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How to Tell Stories, Teach Lessons, and Sell Products, with Jeremy Reeves [Episode 373]

Joining me on this episode is my guest Jeremy Reeves, the CEO of Kaizen Marketing, and host of the marketing podcast, Sales Funnel Mastery.

Key Takeaways

Jeremy sells by words, as a sales copywriter, through websites and emails, anticipating and overcoming objections without talking. He has helped clients generate roughly $50M.
How does sales automation affect sales? Buyers buy some items for thousands of dollars, without personal contact, but does it maximize the sale?
Jeremy recalls a client’s experience with a two-step online lead generation campaign. They had a salesperson call prospects who stopped at the first step. With a call, the client increased their qualified leads by 50% over their online results.
Is the sales funnel, either online, or face-to-face, becoming obsolete? Jeremy suggests adding more relevancy by segmenting it into specific audiences — multiple funnels.
Is Sales losing its value to buyers in an era of near perfect information?
Recently, Jeremy has seen an emphasis on building relationships, or engagement. People respond to relatable, emotional vulnerability, in your stories that teach lessons.
Jeremy puts personal relatable events into his emails, to create engagement. His copywriting is about getting people to know, like, and trust you and your product.
In the current wave of disruption in sales, automation is not creating the necessary human engagement. Relatability is the missing ingredient.
Jeremy is working on a new product, and he shares his progress in stories via email with his prospects. He is getting great responses from people looking forward to this product.
A story transitions to a lesson, adding value, that transitions to the product. Jeremy gives an impromptu example. Stories work well, for face-to-face, or by email.
Showing vulnerability through personal stories helps people relate to you, better than to the ‘robot’ that just visited with a script that didn’t speak to them personally. No one wants to talk to a salesperson, but they’ll talk to a friend.
We all have stories. Look for them. A made-up story is inauthentic, so talk about real events, and memories, and real emotions, that lead to real lessons, to sell your real product.

More About Jeremy Reeves

What’s your most powerful sales attribute?

I go after prospects who know copy, but don’t want to do it, so my main goal is to have as minimal edits as possible.

Who is your sales role model?

Zig Ziglar.

What’s one book that every salesperson should read?

Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition,

by Jay Abraham.

What music is on your playlist right now?

Country, for everyday. Breaking Benjamin, for workouts.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul (AP)

It’s time to Accelerate. I’m your host, Andy Paul. Join me as I host conversations with the leading experts in sales, marketing sales, automation, sales process, leadership, management, training, coaching, any resource that I believe will help you accelerate the growth of your sales, your business and most importantly, you.

Hello and welcome to Accelerate. Joining me today is Jeremy Reeves. He’s the CEO of Kaizen marketing and host of a sales podcast or a popular marketing sales podcast called the Sales Funnel Mastery. Jeremy, welcome to Accelerate.

Jeremy Reeves (JR)

Thanks Andy, I’m excited to be here.

So, take a minute to introduce yourself and tell us how you got started in sales and business and marketing.

Definitely. I have sold a lot of stuff. I basically do it a little bit different than most people, I sell only with words. I mean, I sell new clients on the phone, that kind of thing. But my primarily, I’m what you call a sales copywriter. Essentially, instead of selling someone over the phone or in person, where you actually get to communicate with them one on one, you can ask them questions and well, which I’m sure most people here know is the best way to make a sale is by asking questions and then responding to their questions with basically a pitch. I do that through words. I do it on websites and through emails, and through webinars, and through things like that, where we kind of have to answer dissipate the questions that they might have, anticipate the objections that they have and overcome them without being able to talk to them. So, it’s quite a challenge, as you as you might imagine. But I’ve been doing it since 2008. And since then, I have helped my clients generate roughly $50 million in results in all kinds of different industries. Everything from selling physical products, like right now I’m working with a company and they have this beauty mask that you put over your face. So, everything from things like that.

I’m sure I could use that. Yeah.

Everybody could actually, it works really, really well.

So, you’ve I’ve tried it.

Yeah, I have.

Are you more beautiful because of those results?

Yeah, it’s actually funny, I have this huge cut on my nose. Right at the crown my nose because I was standing up and I snuck into the corner a shelf and it just ripped off the skin off my nose. It looked beautiful for a couple weeks. I had this really red, it stayed really read when the scar went away for a couple weeks, and actually wore this thing twice and it went away and like three days, it was crazy. Now you have to really look at it to see if it’s really there or not. I actually haven’t used it like two weeks. But so, everything from that. We’ve sold a whole bunch of stuff in the health industry supplements and weight loss programs, a lot of high-ticket items, mostly through webinars, it’s typically the best way to do those.

