SNM208: Improve Your Business Strategies and Learn How to Succeed Without Selling with Diane Helbig

0:00 Today we have a really amazing guest for our podcast. We have Diane Helbig an international business advisor and trainer. She's the author of Succeed Without Selling, lemonade stand selling and expert insights. And she's the host of the Accelerate Your Business podcast. I'm really excited to have her here today. My first experience with selling was with lemonade stands in two different ways. First of all, like every kid growing up in Los Angeles during a drought, I set up a lemonade stand in my front yard with my

0:22 family, and I'm pretty sure that we sold the lemonade for less than it cost us. And my second experience was actually my first computer game. When I grew up long time ago, computers didn't have hard drives and you would put in a disk. And you'd have to wait for the game to load. It would take 30 minutes and we used to have a game called lemonade stand, where you would play around with how much supplies you would buy, and then what

0:45 you would charge for a cup of lemonade. If you charge one penny, you would sell like a thousand cups of lemonade the next day. The results charged a hundred dollars. Sometimes you would sell one to someone who was just absolutely dying. And it taught me about supply and demand and pricing and some interesting things. And so that got me interested in the ideas of scaling and building a business. And that leads me to my first question, which is I noticed Diane, that you've been

1:08 saying the ABCs of sales have changed. And why are you saying that? What do you think has changed recently? Thanks, Jonathan. That is so great to hear you talk about your lemonade stands. So, way back in the seventies and eighties, The ABCs of sales were always be closing. And while I'm not convinced that ever really worked, I think maybe it worked for a select few. There was a reason why it was like that. Now that we have the internet and consumers are very well-educated

1:45 and they don't want to be sold, the ABCs of sales have changed in my opinion, to always be curious. When I think of ABCs, I think of Glengarry Glen Ross, that amazing Alec Baldwin one. I always think that coffees for closers and it's first place is a brand new $80,000 BMW, second place, a set of steak knives. Third places you're fired, but I've always loved that even though what they're selling is actually like horrible timeshares or something really no one wants.

2:19 But it's such a great scene. That's so memorable for me. And I remember I was at a conference a few years ago and they were giving away these t-shirts like coffee is for closers. And I go, oh wow. You guys like Glengarry Glen Ross. What are you talking about? This is from the boss, baby. And I was like, wow, you guys. You don't realize that it's cause Alec Baldwin's the character and the boss, baby. I was like, you don't realize that's

2:39 a joke about the original movie. But it just shows how things change right now. Oh, it's about selling milk. It is really prevalent. And that's interesting to me that you talk about being curious because. The sales methodology in that movie that a lot of people teach just go, you eat what you kill. It's a very progressive metaphor. It's about get as much as you can get. Squeezing blood from a stone and always be curious, maybe that means like you should actually care about your customers,

3:07 which is something very different than most salespeople's approach. Yeah, absolutely. Though, here's, what's interesting for me when you're curious. First of all, with always be closing your right, eat, what you kill, but you are also looking at every single person you meet as a sale. So first of all, you're annoying as hell. No one wants to really talk to you, but also, you're missing out on other really valuable business relationships that can take your business further because you're thinking everyone is

3:36 a potential client everywhere you go. And they're not. And so, with always be curious, you just open to really seeing how the person you're meeting is going to fit into your orbit, if at all. And it keeps you away from doing business with people you shouldn't be doing business with because you're paying attention. You're not just going after the almighty dollar. You're going after long-term business relationships that are going to serve your business for ever, until you decide to stop doing it.

4:13 I want to dial into something you said there, which I think is so important, which is who you should be doing business because when people are starting out, whether it's freelancers or consultants, they'll take anyone. I know that happened to me when I was first starting out, I would take clients and realize that I ended up making 47 cents an hour because I spent so much time on the phone with them, or I took a loss and it takes away

4:35 your ability to get a better client. When you get a low paying client or a high maintenance client. My best experience was when I had a client who was a land developer and I was doing SEO and they were paying me $2,000 a month, which to me at the time was huge. And he said, Jonathan, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but technically, if I talk on the phone with you, I'm losing money. I can't. He goes, you'll never hear from

4:55 me because my cheapest piece of land for sale is $1.5 million. So, they were selling like massive, like hunting land or huge piece of tracks of land. So, he said. Technically, if I talk to you, it loses me money. Every second, we're on the phone because my time is so much more valuable than yours and he never spoke to me again. He told me the first day we worked together and the last day we worked together, when I said to him I'm closing up shop.

