In this episode of the Book More Show, I talk with Mark Gambale about building authentic relationships in sales. Mark shares insights from his personal experiences that shaped his unique sales philosophy focused on creating genuine connections beyond transactions. We compare effective sales strategies to American football, showing how preparation and authenticity lead to successfully closing deals.
We explore how customer insights transform sales approaches, particularly in SaaS product launches. Using examples from med tech and B2B SaaS, we discuss how businesses can adapt their strategies by understanding customers more deeply. Small businesses like financial advisory firms benefit from this approach by addressing clients' core pain points rather than engaging in surface-level conversations.
Mark explains the mindset shift needed for effective sales conversations, drawing from his experience transforming sales teams and improving close rates. Through techniques for gauging client interest and securing micro-commitments, sales professionals can build successful long-term relationships. The "close with one" concept helps small business owners lead effectively without getting stuck in day-to-day operations.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
I explored the significance of building genuine relationships in sales, emphasizing how authentic connections can lead to successful deals with fewer calls.
We discussed how Mark Gambale's personal experiences influenced his sales approach, using mindset mapping and orchestration to enhance the sales process.
Mark shared insights on transitioning from traditional sales methods to leveraging customer insights for effective SaaS product launches, drawing from med tech and B2B SaaS examples.
The episode highlighted the importance of addressing deeper client pain points, especially for small businesses like financial advisors, to foster meaningful engagement.
We examined the mindset shift necessary for successful sales conversations, focusing on relationship-building over aggressive tactics, and learning from industry experts like Alex Hormozi.
Through Mark's experience, we delved into techniques for gauging client interest and securing micro-commitments, using humor to enhance client interactions.
Finally, we introduced the "close with one" mindset, empowering small business owners to lead effectively without being tied down by daily operations, and announced upcoming conferences for further learning.
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TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Stuart: It's Stuart Bell here, and today, joined by Mark Gambale, I was practicing the pronunciation off-camera. Mark, it's great to see you again.
Mark: It's good to see you again, stuart, and this is kind of timely in that early part of the year. We've been progressing and watching American football and it's now down to the Eagles and the Chiefs and it's. It's one of those things where it's almost like sales there's only one that's going to win and what is the game plan for the winner? And that's an interesting sort of backdrop for why everyone wants to be an author or wants to be someone that could close the deal in one call rather than four or five or six wouldn't it be amazing if the eagles could show up and just in one, one quarter of the game, just win the whole thing and just be like, hey, we're pretty much done, there's.
There's no need to score any more points, we're clearly the victor. Yes, that's how you can look at the sales process. Writing a book or doing anything else, there's a different way of doing it that's the key, isn't it?
Stuart: it's taking that time to orchestrate something and think about the couple of steps ahead and and plan it before you even start, rather than just doing something and hope it will come together. So why don't we start the podcast? Give people a bit of a background? We were connected on linkedin and then a jumping off point in the conversation was was your book close with one? So it's always good to bridge people's books and what they do, but but, yeah, let's start with, uh, with a background for everyone I think the the story actually began when I was nine years old and my grandmother was battling breast cancer for the second time.
Mark: She defeated it the first time, but sometimes those things just come back like a roaring beast. And it came back and as she was losing the battle, unfortunately, my father and my family would go visit her every Thursday night at the hospital and one of the nights I just had this feeling like, oh, I just can't go, hospitals creep me out. And I didn't go, I didn't make it and unfortunately she passed two days later and it created this wound in me that I realized wow, you don't know how much time you have with a loved one. You could just lose them in an instant. And later on, when I became an analyst and a product manager and a sales trainer, I realized what if we could give people a way to connect as humans in a faster way, so that we could go home and be with our loved ones and our friends? And that sort of stirred in me this ability to close in one sales call rather than four or five or six, to spend more time with your loved ones and it doesn't mean that someone's signing the contract in that first call.
