Increasing Word-of-Mouth

0:04 Thank you for joining us on the Winning and Selling Podcast. I'm Bill Hellkamp of Freech Development Systems, and with me is Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute. I would increase your word of mouth reputation effect your sales pipeline in the short and long term. A referral from your network is one of the most credible and cost effective forms of marketing. For sales people activating and amplifying word of mouth can shorten your sales cycle and build trust faster than any website or email.

0:31 But is this an effect that form of prospecting for immediate sales results? Let's dust off that prospecting plan from 2007 as Bill and I dive into increasing word of mouth and other notable nuggets on episode 670 of the Winning and Selling Podcast. Well, I want to make sure that word of mouth is good. So hopefully we'll talk about that. You know, because I think that negative word of mouth can spread a lot faster than positive.

1:02 So, yeah, some limitations sometimes can get exposed in behaviors. That's right. So let's talk though before we get into that about somebody who did good word of mouth, and that's Jimmy's Exor, Jimmy Z in the book sales perspective. We're on chapter five called the Essential Selling Perspective ESP Method. And this is kind of where he starts to get into the meat of the book. So he's going to talk about this ESP method.

1:26 He's also going to talk about the five C's which the next five chapters are going to be about the five C's. But in the book, he starts out Scott with his story about the bear. And this is that tough customer he was called in to do part of the presentation. I thought it was kind of weird though. Did you catch that? He comes in to do that. And then he leaves after his part of the presentation. And the other guy just does the rest of it.

1:50 I've never left in the middle of a presentation. I haven't either, but you know, it worked. It seemed to work out. It seemed to work out. So it was interesting. But he had the guy that he was out in the shop. And when they went to visit and he comes in and he says, you know, we've heard this before. I only have a couple of minutes and I know everything about you. I always love that. I love that introduction. And so this story is all about turning this person from a skeptic into a possibility.

2:19 Which I think that's a big turn, don't you? It is. It really is. And it's a great story. So anyway, that's what the whole story is about. I'm not going to go into the details because if you want to know the details, you ought to read the book. I'm not going to tell stories for you. But I think we always have to be careful when someone says, I know all about what you do. I know all about your program. Because usually they're wrong.

2:43 Well, don't we deal with that when it comes to working with our prospects and go, have you ever done any work in this particular industry? And we have to ponder and think about it going, well, not really. But what makes your business separate than any other business that we've ever worked? But you can't ask that. No, you can't. Because they think they're unique. Well, they think that they understand everything that we do too.

3:06 So there's some two words both ways. Well, they want to assume that they know all about us, but we don't understand anything about their industry. Right. Because we haven't worked in it. That's the same people that have to hire somebody with industry experience who's been fired by five other people in their industry. But they've got industry experience. That's what they've got. Lots of it. They've got industry experience.

3:24 So anyway, when they're wrong about it, as you say, they don't know. We can't say, hey, you don't know anything about us. So we have to gently guide them into understanding or we can ask the question, well, tell me what you know about us. And then we can correct those. I remember when I was working in software, helping people in a software company. And I think the turn they used was thin client. Yeah. And for them, thin client meant one thing of how the computers were configured.

3:52 And for the big players like Oracle, it meant something different. So if they said we operate on this thin client proposal and just use that word, the client can have a whole different vision of what that means. So quite often we have to explain ourselves, even if they say that they know all about it. So right. Collecting expectusism or misconceptions, we need to correct it sooner than later. Right. Right. The other thing I liked about the story is he talked about he could physically see the prospect change from the arms folded and the legs crossed sort of thing to a little bit more open and leaning forward and asking questions.

4:34 And you know that that's when you're starting to connect with that person. So do look for those changes in physical style. We had this, I thought the other day with the client that we were in. And he basically said we don't work with consultants at our company. And so that was kind of that tough way to start out. And then eventually he started asking thoughtful questions. I took a lot of pressure off of all of us when that was presented too.

5:02 I mean, we all knew where everybody was coming from. Well, yeah. But still now we knew what we had to do. So that's good. Anyway. And then I think a third thing I learned from this is believe them when they give you a time limit or other limiting factors. I've seen many salespeople. I've only got 10 minutes and they barely got through the introductions in 10 minutes or their opening. You know, they don't get to the meat of it.

