Finding The Right Client
In one of our latest episodes of "Marketing Mistakes (And How To Avoid Them)," Stacy sat down and chatted with sales expert and entrepreneur, Donnie Boivin. He gave his two cents on all things sales, and gave some important pieces of advice, such as why you should find your niche, and only pick clients you can do cocktails with.
So, today, we decided to share some key moments from their interview. In this blog, Hollywood Branded shares how to increase your sales and establish systems from the expertise of Donnie Boivin, who is the CEO and Founder of the Success Champion family of companies.
A Little More About Donnie
Donnie is the CEO and Founder of the Success Champion family of companies. He has used his twenty years of experience in sales and business to build his international empire, where he helps businesses grow. Donnie is also the Founder of the Badass Business Summit, as well as Events with an Edge. Whether it's networking through his online community or attending one of his virtual events, Donnie has helped a number of professionals become the champion of their own business. Aside from being a CEO, Donnie is also an author of four bestselling books, a speaker, and podcaster.
Interview Transcript Highlights
Question: Well, let's start off with letting our listeners get a little bit of knowledge about who you you are and what got you to where you are today, because you have a really interesting story. You live in Texas, which I love, because I'm from there, as well.
Answer: So it's a really quick, easy story. So I did four years in the Marine Corps, and then 20 years in straight commission sales. My last career was with a organization called Sandler Training, and supposedly I became one of the top trainers in the country. I don't know what that means, other than I'm really good at flapping my gums in front of a room, but it was a lot of fun doing it.
About seven years into that career, I was out to dinner with my then business partner and he said a phrase to me that just changed the trajectory of every, and what he said was, "Donnie, thank God, you're my retirement plan." And he said it out of love. He truly meant it out of love. And when he originally said it, I took it the same way and was like, "Oh, you know, it's been my honor to work for you."
And then I went and sat in my pickup truck, looked myself in the mirror and said, "Dude, what are you doing?" And I'd realized as I looked over my entire life, that I'd always been somebody's retirement plan, that I never lived my own journey, that I'd never chased my own dreams, and so I had a tough conversation with myself and I said, "Dude, you either get in the game and do something, or you put your head down and just get okay with life." And so 15 days later, I walked away from that whole career company and the whole nine yards and launched Success Champions. I was instantly put under an international non-compete, so I couldn't talk about the one thing I knew how, which was sales and business development. So I came out as a success coach. And to this day I have no damn clue what the hell a success coach is, but obviously it meant I was making Canva pictures, and building websites, and creating videos, anything I could do to try and earn a buck.
About six months into running the company, I stood on a back porch of my farm, looked at my wife and said, "Babe, we're about to lose everything we own." Because I had no idea how to be a business owner. And instead of building a company, I'd built a really crappy job for myself and called myself a business owner.
Well, flash forward to May of 2018—I found podcasting. Podcasting taught me a lot of things. I started learning about how your company should have processes and systems. I learned how to outsource. And so, we've put a lot of things together. Five months after launching that podcast, became number 22 in the world for all podcasts. And I got some cool screenshots sitting next to Tim Ferriss, and Tony Robbins, and Gary Vee, and all the folks. My non-compete came up in September of 2018, so I could go back to talking sales, and then with the combination of sales, podcasting, and just some get shit done attitude, flash forward, we now have six companies, four books, two podcasts, and a partridge and a pear tree.
Question: So, you come from a unique background. You were a Marine who became this stellar sales guy who got told that you were providing the retirement of some other rich guy, and that was not to your liking, because you wanted to provide your own retirement instead, so you went off and you capitalized on your success at sales. And sales is tricky. Sales is not an easy field. I think people are either you can learn a lot in it, but I think people are either natural born sales people or not in a lot of ways. But what have you learned along the ways? How do you counsel organizations who are looking at expanding and growing, and that need to actually put a sales system in place where it's not necessarily just the owner of that company who is out there being the new business scrounger for all things, who never can actually grow their company, because they're always scrounging?
