Becoming an Elite Closer ft. Chad Turgut

What's good, Chad? Thanks for joining brother.

Of course, man, really appreciate it. Great work with the content. The podcast, thank you for having me on. Really appreciate that. Of course.

So Chad is here to give us some sales advice people have reached out they have some some questions, they need help chat as a sales coach, and also one of the best closers I've ever worked with. So excited to hear what you have to share. Appreciate that, man.

Tell us a little bit about your background. I would love to. In a nutshell, I've been working in tech sales for about 10 years, and I've worked with enterprise level brands. And I have closed and coached many, many clients to success. What I also do is I focus on coaching businesses on how to increase their top line revenue. In addition to coaching salespeople on how they can get better, whether it's a salesperson that is starting out as an appointment setter, or a closer, or an account manager, that is an upsell, cross sell retention type of role. I helped them out from A to Z on the entire funnel on how they can have more success, and how they can generate more money, whether they work for a company or where they are whether they work for themselves. Awesome, man. So how did you get so good at sales? I know that you told me that at the very beginning of your career, you were dialing the phone a lot, right. So how did that impact you? And ultimately, what what made you as good as you are today? Great question, Joe. I would say every single year being in sales, I've probably spent over five figures a year on getting coaching and training and development for myself. I got really good at sales straight out of college when I got my first sales job in Manhattan, New York. By shadowing the best people on the floor by taking a ton of notes by actually practicing what I'm what I've learned from these other people, and just putting in high activity, high talk time crafting, every talk track every email every follow up accordingly to the specific profit prospects that I've reached out to. So in a nutshell, I've gotten really well by actually wanting to get better, and having a strong why, which for me at the time, and for me at the time was to become the top 1% of salespeople within that company. And that's carried over to every single company I've worked at. That's amazing. So let's let's go through some, some of the most in my opinion, like difficult aspects of the job, both from a mental perspective as well as performance wise, like the hardest things to do to hit your numbers. So when it comes to something like objection handling, how do you handle that? Because I I've never seen you, except that first know that people give you you always push and then by the end of it, they love you and they're your best friend. So how do you handle that that aspect of the job? objection handling. Great question, Joe. So for me, as far as objection handling and the students that I coach and teach and help the objection handling typically usually people think that it's at the end of the call or at the end of the meeting, which it's really not objection handling is actually prevented throughout the entire conversation from the opener to the probing to the qualifying to the discovery to the asking for the order. So I got really good at objection handling by starting out every call and every conversation with making it about the prospect making it about them. What's motivated them to take the call with me today on what are they currently doing where are they trying to get to what's important for them what's top of mind? What are they currently doing for that now and then positioning my product on how we could be of service right for my students and the for the for the businesses and people that I help coach and so that they can become better objection handlers. It's to find out the why on what's important for the prospect peeling the onion back going into Dr mode, and finding out how they plan on achieving their goal. So as far as objection handling, you just have to really understand is this person in a position of like speaking with emotion or logic, right. And you also have to understand the situation of what's really going on in their side of the business and what they're really trying to solve. So it's the objection handling components are one part of the full closing sales cycle. But to prevent that, it's to ask great questions, instead of yes or no questions and to really make it about them. Definitely be great advice. How about so you have zero fear of picking up the phone, you will cold call anyone from the CEO to the chairman of the board and investor, you don't care? So how did you develop that mindset to have zero fear? And how important is it to just pick up the phone and call people? It's super important. So there's something called analysis paralysis, the more you sit down and think about calling and what am I going to say? And should I reach out? Would they be interested? Are they going to reject me? Would they be on the phone with me to hear me out? There's all these things that your mind plays, tricks and games to. So the way I got really well, being in sales for 10 years, and the people that I help out is, of course, you want to become a industry expert, you want to know exactly. For example, in a nutshell, if you're reaching out to plumbers, know the type of work that they do their their location, what's important for them to type of jobs or estimated profit margins, what