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The Advanced Selling Podcast
Right Under Your Nose
00:11:55
Ever consider that the opportunities you’re chasing might be right under your nose? In this episode, Bryan highlights why your best prospects aren’t always new—they’re already in your CRM. Learn how to turn your "Closed Lost" and "Inactive...
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Foreign. Welcome everybody to the Advanced Selling podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in podcast history. Two minute drill. So fast. Two minutes feels like 20 because it is not really staying under 10. Doing my best. Hey, two minute drill with B. Neil here outside. Solo episode. Bill's caught in the snow somewhere, I'm guessing, but he's the inspiration for today's episode. Remember, we're powered here on the 2 Metro by blind zebra sales operating system sitting here. Look at that. Certified coaches running around implementing the operating system within their company, teaching hundreds of salespeople to make selling really, really simple and straightforward. Now's where I do the quick studio change. Hang tight, real. Three, two, one, go. And done. Gotta start timing myself. If you're not watching, you're like, what is he doing? I just, I have a way to switch the. It's very high tech, very high tech in the studio here. The advanced Selling podcast album art and the Blind Zebra sales operating our sponsor system are gets interchanged. I need to do it like with a digital thing. It would be fun to do. Hey, so today's episode, 2 minutes real here we're going to talk about what's under your nose. It's not a mustache. It's not your lip. What's under your nose is a bazillion dollars of opportunity. It's right under your nose. It's right under your nose. And yet you're so bent on going out and finding new and then you've got so many people telling you to cold call. Cold call. I even had some guys on there. I love them. 30 minutes, those guys. 30 minutes. Present club guys are awesome. Cold calling works. It's like why it works. But let's look right under our nose before we do all these things. So I'm going to give you two places to look and then I'm going to tell you what to do with these two lists now BC Bill Caskey is not with me today. Talks about this all the time. It's one of my favorite things Bill talks about. There's actually a book. I don't think I ever read the book. I think Bill wrote the book. It's called Acres of Diamonds. I don't think I've ever read the book. It's a great title though. But I understand what it's about. I think this is about just looking. It's what, what's under your nose. Like what's right behind you. And so I'm going to give you a to do item along with the where to go to find things right under Your nose. If you're a cold calling person and you like to go out, keep doing that. That's not a problem. Most of you aren't. Most of you like to warm things up and that sort of thing. So I'm going to give you two lists to work and I'm going to tell you how to work the list, okay? And this is really common sense. It's right there. But most of you don't go back and do this because you're so bent on going out getting new. You're also bent on what's good right now, like what's green, what's rolling. You don't go back here because it's a little triggering. You might have a little ptsd ish stuff with it. But you got to get over that. We talk about detachment all the time. You got to get over that. So here are the two places to go look in your CRM. I don't care if you're HubSpot or Salesforce or Sugar or any of those. It doesn't matter. Okay? You should be able to go print a list that is called Closed lost opportunities. Closed lost opportunities. And I want the closed lost opportunities list to be one of your number one go to prospecting lists from now on. The closed loss list should be your number one prospecting list from now on. So let's talk about the mechanics and why that is. At some point along the way, the only way to get close lost in a CRM is to have had an opportunity open with a prospective customer at some point along the way. This little idea of us working together felt good. It felt good enough to have some sort of conversation, and that conversation felt good enough to open up some opportunity. And so I did, and I opened up an opportunity and I went through some process with you, and then for either your side, my side, somebody decided it wasn't good and we lost it. Close lost it. This is sort of like dating an old girlfriend or a boyfriend. I get that. Right? There's a. It's a little loaded. It's a little loaded. But you know what? Over time, just like time kills deals, time also kills awkwardness, doesn't it? Time kills resentment. Time kills blame. Time kills anger. Time can kill a lot of things. It heals a lot. And so because close lost is so definitive and we tend to think about selling as such a straight line with an answer and it's a yes or no. And if it's no, it's like evaporates. We never look at it as what it really is. Which is sort of an infinite loop. I love quoting Deepak Chopra. You know, if the universe is infinite, and then therefore, you are the center of the universe, which you are because you're the center of the universe. And he would also say that. That every life is a circle. It never. It just keeps going. Selling is the same way. So how do you mechanically take that concept to circle? It never stops. It's not linear. And put it into play. The first thing you do is you use your closed lost list as your number one prospecting list. Now, because time heals and time makes anger go away and resentment go away and hurt feelings go away and all these things. It goes away because that is the truth. There's a time element to this. So you need to decide for yourself. Where's the most ideal place to prospect on your close lost list? All right, I don't think the most appropriate place to start prospecting is a deal that was closed lost last month. That feels a little too raw, you know, that's like, you know, your. Your girlfriend left, you know, and while she's at the end of the driveway, you come running back out