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The Advanced Selling Podcast
Bridging the Gap: Between-Meeting Engagement
00:19:26
In this episode, Bill and Bryan tackle a critical but often overlooked aspect of the modern sales process - what to do during the time gaps between prospect meetings. Moving beyond outdated practices like sending marketing brochures, they explore...
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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B
Welcome back to the Advanced Selling podcast. The longest running sales podcast podcast history. We're entering our 19th year and we can't wait to celebrate with you in September of 2025. I'm Bill Caskey.
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A
Brian Neal here.
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B
Welcome back. If you are a new listener, go to advanced selling podcast.com. there is a Hot 25 list of the most popular podcasts. You do not have to start at the beginning, although I know some of you like to do that. But we're 2,000 episodes in, so that's going to take you a long time. We're talking about things today that are a little bit different than we talked about 16 years ago. Our voices haven't changed. Our microphones are the same. We've gotten older, wiser, a little heavier.
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A
I said this morning, I was kind of griping about something. I don't want to say what it is, but I said to my wife, I go, I'm an old man, aren't I? She started busting out laughing. I'm like, I am. I just am. I'm getting those old man traits. You sort of get complainy. I'm speaking for myself here. I'm just doing. I'm fighting it off a little bit and I'm embracing it. I'm like, you know what? This is part of what happens.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So I'm trying not to be that way.
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B
Yeah. I did that the other day. I. I filmed a video and it was with my phone and it was. I was kind of looking down and the light was. The lighting was not good. My hair was long, so I looked like Paul McCartney with his old grandmother. Looks like an old granny. And. And then I, I watched it back and I was appalled. I was like, oh, my God, don't ever let this go out. Because I'm used to having light and having some, you know, looking up light, having a decent microphone. And it was like, so I'm. I'm with you. And I looked. I looked 100 years old. My cheeks were all sunken in.
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A
It just happened. It's weird, isn't it? Yeah. But we're going. Speaking of old men, I went to a Bucket List concert on. Was that Friday or Saturday? Saturday night. I took my son. My scene. My son's. My youngest son's. A senior in high school. Took him as girlfriend. He's a bit of an old music soul and he is following in my footsteps playing piano. He also plays harmonica. I went to see Billy Joel and Sting. Oh, it was fantastic. It was at Lucas Oil Stadium. So it's a Big. It's a. It's a stadium show. Big stadium show. Sting is awesome. And he is in such good shape. Man. He's like 74 or something like that. Man, he is ripped. He can sing like he could when he was 30. Yeah. Really great. Just him and a guitarist and a drummer.
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B
Was his son there?
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A
Music? I don't know.
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B
Okay. His son plays with him. He was a guitarist, but. Okay. I don't know. He may bring him to smaller venues. We saw him at a smaller venue.
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A
Okay. This guitarist looked older than sting. 74, if that tells you 58 too. So I didn't think about that. Good point. Could be. Actually, now that you're saying that, just. I don't know for sure. Billy Joel was just fantastic. He just puts on a good show. He plays all the stuff.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Hasn't lost a step and his voice is, you know, dropped a little bit, but he acknowledges that. I just love how he owns that piano. Playing was fantastic. Crowd was packed. My son was like, this is so amazing that this guy is like. It's just him and a piano at the core and there's 70,000 people there. This is crazy. It was awesome. I'd heard.
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B
I'd seen somebody rank try to rank. Do you like Billy Joel better than Sting? And I wasn't sure why that was, but apparently they're on tour all over the country, so.
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A
Yes.
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B
Sting. We saw him in a venue of like 2,000 people up at Carmel. The Palladium.
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A
Yeah. Yeah. Repping. I like it.
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B
And. And that was best concert I ever saw. Plus, we were six rows back and wow. His voice and. And the crowd. I mean, it was just. Yeah. I mean, I've always liked staying, but, boy, when you see him in concert, you really like it.
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A
It's amazing. Isn't it? Just amazing. His vocal and just. He was just really awesome, so. And I just love being able to experience that with my kid, you know? He just loved it, too, and loves all the songs. And I guess there's a little. There's some. His generation. They all know a lot of Billy Joel songs. And several of his friends were there, like. Yeah. On their own. They're really into the song Vienna. I don't know why ever buzzed up on social media. Vienna. The song is kind of an obscure Billy Joel song. Vienna waits for you when will you realize. Yep. Kind of a B side. Ish. Or an obscure album. Billy even called that out. He goes, this is a single. It wasn't even meant to be a single. It's on an album. None of you have.