5:20 In between, he goes, just send me a recorded message or an email once a month. But I'll probably never read it. And that was like my dream client. I go, this is wow. Other people who are paying me $500 a month. It felt like their last $500. And I started to realize that it's a very different client experience. And usually we learn that the hard way we have to go through 10 or 20 really bad clients before you figure out, maybe it's worth waiting

5:47 three days to get a better client. So how do you define your ideal client? What are the things you look for? And is that something that's changed for you over time? Boy, that's a great question. So, answering the last question first. Yes, it has somewhat changed over time. Because my business has evolved. So that happens with people and you can have more than one ideal client persona, so to speak her avatar, if you sell different products and services. For me, the ideal client, the key to

6:16 the ideal client is how much do you know that they value what it is you do for them, that they value it at the price point that they may even potentially feel like you're not charging them enough. They're not necessarily going to tell you that, but that they really value it for the investment that they're making, that they communicate effectively with you, that they can make decisions easily, that they give you the information that you need, that they problem

6:44 solve in the same way that you do. That their values align with yours because, and this is what I tell people. Go, think about your clients that you currently have or past clients and the ones that you absolutely love to death. You love talking to them. If they call you pick up the phone, if they email, you want to answer the email, you want to go visit them. You want to talk to them. You want to help them, whatever it is.

7:10 And then think about the ones that you absolutely hate. And that's your differentiator, these ones, you absolutely love. What is it about them? What are you doing for them? What are you selling them? How much profit are you making? What sort of margins are you making? How long have you been working with them? All of these things go into account. When you are trying to figure out what your ideal client looks like, because it keeps you from, doing business with the really bad one.

7:39 Maybe that's why I don't do as much client work anymore. Because when I think of my ideal clients, it's always the ones who wanted to talk to me the least. They never want to talk to me. One of the things that people always ask me about is client acquisition. Cause if you go to my website, there's nothing that says I take on clients. I don't put anything in public, every single client, whether it's a ghost writing client or services client is someone who cold emailed

8:02 me, asking me to do a service. And that's been enough to keep me busy between that. And usually it's a referral. People go, oh, Jonathan did something for me. And so even though I only worked with maybe three or four projects a year tops a lot of people really struggle with networking and they don't know the right way to do it. I certainly have had that experience with networking. I started going to networking meetups for meetup.com in industries that in which

8:27 I didn't want to work, I said, I'm going to go to ones where it doesn't matter if I make mistakes and figure it out. And the number of people who would walk up to me and almost slap me in the face with their business card before meeting me was astounding. And I said, okay, I know not to do that. That was the first lesson I learned. I said, anything people do that I hate, I won't do. And that's why I don't have business cards.

8:46 If you want my contact information, it's gotta be like a normal transaction. So, in the same way that if I like many years ago before I was married and many kids ago, if I met a nice lady in the bar, I would never hand her a business card. Cause that would be so weird. And my whole life, if one girl ever handed me a business card like that was more than 20 years ago. And it had a mistake on it that she

9:05 had to cross out and change something. But I still remember it because it was only ever happened once. And I was like, oh, that's pretty efficient. But things we would never do in a personal life. At church or at the grocery store or you met someone like a parent of another kid at school. And they were like, oh, let's have a play date. Again, no problem. Here's my business card call my assistant. It's so impersonal. So, I wonder what your perspective is?

9:28 I know you're a networking expert, so I would love to hear the do's and don'ts for modern networking. So, you are definitely right. The business card thing is definitely a don't that is for sure. So, I'll go with don'ts first. Cause there's so many of them. Don't enter a networking experience thinking you're going to walk away with a client because you're not, you're not going to make a sale. You're going to learn and get to know people and interact and connect and relationship build.