So, high ticket, like–

Everybody kind of thinks different numbers with that, but I typically go anything for like $500 Plus. So, if you’re selling like a product, like an information product, or some type of physical product $500 Plus, if you’re selling a service, a lot of times they can go up into the 10s of thousands and they typically start with some type of strategy session, or consultation or discovery call, which is essentially the same thing, just different verbiage. And, yeah, they’re typically the best way to maximize your sales from those. I mean, there’s just many different industries, it’s hard to even imagine.

Let’s talk about something a little more complex than us. So, the complex b2b sale, you’ve described a lot things are sort of transactional, but increasingly, obviously, the power and the impact of the internet and so on, there’s this vision I know that some people have, gosh, we’re going to get rid of a lot of salespeople because we’re going to be able to use advancements in technology and copywriting and so on because people are searching for this information. These days, most of waiting for salespeople to call on them. So, what are you seeing in terms of people turning to really effective copy to sort of supplant the old face to face selling funnel with something that’s more virtual?

Sure, that’s a good question. And I’m actually a huge fan of– as much as I love automation, and that’s kind of what I talk about on a daily basis. I’m actually a huge fan of adding salespeople back into the mix. So, one of the things that I tell my clients to do is with online sales funnels is, we love to automate things, right? And depending on the price point, you can just sell it on or buy , it’s $100 bucks or $200 even or, if it’s an information product up to even like $2,000, you can sell it without anybody talking to them. But the thing that I think a lot of people miss, even if—let’s say, $500, right? You can definitely sell something, fairly easily, for $500 without anybody talking to them. But are you maximizing the sales? That’s what a lot of people miss. And it’s like, “oh, I’m going to automate this, and I don’t want to hire salespeople” and that kind of thing, but it’s like, you can sell the people, because in any market, there’s going to be a percentage of the audience that they’re just going to buy. Like, if you give them the right pitch, it’s the right timing, you have the right offer, you’re going to sell them. But, and then there’s also people that just are never going to buy, they just want free information, they’re just never going to buy. And then there’s the middle category, think of these people as like on the fence, right? They may or may not be able to be pushed over, some of them will eventually buy, a lot of people need just that little bit extra. And what I tell a lot of people is, “Sell as much as you can without having anybody that talks to them personally.” But if you add a salesman person and you get people to like you, and you call the some of the people that haven’t bought and you can overcome their objections on the phone, you’re going to make a lot more sales, I actually have one client who they did– basically, it was like a two-step lead generation process. So, they sold things for getting– kind of like a Legal Zoom type of type of deal. And they’re one of the betters. So, people came and they said, “Okay, I want to start whatever, an LLC or an S-corp or whatever, some type of entity, right? And my clients did that for them. So, people would come, and they would it was like, step one, first name, last name, email address, and what type of entity you want to form. And then step two was, they had to fill out the name of the entity, their address, all that kind of stuff, and then go through the process. So, what they did was they added people that basically– he did step one, but didn’t do step two, they had a salesman call them, they increase their overall leads by 50% by doing that.

Andu Paul

They had qualified opportunities by 50%.

Yeah, exactly. So, I like to use kind of the automated, the really good sales copy coming up with the right positioning for the offer, all that kind of stuff, everything that I do all the copywriting, selling them as much as we can on print, but, when it’s when it’s applicable, I like to mix that with actually having a sale. You know what I mean? And if you’re selling something where you have to– if people have a lot of questions about it, if it’s not like, “Hey, here’s what you get”, and it’s X amount of dollars, if there’s something where people have questions for any kind of service really, where you get on the phone, people have to know how to sell, because it makes a difference. I mean, what I do in that case, is I can presell them really, really well. I can get them to 80% of the way, you know, 85% – 90% away, but they still need those specifics so, that you can show them how everything applies to them, how what you’re going to be able to help them with is going to solve their specific problem.

And help them achieve the outcome. That is what’s missing, right?

Yeah, exactly. And what I do, in a lot of cases, can get them almost all the way there. But, if you’re selling $10,000 product, it’s kind of hard to sell that without actually talking to somebody, you’re not going to get somebody that goes on your website and makes a $10,000 purchase, without ever talking to somebody. I mean, you can get them most of the way there, you can do a productized service where you even tell them the price, but in most cases, it’s going to be really hard to sell that person without actually speaking to them on the phone. So, yeah, I mean, I like to mix it.

