Julie Broad

I am. I can’t wait.

Julie Broad

The biggest thing and my background is from real estate raising money. So, asking people for $70,000 to $250,000 to invest in a property and yet, I am horribly uncomfortable with the sales. However, sales training programs helped me avoid that.

My first thing was switching it so that it’s not focused on asking people for money or asking for the sale. It’s focused on figuring out if the person across from me or on the phone is actually a fit for what I have to offer. So I’m going to take in the focus on, “Am I going to close this?” and putting the focus on, “Is this the right person for me to be talking to?” It is really essential to attend sales training programs in order to figure that out.

Julie Broad

The first piece is you have to figure out who is your ideal person, professional sales training programs may help you figure that out. Because a lot of people, as soon as somebody shows them interest, they kick into sales mode and sometimes it’s because they’ve actually done some sales training and they know how to do it but often, it’s because a lot of us are selling things that we really believed in and we’re excited to talk about them.

As soon as somebody shows any interest, the light switch goes on and you start talking but you don’t know enough about the person across from you to put it in a context they understand. That’s part of it but the other piece is knowing who you’re ideally suited to help.

Julie Broad

If I sell hair growth solutions, just for example, not every bald man, and I’m not picking on you Luis.

Julie Broad

I swear.

Julie Broad

If I sell hair growth solutions, not every bald man is my ideal client because there’s going to be guys that don’t care. There’s going to be guys who are beyond hope, whatever it is. So I have to sit down and figure out who is my ideal client because not everybody is.

Julie Broad

There’s a couple of pieces to. First of all, one of the things I’ve learned and I learned this actually from a mutual friend of ours, Scott Sylvan Bell. That’s actually how I meet Luis but Scott said, “What’s one word that you think of when you hear the word salesperson?

Now, just think about the words that come to your mind.” And, one of them is when you ask people that, they’re like slimy, pushy, aggressive, and money hungry. If that’s what you’re thinking of somebody that’s a sales person, it’s not surprising you’re uncomfortable because you don’t want that to be you.

So, one of the things is to think about more positive words. For me, I spin on its head and think about, “In sales, I’m solving somebody’s problem and if I’m not solving their problem, then I’m not going to sell to them.” So, I look at it as a problem solver. That’s the way I twisted that so it’s not an uncomfortable thing.

The other thing is where and when you’re doing the selling. Sales training programs teach you the best possibilities. In an online world, a lot of us try to do the sales over email and then maybe we eventually get on the phone but we’re not used to it. You have to know the time and the place for the sales and to make sure that you’re setting everything up so that when you have that conversation, you already are in a more comfortable position.

For me, I’m a high introvert who’s also been uncomfortable with sales therefore I really felt attending professional sales training programs. What I did was build a brand so people come to me and when they’re coming to me, they already know the solutions I offer and how I can help them. So they come to me already ready to learn about how I can help them.

Julie Broad

Yeah. Just something you just said trigger something. A lesson that I learned years ago through sales training programs when I started to help real estate investors help them learn how raise money and build real estate portfolios. I received a lot of advice to start an online membership site and I wanted to help as many people as I could.

I thought, “I better make it really cheap.” I was uncomfortable selling but I want to help a whole bunch of people so I’m going to make it really cheap.

Julie Broad

Yeah professional sales training programs help us a lot. It worked to a degree. Without really a lot of promotion, I had 150 members paying me $27 dollars a month and I was giving massive value but actually was in my mind a bomb. The whole thing was the upsell model. You were going to take them from that and then, upsell them. That’s what the model I was taught to do.

From my perspective, I was a little uncomfortable with all of that and then, to add to that, I thought “I got to give them so much value for this $27,” because I was uncomfortable selling it and it turned out, nobody was even logging into the membership space and the few people that were, weren’t satisfied because I was trying to be everything to anyone that said they were interested in real estate.

Basically, I made myself a commodity and it didn’t work. I had to focus in on a niche and then, as I focused in on a niche, I became more valuable to others because I can only help a certain group of people but I could help them in a massive way. By helping them, I still charge too little for quite a while but eventually, you start to see the massive results that you can help people get and bit by bit, I was able to raise my prices and see my own value because I was seeing massive results from the people.

I think a lot us have to start about trying to help everyone or anyone and slowly realize you’re not a commodity. Professional sales training programs help you avoid that. You have massive value and if you don’t have massive value, that’s your first priority. You have to go out there and figure out where you can offer massive value.

Julie Broad

It’s funny because a lot of people worry that when you focus in, “Oh, I’m not going to get enough business. There’s not going to be enough clients.” You have to be known for something and you can always branch out later but it’s so much easier to become known for something in a smaller niche and then, go from there than it is to try to be The Person in North America or in The United States or even in one state sometimes. Sales training programs teaches which niche you should choose.

Julie Broad

Basically, you’re talking about the awkward abjections that come up, right?

Julie Broad

When we were raising money, basically, what we were doing was we would be asking people to put in all the money for a deal and then, we’d be splitting it 50-50. So we’re not putting money into this property, our investor does it.

Now, we do all the work for them but one of the big awkward objections that we got for years was, “You’re not putting any skin in the game. You don’t have any money in this deal. I’m taking all the risk.” The funny thing is as we switched it and we focused on who is our ideal investor and our ideal investor had way more money than they had time.

They needed somebody who is competent, who knew what they were doing, who’s going to take care of their money, and not bother them with day to day decisions. That’s what they needed and when we were sitting across from that person and the other big piece is we believed. We knew that we had exactly what they needed and what they wanted.

Julie Broad

Yeah. You bet.

The thing for us, it happen by accident that I built my brand but it was the best thing that we could have done. I love to write and I just started writing articles for all kinds of publications in North America and then eventually, I focused in on mostly writing for Canadians. Sales training programs can teach all this far easily.

As I did it, I found that people with money called us and wanted to invest their cash with us. There was no more of this going out and trying to find them. It’s just by building a profile that it made a big difference. However, as I started to help other people build their brand, I started to see some of the big pieces.

Now, a lot of people, they build a website and they have a logo and they say, “I’ve got a brand. I got a professional headshot. I’m good to go.” Those are tools that you can use to showcase your brand but those are not really your brand.

When we’re talking about entrepreneur and selling, your brand is your message and how you package yourself up. What do people see when they see you walk in a room or see you online and how you add value. Really, that’s what your brand is and of course, what makes you unique.

Your brand is you and then, you’ll showcase it with logos and websites but the big thing is getting clear on who you are and how you help.

It seems simple but we’re actually masters of disguise. We bury ourselves under masks and layers to protect ourselves from judgments and things like that. So, showing people who you actually are isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Julie Broad

One of the big things I recommend people do is when they are in a conversation with somebody and it seems like a potential sales situation, rather than talking, ask a few questions and I don’t want you to interrogate the other person because that’s the drawback. When people hear out questions, control the conversation, suddenly, they think they’re the chief interrogator and they got to ask the other person all these questions.

Julie Broad

Understanding what their challenges are right now, if there’s anything in particular that they already has worked or not worked and what they were and weren’t happy about.

My mother in law was trying to buy a car and she had test driven 3 other cars and she went to this dealership and test drove their car and they asked her what the cars she test drove are and that’s the only question he asked her. So, he didn’t know anything about the other cars. He started knocking them down anything about what she thought about the other cars. He started knocking them down and he could have asked her, “Oh, what did you like about each of these cars? What didn’t you like?” Now, based on that, he could have said, “Well, this car has everything you like. Everything you like about those 3 cars you test drove. This car has all of it.”

He could have positioned himself by listening and asking good question but he didn’t and she left and didn’t buy the car from him.