9:57 And you can't do it if your thought process is I got to find my next dinner. That's number one. Number two. Don't talk about your product or service. No one cares. They're not going to care until they like you. So, they can't like you if you're talking about your product or service, assuming that they're interested in it, they're not, that's not why you're there. The third thing is, don't ask people what they do because they'll tell you what they do. And you really don't

10:24 care about what they do. Would you want to know is who are they? So, ask a question like, so tell me your story. It's not really a question, but they're going to tell you what's important to them and that's going to give you an idea of who they are and what matters to them and where they are. And it's a great way to start a conversation. Then when it comes to your 30 seconds, it's not a pitch. It's an introduction. It's the start of a conversation.

10:53 People don't care about how long you've been in business. They don't care about what letters you have after your name. What certifications do you have, where your office is, whatever they don't care about any of that stuff. What they care about is the value that you bring, the result that your clients get. So, these are all. And this is where always be curious, comes into. If you go into a networking experience, just being curious about who's there, who you can meet, what you can learn,

11:21 the way that you show up is more appealing than if you go thinking I got to leave with a prospective client, I gotta leave with a sale. I'm always in sales brain. And you want to be appealing. You want to be magnetic. Not propylic. So, I have always used this approach that I act like I'm not looking for clients and I always go, oh, unless you're really amazing. I don't want to work with you. I always say things like that

11:51 because I saw that on TV show and I just pretend I'm really busy. And now I am really busy, but I used to fake it. I'm like, I don't know. I'm not looking for clients right now. Unless it's a really amazing project that impresses me or really big now, my book is full. And it's amazing how that makes people chase you when you're not chasing them. And it wasn't intentional. It was just me like acting like someone I saw on a TV show.

12:14 I was like, oh, this is what successful people will act like. And it really worked and cause people to resonate because I was like, if everyone else here is acting like they're desperate for a client, like I've been at networking events where I felt like everyone was there looking for someone to save their business. And that repels everyone. But if you just say, look, I'm really successful. I'm not here looking for clients. I have my business working then suddenly everyone wants to be friends with you.

12:37 Because he's the only one whose business is working. And I find that also networking events are so structured in just a really unnatural way. That they're not conducive to conversation. They try to encourage you to do things. I've been in every variation, because I'm always curious about the speed dating type ones and it's always an unnatural way of communicating and they never let you sort. And what I discovered from going to a lot of conferences where they have a networking round table for an hour, it's

13:06 everyone who doesn't go into that room is the people you want to talk to the most. So how could people figure out who they should even be trying to talk to? Boy, that is a great question. I love this idea of going to talk to the people who aren't in the room, with the speed dating and the networking round tables. Cause I agree with you. And I think if you are paying attention, when you are at an event, you can find

13:39 the people who are just comfortable being themselves communicating, as you said, they're not desperate. They're not seeking business all the time. You can figure out who those people are pretty quickly. And just start a conversation with them because it's really what it's about. What I always say to people is if you went to an event and everyone was pitching everyone, would you go back? And the answer is no, not in a million years. So, don't do it, it's just insanity.

14:12 You don't want what they have to sell. They don't want what you have to sell. Let's let it go. And so, look for those people who aren't behaving that way. Those are the people that I think you want to talk to because you're going to have a really good time and you're going to learn something from them and you're going to start a relationship. Okay. You do the sorting, right? You are talking to people that aren't pitching you and you're not pitching them.

14:40 What are the right like questions to ask like critical discovery questions to figure out if there's someone you want to be friends with, let alone work with, or to figure out if they're like a good potential client or they're just a referral type person IVU dig in and get that without feeling salesy. Yeah, it's a great question. So, this is part of the reason why you should ask them to tell you their story, because it gives you real insight into who they are and

15:03 what matters to them in the moment. And then you have to go down that road with them. You can't ask questions because you have this list of questions in your head that you're going to ask. So that's the first best. And I'll tell you, I've said to people, so tell me your story and they've replied with which one. And I always say the one that you want to tell me, right? Because then it's up to them. And so, it starts a different sort of thing.

