Corinna Bench (0:00)

Raise your hand if you struggle with this problem. You have customers that are lookers but not buyers, or you have a bunch of people on your email list who aren't buying. Well, it could be that you just haven't qualified your leads. In the big wide world of sales, there is an acronym called BANT that is used by salespeople to help them qualify their leads. And today I'm going to teach it to you and hopefully show you how you can use it to move conversations along and determine whether or not this customer is actually a true prospect. Let's get started. Hey there, this is Corinna Bench and welcome to the My Digital Farmer Podcast. In today's market, it's not enough to just grow your product. You've got to know how to sell it too. Welcome to the My Digital Farmer Podcast, where we reveal online marketing strategies and tips to help farmers like you get better and more confident at marketing, learn how to find more customers, increase your sales, and build a strong brand for your farm. Let's start the show. Well, welcome to episode 289 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast. I'm your host, Corinna Bench, one of the farmers at Shared Legacy Farms out in Elmore, Ohio. I'm also the founder of mydigitalfarmer.com, which is all about trying to help other farmers like you get more confident in your marketing and sales strategy so that you can grow a profitable business. How's everyone doing today? Welcome back to the show. Happy Thanksgiving. A big shout out to all of my regular binge listeners. I'm so glad you're here and if you're new to the show, thanks for checking me out. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Go check out my first 10 episodes. I designed them to be an onboarding ramp into the marketing space and if you need some help, you feel a little green when it comes to marketing, please get onto my email list because when you do, I'm going to send you a marketing tip or resource every week for like three months to really help onboard you into the marketing lingo. You can do that by subscribing@mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe Today's podcast is sponsored by my friends at LocalLine. Imagine all of your farm sales under one roof. Localine is the most comprehensive sales software built for farmers in food hubs, selling direct to restaurants, schools, wholesale buyers, running a csa, and more. Features include E commerce, automated inventory management, a box builder, subscriptions, point of sale, and more, helping you increase your sales, save time and streamline your processes. Are you looking to switch to sales software that does it? All subscriptions start as low as $49 a month with no setup fees or sales percentages. Plus, if you join Local Line today, your onboarding manager will migrate your storefront at no cost to you, so you'll be up and running in no time. You can even pause your subscription in the off season. And bonus, as a podcast listener, Local Line is also offering a free premium feature for one year with your subscription when you use my coupon code. So head to mydigitalfarmer.com localline and enter the coupon code MDF2024. Our farm uses Local Line as our e commerce platform. I can't say enough good things about it. We love it. Make the switch today. And now back to the show. Well, for all of my friends in the United States, Happy Thanksgiving. This should be dropping the week of Thanksgiving. I hope you have a chance to take a day or two off and enjoy your turkey, your chicken, your prime rib, whatever you decided to sit down and feast upon, and that you have a chance to be with your families and celebrate. Family, this is my favorite holiday of the season or of the year. I don't know if that's the case for you too, but we have a lot of powerful traditions around Thanksgiving and we spend a lot of quality time with our family. We'll be going up to the Maumee Bay Resort, which is Mamibe State park in on LAKE Erie, about 30 minutes from where I live. It's not very far away, but we always have such a blast with our family and we play lots of euchre, we watch football. So I hope you have some time, cherish time with your family. We are still going to have a podcast this week though. How about that? And one of the topics that I've been wanting to talk about for several months now. I keep putting this episode on the back burner, but today it's it's going to be front and center. We're talking about how to qualify your sales. And the reason why this is coming up is because I feel like I keep hearing from my farm marketing school members, my accelerators, and just in interviews that I have with farmers how it seems like we attract a fair number of people into our customer base who aren't really the right fit. Are you raising your hand right now? Has this ever happened to you where you you have a customer, they buy your stuff, but you can tell they're not happy. It wasn't what they expected and eventually they kind of wiggle their way out and they get sort of purged from the customer base. But sometimes it takes a while for that to happen. And that can be a really uncomfortable process. And is there a way for us to do a better job making sure we get the right fit in the first place? Another thing I often hear from farmers is I have people on my email list, but they don't buy. They aren't turning into buyers. What am I doing wrong? What can I do to make them purchase and to click on the link or decide to come to the market and purchase? Or I have a lot of people who just stroll by my booth and look at things, but they're not actually purchasers. And I spend a lot of time talking with them at the booth, but they. They don't really buy anything. They don't turn into big supporters of the business. And that feels like a waste of time, right? It's a time suck. And it's a little bit frustrating because you're wondering, what am I doing wrong? And I think sometimes what the issue is, especially