Resources in this Episode

Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hey Gorgeous. This is episode number 126.

Matthew Kimberly [0:07]
Hi, this is Matthew Kimberly and you’re listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:15]
Have you ever wondered what sophisticated selling is? While today’s amazing expert Matthew Kimberly will let us know about sophisticated selling. Why you need to do it. What it is. How you can do it with ease and why you can enjoy a lot of fun doing it. Matthew Kimberly helps small business owners enjoy more fun, freedom, and flow. And that is also what we are having in this interview a lot of fun and flow. Matthew is the creator of Professional Persuasion, Delightful Emails, and the Single Malt Mastermind. He has an amazing podcast, How To Get A Grip. And he wrote a book of the same name. So have fun in tuning in. All the podcast show notes, the transcripts and all the links to Matthew are at https://christineschlonski.com/ under the podcast tap, enjoy the episode. Well, I am so excited to have you on the show today, Matthew. Welcome.

Matthew Kimberly [1:11]
Thank you for having me. I’m thrilled to be here, Christine.

Christine Schlonski [1:14]
Yes. And we both have a coming topic called sales which we love. And I love your approach because you’re talking about sales done in a way that’s sophisticated. So can you give us a little bit of background. Like what do you understand by sophisticated and you know, what do people do that’s not sophisticated?

Matthew Kimberly [1:39]
Sophisticated and complicated, I believe are opposite ends of the spectrum. People say, people often talk about sophistication as being with added extras. This is for a more sophisticated audience generally means that this has extra onion layers added to it increase what is actually complexity. And I believe the opposite is true for sales in order to, I guess the kind of Scandinavian Design School of Selling which is less is more. And if you can absolutely master the fundamentals, the material, the workmanship, the craftsmanship, the finishings, the fundamental structure, if you can get that down pat, then that’s 90% of your job done and selling. I’ve been in professional sales for really my entire career. And even when I was a kid, I was a street performer who learned pretty quickly to ask for the sale, don’t clap, throw money. And over the years, I’ve seen that you do kind of reach a plateau with regards to information and you can learn closes, and you can learn strategies. And you can learn openers, and you can learn pivots. And you can learn, you can read 1000 books, but you’re not necessarily going to be a better salesperson than in your first six months of your career when actually you follow the basic principles incredibly carefully, incredibly diligently. And if you can master the basics, and I believe you are a sophisticated salesperson. It’s also a rallying cry against insulting the intelligence of your prospect, which I see it so frequently in every industry. I do because I run a remote business, I do tend to pay particular attention to online marketing, opportunity salespeople. But it’s the same in car sales. It’s the same in white good sales, it’s the same in b2b sales. This way you assume a level of stupidity in your prospect, and you feel inclined to be less than honest, you feel I’ve seen it in many industries, you feel inclined to pull the wool over people’s eyes or overcomplicate things again, or oversimplify things on the assumption that your prospect doesn’t get it. So I the idea of sophistication for me is that you treat the prospect as an equal, possibly somebody who needs to be educated on your opportunity. And you present all the information to them. And if it’s in their best interest, you can help them get over the line. And if it’s not you help them get away from you.

Christine Schlonski [4:27]
Yeah, I love that approach. I call it Heart Sells! Because you really, you are authentic, you bring your own values to the table and you assume that your prospect which I call the soul mate clients are on your level. They just don’t know what you know, that’s why they need you. But they are equally smart.

Matthew Kimberly [4:50]
Absolutely, right.

Christine Schlonski [4:52]
You don’t need to treat them like a three-year-old just to get them into your programs. So I love that approach. I guess everybody who’s listening, we included, have been in a situation where they were treated like they were not smart enough or not intelligent enough. Maybe we all remember walking away from a sale because it didn’t feel good.

