all right let's go ahead and get started
uh first off i'd like to thank assist
for giving us this opportunity to
present what i think is
uh some really valuable information uh
that i've been talking with security
guard companies every week
about every week for literally years
today we'll be discussing how to master
the art of
selling security guard services if
you're involved in
actively selling security guard services
which i believe
most of you are then you know how hard
it's gotten to
not only talk to potential customers how
it's got
even harder to get those potential
customers to become
actual customers but before we start
talking about
the hows we'll be talking about some of
the reasons
why things have become so difficult in
regards to
accessing your buyers i believe that
providing you
uh with a few insights behind the why
will make it easier to understand the
reasons that the points will
cover in this presentation are so
critical to your success
let me offer a word of warning before we
get started
there are semester-long classes at some
of the most
prestigious business schools that talk
about
uh some of the points that we're going
to discuss here
so our objective is not to provide you
with everything that you need
in 45 minutes but to give you a solid
foundation and get you
on the path to mastery
so let's talk about who we are my name
is courtney sparkman and i'm the founder
and ceo of officer reports
we're our software company that provides
security guard management software
to security guard companies globally but
don't
consider me to be you know a software
developer
coder that's not me i actually walked in
your shoes for quite a while
so back in 2011 to 2013 i worked in
business development for a regional
security guard company
at that time we were doing about 26
million dollars in business a year
and even before that i founded a
security guard company with my father in
chicago
we ran that business from about 2000 to
2002 to about 2010 before we sold that
and prior to that i worked in sales and
marketing research
which i believe gave me a lot of the
skills and knowledge that i used to make
my career in the security guard industry
a lot more successful
so after hearing from me you'll be
hearing from wendy grottero founder of
grow digital
full-service digital marketing firm but
in addition wendy is also professor of
social media and digital marketing at
university of texas
right there in san antonio but unlike a
lot of professors that are just
academic right theoretical wendy's had
the
opportunity to apply all of her learn
all of her learnings and key roles in
marketing and business development
in numerous technology and service
companies i've been working with wendy
for about eight months
helping officer reports improve our
digital
footprint and i can say that she's done
an outstanding job
after wendy you'll be hearing from joel
russell ceo and founder of cardinal
consulting
cardinal is in the business of helping
security guard companies
take their businesses to the next level
so joe has about 35 years of experience
in the contract security industry
and from 1989 to 2001 he owned and
operated his own security guard company
right there in texas triad protective
services
uh joe was able to expand his service
from texas to about
five other states not to mention he was
awarded the national blue chip
enterprise award by the u.s chamber of
commerce
uh at which point i don't think a
security guard company
had ever received before
so let's start off uh by taking a look
at the definition
of sales and marketing sales is
typically defined as the act of selling
something
while marketing is defined as the
activities that are that are involved in
making people
aware of your company's products
generating leads
and making sure that your products and
services are available
available to be bought in the past many
company sales professionals would look
to their traditional
marketing departments to help them
generate warm leads
but that paradigm has shifted
in today's digital world i believe that
the lines between sales and marketing
have begun to blur
in a very substantial way
the reason being is that smaller
companies especially ones
working with thinner margins sound
familiar
especially ones with thinner margins
don't have the resources
capital and or people to staff a
traditional marketing department
and honestly i i don't think you really
need one
so why is that
so really to understand why these
changes are occurring
we must understand what it means to sell
security guard service in a digital age
back when i started selling security
guard service it was a lot
easier people were a little more willing
to pick up the phone and talk with you
and it's sometimes even invites you into
their offices for an appointment
and if you sold security guard services
prior to 2001
you probably remember the heyday of
being able to walk into an office
building
downtown some place uh getting an
appointment at the front desk without
showing an id
and actually getting to talk to a buyer
just like that uh things changed
admittedly i wasn't in the security
industry at the time but i still
remember
uh being able to walk into a building
talk to the receptionist
have her ask you a couple of questions
and then put you on the
uh calendar to talk to somebody in an
hour or two
i mean who wouldn't love to go back
today
but selling the digital age has been
largely influenced by the digitization
of our lives via the internet
the internet has completely changed the
way that we buy things
if let's say you want to go to a movie
uh what you what you're going to do is
you're going to go jump on the internet
go to a site like fandango
