Get motivated with Jeffrey, Jen and Brent! Every Monday we hop on facebook.com/jeffreygitomer. to have our weekly sales meeting help inspire you to LEARN and EARN!
This week we’re discussing your speed of response. How fast do you respond to customer inquiries? Whether it’s a fresh lead or longtime client, your speed of response says a lot about how business with you will be in the future.
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FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Jeffrey Gitomer: Hi everybody, and welcome to Facebook Levi’s edition of Motivation Monday.
Jen Gluckow: What up.
Jeffrey Gitomer: We have about 10 things to promote this morning, so we’re gonna start right out-
Brent Thomas: Here we go.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And my pot of death wish coffee, which is in … people say, “What’s in it? What are they drinking?”
Jen Gluckow: I was looking for the death wish coffee and literally Jeffrey had it. He was hoarding the pods in his hands-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Boom. Pockets.
Jen Gluckow: He wasn’t sharing. Do you have any more in there, Jeffrey?
Jeffrey Gitomer: They’re hard to do it though ’cause they have these reusable, the biodegradable pods, and you smell like coffee, so it’s not like you can hide it.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Anyway, welcome. I’m Jeffrey Gitomer and to my right-
Jen Gluckow: I’m Jen Gluckow.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And to her right-
Brent Thomas: Brent Thomas.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And behind the glass wall, where you can’t even see anybody, is the great-
Doug Branson: Doug Branson. How are you?
Jeffrey Gitomer: All right, good.
Jen Gluckow: And on social media, we have Mr.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Alex Baldwin.
Jen Gluckow: Alex. I don’t think he has a mic. He doesn’t have a mic.
Brent Thomas: Yeah, we’re working on getting him a mic.
Jen Gluckow: He doesn’t have a mic. Okay, okay.
Hey Wes White, what up? Good morning. Happy dynamite day and week guys. You too, Wes.
Doug Branson: Alright, Wes.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And so what I’m wondering … our topic today is … and whenever I hear that, I think of the Great White North-
Jen Gluckow: Wait a minute, some people who are joining us have no idea what Sell or Die is. They might live under a rock, but they have no idea.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Under a rock? Oh. Under a rock. I got it.
Jen Gluckow: What did you think I said?
Doug Branson: Under Iraq?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. Under Iraq.
Jen Gluckow: No, under …
Jeffrey Gitomer: So I think that they should know … it’s a sale show and this is our Monday live show on Facebook and we’re gonna do a kind of a sales meeting so that you out there in sales land can maybe land a sale.
Jen Gluckow: That’s right and we do three shows a week on Sell or Die podcast. You can get it wherever you get your podcast, on Overcast, iTunes, Stitcher-
Jeffrey Gitomer: You must be 21.
Jen Gluckow: Whatever.
Jeffrey Gitomer: We’re rated E for excellent.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, we are rated E. And we talk about sales and personal development and on Monday, we try to give you something-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Extra-
Jen Gluckow: Uber inspiring. On Tuesdays we interview a guest and on Thursdays we have a-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Sales manager kind of guy.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah. Sales manager kind of guy or a Sell or Die extra where we bring you some extra nuggets of information.
Jeffrey Gitomer: We’re brought to you by Death Wish Coffee.
Jen Gluckow: We are, we are-
Jeffrey Gitomer: There’s the pod-
Jen Gluckow: We really love Death Wish Coffee.
Jeffrey Gitomer: But if you go to Overcast and you sign up for this show and you start to rate the show, you can get us back to the number one position.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah NPR is beating us and that’s bull.
Jeffrey Gitomer: We fell behind NPR, like seriously?
Jen Gluckow: I mean like how could they be beating us in the business category? That’s crazy.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Exactly. NPRB. The B stands for boring. And-
Jen Gluckow: Ken Walls is here, what up Walls?
Jeffrey Gitomer: And we’re trying … today our topic is going to be … may I reveal it?
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, you can reveal it, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Response. And response is something that most people think they do well, but most people don’t really understand the essence of it because they do it from themselves, when in fact, it’s felt by the customer or by the prospect or by whomever it is that you have a relationship with.
This morning I was on the phone with American Express and we had a conversation and literally when we hung up, I had an email from them.
Jen Gluckow: Jeffrey hung up the phone and looked at me, he goes, “I already have a confirmation.”
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right.
Jen Gluckow: “It’s already in my inbox.”
Jeffrey Gitomer: And I wasn’t expecting it, I was sort of flabbergasted by it because most big companies will tell you that they’ll respond within 24 to 48 hours. Like, hello. And this just got to me that that’s what everyone expects.
Jen Gluckow: It is and it may be like because I’ve grown up with it, I expect it. What about you, Brent?
Brent Thomas: Yup. I expect the 24 hour to 48 response to say that, but then if it comes sooner, I’m always like, “oh. That was way sooner than 24 hours. I like that.”
Jen Gluckow: I expect a confirmation of some sort within seconds. If I buy something, I want the email right away to give me my receipt and my log in information or whatever it may be. For me, it’s an expectation.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I wonder if Dominos, in their 3D era … it used to be 30 minutes or less or it’s free. Remember Dominos till they ran over somebody and then they quit that campaign?
Jen Gluckow: Yeah.
