difference there because that's like, I want to get off this call, send me the proposal and you'll never hear from me again and you're going to get ghosted. And then that's where I think when you're looking for trouble, looking for the no, because you're getting dismissed. What sellers do is they get really happy when they're like, oh my God, proposal time, let's party. And then they realize, my God, my close rate is terrible.

24:43Chris Do: That's the problem. Chris, one of the biggest things that people come to me when they're selling their services, you know, they're a small business. Oh my God, I sent the proposal and I got ghosted. I'm like, did you actually take them through it on the call? Or did you set up another call to tailor it and take them through it? No. Well, you believed what they said because people do not like to tell us the truth. They want to let us down gently. They don't want to say no to our face because it's rejection. Nobody wants to be rejected. So we need to give them permission to say what they are really feeling and to find out what they're really feeling.

25:16We need to get to the truth because when we get to the truth, we know if we have a deal or we don't have a deal. Simple as that. We need to give them permission to say no. And a lot of people won't ask those questions because they don't want to hear the answer.

25:30Chris Do: Okay. My guest today has been Charlotte Lloyd. She has done a lot of B2B sales training. She's a sales strategist. And I first want to, A, thank you for being here and being such a good sport and role-playing with me in these weird scenarios and sharing with us a little sample of what you do. For people who are interested in diving deeper into the kinds of things that you do, where do we send them? Send them to LinkedIn. So that's my primary channel. Charlotte Lloyd Sales is my handle. So linkedin.com, charlotteloydsales. I am on Instagram. charlotteloydsales is my handle on Instagram as well.

26:06And I have a newsletter, the charlotteloyd.com forward slash newsletter. Those are three places.

26:13Chris Do: There we go. So I'm sure if you hunt her down on LinkedIn, eventually all roads will lead to something. So let's make sure people go to LinkedIn. You can check her out. She's Charlotte Lloyd. And I think that's it. I think we have to wrap up. Fantastic.