if you have people on your email list and they're just not buying, is that you have attracted the wrong customer. You have not filtered out through your messaging earlier on in your sales funnel. You haven't done a good job of explaining what it is that's going to be on the other side. And so it's very generalist in its message. It attracts a lot of people in, but really only a very small percentage of those people are the ideal fit. So today I wanted to share kind of a framework, a sales qualification framework or formula that can help you whittle down a little more quickly who is your ideal customer and perhaps not spend quite as much time wasting time. And I say that in air quotes with people who will never buy. Now, I wanted to start out with a story. This has nothing to do with vegetables. I probably could have thought of one that had to do with farm products. But this is actually a story of us buying our carpet for a living room, which we did maybe three or four years ago. It's been a while now, but it was such a vivid buying experience and process or sales process that it was one of the first ones that came to mind when I was thinking about how can I introduce this topic? Buying carpet is a big investment. It costs quite a bit of money. And we were doing four rooms in our house, in our living room, or sorry, two rooms in our house, in our big living room. This felt like a big decision. It felt Risky because I was spending so much money, and when we went around, started shopping, I. It wasn't just a decision that was made quickly. I wanted to look at the different types of carpets and the protection, the stain resistance. How soft are they? Are they going to get all flat after just a year? I have a dog, so, you know, how do I have to worry about that? What kind of quality do I really require, since we have so much traffic in and out of our house? And then the color, you know, like, is that going to look good in my living room? What's it going to do to the rest of the walls? All of that? And so it's a longer process. This isn't just like, oh, I'm going to walk into the store, and 20 minutes later I'm going to walk out. And so how does a salesperson working at a place like that help a customer make a decision and get over that hurdle of I'm going to drop thousands of dollars on a carpeting job? And I noticed that the salesperson who helped us did a fantastic job of getting to the heart of the issues of asking the right questions to get me talking. And it seemed like they knew exactly how to guide the conversation and where to take me in the store once they had sort of qualified me as a lead. It was almost like a decision tree. Can you picture that? Where somebody asks you a question, yes or no, and based on what you say, then they go to another set of questions, yes or no. And it just keeps branching off into this little decision tree. My responses led him to take me down a very customized path, and it felt very personalized. This is something that salespeople study and learn how to do. Now, I know we're not selling carpet, and we may not be, you know, trying to pitch something that's a $4,000 job. We are salespeople. We have people coming to our farm stand. We have people that are coming to our website to decide if they want to buy something. They are coming to our online store. They are coming to the farmer's market. Sometimes they're even calling us on the phone, or they're coming to an event. And we are salespeople in those different scenarios. We have an opportunity to guide them down a path, to help them figure out if this would be a good fit for them, if this product would be something they should buy one time or hopefully multiple times into the future and become a lifelong customer. Are they going to choose us? And we don't want them to choose us if we're not Going to be a good fit. Right. We only want to. We want to help them decide to say yes if and only if we feel like this is a great match. And we want to make sure that we give them the right thing so they experience success with the product. And a good salesperson is motivated in that way. They're not just like, oh, I need to get money out of this person. They're really trying to do it for the benefit of the customer as well as for their own business. But we want to help the customer. So I thought it would be kind of fun for us to get inside the head of some of these well trained professional salespeople who are taught this sales qualification framework when they go, you know, to like, sales and marketing workshops. This is an actual thing and it has an acronym called B A N T bant. And this banned formula is widely used to help sales professionals qualify their leads so they don't end up wasting time with sales conversations that aren't going to go anywhere. Right. And it helps them prioritize their recommendations, their sales recommendations down the road as well. So it has kind of two benefits. I want to teach this to you because I think that for some of you, depending on your product mix and what you sell, this is going to be really helpful. You might be doing one or two of these already, but hearing all four in like this order is going to give you some scaffolding to kind of stand on as you're having sales conversations or guiding a customer down the path. And hopefully you're going to be able to use these different elements of the acronym to weed out people who really shouldn't be customers and invite people in who really should be. And it's going to speed up the sales process a whole lot. Okay. So it's got an acronym, B A N T. Each letter represents a key aspect that salespeople consider when they're evaluating a potential prospect. Okay. And I'm going to very quickly tell you what they each stand for and then we're going to go into a little more detail for each of them and I'm going to give you some examples of how you might apply this as a farmer or farm owner. So B stands for budget, and