Jeffrey Gitomer: But in the era of 3D printing, I wonder if we could set our 3D printing on a pizza with pepperoni and get that puppy starting to produce itself like instantly. I can’t see that that’s gonna be too far in the future.
Jen Gluckow: No I think that’s coming. So Ken Walls said love you guys and shared, so thank you Ken.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Jen Gluckow: And that brings up a good point for us.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Share the damn thing.
Jen Gluckow: Share this, guys, come on. Share this out with your network, show us some love. Help your friends get better at selling, help your friends make more money. That’s what the show is all about.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And it is part of the entire process of Sell or Die.
Jen Gluckow: That’s right. Sorry.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Hold the mug in your left hand. Okay, there you go.
Jen Gluckow: Happy?
Brent Thomas: Need to see it.
Jeffrey Gitomer: There you go.
Brent Thomas: Well it’s got two sides.
Jen Gluckow: It does have two sides.
Jeffrey Gitomer: All things have two sides. Like, hello.
Jen Gluckow: It’s like I’m writing this on the back of the napkin.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right, exactly.
Jen Gluckow: Well, which is the front?
Brent Thomas: Yeah, true.
Jeffrey Gitomer: The part that has the company’s name on it. Right? Dean & DeLuca went broke, by the way.
Jen Gluckow: I know, that’s so crazy. I really like Dean & … did they go broke? Is that why or?
Jeffrey Gitomer: I don’t know. They have new owners.
Jen Gluckow: Were people not shopping there enough?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Doug knows.
Doug Branson: Well, first of all, Dean & DeLuca is a restaurant-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, Charlotte.
Doug Branson: That is in … it’s located nationally, but yeah, in Charlotte, North Carolina, three of them went belly up.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah and I had one on my street in New York City, it was on 86 and Madison-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Where am I gonna get egg salad?-
Jen Gluckow: I was obsessed with it. I mean, I would go there all the time.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Where am I gonna get egg salad? That’s what I wanna know.
Jen Gluckow: Well, I don’t know unless we import it from Dean & DeLuca or make it in our house.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And their sandwich people are wonderful. Oh, you know what? I can get it at Poppy’s.
Jen Gluckow: Oh, good thing. We almost had a crisis here in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So, let’s talk about response.
Jen Gluckow: Yes.
Jeffrey Gitomer: You go into a-
Jen Gluckow: You think maybe their response wasn’t quick enough?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right. Well, our producer is giving us one of those little things.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, we just got the, “move on guys, this is boring.”
Jeffrey Gitomer: So, what’s expected these days in response? Are you expected to respond instantaneously?
Jen Gluckow: Well, I can tell you what’s expected from Ken Walls. He expects you to say hi because apparently I did but you didn’t.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, Hi Ken.
Ken. What up.
Brent Thomas: Why does Jen say, “[inaudible 00:06:57] Jeffrey doesn’t.”
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yes.
Brent Thomas: Where’s your response?
Jeffrey Gitomer: I apologize for not responding to you personally, Ken. I’ll try to make it up next time.
Jen Gluckow: There you go.
Jeffrey Gitomer: In fact, next week, I’ll respond to you before you even sign on, how about that?
Jen Gluckow: Now that’s good response. There you go.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, a proactive response.
Jen Gluckow: Exactly.
Jeffrey Gitomer: But how do you respond to your customers? If you’re a die hard and you’re listening to this and go, “yeah, I respond pretty quickly.” Really? What do your customers think? And-
Jen Gluckow: Bless you.
Brent Thomas: Bless you.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Don’t [inaudible 00:07:26]. Do your customers ever email you back saying, “wow, that was quick.”? Do your customers ever give you a comment on your response? Do you ever-
Jen Gluckow: How many people can you think of that you do business with that their speed of response is something you actually consider fast.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, I AMEX for one. I mean that just blew me away this morning.
Jen Gluckow: I’m thinking of someone really specific.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Is it the name of a fish? Why are we guessing, just-
Jen Gluckow: Ben Pesky.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Huh?
Jen Gluckow: Ben Pesky. He’s the most responsive person on the planet.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh yeah.
Jen Gluckow: Is he not?
Jeffrey Gitomer: I have a compliment that I can share with the world. Harvey McKay calls me … he’s like my dad and I love him, but he likes me to say he’s like a brother because he doesn’t want to admit he’s older than I am. But when he calls me, whatever I’m doing, I drop it and I answer the phone. He calls me the most available person in the United States and it’s a compliment to me. And now, it’s like tradition. So, how available are you? I tell people all the time, you can call me, we have a 24 hour live person that answers our phone. I think that’s responsive. I don’t want somebody to go to voicemail, “thanks for calling. Your call’s real important. Please select from among the following nine options because our menu has recently changed-
Jen Gluckow: That we’ve done to serve you better.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, to serve you-
Jen Gluckow: Really?
Jeffrey Gitomer: No, it’s to diss me off. Not to serve me better. And so I wanna know, and then what happens? I leave a message, then what?
Brent Thomas: Out of all nine options, there’s no option to talk to a normal person-
Jen Gluckow: To talk. I just wanna talk to someone sometimes.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Press three if you wanna beat the crap out of the person that made this message.
So I think that, as a business, if you’re looking for responsiveness, hire a live answering service. That would be number one tip of the morning. Hire someone 24/7 to answer your phone because most … people calling, they want help or they wanna give you business.