to read viewer reviews of the movie uh
you might go
to youtube to watch some trailers of
that movie
if you're going to buy a book you're
going to go to amazon.com
read the reviews left by other readers
you might even check out
other books written by the author
previously
this buying behavior is especially true
when it comes to
products and services so as an example
just the other day i was looking to
purchase some security cameras
for my home i made my decision on what
to purchase
after i read the amazon reviews went to
the company's website
and jumped on their youtube channel to
see
what the installation process for those
cameras was like
and this is just a secret that we're
going to keep between me and you guys
in fact i'm not even allowed to make a
purchase
in my house without doing up some type
of background research and investigation
i literally bought a set of spatulas
kitchen spatulas uh on amazon about two
months ago
once the spatulas got here my wife
opened up the box
she looked at the spatulas she looked at
me she looked back at the spatulas
looked at me and said
uh what did the reviews on these
spatulas say
and i'm thinking come on man these are
plastic spatulas
so i was like you know i didn't read the
reviews
so she looked at me rolled her eyes said
something under her breath that i
probably wouldn't have appreciated and
walked away
literally rolled her eyes and walked
away
so if you're anything like us
and you have access to a computer or
smartphone you're probably pretty
similar in the way that you're making
your buying decisions
again this type of buying behavior has
been empowered by the internet
in the past in order for a buyer to
learn anything about your company and
the products
services that you sold they had very few
resources to turn to
you know so they might have seen an ad
that you ran in an industry publication
or maybe they received some type of
mailer in the mail
but no matter what vehicle they use to
uh
learn about your company that that
process
had to be complemented by either a visit
from a salesperson or at least
a conversation with one of your
salespeople
but in the digital age there is an
abundance of
an abundance of information the buyers
have access to
all without having to talk to your
salespeople
if they want to know about your company
they go they go to your company website
if they want to know what your customers
think about you they go to your facebook
page
or your google business page if they
want to know about the type of people
you hire
what do they do they jump over on
again all of this information can be
gathered without
ever having to talk to a salesperson in
fact
buyers nowadays expect and
need that level of access
so why do they need that level of access
and that's because their days are filled
with
tasks and duties that have nothing to
do with security so don't get me wrong
i think it's very important to have a
trained security officer
at a facility providing good security
but at the same time your prospective
customers are dealing with tenants who
have complaints
infrastructure that needs to be
maintained revenue goals to hit that
affect their bonuses
and in some cases they're even dealing
with lawsuits and any number of other
issues that you don't know about
in other words security guard service
will more than likely
not be at the top of their list of
things to address
well until it's time to solicit bids
so according to a recent report uh the
accessibility between
business to business vendors or b2b
vendors and your customers
is shrinking even further again that's
because
of the ease of access to information and
the increased
workloads that your buyers are
experiencing
today 93 of business buyers search
online to gather information about
vendors
before making any buying decisions
this means before your sales team ever
reaches out
or talks with a prospective customer the
process
of making a buying decision has already
started to further underline the
importance that the internet has for
buyers uh
buying decisions there's another study
that says that buyers are
70 percent through their purchasing
decision
before the buyer ever talks to a
salesperson
think about that your buyers are 70
through the decision-making process
before they
even contact you so what does that mean
to me it means that if you aren't
engaging with the buyer
before they reach out to you you are way
behind the power curve
and probably have little chance of
influencing
that buyer's buying decision at all
so based on changes that we've seen in
the buying process
and the abundance of information
available to buyers
security guard vendors need to start
considering
uh processes that take into account the
way the buyers are
making their buying decisions for
security guard companies i think
that the days of just going the old
school route of cold calling are dying
in the digital age you have to combine
all of your old school
old school soft skills with all of the
learnings and tools
that the internet provides
so with that being said i'm going to
turn over the presentation to wendy
so she can provide you with a mini mba
in digital marketing
followed by joel russell who will help
uh who will help you make sure that your
old school sales skills
are everything that they should be
and wendy i'll turn it over to you thank
you so much courtney for
your lovely introduction and talking me
up so much
so i hope not to disappoint everybody
let's
let's get into um marketing doesn't work
have you heard this before i have and
i have come to the conclusion that
that's what people say
when they don't know how to do it so
this through this presentation
we're trying to get people up to speed
with
