Social Dynamic Selling w/ Rylee Meek [Episode 718]

Rylee Meek, marketing consultant, sales coach, and author, joins me on this episode.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Rylee’s first sales jobs were one-on-one, so his commissions were limited by the appointments he could fit into the hours of a day.
• Rylee answered an ad to work three days a week and make $10,000. That introduced him to one-to-many group presentation selling. The opportunity was for selling home remodeling packages.
• That was a light-bulb moment for Rylee. He didn’t get the job but within two months, he had put together his own company doing dinner seminars. It wasn’t as easy as he had thought to fill a room with qualified people.
• Crafting the right message to take a group of the right people down an emotional journey to make a buying decision is different than one-on-one selling. Rylee came up with the term Social Dynamic Selling to describe it.
• Rylee had 26 sales crews over 38 states giving seminars selling residential home insulation and LED lighting packages to help people save on their utility bills. The sale prices averaged $5,000 to $6,000.
• Rylee picked the locations, negotiated dinners with restaurants, sent direct mail, took reservations, made confirmation calls, and gave presentations. The goal was 15 to 20 people per dinner, from about 4,500 mail pieces.
• Rylee calls it “fishing with corndogs.” The “corndog” is a free dinner. Rylee has unsuccessfully tried events without dinners. The dynamic of breaking bread together helps build the system of “know, like, and trust.”
• Today Rylee helps clients run the seminars. A seminar takes two months of planning. With every new client, Rylee starts with the end in mind and then “backs into it.” The budget works with a big-ticket sale item.
• At the dinner, the client is the ringleader of their circus. It’s up to them to perform; Rylee’s team provides support. Prospect attention spans are short, so things move quickly and precisely.
• A group setting is a neutral environment where people don’t feel they’re being sold something under pressure. People sharing a meal in a group form social connections. Rylee tells of the importance of the social dynamic.
• Rylee explains the types of services he offers. Holding eight dinner events is the standard. It is a predictable, sustainable, and scalable selling system. Rylee scaled it to over $12 million in sales in the second year.
• Can you use online marketing to invite people instead of direct mail? Rylee finds that paid online ads cost much more per eventual attendee. People commit at a greater rate, calling in from direct mail, with a confirmation call.