Jen Gluckow: It’s not so expensive. So like, if you’re a sales person and it’s not even your business and you want someone to be answering your number 24/7 and you can’t get to your phone, you can have your-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right. 50 bucks a month and you can get it done.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah. You can have your calls forwarded to a live answering service where someone could literally take a message, ping you, send you an email and a text message with the message. It’s amazing.
Jeffrey Gitomer: You hear them advertise now on cable like, grasshopper or ruby or whatever it is, but make sure the person … whatever the thing is that they’re bullshitting you, make sure that they answer the phone live with the word, “hello.” That’s what I wanna hear, “hello?”
Jen Gluckow: So it doesn’t sound like an answering machine.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, I mean, think about it. Right now, if you call an airline-
Jen Gluckow: Oh, gosh.
Jeffrey Gitomer: It takes you two minutes to hit the right button to get to a person that can help you.
Jen Gluckow: Except if you’re … okay, like on American Airlines, if you’re executive platinum, they push you into a different queue so someone picks up your call right away. But now we’ve been demoted to platinum pro and we don’t get the good queue anymore, so it takes like 10 minutes to wait on hold. It’s crazy. What am I? I’m no longer a good customer of American Airlines?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, just to give them your money. And by the way, they wanted to tell me how mihc they appreciate our business.
Brent Thomas: And you did not just fly internationally did you?
Jeffrey Gitomer: No.
Jen Gluckow: No, no, no. We are not jet lagged at all.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And for the record, they don’t give a shit about my business.
Jen Gluckow: Right.
Jeffrey Gitomer: If I die tomorrow, they’re not gonna send me a card. Geez, we’re sorry to see you go.
Jen Gluckow: Well you were kicked off their-
Jeffrey Gitomer: And your 25,000 … yeah I was. No, I was kicked off of U.S. Airways.
Jen Gluckow: I know but they own that now.
Jeffrey Gitomer: That’s true. They bought my kick offedness.
Doug Branson: So far you have discussed speed of response in terms of customer service, but there’s also an aspect of speed of response when we’re talking about lead generation and responding to those leads.
Jen Gluckow: I love Doug Branson because he always knows how to get us right back on track.
Jeffrey Gitomer: No, he knows what we’re not talking about.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Like those idiots are not talking about lead response.
Jen Gluckow: He’s funneling us in the right direction. Okay, so what do you do, Brent, when you get a lead? What’s your typical response.
Brent Thomas: So from our Gitomer genie that just, boom, puts a lead in my hand. I wish.
Jen Gluckow: Love that.
Brent Thomas: Does do that once a week.
Jen Gluckow: No, leads come in often. More often than that.
Brent Thomas: If there’s a number to call them, I call them right away. And then if there’s not a number, I email them right away. Within the first five minutes of me getting that lead.
Jen Gluckow: Cool.
Brent Thomas: Quicker if I can. If I’m not in the middle of doing something, even if it’s on the weekend. And then I will follow up with them, I’ll set a reminder to follow up with them two hours or three hours later if I have not heard anything back from them.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, that’s good. Here’s my take on this. If someone is submitting an inquiry on your website, that means they’re interested right now. Not two hours from now, not three days from now, not on Monday at 9 a.m.-
Jeffrey Gitomer: And they may be in a different time zone and you may be “off of work”.
Jen Gluckow: Right.
Jeffrey Gitomer: It may be the weekend.
Jen Gluckow: But they’re interested right now and they’re likely comparing you to your competition on the web, right now. And so how many times have we called someone at midnight because they’ve submitted an inquiry. We’re like, oh they’re up ’cause they just submitted something.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And my close of the sale is, think of how cool this story’s gonna be when I talk to your audience and tell them that I responded to you at midnight. They go, “yeah.”
Doug Branson: Now that’s an interesting point that Jen brings up. What has online done to the lifespan of a sales lead? I mean it’s decreasing-
Jen Gluckow: It’s shortened it. For sure, it shortened it because now I can do all of my research online, I know what I want before I even go to the place or before I even call someone.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right. You Google them as you’re calling them and you know exactly who they are and what they do.
Jen Gluckow: Well something on your website had to be appealing enough for them to even hit the call button.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Or you had to have a reputation that brought them there.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, that’s true.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Something happened to trigger the response.
Brent Thomas: It’s decreased the life of a sales lead, but it’s also, I think, all of this technology has increased our ability to respond quickly, but it still takes that inner will to say, I am going to use the tools that I have to execute.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I concur. You have to be willing to do it. You can say, “oh I’ll call the guy back on Friday.”
Jen Gluckow: I get excited when someone submits a lead at off hours because I get to prove what we are talking about right now that we actually do this. And I’ll call and they’re flabbergasted that I called, right?
And then I say, “oh and Jeffrey’s right here, let me put him on the phone,” ’cause you’re usually next to me and they’re even more surprised-
Jeffrey Gitomer: What does that mean, Jen? What does that mean?
Brent Thomas: It means you’re available.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, you’re available.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Okay. For the call. But, here’s the deal. You have to be a genuine-
Jen Gluckow: Ken, can you not hear Doug when he’s talking to us? He said we keep going silent when Doug’s talking to us, I wonder if he can’t hear Doug.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Doug is not broadcasting to the world.
