How to Generate Business No Matter the Product or Service

J:                                  Let’s welcome Pat to the show. How are you doing today, Pat?

Pat:                             Fantastic. How are you guys doing today?

Carol:                         Excellent. We are so looking forward to talking with you. You have such a great database, such a great arsenal of knowledge and skills for new entrepreneurs and how to just make their business rock, and we cannot wait to dig into all of the knowledge that you have to offer, so thank you so much for joining us.

Pat:                             Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate that. Anything I can do to help entrepreneurs, I’m all about that, so good to be here and good to have you guys.

Carol:                         Awesome. Thank you so much, Pat. Let’s go ahead and get started. Pat, like so many of our listeners on the show, you’ve had your hand in real estate and you’ve also been an entrepreneur, so that’s a really great blend, so let’s give our listeners a little bit of an idea of who you are and how you had this amazing journey to get where you are today, and become the sales expert and entrepreneurial coach that you are?

Pat:                             Yeah, so I appreciate that. My heart was always in athletics. I played three sports in high school, and played college football. Really loved the game of football, and loved coaching. You know? I’ve always, once I got out of football, started coaching the little kids, and then I was prodded to become a school teacher, and a football coach, and after jumping the other coaches I was coaching with’s cars, and I had looked at that lifestyle.

Pat:                             I’m like, “Well, I can make 15 grand a year in shift, and move about 16 times, or I can do something with coaching and maybe put it into a profession where I can earn the kind of I want to earn and do what I love to do still.” I was selling cellular telephones, and we’ll talk about that a little bit later, as well, and got referred to a business coach, and I’ve always believed in coaching and development, and he started teaching me about leadership management, about sales training, sales skills.

Pat:                             And I really took to him, and saw some success with him, and actually left to go to work with him, and talk about entrepreneurship. Here I am, selling success, and I have yet to experience any bit of success, and I was straight commission, no health benefits, just dive right in and eat what you kill type thing, so early on I knew that I was an entrepreneur. I’ve always been attracted to situations where something was broke or didn’t exist at all, and I wanted to actually put myself in the situation to be the guy that could actually turn it around or make an influence on it.

Pat:                             That’s what I’m really driven by, which I think all entrepreneurs would agree that you have to have that if you want to be an entrepreneur, and then about six years into mentoring with him I was given an opportunity to become a platform speaker, which ideally, ultimately, as a little kid, was something I always wanted to do, but when you go to career day you don’t usually see motivational speaker booth that you talk to somebody about, so it’s kind of interesting how that all happened.

Pat:                             And then I was an independent contractor speaker, and at that point, really, I had the life, because I was in my mid to late 20s, and I would go leave on a Tuesday, I would speak on Wednesday for four hours, go to another city, speak on Thursday for four hours, and just made an incredible income doing that, and again, I was an independent contractor speaker, so I didn’t have to do any fulfillment.

Pat:                             I went home, when I was home, I was home, when I was on the road, I was on the road, and lived a great lifestyle, especially for somebody in their late 20s. And lo and behold, what I started diving into was really the back end, and it really mattered a lot to me that whatever I was selling, whatever I was representing, had to impact somebody’s lives. I really cared about people, and I didn’t feel as though that the people that I was surrounded by that were actually doing the fulfillment of the things I was up there preaching were really doing a good enough job to provide the value that I really expected and wanted from those clients.

Pat:                             I decided to create my own company and create my own backend, and staff it, and do a seminar model in the mortgage industry, and away we went. We saw amazing success. Everything was predictable, duplicatable, we knew how many people had to be contacted, how many people had to be followed up with to see, at least, 150 people in every room we did, and I did 96 events a year.

Pat:                             My gosh, that was a lot, and lo and behold everything’s good. Big house, lots of fancy cars, boats, and everything else, and then the inevitable happened where we literally thought we were infallible, the real estate market crashed, and pardon me for my voice crack, I’ve been battling a little sinus infection, so I hope I sound okay.

J:                                  No problem.

Carol:                         You’re fine.

Pat:                             In any way, that was really the first experience for me of failure, and I’m not talking about a little bit of failure. I’m talking about at that point I had three kids and an infant and literally, the millions of dollars that we had acquired was all gone, and we had to fire 45 employees and left the building and walk out the door, and at that moment, really, we had a defining moment where you have two options.