It's possible you could take a credit card or do an invoice. But what they're thinking subconsciously is I like Stuart, I trust Stuart. I don't want to ghost him on the next call. I'll actually join the call and if he sends me an email or a message, I will genuinely respond to it. But you, as the sales rep, don't have to do this. Thank you for joining the call today. Here's my pricing, here's my brochure, here's my PowerPoint. None of that needs to happen, because you've already made that subconscious connection where they say thank you, stuart. I'm glad I joined today. I don't think I have to look at other options. I'd like to work with you. So it shifts things around in a way that the prospect loves the experience and the sales rep loves the experience that the prospect loves the experience and the sales rep loves the experience.
Stuart: Yeah, it's such a different take. We were talking with another friend called Tim a few months ago. But this idea of the. I was looking into a book that I read a number of years ago by an Australian academic called Michael Gleason. The book's called Wombat Selling. So his principle in there Wombat stands for something and I can't for the life of me ever remember. And every time I mention I keep thinking I'll go and look and I never get around to it. So wombat's an acronym for something, but I can't remember what it is.
But the main principle is this idea that as the salesperson, you can't force someone into closing. The closing power is with them. What you have the power to do is what he calls refers to his check moves. Like you can put them into check and then it's up to them whether they close themselves. But the thing that you've got control over is that outreach and the point that you're making. The thing that you have control over is the way you turn up the authenticity around it, the, the outcome that you're looking to achieve. It's that little bit of orchestration beforehand that can really make a difference rather than just jumping on another call and wondering which direction it's going to go. How did that framework? The mechanics of the overall system come to mind quite quickly. Was it? Were there some pieces that developed over the years, or was it? This idea of getting to the point of making a relationship is the key thing?
Mark: it was all that complete at the beginning well, I'm not a sales person and I will never be a salesperson but as an analyst, working with Apple and Microsoft and then Amazon, I realized the experience that you give is so important.
If that experience doesn't enable the connection with the vision, it just doesn't work. And as an analyst I realized oh, it's great to talk about the future of SaaS and e-commerce and how to win. It wasn't hands-on enough for me. So I decided I want to be a product manager. And when I went to become a product manager in a med tech space, they said to me we're not going to hire you because you're not a male nurse. And I said well, I don't have three, four, five years to become a male nurse. It would be great. What if I just bring extreme curiosity to the table? What's the value of that? And they said that's interesting. We've never thought about curiosity. I'm like, as the curiosity closes the deal, because you're, you're genuinely interested. So they hired me a steward. They gave me no engineers for all the products that I owned which would detect cancer and cut out cancer.
but they just said everything's fine, your products are good, they're keeping all the lights on. And it wasn't until one of my products one of the components a latex component that was on a strap. All of a sudden the doctors and nurses said well, it's causing an irritation to the patients and we have to get rid of it. And I was like perfect. I went to the CEO His name is Ron Ron. We have 90% share, but it's going to go down to about maybe 10, 15% and just drop from there. He looked at me. He's like no, it isn't, you don't get any engineers. I said wait a minute. This is the research report of what the hospital buyers are saying. And the nurses and the doctors are saying they're going to throw us to the wall. So we got to do something about it.
Stuart: And then when I took, the voice of the market.
Mark: he realized, oh, Mark's not making this up, yeah, he wants engineers, but legitimately we're going to lose revenue.
Stuart: Yeah.
Mark: And Ron immediately said all right, I'm going to give you two engineers. They're brand new, so good luck with them. And, by the way, you're launching May 1st.
And I said no offense, ron, but we as a team come up with what the product is when we're going to launch it, because we don't want to have to redo it. And he said, oh, you guys are going to have to redo it, it'll be late, you'll never hit your revenue. I said, ron, that's not how success happens. It's product and innovation. We listen to the market and then we launch. So we did it differently. We gave him the date we launched and nine out of 10 nurses loved our product over the competitors. Because we listened and we were curious. We basically said what's the thing as part of this product that if we did it, you would immediately drop the competitor, even stop using our current one and switch to this. And it was that extreme curiosity that I took into managing medical products that were hardware.
