#136 - The 5-Minute Rule That 21x Your Conversion w/ Chris Smith - Authority in the Wild

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
85% of all sales happen after the fifth attempt, but 90% of
salespeople make less than 5 attempts.
Meet Chris Smith, the USA TODAY best selling author of four
marketing and sales books. John Hopkins and NIU use his

(00:20):
book The Conversion Code as required reading.
The good news now is that the way the algorithms work, they
actually don't care if you have any followers.
They care if the content that you're publishing is going to be
relevant and enjoyed by the people they show it to.

(00:40):
Hey, I'm Gabe and I want to welcome you back to Authority
World, the podcast where we explore how to build influence
and turn expertise into impact. Let me ask you something.
Are you pouring money into Facebook ads, Google campaigns,
and gorgeous landing pages only to feel like you're shouting in
the void? Or even worse, you have no idea

(01:01):
how to generate leads? You tune in to the right episode
because the difference between aclose deal and a dead end come
down to just 5 minutes, a tiny window of time that can make or
break your entire sales process.If you get a lead and you follow
up in less than 5 minutes, you have a 21X better chance of

(01:21):
converting that lead than if youfollow up in 30 minutes.
And there are critical questionsthat separate the business
tribal line from those that justsurvived.
And today we have the man who literally wrote the book on how
to solve that. It's unbelievable how quickly
people will move on if you don'tget back to them ASAP.

(01:44):
So you need systems, people or products in place.
Chris Meade will guide you through how to generate quality
leads, how to turn those leads into customers, and most
importantly, how to guide the conversation with them in order
to convert them faster. He has cracked the code on a

(02:05):
systematic approach to sales, and he's here to share the
blueprint with us. Grab the pen and paper and let's
dive into it. Chris, welcome to the 30 in the
Wild. What's up, Gabe?
Thanks for having me. It's a true honor and pleasure
to be with you today. And because the way people buy

(02:26):
is changing and conversion, it'salways something hot no matter
the industry, no matter the place that are in the in the
marketing space. So why things have shifted so
powerful recently, and why you wrote the second edition of your
book? Yeah, Yeah.
I think the short answer is thatconsumers are winning, meaning

(02:50):
whether it's the government or the lawmakers or the technology
companies, they are making it easier than ever to call it
filter calls or not track your behavior.
One of the stats from the conversion code that wasn't part
of the second edition was that over 90% of people don't answer

(03:12):
the phone if they don't recognize the number, right?
And not to mention, when I get acall, sometimes it even says
telemarketer or it says like suspected spam, right?
And it even does that now. On your text messages, there's
like a separate inbox. If you have iOS 26, they have a

(03:35):
filtered inbox. And then if you think about like
a lot of times when you go into an app on your phone, it'll say,
do you want this to track you? Yes or no?
Or if you go to a website, it'llsay, do you want to allow
cookies? Yes or no?
And you can imagine how most people answer, right?
But why are companies doing this?

(03:58):
Because salespeople are annoyingand marketing people are
annoying, and they don't really add value.
It's sort of like they only detract.
So if you think about at least where I'm at, like during the
political season, we're getting inundated with robocalls.

(04:19):
It's not even a person calling. It's a robot calling or you get
a voicemail, but your phone didn't ring.
Just cause and effect. It's supply and demand.
There's demand for privacy, so there's supply for privacy.
And the ideology of the first conversion code was a little bit

(04:42):
more of like traditional Internet direct response
marketing, right? Capture leads, convert
appointments, close sales, it's very textbookie.
And the second conversion code is focused on high quality leads
that are easy to convert versus where I come from the boiler

(05:05):
room, the dialing for dollars, having to call 100 people just
to get a couple of them to answer.
I just think that's not the future, that's the past.
Yeah, definitely I'd agree. Because if especially in the
world where now AI is calling you and so on, if you don't add
that human touch to it, it's so hard to make someone's

(05:28):
completely buy from you. And you mentioned there's
something I'd like you to definewhat in your world it's a high
quality lead. Yeah, well, the short answer
would be that they contact you, you don't contact them, that
they're trying to hire you. You're not bugging them.
And in the real world, what doesthat mean?

(05:48):
If somebody watches this podcastgame and they listen to you and
I talk for 45 minutes and they think I'm really smart and they
think I know my stuff, and then they reach out to me and say,
hey, we want to hire you to speak or consult or work with
you. That's a high quality lead
because I've basically proven myexpertise digitally before the

(06:13):
IRL conversation takes place. So the higher quality lead
happens through content marketing and inbound marketing.
So books and podcasts and socialmedia videos and YouTube
channels that give you e-mail newsletters.

(06:33):
It can be writing, it can, you know, but it has you have to
basically earn their business before you need it.
I think is a really good way to think about it.
And to do that, you have to be incredibly helpful and useful
and provide either utility in the form of education,
entertainment. There's got to be something in

(06:54):
it for me if I'm going to let you in my feet.
A high quality lead is a lead that really is reaching out to
you. And they're already sold.
Yeah, because they probably consume hours of you talking on
stage, on a podcast, on your YouTube channel or reading your

(07:15):
books and so on before they makethe decision.
Chris is the right person to actually help them with this and
still a lot of people are not inthat situation.
They didn't start probably few years back to build a personal
brand and so on. Obviously it's better to start
now than tomorrow or the next day after tomorrow.

