Ryan Holmer’s Monthly Newsletter: Issue #3

August 21st
From the desk of Ryan Holmer
Halifax, Nova Scotia

SALES, SALES AND MORE SALES...

W​elcome to the third edition of my monthly newsletter.

I’m dropping this a week late, because I was on vacation,
enjoying the sun, drinking rum; you know how it goes. This past
month I’ve been on a huge sales kick. Partially because I’m
completing my sales book, but also because my main agency --
Affluent Attraction -- has started to onboard new clients. I’ve
been doing 5-7 sales calls/day, closing thousands of dollars in
deals, and enjoying every minute of it.

Because of that, there’s a lot of “​sales ​schtuff​” in this

newsletter, with a few other tidbits mixed in. I think sales is
a great thing to cover though, because it’s one of the best ways
to gauge the health of your business (I will discuss this in the
first section). Aside from sales, I’ve been trying some new lead
generation strategies on Facebook for my agency. We’re
constantly innovating in our business, and this new strategy is
something I’m pretty excited about; but I think I’ll save
telling you all about this new strategy for September’s issue
(which will be related to paid-traffic).

This will be a shorter issue. Blame my sales book; I’ve been

spending most of my time writing that, so I didn’t spend as much
time as I usually do writing this. But I’m going to make up for
it in September with a bunch of juicy goods I have in store for
you ;)

Anyways…
You don’t come here for the introduction, you want the juicy
bits -- you want to sink your teeth into something. So get your
apron ready, saddle up, and let’s dive in.

DOCTOR SALES CHECKING IN -- ARE YOU IN GOOD HEALTH?

A lot of agency owners ask me about how to determine whether or

not their business is “healthy.”

Is it:

- Profitability?
- Cash flow?
- The number of clients you have?
- The LTV of clients?

All of this matters.

You need to be profitable, you need to have sufficient cash-flow

to cover your expenses for a few months (at least), and the
number of clients as well as client LTV (lifetime value) is a
good indicator to keep an eye out for.

Personally, however, I always look at sales.

Whenever someone asks me to help their business, I always ask

the same question:

“How many sales calls are you generating per-month, per-week,

and per-year?”

If they can’t answer this question, or they aren’t generating at

least 5-7 sales calls per-day, I know where the issue lay. You
can fix issues that arise with client retention, cash flow,
etc...but to do that, you need a full pipeline of people dying
to work with your company.
Sales cures all is a cliche which holds true.

So take a look at your own business, and take stock of where

you’re at right now.

Ask yourself the question above…

How many sales calls are you generating:

● Per month
● Per week
● Per day

The reason I do this is to reverse-engineer my goals.

If I want to generate $10,000 in new business each month, and

I’m currently at $5,000, I ask myself -- what’s my closing rate?
Let’s say it’s 50%. Ok great, now at $1,000/month, how many
calls do I need to book, in order to close these 10 extra
clients each month?

20.

Perfect.

Now, you have an exact route to go from where you are to where
you want to be -- you can break down into months, weeks, days,
etc…

20/month works out to 5 per week.

Do this for your business.

Using that situation above, if you’re only generating 5

calls/month, you know your business isn’t healthy. If all of
your clients leave you, it’s going to take a while to get back
to par.
For my own business, we go through cycles of onboarding vs. not
onboarding. When we turn on our system, we can generate 5-10
sales calls per day, with ease.

We can replace our client roster fast if we need to.

You need to get to that point in your business; and the way you
do that is by knowing your KPIs -- how many calls to close a
client, conversion %, # of calls per month, week, day.

And, if you have an issue with generating sales calls, you need
to work on your lead flow, which means ratcheting up one of the
following:

1. Organic outreach
2. Paid traffic
3. Referrals

That’s really all there is to it.

I know people love to over-complicate business, but at the end

of the day, it’s mostly about how many offers you get in front
of your ideal client, and how many of these potential clients
you convert into paying customers.

Know your KPIs.

Do everything in your power to hit them.

STOP CONFUSING YOUR PROSPECTS

I put this question in here, specifically, for a few people who

I know are subscribed to this and have personally asked me this
question:

“How do I state my offer without confusing the prospect?”