So, your podcast called Sales Funnel Mastering, it talks more specifically about online sales funnels. But is the sales funnel in general, either online or face to face selling, is it becoming obsolete? Or at least as we know it today, is sort of becoming obsolete?

Yeah, I think as we know it, and not that it’s becoming obsolete, I wouldn’t say that, I think that’s a little bit too harsh. But it’s definitely becoming less impactful, I guess we could say. I have clients that have a very simple just, “Hey, you opt in you, get a free report or something, we sell you on the product and it works”, so, it does still work. It doesn’t work as well as it used to.

And saying, “it doesn’t work as well as they used to”, we’re referring to a say an online census. Yeah, somebody opts into your list, they’re going to get hit with five or six emails over a period of time that takes you through the funnel. And what you’re saying is that’s really becoming more compressed in many cases.

Yeah, it still works. But definitely not like it used to. When sales funnels became a big thing, two, three years ago, things like that– you just send people to a page, got them on a list and they just bought, you know what I mean? And like anything, this kind of a strategy comes out and it works phenomenally. Well, when it first comes out and then you abuse it. Yeah, it’s kind of the same thing if you’re into like weightlifting, you start — you’re bench pressing 200 pounds at first, you’re getting really good results because you’re pushing your muscles, you’re pushing your body and you get stronger and then all of a sudden, it’s not a challenge for your body anymore and you’re not getting as good results. So, you have to add something new. In that case, you have to add more weight. In the case with sales funnels, what I’m seeing is that you have to add more relevancy, you have to add more segmentation to be able to talk to your audience in a more specific way. So, for example, let’s say that you’re selling something that has to do health, right? So, you can very easily segment your audience and into men or women, in b2b sense, maybe it’s you segment them based on the problem that they’re having. Some people it’s productivity, other people it’s lack of sales or something like that. I mean, the segments would be different for everyone listening to this. But that’s kind of what I’m seeing, is being able to segment people based on the problem that they’re having or the type of person they are, something like that, because then you’re still doing the automation, you’re still doing everything that works really well with a sales funnel, which is, having the right timing, being able to stay in top of mine, being able to build a relationship with them and all the other things that salesforce has really helped me with. That can’t be done just by having someone look at your website once. But you’re able to take that to another level because you can talk to them more specifically. Because if I have two people, if I have a service and it fixes, let’s just say– this is kind of just a made up service, but let’s just say it fixes the productivity side and the sales side, right? I can talk to people way more specifically about the problems that they’re having and how my solution is going to help them solve that problem and give them the outcome that they want. If I’m talking to them specifically about, if they’re only dealing with the productivity side of things and not the sales or vice versa, you can you can really segment and hone in on the frustrations and the desires that your market is having, and then comes in the good copywriting to be able to really hit those pain points and talk to them in an emotional and engaging way, and everything else. But yeah, I mean, that’s kind of the big thing is–

— specialized funnels, basically. So, you have multiple models, we might have had one before. So, a couple things. One, is I just finished reading last week this really interesting book called, Absolute Value, and sometimes what really influences customers in the age of nearly perfect information, and it was written by a couple baseball guys, professor at Stanford, and these guys are heirs to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. In terms of decision making, what they’re saying is that we’re in this world now where people have access to nearly perfect information, instead of being overwhelmed or the sort of the general thought among marketers and salespeople in general as well, cash customers just inundated with information, they’re overwhelmed. They have a hard time making decisions. What these guys have found through their research is really a 180 degrees opposite. All this information given, the fact that we have all these tools that enable them to sort through the information, whether it’s starting at the top of Google and then working down into discussion groups, or chat groups, or review product, reviews on Amazon, on social media and so, on. And so, people are actually able to be there actually, buyers are very adept at sorting through all this information and understanding what they call the absolute value, which is really sort of a utility, if you will, of what the experience is going to be using this product in a way that they’ve never been before it. So, one of their results of their study, they find, is that they have sort of traditional tools of influence, i.e. in some cases, sales funnels, could be copywriting, could be offers, brand names, so on, really have lost a lot of influence, the purchase the purchasing process in this case. I found it sort of fascinating. So, that’s what motivates question about the salesform becoming obsolete. And maybe that’s too harsh of a term and you said, but is how is that really going to change? Now, where we serve, had this trope we talked about this, customers are in control, what they’re going through their research is that yeah, they really are in control, in a way that makes it almost seem like what is the real value of sellers in this environment?