(07:36):
But if they are in that situation right now, before
their reputation builds, what they should do in order to still
get in bond leads or high quality?
Yeah, people say the best time to start is 15 years ago.
The second best time is today, right?
And the here's the good news. Like I would be so pumped

(07:58):
because I started in O 9 and there wasn't even a word
influencer. There was no such thing as
Youtubers. There were no podcasts.
There was no TikTok. Like there was nothing.
You know, there there was, but it was so new that it was kind
of the Wild West. None of us knew what we were
doing. We're all just kind of throwing

(08:20):
stuff against the wall. The good news now is that the
way the algorithms work, they actually don't care if you have
any followers. They care if the content that
you're publishing is going to berelevant and enjoyed by the
people they show it to. So I'll give you an example.

(08:40):
Do you use TikTok game? Not very much.
OK, TikTok has cracked the code on not needing people to follow
or comment or share to understand deeply what you want
in your feed. It's called the FYP, the 4U

(09:02):
page. That was a big moment.
And the way they did it, which was really smart, is they just
look at retention, you know, they just say, OK, this video,
16 seconds and this guy watched it for 8 seconds.
So he watched half the video. So he must like this video
because normally people watch 2 seconds or 7 seconds.
See what I'm saying? So they just looked at the sort

(09:24):
of analytics that didn't requireyou to give them any feedback
and that's how they understand what to show you.
So everybody's kind of moving inthat direction now.
So the, if I'm new, I'm just focusing on how can I create the
best, most useful, coolest content possible.
And I also, by the way, another thing I didn't have Gabe, is AI.

(09:48):
Let's be honest, that alone getsrid of the biggest challenge in
content creation, which is ideas, right?
If I go to Chachi PT and say, hey, what do you sell?
Gabe? What does your company sell?
Consultants sell some. Consulting, OK.
And who's the right person for you?

(10:08):
Who's the right client for you? Individuals that they left
corporate a few years ago, they start to build a coaching
business or consulting business and they chase clients all the
time rather than serving them. OK, so you're coaching the
coaches? You're consulting the
consultants, Yeah. Yeah.
OK. So what I would do is I would go
into Chachi PT and I would say, hey, here's me, here's what I

(10:30):
sell, and here's the best peoplethat should hire me.
They're they were with corporateAmerica.
They're ready to go out on theirown.
Here's their pain points. Here's their hopes, their
dreams, their goals. Here's the kind of accounts they
follow on social media. Here's the kind of YouTube
channels they subscribe to. Can you send me a fresh list of

(10:54):
ideas for content creation everymorning at 7:00 AM?
And it'll do it. And by the way, you can also get
it to cater the content. It'll, first of all, it'll
create the content for you, to be clear.
It'll write the tweet, it'll write the LinkedIn post.
And it knows all the best practices for every platform.

(11:16):
So it knows what will get the most likes, the most shares.
It knows the science, right? That's what a lot of my book is
the science behind how to do it right.
And so man, I would and then it would give me these categories
and these ideas that will say, hey, for people that, you know,
used to have a corporate job that now want to go out on their

(11:36):
own. These are their pain points.
And what you're really looking for are what are the best hooks?
Because whether it's a real or aTikTok or a video or an e-mail
or a, you know, whatever it may be LinkedIn, the very beginning
is what's going to determine whether they end up getting to
the end. So a good hook might be like,

(11:59):
hey, I left corporate America five years ago.
I don't answer to anyone. Do you want to know how to do
that? Because here's three things that
I do that got me out of the 9:00to 5:00 grind.
You know, So show me that you know me in your content.
And the reality is that like I have a post right now on

(12:21):
Facebook that has 6 million views, I only have 48,000
followers. So if you really over perform
these social networks now, they'll show it to anybody and
everybody. And every single post that I do
on Instagram and Facebook, I getmore followers because they're

(12:44):
really pushing it more than everto non followers.
So like organic social media hasthe ability to do a 2 for one,
one can really influence the people that consume it, but then
two, it can grow your influence in the case of views, shares,
followers, likes. So if I'm brand new and I'm

(13:06):
starting out, I'm going to give people a couple words that
really matter. Unique, creative, original
ideas. I want to put out unique,
creative, original stuff. Help me do that because there's
a sea of sameness. You ever heard that?
The sea of sameness, you know, averages everywhere, you know,

(13:30):
And so I like to be different and unique and creative with the
stuff that I put out. I want to be a one of one.
I don't want to be Gary V JuniorI I don't want to basically take
his advice and tweak it, you know, or make it my own.
I want to be the genesis of the best ideas when it comes to

(13:53):
content. And again, thank goodness AI got
rid of every excuse. But on that one, especially
Speaking of LinkedIn, for example, I was quite active
there the last couple of years and it's indeed a CEO of Simmons
and especially after the JGPT start to write better and after
that Claude and so on. And I'll argue that if you, most