Pat:                             You can dig, scratch, and claw your way out, or actually three options. You go get a job, or you can just sit in the corner somewhere and play the victim role, so it was time to just dig in, and lo and behold, there were some valuable things I learned along the way. Number one, that you have all the people, we never really took them anywhere.

Pat:                             It was always trading hours for dollars, and we never built a subscription based business. That was a big mistake. We never offered things to people that came to our seminars that didn’t purchase, right? Maybe they didn’t have quite enough money for package A but they had enough money for package B to get them going, and we never did that just because we were making so much money that we were not paying attention to the fact that we could be making a lot more and helping a lot more people.

Pat:                             And another lesson there was just being decisive when you see the economy shift. I mean, granted, it did take people by storm. We weren’t the only victims of that meltdown, but there was something that we could have seen much sooner that would’ve enabled us to act. You follow me?

J:                                  That’s awesome. I want to step back, because in your story you mentioned that you had a mentor that kind of helped you get to the next level, and I know a lot of people in our audience are very interested in how they can find a mentor, how they can find somebody who can help them get from wherever they are now to the next level, or the next level, or the next level, so what tips would you have for our audience, our listeners, for how to go about finding a mentor, how to go about vetting a mentor, and making sure that the mentor is right for you?

Pat:                             Yeah, great question. You know, there’s an old saying that says when the student is ready, the teacher will appear, right? And it comes from really, truly being ready to be mentored, and you will attract that individual into your life. You know, mentorship is not something that you ought to have. It’s, in my opinion, an economic necessity to have in your life. Not just in business, but in other areas of your life as well.

Pat:                             And you know, I met my mentor and really in a very short period of time he knew that he was the right guy for me, but the advice I would give to people is people want to help people, but you have to really show how bad you want it to people, because basically what I describe as a mentor is somebody that has specialized knowledge in an area that you want to excel in.

Pat:                             They’ve been there, they’ve done that, they carry that wisdom, and you want access to that. Right? And people genuinely want to give back to entrepreneurs. They want to take some, but they don’t want to waste their time with somebody that they don’t believe they’re going to do it, they’re not asking followup questions and just digging deeper, and deeper, and deeper, right?

Pat:                             And I like it when I see young entrepreneurs that come up to me and say, “Hey, I’ve got a couple questions for you. Would you mind? Tell me how you got here. What did you do?” Number one is be ready. Number two, refer around to people that have that knowledge. Who do you know that is really good at this? And then call them, and tell them your story, and tell them why you want to meet with them.

Pat:                             You’ll know when you have the right one because that person will want to actually follow up with you, and they’re going to want to spend more time with you, and they see themselves in likeness to you, so if there are qualities about you that mentor looks and says, “That was me 20 years ago,” they’re going to take you under their wing.

J:                                  That’s absolutely awesome. At this point, you have decades of experience in sales. Many of our listeners are not only new at sales, but a lot of them are probably fearful of selling. They don’t know how to sell. They’re scared to approach somebody. If you were to give some advice to people that are early in their entrepreneurial career, people that don’t have any expertise in selling, but that can kind of get them moving in that direction and kind of get them started with sales, what are some of the tips you would give to somebody like that?

Pat:                             Yeah, great question. First and foremost, I’m a baseball fan, and when you go to Cooperstown, New York, there are statues of people that will remain in that building forever, and those hitters struck out, batted out, got out, seven times out of 10. In other words, they hit an average of 300 and they made it to the Hall of Fame, and they’re forever recognized.

Pat:                             People have to understand that there’s an abundance, even if five percent, 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent of the people do say yes to you, and the lion’s share don’t, there’s incredible wealth built on really small numbers, right?

Pat:                             Now, that being said, that’s kind of the personal development side of things. That’s the first thing I’ll tell you. Stop listening to the radio. Stop watching politics. Dive into yourself, and if you’re an entrepreneur and don’t do that, it’s a huge mistake. But if I were to help, if I were advising an entrepreneur right now, the very first thing I would do is say you have to start with your personal goals. What is your driving force? What, really, are you doing this for? Why?

Pat:                             I would have them create goals, then I’d have them create a business plan, and then in that plan, and in that marketing plan, there’s got to be systems and processes that have got to be created, okay? Whether it’s online, offline marketing, traditional marketing, whatever you decide you’re going to do. What is your marketing plan? And I’ve got to develop systems for that, and within those systems, there’s a thing called best practice.