it refers to the prospect's financial resources and whether they have the budget to invest in your service. A stands for authority. So this is where we're trying to figure out who is the primary decision maker in the household who has the authority to make the purchasing decision. Don't waste your time talking to someone if they don't have that decision making power. N stands for need. This is where you're trying to understand their specific need or challenge or pain point or problem so that you as the salesperson can decide do I have something that's going to help them and which of my products in my product suite are the best place for them to start. And the T in our acronym stands for timeline. This is where we're trying to figure out what is our prospect's timeframe for making a purchase. How urgent is this? Is there some element of urgency working on them? Do they have a deadline they're trying to meet? Did they literally run out of meat in their freezer and they need to fill it now? And if you can't provide it, they're going to go find someone else who can because they need it in the next three or four days. Right. So knowing how urgent something is for a customer, how motivated they are to take care of this purchasing issue now can be very freeing. Like if they want to buy now, then you've just removed a lot of barriers. You don't have to sit there and worry about how do I convince them that they should make this decision and not put it off for another two months? Knowing that is really powerful. So that's the formula B, A and T, budget authority, need and timeline. So by assessing these four elements, you can determine as a salesperson whether a prospect is likely to be a good fit for what you have to offer. And you can also prioritize your sales efforts and tailor your approach so that you're effectively addressing their needs and concerns. That's why this is such a powerful framework. And I want you to notice the next time you go buy carpet or something like that, or buy a car or a piece of equipment from a farm producer, see if you don't notice them. Using these questions that we're going to go through today to try and figure out how hot of a lead is this? Like, are they truly ready? Because when all four of these elements can be addressed, then the salesperson can kind of score you and be like, yep, this person is ready to buy right now. I can make the offer, put a little pressure on it and it's going to go through. I think this formula could have some usefulness for you, especially if you have higher ticket sales. So if you do things like, you know, a side of beef, or if you're doing CSA sales that are larger ticket, and even if you're looking to try and secure a buyer in the wholesale market and you're trying to Pitch your products and you're going around and meeting with different buyers, you know, what are the kinds of things you need to be aware of so that you're talking to the right person and you're trying to get them to say yes. Today's podcast is sponsored by Farm Marketing School. This is my monthly membership program that helps farmers build their marketing systems for their business. If you are a farmer that doesn't really have a good machine in place, that's helping you collect leads, attract your ideal customer, deliver your offer, nurture them into super fans, and learn how to continue to make revenue off of them, then this is a program that you might want to join. This is a monthly membership, which means you pay month to month. And inside I have over 10 to 12 different marketing projects that are 30 day project builds. And farmers can come in, they take an assessment to figure out where they are in their business, what elements they might be missing in their marketing system, and then you build the different pieces of the machine month by month. You get to decide what to work on first. I have projects about the website makeover. I have a project about building your email nurture sequence, writing a weekly email, building a promotion calendar. This coming month, the month of November, we're actually doing a live book study on building a story brand by Donald Miller. And you will be building a brand script for your farm, getting clear about what your marketing message is. So that's the live project going on right now. And in the month of January, I'm going to be releasing a new project all about marketing metrics. And we're going to be doing a deep dive on the key. It's kind of a short list of the metrics that you need to be tracking and I'll teach you them one by one. And then your homework is going to be to go find that metric for that week and build it into your workbook so that you can be tracking it. It's going to be super good. So if you want to join this community, head to mydigitalfarmer.com FMS to learn all about it. It includes a host of project builds. Each project has a teaching workshop, it has a project planner, it has templates to help make the process of building your own version a lot faster. And we also have a monthly zoom meetup where we talk out our questions. So I hope you decide to join the community. I'm super geeked about it this winter to work with my members and work one on one with them and help them go to mydigitalfarmer.com FMS to enroll now. And now back to the show. Okay, so let's talk about the first element, which is budget. The B for bant stands for budget. Why is knowing the budget so crucial? Well, if you don't know what your prospect can afford, you might be offering the wrong product that's out of their reach. Maybe you have an opportunity to present something that's a little more cost effective for them. And you don't mention that product first because you haven't even figured out, like, what table are they playing at. Right. So you know, you wouldn't sell a tractor to someone who can only afford a wheelbarrow. Right. I think of my son Jed, my older son Jed, who's recently really gotten into selling RC