15:26 But in addition to that, I think you want to ask questions like around not these exact questions, but how did they get into the business they're in, what is their favorite part of it? Do they have a story of an experience with a client that just really blew them away? How do they find their clients? Just really trying to get to know them depending on how they answer those questions and how forthcoming they are with those answers. If they go there with you, that can be

15:54 a really good opportunity for you to identify at least what the next steps are. I'm not so sure at a networking event that you can identify where they fit in your world, other than they don't like that's pretty much the first step. But you can identify if you want to continue a conversation with them, you want to continue an exploration. You want to see how this whole thing pans out if it does at all. That I think is the value of networking.

16:26 If you're doing it the right way and more of those questions come as you continue to engage with them. After the networking events are over. I've always been interested in interview questions because they've changed over the course of my career. Obviously now I'm interviewing other people, but when I used to apply for jobs, they would always ask you questions. What's the worst thing you've ever done. What's your greatest regret? What's your greatest weakness? And I would always say things like, oh, my

16:51 greatest weakness is that I'm too humble. They're trying to trick you into revealing something horrible you've done. They're trying to get you to confess to something. And I've always been curious by that. And I had a client a long time ago. He was a Kazakhstani billionaire, and he goes. Here's the question we ask in interviews. What's the difference between a bird and a plane. And I said bird is alive. And he goes wrong. A plane works through cooperation. When you're applying for a

17:18 job in the east, that's the right answer to that question. I was like, wow, no westerner would ever get that right. That wasn't in my top 50 guesses. And he said, anytime it because, Kazakhstan is west of China. So, when we hire people from China, when you're interviewing people from China, they ask you that question and it's one of those crazy esoteric questions. And sometimes it networking events. People are trying to find out things like that, digging deep and maybe they get them from interview question

17:43 books or networking question books. It feels if you have a pre-memorized question or you're looking for specific answers. I never asked the same question twice when I'm interviewing for a potential employee. When I interview someone, I'm trying to find out if they want to work for me or they just want to work for anyone. And I want to find out if I hate them, like I'm trying to find out, do I like this person? Or are they going to make me crazy?

18:09 Because sometimes the whole reason to work for yourself is to not have to work with people you hate, which I used to have to do when I worked for a company, everyone has someone to work with that they hate. Everyone has an enemy. So, what I've been thinking about is like asking questions. Most people who follow me are young entrepreneurs, a lot of authors and a lot of like writers and ghost writers. And they always say, Jonathan, how do you get clients?

18:30 I'll ask does anyone know you're a ghost writer? Being a ghost writer doesn't mean it's a secret, but they say that's all I do. I wish I had this big secret, but everyone says, what do you do? And I say, I tell them that I'm a ghost writer and I act like I'm too good. I say, oh no, I'm a ghost writer. I can't tell you who I work for. But if I told you I would have to kill you. And they go, whoa, that's

18:49 all the stuff I say. And I do have NDAs as my clients. I don't say who it is. But to say that. It's enough because I don't know any other ghost writers. I think I've met two in my whole life and I met them both online, but you don't know a lot of people that are writers, but people, whether they're writers or small business owners are afraid to say what they do or what they sell. And sometimes they really bury the lead.

19:14 15 years ago, I was friends with this girl. We met her new boyfriend. I said, what do you do? He goes, I'm a writer. I say, oh, great. Do you write books or magazines or newspapers? He says, no. I write music. I say, oh, what kind of music? Country music, gospel music, rap music. After eight questions, I found out that he wrote music for bands that I liked. And I asked him, why are you buried? Your job's not bad. You're doing something that

19:37 everyone thinks is cool. Why are you hiding it? It put me in such a bad opinion of him, not because the job, but because of how he felt about it. So, I think that a lot of people think, oh, it comes across as salesy to tell people what you do. And there's a difference in saying what you do and your expertise and trying to sell, because people want to categorize you. And that's okay. And that's different from pitching. So how can people feel that difference?