5:28 And the client might say to the prosecutor and say, well, that's it. I told you I'm going to have 10 minutes. Right. So, you know, sometimes you make an appointment, they plan a half an hour and then their whole business is blowing up that day. And you are the least important person they could be seeing. Right. They should be out in the shop helping something get done because a client, one of their clients needs something by that by two o'clock that afternoon.

5:51 And they're nice enough to still give you the 10 minutes. So do be ready to adjust for that. So some of the lessons that Jimmy said he learned was a new mindset for him. So this is where if you think about the whole book focus in the first few chapters, he was talking about telling everything he knew and he found out and then he did it twice once it worked and once it didn't work. And so now he's starting to figure out what is it that's different about real selling than about blowing your, you know, your sales pitch at him in the first 10 minutes.

6:26 All right. So his first thing he learned was to put others first. Think about their needs. Think about their issues. Think about the challenges they're facing. Yeah. He stresses that throughout the book is always, it's about them. It's not about me. And when you focus on them, it's like he said in the, I think the first chapter is that he came into a meeting. He used to put all the emphasis on it, you know, what goals that they can achieve through him.

6:49 And when he focused on that, it felt like he didn't have any pressure on himself. And I really love that perspective of when you go in with kind of that, that go giver approach, you're going to be able to take a lot of pressure off yourself, serve them, and then they're going to build a recognize your commitment to them, treating them as a prospect. And then later treating them as a client or customer. But if you don't treat a prospect, well, how can you treat a client?

7:11 Well, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Number two is clarity attracts. And this he's talks about simplicity. And I do think that sometimes we get ourselves all absorbed in our own shorthand. I can remember when my wife was in medicine and she and all our medical friends were sitting around talking and I said, I hope you don't talk to the patients that way because I don't understand one word you said. And they kind of looked at me was surprised, but talk about MRIs and BFGs and PFDs.

7:41 And I know my mother who's in her 90s, she pretends to listen to doctors and nods politely like she understands, but she really doesn't know what they're talking about. So same thing can happen in sales. We know so much about our product, our service and how it reacts. Our job is to simplify that and make it easy for them to understand. Right. It's very common in the technology and telecom business as people talking acronyms and codes.

8:07 And it's always interesting to be a witness to that when you don't know as much about it. And you're like, this doesn't seem like anything is tracking. But in reality, there's a tremendous amount of trust that's being established because they're talking the same language. And I like this third what he talks about. Don't say everything. Say the right things. And to me, that's the difference between giving a sales pitch.

8:30 Right. So there's my company deck. Oh, I love company decks to tell you everything about us and make some stuff up. And then you can kick me out of your office when I haven't made any traction. And then the right things focused on need. Well, how can we focus on needs, Scott? By asking great hygiene questions. I guess. That's right. And we learn what the needs are. Yeah. All right. And then number four is a nice one to leave before they're ready for you to leave and I put in parentheses or before they kick you out.

8:59 You know, if the customer stands up and says, well, they're done. Yeah, exactly. And it's 20 minutes until the meeting is supposed to end. They're like, you know what? 20 minutes without you would be a lot more valuable instead of 20 minutes with you. That's right. Give me 20 minutes back. I'm going to invite you to leave because all you're doing is tell me about you. Right. We're not talking about me. And you know, old Dale Carnegie, the thing the person's most interested in is themselves.

9:29 Not in your product or service, but how your product or service is going to benefit them. But the only way to know if it's going to benefit them is to ask questions and find out those needs not make. And that was Jimmy talked about what the big assumption, assuming the gap generally assumed problem. We assume they have a problem. We assume we know what that problem is. Then we go and start solving it. Now we're in trouble.

9:53 Right. Right. We're only right 10% of the time. Okay. Yeah. He's gets back into the sales goal. The second time he's talked about this, as he talked about the last chapter, he talks about the sales goals can get in your way. And he uses a quote from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, Forget about Goals and Focus on Systems. And so Scott and I have talked about systems and for us, those systems are how many calls you're going to make.