Matthew Kimberly [5:16]
Yeah, and it comes down to intellectual honesty as well. I probably like you, Christina, subscribe to dozens, if not hundreds of newsletters, I like to see what’s happening in the marketplace, I like to see what my competition is doing, I like to see what my colleagues are doing. The kind of intellectual dishonesty that goes with the yellow highlighter, all caps, urgent subject lines, you must do this immediately, you must buy now, you must grab this opportunity because it’s the best thing ever. Now, these people do. They do it for a reason, right, because they understand the correlation between ramping up excitement and emotion and getting people across the finish line. But I feel that I’d rather sleep at night. And if I think something is the best thing ever. And sometimes that is true in categories, you know, this particular piece of software, this particular pair of shoes, this particular automobile, if you’re looking for, I don’t know, the efficiency with regards to his miles per gallon or something like that. Occasionally, I’m very happy to say honestly, when it comes to time management, you’ve got to do this program. Or when it comes to understanding business building this book is the gold standard. And I think when, but I’m not going to say you’ve got to do this, it’s the best thing ever, every week. And I see some of my contemporaries doing that. And I think that kind of, you get off blindness after a while as a consumer. And I can’t trust you, I can’t trust you with last week, this was the thing that’s going to put a million dollars in my pocket. And then this week, there’s a new thing, which is the only thing that’s going to put a million dollars my pocket. I think it’s about choosing your choosing what you’re going to get behind is what you stand for. And I’m sure this, this really resonates with you and heart selling, you have a duty to look after the people who are trusting you with their attention, and their money and their trust. And you got to do that according to your values, in order that they can see who you are. And you can attract the right kind of person, Book Yourself Solid, which is the best business-building book ever written talks about having two things an ideal client. But the policy is called a red velvet rope policy. So there are some people you’re meant to serve and others not so much. And you get to decide who’s going to work with you. But your clients also get to decide, but you can’t make a decision without information, which means you need to show them who you are, what you’re about whether it’s good for them. Now, they may not believe as much as you believe that what you have is good for them. At which point I believe is perfect, perfectly ethical to apply some persuasion tactics, or some persuasive language or some incentivization. “Hey, what you really need is this. I genuinely believe that the best thing for me is you, I genuinely believe that the best car for you is this guy. I genuinely believe that the best bookkeeping service is this one. So I’m going to help you make that decision. And I’m going to favor you”, but still caveat emptor. And they have to be the one to making the final decision.

Christine Schlonski [8:36]
Yeah. When I see that in the market was my clients or the people I interact with, I think like owning their own awesomeness, making sure that what they deliver, they believe in is one key point. Right? Because people kind of know what I have a special gift, I have some talent, and now I want to monetize it, I want to serve other people with it. But then when it comes to making the offer, they might not be as solid in their own belief that they can make it happen.

Matthew Kimberly [9:13]
Absolutely right and confidence. And I was discussing this with some friends of mine last night, actually, it’s about personal leadership. It’s difficult to lead others to the sale or in your program or in the hairdressing salon chair. If you’re not if you don’t believe that you can lead yourself as well. I’m confident you know, sales is binary people either do it or they don’t. Christine, you could have a $100 widget that you’re selling. And I could have a $100 widget that with that I’m selling to the same audience who have the same needs. And we receive the same training and the same script. And we will have completely different results you may far outsell me, or I may far outsell so you and it may depend on what kind of breakfast we’ve had or what kind of whether or not we’ve had a fight with our boyfriend or girlfriend the night before. All of these things count. So self-leadership and responsibility are key. I believe people talk about entrepreneurship being a correlation between risk and rewards like those who take the biggest risks to get the biggest rewards. But I think the missing piece that’s often overlooked is actually the correlation between responsibility and reward. So if you’re prepared to take enhanced responsibility, you get to enjoy enhanced rewards. If you take responsibility for your relationships, you will be rewarded with more fulfilling relationships. If you take responsibility for making sure your children are wearing shoes, and getting to school on time, then you’ll be rewarded with happier, better-educated children. If you take responsibility for making sure that people are buying your stuff, you will be rewarded with more customers. And so I rather than risk which is scary for a lot of people. I say what don’t forget about risk, you are responsible individual, it’s within you going on with it. So many, so fascinating. I think the psychology of selling.

Christine Schlonski [11:06]
Yeah, totally, totally agree. Can we go down a little bit taking responsibility for making the sale for inviting your prospect when you see that your product or service is the best solution for them? Because I so often see that people have wonderful conversations, you really see they are the expert, they know something, what you potentially need. But when it comes to making an offer, they kind of start freezing up or losing momentum or the situation becomes kind of weird. How can people understand that part of taking responsibility at this moment where they really need to show up for their clients to actually make that offer?