Pat:                             I’ve got to run the system and the system is going to first start with me running it, and if I want to lead my company, I’ve got to go down that pathway myself first, and then I can duplicate and get out of my business, and then work on my business, and have everybody else duplicate. You have to practice your words. That is the biggest thing I see that people don’t do in sales, in entrepreneurship, is literally, by yourself, practice.

Pat:                             Your phone script, your objection handling, your meeting presentation. If it’s online or online sales, phone with video, you can’t practice it until you get it right. You have to practice it until you cannot get it wrong.

Carol:                         Say that again, Pat. That’s huge. Say that one more time.

Pat:                             I said, you know, anybody can practice until they get something right, but the best practice until they cannot get it wrong.

Carol:                         That’s huge.

Pat:                             And I’ve told all my employees that over the years. Like, you have to wrap this thing out so you know it frontwards, backwards, left, and right, and the process of practicing that is where the real money’s made. Excelling on the football field, my son plays middle linebacker for the Aquinas Institute, and I told him: game day is an expression of your preparation. You just react on game day. You just go and you have fun.

Pat:                             It’s the practice where the money’s made, where the success is

 

J:  Love that.  Practice is where the money is made.  Now, I want to switch up the discussion a bit.  Earlier in the conversation, you talked about hall of fame baseball players who literally fail 70% of the time — they strike out or get out 70% of the time but are still the best in the world.  Failure is something we don’t like to discuss very much, but it’s so important.  .

Pat:                             Absolutely. There’s a friend of mine named Ray Higgin and he lives down there in Florida, with you guys, and runs a company called Rankmakers. He’s a coach in the industry to network marketing companies, et cetera, and I can share his story because he shares it online. I mean, the guy was literally foreclosing on his home 10 years ago. Today he makes income, hundreds of thousands of dollars of month, in income, and he said to myself, “When I was at my absolute rock bottom, I had that biggest challenge where I didn’t know what I was going to do. I mean, my life was just literally falling apart around me.”

Pat:                             He goes, “I’d made the decision that, number one, I was going to do a video a day, and number two, I was going to solicit at least 10 nos a day. If I didn’t get 10 nos, I was going to keep going.” It’s hard to get 10 nos, right? He said, “That really was the turning point in my life.” I thought that was a great story. We had dinner together in April, it was not too long ago, and he’s just got a phenomenal business, and he was a speaker like me years ago, and he had the talent, but he just had to make the commitment to say, “You know what? There’s certain things that are just going to get done.”

Pat:                             And failing? If I just set my mind that I’m going to actually look for failure, that kind of shifted his mindset a little bit, so he didn’t have the call reluctance anymore because he was expecting failure, and what he did was he kept a journal called the habit of self-reflection where he’d ask, and my mentor taught me this as well, you ask yourself three questions on every call after every appointment.

Pat:                             “What’d I do right? What’d I do wrong? What am I going to do differently for the next time?” You know. Or somebody threw an objection at you, and you just fumbled your way through, and you really weren’t ready for it. Great. Write it down, write a way to overcome that objection, practice it, internalize it, so the next time it comes up it’s wax off, like Karate Kid.

Carol:                         That’s awesome. You’re just so ready for it and you’re like, “It’s nothing, I’ve got this covered, and we’re moving on to the next thing.”

Pat:                             Exactly.

J:                So pat…  in your experience, what are some the biggest mistakes you see entrepreneurs make in regards to entrepreneurship and what are some pitfalls to avoid.

Pat:                             Well, you know, when you’re running a business, I would say, number one, project low and sell high. You know? Because I’m the eternal optimist. I’d be like, “You know what? We’re going to do two million the first year, then we’re going to blow it up to six the second year. No, we can really do this. I can write it down on paper. Take a look at it.” Right? You know, I would always make sure that when you write a proforma for your business, always have a proforma.

Pat:                             What is a proforma? If you’re listening, it’s just basically numbers. What do you project in terms of revenue? What do you project in terms of expenses? And in particular, if you’re just starting off, what do those first three months look like? You know, how do you keep the lights on and develop a little bit of traction. I would suggest make sure you have really conservative projection.