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B
Anyway, people start liking it, so they love it.
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A
It's funny, isn't it? Yeah. So he's going around the country. If you get a chance, see Billy Joel. He also has Stevie Nicks as a guest in some of his shows and Rod Stewart as a guest in some of his shows and then Sting in some. So check it out. That's my plug, Dilly. Joel needs the help. He really does. He needs some promotional help from the advanced selling podcast. So he's gonna call it out when you're there. He's gonna go, show hands, who's here from the advanced selling podcast. Quick show of hands. There's 70, 000 of you here. Anyway, 30,000. Okay, topic. Today we talked about money, money, money last time, which was a great topic. Numbers, really more than money, I guess, but number, numbers. Today I want to talk about a little more tactical thing it, which is. And this is version 2.0, we've done this before, but there is always a time period in the sales process in between meetings that you're having with a prospect. And it. It struck me that as time has gone on, what we do in that interim gap has changed. And some of you do nothing, and some of you do what you used to do, which is. Well, I still send them the marketing brochure. I send them some, you know, some video from, you know, 2005. But I want to talk about what's the modern version now that we're in 2025, of what to do during the sales process in between the meetings. And I want to brainstorm that idea with you, Bill, a little bit for our listeners so they can kind of examine their own, you know, gap plan, so to speak. Gap, meaning time gap.
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B
That's a great topic.
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A
Yeah, because it.
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B
Sometimes it feels like we can lose momentum if too much time goes by where there's no connection. And we do lose momentum. And yes, you know what? What was really exciting to them when they were on the call six days later? Not as exciting.
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A
Exactly.
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B
Now you can't be calling them every day. And so this is a good, really good topic.
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Yeah. You mean I have not. I'll start. Well, this is. This is my topic, so it's a crappy topic. I'm kidding.
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B
Here was last week's Mine.
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It was yours. It's a callback. Free listeners. Callback is Bill's bills. We'll tell our producer, Travis, just to call last week's topic, just call it Bill's topic. Don't even say what it is. It Goes in the vault. This is Bill's topic. It was a great topic, though. This one's not so good, but still valuable.
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B
But maybe it'll turn into something.
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A
We'll see. It's not so far 10 minutes in. So the first thing I, I think that needs to be done. Now remember, this isn't like. If you're running a tight process, you should have dates, schedule along the way. So I'm talking about things, this isn't chasing someone down stuff. This is more like they're, they're in process with you. But there is still a 7, 8, 10 day gap between your next, your now meeting and your next meeting. What are you doing between there? The first thing I think that has to come into play these days that was maybe not so much in the past, is customization. I think we need to really work hard as we're listening to a conversation rollout with a potential customer of hearing things that relate to some of our other engagements or other clients and customers. And so an example of that would be I'm calling on a company that is a, a distributor of machines or, you know, big construction equipment or something like that. And I hear something about the distribution model. Well, our, the manufacturer doesn't, blah, blah, blah. I hear something, I think in my mind, I go, okay, who else do I have in my client base that has a similar thing like that? So I might make a connection like we talked about that last time. I go, hey, hey, Bill, you know, Tom here runs a company similar to yours. I know our meeting's not until next week, but I wanted to put you two together if you could find some time to hop on a quick call, do it. If you don't, no big deal. But he had these three things that you talked about and they'd be a great resource for you to hear how we've employed the system at his place. Just that. Okay. But it's cut, it's thoughtful. It's thoughtful, it's customized.
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B
I love it. So that's. So the introduction to someone else who is similar is part of one of.
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A
Those strategies of filling the gap a hundred percent. Yep.
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B
I like that. Here's one that I have that's a. I think we've talked about it before, but nobody does it, so that's okay. And that is when you have a meeting. Like, you know, I had a meeting last week and I didn't do that. I didn't take my own advice here, and I think I will here today. But whenever you have a meeting with someone, if it's a significant, like we had an hour long meeting. There's a lot of stuff happen, a lot of stuff went on, a lot of good comments, a lot of good questions. Create some kind of an article or a video or something. Don't mention the, the prospect's name in here, but you could even say I, I've had some calls recently with people who have had these three type these three questions or these three concerns or trends in their marketplace are, are as follows and speak as directly as you can to those people, not by name. And then put it up on, put it up on LinkedIn and then send a note to your people and say, hey, I recently, I recently published this, thought you might like to see it. You're not saying to them, hey, after our meeting I went and recorded this because it was so. No, you're not saying that. You're saying recently I, I did one of these and I thought it might make sense for you to hear it. And then they watch it and they say, geez, this is good. This is exactly what we talked about.