And one of the doctors said to me we have a problem as GI doctors when there is colon cancer in the colon or there's lung cancer that the bronchoscopists see they'll cut it out and they'll tell the patient hey, we found this, we cut it out, we think we got it all. Well, if you're a patient and you go home you're like, yeah, they found some cancer, but they think they got it all. All of a sudden you're freaking out, going, did they? Will I come back? Maybe somewhere else? And I met this doctor that did some research and he said about a third of the time in some situations of this type when the lesion's flat, I've read the research and done the research, sometimes it comes back. And he said to me Mark, if you could find a way to make a system that does my technique of cutting it out, injecting it and blasting it with like a laser, he's like you'd have a home run. I said, perfect, let me go see if I can find that thing I eventually found that thing.
it was made in germany and he's german and I brought it into the lab and he's like well, we don't need that, we're just going to use what I use today it's amazing.
So he scoped the patient and he's looking at the esophagus, he's pointing down. He's like this patient came to me because other doctors couldn't solve their problem. And he's putting the device down and he's using the laser and all of a sudden it fails, it like fizzes out. He pulls it out of the patient and he looks at me and he says give me what you've got, I need it. And I said, doctor, this isn't cleared by the fda yet. It's okay, it's approved in germany, the eu, but not here. He's like don't worry, I'm the doctor, I'm doing the best for the patient right now. So just give me, give me the setting. That's going to be like what I had before, but it's actually going to work.
So I gave it to him and he started to blast it and all of a sudden he looked at me. He's like this is the way I dreamed it should be. And that's what salespeople are trying to figure out is why did you join the call? What's the dream that you wanted me to serve?
and find a way to get to that dream in three minutes or less right rather than a salesperson saying here's my demo and here's my whole deck and talking, and talking, and talking. And try to get to. What's the one thing? Just ask them. What's the one thing that inspired you to talk to me and let them talk? You give them the microphone.
Stuart: You literally just say, hey, I'm gonna give you the mic yeah, that idea that, um, a number of people go into things with the presentation and kind of a broadcast mode, flipping that switch into the receiving mode first and and asking those questions how, um, the people who you're working with is that a? It's not rocket science in the sense that it's a big, complicated thing that people need to understand. I'm sure they conceptualize it straight away, but is it habits that keep people from doing that, or is it just the visibility of a different way of doing it? What's the light switch moment for people where they switch from a the old way to this way?
Mark: I don't know if you read the book atomic habits, right? Yeah, the author does a really good job of breaking down. There's your habits, of which have gotten you where you are, and then there's the new habits that you see but you haven't figured out how to incorporate. So he calls it habit stacking, highlighting where I'll take a sales call, I'll look at the recording of the Zoom or I'll listen to the audio or be in the room and just listen and I'll break it down and say did you know that you come across like this? Did you know that the prospect said this and you missed it and you kept talking over them? And all of a sudden they see the things that they need to change on their own and as soon as they see them, they can't unsee them and they add new habits on their own, because when they see that thing that they're not doing as part of their habit, they go. I absolutely have to do that. And then I join as a sales coach and coach them from call to call I'll even join a call.
You're familiar with the movie top gun, with maverick, with goose, and basically I am the wingman that will join and be the co-pilot and say okay, watch out for that.
Stuart: Yeah watch out for this and guide them.
Mark: They're still going to close the deal, but I join and help them see the things that they need to see, ask the question that needs to be asked, stop the demo and basically say, hey, let's just, let's step back for a minute and see what it is they want and stop yeah parting them and see what it is they want and stop, yeah, guarding them.
Stuart: That's uh, it's an interesting approach, isn't it? Because it's not only coaching and sharing new information with people, but to be there and identify when those old patterns come up, which I think for most people is the hardest thing to recognize because you, you're in it, you don't recognize it yourself. Those teams that you work with, are they primarily still in medical sales on that side of things, or is it across the board all sorts of different organizations?
Mark: It started off in med tech and it was probably coached and trained and got on the stage for about 1000 or so med tech reps, for about a thousand or so med tech reps, and I transferred that into B2B SaaS and I didn't know how much it would transfer over. And I worked at a company that was just enterprise sales doing really well, and they were about to do a SaaS launch and I asked them Alex was the CEO and Stacey was the product manager. I said all right, what does success look like as we do this launch? And they scratched their heads and they're like I don't know, we haven't had a good launch in a while. Okay, how long?