Pat:                             Avoid that pitfall of trying to be an eternal optimist, because we want to set low but sell high, if you will. Number two, a pitfall, I’d be really careful of partnerships. Many times, people get into partnerships just because, “Well, it would be really fun to build a business with that person.” Right? “They’re fun.” It’s a marriage, and if you don’t have common goals, common beliefs, and common interests, even if you do, there’s always going to be highs and lows in that marriage, and it’s never, ever, ever going to be equal.

Pat:                             You know, many times, people get involved with partnerships, and believe me, I have went 15 years with just an incredible human being. I would never, ever look back and say it was the wrong decision to partner with a guy named Brian Bailey. He was a really, truly good partner, and it really worked for us, okay? But most of the time, and my experiences in partnerships is that they fail.

Pat:                             If you’re going to partner, make sure that they complement whatever it is that you do, and they’re bringing something to the table that can help accelerate the business. Not just, they’re somebody you really want to do it with because they’re fun. Because generally what typically is, psychologically, for a lot of people that choose partnerships, is a false sense of security that by being together, “I’ll have somebody to hold me accountable, we can help do this together.”

Pat:                             Just be mindful of that

J: Okay, pat, so, so much excellent knowledge that you’ve shared so far, and I would love to summarize this. If you had to pick from your experience three pro tips that people can do to consistently sell more successfully, no matter what their business is, what would those pro tips be?

Pat:                             Well, I’m going to answer that in two ways. Number one, you’ve got to have passion for what you’re doing. You have to really, really have passion for what you’re doing, because if you don’t, you won’t put in the time. And when you really love what you do, you don’t mind spending time at late night, when everybody goes to bed, flipping that laptop back open and grinding a couple things out. That’s needed.

Pat:                             You have to love what you do. Number two, you really have to think, “What problem am I solving?” And really, “How can I solve that problem better than the competition currently is?” You have to dive in and find out what they’re doing, and those two things will lead you to the creation of your unique value propositions, and once you go to market, the unique value propositions not only will help you really, really close better when you’re in front of people, because after you’ve delivered so much value and that person says, “Yes, that sounds really good, but the other person said kind of something similar.”

Pat:                             And then you bring that Billie club out at the end of that sales call, with those unique value propositions, that is like the slam dunk, and they didn’t expect that, and when you deliver that, it really, really helps you close your sales, and also those unique value propositions end up being the centerpiece of all your marketing. Another thing I’ll add to that, Carol and J, is that follow the sales process. If no one ever taught you the sales process, here it is: build rapport, qualify, present, close, and handle objections. Okay? You have to build rapport because the qualify, which is really the art of selling, sales are made and lost not in the close. They’re made and lost in the qualify, which is a design of predetermined questions you’re going to ask, and the answers to those questions, you already know.

Pat:                             You pulled them out of that consumer, and that’s an art form, and that sequencing in the qualify is based off of, “Where are you now, where do you want to go?” And that creates a gap, so if you ask questions like, “Where are you now? Who are you using now? What’s working? What’s not working?

Pat:                             And no matter what it is you’re selling, listen carefully as I say this: that creates a chasm. It creates a gap, and once they’ve said, “I’m here at point A. I want to be here at point B.” Your job in the presentation, the close, is to bridge that gap and show how you’re going to get them from point A to point B better, faster, stronger than anybody else.

J:                                  Okay. Can we step back a little bit? Because I think this is really, really important. You mentioned the sales process. Number one, and can we go through each of these five just dig in a little bit more for each one, and get some more detail around what we can be doing? Number one is building rapport.

Pat:                             Yep.

J:                                  Correct?

Pat:                             Yes.

J:                                  When you talk about building rapport, is this something that should necessarily be done face to face? Can I do it over email? What’s the right mechanism to build rapport? Should it be done at the same time you’re going to go after the sale? Should it be done previous? I mean, just give us a little bit of an idea about what building rapport means to you.

Pat:                             Well, first of all, nobody cares what you know until they know you care. We’ve heard that saying before, right?

J:                                  Yep.

Pat:                             And rapport building is like, in most terms, 80 percent of whether they’re going to work with you or not is determined based on your rapport building with them, right? And that’s a face to face setting. Now, if you’re calling a referral, I always tell people if you get a referral to somebody, take the time with the person that’s giving you that name to profile them.