how the buyers behavior has changed
so courtney had talked about sales
versus marketing
so the act of selling something is sales
uh but without the marketing component
it's a hundred percent one-on-one touch
points which means that
uh without leveraging all the tools and
that digital marketing gave you your
sales team has the burden
of making all of those contacts
personally
right so marketing is all of those
activities
and touch points to educate the market
about your product services and people
so think about the five to ten touch
role to build trust
this is this means that they even are
aware of your brand and would consider
you
for um one of their projects so if
especially if you're going up market and
you want a bigger project to work on
or a bigger account you have to think
that these people already have some
vendors in mind
so in order to get into that short list
you're going to have to do
some things that get you out there and
seen invisible as a viable
vendor for their new account
so think of your website as your home
base and there's all these things that
you could do
out in the internet to get people to see
your website
and these things could be distributed
through your social media
um advertising on google or social media
good search so having content and things
that are
searchable online directory listings
that's a really good strategic approach
with getting your company seen sometimes
you have to pay for those listings and
that's okay
uh an email strategy where you do
different types of emails where it's
one-on-one emails where you support your
sales team
or you do email blasts and then there's
also youtube videos or other video
marketing that has been catching a lot
of traction
the algorithms on all the digital
platforms really love video content as
well
obviously that has a lot of challenges
to put something
reasonably decent together but um you
don't have to film
live people and you you can probably
look at other ways to to reduce those
costs
so think of your website as um
the home base right so you want to drive
as much traffic
to that site and then once people get to
your site they have to have a clean and
lovely experience
so think of immediately letting people
know what you offer
i know it sounds simple but you'd be
surprised how many companies
bury what they offer on the second or
third page of their site
right at the top talk about your
security guard services
and then also be sure to mention your
secret sauce
why are you better than anyone else in
your market
so hopefully you understand what makes
you unique or
gives you a competitive edge
so think of those things that what make
you special
so more about is it your
technology that you use to manage your
guards and forces and you you have a
good handle on them
do you hire the best talented people um
do you have certain routines or
what are those things that make you
really special
then there's this thing we call third
party validation symbols
uh it's a big fancy word but basically
all it is is showing
uh the other people not you guys are
talking about your services
so work towards getting reviews awards
obviously being a part of this
affiliation should be on your website
because it shows that you
take your um industry very seriously and
that you want to be a part of something
bigger and
be the best security guard company that
you can be and then any other reputation
badges so any other learning continuing
education
or um anything that you could display on
your site that shows
that you are you take this very
seriously and that you're really dialed
into what the industry needs
um and then i like to say have a clean
clear path to a simple contact form
don't make it complex don't bury your
contact forms have calls to action which
are called
buttons or links throughout your site
that make it really easy
for somebody to fill out a form to
contact you i've seen a lot of websites
where people don't do that
okay so let's break this up into a few
phases
if if this seems overwhelming to you
already
um i want you to think of this in pieces
little chunks that you want to get
through
so let's build your foundation phase one
uh pull up your website pull up all your
marketing across your your social media
now look at your branding your logos
your colors your fonts
and then the way that you message things
is it consistent
is it fresh uh does it look haphazard
and thrown together
well that's the impression that you're
going to give in the marketplace so
think of cleaning that up and setting
your standards
because if people are googling you or
looking you up they want to see that it
is consistent because they know then you
do consistent work
it's it's really interesting how that
psychology plays into a decision
uh with which vendor that they're going
to go with
now go deep on your geo regional words
that's a fancy term for zip codes metro
areas
and then use those words throughout your
site for all the places that you want to
service
that's the way that you could pop up for
for those searches
and also with somebody lines on your
site they want to be sure that you'll
take care of them in their
area and then make sure that your
website has these elements
a home page an about a services and a
contact form at minimum
this is your foundation so if you're
missing any of those you need to make
sure that you get those
uh pages worked on immediately hey wendy
now
yeah for the about us page what type of
information
should security guard companies have on
the about us page
great question i think it should be both
the about the company and what makes you
special a little bit more in detail
and then the second part would be your
people so who are the leadership
