Resources in this Episode

Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hey Gorgeous This is episode number 127 and today we are having the amazing Matthew Kimberly back on the show.

Matthew Kimberly [0:10]
Hi, this is Matthew Kimberly and you’re listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:18]
I can’t wait to dive into another amazing interview with Matthew Kimberly with a lot of fun and flow. Today we are talking about selling is a skill that you can acquire. I am hundred percent sure that Matthew and I have the same opinion, we both believe that sales can be learned. As a matter of fact, I believe that you can really sell with ease, grace, confident asking you a price by making the quote that I always say, “Sales is love come true by just serving more from your heart.” But let’s see what Matthew has to say about this. Matthew is somebody who helps small business owners enjoy more fun, freedom, and flow. He is the creator of Professional Persuasion, Delightful Emails, and the Single Malt Mastermind. He is the host of How To Get A Grip podcast. And he also wrote the book with the same name, How to Get a Grip by Matthew Kimberly. Let’s dive in for more fun, flow, all-around sales. And let’s enjoy this episode. Well, I am so excited to have you back on the show, Matthew. Welcome.

Matthew Kimberly [1:34]
Are you kidding? The pleasure’s entirely mine. I’ve been looking forward to this for days.

Christine Schlonski [1:38]
Yes, our first interview has been so much fun. And you shared already so many golden nuggets. And I really hope that our listeners got that, that they really sat down with a pen and paper and took notes. Because that will save them so much time, effort, money if they follow along what you actually taught. And today I would love to dive into your sales career because you mentioned that you started very, very early on. So do you remember the very first thing you’ve ever sold in your life?

Matthew Kimberly [2:14]
Yeah, it was me. I think, you know, they may have been trading marbles or something in the playground. But it was really myself. I was a juggler, as a young man. I can still juggle but I used to it. It was a hobby of mine, it was passion. I could unicycle and juggle and throw flames, knives and things like that. And I realized that, hey, as I got to a certain age about 14, 15, I wanted money. My dad and my mom were not very wealthy pocket money didn’t stretch nearly as far as I wanted it to. And so I said, “I’m going to take a leap into the unknown, and I’m going to go juggle in the street and see if anybody gives me some money.” And so I went to a small town near where I lived in the south of England, it wasn’t a tourist destination. It was just a small town. I put my hat on the floor in front of me. And I juggle and I came home with some money. And I thought that was the best thing ever. I was like, “Ooh!”, and then I spent the money and I was like, “I need more money. How can I get more money?” So I tried a different approach. Because I was more confident, it was my second time out there. I started chatting to people as they went by talking flirting, making eye contact, building connection, or rapport, I guess now is what it was doing. But most importantly, I said, “Hey, if you enjoyed the show, I’d love it if you threw some money in my heart.” And I said that to everybody. And it started to become my refrain. I was like, “Money for the juggler. If you enjoyed the show, throw a pound in the hat, five pounds if you’re feeling generous”, and it went on like this. And my taking is just, I mean, there must be more than tripled from the previous time. I’ve made considerably more per hour. And so I thought, “Well, I’m clearly an evil genius. How can I make even more money?” I hired my first employee ever, it was a kid called Ben, next Saturday, my friend Ben, I said, “Hold the hat, walk up to people and ask them to put money in the hat.” And so rather than I was in getting people to come to us, we actually took the sale to them. And I paid Ben for his time. And it was the best. That was the strategy. That was the strategy that works. So I have a jogger, he would walk up to people looking in the eye and say money for the juggler. It wasn’t a very sophisticated sales pitch, but it worked. Right. So that was really my first lesson in understanding the psychology of selling. And then fast forward a few years after some bar work and I work in a bar in Belgium. And I worked in a school in Malaysia where I was. Have you seen the film Crazy Rich Asians?

Christine Schlonski [4:45]
No, I haven’t.

