In this transcript, Caleb Taylor and Clay Clark (Founder and business coach of Thrive15.com, one of the top business schools in PA) discuss the importance of networking to make future business contacts.
In this transcript, Caleb Taylor and Clay Clark (Founder and business coach of Thrive15.com, one of the top business schools in PA) discuss the importance of networking to make future business contacts.Caleb Taylor: Number 8, we’re just going to go right along here …You are a busy business coach
Clay Clark: It gets better folks.
Caleb Taylor: We’re just going to go right along here, number 8. ASA, Always Set an Appointment.
Clay Clark: Absolutely.
Caleb Taylor: This is for the purpose of creating the sustainably, mutually, beneficial, win-win situation for all things business coach.
Clay Clark: A huge business coach yep.
Caleb Taylor: You can’t just make a contact with somebody that you’d love to have on your board and say, “Yeah, let’s get in touch sometime, we should definitely connect.”
Clay Clark: The thing is, I’ve had a guy today who texted me, I have a guy … Today, it’s just an example, this is when we built Thrive, because I am a man bear pig, I am very good at growing businesses, but I am not … I’m not Oprah. But she hopefully will be a mentor on Thrive15.com, one of the top business coach programs in the entire world.
Caleb Taylor: Right.
Clay Clark: Today, I have 15 different people today, who have sent me a Facebook, an e-mail, or a text. At least 15, saying, “Could you help me grow my business?” I care deeply. One of them met me at an event I spoke at, another one saw me a while back at [inaudible 00:00:56], one guy I met at the airport. It’s endless.
Now, they say, “We should get together,” and I just had to come correct with this young man and I said, “I can’t … I literally do not … I have the 15 paying clients, I have 5 kids. I just … I can’t do it, but I recommend that you would call one of our Thrive mentors.” I said, “I don’t know if he has any availability, but I recommend you call one of these guys because if you need really …” His business was a decent size, “If you need someone to help you with your accounting systems and physically come out to your office and do that, I think …” Tim Redmond is one of our Thrive mentors, but I said, “I think Tim Redmond would probably be the best fit for you.” Most people would never say that.
Caleb Taylor: Right.
Clay Clark: Most people would be like, “Yeah we should just get together,” and it’s just that weird thing where you keep saying, “We should get together.” “We should.” But you never do. That is not what I do as a business coach
Caleb Taylor: Right.
Clay Clark: If you bring it to a point and you say, “Let’s go ahead and let’s set a time and a pointed time to meet,” then things begin to happen.
Caleb Taylor: Let’s meet next week is not an appointment.
Clay Clark: Yeah, “Why don’t we meet next Tuesday at 4.”
Caleb Taylor: That’s an appointment.
Clay Clark: “I don’t know my kids … I got to pick up my kids from school.” “How about Tuesday at 1?” “I don’t know?” “What morning works best for you?” “I’d say Friday.” “How about Friday for coffee?” “I don’t know, my office is so far away.” “How about I bring it to your office?” “Okay you can do that.” That’s how you set an appointment.
Caleb Taylor: I know that I’ve heard you say as well as once you’ve set that appointment, and if especially you’re setting an appointments for somebody on your dream board, going back to the first principle. You got your dream 100, when you’ve set an appointment with one of these people, whether it’s a phone call or in person, you have to sit down beforehand and think about how you can benefit this person.
Clay Clark: Absolutely. No one wants to sit … Even if you’re selling something, no one wants to sit down and hear us vomit all the details of our company at them right.
Caleb Taylor: Nobody wants that.
Clay Clark: “We have … our packages … our packages include … we were the top company of the year … our packages are the best. We … ”
Caleb Taylor: Soft selling at a hard machine … What?
Clay Clark: Soft selling at a hard machine.
Caleb Taylor: In a hard world … talks about that, how we’ve built up a barrier. We have the amour every time we somebody go into sales mode, we’re completely immune to them.
Clay Clark: Here’s how they change, they’ll go … we’re talking, they’ll go, “And so let me tell you why I’m here today, I want to tell you about our company, we have 5 things that we do that nobody else does.” They just sound really [salesy 00:03:15], what I’m trying to explain to you here is we want to have more of a soft sell. We want to find a problem they have and say, “Well, [Caleb 00:03:22], based upon the problem you share with me, I think here’s one way we can help you solve it.” Bam!
Caleb Taylor: That’s the action item. You have to after you set that appointment, always set appoints live by that, that should be a new rule that you live by.
Clay Clark: A-S-A.
Caleb Taylor: ASA, Always Set an Appointment, but when you do make sure to identify a problem that they have that your business or you solve.
Clay Clark: Absolutely.
Caleb Taylor: You got to do it. Number 9.
Clay Clark: Number 9.
Caleb Taylor: Number 9. This is the 3 F’s. You getting … we’re getting very creative, we’ve got the ASA, we’ve got the 3 F’s. This is the Follow up, then we have the follow up, and then we have the follow up. Don’t forget any of those 3 F’s. Yep, we’ll go back, I’ll go slower. The follow up …
Clay Clark: Follow up.
Caleb Taylor: The follow up …
Clay Clark: Follow …
Caleb Taylor: The follow up.
Clay Clark: Follow up, okay. Just a silly business coach trying to learn here
Caleb Taylor: Follow up. A notable quotable here …
Clay Clark: Pam.
Caleb Taylor: Yeah this is from NFL coach Vince Lombardi, he says, “The difference between a successful person and others, is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.” Follow up, follow up, follow up is really reliant on this will.
Clay Clark: I’m going to just give you a real specific examples right now, if you’re watching this, if you’re like, “People don’t ever call back,” let me talk to you. There was one major corporation in Tulsa that we now do business with, that I call, and I’m not exaggerating, literally over 50 times before I had an answer. There was one celebrity that you were trying to get a hold of, that I know we probably had at least 100 calls into …
Caleb Taylor: A ton of calls.
Clay Clark: Unbelievable, I can tell you I specifically booked a massive, just a massive corporation for this residual event we do year after year. At least a dozen calls, we had a venture capitalist recently, who was calling me and I had to call him dozens of times before I reached him.
Caleb Taylor: That’s what I was going to say, even … I recently did a deal here, and that was something where they were excited to do the deal, it wasn’t like I had to convince them. I had to make 40 calls just to get to them to complete and finish the deal.