Pat:                             What are they like? Do they have kids? What are their kids interested in? Right? Because I’m writing this down, because that’s all rapport building stuff. “Hey, John. My name is Pat Fenton. You and I don’t know each other, but my friend Jimmy Smith suggested I give you a call. He said you were looking to sell your house, and I just wanted to give you a quick call. He also said you have three kids that play little league in Webster. My kids do, too.” You know what I mean?

Pat:                             You can utilize that right out of the gate and that brings people’s walls down, right? That’s a referral. But regardless, when you’re on the phone, get the appointment, build a little bit of rapport there, and get off the phone, and do most of it in person, in a traditional selling sense. Right? If you’re cold calling, you can’t build rapport quick. You got to get to the point. “John, John. My name is Pat Fenton. I’m giving you a call because such and such. Are you having a good morning? Is this a good time? Yes. Let me tell you why I’m calling.”

Pat:                             And you get right to the point, you go through that initial talk track, and then once you hook them with your qualify questions, that’s when you’re able to come back later on when you’re cold calling and build more rapport. I would say this is a whole segment we can do on cold calling and the art of it, but you know, there’s a real art form to that.

Pat:                             But the same thing holds true on social media. In online sales funnels, you better build rapport, and you better qualify out, and bring out the qualify, the pain, identify the problem you’re trying to solve and then show them how you’re going to fix it. Right? Rapport is just, it’s absolutely critical, because the real art is in the qualifying. If you don’t build enough rapport, they’re not going to be honest, or they may withhold answering a full qualify sequence.

Pat:                             When you build really good rapport, then, you’re able to ask the tough questions.

J:                                  Okay, so can you expand a little bit more? When I think of qualify, typically, and I think a lot of people think this, we think of qualifying our customers, our potential customers, before we ever contact them, so we’ll go out, we’ll do some research, and we’ll say, “Oh, here’s the list of people we want to contact because they meet the profile.” But it sounds like you’re talking about qualifying while you’re on the phone with them.

J:                                  When you use the word qualify, what exactly are you referring to, and can you give us a couple examples there?

Pat:                             Yeah, and qualifying is, again, it’s on the phone as well as in person. Okay? For example, have you flipped any houses before in your day, guys?

J:                                  Yes, a few.

Carol:                         One or two.

Pat:                             A couple? I mean, if you walked into someone that you got referred to, and they were going through disaster of some sort, and the house was flooded, and they’re running out of money, and they’re a couple months late on their mortgage payment, and you come in there, what are you going to want to do? You’re going to want to build rapport because if you don’t build rapport then they’re not going to really be honest with those qualify questions.

Pat:                             When you show that sincerity, now the qualifying is, “Mary, you know, I’ll tell you,” because I call this a little transition question, “I may be able to help you out, I might not, but based on a couple of questions I have prepared I’ll know within five to 10 minutes if I can help you. If I can, I’m going to show you how. If I can’t, I’m going to tell you that, too. Is that okay with you? Yes. Great. Talk to me about where things are at right now.”

Pat:                             You know, and then you’re going to ask her about the house, where it’s at, what the situation is, where does she want to go, the financial side, are you backed up? What’s the mortgage look like? What percentage does she owe of it? Correct, then you’re going to qualify out, is there an opportunity for you to offer seven cents on the dollar to her, to help her out, right?

J:                                  Got it. This is basically your due diligence. You’re determining whether this person is actually somebody worth continuing the process to try and sell to, or whether they don’t fit the profile for your product or service, and now’s the time to just kind of exit the discussion.

Pat:                             If they don’t qualify, you never present, so each stage is a series of gates. I used to teach my sales people this, and I remember an appointment when I went out of New York City. It was actually Manassas, New York, Long Island, with a guy named Jeremy, and we walked into this manufacturing firm and I asked these series of qualifying questions. “Where are you at with your sales people, the production?” And all these things, right? And he was not cooperating. He wasn’t answering hardly anything, so I just simply folded my brochure, my notebook up, and I said, “John, not a problem. Unfortunately, we can’t help you out. I don’t really understand the first clue about what your problems or challenges are based on the questions and the answers you gave me and that’s okay. I want to thank you very much for your time.”

Pat:                             I literally get up, and I go to shake his hand, and he’s like, “Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Where are you going?” I’m like, “Listen, prescription without diagnosis is malpractice, buddy.” I said, “I have no idea how to help you because you’re not answering these questions. If you answer these questions and you tell me honestly that you’re here, and if I can get this information, I’ll be able to tell you whether or not I can help you. Does that make sense?”