keeps them up at night, what type of jobs they want more how much they would charge estimated, for example, if you're selling to businesses, and you're selling a software, find out what are some some of the other competitors, why this software is important, right? You want to know, the person that you're reaching out my opinion is, you have to get really good and fast start doing a quick scan on their website, maybe their LinkedIn, maybe their social media pages, and finding out who they are dialing out having great energy, great tonality making it about them. And then asking for an appointment so that you can run them through what you have to offer if you're running a demo, or you know, have that conversation to qualify or disqualify really quickly. But I got really good at picking up the phone and calling because if you're going to sit behind a desk, and just email and text, and not really pick up the phone, you're really not going to get in front of a lot of people, and you're not going to learn more about them. So that initial call is very important. And that's something that a lot of the people that I work with in the businesses and salespeople that I work with, they get really good at because if they're just stuck in this freeze mode of just thinking about calling that energy and frequency transitions into the phone call and the person really doesn't want to hear you out, they hang up. Definitely walk me Yeah, walk me through a day in your life. When you were making 200 cold calls a day, what did it take to succeed in that environment? And how did you structure your day? How I structured my day was all of my most important follow ups, I would prioritize it for the beginning of the day. And all of my like I would focus on every single day when I came in top of funnel, how can I line up more opportunity to pitch and to follow up into close. So anything as a sales professional, anything that is non revenue generating, I would always recommend to the businesses and salespeople that I coach do not have it for the beginning of the day. So when I would walk in and start my day, my most peak of energy would just from 8am, till, let's say two to 3pm. I'm reaching out cold calling a ton of businesses trying to get in front of them. And I'm also following up with all of my previous people that they said, Hey, follow up, we want to hear more or follow up for an answer or follow up to close, I would do that. So I would say that first initial job where I did 100 200 cold calls, I was doing it because I was very focused on outreach and focused on getting in front of a lot of people. If you're in sales, I don't care what you sell, whether you sell cars, boats, houses, advertising, SAS, if you're only going to reach out to maybe 20 3050 people a day, and you expect to make six to seven figures a year in commission. You're not going to get there. The reality is you need to really have a lot of activity, get in front of those people and be really good at nurturing and following up. For example, myself, I would never reject any prospect unless they said hey, we're not ready to buy even when they said we're not ready to buy, I would still nurture the relationship, I would never put them and change the status in my own CRM to reject it unless I knew that we 100% can't help them out. And they're just not a good fit for the long term. Definitely. So also you have a real good sense of urgency. How did you how did you develop that? Because I remember, when we work together, there was a good lead that came in, and the managers were like, hey, anyone can go after it. And in my head, I was like, alright, you know, after lunch, I was thinking, maybe what I would say, and next thing I know, bro, you were on the phone call. And you had them booked for a meeting within like, 1015 minutes. So where did you where'd you get that sense of urgency from? So the service, a sense of urgency came from me through just sales psychology, like people want, what they can't have. And people want, typically things that are limited. So for example, the first company that worked that, we would have a ton of traffic for blue collar business collar owners for paper call and paper lead advertising. So I would always pitch it, hey, we have an influx of calls coming in, in your area only if it was true, of course. And we're looking for one or two more businesses that can take the calls, do you mind telling me a little bit about your business and how much availability you have, right? So position it, positioning it with urgency that we're looking for someone right away. And that exclusivity we're looking for once two more businesses within this area. Same with when I worked at a fortune 10 company, hey, we only work with a dozen brands per quarter, we're very specialized team here, we want to learn a little bit more of how we could be of service if there's a mutual fit for us to allocate our resources to your company, so that we can help you scale, right. So any for any salesperson out there, if you want to sell and you want to have that urgency and exclusivity. Think about what would pique your interest into taking that call if you were a business owner, right? For almost every single product out there, there's definitely an urgency factor and exclusivity factor. And you want to come up with that and craft that in your own message. Because without that, if you're just dialing out and you're just trying to pitch something, you're really not going to get a lot of stickiness, unless there's a real big need.