Matthew Kimberly [4:47]
Okay, well, the kids I worked with in Malaysia were crazy rich. I mean, they were insanely rich. And I was earning maybe $100 a month plus board and lodging as a co-teaching intern. It taught me that life is better when you got money. That was one of my big eye-openers. There’s a line in the song, Sit Down by James, which something like, ‘If I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor.’ And I was like, “Oooh, I’m surrounded by all this opportunity. And I can’t access any of it. So so right no more teaching for $100 a month.” And I started working in a timeshare business in which way was it yet timeshare in Malta. So I moved to Malta because I meet a girl. And at that time Malta wasn’t part of the European Union. So I needed and I was a British guy. And so I couldn’t find legal employment. So I needed someone who would either sponsor a visa or turn a blind eye and the timeshare industry was very happy to turn a blind eye. And they used to pay some offshore into bank accounts that were a long way away from the Maltese tax man. And the people I worked with words drunk, ugly, stupid, terrible, terrible specimens of humanity. And they were some of the best salespeople I’ve ever met. And we were taught a very tough borderline. No, I mean, ethically compromise. It wasn’t, there’s nothing borderline about it, it was ethically compromised, very tough six to eight hour sales pitch where we would get people who had no intention of spending any money when they woke up that morning, drag them out of the sea, or their swimming pools, subject into an eight hour sales presentation. And here’s the thing, about 11 or 12% of the time, they would spend an enormous amount of money. And I got out of the industry because it was too much fun and dangerous. And I needed to stay alive and keep my marriage alive and all of these things. So I left the industry. Actually, what it was my mom and dad came to visit. And they said, “We should come on one of your presentations”, and I said, “No, you shouldn’t,” I thought, well if I wouldn’t sell it to my mother, I shouldn’t be selling it to somebody else’s mother. So I was lucky to get out of there. But that was where I really learned that selling was a skill that you could acquire. Because there was a very clear system that needed to be followed. We couldn’t stray from it. When we went to get our managers at the end of our presentation. They said have you done the rapport building? Have you done the site? Or have you done the benefits and features? Have you done the Benjamin Franklin Winston Churchill, two sides of the sheet of paper close? If you showed them the logic, if you test the emotion, have they got their credit card on the table? With like, I’m going to get my manager but before we give you the price, we need to know that if it’s right for you, then you’re in today, is that right? We did very hard takeaways. If you’re not, don’t be walking because we had it like a three day cooling-off period and maybe a 10 day cooling-off period. And we used to look in the eyes and if you even thinking about canceling, it’s over between us, I don’t want you to sign that paper. If your intention is to come back and hit I need you to promise me that you’re not going to change your mind tomorrow. And we get very hard with it anyway. So it was a horrible, horrible industry. But the system is what worked. And if I thought what if we could take that to a different industry, which of course we do. Every single industry has a sale system, you follow the system, it doesn’t matter if you’re drunk doesn’t matter if you’re stupid, doesn’t matter if you’re ugly. These fundamentals that we talked about last time, those are in place, and you increase the likelihood of your prospect doing the deal. So I learned the importance of asking for the sale in my first street performance job, the importance of the critical importance of following a foundational system towards the sale in my timeshare job. And then the third big lesson I learned was fast forward a few years, I’d started my own recruitment company in Brussels, and we were doing b2b, cold calling in order to sell highly skilled professionals into short term contract jobs in places like banks and engineering firms and blue-chip organizations. And that’s when I realized, and I used to have hired people with no skills, drunk, ugly