airplanes on Facebook Marketplace. And he has talked about this problem with me quite a bit where he's beginning conversations and threads on people are like, oh, I'm interested in this product. And he goes back and forth, you know, and he's at school and then he has to come, he comes back and he's checking. Sometimes these conversations can last for several days before we finally get some movement. And like, is this person really serious about wanting to buy this or not? And one of the things he has noticed is that they. Sometimes the person is really trying to wheedle down the price, like, to really, really low. And he's just. At first he kind of accommodated some of that and kept the conversation going. And now he's just sort of learned. This is one of the first questions I've got to get out of the way is, are they able to afford this? Like, are they in my ballpark? If they're not, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cut the conversation off because this isn't going anywhere. So price can be a qualifier. And I want you to stand strong when you say that. You know, like, we're not always trying to wheedle our price down as low as it can go so we can get as many people as possible to buy it because we feel bad. Like, no, like, price can actually, if you have a strong price that's elevated, it actually does weed out certain kinds of customers and it attracts others. And I have just not. We have a pretty elevated brand. And I have noticed over time, the higher the price seems to go, that we are attracting a type of client for whom price is not really so much of an issue. And that's just very interesting to me. So I want to attract more of those people who aren't, you know, looking at price all the time or saying, oh, I can't afford that. I, I want people for whom prices is really not an issue. Ideally, I would like the majority of my clients to fall into that. Right. So price can be a qualifier. And for your type of product, it's okay to ask this question. So how do you uncover this information from someone? How do you have a conversation around this budget question? And here's just a few strategies you could ask a direct question. So I feel like sometimes just being straightforward is the best. You could flat out ask, what is your budget? What price range are you considering? This is something you hear when you go and buy a car. This is the first question the salesperson will ask you, or some version of it. What are you looking to spend today? It's so interesting. Now that I know this formula, I see it in action all over the place. But this is just helping the salesperson know, what table are we playing at here? Right. If they're looking to spend 20,000, I'm not going to go show them the cars that are 50,000 because that's going to be a waste of my time. So sometimes just trying to figure out, hey, where, what are you looking to spend on a side of beef? Or what were you looking to spend as you fill your freezer today? You could also get at this by probing about their past expenditures, like what's been their history of spending in this area. So if they're hesitant to discuss their budget directly, you could inquire like, you could say something like, well, tell me about the last time you invested in a freezer full of meat. How much did you get? And that will kind of help, you know what their pattern has been. It just gives you a ballpark. Right. You could also offer pricing options in the conversation to try and help them bring it up. So giving them different options at different price points. That way they can self select into the range they're comfortable with. So you might say something like, well, we have different packages that range from $50 to a thousand dollars. Where do you see yourself on that spectrum? You see how that's like an open ended question, some version of that, right? And that can help them, they'll answer. And then that'll kind of help. You know, again, what table are they playing at so that you can decide, do I want to continue this conversation? Because maybe you don't. Maybe they have a number that you're like, I really don't want to attract any more customers who are at the $50 price table. Like, and then you just kind of Find a way to get out of the conversation. Or you can pivot and say, well, we have options in that price range like this. X, Y, Z. The other thing I might mention here is to try discussing the value of the investment over the cost. This is a little bit of semantics here, but whenever I've been taught about sales, they say, don't talk about it as the word cost, talk about it as an investment and talk about the word value. Like what are they going to be getting out of it? So it's not always about absolute numbers, but it's more about what's the life transformation going to be, what's going to come out of this investment. If you can demonstrate the return, the ROI that they can expect, that's really powerful. So this CSA System might cost $1,500, but it's going to save you X amount over the course of the year if you want to use dollar amounts. But you could also talk about the value it's going to have on your families, on their eating habits, on their health, how you're setting up your kids for life with learning how to eat healthy foods, how it's going to give you an opportunity to be really creative in the kitchen, how fun it is, how you're going to meet all these really neat people in the community, they're going to make you a better cook. You can start talking about some of those life changes and sometimes that helps people see that. Yeah, that's actually what I want. So let's, let's put this into. I was trying to think of like an example. After I do each of these letters, I wanted to come up with a specific example in the farming world. So let's imagine that you're selling a line of organic grass fed meat. I know I have a lot of listeners who fall into that category to a customer that's interested in making