what are they like what are their
backgrounds brag um
i know it's hard for a lot of people to
brag about how amazing they are but you
got into this business
because you're probably you have a
history in
um the armed services or police work or
any other
uh part of that industry that you need
to brag about that
that has to be something that you
highlight with how many years of
experience your team might have as a
whole
as well good question um
and then a you want to have your
facebook and a linkedin business
profile page not a fake uh user account
but an
actual business profile page because
that is where you can actually
eventually start to run promotions
you have a lot of features in the
business pages like booking appointments
collecting information and other
marketing tools that you could use
then you also need a nice and clear
google my business account so fill that
out
for the profile information completely
so once you have all that done you can
get onto phase two
and i like to call this the roll of
threes just to make it easy on you
um you need to create a minimum of 12
posts for social media and your google
my business account don't neglect that
make sure that they're the right sizes
and branded so you've already
got your consistent branding done right
you've got your colors your fonts the
the images that you want to use
and then make make these in either
by 800x800 or center them with some
bleed room
at 1200 by 900 um and then here are some
ideas
so you could do either three reviews or
customer quotes
little mini case studies so if you're
going after specific industries that you
want to grow into like
shopping malls or something like that
you would probably want to do three case
studies about shopping malls and post
about that
um i like fax and industry
information so three safety or security
facts and post about your company
or services three tips
uh three brags about your employees
again highlighting how amazing your
employees are with their backgrounds and
experiences
in the industry or three three quick
videos of a tour or how you work
so behind the scenes like it doesn't
have to be a nice
big fancy presentation you'd be
surprised at how much traction
these on-site uh authentic videos
can get okay now yet you have some
some content to distribute and you have
a good foundation
now it's time to actually think about
promoting so schedule and plan all your
posts
and rotate them by topics so if you put
together
a few of these threes you want to rotate
them you don't want to
to do a series of three in a row because
you want to have a lot of
variety of content that you want to post
throughout the month or throughout the
year
so also create a social media
advertising account to boost your posts
to your target audiences this is this is
like simple on page promoting
one of your posts so if you post
something on your social account all you
have to do is just boost that
to um people with selected
in your area that might have business
owner or decision maker type titles
and then if you have a customer list or
target list you can actually use that
for social media you could upload that
as a custom audience or you can create
an email account and send out black
email blasts which would be like
information about your organization
or industry news be careful when you're
doing email blasts you don't want to
overwhelm um your list so i would say
in the beginning no more than maybe two
a month unless you have really good
content
in those blasts that people are not
unsubscribing okay
so wendy yeah question so for the
uh your customer list so you can
actually
use your list of potential customer
emails to target them in social media
you sure can but it has to be big enough
and that's the problem
these rules of social media do change
often so once you get to phase three
you're gonna have to be a little bit
committed to learning these rules
and staying on top of them but if it
populates and it finds a good amount
usually over
a couple thousand um you can
then target those people on social
social media with boosting to them
so it's really exciting because they
don't know you're you're targeting them
it's a very soft
touch point as opposed to an email which
is a little more aggressive
so a lot of people like to use the
social awareness on their target lists
but again those have to have a minimum
critical amount
for your area that you're targeting and
that's something to work towards so
build up your target
lists um make sure that they're getting
as close to the 10
000 mark as you can get and that would
be key to success with that
strategy okay
phase four this is pretty advanced um
this is where you get into
highly strategic digital marketing uh we
call
certain types of blogging and really
deep
content that's targeted for your
prospects
so this is stuff they want to read this
is these are things that they're
probably googling or looking up
on their own and you want to have that
as bait
for them when you're running your ads um
and your promotions and your sharing on
social because this is how you collect
those emails we just talked about how
valuable they are so this is called an
opt-in and this also gives you leads so
you can really rapidly build your email
list and your network
by having these things that are juicy
that your targets and prospects want to
use
they have to be well relatively well
done
but think of these these potential um
pieces the five ways your security team
can help build your brand
right the top three signs that a tenant
is going to be a problem so again
that's for your user and that's
something that they probably would want
to know
and they would opt in to your list to