Matthew Kimberly [11:51]
So the reason that it gets weird is, at that point, you might be having a perfectly comfortable conversation with somebody in front of you. And you’re thinking, “Well, they make a great prospect.” And they might be thinking, “Wow, I’d make a great prospect.” And you might both be thinking, “Wow, we should totally work together.” But you haven’t broached that subject yet. And so making the transition from being friendly to being having a commercial relationship is the weird bit right. People say that they don’t like selling because they’re afraid of rejection, which I understand. They say they’re afraid of success, which I don’t understand. I get it, people deliberately play small, but if they were handed a big bucket full of success, they take it, right? Maybe they just don’t want to be disappointed. Maybe they don’t want to be disappointed in their efforts not paying off. But I don’t think it’s being an afraid success. But I think what people are genuinely afraid of, is changing the nature of the relationship from being noncommercial, to being commercial because they occupy completely different spaces in our psyche. If we go to a BBQ, we relax. If we walk into a store, we don’t relax so much, because we know what, maybe we do if we love shopping. But if we walk into a situation where we know we’re going to have to spend money that we don’t relax well. They occupy different spaces in our head and you go from relaxed to tense, and that there’s an awful lot of friction getting to that point. So my absolutely preferred way of guiding, guaranteeing that sales conversations will enter and offer. My absolute preferred way it’s not always possible is to begin every conversation about the good lead to a sale with these words, “The purpose of today’s conversation I understand is that we’re going to determine whether or not we should work together. Do you agree?”, or, “Great, thanks for chatting. Just so I’m right, the topic of this conversation is to work out whether or not we’re going to do business.” If the customer says yes, or the prospect says yes, then fantastic. You’re doing it and you could just cut to the chase. Then you could do everything is normal. You say, “Right, good. So here’s what will typically happen, I will ask you some questions, then I will tell you some stuff, then you can ask me some questions. And then at the end of it will decide whether or not I should make you an offer. Does it sound fair?”, and you’ve already all the tension is disappeared, because you’ve mapped out the journey. Lack of tension or fear comes from the unknown. If you can say, “This is exactly what our path is going to look like.” They’ve got their eyes open, you’ve switched the lights off, “That’s my absolutely preferred way of doing it.” So I’m not a big fan of free strategy sessions, or free coaching calls or call us for a chat, call us for to discuss whether or not we should work together as much better. Let’s have a sales conversation, or even something as simple as you know, speak to our head of sales rather than our head coach, something like that can help. But I do understand that sometimes you’ve met someone and you don’t know at the beginning of the conversation, that it’s going to lead to a sales conversation, they happen to say something, you go, “Oh, I could help you with that.” I like to use the Book Yourself Solid Method, which is, “What is it specifically that you need help with?” And they may say, “I don’t know, losing, losing 20 kilos.” “Okay, right.”, and then you ask, “Why is that important to you?” And this is the traditional gap stretching exercise that most salespeople do. The difference between today and tomorrow. What happens if you stay where you are? What will life look like if you change? What will life look like if you have a new car, you have a new freezer, if you paint your house if you lose 20 kilos? You get into tell you future pace it. They say, “Oh, well, my kids will respect me more. I might get promoted. I’ll have more sex. I’ll enjoy a better relationship with myself.” And then you go, “Okay, great.” And then you can say, “What would you like someone to help you with that? With a smile on your face” Which point they will either say yes, no, or it depends. And that’s great. We welcome each one of those answers. If they say yes, you say, “Oh, fantastic. Because I problems like that for breakfast, it’s firmly in my wheelhouse. How would you like the person to help you with that be me?” Which point they will say, yes, no or how much does it cost and boom, you’re having a sales conversation. If they say no, I don’t want to deal with that. Previous question, you guys, “Okay, that’s fine.” Or if they say it depends how much does it cost. You go, “Well, I’m glad you asked. Let me tell you about how I work.” And all of a sudden, you’ve just effortlessly moved into having a conversation about stuff to being asked to present your prices.

Christine Schlonski [16:27]
Yeah, yeah, I love it. You mentioned a little bit earlier that you are not a big fan of like free strategy sessions, free come in, and let’s have a chat kind of things. What kind of advice could you give our listeners to get a better approach?