(14:17):
people, you'll use AI. Of course, it's great to get
started, get ideas. But if they just leverage AI
alone, I'll argue they won't go far.
And some people, of course they are, there are some exceptions,
but if AI would kind of speak tothe same thing all the time, if
you don't train it on your own experience or your own knowledge
and so on. And Speaking of, like you

(14:37):
mentioned, at some point, if someone like just their
corporate job and they start their own business and they want
to hear the story of someone that actually was in those
shoes, how we can still leverageAI but send that unique message
out there, ensure that we tap into our own expertise.
Yeah, it's a great question. I have basically spent dozens of

(15:00):
hours, probably over 100 hours making the AI mine.
So I use something called a custom GPT and I also use
something called a project in Claude.
So those are. And so with Claude, which I feel

(15:20):
like does a really good job withcreative writing.
That sounds very human. I have 4 books.
I gave it all my books. I uploaded the whole thing.
I gave it all my blogs, I gave it all my tweets, I gave it all
my YouTube videos. I trained it.
I said this is me. I gave it all my newsletters.

(15:41):
It takes a while to do that. It's just like laborious, you
know? It just takes some time and it's
not that fun. But man, now I've got something
called Chris AI and it, it is literally no one in the world is
creating the content that I'm creating the, the AI.
I'm happy to tell people I use AI to help me create great

(16:01):
content, but I don't create AI content.
I'm the editor. You know what I mean?
It's just like I got another Chris who will work 24/7 and
never complain. So I'm like, hey, Chris Junior,
give me 25 tweet ideas and it knows me so well that it gives
me 25. And out of the 25, I only two,

(16:25):
right? So I'm saying that AI is awful
23 out of 25 times. And then the two that I like I
tweak, you know, because it's not quite what I want to say,
but that's the new dance that people should be doing.
So I understand that like some of the jargon that it uses, some
of the punctuation and the dashes and stuff that it uses

(16:47):
red flag immediately looks like AI.
But there's even tools. By the way, this is what happens
when you love technology and youembrace it and you like don't
like kind of like shit on it. Quilbot.
You ever heard of Quilbot? Because that to me is something
where if your concern is something being on original and

(17:10):
AIE, that's something Quill Bot can help with, right?
Just input the text and it givesyou is getting rid of the at
least the last time I tried was getting rid of AI generated
nonsense and it's rewriting the text to the way it wants.
And if I remember cry has a likea feature to shorten it or make
it longer and and so on. It'll basically say there's an

(17:34):
85% chance this is AI, and then it'll rewrite it to where
there's no chance it's AI. So there's even tools that can
address that head on. But I think taking a step back,
I'll give you one thing that I did that took forever.
Do you use Twitter? I know you don't use talk.
Do you tweet? Rarely I'm most active on
LinkedIn and Instagram, but I have an account and kind of know

(17:57):
the road. OK.
So all of these platforms and it's not straightforward.
How long have you been using let's say LinkedIn?
10 years probably. Yeah.
But actively, realistically, like 3 1/2, something like that.
OK, with the Instagram as well. Yeah.
So what what you can do is you can actually download your

(18:18):
history of everything you've ever posted.
And I think this works best withtext.
So not so much with the Instagram.
Different beast. But what I did is I went into
Twitter and I said I want every tweet I've ever given and I want
all the metrics. I want to know what my most
liked tweet ever was, all the way down to the worst one.

(18:40):
And I you can do that on LinkedIn, Facebook and you can
extract it. It just takes a while.
Like it took a week for Twitter to get back to me.
Like what is going on? Just give me the list.
Your tweet or log. Yeah, I have 50 / 50,000 tweets.
Well, once they gave it to me and I had it in a spreadsheet, I
gave it to Claude and I said, hey, here's every tweet I've

(19:03):
ever done with all of the engagement.
Analyze them, figure out what I can do that works the best and
help me come up with categories and topics based on what my
audience likes, right? I was listening to the algorithm

(19:23):
and then I was analyzing the results of what I heard.
And then that gave me a very clear path on what I should
focus on. The other thing that I've done,
and this is actually a really cool one, I'm guessing
occasionally you have a post that does way better and you get
a lot of comments and you get, call it 10 times more
interaction than normal. Well, on that Facebook post that

(19:48):
I did that has 6 million views, it has over 7000 comments.
So I actually take now, I take the comments and I go to the AI
and say, hey, here's every comment from my most recent
post. Give me a breakdown of what
people are saying, the sentiment.

(20:08):
And by the way, how can we leverage the insights from the
comments to create more content?So it's a friend.
It's a loop. You see what I'm saying?
And I also about once a month, somewhere in there, I go back
and I say, hey, these are the five that did the best.
Add it to your brain. These five are the ones that

(20:32):
perform the best. It's a dance I'm doing with the
technology and because I am putting that in, I'm not saying
that day one write a tweet for me.
No, because I'm putting in the work.
I have probably a way different experience and viewpoint of AI

(20:53):
than other people. Yeah, absolutely.
And you mentioned there's a superpower there, like the
comments part. And especially if you analyze as
well, let's say your competitorsor people that you kind of have
the same audience use their comments in order to generate,
because people will complain about certain products or
certain things and maybe your product can do it better and you

(21:15):
have content for that. And once you solve this problem
of acquisition and you have attention or get inbound leads,
how someone can actually convertthem into clients?
Yeah, the really good tip that you just gave.
So I'm going to double click that You don't need your own
viral content to do anything I'msaying because you can go to the

(21:39):
number one influencer on Twitterin your space.
Like I'll give you an example, Ithink.
Do you know Scott Galloway, you know, that is OK.
He, I feel like he has a similarkind of follower to the kind of
person you described. They come from corporate
America, but they're kind of trying to stick it to the man
and they want to kind of build their own business.