Well, it's been 10 years. I was like 10 years like SaaS is different. We can't rely on our old enterprise model. You remember Microsoft Office? You'd buy that and it would just be this massive enterprise sale and you would pay a monthly service fee to keep it going. I said no, it's completely flipped. And I asked them if they were willing to do product launch a little differently and change the formula, because that product the cancer one that I talked about we launched it.
No one even knew about it, the reps didn't know about it, the market didn't know about it and it was done in a way where we took that doctor's video of the case that he showed me and I unveiled that to the sales team with it and they were like, boom, that's the answer. So with that product launch, I figured out what the market wanted. What are all the emails, texts and webinars that if we launched it tomorrow, that people would absolutely jump in and say, of the thousand emails I have, this, this is the one I'll?
join the webinar, I'll go to the conference. So when that was all done in the right way, stuart, after one week at an industry conference, we launched it and the way it was talked about had the people in the audience running to the back of the room, going where are the sales reps that can give me a quote? And they asked for quotes that were one year quotes, not a month or two. Let me try it right and by the end of that week the arr was hit yeah it's like a big difference right.
Stuart: Yeah, quite a big difference from their past experience that identifying those messages. So, as people listening here, we've got a wide range of different businesses, mainly small, to idea of identifying. People often talk about identifying the pain points and talking to those, but I think really taking the time to dive into that a little bit deeper, what's the as you go and work with a new client, what's the first exposure that you've got to what those pain points are? Is that asking the internal teams or finding friendly clients and talking to those? Or market research? How does, as someone's listened to this, what's their first steps into thinking about it really from the customer pain perspective and not just superficially?
Mark: are you talking about more of the onboarding process, of how do we make a project successful, or is it earlier on, like what do we do during that first call?
Stuart: More from the point of view of let's take, we work with a number of financial advisor type people, so they might have two or three people in the team. Their products and services that they're doing necessarily unique, but their approach might be unique or their personality might be unique. They've probably got some idea of what the pain point is for the customer, like the organization that you were talking about. They probably have some idea. But to be able to go that bit deeper into crafting the emails and the webinars and the support and material that really makes the end user think about it, how can people get that mind switch into away from just thinking about maybe some superficial avatar into, okay, how to identify what the clients really want? Is there a mindset switch that the organization itself needs to have?
Mark: oh my gosh you reminded me about during the pandemic. I was starting out my own digital marketing agency and I thought this is great.
There's no other digital marketing agencies like me. I'm unique and I realized that when I got out there that there's just tons of those. They're all over the place. And I met a woman named Stacy and I was about to have her on the sales call, the sales pitch. I had prepared a big long PowerPoint. I'm like this is great. She's going to hear all about everything that I've done. And all of a sudden I froze and I said you know what?
It's not about me. Let me ask Stacy, what's the one thing that you wish was better and what's in your way? And she was remarkably focused on one thing that you wish was better and what's in your way. And she was remarkably focused on one thing. She said, mark, I've been successful because I've been doing these things, but I'm now at a wall and I can't get over this wall. And I said, well, what's the wall? And she said, well, I have this calendar link that I built and this website. None of the funnels are working in that people get referred to me, but I'm not getting over the 800,000 mark. I said what's 800,000? You're talking about revenue. She's like no, I make 800,000 in take home commissions.
I was like, okay, so what's the problem? And she's like I wanted to get to a million and I haven't found a way to get there. And so that's when she became a client of mine and I said, okay, I can help you get to me a million. We're going to break down all the things mindset as well as the whole buyer journey process of hearing about you clicking through the funnel, getting on the phone with you. She's a great closer. She didn't have the top of the funnel piece working so she needed all those other things, to create people that would hear her message and get on the call.
And she didn't think that it was possible to get the a million and so it was mindset mapping where, if you imagine a thermostat on the wall and 800,000 is the 80 degrees, she wanted to get to the 100 where things were cooking. She had turned the dial to 80 and said that's enough, I don't want any more, I don't think I can do more, and I basically said said Stacy, ripping that off the wall, the thermostat doesn't exist, it's September, you have three months of the year left. Here's the things that I need you to do from a mindset perspective and we're going to work on this every day and every week till you get to the million. She. She got there and it was through a different kind of work and I didn't realize it at the time. That was the close, with one mindset and methodology that I had learned trial by fire.