Yeah, and you you do a good job at bringing it back to their core problems, you're not just going and pitching the the service itself and feature selling, it's always tied back to something that actually moves the needle.

Exactly. One of the things that I would love to mention to our viewers and or listeners, Joe is it's really, really important to make it about them. And to also reference maybe some other brands that you're working with in their space. So for example, for the people that are watching and or listening, hey, Joe, I'm actually calling from XYZ. We're working with similar brands, such as ABC in your space, and we've helped them out with blank. I personally wanted to reach out to see how we could be of service. Do you mind giving me a quick rundown on what's important for you guys for the upcoming 2024 year, for example? Right? So if you have some references, that would definitely help out. If not, you have to hustle hard crack your first opportunity in that space or in that location. So that moving forward, you can use that as a point of reference for every other conversation without revealing anything sensitive of that business or customer that you have in your book of business.

And then how do you let's say you do it first meeting it goes great. But then they're they're giving you the runaround a bit. They're not following back up. They're not showing up to calls. How do you how do you reengage? How do you get them re interested? Definitely

not to email or text or call or leave a voicemail by saying hey, I've reached out to you X amount of times that would put you in a weak frame. I would always assume best intent if you want to make a lot of commission in sales. Whether you're working for a company or working for yourself, assume investment time for example. Hey Joe, it's Chad, when you have a second please call me back. I would love to get your opinion on something and run it by you. Something casual like that. If you're emailing and there's a pretty big chain of you following up stop that if you email they don't reply maybe reply one more time to that email. Let it be a chain or two and then on the next follow up maybe start a new chain so that they don't see that you followed up in one chain a smart five times. So same situation with call Going right and you're following up, you don't want to make the call every single time and leave a voicemail every single time. Maybe you want to call and they don't pick up sandwich it with a text. Hey, Joe, hope you're doing well. It's Chad with blank, I want to run something by you to get your opinion, would you have a quick second to chat, I want to run something by you. That can be a be an approach. And then maybe on maybe a couple of days later, when you do call again, maybe this time sandwiches, sandwiches with a voicemail switching? Very important.

I like that. So a lot of companies that I speak with they do, they not only need one person to come in and close they need they need a full team to handle the amount of inbound leads that they're getting. And they're having trouble finding the right, the right people to do that. So you've managed teams in the past? How do you go about building out teams and coaching them to perform at the same way that you do?

Great, great question. Whether you're a business owner or a sales leader, I always recommend to lead by example, right? So you personally, have done that role. You have personally been successful in that role. And you're not scared to get your hands dirty. For example, some of the best leaders I've worked for. They always found out what my goals were beyond just selling, hey, it's important for you, what are some of your goals? What do you plan on doing? Everybody has different motivation, right. So getting to know your people first is very important. Some people have motivation on career advancement, meaning getting promoted, some people are motivated by being acknowledged, some people are motivated by money. Or some people are motivated by all three, right? So getting to know your people. And I personally recommend definitely to working and bringing on people that are coachable. And they're open minded. And those are typically the people that I would recommend. But most importantly, starting out a sales team. What's very, very important is to bring on people that have that grit, tenacity, to call get in front of customers, high energy, great tonality making it about the customer, instead of shoving a product or service down someone's throat, make X amount and commission. So that's what I think works really well. And of course, making the integrate making it a great culture fit instead of someone who's very toxic. Whether they're a top performer or low performer, I always want to see if they're a great collaborative person that's going to collaborate with everyone. And they're going to be a great fit, great energy. For example, all the companies that work that I worked around top top performers that were very motivated to excel and to break into the top 1% in that company like that.

So I'm gonna give you a scenario here. Let's say you're a rep, and you're struggling, you're having a down quarter, you only have a month left to pull it together. What are you going to do in that scenario?

That's a great question. I would recommend, first and foremost, connect with a couple of the top people on your team or and or your sales manager, or whoever the leader is, come up with a game plan. How many people do you plan on reaching out to for example, if you're an appointment setter, how many people do you plan on reaching out to your pipeline lists? How many appointments do you want to set or need, right? Because if you're in that chopping block, have a one month or two months left for you to keep your job or to perform? I would recommend that same with being a closer if how many people do you need to get in front of you need to know your numbers, right. And most importantly, I would personally recommend if you're in that position, you have to be the first one. And the last one out always high activity high talk time, right? And we don't want to just dial to dial just to have that number board number on that dashboard. We want to strategically dial with enthusiasm, being strategic, reaching out following up nurturing. And the last thing I would say Joe is just having that self belief that you're going to make it work. If you have that mindset of what if what if what if it's never going to work? What's going to work is you to believe in yourself and your capability that you're going to hit that number hit that metric, not only to keep your job, but for your own sanity that you can do this. And for all of our people that are watching interviewing. Sales is a very important skill whether you work for a company or work for yourself. It is one of the best professions in the world, in my opinion, to have that financial freedom and to have a skill that is the Very important whether you're selling a product or service for a company or for yourself.