Yeah, and that’s actually something I’m interested in, I should read that book. One of the things that I’ve really seen a huge trend in, because they are right, they have access to so much information. And, a lot of people are saying the same things, that you can buy, let’s just say it’s an information product, you can buy 10 different things around the same topic, and 90% of it is going to be saying the same thing, and then everybody has their own little twist on it. One of the things that I’ve really seen in the last, over the last, I would say one to two years, is building the relationship. You know what I mean? Building engagement, being able to bond with your audience and really selling you. People don’t want to buy from faceless companies anymore. They want to buy from people with personalities, that are going through their own struggles. I even know for my own podcast– I’ve actually thought about writing a book on this, it’s so, powerful. One of the biggest and most influential things I’ve seen in my life is being vulnerable. So, I have autoresponders and they go out to the customers, all that kind of thing. And I noticed that in probably, I would say at least 70% of the cases where people are writing back to me and saying, “Oh my god, that was so, amazing”, or, “you helped me, it was valuable” or whatever, in probably at least 70% of the cases, it was a story about me being vulnerable in some way. And then transitioning into a lesson from them. So, for one example is my wife has epilepsy. So, she has grand balls, and which means basically, she loses consciousness. So, when she was pregnant with our first child, Connor, he’s five now, I was in our kitchen in one of our old houses, and I heard her yell, and I’ve been with her 12 years now. So, I’ve witnessed her having, I don’t know probably around, maybe eight seizures every six months to a year or so. And so, I heard her kind of like, say my name and it was like– sometimes you just know, it’s just like that gut sense. So, I was in the kitchen. Maybe I was making dinner, I was doing something in there. And I heard her and like no thought, I just started sprinting towards the steps because I could tell it was coming from the top of the steps. So, no thought, just start sprinting towards the top of the steps. I got halfway up the steps, and she fell down and started falling down steps. Now keep in mind, she’s eight months pregnant at this point. So, you can imagine how scary that was. So, I asked her, I caught her on the steps. And, I think it was one of those like super Superman moments, because normally, I think very few people would be able to catch somebody full way. I mean, she’s a small woman. But yeah, she was pregnant. And she was falling down the steps, and so, you can’t really get much like power in your legs really. And so, that happened. So, I have a story and they’re talking about that, and then I transitioned it into a marketing lesson for my audience, I forget what the marketing lesson even was. But I would say like, of all the emails that people reply to, that one probably gets at least four times the amount of replies of any other email, and it’s like, every time I’m actually almost hearing up, even saying that story, it’s a very emotional story for me. In the email, the emotion pours out of it. And so, I have a whole bunch of those different stories and I have kind of a theory, I need to put a name on it. But I have a theory that when people join your list, think of your friends, right? Think of your friends that you really like could be business. Social, colleagues, actual friends, like in your “real life”, in your local area, whatever. There’s one of the reasons that people have friends and are attracted to one another, is because they relate to them in some way, right? You have similar interests, you have similar hobbies, whatever you like to do, that kind of thing and so on, I actually infuse that into my copy, into the stories that we tell. So, I have a bunch of—I just call them trigger points of things that I want people to– I want to attract other my audience that relates to me, one of them is my wife that she has epilepsy, another one is my father passed away from cancer. So, anybody who’s dealt with that, if I tell stories about the struggle that I went through with my father having cancer and then passing away from it, anybody who’s dealt with that, or knows anybody with it is going to instantly bond with me, right? And then I have a whole bunch of those. I like the Philadelphia Eagles, I like to work out,

Let’s talk about that Eagle connection. Talk about being really vulnerable right there.

I also, get emails on that too. I hate the Eagles, I love, Cowboys usually, it’s like that. But, I have a whole bunch of things like that. And it’s just it’s about creating that engagement with the audience. That’s a really big tip. If you’re writing emails, you get people on your list. It’s not, it’s not just about what you sell, or the problem that you solve. That’s a huge part of it, obviously. But people buy from people that they know, like, and trust. So, even a salesman, if you’re calling somebody, if it’s worth the time to do this, research them, look up, most people you can look up their Facebook page and know at least the cliff notes of their life story in like 30 seconds. So, look them up on Facebook, if they’re not set to private, you can just look down and see if they have kids, see the hobbies they like, and blah, blah, blah, and then you can quickly relate to them, and don’t do it in a creepy way, obviously. But if you can, at least if you can do it in a way that’s very genuine and kind of just natural, I guess is a good way to say it, It just creates a connection that you can’t build without being able to do that. And people buy from other people they know, like and trust. If they don’t trust you, there’s no way they’re going to buy from you. So, if you can create that bond and that engagement relationship, whether it’s through your emails, a phone call, or whatever it is, if you’re selling face to face, look around, see what pictures they have in their office. I’m sure a lot of people already know this. See what pictures, “Hey, I see your son’s in baseball minus two.” I mean, it’s instant bond. So, it just helps, and I think that’s kind of a huge trend that I see, building a connection and a relationship with your audience.