people off the street. Again, it’s got a history of my career surrounded by lots of drunk people, I’d hire them off the streets and train them up in the system. So I knew that much. But I noticed then that there was a little bit that people always wish this wasn’t true. But it’s so true and unpopular, a direct correlation between the number of telephone calls that my guys made, and the amount of money that they made. I used to get them to pick up the phone 60 times in the hope that they would be able to connect with 10 to 15 people a day. Nobody likes doing that. Nobody likes talking to strangers. I believe I wouldn’t recommend cold calling to the vast majority of people that I work with today, there might be one or two industries where it’s still appropriate recruitment, for example, you kind of just in case services, “Hey, I’m here.” It’s not right, picking up the phone, because everybody does it so badly if you can do it well. I still believe it’s a great skill. But there was no question that if you didn’t pick up the phone, then you didn’t make any sales, there was just no question. You probably heard about, your listeners have probably heard about the difference between a lead measure and a lag measure. So what that means is if my guy said, “I’m going to make 5000 euros this week, and personal income”, I’d be like, “Great, but that’s no good as a goal. You need to break it down into what needs to happen. In order for that outcome, we need to look at an input in order to generate output.” So I would say fantastic. And so after they’ve been with me for six months to 12 months, they would know themselves exactly how much each failed telephone attempt was worth to them. So in order to make 5000 euros this week, or this month, or whatever the period of time would be, I’m gonna have to have, I’m going to have to make eight offers. Because I know that two of them will be accepted and each will be worth two and a half right? In order to make eight offers, I’m going to need to get 16 meetings. In order to get 16 meetings, I’m going to have to have 250 telephone conversations, actual conversations. And in order to have 250 telephone conversation, I’m going to have to pick up the phone maybe 1500 times. So once you go for the month, pick up the phone 1500 times, that’s it, because the rest will take care of itself. And after a while, we could measure that each call was worth excellence. So many people come to me and this is a bit where people roll their eyes that I wish this wasn’t true. Forget the cold calling example. It sucks. It’s horrible. Nobody likes receiving them. Nobody likes making them. That’s fine. But when people come to me my clients and say, “I’m a bit stuck. I haven’t made any sales for the last three weeks, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks.” I say, “Don’t worry. That’s what I’m here for. Let me ask you this. How many sales offers have you made? How many times have you said, “Would you like to buy this thing, it costs $100?”” Normally, the answer is, “Well, my cat was sick. I didn’t have enough leads. I wasn’t really feeling it. I was on holiday.” So the answer is no. I would always say right. So I think I see a correlation here. You didn’t make any sales offers, and you didn’t make any sales. Is that right? And they say, Yeah, and I get great. Well, my fees started at 15 thousand dollars. But I don’t think you need me because I’ve just given you the answer. And then when they do, you know make more sales offers. And of course, there’s more to it make appropriate sales offers to appropriate people. But making the offer is so important. That’s not the same as asking for money. That’s the same as being active, we’ve all got a sales muscle. Like every muscle, we need to do lots of reps, lots of push-ups, lots of activity in order to keep it strong. What’s also important is form but the form is less important than activity, you can do a bad press up and it probably you probably won’t injure yourself. It might you might not build your muscle as quickly as if you have great form. But the fact that you’re using the muscle is the thing that keeps it strong. So worry about using it then worry about getting better at it, you know, academic learning is useless if it’s not coupled with real-life experience. And so that was probably the longest answer to the shortest question you’ve ever received.