Pat:                             He said, “Yes.” I said, “Great.” Then I went right back to the questions that he answered, then we walked out with a big sale. Right? You got to be willing to walk away if they don’t qualify, because again, presenting and selling is not persuading. It’s not you’re the best closer. It’s not you’re slick, and everything else, you’ve just got the magic words. The true, consultative sales approach is finding out, “Where are you now? Where do you want to go? And can what I do for a living help you get there?”

Pat:                             That’s real simple.

J:                                  That’s great, that’s great.

Carol:                         It’s simple … wait, before we go on. Pat, you once mentioned to me something like, “It’s real simple, but something else.” What was that?

Pat:                             It’s simple but it’s not easy.

Carol:                         Exactly. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. You have to keep at it, and perfect your art form, and establish those routines and habits, and practice on doing it over, and over, and over, until you can’t get it wrong.

J:                                  That’s awesome. Okay, so we’re building a rapport, we’re qualifying the potential customer. Next piece is to present, and I assume this is kind of the longest piece of the sales process where, basically, you’re trying to convince them that this is the product or the service that’s right for them.

Pat:                             Yep.

J:                                  And so, any great tips, or just gold nuggets of what we should be doing when we’re presenting to the potential customer or client?

Pat:                             Presenting and closing, it’s like music. It’s a crescendo, okay? And you really have to start by adding, just some really good, cute, little value adds in your presentation. “This is something I’m going to do for you.” Then it just progressively gets better. Let me give you an example If I were in a real estate setting again, that’s just what I’ve been teaching for many years, but if anybody gave me an example I could do it for any industry because it works exactly the same.

Pat:                             In the qualify, if I said, “John and Mary, outside of price and commission, I want to talk about that second.” Now, I do that because I don’t want them to bring up price right away, because I can’t add value. “Outside of price and commission, talk to me. What are the qualities and attributes you’re looking for out of a real estate agent you want to list your home? What are the three or four things that you want to have from your real estate agent?”

Pat:                             And they say things like, “Communication, integrity, assertiveness.” They want somebody that’s going to work hard, right? If I got down earlier, and I got out what they want for the house price wise, and I got out their urgency, where they’re at, and what their next move is, I did a full qualify. When I got to the presentation, I would simply say, “John and Mary, one of the first things you said you wanted was strong communication. You said it a couple different times, you said it a couple different ways, so I know it’s important to you.”

Pat:                             And I’d bring out my laptop, my iPad, or my pitch book, and I would say, “Boom, commitment to communicate. John and Mary, this is my commitment to communicate. It’s three and a half paragraphs long. It’s signed by me at the bottom. Here’s my cell phone number, here’s my day, and here’s when I return calls.”

Pat:                             And all it says is I’m going to contact you once a week, proactively let you know who’s been through the house, what their feedback was, and answer any questions you may have. Right? I just go through that, great, then you just go down the line. You’re just presenting that off the things they said were important to them in the qualify. The next thing you said you wanted was integrity.

Pat:                             I want to show you this testimonial, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right? When you’re presenting, all you’re doing is linking the things they said they wanted in the qualify and telling them and showing them with a support, collateral material, iPad, whatever, how you’re going to help them get there.

J:                                  Awesome. And so you said that the present and the close kind of go hand in hand, so it’s not a, “Here’s my presentation, now let me ask you to buy.” Although I’m sure there’s that, as well, but that ask is kind of woven throughout the presentation?

Pat:                             Great salespeople close people at every step of the day, whether it’s all tied out, right? “John and Mary, is this consistent with the type of communication you’re looking for from your real estate agent? Yes, great, then that one’s checked off the list. The next thing you wanted was,” so along the way, I’m going through the things they said they wanted. I’m showing them how I’m going to get them there, solve that problem, and then I’m tying it down by saying, “Is this satisfactory, what you’re looking for, what you want to expect? Yes?”

Pat:                             And I’m shaking my head like a penguin, and I’m doing that because they’re going to say yes, right? When it comes to the close, if they said yes to everything, before I get to, and I’m just going to use this example, staying with real estate, John and Mary assume for a second that price and commission, we agreed upon. “Would there be any reason you would not utilize me and get things going today, or would there be anything else you would want outside of price and commission? Are we on the same page with everything else?”