Matthew Kimberly [16:45]
They serve it, they definitely serve a purpose. But I think we have to call them what they are. And in that is all in the framing of the offer. So free strategy session and the sales conversation are pretty much the same things. And they will follow exactly the same pattern with the caveat that I always prefer that everybody knows that there will be an offer at the end because then they can relax. And you can actually get more out of it. Rather than the tension you come. So tell me about this a bit. Okay, then they go Okay, then. So now it’s time for you to make me your offer, and they don’t want to get there or they’re afraid they can’t afford it before they come on board. I’ve had to get rid of that. So it’s all about the framing beforehand. It’s easy to get somebody on the phone if they think it’s for free stuff. It’s less easy to get somebody on the phone if they are aware that this is a commercial opportunity. But I think it’s our responsibility to attract aware buyers, we’re not doing I mean, it’s worse, it’s a bait and switch. And I don’t think many people are doing that. But you know, we can change your life with one strategy session. Most people don’t say, but you do see people buying tickets to multi-speaker events, for example. “50 euros or $50 or 50 pounds, we’ll get you a whole day of business building strategies advice. And here are the headliners. And here’s all the things that you will learn and what.” What is actually happening is you’re going to be a pitch at for one day or two days, they’ll be eight speakers a day, each one selling you their $1,000, 1000 Euro, 1000 pound program. And I think that is, I’ve participated in those events. I’ve spoken at the events I’ve sold of those events. I have a problem with, not with the event, but with the language around it. So what about it’s going to be hard work to get people into your strategy session, if you say, “Let’s discuss the sales opportunity.” It’s going to be hard work to get people to your event if you say, “Come and listen to eight valuable, interesting, informative educational sales pitches.” But I think we’re actually doing us our customer’s favor. And we’re pushing ourselves harder, which is not a bad thing. In order to attract a better quality prospect. I get to the end of a sales presentation you go, “So while you’re here, let me tell you about a special offer that we have on today.” And they say, “I’m sorry, I don’t have any money, nor my interest in buying anything.” I would rather found that out before they bought the call.

Christine Schlonski [19:15]
Yeah. I totally agree. That’s such a waste of time. And if you could use it for marketing research. But if it’s not your ideal client, because they don’t have any budget, then it’s really not worth your time.

Matthew Kimberly [19:31]
The best marketing research, I believe, is getting people to pay for things. I think what if you ask people some, if you ask someone their opinion, they will tell you, “Whatever, really, because the stakes are low.”, that awful question, “Would you buy? If I created this thing, would you buy it?” Well, that’s the wrong question. Because people say yes, because there are no stakes.” Okay, great. It’s here, you got to buy it.” And they’ll say, “Well, let me just check my credit line. Or let me just talk to my husband”, it’s easy to say yes to a hypothetical, was actually getting people to buy is much better. And for about three years, I’m still at the tail end of it. Now I had a program called the Single Malt Mastermind. And it was coaching by email. Every week, people pay for the year, people paid various amounts up to about $1200 for the year, some people paid less. They would get an email from me it was a pre-written email. I wrote 52 emails in an autoresponder sequence. Each one was useful, informative, and educational and fun, and it made them smile. And then I said, three questions. What did you do last week? They go out on Friday, so what did you do this week? What are you going to do next week? And the third question is, what else do you want to tell me? What do you need help with? What’s going on? And I had probably about I can’t remember exactly, maybe 700 paying clients right to me, every single week and tell me, “Here’s what I’m struggling with. Here’s what I need help with here, the kind of solutions I’m looking for.” That was absolute, it was a lot of work. So I stopped doing it was absolutely golden. It was absolutely golden in terms of getting inside people’s heads. Get them to give you money, get them to commit and see what they say. I’m about to relaunch a coach licensing program. I’m looking at the business model today. I’m thinking, sit down with a piece of paper or an iPad and a pencil and you start mapping out all the upsells and down-sales and cross-sales and possibilities and opportunities. I had to stop myself. I said, “No, no, no, no, we are going to sell one thing. We’re going to license coaches.” And then after we’ve got 100 of them or 200 of them, or if we’ve been doing it for a year, we’re going to listen to our coaches and say so what is it that you need help with the opportunity from your paying clients will present itself trying to second guess the market is a terrible thing. I love the iterative, iterative approach to selling something that you’re creating is you ask, you don’t ask what you can ask, would you be interested if I did a program on email marketing, for example? And they might say, “Yeah, sure.” But then you’ve got to ignore that. You just want enough people to raise their hands to say, “Yeah,” the interest is there, great. Then the next email is going to be great because I’m going to put one together. So here’s a link to a shopping cart. Give me $1,000. And we’ll run a private class. And I did this for about 40 people last year exactly this. So give me $1,000 we run a three-week course I’ll testing the two of you love it, great, if you don’t I give you your money back. But what do you say? Let’s, let’s try it out. And it was worked like gangbusters, a 30, 40 people signed up. “Yes, let’s do it. Boom!” It became one of my most popular courses called Delightful Emails. And it’s now that I took that material refashion it intended into a self-study course with workbooks and video summaries and things like that. But I actually got paid to test, got paid to do the market research. So I know I’ve got something good. We have a relationship with the people who were the first cohort had a relationship with me, good enough that they could trust me. When I said I’m going to do something good for you. It’s going to be about this is going to deliver this. I’m not going to tell everybody but if you want in do it now. They trusted me enough based upon previous experiences with me to say, “Okay, let’s do it.” And that was all we need. And then you get paid to do your market research, instead of locking yourself up in a cave for six months, making some jewelry, creating a piece of furniture, designing a course, whatever that might be, and then going to market and nothing. Yeah, yeah,