(22:01):
Like Professor Galloway, right? He's a really smart dude.
So what I would do is I would sort all of his most popular
tweets ever and I would grab a bunch of those and I would go to
his YouTube channel and I would sort by the most viewed and I'd
grab a bunch of those transcripts.
And then like you were saying, grab a bunch of the comments,

(22:24):
right? So you can really have all of
this insight into, I was interviewing a guy the other day
and I basically was like, let mefind his most viral tweet to
bring it up. I had 7600 likes way more than
normal. And it was something that was a

(22:45):
little political. And I have always stayed away
from anything like that. I think there's lots of people
that are smarter than me about politics.
I'm just really good at marketing and sales.
So I tried to stay in my lane and he had but I was
interviewing him and he had a tweet and it said, if you think
homes are expensive now, wait till we deport all the illegals

(23:06):
and see how much they cost. And I was like, wow, that got a
response. So I took his and I said, hey,
look what this guy said. You know what I mean?
I didn't say it, but he said it.I'm interviewing him if you want
to come, but that his tweet withhis face, with his name in my
account. I think there's 10,000 comments

(23:29):
on this post and it's all the kind of comments I don't want
any part of, by the way, right the back and forth around
immigration and housing. Like I don't want to talk about
that. But my point is that was me able
to look at someone else's stuff and be like, OK, here's what is
his best performing stuff. So, but back to your question,

(23:51):
and I was just going to throw out there.
Reddit is another really great place to find ridiculously good
comments and commentary in subreddits.
But how do you take a high quality lead and turn it into a
customer? There's there's a couple things.
Part of it is the follow up tactics and methodology that you

(24:17):
deploy, and then part of it is the conversation that you have.
So I'll start with the methodology and the tactics of
getting them on your calendar for a call, for a Zoom, for a
meeting at the coffee shop, right?
And that comes down to really two really important things. 1

(24:40):
is what we call speed delete. OK.
If you get a lead and you followup in less than 5 minutes, you
have a 21X better chance of converting that lead then if you
follow up in 30 minutes. Like from minute 5 to minute 30
is really critical. I actually looked at the data

(25:02):
around minute one versus minute 2 versus minute 3.
It's unbelievable how quickly people will move on if you don't
get back to them ASAP. So you need systems, people, or
products in place that allow youto follow the five minute rule,
which is that every single lead we ever generate has someone

(25:27):
reaching out to them in less than 5 minutes after they reach
out to us. Let's just calculate, I guess.
I think it's very fascinating ispeople think, oh, if someone
contacted me and they trust me it's involved, it's hot.
And maybe even someone recommendthat person to you, but you're
not the only one they are contacting.
And if someone else is replying faster than you, you already

(25:50):
lose. People always have options
beside you, even even when it's a referral.
But I will say you're hitting onsomething really important,
which is yes, the more sold theyare on you as important some of
these tactics are. So if somebody wants to hire me
to speak at their conference andthey reach out to me and send me

(26:12):
an e-mail, they're going to still want me to speak at their
conference three days later, right?
I don't have to get back to themin 60 seconds, you know?
So yes, that is important too. But I'm saying like, and this is
really the mindset of my book islike inbound marketing, you
know, but outbound sales. So it's like you combine the

(26:34):
best of both worlds. You generate inbound leads that
are really wanting to work with you, but then you still treat
them like a cold call in the sense that you follow up right
away and you call them several times until they answer.
So speed to lead critical and then effort, which is tenacity,

(26:57):
which is how many times total are you looking to get them on
the phone replying to a text ande-mail.
And the number is crazy that like 85, I think it's either 81
or 85% of all sales happen afterthe fifth attempt, but 90% of

(27:18):
salespeople make less than 5 attempts.
That's so. This is, yeah, this is a big
disconnect. So you reach out once, they
don't pick up, they don't recognize the number you text,
they don't get back to you. They're in a meeting and you
just and then you just move on. That's what most people do.
Whereas if you apply science andyou look at the data makes it

(27:41):
very clear that you should be following up a lot more times
than you are. And and you can't take it
personal when they don't respondor pick up because the reality
is we live in a very distracted,busy world.
And so if they asked to be contacted, you know, we're going
to reach out to them until we contact them.