Love that. So I also have spoken with a lot of people who have technical backgrounds very smart, they can code they can build their own products. They're they're not very good at sales yet. So how could How could someone brand new get up to speed and get and get good at it not become an expert not become Grant Cardone Alec Tomasi, but how could they become competent, as quick as possible,

as quick as possible, I would recommend investing into a coach, whether it's someone like me or someone else, I would definitely recommend you want to find someone that's already doing it and selling into that industry. There is a lot of Facebook groups out there, there's a lot of people out there that are on LinkedIn, I would recommend getting in front of them. I personally recommend investing into coaching to accelerate your experience and growth is key. Even for example, let's say you are trying to run a marathon right? hiring a coach to accelerate that fitness goal so that you can have that stamina to finish that race is very important. So I think that's very, very important. And it also um, you know, doubling down on what you're good at, right? Let's say for example, if sales is not your thing, you have this brilliant business idea. Okay, it's great to hire someone that can sell but you as a business owner or a entrepreneur, you definitely want to get good at sales, because you're going to be selling your people internally, that product.

Yeah, regardless, even if you're not technically sales, if you are the founder of a startup, you're gonna have to sell a lot internally as well, you're gonna have to pitch to investors. So at some point or another, you can't just outsource it or rely on a team member, if if it comes down to it, as the CEO, as the founder, you got to step up and be able to deliver a pitch when needed.

Exactly. Like, for example, I come from the hospitality background, my family owned a restaurant for 20 years from 1995 to 2015. I started working in the restaurant space for I started working in the restaurant, from the age of 13, my father would bring me in on the weekends, and I would help out, right. And my father would always tell me, that he knows how to do everything on the menu. So if the shop ever left, the business wouldn't go down.

Right? But my dad said the same thing.

You know, so it's very important to know how to run your own business and, and to have everything but you being a business owner or a sales professional, you being a business owner, that has a great idea or product, you need to get really good at selling to because like you said, you're selling to people internally to grow your vision and your team, you're selling to other investors that may be investing in your business to expand so that you can grow, whether you want to sell the business or penetrate the market.

For sure, so when we when we work together, I would come to you, I'd be like, Hey, I just wrote up this email, can you look it over for me, you would take one look, and you'd be like, this is horrible. Do not send this please tell me you haven't sent this. Walk me through some red flags like that some big mistakes that you see salespeople making that you would fix right away.

I would recommend every single call text, email, any type of communication to be custom tailored to that person you're reaching out to. Specifically for emails, long emails, people don't tend to read it. It's just the way it is. Right? So I personally used to focus a lot on subject line. Intro, why I'm reaching out how we help. And then a great call to action of asking for a time to connect. Right? So I would recommend for anyone out there that's running their own business, and they're trying to push their product out there to test the market or to get sales or whether they're a salesperson. Looking at your email and thinking to yourself, is this an email that I personally would open up and reply to? Right? You need to really think about it like that and really look at it, like look at it on your mobile device to I would even send emails out to myself and look at it on how it looks on my own personal phone. Smart. And if it's something that I would reply to. So I would recommend any outreach that you do, whether it's an email, text or phone call, you want to have a clear reason why you're reaching out be brief. Great tonality, great energy. Great Call to Action. Yep.

And then how about the pitch itself? Because there were also times where I remember I would read, I'd be at home I'd be reading a book and I would come in I would be like, Hey, I'm gonna add this to my pitch, it's gonna be, it's gonna be unreal like, and I and I give you the pitch and you're like, way too long. And then you would give it back to me in two to three sentences and be like, just say that. So how do you how do you approach that aspect of the the job as well, actually running the presentations and the pitches all that

you want to dumb it down as much as possible, the more information you give it, just it kind of dilutes the situation. Let them ask you about that, right? Let the prospect or the customer ask you, Hey, tell me more about this, right. And then you lean into that part of the product or service. When you feature dump. I don't care how high ticket the offer is, or product is or low ticket, when you feature not, when you give too much information, it may not be relevant to them. So you always want to custom Mize your product or service and you're offering on what you're helping out with, with what's important for them. For example, let's say you're a company that sells a database of leads, right? Let's say you're that company, and you're in a pitch, find out hey, what are you currently doing right now to get leads for your sales team? How often do they follow up? How are you managing each stage of that lead? Are they working it to the bone? What's an average sale worth to your company? What's the average sale worth your salesperson for commission? And what type of companies are you trying to get in front of? Where are you currently getting these leads? If you're prospecting? How long does it take your salesperson to prospect each lead? Okay, great. What made you take this call with me today? Let me run you on how some of the other companies we're working within your space, how they save time and increase their top line revenue. You run with very good

and then getting them so a lot of people will be on the phone, they'll be building rapport, they'll do a good job. It's clear what the value was they provide. And then all of a sudden, there's 30 seconds left, and they don't they don't even have next steps on the calendar. So how are you managing your time on the call to make sure that you're setting yourself up to plan for next steps and move them along the sales process?