10:19 How many appointments you're going to have? How many proposals are you going to write? And all those things are leading indicators. Right. The sale is a lagging indicator. It's the result of doing all the process steps right. And if you don't do them, you're not going to get that final goal. Sometimes you will. You go on and blow off all you did and they say, okay, well, we need some of that stuff. Yeah. And he focuses three questions on goals in this particular chapter.

10:43 He says, what has happened, which is the past, what is happening, which is the present, and what needs to happen, which is the future. And it reminds me of the saying that I share with the group is when you get up every morning and you leave the office and you go out into the field, you have to have an attitude of make it happen. Or you let it happen. Or you explain what happened. You're in total charge of how you trade your time and the results that you turn it, the scorecard you turn in and be accountable for that.

11:18 You have to have a goal. Well, that's right. You have to have a goal and you have to, I think, write those goals down and you have to write down the steps you're going to take that day. The activity you do is the steps you're taking that day to get you toward the goal. Bingo, right? I'm going to make 20 calls. I'm going to have three appointments. I'm going to write one proposal. Those are the things I'm going to get done today.

11:42 And so those 20 calls are leading to the next three appointments, which might be next week sometimes. But you have to get those in. And we found the biggest challenge with most salespeople, whether entrepreneurial or not, is that they get a couple of sales and then they spend all their time focusing on that activity and no more time focusing on the next sale activity. Why isn't that the truth? Yeah. All right. So he's going to get into his ESP essential selling perspective method.

12:09 So perspective, meaning the way we view things. And so he has three areas that he wants us to view things in value, in service and in trust value service trust. That's the three perspectives that he wants us to look at. And in each of these factors, he calls them factors value service trust to the factors. And each factor has three facets. And that is the person, the business and the problem. So under value, we have to understand what is the person value, what is valuable to the business and what is the problem caused in terms of value or how can solving the problem.

12:48 Talk about terms of value under service. What does the person want for service? What does the business need for service and how can service contribute to solving the problem and then under trust the person, the business and the problem. So there's really a nine segment quadrant that quad, nine quadrants that you have to deal with, value, service, trust, the person, the business, the problem in each of those. How does that ring for you?

13:15 That's profound. I think the way breaking it down. And there's business reasons, there's personal impacts and there's outcomes. I think that everybody works together to solve and he breaks it down perfectly within this model. What are the business reasons? Why are we, what's good for the business? What's the personal impact for the person? And then what is the outcome that your solution provides? I love how it breaks it down and it's just another perspective of how do you sell.

13:42 I love it. But what I like about it too is that it's not just focusing on the problem. I think what happens too often is we don't think about the impact. But if I remember back to my early sales training, the impact was all about what does this solving this problem mean to you? What will happen if we solve this problem? Will your life be easier? Will you make more money? And if you make more money, what are you going to do with that money?

14:09 It's getting it to the personal side of it because every decision is made on personal reasons even though it looks like they're made on professional reasons. And if you get them to talk about that, you can get moving ahead. Yeah, we sell outcomes. We sell the consequences. What are the consequences if they don't do anything? And sometimes that's the greatest competition that we all focus or have to deal with is in action.

14:34 And when you think about the three attributes of the person, the business, and the problem, what are the consequences when it comes to value, service, and trust? And now you really start to put it in perspective as to what happens if we don't do something. Now we start to discover and search for the value. Right. And that's what we're missing. That might be the missing piece that says we didn't close the sale because I didn't find this out.

14:57 But I didn't explore this piece of the business. And what he uses to explore is what he calls the five C's of every sales experience. And the next five chapters, Scott, are going to be about these five C's. Care, connect, clarify, confirm, and commit. And he doesn't go into explanation of these because the next five chapters are going to explain these in detail. But something I did think that he talked about interesting is Jimmy contends that sometimes during this process of care, connect, clarify, confirm, and commit, the sale will close itself.

15:31 Right. If you do the process right, the sale will close itself. My sales training has for years been called the process oriented selling process oriented selling. A lot of other people call theirs the selling system. It's a process. There's certain questions that have to be answered. There's certain issues that have to be resolved. There's certain things that have to happen. Sometimes they happen. Boom, boom, boom. Those three things are lined up.