(28:03):
And that might be 3 to 4 attempts on day 1-2, or three
more on day 21, more on day three, you know what I'm saying?
And even day seven, day 10, day 15, like when you work for a
company that forces you to call leads, they ensure that you do
all these things. But if you're more of a

(28:24):
freelancer solopreneur, it's really on you to have that, you
know, kind of mindset that like,I'm going to talk to this
person. So those are two things that
everybody can control how quickly they get back to people
and how many attempts they make to get them on the phone.
But the magic is knowing exactlywhat to say when you have the

(28:49):
the phone call, the conversation.
And that's where a lot of peoplefail.
They are terrible at sales. They do not understand the art
and science of conversations that lead to yeses versus
conversations that lead to maybes or Nos.
And that is if you look at my book, The whole first section is

(29:13):
about the marketing that generate generates the leads.
The second section is kind of the technology and the processes
that get them to answer. The whole third section is about
scripts and knowing what to say and when and why and how and
tone. It's critical.
And so I I would say that most people self identify as being

(29:37):
terrible at sales and that is such a easy thing to fix because
there are very unique things youcan do that make the call and
the conversation better for bothparties.
If I showed you like, this is part of my sales script that I
use. Notice how there's nothing
there. That's a pretty bad script.

(29:59):
I, I think when people think of scripts, they think of Hollywood
and they think of trying to memorize what to say.
And by the way, sounding robotic, like reading off a
paper, that's not what it is. A script is just a process that
you follow each and every time so that you get the outcome you
want each and every time. You want the highest conversion

(30:22):
rate possible. And to do that you have to have
structure to the calls that you make.
So I can go into a couple of thespecific tactics that are a part
of that. But what you're what you're
trying to do when you end up on the phone with these people is
you want them to be more excitedthan the cost of what you sell.

(30:44):
And at the point that they're more excited than the cost, you
need to close them and ask them to buy that.
That's really all you're doing on any sales call.
How do I get this person more excited than the cost of what I
sell during the time I have their attention?
And before I'll make you indeed go a bit in details of the

(31:05):
structure of a script when you jump on a sales call, I would
like to ask you what actually makes people exciting in order
to buy. Yes, So often if they come with
a problem, let's say in my case,they come with oh, I need more
leads, I need more clients. While in reality that's not the
case, they need better leads andso on.

(31:26):
But how to make them exciting? I will say that I have no idea
how to sell even that I work in sales and so on, but I'll just
play here. Most marketing consultants,
they're terrible at sales. So you're not like I did a
speech at Hubspots event and it was called Boiler Room
Billionaire Sales Scripts. The whole audience was marketing
people. It was like overflowing.

(31:48):
They had to shut down the room. So you're not alone.
You know, it's definitely something that most people are
not great at, but I'm glad we'retalking about it because that,
you know, that's how you improveis making it a priority.
So the way that you get people excited is 2 things.
You have to be excited. There's one of my coaches.

(32:10):
This is from my book. I don't know if people are
watching or listening, but that's what I was just saying.
Like the science of get them more excited than the cost
during the time. But this is what you're talking
about now. Enthusiasm, right?
Enthusiasm ends with IASM. Think of that as an acronym.
I am sold myself, OK. It's contagious, it's

(32:34):
infectious. And in a call like this, some
people I'm guessing will listen to this and then some people
will watch this, right? The people that watch this, they
see me, they see like my body language, my Physiology.
That's a big part of how people communicate and how people
understand other people. Well, if you're on a phone call,

(32:58):
you don't have any of that. So what do you have?
You have your words and your tone, and a lot of people have
what I call. Have you ever heard of resting
bitch face? You hear people say this?
OK well people have resting bitch tone meaning it isn't
their fault it has nothing to. It's not personal but they don't

(33:20):
sound excited or passionate if you just listen to them and the
tone is so critical so I would work.
You're asking how do I get them excited?
1, you have to have a deep belief in the fact that if they
don't buy from you, their experience will be poorer going

(33:41):
somewhere else. But Part 2 is you have to have
an an infectious tone and it maynot be natural for you.
So you might have to work on it.You might have to sit up in your
chair a little bit. One simple thing is you might
want to stand up and walk aroundwhile you're on the phone.
Open up your diaphragm a little bit.

(34:01):
You know, it's OK if when the call starts, when I'm on this
call with you, this is me. There's no acting, no nothing,
right? This is who I am, but I'm not
going to hang up with you and gotalk like this to my wife.
She would divorce me if if everyconversation we had was like,
hey, Hon, what? So what are we going to do for

(34:22):
dinner? You know, we need to have a good
dinner. That would be annoying.
So it's it's sort of like when that red light comes on and they
say action. It's OK not to be your normal
self. It's OK to amp up a couple
notches because it's so important that you do and
everyone will appreciate it. But the other key to getting

(34:45):
people is excited is to get themtalking instead of you.
This is so important. You are asking, you know, oh,
what do you guys need? Oh, we need more leads.
Most people in a sales call environment, their answers are
very short and sweet. You know, it's like you're
trying to have a good conversation with them and

(35:07):
they're giving you very short answers, right?
Oh, we need more leads. OK.
And what are you guys doing now to generate leads or doing some
social media, but not much else,right?
So what you have to do is this is something I call the digging
deep technique. You have the questions that
you're going to ask because you need to qualify people.

(35:29):
You need to understand their problems before you pitch your
solutions. That's critical.
So you, there are questions you kind of have to ask, you know,
but then there are questions that you get to ask because you
listened to the questions and you listened to their answers.