I actually got into cars with sales reps that were incredible at what they do. That got to President's Club. President's Club is when you're the top rep of the year and there's a team 15, 20, 30 reps. You go to cancun or wherever. I got in cars with them and went on sales calls and basically just observed, like, what are their habits, how are they interacting with people? So I went to the seasoned ones that were great, the mid tier and then the new ones and I would just study and observe and then slowly ask questions about how they got to where they were. And at one point I felt confident enough to maybe ask questions of the buyers. And that was the moment where I realized when you ask a question of a prospect you have to be so spot on with your question that they have to feel like you get their world. And if you don't ask good questions then you're not going to have good dialogue. And that's part of the preparation. Alex Harmozy in the $100 100 million dollar offer.
You haven't read the book or looked at what he does. He basically talks about what's that one thing that people want that you've got to have a really good question, for, like, he has a weight loss program system that he created for all the gyms that he created and he taught how to have incredible growth. And he basically said, hey, is it so? If that's your target, is it okay for your family and friends to see that you've let them down? Like, is that okay with you to just tell them I'm not doing it?
Stuart: And then they would look at it differently and go, no, it's actually not okay for me to let them down, I don't want to let them down, and they would see the problem differently, right From the perspective of, yeah, it's important for me to do this that there's the one thing that you're trying to make, that, or there is potentially one thing that you're trying to make, that connection with someone that's the anchor for them to begin that know, like and trust journey and understand what the next steps are and see it from their perspective. How does that do some sales teams struggle with that, given that there's often pressure to close and they see it as too long of a process or too much of a tangent away from that kind of hardcore sales message. If they've really been kind of trained in that mindset, is it difficult for people to kind of make that switch from a very kind of dog-eat-dog closing type world to more of a relationship building type world?
Mark: It can be really difficult for everyone to see that there's a different way. But as they see themselves doing it differently, all of a sudden their minds shift. And I'll give you a for instance. Recently I just finished a project studying 10 sales reps and the question was their close rate is 75%, which is really good.
The company wanted it to be 85% and they had some people at 90 and some on the low seventies and they said our average is not good. So I joined sales calls with each of those people as coaching one-on-ones and I studied their calls and listened in to what they sounded like and I played it back in front of them. I said this call was not a win. After I went through all the ones that were, they were really good at and built the workflow and I said this one didn't go.
Why do you think it didn't go well, how did you sound? How did they sound? And all of a sudden they started to realize, oh well, I didn't really show up the way I should have. I sounded tired, I let myself talk over them. So usually about 50% of the people are willing to be coached and they're willing to see something different, but three of those 10 really had already decided that they'd given up and they were already looking for other jobs or they were on a performance improvement plan and they just didn't want to be there.
The next level up, where there's basically three people of the 10 that were kind of doing average work, they would show up. They're in their PJs, sitting on their bed, maybe watching some Netflix, and it was just. They were just checking the box. I work nine to five, so that's the other three people, so that covers six. And then the other four were I want to grow in this company. I see other people around me that aren't doing the best, but when I close a deal, they're getting a piece of the action because it was shared commissions. Okay. These other four people were stressed, not happy, not feeling listened to by the company, and one of them was just like ready to go I love it here.
I'm great, I love my job, but I don't know, maybe I could just retire or do something different. Like they had side businesses that they wanted to do and it's great that people have side hustles but for the company not to give that person what they need to be successful right so it's really interesting. Um, it's sales is like a mirror. Um, and you've heard of the concept of snow, white and the seven dwarves and there's that mirror, mirror on the wall. Who's the fairest?
right well as salespeople want to show up. You really can't be the one that looks the best the mirror is the prospect and they are looking to see if you have the thing that they want.
Stuart: So you've got to show that you can do that thing that they put in the mirror right those connections and kind of looking past to the bigger picture of of the, the outcome and truly what's in it for them, rather than just going through the motions. Such a big difference. I want to talk quickly just about the book. So the idea of bringing it all together, all these ideas together, as a book, was that done more from a um, from a marketing perspective, in the sense that it would get you in front of clients who were good fits, or was it initially more of a passion project and you really wanted to kind of document this way of thinking for posterity?