Answer: For sure. I'm going to back up one second and [let] everybody understand where the idea of Success Champions come from, and then I'll come forward and finish that question...So when I started the company, the movie Troy came on the TV with Brad Pitt...But the opening scene of that movie, you got two army [guys] standing in the middle, and the kings come together and said, "We could duke it out, and thousands of lives will lost or you pick your best, I'll pick my best, and whoever wins, wins all." And so both kings agree, and the one king walks away and calls for his guy, and this fricking giant of a dude who's got muscles where you shouldn't have muscles just popping out everywhere, comes out, screams and hollers. The army goes nuts.
And then the other king goes, "Where's Achilles? And so one kid runs off and next thing you flash forward, here's Achilles in a pile of naked women, drunk as hell, and the kid comes running in and goes, "Achilles, Achilles. The king needs you." And so Achilles wakes up. He walks out of the tent, and little kid I remember looks right at Brad Pitt and goes, "Have you seen the size of this guy? I couldn't go out there." Brad Pitt looks right at the kid and goes, "And that's why nobody will ever remember your name." And so then Brad goes through the crowds, he walks past the king, and now it's Brad and this mountain of a man. Well, Brad, he runs out, jumps one move, kills the big, giant of the guy. War's over. Other army belongs to the other king.
When I saw that scene, what ran through my head was these two kings put their countries on one person. That was their champion. And I instantly thought, "How often are people their own champion." Right? The only way you're going to get in life or anything is you've got to choose yourself. And that's how I named the company to Success Champions, because I believe you got to be the champion of your own success
So flash forward, what I know about a lot of companies, is for years, sales has been taught from people who did transactional sales, insurance, car sales. They did one-off transaction. You buy this and then we don't talk again. And so that was a lot of people in the space that were teaching sales. When if you employed a lot of their tactics, you're going to lose when you're in a service based sale, because sales isn't transactional. So we've had to go in oftentimes and teach a philosophical change.
From me, my company, we don't believe in closing the sale. Now you should get to closure. Every conversation should end with a yes or a no, or maybe a significant next step, but there's no time you go in there and go, "Oh, should we write this up? Should we put this to work?" Or any other grease ball damn move. You just ask them plain and simple, "What's the next step from here?"...If you want to work with them and they want to work with you, cool, let's partner it up, but you shouldn't be convincing people to buy. You shouldn't be trying or deploying any tactics. You're not trying to close every fricking deal. You should be spending more time sitting across from that person and deciding if they're a good fit for you. And it changes the entire philosophical dynamic of how you go into a sales call. And then we build systems and processes to help you stay in that mindset. But most people are taught "always be closing," and that's what makes people feel like a grease ball. [It] makes...people feel dirty. And the more you try...to sell, the more you become the dirty grease ball.
Question: So when you're starting to work with an individual or a business and you're counseling them on creating the soft sales approach, how do you get started? How do you help them figure out their ethos, their center, what they should be building around, and how to get going versus "buy my product, buy my product, buy my product, please, please, please."
Answer: ...I think the first thing they have to do is figure out what everything an individual has to have to be able to say yes to you. So they've got to have the right mindset, they've got to have the right energy, they've got to have the time, they've got to have the money, and you've got to like them. Right? Those are my five key areas that you've got to have. So you go through and you define each one of those. And if you know these are the five things that they have to say yes to, right, or you mentally have to check a box to do business with them, now you can spend most of the call figuring out if they fit into one of these boxes. Okay?
Then I would focus heavily on an avatar. And for me, it's not the big blue dude that you saw in the movies. It's your truly ideal client. And a lot of people harp on this, but what people don't understand or don't explain, your avatar is not for you and your business. Being able to define an avatar is for everybody you talk to. So, literally I was just earlier this morning talking to a couple guys that run a social media company, as well. And I said, "What's your niche?" And they said, "Well, we're really service based companies." I said, "It's not good enough." And they said, "Why not?" I said, "Imagine you became the social media company for roofers, and you became go-to company for roofers. What that does is yes, it gets you a niche." And they're like, "But that puts me in a box." I said, "But it's a cool box, and here's why. When you say I'm the best social media person for roofers. Now, when I'm going around anybody I hear a roofer, you're instantly top of mind for me."