download that and to read it
the top five ways that your security
team can help with the smooth eviction
that is powerful information you can
promote that and get a lot of leads
based on some of the these type of
bait is what i like to call them um
so you could also run google ads to some
of your content
so if you have really good strong lead
magnets people already googling those
terms
so you can run these google ads in a geo
region
that you're targeting and get get your
leads this way
um advanced social media ads would be
where you're using the back end
and they're called dark ads and you're
configuring these and targeting people
and your
your competitors don't really know what
you're doing because they can't see it
on your page
so those are really strategic email
sequencing and social setting
selling um this is not an email blast to
the list this is where
you send these like personalized email
um sequences like hello i met you at
this place or
um i thought that you might be
interested in an x
and if they open it or if they don't
open it it goes in through a sequence
until you can get them to get
a schedule a meeting or call with your
sales team your sales team really
appreciates this
as they're so busy trying to talk and
negotiate deals
if we're running these marketing
sequences for them on the background
then that really helps save them time to
focus on the customers and the leads
that are active
and then get your team trained for
online advocacy
and networking so getting them uh to use
tools like linkedin with a personal
brand that also represents your business
in industry while getting them more
involved into associations and events
okay big tips think of your online
accounts and tools as tangible assets
so often people forget that these are
actual things that have locks and
controls to gain access
i've come across many organizations that
they'll just spin up
some social media and then they lose the
contact information they don't know
who's
who could get into it and then they lose
all that momentum
and all that branding so make sure that
you always control
that and you have some kind of protocol
for access
um these are some of the tools that we
like to use so google
email because then you can set up
everything in a google
drive canva is a really fun tool they
have a free version that's pretty robust
and that helps you design those social
posts really easily without
having to spend a lot of money um but
think of marketing is the only way
to educate your market on your value so
you can't
you don't have to keep heat on price and
if you're going after those bigger
accounts
then price matters to a point it has to
be a fair price
but they they care more about the job
being done right
so how can you do the job right and you
have to educate them on
how you do the best job invest in your
online brand
so you can charge those rates that you
want and then
if all else fails and this seems really
overwhelming hire a pro
so contract somebody to consult you on
setting it up and train you
or um hire an agency that for
a reasonable rate that can help run some
of this or team up with you
and your team to get this done uh
properly so you don't
in get into any costly mistakes there
are some mistakes that you can make that
can get your
accounts banned or taken off the
internet so just be sure that
if you do go down this path that you do
have somebody who's committed to
learning
the best practices and follows the rules
thank you i'm gonna go ahead and turn it
over to
uh joel russell and he's gonna get into
the old school
sales i'd like to thank courtney and the
members of assist for inviting us here
today
to make a presentation first off i want
to say everything that wendy said is
exactly correct
it is the digital age and all of those
devices
and programs need to be implemented
to keep you up to speed with your
competition
so with that in mind we're going to step
off and step back a little bit to the
old what i call
old school sales
first off no one is ever going to buy
anything from you
until they've heard your name five times
now that's an
old advertising adage that has been
around
well before television probably before
radio
but it's still true today you have to
let the customer know who you are
and what you do so
what now where do we go from here you're
scratching your head you're thinking
well okay i can do that
the first thing you have to do is
research your prospects
you have to identify who is a user of
security guard service
what kind of a company are they what's
their company type what industry
are they in what's the company's size
and what is the job description and the
title of the person
at that company who is going to be the
buyer or make the decision
for hiring a security guard company
real quick users are always going to be
companies where
they're using security service already
security guard services
they're they're one of your competitors
there 99
of the business that you get in the
lifetime of your company
will be business that you took away from
somebody else
company types you got different
industries
hospitals hotels manufacturing
facilities all of these have a different
sic
code and you can identify them by
those company types company size is also
important
just because ibm has a facility in your
location
if they've only got 20 employees there
you're probably going to waste your time
calling
and this is the big click for all
security
guard companies and i think probably all
you people out there know that
there is no one single title
of the person who makes decisions to buy
security guard services
and this is what really causes us to do
a lot of double research
on companies because in some places