Christine Schlonski [13:33]
Yeah, but I love that there was so much wonderful stuff in there. So I worked in high ticket event sales over the phone. So over a decade so that, I kind of did a calculation the other day.

Matthew Kimberly [13:46]
Were you doing like Tony Robbins stuff kind of events like live events?

Christine Schlonski [13:51]
They are different for CEOs and decision-makers to come together to do business.

Matthew Kimberly [13:57]
Okay, I used to get calls for those people. When I was in Belgium as a CEO. There was a company called C level or C suite summits or something like that. Yeah, I used to get advice those some of the best, most tenacious salespeople I’ve ever listened to.

Christine Schlonski [14:12]
Yeah, so I was in that industry for over a decade. So I’m you know, picking up the phone. And it’s really true, what you’re saying that muscle, because if you don’t feel like it, right, you kind of one day slips away, and you haven’t really done calls. And the next day, you don’t feel like it, because the day before you didn’t feel like it. So you don’t have any success.

Matthew Kimberly [14:32]
That’s right.

Christine Schlonski [14:33]
And I just want to make that point that one phone call can change the whole path you’re taken. Because you might not feel like it, but you kind of push you to have a conversation. And all of a sudden in the conversation, you realize, wow, this is my perfect customer. And all of a sudden you enjoy the conversation. And you invite them to your offer. And they might even buy. So your whole perspective can change. That’s what I love about sales, like your whole life can change from one minute to the next with somebody saying yes to what you have to offer.

Matthew Kimberly [15:13]
Absolutely, right. And if you’re listening to this now and you think, “Well, yeah, I still don’t like the idea of picking up the phone.” Here’s the strategy that I like to use when the product or the service is appropriate. And it’s called the blunt force approach. So somebody who has not made any offers for six weeks and hasn’t made it. So six weeks, if their product or service is appropriate, I will send them to the shopping mall, anywhere where they can walk up to 100 complete strangers. And with no context or no warm-up, just make an offer to 100 strangers. And the offer would typically be something like, “Hey, I’m a personal trainer. I’m running a promotion on a package of sessions, would you be interested?” That’s the pitch. Some kind of reason to do it today. There’s a promotion, there’s an offer, there’s a deal. And that’s it, you know, just super simple language. And if you approach 100 strangers, I’ve yet to see it not have at least a 1% close rate, right? So one person will say, “Oh, that sounds interesting. Tell me, I don’t want it. But maybe my wife would be interested”, or you know, “I’m a photographer, you have a beautiful family. I’m running a promotion in my studio. Let me give you my details. Would you be interested in a cookie in a session?” You have to use that approach to 200 complete strangers. And somebody will say yes. And here’s the really interesting thing. The finally one person says yes, completely counteracts the 99, you’re done.

Christine Schlonski [16:31]
Yeah.

Matthew Kimberly [16:32]
What is the worst that can happen if you make somebody a sales offer and they say no? And can you live with it? And the answer is nothing. There is nothing bad that can happen. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t ruin it for yourself by being pushy, aggressive, not listening to them. But nobody gets offended when you say, “Would you like to buy anything?” Nobody ever gets offended. They either say yes or no will tell me more. And that’s the worst that can happen. You can experience 99 complete zero impact rejections and walk away with a customer, or walk over to customers, or in the case of some of my clients or 10 customers walk up to strangers. And I go, “Great, now the muscle is working. Let’s work on efficiency.”

Christine Schlonski [17:16]
Yeah.

Matthew Kimberly [17:16]
So that’s where we go to target market, you’re not going to the shopping mall anymore, you’re going to the yoga studio, or you’re going to the school gate, or you’re going to the business or whatever it is, but you know we’ve got a 10% completely cold close rate, let’s tighten the target market, let’s get more sophisticated with our pitch. We can experience much, much, much greater results. I’m super excited by that. And you can try it. If you’re listening to this and thinking, “Well, nobody wants my accounting services, coaching services, whatever”, try it. Just try it. They’re gonna, they’re not going to arrest you.

Christine Schlonski [17:50]
Yeah. So how can people deal with it? Let’s say, they haven’t made a sale for quite a while. And they are a little bit desperate, you know, money needs to come into the door so they can pay their bills. And the confidence level obviously is not as high as when you just closed a deal. So what kind of advice would you have for them to push through that, to really go to the mall and have those conversations? Or to pick up the phone or whatever they want to do? Like, how can they get over that out of that depth?

