I have a tendency to analyze the living hell out of salespeople when I’m on the other end of the buying process.

I’m a BUYER.

I’ll be thorough and ask questions on calls…

But I don’t hop on sales calls unless I have a very high intent of going through with the person’s services.

Last week I was on a call with this guy who had a DFY Twitter organic growth offer.

[side note: if you know of a good Twitter organic growth person, please send them my way]

There’s a few takeaways here that I want to break down after seeing this guy totally drop the ball on this call:

Buying Values

On any sales call (and also when writing copy), it is CRUCIAL that you get to the root of the prospects’ buying values.

Many times this is what will get a deal across the finish line.

What do I mean by buying values?

My main buying values in this instance (for hiring someone to grow my Twitter account were):

1) Speed

2) Profitability

I laid these up for the guy on a silver platter.

Normally when I’m the one doing the selling, I have to dig for these a little bit.

I’ll ask questions like:

• “What was your experience with the last person you hired to manage your email list?”

• “What did you like and dislike about working with them?”

• “Where did they fall short?”

The goal of these questions is to figure out where the previous person went wrong and why they got dropped (so that I can show them I will do the opposite).

So I told this guy in the first five minutes of the call:

“I want to get my first 10,000-20,000 Twitter followers ASAP and if I can BUY my way there FAST without tweeting into the void for the next 12 months, then I don’t care how much it costs, I will happily do it.”

I displayed a clear indication of desire for speed.

If he can demonstrate that he can get me the result FAST, then I will like that. That aligns with what I want and what I’m willing to buy.

As a salesperson, you need to be looking for these things. You need to be tracking buying values like a hawk.

I also told him,

“I don’t want to go deep in the red on this. I don’t really care if it makes me a ton of money in the first few months. But I’m concerned about the quality of traffic. I don’t want 10,000 followers who are all bots. I want to make sure it’s profitable preferably within the first few months.”

Some people may consider this to be an unrealistic expectation…

When I sell email marketing services, it is RARE that I’m not extremely profitable in month 1.

In the rare cases, that I’m not profitable, that client doesn’t renew for the second month.

…and I think that’s totally reasonable.

I’m not just going to spend and spend and spend without seeing a return (that would be pretty dumb).

So I made it clear that I expected it to be profitable early on.

These were my buying values that I expected him to pick up on.

How Did He Fuck This Up?

He didn’t completely mess up the speed element of it.

However, he didn’t weaponize it either.

If I’m taking a sales call and I diagnose a prospect’s buying values, I’m going to tailor my pitch and the entire conversation around that.

For example - if a prospect makes it clear to me that he wants things done FAST, I’m going to say something along the lines of:

“Look Mr. Prospect, based on everything you’re telling me, it’s pretty clear to me that you want to get this going ASAP.” (I start by giving an overt explanation of the fact that I understand what he wants. This helps the prospect to feel heard - super important)

“If you can get me the ESP logins, your Hyros login, and a few sales call recordings, I can binge those over the next 48 hours and get the first email shot out by Tuesday night at the latest. Assuming your sales team takes care of business, you should have your first email deal closed by the end of the week which will give you a 2x ROI on my monthly retainer.” (this is an explanation of HOW I’m going to act on their buying values by applying speed. Establish a clear gameplan with set checkmarks and then tie back into the ROI).

This is what I would have done. He did not do this.

Now let’s get to the REAL mistake.

I made it clear that I wanted profitability.

I don’t want bot followers, I want bills in the bank.

When a prospect gives you an objection, you need to address the objection head-on.

This guy side-stepped it (arguably the worst way to approach it).

He basically said,

“Well you’re inevitably going to get some fake followers.”

I followed up with “well what do you do to measure the quality of followers then?”

He also side-stepped this and didn’t answer the question.

Lastly…I said, “I don’t have a product to sell just yet.”

(this is actually not true - I have a How to Fix Your Lead Quality Course available right here. I’ll be adding a zero to the current price tag once I get ads live. Until then it’s available at a 90% discount)

I just said this to gauge his reaction and test him a bit.

From here he went for the hard-close.

He goes on this long tangent about how you need to “Build trust first. Buying is all about trust. You can figure out the monetization later.”

Side note…that’s super dumb.

Let’s cut out the virtue signaling bullshit for a sec…

Yes trust is important…but monetization requires a clear gameplan.

Revenue isn’t just going to fall into your hands because a bunch of people trust you.

How do I target the right audience if I don’t know what I’m selling?

What if you build a B2C audience when you’re trying to sell B2B services? (I see copywriters do this ALL the time then they wonder why they can’t get clients).

After this he got super pissed that I didn’t PIF for $15K on my first 30 minute call with him so that didn’t go over too well with me.

So that’s my sales call breakdown for y’all on this sunday morning.

Hope this was helpful - always diagnose buying values early. Super key.

• Damon