it'll be a security manager
and some companies that'll be the hr
manager or the facilities manager or the
property manager
there's dozens of titles that we have to
deal with so if you're trying to buy a
list
you you can't just hone in on one
particular
job title you have to be able to do the
research
to get it in the right box
now um this is where
if you haven't already i highly
recommend that you do this
get a salesforce.com account
now salesforce.com is the simplest
and easiest and cleanest way to maintain
your database your database is all the
information that you collect
on your known users the prospects that
you're going to be
trying to obtain as clients okay
this information um their email
their phone their names their company
all this information is kept in the
database
you can schedule for the next time you
want to meet with that person
or the next time you want to call also
too with salesforce
it's got an email and a direct mail
where you can generate
activity right out of the salesforce
account at your at your prospects
of course you know you're going to log
telephone calls too because
you are still going to use the phone i
don't care what anybody says
the phone still works it has to
when you're selling a product in a
service like we do
and we're selling an average guard
account
two hundred thousand dollars a year is
the budget on that i mean if it's a 168
that's an easy two hundred thousand
dollars purchased by that company
they're not going to take that purchase
lightly they're not going to order it
over the phone it is not an amazon
gift they're going to do research
and they will do research on youtube
they want to make sure you're a
legitimate company
that you've experienced that you know
what you're talking about
that's part of your presentation that's
part of your relationship building with
those people
okay because our goal is to get there
and get
in front of them get in front of them
now
one day so joe so hey joe i know a lot
of companies out here using microsoft
outlook and microsoft excel as a crm
what are your thoughts well those
programs were really not designed versus
drm
um you know a crm is the customer
relations management
management program so
salesforce has that built into it and i
don't work for salesforce and i'm not
trying to sell
the product i'm just telling you what i
know works well for me
and salesforce works exceptionally well
i have multiple clients around the
country
i always get them on salesforce and and
and they use it
not only in the sales department but
also in the
opportunities and also in the accounts
so they can
keep our information from birth to death
on
salesforce
one of the nicest aspects of salesforce
is that it has a
an email tracker built into it
so if i'm a salesperson for your
security company
and i'm sending out emails to potential
clients
i'm looking for openings now
this page didn't come out very clearly
but over on the far
right you can see some numbers over here
and those numbers
indicate the number of times that email
was opened
if i send out 50 emails today and i have
20
openings guess who i'm going to call
first i'm going to call the guys that
open the
opened it four times three times two
times because they're looking at my
advertisement
it's fresh in their mind and they may
have passed it on to somebody else and
their staff
who may be the person who's really in
charge of operating the security guard
service
so this kind of information
is worth its weight in gold to a
security guard owner
or your department sales people this
is you can you can you've got 20 people
you can
contact that already knows your company
name they already saw
something about you it's fresh in their
mind jump on it
don't just let it lie there
from making those contacts with those
people and those you know those
potential prospects
we want to set an appointment you want
to get in front of the buyer
you want to research them before you get
there but
you know you want to listen to their
problems listen to their pain
okay people won't tell you honestly
things on the phone
but when you get into a private office
with them they'll tell you
everything they'll tell you all the
evil that their current security has
inflicted upon
them and what it is that they really
want listen
70 of the time you don't have to go
there
and sell them on you're the greatest
things in sliced bread in the security
guard industry
you're there to listen they already know
that you're a professional or they would
have never allowed you to come in and
see them
one thing you need to think about for
your companies
is developing an innovative offering
what is it that makes you special what
is it
that makes your company stand out from
the rest
okay now you can't say we're the biggest
we're the best we're the fastest
oh no your your competitors at garda
securitize and g4s they're already out
there telling them they're the biggest
and the best in the world
okay you have to be the biggest and the
best locally or regionally
and this is one place i just want to
mention to you it's not really sales but
it is
it's the customer service aspect
you the local owners and operators you
always can beat the nationals or the
internationals
at customer service if you apply
yourself
they are not good at it they treat their
customers mostly as numbers
and you are the local original guy who's
been there for 5 10
15 years just a quick story
in a 25-year span in dallas one of the
large
national guard companies here had 24
branch managers
okay now i know that for a fact because
i used to follow
and every time they changed branch
managers guess who i was going to call
i was going to call their clients it
makes sense