(35:51):
So that's what I call the digging deep technique.
I would only plan out about 5 or7 questions that I was going to
ask, but every single answer they give is going to cause me
to ask another question that's digging deeper.
And what I found is that number one that gets them to, you know,
becomes much more of a conversation versus a pitch.

(36:13):
And then #2 usually by the like 3rd or 4th or 5th, you know,
attempts, then they give you thereal answer.
So you're like, oh, you just need better leads, right?
That's kind of what they're you're saying.
That's what they really mean. Well, you want them to say that,
you know, So if somebody said, oh, we don't have enough leads,

(36:33):
As soon as I hear that, the onlythought in my brain is, well,
how many do you have? That's the only thought I have
is like, how many do you have now?
100? Well, that sounds like a lot.
How many do you think you need? Well, would right be at 500.
OK, you need 500 leads. How many people do you have to
follow up? How good are they at their job?

(36:56):
Because we don't want to pour more leads into a leaky bucket.
Where are these leads coming from?
What information do you have about the leads when you reach
out? How long does it take you to
contact the lead when you do getone?
What's your cost per? This is digging deep.
And what happens is, and this is, I know probably hard for

(37:17):
people to believe because I'm talking so much, but I'm being
interviewed for a podcast. It's different.
The best salespeople in the world actually talk less than
the lead throughout the course of a call. 57% of the talk time
with top salespeople is the other person, and 43% of the

(37:41):
time is the Rep. How in the world are you going
to do that if you're not asking great questions?
And by the way, what happens is as we're digging deep, we're
writing down all their answers, which I highly recommend that
you're listening. And there's tools that do it.
I get it. But when I create my sales

(38:01):
pitch, when I kind of turn the corner later in the call and I
say, OK, great, here's how we can help you. 100% of my pitch
is based on the answers to the questions I asked.
I would say, hey, when you guys reached out, you said you need
more leads. Right now you got 100, you're
looking for 500. And right now the quality of the
follow up is poor. Am I right?

(38:23):
Right, OK, here's what we're going to do to help you with
that. And earlier you said, so you
earlier you said X. So that's why we're going to
recommend Y, right? My co-author, I have a book
called Exactly What to Say for Real Estate Agents.
It's based on a multi million selling book of the same title.

(38:47):
Just the main book is called Exactly What to Say.
We wrote the real estate industry edition and my Co
author's name's Phil M Jones. Brilliant guy.
Everybody should look him up. But he says sales is earning the
right to make a recommendation. That's it.

(39:09):
So the only way that you can, you know, I was talking to the
number one salesperson at realtor.com one time, hey, man,
how do you make so many more sales than the other guys?
You're all at the same table. I was on stage giving the speech
and then everybody goes back to the booth at the break.
And he always made the most sales.

(39:29):
He said, Chris, because what theother salespeople are doing is
they're not establishing a problem before they propose a
solution. So everybody comes back to the
booth looking for a solution, just like the people that reach
out to you, here's what we're after and your job is to say,
hold on, let's figure out if there's a problem to solve.

(39:50):
That is really the sort of diagnosis that works is solving
problems. You can't make the right
recommendation if you don't earnit through listening and digging
deep. Yeah, because often when you
serve, quote UN quote, someone that comes to you with a

(40:11):
problem, but in reality is not the real problem, you won't be
able to help them first. Second, they'll complain after
that they help you solve the wrong problem.
And that's why this diagnostic part is so important and diving
deep into the reality behind their request in order to truly
understand them. And I'm a true believer that in

(40:32):
order to help someone, you really need to understand and
to, as you well said, sit with them, listen and take notes, use
those notes in order to create the solution.
And going back a bit to the structure of this approach, like
how do you structure your sales goals to ask the question at the
right time? You start in a certain way, you

(40:52):
continue in a certain way, you end up in a certain way or how
it goes. There's a definitely an order,
right? So the first thing I do is
before the call starts, I look at what they told me on the
form, you know, in the notes from previous calls.
I call this the pre call stock like I will Google their e-mail

(41:15):
address. I will go to grok and say, hey,
I have a sales call with this person later today.
Here's their e-mail. Can you find everything you know
about them? So that I'm really power
position when I go into the call.
So I'm trying to find really specific things that I can use
in the opening of the call. So as an example, it might be,

(41:37):
hey John, I got your informationfrom Zillow about six months
ago. You're looking at a property in
32828 that was $700,000. How's your day going?
Like those little Nuggets are like, oh, it's not a cold
caller, you know, So that would be something that I think is

(41:58):
always worth it. Take 5 minutes before the call,
grab a couple Nuggets. It could be where you went to
school. It could be, you know, hey, I
saw that you went to Florida State as well.
That's cool. I went there.
Where'd you graduate? You know, you're trying to find
some things that are personal and specific to them that you
can use that. That would be #1 #2 is what I

(42:20):
call the perfect first minute. And the perfect first minute is
understanding that no matter howgood the lead is, how bad the
lead is, they typically have a brick wall up when they start
and they almost always just wantto cut to the chase.
So one that a lot of people willwant to know real early as well.