Mark: there's really great books out there that a lot of people know, like Simon Sinek's, know your why? Chris Voss' Never Split the Difference. And then there's also these things that come together in terms of have you heard of a beautiful mind, like the theory and the framework that's there.
I've realized that I've got my own framework and that's why I'm writing the book, which is to tell people sales is not at all what you think, and there's a way to make it so easy and fun and enjoyable and meaningful. So one of the hardest things to do is to show up each day with nothing in your basket and by the end of the day you want to have collected so many fish that you can bring it to your village which is really the company as well as enough to your family. That's quite an honor and an opportunity and I decided I would write it down so that people could think about sales in a different way and realize it's not a bunch of techniques, it's not about slides and demos, it's about something completely different.
Stuart: Yeah, it's a um the chapters in the book and the pieces that didn't end up in the book. It's one of the fascinating conversations that often comes up, because people are always thinking more is better, and our position, particularly from a conversation starting book perspective, is that's true, but all of that more doesn't need to be in the book, because the book isn't the product. The conversation is the product. The book is just the way to get to the conversation. So this idea to make things manageable in terms of reading it, but also really manageable in terms of creating it we're always looking at what should be included and what should be live outside of the book.
So this idea of beneficial constraints for you, because there's such a broad element. Each person is different, each scenario is different. There's a core set of frameworks, but I imagine that there's a lot of stuff that you could have included, but but didn't. Was that an easy decision or was it um? It was really kind of like um throwing the babies away because you really wanted to include this piece, but it's um, it just didn't fit well in this, this particular framework. How do you have the discipline to draw a line under it?
Mark: I realized that the audience wants to have one core principle and then sort of seven elements that back it up and that's the essence of a book is it's like one principle of a story that you can see seven examples of how to do it. So I'll give you a. For instance, how familiar are you with the movie dumb and dumber?
Stuart: yes, yeah, probably more familiar than it should be yeah, exactly so.
Mark: There's a moment in the movie where the character asks the woman hey, what are the chances? And he says it in a funny way. He's like, what are the chances of a guy like you and a girl like me being together?
And she's like one in a million and he's like so you're saying there's a chance. What's great about Closed With One is that when you have someone on the call, you've already started off with a 10, 10 being. They want to buy over time During that call. It can go immediately to a one and it's. It's very much Okay. I teach people based upon what you've heard so far today that we've talked about, how likely is it that you would actually want to work with me, one being?
Stuart: who are?
Mark: you and 10 being absolutely I wish I saw you yesterday and it's okay to just do that as a laugh and just sort of a camaraderie moment. Maybe I'm not a fit, and then it gives them a chance to go. You know, I don't know, I just met you.
You're kind of a five or a six, which is neutral, so people are kind of being kind. And then it lets the sales person to say, all right, well, what would make me an eight or a nine? What would make me a? Yes? Well, you know, I like SEO and I like to do websites, but really what I want is someone that can make me a ClickFunnels style approach that can put everything together and puts all the credit card money in my bank. Just did that last week and I built a million dollar sales funnel. Oh, really, yeah, okay, would you be opposed to talking again Tuesday at two or Wednesday at one, so we can go into that? Sure, no problem. And then the next technique is basically and I say technique because what you want to do is it's the birthday approach where you'll say to the person okay, so you said Tuesday at two, works, I'm going to send you the invite right now. I want to be sure that the spam filters don't block it and you can't see that we're supposed to meet. Okay, great.
So you send it out and then there's some waiting, and then you're able to have a little bit more fun with the conversation and say something like okay, I want to be sure that you see it on your end.
And it's not a question of going to the dentist versus talking to me. And then all of a sudden, you get them doing what you just did a little bit of a laugh. People don't usually want to go to the dentist. It's essential, and in this situation they're going to laugh potentially, and then you're able to say, all right, do you see it on your end? Oh, yes, I see it. It just popped up. Okay, open it and click yes. And when they open it and click yes, subconsciously they're making a commitment to you, saying all right, you just invited me to the birthday and I'm going to go to the birthday and I won't ghost you. Because imagine inviting one of your best friends to your birthday and they say sure, I will go, I'll be there Friday night, can't wait to see you. Imagine if they ghost you, how you're going to feel and how they're going to feel your best friend, your good mate's, not going to do that to you.