people like to deal with the same people
they don't want that change in their
jumping up
and you know knocking over their apple
cart every every monday morning
also too you're the security
professional
you're the one that knows how to operate
a guard force
you're the one that knows how to hire
train develop post orders and
make a company shine and make your
company
shine with them they're not
90 of the people that we deal with as
clients in this industry
don't know very much about security they
know they need it
their boss told them so but
they don't know much because their job
is something totally different
okay so everything you say they can they
look at it like it's gospel
so be gospel be a professional and
you'll be happy
okay i want to talk a little bit about
price because everybody
has their own their own advent on price
but
you know know the market that you're
working in you have to research the
market
um you know when you're when you're you
request
bill rate and budget from the from the
prospect you get in front of them
ask them what their budget is don't be
afraid just ask them
okay also ask them what the current pay
grades are the officers
of the service they're currently using
sometimes you might get a big surprise
okay and then understand that you do
have to develop a labor versus
building methodology that works for your
company but i can tell you right now
anybody who's at a 60 split is going to
be in pretty good shape
so if i pay my officers 15 and i'm
billing that customer
25 an hour my bill rates 60
okay
and then once you've got all this
information the mass
and you're ready to get that proposal
and put it together in that nice
professional binder and take it there
um and deliver it to the customer now
you're ready
okay so you know always request the
opportunity to make a presentation even
if you
don't even if they don't want a
presentation still ask if you can do it
now you can easily develop a quick
presentation on a powerpoint
10 or 12 slides you know basically it
just
copies from your proposal documents and
you can run through that with the client
if they don't want to do that make sure
that you want to deliver this proposal
in person
you're not going to send this through
the email
i don't care what they tell you ask for
the appointment again
to take that proposal to deliver it to
them in person
at least give them the opportunity to
open it up and go through
and that's when they've got that's when
you've got it they're looking at the
price they're always going to turn to
that section
first that's what i've seen 100 of them
do
and then they may have some legitimate
questions okay
where's your coi your certificate of
insurance
you know can you give me any more
references than the ones that you
supplied me with
etc whatever they're interested in
answer those questions right there for
them
and fix it now you've got them well you
can ask for the sale
now i know they're going to probably
tell you well i have to show this to
so and so and so and so and we have to
have more
input before we can make a decision but
that doesn't stop you from looking him
dead in the eye and saying
mr client i want your business and our
company will take care of you
and i'm here to tell you that i'm going
to take care of you when you say that to
them
face to face man-to-man there's no piece
of paper in the world
that can break that mold so that's one
power that you have
but you don't utilize it if you're
sending it to them in an email
you gotta get up and take it out there
and see them
after the proposal is delivered well you
just don't forget about it and go home
and have a cocktail
send them a thank you letter and let me
say this okay
email is nice but a personalized
card in in the us mail
if you can depend on them to get it
there the u.s mail
sending a personalized card is the way
to go
people think you took the time it means
something to them you can put a little
note in there
and you know that really can help you
cement a deal
also if it's not submitted yet you got
to keep following up
don't ever quit following no when they
finally get to the point where they said
well we selected somebody else
that's not the end of the world okay
there's plenty of things you can say at
that point too
i mean i used to always say well mr
smith i'm glad you selected somebody i
hope you're going to be happy with them
but in the event that you don't you know
you can call on me and i'll be here
okay then continue to follow up send
them emails
send them letters send them other
advertising
someday down the road someday down the
road
they're going to wake up and say well we
made a mistake or
we hired the wrong company we're not
getting the service that we expected
you want to be there so you can move
right in behind it
and that's the end of my presentation
and i hope everybody picked up a little
bit from it
and i really appreciate the time
all right thanks wendy and joe for
taking us through your portion of the
presentation i i think the information
that you provided was absolutely
critical
and again getting back to the point of
the presentation it wasn't to give
everybody all the information that they
needed to
go out and become super salespeople or
supermarketing people
what we wanted to provide you were some
actionable steps that you could walk
away with
uh and with that being said if you have
questions
we will be around for a little while
answering those
and if we can't get to your question
please feel free to reach out to us i've
posted all of our contact information
here if you scan the qr code you'll be
able to automatically pull our contact
information over into your smartphones
so i'll open up the floor now for
questions