20:03 Especially small business owners who really need to let people know what they do so that people could hire them. Yeah. So, I think we have to say what we do with the result that it brings. And, I think what a lot of people do is they add onto it with and if this could help you, I'd love to talk to you about that. Or if someone is a good referral for me, or if you know someone, then it's just them selling themselves.

20:32 But if you say something like, I'm a ghostwriter, I help people get their message out more clearly and with greater impact. Okay. Now I know you're a ghostwriter and if I didn't know what a ghost writer was, now I know the impact that it has on your clients, period. You're not going to follow it up with. So, I'm looking for anyone who is thinking about writing a book, or, if you're thinking about writing a book, I would love to help you.

20:58 Anyone can write a book, it's that we just go a little too far. We just have to be able to say confidently, this is what I do. And this is the value that it brings. And I will add keep it short, say it don't go on and on and on the more you talk, the less they listen, just put it in a box. Doesn't have to be flowery, just straightforward. Okay. I used to have this friend in London named Hap and he decided one day

21:29 he wanted to be more successful. He was a dentist. And so, he started writing his own press releases and in every press release, he called himself celebrity dentist. And eventually he started appearing in tabloids, and that story always fascinated me. Then he did a second thing, which is where he had a shared medical office with a plastic surgeon and he put out a press release about getting breast implants at the dentist, which sounds like it's next door, right? There's a doctor next door to the

21:57 dentist, but it got everywhere. He goes, oh, celebrity dentists now offer this crazy service, which is not true. It was simply the guy next door, but it was close enough and that fascinated me. And so, I changed a few years ago. Now when people ask, what do you do? I say, I'm a celebrity ghost writer. And what I've discovered is that people pay twice as much if you say that. I think it's in how you name yourself. If you have anything that distinguishes or that specializes

22:25 you, then people will remember. Because it's only one extra word. I don't have to explain anything, then everyone, all they want to know is who I've worked with. I can't tell you but it opens up this whole thing. You don't have to use the word celebrity, I just figured that like my friend and I copied it. But I find that you don't have to give a really long answer, but instead of being evasive, if you just think what's a really cool way to characterize myself.

22:51 You can call yourself, like my friend is the LinkedIn job seeker expert, three words, you know exactly what he does. He helps people get jobs. He's on LinkedIn. It's not burying the lead. So, I think creating a title, no matter what you do. Like even if you own a dry cleaner, you can say we're the stain removal, dry cleaning experts. You go, I got a stain, I'm going to this guy. You can put in the title you don't have to do anything else.

23:13 So, it's like the opposite of, selling. But if you just think about how can I describe what I do that is different to everyone else, so people know my specialization. I had a friend who owned it, SEO for cemeteries. So, he could say, I do cemetery SEO and, I don't have a cemetery. I'm not going to be your client. And it was really dialed into one thing. As people are starting to build their business a lot of times, and this happened to the friend of

23:40 mine, we're at right out of college. He goes I'm a real estate agent and he was like 22, 23 years old. And guess what? No one wants to make a million-dollar purchase with someone who's never purchased a home. Someone who still lives with their parents. And he of course changed careers in six months. Like every real estate agent does no one lasts more than two years, but everyone starts out. He started out like trying to get me to buy a house.

24:06 I said, what are you talking about? I'm not going to buy a house at 22, that's not happening. I don't have that kind of money. I haven't figured out my career. I didn't even figure out my career for another 10 years. I'm from the generation. I'm technically a millennial. I'm as old as you can be and still be a millennial. I don't own my house because I don't want to. Evan always says to me, Jonathan, why don't you own your house?

24:25 Because I want to be able to leave. If I get tired of where I live, I can be on a plane tomorrow and live somewhere else. Good luck finding me landlords. So that is my perspective. And so, I always thought trying to sell it to friends and family is really hard. And that's where almost everyone starts. My first client is my mom, my second client is my cousin. And all it does is in my experience either makes your family hate you

24:49 or you never grow out of that shell. It's a terrible thing. And I want to back up a little bit with being able to say what you do. So, I love those examples that you gave and I'm glad that you even added onto them because people have to be really careful that it's not cute. That it's not too cute. They have to really feel, they have to know what their differentiators are and they have to feel it. And in all those examples you gave.