15:57 But there's other things that are hidden. If you don't have a process, you're going to miss something. This is going to be Jimmy's process. There's no six C close. There's no there's no clothes in the five C's. He does make that point, right? Yeah, I think. No clothes in the five C's because it happens. And I'd have a section on closing. And we do a couple of things too. But the real message that I give is similar to Jimmy's.

16:22 And that is if you've done everything right and everything's lining up, the customer has no reason to not buy. And they go ahead and buy when they're ready in their timeframe. And usually it happens. And sometimes I'm often surprised by it. I think we got that just happened. I like it to be a confirmation and commencement. So we're confirming everything that we've talked about. We've got confirmation that we agree on all of the aspects.

16:50 And we're commencing, which means that we're now transitioning from trying to sell to implement. And now we're working together on the commencement of the solution to get the outcome that everybody wants. All right, super good way to close it up. So next week we're going to go into part two, chapter six and seven. That's going to be care and connect. Again, if you haven't done so, pick up the book sales perspective by Jimmy Zuggeord, Jimmy Z.

17:17 I think you'll enjoy it next week, chapters six and seven. Bill, you and I have read probably hundreds of sales books in our career. And as many books as I've read, I'm learning stuff from this book from Jimmy Z. He really does give a fresh perspective. And it's easy to be able to adopt some of his practices into my experience of what I've already incorporated into my behavior. And that's what I really like about this book.

17:43 Yeah. I think I don't find that he's in conflict with what I do. But he adds a certain humanity that is very good. And that's his personality to it. And we've had him on the show twice. I think people know that he's a very likable, enjoyable guy. And he really, really cares. I mean, and that's what we're going to talk about next week is he really cares about his prospects and his customers. Well, when my wife met him and he was at our PSA, spoke at our PSA meeting, Professional Sales Association meeting, my wife said, boy, Jimmy is the nicest guy I think I've ever met.

18:16 And I said nicer than me. And she said, yeah, quite a bit nicer than you. Which kind of hurt my feelings. But I'm going to get over it because I don't care. So today's topic is increasing our word of mouth. And when I sold marketing services to attorneys and law firms, the greatest objection I heard was we get all of our business from word of mouth. And I could, how can I compete with that? And today finally, I have figured it out.

18:43 So Bill, have you ever been in that situation where you receive a subjection of, oh, we get all of our business through word of mouth? No, I've never gotten that object. No, I really haven't. I think what I hear though, and this is similar, my brother-in-law does that. My cousin does that. And it's that relationship that people want to get to that makes the selling easy. I think we fool ourselves when we think all of our business comes from word of mouth.

19:12 Because something else is happening to continue that word of mouth. Because people just don't talk about it as much as we think they do. They usually just don't care. So we need to do more than just have. We have to need to be out in the community and now out in the community electronically as well, I think. Well, maintain a top-mind awareness at least. That's right. And maybe it's not word of mouth, but it's a sense of awareness.

19:35 And unfortunately, we get bombarded and there's so much noise and clutter in that area that it's really tough to know who's got a good reputation and who doesn't through their word of mouth. I think about when I was in the situation and I'm dealing with good smart attorneys, they are the smartest people in the room. And I've had to almost get to the point of talking with them that knowledge and experience has no value without a customer.

20:02 How can you leverage this strength into getting more customers? What do you tell them when they call? When a prospect calls a law from a attorney, what does the attorney say to that prospect to gain credibility and confidence? And then I want to turn the tables a little bit to salespeople. Our listeners is when you're calling within a certain marketplace, a universe, you have a reputation. You're building word of mouth.

20:32 And when people call you, what do you say in order to really validate that reputation that you have in the marketplace and really leverage the word of mouth that you want to build within your network, within your universe? And I really want to break this topic up into two parts. One is the setup and then the other is the action. So the setup part of it is to really know that this is a long-term game. I said that in the opening.

20:57 Is it good for short or long-term? Well, both. Number one short is that you are consciously behaving in a way to build a reputation to gain word of mouth. And then long-term, you're going to be able to leverage some of the people that you've talked to, that I've talked to people, that I've talked to people to be able to use that to your advantage based on your commitment, I think, to the topic that you serve and to be able to commit to that in the future that you're going to grow with that topic.

