Something I believe is essential in business. And those are the handoffs from various people in your company to the next person. Identity versus role and your attitude. And how is your identity different from your role? It's not only a successful selling system, it's a communication system. So implementing this system helps you get to budget sooner. Everyone on the team who read this book was like, you know what? We still want to do even better. Teaching your staff how to ask very great open-ended questions to potential customers and then guide those potential customers through a sales process is the key to getting you, the owner, out of sales. And in today's podcast, I'm going to recommend one of my favorite books of all time and definitely one of my top sales books.
Jack Jostes [00:00:57]:
And it is: "You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar" by David H. Sandler. It's Sandler training seven step system for successful selling. And just a couple years ago, 2023, they came out with the second edition, which has an updated. It's been updated and has a forward with the new CEO, David Matson. So this book I read the first time about eight years ago. And at that time, I was okay at sales in the sense that I was making them and I was getting clients for my marketing agency.
1:35 - Jack’s Personal Experience with Improving Sales Using Sandler's Method
Jack Jostes [00:01:35]:
But I was also experiencing a lot of stress doing it. And I think my clients, my potential clients, were experiencing a lot of stress from it because I was implementing a way of selling that I had learned that wasn't really very effective. I waited until the very end of meetings to talk about budget, and I had these very long, drawn out sales conversations with people who ended up not being qualified buyers. And this, when I had kids, I had less time available and I also needed to make more money. So that was my pain. And luckily, I had a client who was, you know, he implemented Sandler in his own business, and he introduced this book to me and gave me some coaching. And when I implemented what I learned and adapted it and started studying sales extensively, my sales became more enjoyable. I made more of them, and I was able to create a system that I taught to my employees and that created even more freedom and flexibility for me.
2:43 - Ramblin Jackson’s Book Club Format: How to Get Your Team Involved
Jack Jostes [00:02:43]:
So for those of you watching, if you're currently doing okay at sales, but maybe it's stressful, or maybe you have people on your team and they don't have the owner's advantage that you do, this book could really help you. So at Ramblin Jackson, we're currently in our 15th year of business, and I have 14 people on my team. And I got together with all of our client facing positions. So our salespeople, our project managers, and our account managers, and our director of operations, and we all read this book together as a book club. So we've done numerous book clubs at Ramblin Jackson, and this time we did something that our Director of Operations, Jessica, came up with that I really liked. And we had a Google Doc where each week we needed to add our notes from like two or three chapters. So we broke it out over six to eight weeks. So people had time, but they also had some accountability along the way.
Jack Jostes [00:03:43]:
And that led that Google Doc alone gave me some great insight into, like, how is my team feeling about sales? What are some of their ideas for things we could do better? And then maybe what are some opportunities for additional coaching and training based on what people need? So at the end of the eight weeks, we got together on Zoom and we had a book club where we talked about, what are we doing that we could do better? How could this help our clients? And it ultimately led to a great conversation about something I believe is essential in business. And those are the handoffs from various people in your company to the next person. At Ramblin Jackson, we have a strategist who helps our clients figure out their first year marketing plan and work on their audit, and I work with that, too. Then there's a project manager who manages the client for the first six months, and then there's an account manager who manages that relationship ongoing. And overall, it's going really well. We get very positive feedback from our clients. We have surveys and we check in with them to make sure that it's going well. So I think we're already doing well at putting those important notes in HubSpot.
Jack Jostes [00:04:55]:
And Asana is the task management program that we use. And everyone on the team who read this book was like, you know what? We still want to do even better. And I believe that at your landscape company, maybe you do commercial landscaping where you have a salesperson, and then there's an account manager, and there's other people, or maybe you're in a design, build, manage model, or whatever it is. Those handoffs from the various people who interact with your clients are very important. And I see this book not only for it's not only a successful selling system, it's a communication system. It's a way of talking with people about their pains and problems, like, what are they thinking and what are they really feeling? And this book guides you through. They use this submarine analogy where you're guiding people through these various components of a submarine. One of my favorite chapters in here is Chapter 8:, Negative Reverse Selling, the most potent sales technique of all.