Stuart: Yeah, those little micro commitments.
It's kind of like the Robert Cialdini persuasion type element or influence one of the two books, to write those little micro commitments towards, step by stepping someone towards an ultimate outcome that's good for them, rather than jumping too far, too far too fast, which is, I think, easy to do.
Easy to do what um of all of the people. So I say, like um, as I say the audience, that we have a typically more small to medium-sized business but a lot of people who are responsible for their own book, their own book of business and their own book, but her own book of business. So there's a lot of juggling of the plates and trying to keep everything spinning and not necessarily having the structure of a big team to support them. A couple of the easy ideas for just making the small changes that really make a difference. Of all of the people you've worked for who might be in a similar situation, what's the? Is there a takeaway or a quick action or something that they can do to really start down a journey of thinking about this? Sales conversations in a different way.
Mark: Close with one as a principle, is a good way just to listen, and so one key takeaway for everyone is that when you start the conversation, say one of two things I'm a listener, but I'm also a note taker and I want to be sure I don't miss what you're talking about, what matters to you. Would it be okay if I popped up one slide that's really just kind of a icebreaker that just asks them where do you want to be in a year On the personal side and the business side, what does success look like to you? And then usually that leads into well, what's the one thing that they want? And just start from there. It's very simple. It's not a pitch, it's an icebreaker. How do we work together? And if I don't know someone else's personal business legacy and whether I can help them, they shouldn't be in the pipeline after that call. I might just say you're not a fit, or you're not ready, or I know somebody that can do that for you.
Let me make the intro yeah and I realized that this all could be done in one event style conference and I put together a close with one conference that happens in Bozeman, montana in.
June, the third week, as well as Aspen, the first week in November, and people that go will get the brand, the strategy, the backend systems like the funnels, the videos and the assets and the mindset that when you're a business owner, small business what's the structure of the culture and the legacy that the leader wants to have, because the leader shouldn't be tied to the business. They should be leading it and able to go to Greece for a week or two weeks and step away and still have the culture intact. People might say, oh yeah, we can move that, we can buy that, let's move ahead. They already are able to just go. This is a yes culture.
They would say yes because they know I'm responsible, and so this conference has all of that. And then I'm teaching the close with one mindset, so that everyone knows how to have the great messages all through the funnel, and then, when people finally do come into the call, they're able to narrate and navigate and give, give the prospect a chance to have the mic and I'm excited about this conference because it's four other people plus me. It's kind of like the Beatles and the Fab Five. Like let's just be about the audience.
Stuart: And particularly being in a conference environment, in a place where you can go and delegate time. We were talking just before we started recording. I just came back up from Florida yesterday. We've had one of our events down there and the difference we tried to I mean we did do them over, zoom, over covid, but I was just saying to dean the difference between actually being in person and the kind of limbic space that you have. The the pieces in between, the talking pieces are almost as important as the actual material that's being delivered. But actually to be in person at an event over a period of time, yeah, huge opportunity to really consume it all. I want to make sure that people have got opportunity to get in touch and find out more and and get some information on the conference as well as the book where's a good place for people to go and what's a good link for people to find out more the best place is close with one, the number one.com, to learn about the conference.
Mark: it's conference.closewithone.com. That's really the best way to start the conversation. And when people are ready and they want to get to that million dollar business, that personal legacy or the business legacy, once they know what that is, it's like simon sinek when you know your why or where you want to get to, I teach people how to get there yeah, fantastic.
Stuart: I'll make sure that we put links to both of those as well, so on the podcast players or on the website, people can just click straight through and find out more. I really love these podcasts because it starts off talking about a book and how that kind of makes a real difference, and the aim always is to share with people listening how easy these things are to create and how much it really sets up the the framework for starting a conversation and finding out more about people. And then the framework that you have ties in so nicely with it because it's very customer centric and very focused on what's in it for them, which just marries nicely with what we're talking about all the time.