Matthew Kimberly [18:22]
We’ve got to eliminate, we’ve got to lobe it up, we got to grease the wheels make it super simple, we’ve got to eliminate any variables which are going to stand between us and doing it which is why I like the mall example because call 100 people means Well, first, you’ve got to find 100 telephone numbers, and then you’ve got where you’re going to get them from, then you’ve got to get through the receptionist, which you’re not going to do and you’re not going to have 100 conversations with decision-makers. So try to. There are two approaches. One if you have experienced success in the past, and now you’re going through a bad phase, go straight to the low hanging fruit, the low hanging fruit on your existing network, your previous clients and your existing clients and offer something more, then you’ve got the people who are in your prospect list that just haven’t heard from in a long time. So reactivate those, that’s if you’ve experienced this if you’re brand new, and you’re just starting from scratch, you don’t have any of those assets. Eliminate any variable. Look for the quickest and easiest way. And often it’s by refusing to entertain any level of sophistication. The people who overthink it are the same people who say, “I don’t want to be sleazy. I don’t want to be pushy. I don’t want to come across as that kind of person.” And if you’re the kind of person who thinks that, you’re never going to be the kind of person who does come across as salesy or pushy, if you’re even aware of it, then you don’t need to be. That means that you’ve got enough emotional intelligence, in order to not put people in a sticky situation. But you can also be your own worst enemy. You can overthink the very, very simple act of getting a sandwich board or a poster or walking up to complete strangers and saying, “Bookkeeping services. Let me know if you need bookkeeping services. ” If you’re a bookkeeper, I’d use the telephone, to be honest. I just get the Yellow Pages to call 300 people just so here’s a concept called the Kimberly Kids Kidney concept. People say, “I can’t. I couldn’t possibly go to the shopping mall and ask 100 people. I couldn’t possibly pick up the phone 300 times and talk to complete strangers.” Well, I bet you could if your kid needed a new kidney. And that was the only way that we’re going to get it. I bet you could then. And that’s what I call the Kimberly Kids Kidney concept because these are people, these self-imposed limits on what we are able to do. There are some things which obviously you have, maybe you will never run a three-minute mile, I understand. But I bet you go a lot faster. If the consequences of not doing it were great. And so it is worth remembering that actually we do have the ability. Everybody go to the month. Imagine that your job is to do market research. And you’re given a clipboard, and you’re told walk up to 100 people in the airport and ask them where they’re going. And if they enjoyed this day, could you do it? Of course, you could. Why? Because you’re being paid to do it and the consequences of not doing it. Maybe you get fired. Well, guess what? If you are your own boss, you’re also getting paid for it. And the consequences of not doing it are worse than getting fired. So I think we do have this untapped reserve ability within us that that. And my favorite question, my favorite question, what’s the worst that can happen? And can I live with it? Yeah. Will I look like a fool? Yes. Can I live with it? Probably.

Christine Schlonski [21:40]
Yeah. So is that the way you deal with rejection that you just ask yourself? What’s the worst that could happen?

Matthew Kimberly [21:47]
Yeah, to a certain degree, I also am very defensive. When it comes to rejection. I try to avoid it by rejecting people first. So when I’m on a sales call, now, yeah, I’ve achieved a certain level of confidence about the future. I’m not worried, necessarily. And I never take anything for granted. But I’m not worried that I’ll be hungry next month, right? And so when now when I get on strategies, and this has come through, and people say, “well, How’d you do that?” So what I’ve been doing this for 15 years, but I like kind of every day for 15 years. So when I get on the sales call now, I’m looking for reasons not to work with people. Convince me why I should work with you. And that’s a much better dynamic, but you only get there through reputation results. But you do want people knocking on your door. Right? If you ever tried to call your favorite hairdresser to say, “Can you please fit me in on Saturdays, I’m going to go to a party”, they have all the power. I tried to be the power we’ll go out. But that comes with, that definitely comes with experience, we can take some of that. Like being detached from the outcome is super important. And I find a mild hangover helps with that if you got an important gig. This is, I’m joking, of course. But you know, if you don’t give the outcome 100% of your energy in the dating world, nothing less attractive than a needy suitor. “Please, let’s go.” You know, we play slightly cool, we play slightly hard to get the game is more fun. And I like that now. I like having fun. But that’s how I deal with rejection now, I try to reject first. But you know, oftentimes, I don’t like looking like an idiot. I live in Malta and I’m the only member of my family who doesn’t speak Maltese. Because my wife is Maltese and my kids are, well, they will speak good Maltese soon. Often to avoid being taken advantage of. And it’s probably something in my head. But I’m convinced that I pay more for the fruit and veg from the guy who brings his van to the street than my wife pays because I can’t talk to her Maltese. It’s like the tourist tax, right. And so I get around that by getting my wife to do the shopping. And if you really, really, really hate selling, but you realize how important it is to you. You don’t have to learn, but you must be prepared to spend all the resources on it probably money in hiring someone who can sell for you. You know, I do meet people, “I just don’t ever want to sell again in my life”, and that you don’t have to. But if you’re not prepared to use time and energy as a currency, you must use money as a currency because money will hire you, people, to do all of this for you.