Pat:                             That’s called a trial close. Now I know going into the toughest part of the conversation the only thing I’ve got to do is eloquently deliver on price and commission, and then I got to make the close very assumptive. Where people think that the best sales people are the best closers, the closing’s the easiest part, because you’ve been closing them and tying them down every step of the way, and you did one or two trial closes.

Pat:                             And that’s why the UVP is important, because, In essence, when you get to the hardest part of the conversation, which is typically what it costs, or the price and commission in this term, if your product is X amount and you see the physiology change, it’s then, after then, is when you bring up your UVP.

Pat:                             Now, John and … so, if you think about an infomercial, they drop price, and then they bring in testimonials, and then they do a massive price reduction, and it causes this massive rush after an hour of watching this thing. Well, there’s a lot of psychology with that. When you’re doing a sales presentation, and you added value, and that’s what I mean by a crescendo. You’ve added value, you’ve tied them down every step of the way. They said, “Yes, that’s good, yes, that’s good, yes, that’s good.”

Pat:                             You’ve built yes momentum, then you brought up the toughest part. The price, the cost, et cetera. It’s then you bring in those unique value propositions, and that’s really the deal seal and momentum close from there.

Carol:                         Excellent, excellent. It is so important to have those at the ready all the time. It goes back to exactly what you said over and over. Keep practicing, keep working on your semantics, build that routine so that your unique value proposition is front and center at all times, and you can weave it throughout that conversation, and close that deal.

 

Pat:                             You know, if they qualify, if they said they have a problem and along the way they tied down, they told you they want you, so selling is actually getting them to see and say, “Yes, I need this. I want this.” It’s really the direct opposite of the way most people have been taught about selling, and this is a craft. It really is, and if you’re listening to this, we talked about a lot of things. If there’s one skill you really need to hone and own, it is your questioning. It’s your line of questioning.

Take some money that you earn and put it into an avenue where it’s going to create passive income for you. That is a humongous thing, because business and sales has runs, and when you make that run, don’t spend that run. You don’t need great cars.

Pat:                             I had a Porsche. I got rid of it six months after I bought it; it hurt my back. It didn’t make me happy. Get the Chevy Silverado. That’s what I drive now, right? It’s basic, but I love it.

Carol:                         Yep. Absolutely.

Pat:                             Manage your expenses. That’s one thing, is put money into things that are going to make you more of it, and know that capital is not the only solver of problems, guys. Process and people are. Before you start thinking, “Well, if I had the money, if I can just borrow money from somebody,” that money will burn so fast your head will spin if you don’t have the process and distribution and salesmanship down first.

J: Those are some fantastic tips. This has been tremendously insightful, but we are getting to that point in the show where we’re going to jump into the four more segment. In this segment, we’re going to ask you four quick questions, and then at the end we’re going to give you the opportunity to tell us a little bit more about where our listeners can find out about you and your business, Pat. Does that sound good?

Pat:                             Absolutely.

J:                                  Okay. Let’s jump into question number one. Can you tell us about the worst job you ever had, and what lessons you learned from it to kind of improve your success later in your career?

Pat:                             Well, you know, I look at life as lessons, so I really don’t, if I like something, and I’m out. And I’ve been like that pretty quick, right? My first job actually was selling cell phones through a broker dealer, which, it wasn’t a main company, it was this tiny little office, and I loved cell phone technology. Handhelds were just coming out at that time. This was 1995, and basically had no leadership, no direction.

Pat:                             I was handed a phone book, right, and we were given a cellphone, like, “Go make some money.” Right? I didn’t really last more than, I don’t know, six or seven months there, because I’m like, “I have no idea what I’m doing, how to sell, or who to talk to. I don’t have any direction at all.” The lesson I learned from there is no matter what it is you decide you’re going to do, go make sure you find a good leader, and good training and education.

Pat:                             Surround yourself around people that have that. You know, that was my lesson.

Carol:                         Excellent. It’s a great lesson. Okay, Pat. We would like to know, what was your defining moment when you realized, “Huh, I’ve got this entrepreneurial itch, and I need to make something happen on my own.”

Pat:                             Well, that was very early on. I mean, I’ll go back to when I was playing junior college football and I was getting recruited by a lot of college. Well, I chose the school that was 0:9 the year that they were recruiting me, right? Now, to me, I’ve always wanted to, all right 0:9 is attractive to me because if I can go there and make them 500, or 700, or god forbid, make the playoffs in college, man, I could make a difference.