(42:42):
I was just curious how much it is.
How much do you guys charge? Remember, we're trying to get
them more excited than the cost while we have their attention.
And if we're 30 seconds in saying, oh, it's $15,000 to have
me speak at your event, I, I haven't had enough time to get
them more excited than the cost.So there's a technique that I

(43:03):
recommend called ARP ARP and it's acknowledge, respond,
pivot. OK, so you acknowledge what they
said and by doing that you just read it back.
Oh, you want to know how much I charge to speak at conferences?
No problem. And then you respond.

(43:24):
I feel blessed for how much I'm able to charge lately.
I can't believe I get paid as much as I do.
When is the conference that you're thinking about having me
at? That's a pivot away from cost.
So no matter what it is like if you're a realtor, it's hey, just
wanted to know if the property was still for sale.

(43:45):
Oh, you want to know if the home's still for sale?
No problem, I'll look that up. That's the acknowledge respond
would be if you found it on Zillow or on the Internet.
There's a good chance it's not the a lot of the homes have
already sold what drew you to the home that you found pivot,
right. So that helps a lot.

(44:06):
And then there's a bunch of other stuff that I could never
cover in just an interview like this.
But you're building trust by giving them some statistics that
make them feel good. Hey, by the way, I've already
spoken at 700 events and the average audience gives me a 9.9.

(44:26):
Just one loser per event that says I didn't do a good job,
right? So you can use stats, but it
really just comes down to the section that matters the most is
OK, I want to figure out if we can help you tell me about this,
which is that digging deep? You're asking really good
questions. You're digging really deep.

(44:47):
And that entire process is what helps you write your sales
pitch, which I call FBT, which is feature benefit tie down.
That's kind of the structure of the pitch itself.
So I would say, hey, we're goingto help you generate leads using
social media. That's the feature, right?

(45:08):
Leads, the benefit is that because we're using social
media, these are going to be leads that we actually know who
they really are, right? And then the tie down would be
you want people to answer when you call them, right, Right.
OK, next feature. So it's FBTFBT and because

(45:32):
you're kind of doing it and you're kind of like getting that
buy in each time before you go to the next thing that is almost
like a mini close. So as opposed to getting to the
end of your sales pitch and there being one question, are
you moving forward today? Are you in, you know, should I
get the paperwork started instead of those types of, you

(45:55):
know, hit or miss questions, you've been getting them to say
yes throughout the pitch. And so saying yes at the end is
much more natural. Yeah, absolutely.
Because they kind of sell themselves into it by sharing
more details, they are revealingwhat they need.
And even as a speaker, assume they tell you why they want you

(46:17):
as a speaker. They tell you how the conference
will unfold, what are the speaker speakers are, and you'll
be able to basically tell them why you are the right person,
like by sharing the stats, by sharing the details they want.
And when an objection comes in, for example, after you build
that trust and they're like all right, and still was the prize

(46:39):
and you give them a prize or youdon't give them a prize or how
do you proceed? Yeah, when you're at this point
that you're doing the pitch and you're closing and trying to get
them to say yes, you're going togive them the terms for sure.
If they say, all right, I'll need to think about it because I
think it's one of the most common objections that most
people get. What do you say to that?
While they a lot of times they have to think about it or that's

(47:02):
not in my budget or I need to talk with someone before I make
a decision. There's very common objections.
So the technique that you're using in that scenario is called
ARC. ARC instead of ARP.
Acknowledge the objection, respond to the objection, close

(47:24):
them again. OK, So if they need to wait,
right? OK, I totally get it.
No pressure. If you need to sleep on it, you
know, I do that too when making a big decision, right?
But when you know, throughout this conversation, you said that

(47:45):
your goals are AB and C and you said that the outcome of solving
those problems was worth Ed and F and bringing me to the
conference is the is a decision that kind of empowers all of
that to unfold. So did you want to use a credit

(48:05):
or debit card for the deposit like you in that's like C, which
is like close again, right? But you're going to there's
something called smokescreen objections and then there's real
objections. OK, when I get to the end of a
call, if I've done everything that I'm talking about properly,

(48:26):
the objections are usually legitimate.
But what happens is a lot of sales people are getting BS
objections. And what the objection is doing
is just, it's just their nice way of saying I don't think
you're worth more than the cost.It's just the easy way out.
All I need to think about it. Oh, let me get back to you in a

(48:47):
couple days. Oh, let me talk to my wife.
Oh, let me check our budget. So if you do a great job and
that stuff comes up, by all means like that happens, it's
sales. That's why following up so many
times is important. What I do in that situation is
it's something I call preferred additional outcome.

(49:08):
If you're in sales and you're only planning on people to say
yes, you've picked the wrong profession, like it's just sort
of not how it works, even if you're great.
So what I have is I have a planned additional outcome,
which is basically like, I'm still going to get you to say
yes, it's just going to be to something else, right.