Look, some people need time, right? You're not going to close every single deal on a one call close look, there has been times where I have closed an enterprise deal on a one call close 100%. And there has been times where I it's taken maybe three, four or five calls depending on where we're at. I personally recommend always to, after you learn about them to provide how you could help out and then see how that could be a great fit for them and ask for and you want to have different closing techniques, right? Maybe you want to do a soft trial close, maybe you want to do an alternative, close, maybe you want to do a assumptive close depending on the person. But let's say for example, that person needs time. Find out why. Come up with a clear next steps, put on the calendar on that initial call or video call or in person meeting. And then tell them hey, the next meeting or the next call or the next video call. Our goal is to get started on XYZ and take it from there. But it's always find out. What's the stall about Is it money. Because usually it's not money for anyone, any business out there that's trying to solve a problem. There, it's usually not about money. It's about either value, or a timing situation. Or maybe forgot to ask if they're the only decision maker in the in the formal.

Good to Good point. Good point. When you when you have had your your best quarters, all these different roles. What did your day to day look like? What were those key action items you were taking care of every day? That led to the big numbers?

For me, Joe, it was always to have a packed out calendar. My mindset has always been how can I pack this calendar out, be productive. And time block. I was very good at that I had a time block on my calendar for when I was going to prospect when I was going to cold call when I was going to email when I was going to follow up. And then everything else that was non revenue generating would be for the end of the day where it's not really a priority, right? So I would recommend for you know, to being successful like pipeline management, time management, calendar management, very important. If you're not going to do that, and you're just going to spray and pray and hope that you get a couple people On the phone and not have that frequency, your success is going to be very up and down very sporadic. And it's going to ebb and flow a lot. But if you're constantly reaching out, constantly loading up and replenishing that pipeline, you're going to have a ton of success, and you're going to become invincible. And that success is going to roll over into the next call next meeting, clients and prospects will feel that vibration of frequency, and they'll want to transact with you.

Amazing. So we've had the luxury of working for some some big brands, right. And that helps when you're doing outreach. And when you're running your sales calls, we've also worked for startups too. If you were working at a at a startup that barely had any case studies, zero brand recognition, how would you approach that? How would you approach getting clients and then also pitching, making them confident that you'd be able to deliver, even if they never really heard of you before,

I would personally reach out to do a free trial for them. Because my goal was I just want a case study, I want that first client under my belt, establish a great relationship with them, help them out as much as possible. We always have to assume best intent, whether we're a business or a salesperson, right. And we always want to assume best intent that the person on the other side can benefit. And they're excited to hear from us, right? We can't assume that I'm going to be a pest, I'm bothering them, they don't want to hear from me, this product sucks. Selling, you want to make a lot of money. Whether you're selling for a company or for yourself, you have to internally believe in your product, or service. And if you know, you need to either change that, or change the profession you're in, right. But I would personally recommend, let's say for example, there's someone out there that's trying to start their own business, getting their first client and that case study and that testimonial, and that referral is very important. And then you can take a tip and snowballs

from there. Exactly. And then you full you're full of great info brother. So if people want to work with you, what does that what does that process look like?

For me specifically in my team is, everything is custom. We don't have like a cookie cutter approach on pushing you to a course or telling you to join a facebook group. It's not like that. Every single coaching and training session that I do, it's custom learning about you and your business on you know where you're at where you're trying to get to. And then we put together a custom plan to help you achieving your revenue goals. And what that looks like for you. So like you said, the the coaching, whether you're LeBron Michael Jordan Ronaldo, they all got coaches, right? And it helps it helps go a long way, especially. Especially in something like this, where the results of that coaching lead to better career more money, a lot of the things that that people are after. So it's very helpful to seek, seek it out if you if you're struggling or even if you just want to level up your game.

Exactly. Perfect, brother. Well, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. We'll do more of these. Where can people find you on LinkedIn? Is that the best place? That's

usually the best place and I'll also you have my website, Joe will will put in the description. If anyone has any questions, whether it's for themselves or their business, or anything related to sales, or client retention, you can reach out I'd be more than happy to help them out. And I can't thank you for your time. I really, really appreciate you reaching out Joe and putting this together. Of course

brother. All right Talk soon. Take care.