Jen Gluckow: We don’t know, we don’t know. But also, Ken, who seems to be the only person commenting, so guys, you gotta beat Ken here because this is crazy. He loves our new coffee mug. I love our new coffee mug, too, thank you, Ken. Cheers.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I would challenge you if you’re out there listening right now, why not post something about fast you respond?
Jen Gluckow: Oh, they can’t hear Doug. Oh no.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Give us a brag.
Jen Gluckow: Thanks for letting us know. Doug says such important, amazing things. That’s really a shame.
Doug Branson: Well I’ll say them all again. No, they should be able to hear me now and if you missed all of my wisdom, then you can-
Jen Gluckow: Oh, no. No, Doug.
Doug Branson: No, here’s what you do, you subscribe to the Sell or Die podcast because we put these shows on the feed and we fix any issues that we have during the live show, so.
Jen Gluckow: There you go. Thank you guys for letting us know you couldn’t hear him. I’m sure he’ll chime in again soon-
Jeffrey Gitomer: And if you really like explicit language, you gotta listen back because Doug weaned our asses out-
Jen Gluckow: What?
Jeffrey Gitomer: And it was wonderful-
Brent Thomas: He was dropping some bombs.
Doug Branson: Well I have some stats for you on the-
Jen Gluckow: Good. Good, Wes, thanks-
Doug Branson: Short life of online sales leads.
Jen Gluckow: Oh, wow. Okay, tell us, Doug.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So what you’re talking about is the sales cycle or the sales response time. Not necessarily … like does it die after a minute and a half, is that what you’re trying to say?
Doug Branson: Well, yeah. The life span of an online sales lead. So someone responds to your website inquiring about your product or service and then how-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Got it. How long does it take you, yeah.
Doug Branson: Yeah, exactly. So this was from the Harvard Business Review.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I’ve heard of them.
Doug Branson: And they surveyed 2,241 U.S. companies and the data showed that for these online sales leads, 37% of companies responded within an hour.
16% responded within one to 24 hours.
24% took more than 24 hours.
And get this guys, 23% of those companies never responded.
Jen Gluckow: Never responded? Idiots.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh my gosh.
Jen Gluckow: Someone wants to buy your product and you don’t respond. That’s happened to me, by the way. I’ve submitted inquiries and I’m like following up and following up and following up-
Jeffrey Gitomer: I wonder what the stat would be though, Doug, less than an hour? Like 10 minutes.
Doug Branson: Yeah, 37% responded within the hour, so no kind of breakdown minute to minute, but that’s good.
Jeffrey Gitomer: That’s pretty good, though.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah.
Brent Thomas: Can we get deeper and figure out what the close ratio for that was?
Doug Branson: I’ll call the Harvard Business Review.
Brent Thomas: Alright.
Jen Gluckow: Thank you, thank you.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Tell them we said hey, tell the Mark Zuckerberg said hey.
Jen Gluckow: Jeffrey, I’m gonna use your stat here, but I can guarantee that 74% of closed deals happen when you respond to the lead quickly.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I totally agree … when you respond quickly.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah. Exactly.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I agree with that.
Jen Gluckow: Speed of response is everything-
Jeffrey Gitomer: But people expect it now-
Jen Gluckow: But not only is the speed everything, quality. Let’s talk about the quality of your response.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Okay. If you respond by email and you’ve spelt something wrong-
Jen Gluckow: Or bad grammar.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Or you’ve just given them the email with the three bullet points in it. Like here’s why you should send us money now, not good. I want something personalized. Is that agreed among us?
Jen Gluckow: Yes. Yeah, I don’t want a template response. I want to feel like you’re talking to me.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Exactly. And I want numbers. I want communication numbers, send me your phone number, send me your email address, send me something that I can get back to you that will assure me that you’ll respond back immediately.
Brent Thomas: So how do you send out a personalized response email if you don’t know, A, anything about the person just yet?
Jeffrey Gitomer: You Google them.
Brent Thomas: Okay. And they have just … you got a notification that says so and so is interested in your company or product.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. I LinkedIn them.
Brent Thomas: Okay.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Because most people that are anything are on LinkedIn. Then I would Google them to see what the deal is, then I would Google their company name, assuming it’s not Gmail. A lot of people work for Gmail, have you ever noticed that?
Brent Thomas: Yeah.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So I want to try and find out those three things. I’ll Google the company, I’ll Google the person and I’ll LinkedIn the person. Those are my three-
Jen Gluckow: You can do that all literally while you’re calling the person.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, literally.
Jen Gluckow: And look up their company while you’re on the phone with them if you wanna get back quickly.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Even if you’re on your smartphone.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I mean, the technology is unbelievable that you can get all this information while the phone is ringing.
Brent Thomas: So what you’re saying is there’s no excuse.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Zero.
Jen Gluckow: There’s none. There’s really none.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I mean, unless they answer the phone in one ring and you go, “hang on a second, bud, I’m checking you out. I’m checking your LinkedIn profile. By the way, it blows.”
Jen Gluckow: So this is funny, Wes, in reference to not being able to hear Doug, said, I just thought we were playing really hard charades. You got a ding, Wes. That’s amazing.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, very funny, Wes.
Jen Gluckow: And Ken says I’ve received a lot of compliments because of my response time. It’s actually a huge pet peeve or mine. You have to be a complete idiot to not respond immediately.
