This is Barry mold still getting small businesses on stock. And one of the places that your business is stuck is that you keep selling to prospects and customers that long ago told you that they had no interest in ever buying from you. And this is the way it goes. You make a sales call and you sit down with them and they're really excited about doing business with you. In fact, you may have even sent a proposal and they may have been even said, Well, yeah, I'll do that next week. So you're all excited you think you have the sale, and then next week you call them and you never hear from them.

And then you email them and you never hear from them and email again and you call them again and you email them again and you never hear from them what happens. They're telling, you know, without actually answering the phone, or applying your email, now, of course is a problem because you didn't get the sale. But it's even a bigger problem because you have hope. And remember that book many years ago that hope is not a strategy. The biggest problem is that you hold on to this prospect being a customer for your Sunday. And it prevents you from looking to other prospects, who actually have the pain you solve, and have the money and actually will do business.

And this decreases your sales. I'm going to show you in this video, how to cut your sales effort by 90% by only selling to the people that have the pain and the money to solve that pain and who are ready to buy. So let's say you have one of these prospects as promised, or as I say, threatened to do business with you. You of course call them ASAP. And then You call them within a week, and then you call them perhaps two weeks later. And if you don't hear from any of these contacts, which needs to do is send them what I call is the letter.

If you send this letter, you will get 80% of the time a response. I'm not saying it's always gonna be a positive response, but at least you'll get closure on what's going on with that prospect. And so here's the letter. Dear john, I've been unsuccessful in my attempts to reach you, and provide the information that you requested. This typically means one, you're just been busy and you're still interested in talking with me about how I can help or to you no longer interested in being a business person. I know you can appreciate the position that I'm in and I want to provide you with excellent customer service and all the information you need to make an educated decision.

What I don't want to bother with you is something about this if you're no longer interested. Could you please think Tell me which situation we're in. This would allow me to better allocate my time and give you the attention you deserve. Thanks again, Barry. Now think about what this letter actually does. It lays out a business proposition for the prospect.

Are you still interested? Or maybe you're not? And guess what if you're not, it's okay. It gives them an out, because many prospects don't have the courage to tell you no, but you're giving them permission to tell you no. Now this letter will actually get an 80% response. There is another letter that gets you a 90% response.

And it goes something like this. This is the title. I thought you were dead. Now, if you give that title to an email, you'll definitely get a response. Now you may never do business with them again, but at least you will take them off your prospect list. And we're Of course I got this was from Escape from New York.

Where snake plissken people always say to him, I thought you were dead. And it was funny because I brought this graphic at a recent presentation I did, again in Las Vegas. And a gentleman comes up to me and says with a shirt says, I'm not dead yet. So remember, the idea is just to get a response. So if you either do business, that customer or move on and let them go. Now what you really need to do is to make this work is review all the list of outstanding proposals you have.

Note, when you had the last contact, follow the schedule that I talked about, contact them now contact them again in a week, contact them in two weeks, if you don't hear from them, send them the letter. And again, if you don't hear from them, you've got to let go and put them back in the marketing funnel. It doesn't mean that their answer is no forever. If they don't contact you, their answer is No, not now. Remember the most powerful answer we can get When trying to sell our product or services to customers is of course, yes. But the second most powerful and important answer is no.

I would rather get a quick no than a long drawn out maybe, because many times maybe, is really just a no. Think about the last time that a customer told you maybe. And within the month they actually bought something from you not very often. Now, there are some customers out there that actually keep you stuck. Think about the ones that you hate. Now, I know that hate is a strong word, but the ones that you just can't stand doing business with.

Think about the ones that you shy away from communicating with. Think about that you're always looking for better customers. These are the ones that you really need to get rid of. So here's the steps to do that. First of all, you got to stop searching. It is your responsibility to do business with customers that You feel you can serve, make a difference.

And of course, make a profit. Think about which ones are really the proper ones. Because just because someone does a lot of business with you, or takes a lot of resources to do that business doesn't mean that they're profitable. And the financial section of these videos, we'll talk about how to make sure that a customer is profitable. But you also have to look at which ones are actually and I use this a very important word, poisoning your team and your company. Some customers actually holding you back from growing your business and getting unstuck because they're weighing you down.

Now, a value of a customer just doesn't have to be just in revenue. It can be in as I said, the profit they make, but it also can be in the timing of that revenue. So for example, if your company is flat out around the holiday times, and they do business in January, they may be a very valuable customer, because you can serve somebody Else during the holiday time when you're very busy? Does that customer give you referrals? Do they create reputation buzz, like we talked about in the last video? Do they stay with you for a number of years, their lifetime value is much higher?

And is that who is the customers brand? So for example, I know that any of you would much rather have a famous celebrity, like Oprah Winfrey do business with you, rather than me? That's because if she says she does business with you, it will raise your brand. Now, how do you go out and actually fire a customer? How do you figure out which ones you should fire? First thing you have to do is think about if you are no longer helping them, because if you're not helping a customer, you're not doing them any service and eventually they'll leave and certainly you're not helping your company.

If that customer is actually disregarding your advice. That's just a precursor for them leaving you so you might as well set it on your own terms. The customer is not willing to pay a price that you can do business at a profit. every customer who's worth anything should understand that you've got to make a profit, doing business with them, or you really can't be a great business, and they can't be a great customer. Another time you should leave a customer is if they ask you to do something that is illegal or unethical. This can lead to nothing really good.

And especially with social media, this could in the end wreck your company, or, most importantly, and I see this a lot. Unfortunately, the customers has really become inappropriate with one of your employees or disrespected your company. So how do you go out and actually fire a customer because you don't necessarily want to do it today? It could be a disaster for your company, especially if they add a lot of profit. The first thing you knew is if it's something unethical, illegal, you should seek legal advice or get Your HR consultant or in house person to help you revisit the economic value of that customer and understand exactly the kind of profit they bring to your business. If, in the end, they bring too much to your business, too much profit, you may have to meet with them, and then reset boundaries for doing business together.

But if you do not want to keep this customer, you really should create a plan to terminate them. And the way that you do that is, first of all, when you fire a customer don't permit any conversation about the former customer between your employees. Again, this leads to nothing that can be good. Identify a series of prospects that actually can replace the profit for this problem customer begin to phase the fired customer out, perhaps you have to show them that they would be much better off without you or maybe they should go to one of your competitors and then set an internal date. on which to do the termination. Remember, this cannot necessarily be done overnight.

But it can be done with planning over a number of months to make your business much more profitable and get it unstuck. Remember, you've got to love the customers that you with. This will really help your business, get unstuck and moving forward. Now reviewing this video, think about striving for minimal achievement, and what's the one change you're going to make as a result of watching this video? This is Barry moult, still getting small business unstuck. Have a great day.