there. Wait, don't leave. All the plants will die. If anybody knows what movie that's a quote from, I'll give you 50 bucks, email me. Don't leave. All the plants will die. So that's a movie quote. I'm a boom. I'm not a boomer. I'm a gen X. But anyway, sorry, I digress. So that's too soon. A month is too soon. Closed loss from 1997. Probably a little too far away. Probably some change. Don't even know if they still exist. We don't know anything. Somewhere between. There's the answer. All right. But I want you to think about I personally, for us at Blind Zebra, we like that six to 12 month. So six enough. Six months is enough closeness to have remembered what happened. Six to 12. And it's enough distance to good things have changed. Maybe bad things have changed. I don't know. Something. Something has changed. But there was some closeness. You know, we've got a brand new offering that we didn't have last time we talked to you. It's a great thing to talk about. We don't know what. Maybe there's some new leadership. Maybe they got bought by a private equity firm. Who knows what. But that 6 to 12 month window is really good. So first lesson, Use the closed lost list as your number one prospecting tool always. Six to 12 is that little area where it's most ideal. Okay, 25 years before too long, last week, too soon. You get it. Okay. Very similar. One a little bit different would be inactive clients. So most of you can run a list from your serum of inactive clients. Now what's the difference between closed loss and inactive clients? Should be pretty simple. Closed loss never became a client, inactive clients did. Closed loss never became a client, inactive clients did. So they didn't just go through a process and start a meeting and we open an opportunity and then we talked through it. They went all the way to I want to work with you, shake hands, contract sign, work together, boom. And then they left at some point. It's amazing to me how few salespeople think about going back to those people that left. All the pressure is on whatever they left for. I think it's fantastic to go back now. You know what the advanceling podcast, we believe in abundance and good intention. So what we're not trying to do is, you know, hope bad on other people. That's not the deal. But how many times have you, has someone left you? Gone away like for a better pricing or different feature function thing or whatever. They left or you got a new buyer in, in the house and things just didn't go well and they came back. That happens to us. What doesn't happen enough is the salesperson initiating that. And that's what this one's about. This is about the salesperson initiating, being the one to start the first domino, hit the trigger that says, okay, we're going to have some conversation for someone that's been gone. Okay, now that also is time based. If they just canceled their contract, same deal, it's January 2025. If they canceled their contract and it ended 1231, 24, little too soon. Let it cool off, man. If they haven't been a client, you know, two Winter Olympics back like eight years. Yeah, you know, will even know you do even know they were a client, they may not know they were a client. So somewhere, again, timeline is important. Come up with a parameter for your timeline. 6 to 12 is a great thing. For the inactive client, it might be a little longer because a lot of people enter into contracts that are a year, two years, whatever. So that one might go a year to two before you know, when you go back and say, hey, they became inactive a full year ago. So they worked with us in 24. I'm sorry, 23, they canceled the contract. I didn't work with them at all in 24. Here was 25, it's April 25, I might shoot them A call because they were a really good client back in 2023. If they were a client, they'll remember you more they're than they will if they never became a client. Their memory will be better and you're just checking in. The other good outcome that can, that can come from the inactive client list. I like to think that they were at some point happy. You like to think at some point they were, they liked what they had. Not only might they come back around and boomerang. If that doesn't happen though and you ended well, they may be able to connect you to somebody else and then they become a referral source for you, which people are typically flattered by. If they did good work, they felt bad leaving, it ended well. We always like things to end well. And if they did, that person cannot only boomerang as a client come back. They can also become a great referral source for you. Okay, so two lists that I recommend you work very, very diligently that become two of your top prospecting list. One is closed lost. The other is inactive clients and use it as a prospecting list. So you're constantly working at it. This isn't an event thing that I'm recommending. This is the actual the, the go to place. It's a landing spot. Think of it like a destination list for your prospecting. Okay, I promise you, if you do what I'm teaching you, you're gonna wish that you would have done it sooner. That's the feedback I get. I wish I would have done this sooner. This is one of those things. Okay. If I'd have had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter. If anybody can tell me what movie the quote you can't leave all the plants will die without googling or chat GPT See, I trust you. I trust you. First one to hit me up gets 50 bucks. I'll venmo it to you brian@blind-zebra.com so if you want to learn how to get certified the Blind Zebra sales operating system, just go to blind-zebra.com you can also email me direct B R-Y-A N@blind-zebra.com we have dates for the entire year of 2025 booked. We'll start putting 2026 dates together. So if you're listening to this after 2026, I don't know where we are but 2025 is. We're booking them up in 2026 is going to be here soon. It's only January of 2025 with this recording. So that's it. We appreciate you all hit our LinkedIn group, by the way. And also check out Bill's Insider groups, a great place to go for live training. That's it. See you next time. The advance selling podcast.