Christine Schlonski [23:49]
Yeah, I love that. And I think that’s so important that we talk about this because that’s what I see over and over again. I was lucky enough to have coaches and mentors who prevented me from creating a whole course without testing it. So I have the same approach. And I think it’s so important to get paid for that research work as well because it makes your whole life easier. And you actually deliver what people need, not what you think they need that there’s a difference.

Matthew Kimberly [24:18]
Yeah, that’s it. I’ve seen, unfortunately, many particularly coaches fall by the wayside when it comes out and they get dispirited, they say that they think there’s something wrong with them. Or they think there’s something wrong with their offer. Often it’s not often it’s just not using the right words. You know, I’ve met female empowerment coaches say, “I want to. I empower goddesses to step into their greatness and embrace the divine feminine”, and they broke because nobody wants that. Nobody wakes up in the morning says, “Oh, I really to embrace my divine feminine, and step into our greatness.” They say, “Damn, I wish my relationships are better. I wish I had more money. I wish I was fitter. I wish I was happier.” If we can find the right words, and get people to respond very, very quickly, then we take an iterative approach to selling and testing. And that’s I’ve always kind of tried to do that, at least in my career.

Christine Schlonski [25:18]
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I can’t wait for our next interview. Because I’ve so many more questions, especially in your sales background, you mentioned that you started selling very early on. So that will be in the next episode. Just to finish off, tell us where people can find you. Because I know you have an amazing, amazing newsletter which everybody should be signing up for. So let it let us know where to go.

Matthew Kimberly [25:44]
Sure. So if you go to https://matthewkimberley.com/. And that’s Matthew with two T’s and Kimberly is spelled le y at the end, although I think I do have redirected domains of every misspelling. If you go to Matthew kimberly.com, put your name in any available email opt-in opportunity, then I look forward to getting to know you.

Christine Schlonski [26:08]
Awesome, thank you so so much for your time, and I’m looking forward to the next interview.

Matthew Kimberly [26:12]
Thank you for having me.

Matthew Kimberly [26:13]
What a piece of amazing advice to share. And I mean, there’s so much about sophisticated selling, so I really hope you got your golden nuggets out of it. I’m happy that we talked about getting paid for doing research and really doing what you need to do to get out of the funk, to get into the flow and have fun and enjoy sales conversations. Because rejection is just part of it. But going about it smart and creating after you basically sold so you can tailor it to your client’s needs, that they can rock their business that they can overcome their challenges. And you can make sure it’s not just you know, a course that you came up first, but really something that supports them that you can adjust on the goal is I think really, really big learning for so many entrepreneurs, especially those who are starting out. So hop on over to Christine schlonski.com. Find the podcast tab. There you have the show notes as three key points, the transcript, and all the amazing links connecting you with a wonderful Matthew, Kimberly. If you have not yet make sure you subscribe to hard sales podcast. And please leave us a five-star rating and review and share it with three of your amazing friends. I can’t wait to tune in to the next episode with you that you are joining us actually for the next one coming up which is called selling is a skill you can acquire. So looking forward to seeing you there. Have fun wherever you are in this beautiful world.