Pat:                             But shortly thereafter, that cellphone job, I literally went in and I hired my mentor at the time, and I had a team of people, a pit crew, but this one particular guy that I was working with, he wanted me to come work with him and sell success. Now, I have not made probably more than 1,000 dollars in a month at that point in time, and now I’m going to go out and talk to executives and sell success for straight commission, no health benefits?

Pat:                             It’s at that point in time where I’m like, “You know what? I don’t care. I love this, this is what I want to do with my life. I’m going in.” And I was only 24 years old when I made that decision, and it was just a great decision at best.

Carol:                         Awesome.

J:                                  That’s awesome. Okay, question number three. What was your word entrepreneurial moment? What was the worst thing that’s happened in your entrepreneurial career?

Pat:                             Oh, it’s just sitting with my business partner, and flying down to Florida and saying, “You know what? When I fly back to Rochester, we’re going to go in and fire every single one of our employees, and shut off the lights, lock the door.”

Carol:                         Wow.

Pat:                             Then I’ll fly back down here, we’ll figure out what we’re going to do. That was, when you have kids especially, that was the worst day. You know, business wise. But it wasn’t, if you still focus on people, there’s always a pearl. Not to get too long with this, but we had coaches coaching clients, we had to fire the coaches. We still had clients that paid for coaching.

Pat:                             We had to fulfill those contracts, so the worst part was he and I had to still keep working. Not only are we not making money and bringing in jobs, we still had to fulfill. We have integrity. One of those people I end up coaching basically asked me, “Pat, what would it take for you to come to Florida to turn my business around?”

Pat:                             I said, “Wow, you’re asking a lot. I have to give up my company. I just shut down yesterday.” No, I didn’t say that obviously. You know, so I gave him a number. He said, “Fantastic, I’ll draw up a contract. Let’s do it.” You know? And it was in that serving mentality that our, in my opinion, our creator blessed me with that new opportunity, because Napoleon Hill said it best in Think and Grow Rich, for every seed of adversity, for every adversity you have, there’s a seed of its direct opposite.

Pat:                             No one can ever take you down. It just stops, it just lessens. Take the lesson and move on. You know? You just got to look at that and not have self-pity, not have self-doubt. Pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and move on.

Carol:                         Excellent. That’s a great pearl of wisdom to take from that. Okay, Pat. One more question. What is something along the way that you have splurged on either personally or professional that was totally worth it?

Pat:                             Well, the Porsche, I splurged on that, and I hated it, so it wasn’t worth it. I thought I wanted all these big things. You know, material things just don’t impress me anymore. Experiences do. You know, it really, truly does. I mean, I’m all about family experiences, and so, honestly. From a business perspective, really splurged on a data mining software that pulled data off the computer, and it’s paid off big time, you know?

Carol:                         That’s great. And that is one thing that, as we talk to so many people, and the more entrepreneurs we talk to, the common theme is absolutely, every single time, “None of us care about the material stuff anymore.” Right? We’ve all realized that, by taking control of our own journey, and our own time, and our own day, we are totally able to prioritize what really matters and we truly realize that experiences are all that matter.

Carol:                         The stuff, whatever. It just doesn’t matter as long as you’re happy, you’re healthy, your kids are okay, it all works itself out.

Pat:                             100 percent, guys, and I’m so excited, and so happy you guys had me here today.

J:                                  Awesome.

Carol:                         Oh, it was so great.

J:                                  Well, Pat, let’s jump into this part of the four more. Tell our listeners where they can find out more about you, more about your business, and how they can connect with you.

Pat:                             Yeah, so if you want to go to Coach Pat Fenton on Facebook, and that’s a way for me to talk to you if you want to hear what’s up with me and just kind of hear some of the value things I do, the videos I do, you go to Coach Pat Fenton on Facebook, and also go to repsuccess.com, and so those are the two main places you want to check me out, or you could friend request me on Facebook at Patrick Fenton.

Carol:                         Excellent.

J:                                  Pat, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with our listeners. We really, really appreciate it.

Pat:                             Love you guys. Thank you so much for having me, and I apologize for the voice. Hopefully it got through it and you can hear me okay.

J:                                  No problem.

Carol:                         It’s great. You’re fantastic. Thanks a million, Pat. Have a really great day.