a lifestyle change, but they're a little concerned about the cost. So you might say, I understand budget's a concern. When you're switching to organic grass fed meat. Can you share with me what you're currently spending on your meat purchases and where you're purchasing it from and what changes you're hoping to make within your budget? Do you see how that question doesn't feel quite so intimidating? And it's honoring them where they're at in their journey. It's kind of empathizing. It shows that you understand and that you're listening. It just opens the door to a budget discussion. So maybe they reveal to you that they're currently spending $150 a month on conventional meat from the store, the grocery store, and now they're interested in organic options. And so you would then tailor your response to highlight the benefits of your offer and the value. So hey, our organic grass fed beef might be a bit more expensive upfront, but, but it's going to provide some superior nutrition to you. It's going to support sustainable farming. It tastes so much better. And by the way, we offer flexible subscription plans so that you can transition smoothly into, you know, the kind of eater and the kind of budget that you want to have without breaking your bank. So you can kind of show them the path and give them a specific first step. So the goal here isn't to be pushy when you're probing about the budget amount. You don't want to make them feel uncomfortable. It's just, it really is just about helping you understand what's their financial landscape so that you can make the right, best first offer that's going to fit within their means right now. And maybe over time that will grow, they'll grow into a different kind of customer. They'll graduate into more and more products and they just don't even realize it. But they just need a lower risk starting point. Maybe they're telling themselves, I can only spend $150 right now. But once they experience the value of your product and that nothing fell apart in their life because they're spending $150 on your meat, then they'll be more willing to take a step. A few months later be like, well now I can spend $175 and then soon it's $200. That was letter B. I hope that gave you some ideas. Let's move on to letter A, which is authority. Who really makes the decisions in the household. This is absolutely essential. Who has the decision making power. You could have the best product in the world, but if you are not talking to the right person who holds the purse strings in the family on this particular issue, you are not going to get anywhere. And it really depends. Like I, in my world, it seems like the women in the family seem to control the purse strings when it comes to food more than the men. But not always. That's not always the case. So make sure that you are pitching your message and talking to the right person. I was thinking about Lego kids. Please just humor me. I have two boys, right? And they were really still are really into Legos. You never really stop being into Legos, do you? But when they were younger, in their early teens and certainly in their primary school years. Wow. We went, we spent, I probably spent five or five thousand dollars on Legos. Like, it's crazy the number of kits we went through. Don't regret it for a second because they are now engineers and like my son's going to be building airplanes. And I know, I know that helped them, right? But I remember noticing an advertisement in somewhere. Where did I see it for a LEGO kit? And it was a little girl holding this cute little kit that was, you know, super easy to build. And it, the tagline was something like, this is how we build creativity in our kids. That's not the tagline, but that's essentially what it was communicating. It was not a tagline targeting a child. It was definitely talking to the parents. And that was a moment where I realized, wow, yeah, they're talking to me because I'm the one who's got the money. I'm the one who's gonna spend the 200 bucks for that LEGO kit. So it's crucial that you are engaging with the right person from the start. When you're having a conversation with a, with a potential customer, is this the person who's actually going to be spending the money? Because if not, there's going to be a few things you want to do to change that. So here's how you can identify and connect with the decision maker. First of all, just ask directly. Don't be afraid to just say something like, who's going to be involved in making the final decision of this purchase? Is that you or is that your partner? And that's going to save you a ton of time. Then you don't have to have the same exact sales conversation on the phone or in person with the other person later. Right? So just be upfront. Make sure you're speaking to the right person. I think about this too. When it comes to finding wholesale buyers. When you're trying to shop around and figure out who might be interested in your produce, again, you can be working your way through the whole org chart trying to figure out who is the person who actually makes this decision. And make sure that you figure out who that is. Or it's just gonna. You're just gonna spend a lot of time pitching the same thing over and over again. Leverage your network. So I would also just use your connections and your relationships, even your customer base. Sometimes a referral or an introduction goes a long way to getting you in front of the right person. So you can ask around to some of your customers. Hey, do you know someone that is in this space? Or who should I be talking to if I want to be selling my meat in such and such venue? Or do you know who I should talk to about offering this product? Can be a follow up question. And then I would just say like, keep your radar out and look for clues. So I try to pay attention to what the person is saying, the prospect is saying. I do a lot of listening and I try to get them to talk as