I agree. There’s no excuse. Even if you’re on a nine hour plane, okay? Then you have someone cover for you, you figure it out so that you can respond immediately.
Jeffrey Gitomer: On a nine hour plane ride we were on yesterday, we could’ve responded, but the-
Jen Gluckow: The WiFi was broke.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. That was American Airline cheap ass WiFi, in case anyone’s listening.
Jen Gluckow: Their new Panasonic ultra fancy WiFi was broken.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. Exactly.
Jen Gluckow: And they couldn’t even reset it. Stupid.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And it was $19 for a seven hour flight.
Jen Gluckow: But we would’ve paid, each.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh yeah. Such idiots.
Jen Gluckow: You think that would respond?
Jeffrey Gitomer: “well we don’t know how to fix it, there’s nothing we can do.”
Jen Gluckow: Oh this is actually cool. So I mentioned it to the flight attendant and she gave me points or miles or whatever because of my WiFi experience. So right there, on the spot, you know they have these new handheld devices.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right, they have WiFi, but we don’t.
Jen Gluckow: Right and they’re able to award you points that she said I wouldn’t see until six weeks from now.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right. Because they have to send somebody a pigeon to be able to get it. Jackasses.
Jen Gluckow: So, Jeffrey, you have-
Jeffrey Gitomer: And by the way, the food sucked.
Jen Gluckow: How do you know? We didn’t eat any of it.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right, exactly.
Jen Gluckow: We don’t [crosstalk 00:20:45].
Brent Thomas: Flight sounds wonderful.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah it was great.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Somebody said, do you want the …
Jen Gluckow: The rubbery chicken or the stale pasta. That’s what the steward said on the plane.
Jeffrey Gitomer: That’s the flight attendant coming back.
Brent Thomas: No way.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah. And they guy goes, “I’ll take the stale pasta, please.”
Brent Thomas: That’s awesome.
Jen Gluckow: It was pretty funny.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So at least they were being funny.
Jen Gluckow: So you have a pet peeve, we were just out of the office, out of the country, and you have a pet peeve about what people do when they go out of the country with their responses. Or out of the office, sorry.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh yeah, an auto response. Like, seriously? Your life is that important that you gotta tell me you’re … “well I’m at the doctor’s right now. They’re checking my heart rate.” No I don’t really give a shit what you’re doing. What I want you to do is just respond to me.
Jen Gluckow: Right.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Don’t respond to my response and tell me you’re not responding because you’re not able to respond right now.
Jen Gluckow: We expect people to be on at this age and time like 24/7.
Jeffrey Gitomer: We send out our weekly email. We get hundreds of, “I’m out of the office at this moment.” Like, seriously? I don’t …
Jen Gluckow: I love the really long ones, they make me laugh. “I’m out of the office at this moment, so if you need help with this, email this person. With this, email this person” and it’s like a diary or a book of some sort, like why would I want to read all that? It’s crazy.
Ken says, about our airline woes, just get your own private jet. Problem solved. I agree because if we bring our dogs, they really need to fly.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh my God. Let me just share this. If you’re out of the office and you want to tell somebody you’re out of the office, let me give you a clue. They don’t care that you’re out of the office. They don’t give one rat’s ass that you’re out of the office.
Jen Gluckow: They still want their issue solved.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Huh?
Jen Gluckow: They still want their issue solved. How difficult is it … I get a couple hundred emails a day. I am still able, while out of the office, to check my email and respond to the people that need response.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And I don’t get notified that I get an email because that’s a real pain in the ass, but I respond to people. They know that I’m going to respond in some period of time. If you have my cell number and you text me, I will respond immediately. But you ain’t got my cell number and you’re not gonna get it.
Jen Gluckow: 7-0 … just kidding.
Brent Thomas: What about the response, if you truly are busy and you can’t get back to them within a few hours, just say, “hey I got your email, I’m looking into this.”
Jeffrey Gitomer: No, I don’t do that. I either get back or-
Brent Thomas: You don’t think people appreciate that?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Maybe.
Jen Gluckow: It depends on what it is.
Brent Thomas: It depends on the issue, I guess. Or the request
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, it depends. If it’s like something they need right away, they probably don’t wanna wait while you look into it, but if it’s something they can wait on, I think that’s okay.
Brent Thomas: If you’re putting out a serious fire, I think that that’s okay.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. If your car’s just been in a wreck or something, but seriously, I need to know if you have this in stock … like yeah I got it.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, not cool. Ken says get a freaking virtual assistant if you have to. I agree.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I agree.
Jen Gluckow: Although, you have to make sure whoever you hire has proper grammar and-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Is Ken on our show?
Jen Gluckow: I love that he’s participating.
Proper grammar and spelling because …
Jeffrey Gitomer: So, die hards. If you’re out there right now, how about participating? Come on, pick up your pheon or pick up your computer and throw something at us. Throw a questions about how to respond better or put in a comment about how you respond. Or maybe you’re just not that good at it. Or maybe you’ve been at it for a long time, you don’t feel like you gotta do things quickly. Or maybe you’re not that technologically advanced to be able to respond in two seconds.
Jen Gluckow: Part of response is the consistency of it. So like, Ben, who I mentioned before, he owns Freedom Merchants in New York City, it’s a credit card processing company.
Jeffrey Gitomer: He’s our guy, Ben.