Mark: So yeah and steward, as it relates to your goal for the year. Your goals is learning how to play something totally new like the banjo and then helping people take their stories and build them into something new, which you're calling guidebooks. Like what's, what should the audience be thinking about as it relates to? I have a personal legacy and I have a story. How do I put that into a how-to guidebook that people would go? Yes, I want that yeah, thank you.
Stuart: It's a great point because, under the name in a book banner, we've been helping people where they've got a strong idea, turn that into a book for over a decade now and that's always great. But there is this group of people who have a lot of knowledge. They've got something valuable to share. They can help their customers, but they can't quite make that connection with a book and how it would come together of you have some knowledge in your head, but let us extract it in a very framework-based way that we've got 10 years of evidence that it's effective, but without putting all of that overhead back on your shoulders, of turning your ideas or your knowledge into a book. The guidebooks excuse me, the guidebooks are a very easy way of making that step. So, yeah, thanks for bringing it up.
It is a great point. The 90 minute book solution is fantastic if you've got a an idea of what you want, but the guidebook option is something that just removes even that constraint of okay. I can kind of understand what it might do, but I don't know how to do it. This is very much. It's it's done for you just making the most of your knowledge.
Mark: Can you say that again, the nine-minute?
Stuart: book, yeah, the 90-minute books framework. So the main company, the 90-minute books company, which most people will be familiar with as they listen to the podcast because it's what we talk about all the time. That's very. The framework or the methodology that we've got there is very good if you've got a pretty strong idea of what you want to write about. So we'll help you flesh out the ideas of the chapter and the structure and we'll bring some marketing expertise to kind of the make sure that the job of work is is as effective as it can be. But it still requires you to have a pretty clear idea of what you want to say.
The guide, guidebook, the Brutally Honest Guide series, the benefit there is we'll do that work for you. We'll outline it, we'll talk about the things that your customers are really interested in, we'll identify what those are and then you can almost just answer those questions and bring your expertise in the answers without having to know what the questions are. So it's a nice balance of. I understand that a book would be beneficial. I've got this knowledge because I've been in business for five years but I don't know how to. I can't even think about how to bring that together as a book. Well, the brutally honest guidebooks kind of solve that problem, because it's a very formulaic framework for sharing what's up here in a way that really resonates with the audience and to bring this story from the beginning of my Nana's breast cancer all the way to today, that one product that I launched, the Beamer system, brought in so much revenue in six months.
Mark: And when I launched it I held up a series or a set of keys for the Beamer 6 Series car and I said whoever sells the most gets these keys. And it was amazing to hear a whole team of salespeople, silent and then, they were thinking wow, how do I get there?
And that became a $100 million revenue system from 2009 up until today and beyond, and I don't know the numbers personally, but when you add it all up it comes close to that. But the most important thing is that thousands of people not patients, people went home cancer-free all kinds of cancer esophageal, stomach, gi and even pulmonary and it's still there today and that legacy of my Nana lives on because the Beamer is helping people go home cancer-free and I'm excited that I was part of that piece.
That's her legacy and me enabling that legacy to move forward. And my hope is that everyone today gets the blessing of how to be able to sell their products and services in an easier way, that their own personal and business legacies get achieved in less than a year and they're able to just get to that time freedom to spend more time with their family and friends yeah, as you say, that connection through to kind of feeling like there was something that was stopping you personally from having that connection at the time, to then extrapolate it out into a system that helps other people yeah, really meaningful, and it makes it such more of a personal connection it does uh stewart, I can tell you're a blessing to work with anyone that needs your help.
I hope that they'll reach out ah, fantastic, thank you.
Stuart: Well, and likewise, again, I'll put the links through to the close with one site and the conference links. So there's a lot of opportunity there for people to learn more about the system and and see how they can make these changes themselves. Mark, thanks for your time. These podcasts always go fast, but I appreciate it. Um, we'll circle back it's um later on in the year and see how things are going and then check back in with the audience and looking forward to hearing some stories about making some connections and how people are implementing this system thanks for having me on perfect.
thanks, mark. Everyone thanks for watching. As I say, we'll put the links, as always, down in the show notes and then reach out to us with any questions. Hit reply to the email that we'll send out and we'll talk to everyone next time.