Well, I think that’s one of the things that I agree with you. We’re going through trends of disruption, waves of disruption that happened in terms of how we engage with customers, or how we no longer use engage too often here. And, what we’re seeing and what I’m hearing, because I interview guests six days a week, the common themes is, we’re starting to see sort of the downside of some of this automation, is that at the end of the day we can automate our processes. What’s missing is this level of engagement prospects. And I think that is something that– you clear away sort of all the smoke and mirrors about automation, and what’s left– and you’ve talked about in a very reliable way. And I think relatability is really the word that you’re looking for, how do we engage as well? How do we make ourselves relatable to our audiences? And I use that in a plural sense, because there are multiple audiences and you have to have multiple stories. And so, often you see people try just do one story and one story is not enough.

Yeah, one of my products that I’m coming out with in the future, I haven’t even started yet, but I’ve actually been getting a lot of people asking me, which is a good sign when you’re on your email list they’re are actually asking you to build something to sell them. But I get people all the time saying, “Hey, oh, my God, I literally wake up in the morning and can’t wait to read my email so I can see what you’re going to tell me today.” And I get that all the time. And it’s, it’s because I use stories to add value. And I think that’s a really good way of saying it, is using story ways to add value to the lives because you don’t just want to tell stories, you don’t just want to give good information, you don’t just want to talk to them about their problems and the solution you have, you want to kind of combine all those, you have to kind of infuse your stories with value. One of the easy ways of doing that is just simply, you have a story that transitions into value which transitions into your product. So, let me try to do one right off top my head. I’m just going to look around my room and see what I have here. So, I’ve plants right there, and it’s a little bit yellow, right? So, you could say, “Hey, I was just looking over and by the way–” I’m literally coming up this off the top my head so, it’s not polished.

cards and letters let’s, let’s not grade them too harshly.

Yeah. So, you can say, “Hey, I came down to my office this morning. And I noticed that one of my plants in my office, I actually have a money tree”, if people know what that is, “I’ve a money tree in the corner of my office, and I noticed that some of the leaves overnight had fallen off and died. And, after cleaning them up, I got to thinking that, sometimes that happens in your business”, then this is kind of the transition into lesson, right? And again, I’m making this up as I go. And you can say, “Sometimes business deals “fall off and die”, things that used to work, but then you realize them that you’re wasting a lot of time, you’re wasting a lot of energy on things that are already dead on the floor and not providing any more value to your business.” And so on, that’s kind of like the lesson and you can expand that a little more. And then you go into the transition into whatever is that you sell. And in this case, maybe it’s a productivity course, and you can say– And that’s one of the things that I cover. I cover it in Module 1 – 6 of the course, is looking at your business, looking at whether you’re doing on a daily basis, whether it’s looking at certain segments of your market, and realizing that you’re putting a lot of time and energy into serving that part of the market, but it’s actually not really contributing to your bottom line. Whereas you might have– basically you’re focusing on the, the dead pieces on the ground, when you still have a whole plant that’s growing and thriving, but rather than focusing on what’s healthy and helping you grow, you’re focusing on what’s dead and old and wasted on the floor, that you should have thrown away. You can see kind of the progression of that, you tell the story. Tell us a little bit about your people and get an image of what’s happening in your in your office. This, you transition into the lesson. So, it adds value to their life, that so you’re not just pitching them in every email, and then you also, transition that into whatever it is that you’re selling. It’s such a good way, if you do that it’s such an easy way to do everything that we’ve talked about, you increase your sales because all the various reasons, you’re pre selling them on the product and first of all, you’re telling that you have the product. A lot of times people don’t even know that you have certain products, and you’re staying top of mind, you’re building that bond that relationship. There’s it’s such a good way of selling and the big thing is, it doesn’t burn your list out and you get people that say, “Oh my god, I can’t wait to hear your next story of what’s going on in your life.” I’m a copywriter, this is what I do every day, right? And, but you don’t. The other big benefit of this is you don’t have to be like a trained copywriter. You know what I mean? That story, as you can see, there’s nothing magical about that Yeah. And, it takes some time. If anybody wants to try this, go ahead and do it and just write a story and then– Okay, here’s the thing and then just look around your room. I literally that’s what I just did. I looked around my room, I saw the plant and started telling the story not even knowing how it is going to transition. And I love doing that on live shows. And, and then you just say, “Okay, well, how does that transition into a lesson, what connects about life or about business, or about health, or whatever industry you’re in”, and then, “Okay, well, how does that transition work into my product, or my service or whatever value I’m delivering to the audience.” And if you practice that, like in the beginning, it’s going to be tough, it’s going to be harder in the beginning, but once you do it a couple times. That’s why I can just look at something–