Christine Schlonski [24:28]
Yeah, and to get money into the door, you have to do something right before that. Either way, figure out how to sell because it helps him every situation. It helps you with an idea you want to get across with, you know yourself leadership. And usually, great leaders know how to sell they know how to connect, they know how to get their point across. So and I think every entrepreneur is a leader.

Matthew Kimberly [24:57]
And I think every entrepreneur takes leadership not only for their customers but for themselves if they’re going to truly experience and often. And I really think we talked last time about the correlation between responsibility reward and risk-reward. A leader is going to be prepared to do the things that other people aren’t prepared to do. Yeah, that’s so important. If you want to achieve unusual levels of success, then you must be prepared to do unusual things.

Christine Schlonski [25:27]
Yes. Awesome. What a great finish off that second interview. Thank you so so much. Let us know again, where people can find you, and how they need to spell your name.

Matthew Kimberly [25:40]
Absolutely. So last time, I suggest that you go to https://matthewkimberley.com/ and sign up for my newsletter. And you can also you can absolutely do that you can also type in, this is, you don’t need to know how to spell tip on those how to spell this, howtogetagrip.com will take you to the podcast page of my website where you can also sign up, receive all of my delightful emails.

Christine Schlonski [26:02]
Awesome. And you can also listen to that amazing podcast.

Matthew Kimberly [26:06]
Oh, I definitely recommend that.

Christine Schlonski [26:08]
And subscribe, right?

Matthew Kimberly [26:09]
And leave a review on iTunes. And that’s exactly what you should be doing here now reviews, ratings, all things. Every recommendation makes a big difference. You know, we want those business owners we want to receive referrals. Well, let’s start paying it forward. You know, spread the word about good things that you so if you enjoyed this, write an email to 10 of your friends and say, “Hey, you should definitely subscribe to the Heart Sells! Podcast.”

Christine Schlonski [26:32]
Thank you so much for being on the show, for being so much fun and sharing such great sales advice.

Matthew Kimberly [26:38]
Thank you for having me, Christine. I’ll come back soon.

Christine Schlonski [26:40]
Thank you. Well, what a fun episode. I just love that Matthew Kimberly started out juggling, making money and finding out a way how to make more money, that he had the realization that life is more fun with money, and that he also found a way how to sell from his heart to really make a big impact in this beautiful world. I hope you really really enjoy it. Let me know what your learnings are. hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/ . Find the podcast tab. Check out the episodes with Matthew Kimberly 126 and 127. And just leave your comments or simply write me an email to info@hristineschlonski.com and just share what you have learned. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for giving your gifts to the world. I so highly appreciate you and everything you do. So if you know more amazing people in your network. If you know people that would love to have some support in creating the business and lifestyle of their dreams. Then come over to Heart Sells! Podcast, make sure they subscribe, make sure you subscribe so you never ever miss an episode again. And that allows me also to serve you and a much much higher level. Thank you so much for being here. Have a wonderful day wherever you are in this beautiful world and I’m saying bye for now.