25:13 They didn't go on and on trying to explain what it is that they do. They got to say it in three words. It made sense. That was it. So, I just wanted to tack onto that. Now friends and family are not a target audience, no matter what it is you sell, they aren't your target audience. They're never going to be. Do they support you? Yes. Do they love you? Yes, that is so great. But this is why it's so important for us

25:36 to know what an ideal client looks like. And what our target markets are and market toward them. We don't want to make people uncomfortable. We don't want to spend time trying to convince anybody of anything. And we don't want people to feel obligated because as you said, it ruins the relationships, it makes people avoid you. You get the opposite of what you're looking for. They're not going to refer you because they're uncomfortable that you just talked them into buying something that they don't need or want.

26:07 There's a lot of industries where they say, okay, pull out your contact list and reach out to these people. They love you. It's please do not do that. They're going to hate you. You're going to hate doing it. It's just, it's a terrible thing. Figure out who potentially needs what it is that you have to sell, who potentially has that problem. And then prospect toward them market toward them get connected to that. Go after the actual, if you're selling something there's a market

26:35 for, then sell it to that market. As an author, one of the first things, every writer tries are to get reviews from their friends and family, and then they discover. That no one will do it. People say things like can I just buy the book twice and not read it? They'll pay you to not have to read it. And it's the exact same thing as that relying on friends and family, all the habits and feelings get hurt. Nobody will read it. Maybe you get one review.

27:03 That Jonathan is a really great guy, books are probably good to. I had a friend and another friend after college got into an MLM. He was like, guys, you can save like 14 cents if you order two pays for this catalog, I was like, cool. I'll see you in two years. So, we all stopped being friends with him until he gave up on it because it's so invasive. The friend of friend selling I've only ever been to one of those parties.

27:28 It wasn't a Tupperware party, but it was one of those like that. And I was like, what am I going to do with a gravy thing? Like a gravy boat. I don't need that. But you always say I don't eat gravy. So, it's like something so unuseful for my life. It is something where people are unsure of how to sell. Whether they're unsure the right ways of communicating. Either they're too shy or they're overly aggressive, or they're learning the

27:56 wrong methods, but you have a new book out called Succeed Without Selling. So, tell me a little bit about that book, but what could people learn from it? How can their hands on it? Okay, thanks so much for that. So, the premise of the book is that you have to change your mindset and you have to let go of this whole idea of selling, because the more you think about selling the less you actually sell. And it's because you're in that sales brain, it's uncomfortable.

28:24 You don't like it. Other people don't like it. So, the premise of the book is stop it. Just get out of that. Be curious. There's examples, real tactical information. Things you can say, ways that you can reach out, ways to approach different situations. And it's full of a lot of information. It's everything from figuring out your target audience to maintaining a client after you've sold everything in between. If you're a direct seller, MLM, there's a whole chapter for you. There's chapter for sales managers,

28:52 there's a chapter on using LinkedIn. I tried to put as much information in there for small business owners and sales professionals as possible so that you could really get it. It gives you permission to say, okay, my gosh, I don't have to be a salesperson. So now let me be a person. And let me have a system and a process that I can use so that I can grow my business in a better, more natural, more comfortable way. And it's got documents in the back.

29:22 It's got, resources in the back. Then people can go to the website and download them and use them. The best way for them to get it right now, it's in Kindle version on Amazon, it's available in Kindle version. It will be publishing in paperback in December. People can pre-order now on Amazon, if they like to have the actual boo k. They can go to my website and see it. There's a free chapter available on my website that they can get so

29:46 they can get an idea of what the book is about before they buy it. Okay, that sounds wonderful. And your website is helbigenterprises.com and we'll put a link right below this video, or right below the audio for people that aren't watching this. Don't worry. We'll have it in the show notes as well. So, people can find the guides. I recommend checking out Succeed Without Selling. Diane this has been an amazing interview. Thank you so much for spending time with me and I'll see

30:07 you guys in our next episode. Thanks Jonathan.