If you take it outside the context of, sending to a list and say, okay, we’ve got a salesperson on the field that’s got certain accounts, inside salesperson with only certain accounts they talked to. Yeah, have a few stories like that, that they can share around because they can use it multiple times.

Really? Absolutely. If you’re a salesman, and you’re not reading the emails, just think of how to apply what we just went over into in person selling, because it’s really, I’m just selling via email rather than via face to face, or phone, or whatever.

Works the same way. The value of the story is the same. I love the transition that you did there. That’s a great way– oftentimes stories we are always sort of told, or at least the way people are taught increasingly in sales these days is you tell stories about your existing customers and what they’re doing. But if they have stories about themselves, and there’s this whole idea and one thing that I certainly teach people that I’m working with, in selling there is this aspect of vulnerability. I think it was really critical in terms of developing that level of engagement that you’re talking about; people want to see that. They want to hear, that’s how they understand that you’re a person as opposed to the robot that can visit their office before you. The guy just treats them as a customer and a niche, they put on a box and they sell on the same way as they sold everybody else. And there’s nothing personal about it.

Yeah. And with the whole vulnerability thing, one of the biggest things that I think– like the psychological factors happening there, is that especially if you’re salesman, face to face, nobody is comfortable when you’re talking to a salesman, let’s just be honest, nobody wakes up and they’re like, “Oh, I can’t wait to talk to you today. I can’t wait to be sold today.” I mean, nobody wakes up thinking that. Now, there are a lot of things you can do to kind of reduce that. But, even if you go to a car dealership, you know what’s going to happen, you know that you’re going to eventually talk to salesman but then like once it actually happens the consumer kind of clams up, you get nervous, you get like, “I can’t wait till this is over Holy God”, that kind of thing. And what happens is that their red flags are up, they’re looking for any excuse to not buy, and when you’re vulnerable, all of that comes down and they’re like, “Oh my God, this guy is really opening up to me like, this is an actual human. This isn’t a sales.”

Absolutely an engagement.

Yeah, And the defenses that people have, the walls that they put up to the salesman, whether it’s online or face to face, it’s such a good way to bring them down. And if you can do it in a way that you’re being vulnerable, and if you could somehow be vulnerable, it’s actually a good thing for selling the product. I don’t know if I’ll be able to come up with a specific example of that, because I’d probably need a specific product. But, if you can do that in a way that, “Okay, what can I be vulnerable about?” Say you’re selling a car. I’m trying to think of an example. I’m sure we’ve got the car. Say you’re selling a car and, something about, like, if you’re selling safety, what’s it good? I think Volvo are known for this. And you could say, maybe, car accident. Yeah, maybe your wife was pregnant. And you can say something about, I was in the car, my wife I were driving some other car. Maybe we were driving a Volvo because that’s what we drive. So, that’s a good way of saying, “Hey, I actually use this product.” So, we were driving the Volvo, somebody hit us. I knew my wife is pregnant. And while she was there, I was like, “Oh my god, you okay?” And, I took care of her. And then later that night, I went home, and I broke down crying because it all hit me later, and I just couldn’t express my gratitude enough that we were driving a Volvo that’s known for being safe. And I actually looked it up. And what happened was– I don’t know, anything bubble– they hit the passenger door, and Volvos have this safety feature like these, see how it transitions into it? Think about how much more impactful that is, selling the benefits and the features through that story, through that vulnerable story. Rather than just saying, “Oh, well, we have these side airbags”, and they’ve heard it 1000 times. They’re like, “All right, I don’t really care.”