So the avatar is not necessarily for you. It's for me, the person you're talking to, to be able to open the right doors. And think about it. Then if you stay in that niche and you be truly, I mean, you work with hundreds of roofers, and I told, "Just pick a different roofer in each city, big city, whatever you work with a hundred roofers, every time you sit across from a roofer, you're going to know every problem they have, every issue they have, and you're going to already know how to fix their system so you can build a ton of referrals and things coming into it." Right? So that's the power of niche, but people are like, "Well, I limit my marketplace." And it's the exact opposite. You completely open your marketplace to people that you can be known as the guy, or gal, or person that owns that marketplace and to a beautiful way to operate business.
Question: What are some of the other mistakes people make along the way?
Answer: They sit across from too many people that can't say yes to them...One of the things that I have my clients' people track is number of meetings they have with people who can say "Yes." And if you look at a lot of people, they're going on LinkedIn or these other platforms, and they're jumping and doing all these Zoom calls, and they'll say to me all the time, they're like, "Man, I'm meeting with all these people and it's not turning into business." I'm like, "All right, well, walk me through who are you meeting with?" They're meeting with a bunch of people that can't check off those five boxes, so they're meeting with a bunch of broke people, and I don't mean financially necessarily. They're broke minded or they're broke financially, and so when you're putting that much energy in the marketplace, you'll get exhausted and be like, "This stuff doesn't work."
When the flip side is if you know the role, you know the details, you do the Harvey Mackay 66. If you guys don't know what that is, just to hype in Harvey Mackay 66. It'll give you the coolest avatar sheet you can fill out in the world that allow you to put all the characteristics down of who you're looking for. If you find that, then you go and start doing your reach outs, and we call them five star reach outs.
I think people should every day do a minimum, which is a really low number, of five reach outs a day. Two people that fit that ideal avatar. Okay? Four of them are kind of safe reach outs, meaning you're still going after your avatar, but they're not like this monster business. One of those has to be a five star reach out where you're going after somebody like if you landed that company, it would scare...you, because you're not sure you can handle that. You need do one of those a day. And what you'll find is that series of doing the four small reach outs and then one five star reach outs, eventually it's going to create this momentum wheel going where you're start getting into the right Zoom calls. You're starting getting into the right meetings, and you start getting better and more comfortable with those meetings and those conversations, because really the sales conversation is the same conversation every damn time. It's just a different person you're sitting across from, but people haven't found that process and rhythm. So the biggest fix, do those five reach outs.
Question: Any last words of advice to all those who are like, "I have to tighten up sales for my org?"
Answer: This is my favorite...thing in the world to say. Guys, if you've got any value whatsoever out of this podcast, do Stacy the biggest honor and share this with one person. Being a fellow podcaster, let me tell you, growing a show is a lot of work, trying to get awareness and get people to find you into your way. You want to grow your business, understand that by helping somebody else grow theirs is the best thing you can do. And so literally you should go out, find one person that need to hear Stacy's podcast, and help them subscribe. Tell them to listen, tell them is subscribe to her show. It's like you walked up and gave her a virtual hug, and it will mean everything to her. So, if you live like that for the rest of your life, life will be good back to you.
Check Out The Podcast!
Donnie has so much great information from his experience in sales and entrepreneurship. Check out the podcast below to learn more!
Every week we have a marketing professional on our show to share their tips, tricks and lessons learned from their professional experience. Check out some of our other podcast blogs from earlier this year:
- Marketing Yourself As A Student Athlete
- The Power Of Digital Metrics And Web Design
- Creating An Engaging Video Campaign
- Turning Your Website And Socials Into Effective Tools
- How To Leverage LinkedIn
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