much as possible in the conversation. So if they're mentioning that they need to discuss this with someone else before they make their decision, then they're probably not the final decision maker. And that's where you might say something like, well, I'd be happy to provide additional information to anyone else who needs to be involved in this process. And then of course you need to do so. So let's bring this into a farming context. Let's, let's say you're talking to someone interested in buying again, bulk beef, a side of beef. You might say, hey, I want to make sure I'm providing all the right information to you who will be making this decision about this purchase. Okay, just nice, short and sweet. I also think it's important to build rapport with the decision maker and realize that sometimes it's going to take a couple of conversations before they are ready to trust you and move forward. Especially when it comes to things like wholesale relationships. This is a waiting game, an investment where you may have to make a call or take the time to nurture a friendship and a relationship over the course of many months, maybe even many years, until there's an opening. And then, you know, you slide right in. Okay, let's move on to the letter N in the acronym. And N stands for need. And this is so important. I think this is one of the most important things, need. So why is this important? Why is this so crucial? If you don't know what challenges your prospect is facing or what goals they have, or what they want, what they want to become, then you're just guessing. Remember that every purchase is usually motivated by some kind of desire or an internal deep seated need. Not always just the external need of oh, I'm hungry and I need to get calories. But there's usually something else driving the decision to buy and you want to try and uncover what that problem is, what that pain point is. What are you trying to solve for this customer guesswork does not lead to successful sales. So you want to have a conversation to uncover what that need is so that you can tailor your recommended solution to them. So here are some ways to do that. Again, open ended questions are your friend. This is going to encourage prospects to share more about their challenge and their goals they have. So you might say something like, hey, can you tell me about of the challenges that you're facing right now when it comes to xyz? Or what's the reason that motivated you to reach out to me? Or why are you looking to purchase a csa? Share what got you thinking about it and that opens up the conversation. Let them talk because you'll hear all kinds of things underneath their words. Really listen. The need is often hidden between the lines and you can follow up with questions like hey, elaborate on that or tell me more about that or how does that, how is that impacting your day to day meal prep? If you are doing more stuff in the area with like wholesale buyers, I would say do your homework and research before you meet with them and make sure that you understand their market potential issues and opportunities that they're facing and how you might play into that because that shows that you're prepared, that you're genuinely interested in doing business with them. So saying something like hey, I noticed that you recently expanded your local produce operation Or I've noticed that you're opening a new store in Findlay in the next few months and how is that going to affect your resource needs? As you're listening to them, you're kind of asking yourself, can I meet that need? Do I have a solution for them? And if you're not a right fit, then you should stop the conversation. Right? This could end up you not only weed them out, but you know they can weed you out and that's okay. Then you save time in the long run. Okay, so let's put this into a farming context. I thought of an example, community supported agriculture, somebody who's thinking about joining your csa. So you're talking to a potential lead and you might say something like, look, I know finding fresh local produce can be challenging, especially when you're trying to navigate a busy lifestyle. So can you tell me about what you're looking for in a CSA program? What drew you to us? And then maybe a follow up question could be like, do you have any concerns? What are your questions that you have about it? What's holding you back from being all in? So try to figure out what those FAQs are, what are the objections? And then you can address them one by one and if you can break down those objections, then you've just made the sale. I feel like I spend A lot of time on this podcast really touting digital marketing, and that is primarily what I do. But there is a lot to be said for the one to one sales conversation on the phone or in person with a prospect, especially for things like a CSA or a high ticket offer. I know it doesn't sound like it's scalable, but if you're in the early stages of building your business, there is a very high conversion rate on one to one conversations. And I've noticed this anecdotally. I've also measured it with a few of my promotions and if so, if you're like in the early stages of building your business, I think it's totally worth it to have one to one conversations. To spend 20 to 30 minutes using a framework like this helping relieve some of the concerns that a customer might have, because you often end up closing the sale. Like my closing rate can be between 70 and 80% if it's 1 to 1, especially if they have reached out to me and shown interest. And I want you to just consider if you can close that sale, especially for something like a csa, when they often will repeat and come back the next year and buy more things from you throughout that year when you make other offers, their lifetime customer value is huge in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. And am I willing to spend 20 to 30 minutes of my time, which is also