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Yes.
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B
Now you've got to, this has got to be a big enough deal. It can't be a $100 deal. You're not going to do it. But if it's a $100,000 deal or higher or you, you can generate 10k from it, it's worth you spending an hour shooting a video and putting it up on YouTube. You all should have a YouTube channel by now. I'm sure you do. Or, or on LinkedIn or on a website. I'm sure you can hatch a web page, you know, out of nothing. Yeah, but yeah, that.
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A
It's great.
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B
Yeah. It feels then to them like, okay, this is, man, I, I wasn't sure about him when we were talking, but now he's, he's speaking our language.
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A
It's some. And it's something different. That's the main thing too for me is like, like you said, Bill, we've talked about this. No, it's still, the vast majority of our listeners are not doing these things and to create some video or landing page or some, someplace to go like a portal. There's actually a really, really kind of buzzy software now going on that they call them virtual sales rooms where sort of all the sales stuff is sitting there. There's several of those out in the world. You can go look them up. But that's a, that's a buzzy thing right now. So here's another one. And you have to be thoughtful here and good intention. We Talked last time about numbers to measure. New math. One of the new math things that we talked about was making introductions to people. What better thing to do? My opinion, there's not a better thing to do than to make a potential introduction for my prospect to one. A customer of theirs. A potential customer. So again, I'll stay in my track of Bill, you work for McAllister Machinery, a big outfit, which I think you used to, and you sell bulldozers. And this guy that I'm really good friends with owns a really big construction company. You probably know each other, but I don't know that you do. You know, And I can make an introduction to you guys during my sales process because it's this extra thing that can come along when you work with us. You know what I mean? And I don't care where it goes. I'm just making the intro. But I'm like, hey, some stuff we talked about. You two should get to know each other. And it doesn't even have to be the first one.
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B
How's that different than the first one you did?
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A
The first one would be more related to what I sell. The first one is more about, hey, we. We've got the sales operating system. Plug it into. Yeah, here's what that guy did. This is strictly a potential customer. Yes. 100. Because the person I intro them to may not be a customer of mine. They just might be a friend of mine, right? Yeah, might be a friend. Just trying to help them out. But to show them, like, hey, I'm listening and paying attention, I want to make a connection for you. That's one.
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B
I like it.
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A
Like it.
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B
Okay, here's another one that I had. And we're actually in the process of creating this for us, and I'm recommending my clients do this. And that is have a library on your webpage somewhere or on your often remarked about YouTube channel. Have a. Have a library that contains the things that they need to know about you and the work you do. That would connect. That would connect you, for example, your story. You know, tell. Have a video there about your story, like where you grew up and how you came to this business and why you're in it and why you love it and how you serve people and help people. I want to know your story. I have another video there that talks about trends in the business or misconceptions or big picture economic regulation trends or whatever. Educate the prospect a little bit. Have another video there that talks about our process. What does it look like to work with us? Because the rule Is. And I don't know if this is legit, but I've heard it so many times, and I probably believe it is, that a customer needs to consume a certain amount of hours of you before they really have trust in you. And that's why I think that it used to be. It used to be that you could have one call with somebody and they were like, okay, man, let's do this. Let's. Let's go.
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Yeah.
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But now we have become so suspicious and. And hesitant about putting all our faith in somebody that we don't really even know just because we're on a call with them. We don't know people from last week. They still don't know me. We laughed and had a great time, but they don't know Bill Caskey.
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Right.
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B
And so were. Were we to have had this library done? It's not quite done yet. And this is a digital library. I'm not talking about building and library. You understand that physical.
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A
Right. It's got so far in the vault. It's got one podcast episode, but you.
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B
Could put podcast episode, anything that would be useful for your customer to get to know you a little bit. I think that would be a great thing to send in the gap between meeting one and meeting two.
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A
That's really great. And I'm not a big power user of this. My team makes fun of me for this. But if you're a G drive, Google Drive kind of person, you could actually put all those assets, as they call in the Google Drive and just say, hey, here's some stuff. Poke around. Because some people love that. More people love it than don't. Right?