Jen Gluckow: He’s our guy. And Ben literally responds within seconds every time, no matter what. Every time. One time, which was last week or two weeks ago when we had an issue, he didn’t respond within seconds and I knew something had to be up because it was so unlike him. And it turned out he was at jury duty or whatever and getting set up to respond to people.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Jury duty. Guilty.
Jen Gluckow: Well, that’s for him to decide, not us.
Jeffrey Gitomer: They disqualified me when I … they said what’s my opinion, I said everyone who comes here is guilty. They let me out.
But let me throw something at you, [crosstalk 00:25:21]-
Jen Gluckow: But because of the consistency, I knew that he would get back to us.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, agreed. So, my daughter, who is nine now, when she was eight, asked me if I would email the people in Australia about Shopkins. So I went online and I found their contact thing and I emailed them and I said, okay, I sent it. And then a minute later, she goes, did they respond yet?
Jen Gluckow: What’d they say?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. She went like a minute later, I go, whoa. We just emailed them a minute ago. She goes, yeah I know. So the younger generation is expecting a faster response than we, as mature, yet decrepit old people are not used to doing it that fast. I mean, it’s a new world.
Brent Thomas: Also, I think that some people believe that there’s a perception that if they delay the response, it seems like they’re busier.
Jen Gluckow: Oh, that’s stupid.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, give me a break, that sounds like … it’s an old world sales thing.
Jen Gluckow: Like making people wait online outside to show that your restaurant is busy?
Brent Thomas: Yeah.
Jeffrey Gitomer: yeah.
Brent Thomas: I see tables right there.
Jen Gluckow: But you go inside and half the tables are empty.
Jeffrey Gitomer: In the old days, sales people were actually taught that if a customer asks you a question, you ignore it. Or that if they ask you about price, that you don’t give it to them. That was the old way of doing things.
Doug Branson: Playing hard to get.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Playing stupid. Well, I’ll go over the price a little later.
Jen Gluckow: It’s so manipulative. It’s awful. Oh, man.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Absolutely ridiculous, yeah.
Jen Gluckow: Wait, do people actually believe that if they take a longer time to respond, it means they’re lucky you’re responding to them?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, I’m very busy right now [crosstalk 00:27:03] back to you-
Brent Thomas: I don’t know if luck’s a factor into it, but I would say that there are people out there who would say, don’t respond right away because you don’t wanna seem like you’ve got nothing going on.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh my gosh, yeah.
Jen Gluckow: I want, personally, I wanna feel like I’m someone’s only customer-
Brent Thomas: Yeah. Every customer wants to feel that way-
Jen Gluckow: And that’s how I wanna be treated and that’s how I wanna treat my customers.
Brent Thomas: Absolutely. Agreed.
Jeffrey Gitomer: If any of you out there in die hard land wanna hire me to do a seminar for your sales people, watch how fast I respond.
Brent Thomas: I think that’s what it comes down to.
Jen Gluckow: You could even get a sell in that case.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Listen, if I’m gonna be available, then I’m gonna be available. I wanna be available, I wanna be approachable, I wanna be affable when I’m talking to them on the phone. But that’s not everybody. I can promise you, that is not everybody.
Jen Gluckow: Well, we’re telling you the strategies to win, so you might wanna try these.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So if somebody out there wants to find the pain, don’t call me. I’ll find you the pleasure.
Brent Thomas: Yup. I like that.
Jen Gluckow: I agree.
Brent Thomas: What about another former response? The second or third time you’re following up with-
Jen Gluckow: Like the follow up?
Brent Thomas: Yeah, the follow up. How often or how much time do you let go?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, I have a response that I’ve used for years-
Brent Thomas: System?
Jen Gluckow: Go for it.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Okay. If you believe in your heart that you can help the people that you’re calling or emailing, then you never quit. And the best thing you can do is tell them.
Say, “Listen. You’re not responding to me and I believe I’m the best to answer for you.” … I don’t say “solution” ever, I always say answer … “and if you decide that you don’t want our services or my services, then just tell me. Just say get the hell out of here.”
And then I’m gonna respond for like three more weeks and then that’s it, I’m gonna quit. And once you tell them, it’s like I break the ice with humor. I break the response ice with humor. And sometimes it’s kind of an insult, like, “your voicemail must be broken ’cause you’re not returning my call.”
But I don’t think you wanna go down that path, I think you wanna just voice your sincerity and voice that you believe in your heart that you’re the best answer for them.
Jen Gluckow: I love that method because it’s genuine and it’s sincere and it’s authentic to Jeffrey, right? It’s humorous.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, my way.
Jen Gluckow: Right. I have seen some really crappy emails where someone puts some weird gif and they’re like, “is everything okay?” And then they put like an animal coming out of a hole and they’re like, “you must be buried or something because you haven’t responded to my emails in six days and I’ve tried 93 times. I just wanted to make sure you’re alive and okay.” You don’t give a shit if I’m alive. You wanna sell me something.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Exactly, you just want my money. You know what, why don’t you gif me a credit card? All I need is the number and that expiration date and I’ll get-
Jen Gluckow: But I’ve seen like 10 different variations of this are you still alive and okay kind of thing and it’s like, you don’t actually care. Why would you ask me that?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Okay let’s do one more response.
Jen Gluckow: Okay.