valuable, in order to acquire someone who's going to bring in 10 to $15,000 over the course of their time with me? Yes. You should say yes every time, especially when you're in the early stages of your business or if you can't do it because you're higher up in the management, do you have someone on your team that you could delegate this to and say you're taking care of these kinds of conversations for me, Okay, I feel like I'm going into the weeds. But when you can understand a person's problems, pain points, specific needs, their wants, you're going to be able to position your product or service as the solution they've been looking for. So you can tailor your pitch based on what you've heard from them. Right. So you might be like, hey, based on what you told me, our CSA offers customizable boxes. You're going to be able to choose the vegetables your family loves. We have an online store, so you can basically pre order, put in a bunch of money and it goes in a store credit and you'll be able to build your own box every single week and we'll bring it to Your pickup site, which is right next to your house. Like, it sounds like you're a five minute drive from one of our locations. I think this could possibly be a great fit. Right? You can provide evidence. This is another suggestion when you're trying to tailor your pitch. You can provide evidence of success stories or testimonials. Talk about how other members in your CSA feel about the product. Like, hey, one of our members mentioned that her CSA helped her family eat healthier. You could also offer a trial or a tour as part of your sort of pitch here if you want to help move them forward. If you feel like they're a good fit, you're getting a good vibe, you're like, you know, I feel like the next step for them is to just give them a chance to try it for four weeks. I'm going to give them this special offer and that might be an easier first step for them. And you can feel that out because you've had this conversation and you know that that's what you should do. Or, hey, come out for a tour so I can show you around. And now that's another micro decision that you're asking them to make and that's going to make them come and invest some of their time. It's going to make them way more likely to say yes once you give them that opportunity to come out for a tour. Very, very powerful. Okay, that's the letter N. Let's move on to the letter T. T stands for timeline. Understanding when your prospects are ready to buy is crucial because timing can make or break a sale. If your people are not actually ready to purchase because they're waiting for something to happen in their life, or they haven't moved back into the area, or well, my freezer isn't actually empty yet. I just want to make sure that this is something I can purchase in the future. Okay, well now they, they're not a hot lead, they're more like a warm lead. But they're not going to be ready to buy for like four or five months. Right. So we need to know what their timeline is. You got to figure that information out so that you can either a give them the offer and add some urgency to it to make sure they buy now, or you can put them on the back burner and follow up with them later. So here's how you might uncover your prospect's timeline. You want again, ask direct questions. So you could say something like, when are you looking to start your CSA membership? Or when is your freezer going to run out of Beef is another great way to ask that question. Do you have a deadline for when you need to make this decision? When you're, if you're talking to a wholesale client, potential wholesale client, you could say, hey, when do you typically take on new clients? When does that start? Because if you're in the early stages of investigating a new relationship, you may not actually know what their cycle is. Right. The second thing is to understand seasonal cycles. So especially when it comes to food production, your timing often is closely linked to seasonality. That also goes is the case for you. Like we all know that when it comes to finishing up beef, like there's a certain time of year that you know it's going to be ready to go to the butcher and not a moment sooner. And so that, that just may not align with when they want to have it. If they want to have that beef like next week, and you're like, I'm sorry, it's just not going to be ready for four months, then this is not a match made in heaven right now. You also want to probe for signs of urgency. Sometimes prospects have pressing needs like they need to accelerate their timeline. And so you want to ask questions like is there some kind of immediate need or a problem that you're trying to address that makes this important that we do this right now? Right. Just try to gauge their urgency. So if they have a health issue, that was kind of the example I was thinking of, or I'm not going to be in town for the entire month of July, I really need to get this taken care of now, then that might make their name rise to the top of the list. Or you'll just know, oh, they really need to handle this today or this weekend. And then I wrote down set follow up milestones. So if the prospect isn't ready to buy and that sometimes happens, if they're not ready to buy immediately, that actually happens more often than not. Then establish some kind of a timeline to follow up with them or create some kind of a system in your digital marketing so that you follow up with them at a certain milestone. So you can ask them, hey, can I check back with you in a month to see where you're at with your decision? This is something you'll hear a lot of salespeople do one on one sales do with you. You'll notice it now that I brought it up and if they give you a yes, if they're like, well yeah, you know what, how about we talk in four weeks, then go write it on your calendar or put it in your phone, a reminder to follow up with this person. And all you have to do is