21:28 I'm surprised how many AI specialists there are right now and I think AI is coming out in November of 2022. And all of a sudden everybody's an expert of it. Bill. And I just don't think that that's possible to become an expert in three years on a certain topic. But you can have a reputation within a topic or an area and commit to it and then develop within that industry with it. So the first part is really the setup. And it starts with the first question that I think everybody needs to ask themselves is what do you do for who and why?

22:04 This covers three areas. One is your unique selling proposition. The other one is your ideal customer profile. And the third is what motivation do they have on wanting to make a change? Right. So keeping a mindset of having a wide net with a tight focus and really start to market and network within the biggest group of active prospects within an industry with the unique niche others cannot compete on. I think is where you really need to start to build that reputation and that word of mouth.

22:39 I think one of the things that I've always seen is that the good news is everybody's our customer. The bad news is everybody could be our customer. And when that net is too broad and we can't really focus ourselves, we're just casting about. I like what you say about picking an industry or picking a certain market niche that you can then go after and develop some expertise, develop a few customers in that market niche and then you then you have some credibility in that.

23:11 I think the other challenge with credibility is whether it's a young person or somebody who's gotten fired and decided to become a consultant. The industry, the field does not trust you to stick around. Scott and I have laughed plenty about the person who's going to be a fractional CFO unless he gets a job. And you're committed to being a consultant until you get that full-time job. So you're not really committed and those people come and go all the time and we know they're coming and going all the time.

23:42 And so people like Scott and I who've invested 25, 30 years in one business model, well, we develop a lot more trust. So you're not going to get that trust by flickering around. Well, there's a long-term commitment on that. I mean, nothing says commitment like gmail.com. It's people that get a free email and then they get their vista cards, free business cards and then say, okay. It's an advertising on the back. I mean, you want us to give you money and you won't even spend money on your own business.

24:16 I'm puzzled. I'm curious about that. That just doesn't make sense to me. But I think it's really important for us to be able to know what do we do for who and why. And that's the foundation of any sales conversation and it works out well when it comes to word of mouth because you're building it now and over time. Right. So the second one is an exercise and I think I've talked about this before on the show is to list three words you want others to use to describe you to others and in your absence.

24:45 So really what you're doing is building a reputation and you're picking three words. My three words are committed, compassionate and relevant. So everything that I want to do, I want to demonstrate a certain amount of commitment. I want to be compassionate with people, understanding that change is not easy and it's difficult. And I want to be relevant, which means it's something that can be useful in today's marketplace and they can get immediate response or some evidence of a better response that's going to come out in the future.

25:14 But then you got to ask yourself, how do you action these three words? So how do you demonstrate commitment? How do you demonstrate compassion? How do you demonstrate relevance? And that is the foundation of your reputation and now you're building the word of mouth within that particular industry. Well, the nice thing too about picking those three words is then it gives you something to anchor yourself to as you're having those conversations.

25:37 Exactly. How can I in this conversation show my commitment to you? How can I in this conversation provide relevance to the issues that you're bringing up? So by continuing to focus on those three words, and I have a friend that focuses each year, they have a word or a little phrase for the year. So that's what they want to focus themselves on that year. And so I like that ability to help us focus down on, again, three words that are meaningful.

26:04 Yeah, and then you action them. And now you say, well, this is what I do. And now when somebody tries to describe what you do and it doesn't match those three words, others have to think, who are you talking about? Because that's not who I see when you describe this person. So the first question I think a prospect is asking themselves is, are you committed and do I want to work with you? And once they come upon the conclusion, do I want to work with you?

26:30 Now together you come upon a solution together. We've talked about that in past episodes, right, Bill, where we've talked about our proposal and we present it and we work on a better way together. And then it's something that they feel more comfortable buying. I think also for you and I, there's certain things like five years of doing this podcast, 270 shows, you know, when we tell people that that's what they say is wow.

26:54 Yeah, yeah, wow. Every week. And you always emphasize that. Yeah, every week, every week, every week, every week. A new show I've been here every week. But Scott's missed a few. Okay, keep track. The third one is build for those me too. At least. Okay. The next number three is create forms of credibility builders. This is really the marketing side of sales. So it demonstrates commitment to a community. So you get testimonials, recommendations, reviews.