Yeah. And I want to talk about the key things there too. And you brought up with your story about your wife and the stairs. We all have stories. Just have to look for the stories. I’m a big believer in not creating stories that haven’t really happened to you because eventually they come across as inauthentic. But if you’re just observant about your life, we all have them. So, in regards what we saw with things that happened to us, were humans that our customers can relate to.

Yeah, absolutely.

Excellent. Jeremy, this as we move into the last segment of my show where I’ve got some standard questions I ask all my guests. And the first one that puts you to the test is a little bit of a hypothetical scenario. And in this scenario, you’ve just been hired as the VP of sales at a company whose sales have stalled out and it is time to hit the reset button, get them back on track. So, your first week on the job. What two things could you do that would have the biggest impact?

Oh, that’s easy. So, I would, look at the stats, who is buying, and I would kind of segment the buyers into people, I call them hyper buyers. You come out with a new product, you pitch them on a service, whatever, and they just buy. They buy it because of you. So, there are people that, whether they just love to buy stuff, or it’s because they just have such a deep relationship with you. Step one is segment them, find out who they are, who are the hyper buyers, or another way of looking at is, who is your, like, what product or service is kind of your hyper product or service, essentially doing like an 80-20, right? Figure out where 80% of your results are coming from. The next thing is I would call those people on the phone, and I would have two questions for them. Actually, what I would do is call them on the phone, this is kind of like a two part, this is like 2A and 2B, sort of. So, again, first one is to segment to find out either who’s spending more money with us or what product or service are they spending more money with the sun. Second thing is call them, call the hyperbullers and say, “Hey, what is it about us? Why are you so, loyal? I love the fact that you are, but what is it about us that really attracts you to us?” And then the second thing is, I would call people who didn’t buy. So, call people that were interested, for some reason they said, “No”, I actually do this myself, both of these actually, and say, “Hey, what was it about our service? I know you’re interested, you needed help with whatever, what caused you to go to somebody else?” And call 5 – 10 people something like that. You can also do this in surveys, online if you don’t want to call people, but I would recommend doing both, do a survey to your whole list, but then also, call a couple people, you get much deeper insights when you talk to people on the phone. And I know that because I’ve done this, I actually did it like a week and a half ago for one of my clients. And so, I would do that. And then so, let’s just call all that the first thing, and then the second thing I would come out with a new product or service based around what they told me, whatever it is– or do like a promotion, there’s kind of a lot of things you can do here, like after you know that information you can come up with a new product or service with new insights you got. You can go back and revise your selling approach, whether it’s online or offline, on your sales pages, in your calling scripts, whatever it is based on, why people did buy, why people didn’t buy, you can overcome the objections and put all the selling points in there, all that kind of thing. There’s a lot of different things you can do, you can do more advertising to those exact people, on Facebook ads, for example, if you find out like what hyper target market is, men that are 50 to 60, and they’re dealing with these specific issues, and they tend to live in this type of media. They tend to make this type of money. You can go on Facebook and say, “Okay, only send ads to people that are under that criteria graphic, right? And then in the ad you say, “Hey, are you dealing with this? Are you dealing with this? Are you dealing with this?” And then you kind of go into your whole thing. Yeah, so, that’s what I would do.

Okay. Great answer. All right. So, I’ve got some rapid-fire questions that you can give one-word answers to or elaborate if you wish. First one is so, when you Jeremy, are selling your services, what’s your most powerful sales attribute?

I go after people, one of my best clients are people that no copy, they just don’t want to do it. So, my thing is, when you get this back from me– a lot of my clients, they know what good copy is, when they get copied back for me, my main goal is to have as minimal edits as possible, because I’ve worked with a lot of lower end copywriters, I’m a little bit more on the higher end scale. And I’ve worked with more like newbie copywriters, just on like my side projects, I’ve started businesses and things like that. And so, I test them out to see if I should hire them and things like that. And I know one of my biggest frustrations is getting copy, and I still make a whole bunch of edits. So, one of my biggest selling points is, look, when you get my copy, like it’s basically good to go. There might be a couple little tweaks you have here or there, but it’s like 98 – 99% good to go. The only things you might have to change is if there’s like a factual thing, because sometimes if I’m telling their story, there might be one or two things off or whatever. But I really try to nail down things like the tone, how they write. Before I start writing, I will actually go and read if they have blog, or if they have something as simple as an “About Me” page. I’ll actually pick up the tone from their writing and try to model that, how aggressive or subtle they are in their– and capture things like that. Obviously it’s results, that number one, but then the second thing is, just ease like when you get it back, it’s done.