This is one of the top reasons you aren’t closing deals; because
no matter how excited the prospect is to work with you, if you
botch this part, you’re going to confuse the hell out of them.

I’ve listened to dozens of sales calls of people in my

Consulting Mentorship Program over the past week, and
invariably, they explain their services like this…

“So what we do is help Realtors with their lead gen campaigns.

We do this by signing up for a ClickFunnels account, then
building you a Facebook account where we target pe…”

You get the idea.

I fell asleep writing that.

You need to be able to explain your offer from 30,000 feet. I’ve
written about this before, but it’s worth re-emphasizing:

Focus on the result.

When explaining your offer, focus on the result you’re

providing, not the service itself.

“So what we do is we help Financial advisors generate highly

qualified leads, via online marketing. It’s entirely automated
-- the high net worth leads are delivered straight to your
inbox, every single day.”

Simple, clean, and it solves their problem.

You want to take your ego out of the equation here.

No one cares about your service, because at the end of the day,
people aren’t buying a service; they’re buying a result, and
some sort of transformation.

So here’s a good exercise:

Try to get so good at reciting your offer, that you can say it
in 10-15 seconds. Also, focus on the results you’re providing
for your client. Remove any software you use, or any technical
details. They don’t need to know you use Facebook, ClickFunnels,
ActiveCampaign -- none of these words should come out of your
mouth.

The idea here is to give your prospect the bare bones, and let
them ask you anything they need/want to know. Don’t overshare;
because you’ll risk giving away too much and overwhelming your
prospect.

HOW TO LEAD SALES CALLS

I was talking to a client today.

He asked me how to handle a bunch of objections, and seemed

pretty nervous about being talked over on the sales call. The
issue here was that he didn’t know how to lead.

Nearly everyone experiences this issue, especially if you’re

new. But there’s an easy way to lead sales calls, that you
probably already knew -- and it starts at the beginning of the
call.

You see…

The tone for the call, if you will, is set in the beginning. The
first impression you make on someone sets the tone for the rest
of the relationships, so it’s important to get it right from the
beginning.
To lead the call, you must ​set the tone from the beginning, by
stating the agenda​. What this means, is that you set the rules
of the call, and your prospect places by the rules.

Here’s how I do this…

“Ok, Mr. John, if you’re ready, we can dive right in now.”

“Sure.”

“Great. So how these calls typically go, John, is I’m going to

ask you a few questions about this application we sent through.
We do this so we can reverse engineer your goals, and create a
roadmap to get you to where you want to be.

Then, if it sounds like I can help you, and we’re a good fit,
I’ll explain what I have to offer, and how everything works. At
the end of the call, you can make a decision on whether or not
you want to be apart of it.”

And just like that, you’ve set the tone for the rest of the
call.

They key here is to say this with confidence, so it’s important

you rehearse this part. If you lack the confidence to say this
part smoothly, the prospect will have questions, and self-doubt,
which is not what you want.

There are a few things to keep in mind here.

If you don’t have an application they have to fill out in order

to book a call with you, you’ll need to remove that section and
replace it with something else.

But overall, this should work for you.

REDUCING BUYERS REMORSE

This is going to be a small section, that I wasn’t going to

throw into this email initially. However, a few of my students
have been battling with buyers remorse, so I figured it’d be a
good thing to cover.

Buyers remorse can be a big problem.

You’re on the phone with a prospect.

He hits you with objections.

You handle them brilliantly.

He agrees to work with you.

Then…

He ghosts.

It happens when you’re starting out, but it’s sort of a

self-fulfilling prophecy -- it only happens because you expect
it to happen.

There are a few ways I solve this, and I break them down into:

● Managing fears on the call

● Going over the proposal together

The first way to prevent this is to manage fears, and ask

further questions on the call. Usually, you’ll be able to
instinctively tell when a prospect may ghost or not.

If you get that feeling, it may be worthwhile to summarize the

call, as well as the next steps. Even further, it’s usually
worth it to ask:

“John, is there any reason why you won’t be able to get to the
proposal this week, and send payment so we can get started?”

“Uh, not really.”

