Sales and Cigars | Chris Falk | Sales Is Like MMA | Ep 161

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, Walter Crosby with Helix Sales Development, your host of sales and cigars.

[00:00:04] Today, my guest is Chris Falk.

[00:00:06] He runs a business very similar to mine.

[00:00:09] He's got a similar mindset.

[00:00:10] We hit it off when we do the pre-interview of the scheduled and recording because we

[00:00:15] both think that you need to be as a salesperson.

[00:00:19] You need to be on the phone.

[00:00:20] You need to send emails.

[00:00:21] You need to text message.

[00:00:22] You need to go see people.

[00:00:23] Right?

[00:00:24] Nothing's dead.

[00:00:25] Everything works.

[00:00:26] Everything doesn't work.

[00:00:27] It just depends on the day and how good you're down in not so sunny Florida right now. So little little different from home. Little windy hurricane passed through and, you know, left a little bit of carnage behind,

[00:01:42] but it's certainly clear up now.

[00:01:44] Yeah, it's it's it's someone in grade six can understand it. Well, that's who's writing it, the sixth grader, but there's a lot of succinct, crisp ideas that you can turn around and go implement, right? Right out of their book, if you're in the sales game.

[00:03:03] That's a good little book.

[00:04:03] and we hired on a couple more people and I was just a dead ringer for management.

[00:04:06] So they put me in this business development management role.

[00:04:11] But because of the construction type industry,

[00:04:13] I had to cover a little bit of the estimating portion,

[00:04:17] a little bit of the design portion,

[00:04:19] a lot of the delivery side of things.

[00:04:21] And I went in head first

[00:04:24] and that was probably the best. We have to be because of the nature of what it difficult to challenge. And that makes you better at what you're doing today because you understand all of those components, right?

[00:07:00] For sure, and I think any salesperson,

[00:07:04] especially when they're younger starting out

[00:07:05] or even mid-way career, There's a humbleness to what we need to bring to that. Be humble when we're in front of prospects and humble when we're in front of customers. Be empathetic to all of that. And to learn that at a young age, not to 24 as a kid, but I still think of them as kids.

[00:08:21] That's a great lesson. It's not something that comes to everyone naturally. So I would say that and as well, there's kind of micro investments I've made along the way. So for example, when I was a rep and I was calling on pulp mills

[00:09:40] and oil refineries and whatnot,

[00:09:43] I would go to court and sit in in classes Governmental issues whatever whatever their struggles are you can get that and then and help dig into that and help solve those problems Because you can't really solve a problem unless you're unless you understand it and you can only get so far asking questions and and you know trying to go get that that's that's that's great insight Talk to me about a habit or discipline that you've embraced that's really helped you Be successful from a from an entrepreneurial perspective. I

[00:12:24] Think that one of the disciplines

[00:13:22] particular industry or process. So that's one thing that I've really focused on.

[00:13:27] I had a client come to me a year ago and say,

[00:13:30] hey, listen, we really liked hanging out with you

[00:13:33] and chatting with you at an event.

[00:13:34] We want to work with you.

[00:13:35] And I wanted to say yes, because I really liked the team.

[00:13:39] And I thought that they were going to be successful.

[00:13:42] But after a certain review and think about it more

[00:13:44] and take that time to kind of put my discipline

[00:13:48] into practice, a better fit and here's why. I love that. But you know where I went with the idea of the know is that that's sort of my default when somebody wants me to do something right from a vendor situation or you know somebody wants me to take on a task that I haven't done. You know typically

[00:16:03] statistics, like a standard deviation chart. So I have my ideal clients at my mean,

[00:16:07] and I don't go past, you know,

[00:16:08] like two standard deviations from the mean

[00:16:11] on where my skill set is.

[00:16:13] So it's kind of a pathway,

[00:16:16] and it kind of keeps me disciplined on that,

[00:16:18] but, you know, let's be honest, when times are tough,

[00:16:21] even everybody's trying to chase any opportunity to get.

[00:16:25] That's when you really don't have to name names. No, no, I won't name names because even a lot of the people out there that are passing

[00:17:40] off bad advice, they're still great at what they do and they do have a lot different camps who say the phone is dead or email is dead. And I think that this is the worst advice anyone can follow. And I say this myself on social media is on podcast, different types of events that you need to be a Swiss Army salesperson. You need to be.

[00:19:00] You got to use every arrow in the quiver.

[00:19:02] And you know what?

[00:19:04] The email arrow may not be as powerful as the phone call arrow for you. need to be authentic. But I think the thing that people leave out often is being consistent with their messaging and staying true to their values, staying true to the purpose, right? And talk to four people, and three of those would hang up on me. But it was just part of what we, the chops that we had to develop. So I'm glad there's other folks out there who,

[00:21:42] you gotta be, the Swiss Army knife idea

[00:21:45] or that you gotta do a little bit of everything. comparing sales to mixed martial arts. That's a, you know, we just keep put salespeople in a cage and let them go. That's, uh, that's fun. Um, interesting. Um, so this, this is a weird question, but I like to ask it. Um, why do results matter? Well, there's two reasons.

[00:23:02] And one of the reasons is that the results.

[00:24:01] to continue to grow the economy, to drive that economic engine

[00:24:03] whichever country you're in, and globally.

[00:24:06] And the better your results are,

[00:24:09] the greater impact you can have

[00:24:11] on that entire wheel of commerce.

[00:24:14] And I think a lot of people,

[00:24:16] especially when you look at the new silos

[00:24:18] that are so involved in sales

[00:24:20] where you've got five different salespeople

[00:24:22] to make one sale, they're not seeing that.

[00:24:25] They don't understand that, I don't say, hey, yeah, oh, I work for myself. Because I don't work for myself. I work for my clients.

[00:25:40] That to me is, if I can help 10 people win over the next 100 years, I'm happy. portion of your living from it, you're not working. I was sitting at a cocktail bar with my wife a few weeks ago and a client called me, it's like 7.15 at night or getting ready to go to dinner. And I need to talk to him.

[00:27:02] She's fine, she understands.

[00:27:04] And the appreciation that he shared, a very similar space in terms of what we do. What's the best way for people to reach out and say, hey, I want to learn more about you and what you do? We'll have your website, we'll have your LinkedIn in the it easy. Maybe we should try that. We just put the name of the business. You know, who the who we serve and why we serve them and put a phone number and call it a day. I gotta be like all above the fold. We should try that. See what happens. And that's what we're doing. We're going to go to three pages. That's it. And it's

[00:29:43] going to be simple. Here's everything we do they want help? Right? Is it a big enough problem to resolve? I talked to a guy, I think it was in March and he had a $50,000 a month problem. And we were talking about it and it was something I could help him with and I'm like, okay, well, you know, said $50,000? Is that a lot of money? And he's like, well,

[00:32:04] anything. I don't want to make a sale. I want a client. I want somebody who calls me like like you get calls at seven in the evening. I get them too and that's what I want. You can call me off

[00:32:09] hours. You can ask me a question. I'm not going to send anyone a bill. We're not going to tell

[00:32:14] you a package. Let's build a relationship. Let's work together long term because

[00:32:20] no one's going to fix problems overnight. I don't care what anybody says. Nobody can fix a problem

[00:33:26] this little respite. I love it. That's good. I appreciate your candor, your perspective. When we talked originally on the

[00:33:30] telephone, we realized that Kerry was right for connecting us

[00:33:35] that we had some common ground and maybe there's something we

[00:33:37] can do down the road to help each other out. So thank you for

[00:33:42] taking the time and being on sales in cigars.

[00:33:45] Yeah, thanks so much for having me Walter. I appreciate it. And