Jeffrey Gitomer: You’ve just sent a proposal to somebody and they haven’t responded back to you for three or four days and now you’re calling them up to make sure they got it and to make sure that they don’t have any questions. That is, I will guarantee you, that there are a million sales people a day that are making that stupid ass phone call. “I just sent you that proposal and I wanted to make sure that”-
Jen Gluckow: “I just wanted to follow up”-
Jeffrey Gitomer: “To see if I could have your money. Yeah, that’s it. The money. Is it ready yet? Can I come get it?”
Brent Thomas: So what would you suggest to those millions of people a day who are doing that?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Never send a proposal without a firm time to call them back ever, ever, ever.
“I’d love to send you this proposal, Mr. Jones, but I’m not allowed to.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, unless I have a firm, exact time to call you back to talk about it, I’m not allowed to send this proposal. ‘Cause our proposals are customized, they’re not standard.”
“Oh, well, you know” …
And I like to make odd times, so, “Monday at 9:59 a.m., would that be okay? And you don’t even actually have to answer the phone, other than one second. 9:59, it’s gonna be me. You pick the phone up, you go ‘yes!’ and hang up.”
So I put humor into it so that people feel like there’s an ability to engage with me, like I’m a normal human being. I’m not some guy with a pipe up his ass trying to be a professional. I don’t want professional. I want friendly.
Jen Gluckow: Well, you still want them to be professional, but not just professional. No?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Jen Gluckow: See, I want both.
Brent Thomas: Friendly professional?
Jen Gluckow: Yeah. I don’t want someone who’s-
Jeffrey Gitomer: “Hi, I’m a friendly professional and”-
Jen Gluckow: To me, someone who’s unprofessional lacks grammar, lacks spelling, lacks-
Jeffrey Gitomer: They don’t have to tell you that. That shows.
Jen Gluckow: Right.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So if you have to tell me you’re professional, I don’t get it. But I want to be friendly so people go, “oh, friendly.” You know what I mean?
Jen Gluckow: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I understand what you’re saying, yeah.
Brent Thomas: I agree that professionalism shows. Or does it?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, professionalism shows. And now there’s all kinds of professionalism. There’s politically correct professionalism, there’s gender professionalism, there’s …
Jen Gluckow: People are ready to bite. Literally people are ready to snap at everything you say. You were making a joke with the lady in the chocolate store, the G Store, in Paris and-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, hold on. A throw away line.
Jen Gluckow: Sorry.
Jeffrey Gitomer: On my way back from the moon, I … that’s the ultimate throw away line, by the way.
Jen Gluckow: Okay, at the chocolate store. And she happened to be American and from Jersey. And you were making a joke about, these are male kinda cookies or chocolates and these are females cookies and she was like getting so outraged. “You’re the weirdest person, I’ve never heard of such a thing, how could a chocolate be for males?”
Jeffrey Gitomer: No, this is what it was. I said “women like” … and I probably said the word “girls” because if you have 45 year old daughters, you’re allowed to use the world “girls.” I said, “girls like milk chocolate and men like dark chocolate.”
And she goes, “they do not!”
And her husband goes, “oh, I like dark chocolate.” That pissed her off to know it.
Jen Gluckow: She was so mad that he was …
Jeffrey Gitomer: Kind of on my side.
Jen Gluckow: It was crazy. And he was just joking around, like people are ready to jump at the craziest things lately.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I just have a story … it has nothing to do with anything, but it was funny.
I’m on my way to the recording studio before we had our own studio, so this was like 25 years ago, and I was late. And I’m going a little bit quicker than normal and someone ran the stop street and banged into the back of me. Yeah.
And it was a woman and she gets out of the car and she’s crying and the cops come and finally her husband comes and it’s like a six foot five guy that weighs 300 pounds.
And he comes over to me, he goes, “did you write that column in the business journal?” And I go, “yeah,” and we start talking about sales and meanwhile his wife is crying. It was hysterical. Totally hysterical.
Jen Gluckow: She was probably really shooken up, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, she was all shook up that she ran a stop street.
Brent Thomas: Yeah, she get the ticket though?
Jeffrey Gitomer: She did get a ticket.
Brent Thomas: She couldn’t sell her way out of that one.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Nope.
Jen Gluckow: No, no.
Jeffrey Gitomer: But, anyway.
Jen Gluckow: All right. So for those of you just joining us, this is Sell or Die, our weekly podcast, today is Motivation Monday ’cause it’s Monday and we wanna rock your week. You can subscribe to Sell or Die on any of the places you get your podcasts.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Especially Overcast if you have an iPhone.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, if you have an iPhone, please download the Overcast app, like our show because we’re currently being beat by NPR.
Jeffrey Gitomer: NPR. Seriously?
Jen Gluckow: And that’s BS, we wanna beat NPR, okay. We’re beating two out of three of their shows, but there’s one show that’s just creaming us right now and that’s crazy.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. And you can help.
Brent Thomas: It’s not even good.
Jeffrey Gitomer: You can help. You also might want to, assuming that you’re not making all the sales that you’re hoping for, you can go to the gitomerlearningacademy.com and you can subscribe. I think that’s the best way to-
Jen Gluckow: I love it. Or if you’re not ready to subscribe, which that’s crazy, but I understand, you can request a demo with Brent over here and he’ll provide you with demo.