27:23 This is very important because this is in the past that, you know, have a predictor of the future is what you've done in the past, not guaranteed, but definitely a predictor. When you advertise and you have a PR campaign, you're demonstrating a commitment. You're building that familiarity. You're involved in chambers and associations. So you're saying, I want to build a contribute to a group. I also want to learn from a group.

27:44 And maybe you get into offering scholarships or sponsorships with different organizations. A guy that I knew many, many years ago, Joe Riley, he's passed away. He started a company. Every time he talked, he talked about three things that are passionate to him. He and his wife, Pat married no children. And every time that they had a benefit or support or sponsor an organization, had to do with three things, had to do with children, had to do with food, and had to do with housing.

28:12 And that was Joe's reputation. But those are the three things that he supported. And it represented the person that he was when he was involved more in the community. I want to add one more thing to this because I was having a lunch with a mutual friend of ours yesterday, Chris. Yeah. And we were talking about LinkedIn and kind of this electronic vision of who we are. And he said, he said he's been very amazed that the post that have the most attraction are when he talks about his family or when he talks about doing something for the community.

28:48 Yeah. People are very interested in that. And that's what you're talking about. It's not just your reputation and business. It's your reputation in the community, what your family talks about and who your family is and what you're doing and what your team is doing out in the community. Mm-hmm. And sometimes the responses when you mention somebody's name to another person and you're trying to build that word of mouth, they say, I've never heard of them.

29:10 And the person that's mentioning their name for the very first time to somebody who's never heard of them, the next question has to be, what would you like to know about them? Well, I don't know. What are their values? And you've talked about it before, Bill, where people sell their values and customers buy based on similar values. And when you're able to have a reputation and build that word of mouth of supporting children, food, or housing, then that can be the next thing is, well, they're really committed to this and this represents the values of this particular person.

29:40 That builds word of mouth, incredibly and reputation. And I got to tell you, when your friend Joe Riley or my friend Chris post pictures of him out in the community doing things, to me, that's a lot more valuable than wearing your little ribbon pin. Definitely. And you talk about, we see this with the movie stars, we talk about, oh, the ecology, and I wear my little ecology pin as I fly my private jet from place to place.

30:07 Right. I mean, we're tuned into hypocrisy now. It's what you're doing match what you're talking about. When your friend Joe or my friend Chris goes out in the community, we know there's a match there. We don't have to beat our chests about it. We just say, hey, here's some things that are going on. Maybe you should give to this group. Yeah. Yeah. And it's outside of that self promotion, but it definitely demonstrates your values.

30:33 So number four is to create an easy way to engage. This is the selling part. So Bill and I offer an assessment. I mean, if you wanted to be able to go, you know, what's my sales team like? Well, we've got a way to engage. We can do an assessment on your sales team, come upon some findings, and then you can decide what the next steps are. Sometimes that's a full-blown sales strategy. Well, it turns into that, but it needs to start with, you know, is this worth pursuing or not?

30:58 We don't want to be at some time, and we want to be able to have a strategy that is relevant to what we're working with. Right. Right. Some companies, some salespeople might do white papers on a particular implementation of a solution. The challenge that they have, the solution that they have proposed, and the outcome that they received, great way to engage. You know, ask for their white paper. Hey, if you want to know more about them, just ask them to send you the white paper.

31:20 Go to their website, look at the white paper. Subscribe to their newsletters. You know, over time, people will really demonstrate what their priorities are and their commitment to doing a newsletter. How many people have we seen that have been rated in the top 25 sales podcasts that have done two episodes in two years? But for some reason, they're rated in the top 25 podcasts. Well, we've been doing it every week for over five years.

31:44 And so the commitment and the knowledge through the newsletter, and then I think sometimes an executive briefing is really nice, where they do a quarterly executive briefing. If you want to know more about them, contact their office, send them an email, and see when their next executive briefing is. Yeah, if you've got one of those kind of client relationships, where we're in there working with you all the time, we were providing a long-term service.

32:08 I had a client that was for medical facilities. They were providing all the laundry services. And they did that day and day and week and week and it was a tight relationship. Well, every three months you go in and talk to the executive committee or the key people that are involved with that. And you say, here's what's going on. Tell us what, you know, let's make sure we get out anything out in the open that you're not happy with.