just shoot them a text or call them and say, hey, you asked me to follow up with you. Okay, so let's put this into a context again. I'm going to choose this time a Meet CSA membership. Let's suppose that you're talking to someone who is interested in joining your meat share and you might say, well, I want to make sure that this CSA meets your needs. When are you looking to start receiving your first box from us? And this shows that you're attentive to their timing, you're ready to accommodate their schedule and then they can give you a very specific answer. So align your pitch, tailor your conversation to their timeline. You can say, great. Since you're looking to start in July, let's discuss what's available for that season and let's get you scheduled to sign up. Create urgency when it's appropriate. If there are benefits to signing up sooner, make sure you highlight them so you can say something like, hey, we've got a limited number of memberships available. If you sign up right now, today, this weekend, I can guarantee your spot for the summer season. Or you can offer them a bonus like, hey, I'm going to give you a package of chicken breasts if you sign up by this Sunday. I remember when I signed up for a very expensive coaching program that was, I got onto a one to one call with some with the instructor and it was a really good call. I was like, yeah, I think I want to do this. And she ended the call with her pitch and she gave it a deadline. She's like, well you have, I'm going to issue you the link to go sign up and you have until this Saturday at 6pm is how long that offer is good. So I was like, oh, okay, I'll make sure that I take care of it. So you can create urgency in this conversation as well on your end, if you sense that they want to do it, you can be like, all right, well I'm only offering this to you at this price with this special offer now that we've had this conversation for the next three days, so make sure you take me up on it by then because then you know it's, it's no longer good or that the offer might change. And then again, like I said earlier, be prepared to follow up. So if your, if their timeline is indeed longer term, then just set reminders and follow up with them as you promise and tell them, hey, I'm going to check up with you in a month and see if you're ready to make a decision then. These are things that salespeople are trained to do in the world of one on one sales. Budget, authority, needs, timeline. Those are the four qualifiers that they use to figure out how hot is this lead really? And then based on how people score in each of those categories, the salesperson decides, how much time do I want to spend with this lead? Is this person someone that I really need to follow up with? Or does one of those letters need to shift a little bit before I really spend spend my precious resources trying to convert them? I don't know where this lands with you today. Maybe one or two of these letters really jumps out at you and you're like, yeah, I can apply that or I need to apply that. And that might help move some things along. But I hope that you can use all of this framework or some of this framework in a future sales conversation this coming week. Test it out and play around with it. Whether it's someone at the market who's thinking about switching to, I don't know, buying one of your more expensive products, or it's a CSA sale, or maybe it's you trying to negotiate with the future wholesale buyer. See if some of these elements in the Bant framework can help you. My goal is that you do a better job at qualifying your leads, that you don't waste as much time on customers who are never going to convert to a sale or who are never going to turn into a great customer. Maybe they'll just be someone that only ever buys once or twice a year and really, is that worth it? Is that the kind of customer that you want to cultivate or are you looking for a certain type of client? I'm doing a book study right now with our Farm Marketing School members on Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. And one of the most important things that you have to get right is you have to know who is the hero in your story. It's the very first element in the sales communication framework and you've got to make a decision. You get to make the decision as the business owner of what kind of ideal customer do I want to attract into my business? Who is going to be the hero of this story and what is their pain point and problem? And how can I help solve that? How can I guide them to the right solution? You get to determine to some degree how this all works out. You get to decide how you want to filter people in and out. So make a decision on the kind of clients that you want to serve, who are the clients that are going to create a profitable business for you, and then develop this framework, this sales framework that is going to help you qualify people so that you're getting those kinds of clients and weeding out the ones who don't quite fit. All right, my friends, that is all I have for you today. I'm going to leave the show notes for this episode@mydigitalfarmer.com 289 if you liked this episode, please leave me a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts because it really does help more people find out about the show. If you want to get onto my email list and start getting better at your marketing, I have some free stuff to send your way. You can unsub at any time, but it's a lot of lot of really good information in there. Mydigitalpharmer.com subscribe I'll send you something every week for like three months. And if you want to follow me on Instagram, I'm @mydigitalfarmer. I like to show up in stories from time to time and share some of my ideas and thoughts and connect with you there. Thank you so much for joining me today. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Have a great week and I will catch you next time. I believe in you. Bye.