Brent Thomas: See how fast I respond.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Exactly.
Jen Gluckow: Exactly.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Check his response time.
Brent Thomas: For real. Test me.
Jen Gluckow: Just don’t submit it this very second, no, just kidding. Submit right now, I guarantee as soon as we’re over, he’ll respond. And we’re gonna pop that into the comments so you have the link.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And there is a level that you can get into the learning academy by not getting the whole thing and that’s with our Sales Warrior program.
Jen Gluckow: What’s a warrior, Jeffrey? What’s really, what’s a sales warrior?
Jeffrey Gitomer: A warrior is someone who gets up an hour before everybody else, goes to sleep an hour later than everybody else, and in the middle, works their ass off, whether they’re male or female. And they are fighting for the sale that they know they deserve. They’re fighting for their success because they’re an eager student, they’re an eager meeter of people, they go to networking events, they do the things with intensity that other sales people fail to do and consequently fail to capture a part of the market that they deserve. A warrior gets more than their share.
Jen Gluckow: And so in your course, you teach people the fundamentals of how to become a warrior?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, it’s about attitude. It’s about the objection that you’re gonna get inside of a sales call and the value that you have to offer inside of a sales call and how to close. That’s the warrior encapsulated program and it’s really good, it’s really intense. And by the way, if you’re looking for the real warrior, this is not a Bud Light commercial, but at the end, you might drink a Bud Light or some beer that’s drinkable-
Jen Gluckow: A celebratory drink-
Jeffrey Gitomer: In order to celebrate your sales.
Jen Gluckow: All right. Tara says, I have a prospect that’s been in a horrible trauma. How do you sell but not overwhelm her?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Just be her friend. Have coffee, have tea and however long it takes, be the person who never asks for the sale. Be the person who earns the sale by virtue of the fact that you’re there for them when they need you. They’ll remember it forever.
Jen Gluckow: Mm-hmm (affirmative). When someone’s going through a hard time-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Just be their friend-
Jen Gluckow: It’s like the worst time to ask them to buy something. I mean, it’s like the last thing on their mind.
Jeffrey Gitomer: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear about that car crash. What’s your credit card expiration date?”
Jen Gluckow: “Yeah, can I get you signed up for this?” No.
Brent Thomas: And I think the experience is whether it’s good or bad. They could be having a baby, which is a great thing in someone’s life-
Jen Gluckow: Great point.
Brent Thomas: You still don’t wanna say … like they’re not thinking about you or your product or your service at that point.
Jeffrey Gitomer: That’s true.
Jen Gluckow: That’s a great point, Brent. When someone has something personal going on, whatever it may be, they just want you to be considerate of that.
Jeffrey Gitomer: But I can tell you this, if they do have a baby and you send them a Little Engine That Could book and you inscribe it with, “this is not just a book for a kid, it’s a philosophy for a lifetime”, they’ll never forget you. For $5.
Jen Gluckow: I hope we don’t send baby gifts to the same people as any of our listeners. They’ll have the same gift and inscription.
Brent Thomas: I imagine when something happens to your prospect or maybe somebody that you constantly sell to, I think that some sales people would look at that as a negative thing, as now they’re going through something and now I’m not going to be able to get them to buy as easily. Whereas you guys are saying, this is actually an opportunity to create a relationship.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, huge opportunity.
Jen Gluckow: To build the relationship. It’s like the time.
Jeffrey Gitomer: It’s the focal point and if they see you as non-salesy and as genuine, I can promise you they’ll take your call forever.
Jen Gluckow: When someone tells me they have a life event of any sort going on, if it’s something I can support, if it’s like a death in their family and a funeral, I try to go. I mean, that’s doing the right thing. We’ve done that for some of our-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, but I mean you have to be friends with the person, you don’t just show up at funerals, but-
Jen Gluckow: No, that’s because I built relationships that had-
Jeffrey Gitomer: “Hi I’m here, I brought this brochure with me.”
Jen Gluckow: No, you don’t bring a brochure … no, no, no, no, no. If it’s something like a positive life event, like a birth or whatever, you send them a card, you send them a small token of-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Your appreciation.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah. Your appreciation-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Or your recognition of what they’ve done-
Jen Gluckow: Your excitement for what’s going on for them. That’s key.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Okay, so I think we’re about motivated. I, personally, am motivated. Doug? You good with it?
Doug Branson: I’m super motivated.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Okay.
Jen Gluckow: Oh, yeah.
Doug Branson: Let’s go.
Jen Gluckow: Oh, yeah.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And we will see you tomorrow-
Jen Gluckow: Hey, this is gonna be a great week, guys. Before we go, we want you to write in the comments what you’re gonna do differently this week. Think about your response time like we talked about throughout the episode, think about what sales you’re gonna make and commit to something so that we can check back on it next week.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And I am not gonna promote the Tuesday Sell or Die because you should be listening to it no matter who the guest is.
Jen Gluckow: That’s right.
Jeffrey Gitomer: We have great guests all the time, but you’ll learn from Jen and I, you’ll learn from whoever the guest is, and you’ll have a great time on Sell or Die.
I’m Jeffrey Gitomer, Motivation Monday.
Jen Gluckow: I’m Jen Gluckow.
Brent Thomas: And I’m Brent, thanks for tuning in.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Hey. And cheers until next time.