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B
Yeah.
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Go poke around here. Some videos in there to watch, and they're named. Well, so it says, get to know Bill Caskey. What's it like to work with Bill? There's a video and it's. It's. It's tagged. Three minutes, right? That's awesome. Here.
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B
Here's a.
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Here's a. Here's a G drive with some videos and some documents you can take a look at. That's fantastic. That's great.
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B
In between stuff, because right now, when you. If you were to send them links to these things, they would be all over the place. Totally. One on your about us page, on your website, one on a YouTube channel. One, you know, but have your owner, if you're not the owner of your firm, have your owner shoot a video and talk about the origin of the firm. How we came to be. What's our story? What did we. We almost went out of business 10 years ago. Then we pivoted those. Those things are invaluable for people to. To really connect with you at a deeper level in between those calls.
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A
Okay, that's really good. Let's see. My. My last one I'll add is. So it goes along with that, but it's a slightly different with video. If you send video, we are just huge proponents of using software that's trackable to do that. So we use co video. Friend of the show. They're kind of off in the automotive space now. They've sort of sunset the rest of their side of their business. There's one called Vidyard who's really popular. A lot of sales orgs use Vidyard. But what we love about those is they're trackable. You get all the data that says if you do a video for someone, how many times it gets watched and. Or who it gets forwarded to, so you can follow along with that. And I know there are other trackable type softwares for things. I love that with email, PDF. You know what I mean? It just. It informs you a little bit about what's going on. You know, you do a video for someone, no one watches it and like, so that. That just adds on to the previous idea too, a little bit.
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B
And they will. It also tracks who they forward it to.
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A
It does. Correct. And how many times they watch it and how long they stayed on it. Yes, all the above. All the above.
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B
That's great. I think that that's Loom. I think Loom as well. I don't know if Looms is trackable, but figured, yeah, there's a lot of them. Yeah, a lot of them. You have to be judicious with that. I think there was a time when everybody was sending those things.
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A
I was like, yeah, calm down.
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But I think if you can. If you can link that up with the thing that I just talked about, which is the library. Those two things really work nice together.
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A
Yes.
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B
My last one here. And I want to thank you, incidentally, for this topic. It's a fantastic topic.
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A
My topic.
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B
It's right up there with mine.
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A
We're struggling.
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B
It's okay.
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A
We're getting through it. Finding some stuff here. I'll try to. I'll try harder next time to come up with better topics.
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B
Yeah, you're gonna have to employ AI next time.
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A
I will.
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B
Or maybe you did this time.
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A
I did not.
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B
The last one would be always, always have something to invite people to. Like I've got a webinar coming up on the 19th. 2. I'm gonna do one on the 19th and 26th of February. And so if this person who I talked to last week, if I reach out to them and I don't hear from them, I will probably just say, look, sounds like you're not moving forward. That's cool. We have a webinar coming up on the 19th, and that's a very low risk way for them to get a little bit more, hear a little bit more about me and what we do. And so if you always have something that's sitting out there, and I like master classes, virtual events, webinars, whatever, but it could be. It could be a panel discussion that you do online. It could. There's lots of different things you can do, but have something that you can invite people to that feels like it's not just you harassing them for this in the sales process.
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A
Yeah, that's a great, great idea. I love. That's a whole other topic. I love that idea of. I call it hub selling. It's being the hub of the wheel. It's really, really good.
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B
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Okay.
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A
Good stuff. So a decent topic today. Not the best, but we'll try harder next time.
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B
So I hope you guys, I'm gonna send you a thank you card later today for this.
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A
We'll keep this one in the shoe box. We'll keep bills in the vault. We'll keep mine.
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B
Travis, let's not. Let's not roll on this one until.
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A
I have a chance to listen to it anyway. If you're not in the Insider, go to the advancedlingpodcast.com website. Join the Insider. Best bang for your buck, no questions asked. Great community live training from my friend Bokaski. And find us on LinkedIn if you would, please. And yeah.
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B
And if you're not, if you do not get our emails, go to same site, advance selling podcast dot com. Just put your name and email address in and we'll make sure you get. Because we're doing some email, some recaps of Insider, and so we want you to get access to those.
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A
Hop on that.
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B
For sure.
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A
So. Okay, that's it. See you next time. Bye.