6:01 - The Power & Effectiveness of Negative Reverse Selling
Jack Jostes [00:06:01]:
Many of my clients who run full landscape companies inevitably do this. Maybe they don't even know they're doing negative reverse selling. So negative reverse selling is instead of, if you think about maybe a traditional approach to selling that's very promotional, and you should do this, and here are the features and benefits that you should have, and why don't you buy from me? Negative reverse selling is. It might sound something like, hey, we currently, I'm not sure that we're going to be able to help you with your project because our design process typically takes two to six weeks to finalize the design and budget. And then sometimes there can be months before you're actually on our installation and construction calendar. And we currently have a backlog several months from now. So it doesn't even make sense for us to talk about your project because you were saying it needed to be done in four weeks. When you start to take it away from them and you're not pushing, pushing it towards them, they might pull you back in and say, oh, no, we were hoping it could be done in four weeks, but we're realizing that there's this design process to go through, and we want to get this done right the first time.
7:15 - How to Separate Identity Vs. Role in Your Business
Jack Jostes [00:07:15]:
So can we keep talking about working with you? Right. So that's how I think this can really play out in landscaping sales. But this goes into so much more than just tactics. It gets into identity versus role and your attitude. And how is your identity different from your role in business? That's a very powerful thing. One of the key things that I learned from this book that made me really uncomfortable at first when I read about it and when the client, who was kind of coaching me about this, it was about talking about budget sooner, because I learned a very bad habit of building a ton of value and all this stuff and getting people excited, and then here's the budget. And people are like, oh, my God, this was so expensive, I had no idea. And this was often after spending a lot of time getting to that point.
8:10 - The Importance of Discussing Budget Early in the Sales Process
Jack Jostes [00:08:10]:
And it was a negative experience for the client. So implementing this system helps you get to budget sooner in conversations. And I believe that's very respectful to the client. Talking with the client and helping them figure out their budget and their framework for making decisions serves them so that way they're not strung along in something that's way outside of their budget. This book is ultimately about very clear communication, and very clear communication serves both employees and customers. It helps them align around what are we doing and how much does it cost and what are the steps. I was just talking with our Director of Operations, Jessica, and she's like, you know what? Some of this book comes across as really direct and maybe even aggressive. And I remember another coach of mine saying that a saying of Sandler was "nurture, nurture, nurture".
Jack Jostes [00:09:08]:
And when I listened to recordings of Sandler, he's very nurturing and his vocal intonation. And, you know, we currently have a timeline that backs up several months. Does it make sense for us to talk? So I think the way that this is delivered is very important. Your pacing and your intonation, and these are things that you can coach your team on that I'm never done working on myself. I think that when you listen to the audiobook, you get that nurturing component, partly the narrator that they selected. But hearing Sandler is something I wanted to share with you because that was part of how I learned it was listening to recordings of Dave Sandler, listening to this audiobook. And overall, it's a great book. So if you are the owner of a company or you have salespeople or both, consider reading this book with your people, consider listening to it with them and implementing the Sandler system.
10:10 - Additional Resources from Dave Sandler & Upcoming Events
Jack Jostes [00:10:10]:
There's a ton of resources on the Sandler website. Their podcast is incredible. And overall, I'm really glad that I read this book a second time. You know, sometimes I meet people who are like, I read 50 books a year, and when you talk to them, they can't remember anything from those books other than the number that they've read. I'm all about, like, really thoroughly slowing it down, reading a book, and this is, this is one of them. This book is worth reading many times, and the second edition is excellent. My name is Jack Jostes and I love sales and marketing books. And if you check the link at the end of this video, I am going to link you to my top 3 business books recommendations for landscape companies. This wasn’t on there, but you should check it out. Make sure that you like this video subscribe, check out our show notes from other resources and then click the link check out this next video.
Show Notes:
Watch the full episode + see the transcript at: https://landscapersguide.com/podcast/
Tell us where to send your beef jerky: https://landscapersguide.com/toolbox
Stop by Booth #1428 at the SIMA Symposium in June 2024: https://landscapersguide.com/events
Start your own Company Book Club: Purchase the Book on Amazon