(49:31):
So in that example where they need to think about it, no
problem. I actually wanted to set up a
decision making call for tomorrow at 1:00 PM.
At the end of that call, we'll know if we're working together
or not. So you see what I'm saying.
So, yeah, so basically it's likeyou're setting the next

(49:52):
appointment for the next. Oh, you need to think about it.
No problem. You know, 24 hours is the least
I can give you. You know, how about tomorrow at
3:00 we do a call where you makethe decision.
Sure, that's fair. So now I've got that appointment
on my calendar tomorrow at 3 forthe decision.
And on that call, usually you'regoing to get your answer, yes or

(50:16):
no. So now some people that I'm not
ready to set that call up. OK, no problem.
Would you mind if I sent you some testimonials of the people
that have brought me to their conferences in the past?
And I send you my speaker reel so you can show it to the people
that you work with. Sure.
OK, what's your e-mail? I'll send that over.

(50:36):
So so you're kind of like alwaysgetting a version of yes, that
extends the relationship. But I do think a lot of people
are just afraid to get an objection and then overcome it
and then close people again. Because the last thing I'll
leave you with here is like, there's something called a buy

(50:58):
in question that sounds like an objection, but it's actually
them wanting to work with you. So if they get to the end and
it's ah, well, how much is it? And it's $10,000 and they're
like, well, do we have to pay that all upfront?
Oh, great question. You know, like that's a buying

(51:19):
sign that means they want to buy.
Can't quite afford it. And now I'm like, OK, how about
this? What if we did half upfront and
the other half you don't even have to pay until I walk off the
stage and everybody's clapping because they're so happy that I
spoke. Oh, OK.
Or how about we, you know, there's six weeks until the

(51:39):
event. What if we just break the
payment down into 6 payments over the next six weeks?
Would that work better for your budget?
Sure. Yeah.
I didn't know that was an option.
Right. So part of it is just being
dialed in on. Is it an objection?
Is it an objection that's legit,or is it a buying sign?
That sounds like an objection. You eventually get really dialed

(52:04):
in, man. And because you're listening so
intently and you're curious and you're digging deep, it's such a
good call. It's such a good feeling for
both parties, and you're just giving it the best shot.
Like I said, you want the highest conversion rate
possible, but no one's going to bat 1000, you know, no one bats
1000. Everybody strikes out.

(52:25):
Michael Jordan missed half of his shots, right?
You're not going to ever be, youknow, 100 for 100.
But if you're an organization or, you know, a solopreneur and
you're listening to this, here'swhat I want you to think about.
If right now 2% of the people are converting and you can get

(52:46):
that to 4%, you're doubling yourincome.
You know, like the reason it's so important to increase your
lead conversion rate is because that's the cash register
ringing. So I've helped people that
they're doing a lot of Internet leads and their, their
conversion rate was .8 and we got it to 1.8.

(53:10):
That doubled their ROI. So it's a lot about perspective.
There's, you know, we're not looking for more traffic or more
clicks or more subscribers. Like this is sales, you know,
this is if you increase or improve your conversion rate, it
really is priceless. That's why a sales organization

(53:33):
will pay me 30 GS to speak at their conference in front of
7000 people 'cause if 7000 salespeople get .2% better, it
makes that company a lot more than 3030 GS, right?
So that is what I think people should be the most excited about
is like, even if you just move the needle a little bit, the

(53:54):
return on that is tremendous. And that's why I think my book
has, you know, half a million copies and seven languages and,
you know, all these accolades because it's such an important
thing to get right. 100% And I want that there's something like
if your conversion rate is too high, you're probably charging

(54:16):
too low. Absolutely.
And Chris, please tell those listening they're so excited
they want to hire you to speak on stage or they want to check
your book where they should get in touch with you.
Yeah, it's so funny. I'm not even speaking right now.
I've took the year off, so I'm just using those examples from
my past. But the best place to go is the

(54:37):
conversion code.com that's got the book, the link to Amazon,
you know, any information about my workshops, my coaching,
consulting, and then Twitter X and Instagram is where I'm the
most active. I spend most of my time Chris
under score SMTH no IN Smith Chris under score SMTH on IGNX

(55:06):
and I love to connect with people.
Let me know you heard me on the podcast.
Always nice to meet new people. Awesome.
And the links will be down belowfor easy access for you guys And
how to agree with one single thing.
Let's go travel a bit in time, but in the future.
It's 2030. What did you experience in the
last five years in terms of how people buy?

(55:30):
Well, I will confidently say that 25 to 30% of our sales are
now happening through people engaging and talking to an AI.
That will be the future. One out of every three sales we
make. Never speak to a human.
This was Chris Smith on Authority in the World.

(55:52):
Thank you so much for tuning in.I'm not sure about you, but if
you just listen until this point, I bet you took a lot of
notes. Now it's time to put them into
action. But before you do that, can you
do me a small favor? If you want to see more experts
like Chris Smith during the podcast, please subscribe to the
channel if you're on YouTube or follow on Spotify or Apple,

(56:15):
wherever you get your podcast because this helps me bring more
quality guests to the show, increase the roduction and share
this knowledge with all of you. Thank you so much.
And until next week, Uravida.

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#136 - The 5-Minute Rule That 21x Your Conversion w/ Chris Smith

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#136 - The 5-Minute Rule That 21x Your Conversion w/ Chris Smith