Okay. Yeah. So, who’s your sales role model?

Um, probably Zig Ziglar. He popped in my head first.

That works. So, what’s one book you recommend every salesperson should read?

I would say, every salesperson, let’s see. One of the books I always recommend is, how to get everything. what’s the what’s the book? I might have to look it up. It’s a Jay Abraham book. I am looking it up right now. Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got. And I think it’s actually pretty relevant to salespeople. It’s not a sales book, but it teaches you to think differently. Jay Abraham is probably my biggest influence on the way that I think. I was very lucky when I got started, he was one of the first people that I kind of heard about. So, it was like one of those really early influences. And it just got me to think more strategically, rather than thinking transactionally. You start to kind of see the whole picture. And I think it’s very applicable, even to salesmen. Like I said, it’s not technically a sales book. He’s not saying, the 16 ways to close and that kind of thing. But it’s just getting you to think differently and to sell rather than having a scripted pitch or things like that. It’s really just learning how to reframe the whole conversation and that sort of thing. So, that’s what I would say.

All right. Good suggestion. So, last question for you then is what music is on your playlist these days?

Does it matter what kind?

No.

I listen to country for everyday listening. My wife and I love to go quadding, and we were talking before we started recording. I live in Wyoming, Pennsylvania. It’s a very mountainous kind of place, lots of woods. The town I live in, there’s only 4000 people. So, there’s a lot of space. We have a quad and one of our things that we like to do is, we have a three, a five-year-old, and another boy on the way so, three boys. So, we’re not doing this now obviously, but when she’s not pregnant, one of the things we like to do is have one of our parents watch the boys and then we go quadding for the day. We go out and behind her brother’s house, and there’s a whole bunch of quad trails back there. We go and take a couple beers, and take a cigar too, and take some snacks and things like that and just go out in nature. So, we’re always listening to country if we if we have our boys out in our driveway, we’re listening country. And then for my workout songs, I listen mostly to Breaking Benjamin. They’re actually a local band, they’re from this area. I think they’re from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and they kind of made it big. It’s a little bit more like hard rock type of type of music. And then anything old. I can’t stand the music today, like the pop, music today,

You like the classics.

I like the older stuff. I’m a younger myself. I’m only 30 and, I can’t stand today’s music. It’s like an abomination that any music that’s ever come before it. If I’m in the car, and there’s nothing good on the country radio, I actually turn the radio off. I can’t even listen to it.

There you go. All right. Well, Jeremy, thanks for joining me. So, tell folks how they can find out more about you.

Definitely. So, if you resonate with what I talked about today, I would say there’s two ways of getting in touch. The first one is, listen to my podcasts, right? So, if you like listening to podcasts, then you’re probably on your phone right now and just go in and search, Sales Funnel Mastery, and I should come up, even if you just type in “sales funnel”, I’m sure you come up. And so, that’s number one. And you can get on my podcast I have, I think we’re up to like 65 episodes, something like that. Very similar type of things that we talked about. I do half and half. I think the first 30 episodes, were just me talking, and now the last 30 is kind of a mix between me and having guests. And then the second thing is my website is jeremyreeves.com, if you need help putting together a sales funnel, rewriting some of the copy that you have, things like that, if you sell anything high ticket, definitely get in touch about doing a webinar. That’s one of the areas that we specialize in, selling high ticket items. And everything that we talked about kind of goes into that. It’s a very unique process, webinars are a very good way to build a relationship very, very quickly. People sell $10,000 programs within 24 – 48 hours of someone hearing about them. It’s amazing. Those are a couple different ways that you can get in touch, and I hope you enjoyed everything that we talked about.

Excellent, excellent. Again. Thanks again, Jeremy. And remember friends, make it a part of your day every day to deliberately learn something new to help you accelerate your success. And one easy way to do that is to make this podcast a part of your daily routine, whether you listen to commute, in the gym, or make it part of your morning sales meeting. That way, you won’t miss any of my conversations with top business experts like my guest today, JR, who shared his expertise about how to accelerate the growth of your business. Thanks for joining me. Until next time, this is AP. Good selling everyone.

Thanks for listening to the show. If you like what you heard and want to make sure you don’t miss any upcoming episodes, please subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or stitcher.com. For more information about today’s guests, visit my website at andypaul.com.

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