32:31 Because we don't want those problems to fester and every relationship has problems. It's going to be things they don't like. But if you just let it fester, then they're going to be open to that next person to say, hey, why don't you change vendors? Right. Right. And in this context, I'm referring more to an open workshop to the public that is invite only. You're inviting people to come in here, what you do in a very intimate, invite-only environment.

32:56 Once again, I didn't understand what you were talking about. Well, that's okay, but you bring an interesting perspective. Sometimes you have to give those committee reports or those executive brief reports. But as I go through these, before I get into the action steps, I'm reminded from the book Go Giver. As I was preparing for this, I thought about the book Go Giver. And the second law is the law of compensation. And the law of compensation is your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.

33:23 And this is really building the reputation and that word of mouth. So how can we action this? And I want to pick up the pace in the interest of time. Is number one is ask for referrals at the right time. Timing is key. And right after you have a successful conversation about your topic that you presented, you might want to say, I'm curious. Who else do you know that might benefit from the conversation that is not here?

33:47 Who might that be? That's a great way to ask for a referral and an introduction to somebody that they may know. Bill, have you ever heard the saying that, well, I can't ask for a referral or an introduction

33:57 because they never bought from me? Well, I think everybody's looking for a reason to not ask for a referral. Yeah. Have the conversation. If you like me, who else should I know that you know? That's a question I always ask. Who else do I know? Who do you know that I should know? And also, I also like to ask for referrals by having a list of 10 companies I want to work with. Yeah. Yeah. And then saying, do you know anybody at any of these companies that I should have a conversation with.

34:21 Yeah, another good approach. So number two is create a memorable, talkable experience. So be remarkable, not just reliable. So these small, delightful touches, these handwritten notes, these unexpected updates, these thank you gifts, give your network a reason to talk about you. And I like to call it proactive appreciation. And to really call somebody up, and I did this last week for a couple of people as I was kind of getting in the mindset of memorial and being grateful for the people who are still here.

34:54 And that they are in my life and in my network. I said, I'm just so grateful for the time that we share together. You know, I look forward to seeing you the next time we get together. So I'm expressing this proactive appreciation instead of after an event. And it's reactive appreciation, expressing gratitude afterwards. My mother has a great habit of calling my brother and sister-in-law and just saying, you know, I just wanted to thank you for picking me up for church this Sunday.

35:19 And she's doing it before churches. So it's a reminder. And it's also expressing appreciation. Right. And when my brother and his wife get in the car and they're going to pick up, mom, they're looking forward to seeing her because she's already expressed appreciation for what they're doing. So think about that proactive appreciation. And last, number three, is tap into those LinkedIn introductions. Ask your LinkedIn connections to introduce you to their network.

35:46 Provide them a short message that they can forward on making it easy and to be consistent and to be frictionless when you're making that introduction or you want other people to make the introduction to you. Make it easy for them to do that. Different ways of doing that. So those are kind of the setup and the action of how do you really increase your word of mouth. All right. Excellent. Excellent topic, Scott. And I think everybody got some new ideas that they can take out and use right away.

36:16 And that's really the key. Don't just listen to these and do nothing different. Go out and take action. Do something different on your LinkedIn. Go out and make a couple of phone calls proactively as Scott's talking about. Go start attending things. That's one thing I think, especially I'm noticing with younger sales people, they don't want to attend things. You can't make all the sales in your jammies in your office.

36:41 You got to go out and meet people. You do not build a reputation in your home. Let's finish up with our golden nugget. This is from the singer, Loretta Lynn. In the long run, you make your own luck, good, bad or indifferent. And I might also say you make your own reputation, good, bad or indifferent. So what are you doing out there to make your own luck and to make your own reputation? In the short term and in the long term, word of mouth is a long term strategy.

37:09 But we have to work on it every single day. There you go. Yep. All right. So everything we talked about will be at winning at selling.com. So www.winning at selling.com. Next week sales perspective by Jimmy Zuggsworth, parts two, part two, chapters six and seven. And our topic is selling to a group. Please subscribe, share the podcast with your colleagues and on your social media. And if you're so inclined, give us a five star review.

37:34 This is episode six, seven, zero. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.