“Great. Let’s schedule our kick-off call now while we’re at it,
so we can get started on the right foot and help you achieve
<goals, etc..”>

The reason we do this, is because people are naturally fearful

of sales, and making big purchases, no matter how valuable they
may or may not be. For this reason, we quell their fears by
indicating we’ll be with them the entire way, while re-stating
value, and asking them point blank if they intend on going
through with it.

This isn’t foolproof, however, because people can still ghost

you.

Another thing I’ve been recently recommending to clients, is

that they go over the proposal/agreement with the client over
the phone.

Eventually you’ll get to a point in the call where the prospect

will say “Yes, let’s do it.”

Most people will send the agreement, and that’s it.

What you should do if you’re worried about the issue of ghosting

is suggest going over the call together.

“Great John. In cases like this, it usually makes sense to go

over the agreement together, so that there are no
misunderstandings on either of our parts. Why don’t I call you
book tomorrow at <time>, and let’s go over it together.”

This ensures there’s no error in transmission, and you can

address real-time feedback, vs. replaying post-factum through
email, which can be a pain in the ass.

TRANSMUTATION

I wrote about Imposter Syndrome before, but I had a few new

subscribers ask me to cover it, so I thought I would add it in
this letter as well. I recently filmed a video in my program
about overcoming I.S, and the feedback was incredible, so I’m
going to explain it the same way here.

Additionally, the explanation for overcoming I.S, is also a

great way to look at growth in general. If you use this, it’ll
help you break barriers, and grow your business to new levels by
essentially becoming a new person.

The way I like to explain it, is as follows…

Every person has two selves.

1. Their current self

2. Their ideal self

Your current self is an amalgamation of all your current:

● Habits
● Characteristics
● Friends/family (social circle)
● Traits

Everything you do, is because of who you are.

This​ is at the route of imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome arises because you’re doing something your

current you isn’t used to.

Think about -- if you’re working a 9-5, you’re used to your

current habits: wake up, eat, go to work, come home, watch TV.
If all of a sudden you’re cold-calling businesses, and taking
sales calls, it’s going to feel weird as hell.
That’s ​normal!

Imposter syndrome is a ​symptom of growth​.

To become your ideal self, to accomplish all of your goals, you

must become an entirely new person capable of doing all of the
stuff you need to do, in order to ​reach your goals​.

I call this process I ​ dentity Transmutation - the process of

transmuting your ideal self into your current identity.
This is how I’ve been able to grow my business so rapidly; by
embodying the characteristics I want to have right now, vs
waiting 5-years to cultivate them.

So here’s what I want you to do:

Write down who you want to be in 5-years.

● The clothes you wear

● How much money you have in your bank accounts
● Your characteristics (“I’m a stone cold sales closer”)
● The type of people you hang out with
● The type of cars you drive

Be descriptive, post pictures in your document, be as detailed

as possible. You want to create a visceral response to the
stimuli.

Now that you have an idea of who you want to be in 5-years, you
need to start embodying these traits now.

This isn’t a static process either.

Eventually you’ll reach your ideal version of you, and you’ll

need to create a new ideal version of you, who is making even
more money (or is more accomplished in the respects you
desired).

The idea is to “hack” the growth process.

I know it may seem a bit weird.

But try it out; the results and the confidence you gain will be
incredible.

CONCLUSION

Well, that’s a wrap. The third issue of my monthly newsletter is

complete. I know, it was a short one -- but that’s because
you’re spoiled anyways, and are used to my 25-page whoppers.
Next month, I have something super special in store for you that
I’ve already been planning out -- an inside look into my paid
traffic system which is generating high-quality leads for a
ridiculously low cost, and the thinking behind it.

This month was quite sales-heavy, but I feel it’s actionable,

and you can use what you read here almost instantly to add
dollars to your business which, at the end of the day, is why
you subscribed to this newsletter.

If you have any questions about anything I wrote here, or want

me to expand on it, just send me a direct message on Twitter, or
shoot me an email to ​ryan@affluentattraction.com​,
ryan@thecaip.com​, or anywhere else you can find me.

Until next month!

- Ryan Holmer

PS: I’d love your feedback on this months newsletter. So send me

an email -- tell me what you think! I value your feedback.