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- [00:00]
Alex Goldfain
Foreign.
- [00:09]
John Chance
Welcome to another episode of the.
- [00:11]
Duct Tape Marketing
Duct Tape Marketing podcast.
- [00:12]
John Chance
This is John Chance. My guest today is Alex Goldfain. He's a three time Wall Street Journal bestselling author, one of the most sought after sales speakers in the world. He's the CEO of the Revenue Growth Consultancy, one of the top grossing solo consulting firms in America, generating 7.5 billion million annually. His clients, primarily B2B organizations, implement simple proactive actions that drive 15 to 30% sales growth every year. And we're going to talk about his latest book out grow how to expand market share and out sell your competition. So welcome to the show, Alex.
- [00:47]
Alex Goldfain
Hi John. Thank you, sir. Thanks for having me.
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John Chance
I want to unpack one of the core themes of the book. You talk about transforming reactive companies into proactive ones. So tell me a little bit about that thinking.
- [00:59]
Alex Goldfain
Well, I think, you know, over 415 clients over about 22 years that I've done these outgrow revenue growth initiatives with. What I've realized is about 95% of all companies and also 95% of all salespeople are generally reactive. Meaning we take what's incoming and when you take what's incoming and most companies that have been around and that have some history are very good at this, like world class. Right. When I arrive at a, at an organization, usually they are world class at this reactive work, which is basically customer service work. Well, the only way to really grow in terms of volume growth, not inflationary growth, not acquisitive growth, but organic volume sales growth. The only way to do that is, is we have to take market share. We have to take business from another company that already has the business. And the only way to compete for and take market share is to be proactive. You cannot react your way to market share growth. You can't do it. You're just in your reactive, you're just, you know, rising tide lifts all ships, sinking tide sinks all ships and you're just moving with the current. You go where the economy takes you and that is 95% of all companies and 95% of all salespeople. And that's actually good news because it means that it's really easy to stand out in that crowd. It's really easy to do better. And as a result it's really easy, John, to grow.
- [02:43]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [02:43]
John Chance
And you know, in this particular moment in time, starting the third quarter of 2025, as we record this, I'm seeing a lot of companies that it's even worse because they're not even if they're unhappy right now. They're, like, not reaching out because there's a lot of uncertainty, and it's like, I'm just going to stay put. So, I mean, I would suggest that you're proactive is probably even more necessary because there's probably less incoming right now.
- [03:08]
Alex Goldfain
Not only is it more necessary, it works better now because of exactly what you said, because literally nobody's reaching out now. So outgrow proactivity works really well in good economies because people have money to spend, and we can go to them and say, hey, what are you spending your money on? May I help you with that? I'd love an opportunity to help, but in a bad economy, John, because of exactly what you said, people sit around and, you know, your competition is like, I'm not going to call them now, especially now. I'm not going to pitch them, you know, for more products or more services. Now in this economy, I'm telling you, when you call a customer and say, I was thinking about you, how's your family? What are you working on that I can help you with? Or perhaps what are you doing with my competition that I can help you with? And this is somebody, you know, somebody have a nice relationship with. When you call somebody like that, John, you are the only one in that person's life doing that. Nobody else is doing it, especially now. So talk about standing out from the crowd and how easy it is just show up, because nobody is.
- [04:16]
John Chance
I think I know the answer to this, but tell me a little bit about the term outgrow. What are you trying to project with that?
- [04:22]
Alex Goldfain
Yeah, well, we want to outgrow the market. We want to outgrow the competition. We want to outgrow the average. We want to outgrow the company's own history year to year, you know, in terms of growth. And again, the way to do that is through taking market share. And the way to take market share is to be proactive.
- [04:42]
John Chance
So looping a little bit back to one of your very first things. I was saying that, you know, 90% of the folks just wait around. I mean, is that. Is that another way of saying that 90% of salespeople are lazy?
- [04:53]
Alex Goldfain
No, it's another way of saying that 90 or 95% of salespeople have tremendous discomfort and fear.
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Unknown
Right.
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Alex Goldfain
With communicating with customers and prospects when nothing is wrong, which is my definition of proactivity. If somebody says, well, what do you mean by proactive? I mean, when nothing is wrong.
- [05:12]
Unknown
Yeah.
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Alex Goldfain
When the price isn't going up, which is when salespeople call when you need the payment, which is when customers hear from salespeople, when you can't get them the order on time, which is when customers hear from salespeople. Right. People only hear from people when something rises to the level of urgency to make the call. And so this communication, this proactive communication, is when nothing is wrong. So that's my definition of productivity. And it's not laziness. It's intense and severe discomfort with bothering the customer, annoying the customer, taking their time. And probably hovering above all of that, even higher is discomfort and fear of rejection. Fear of rejection. If I call them about this other offering, they might tell me no into my ear hole. And that's an intense personal rejection. Right. And that's what we're trying to avoid. We humans, and you and I are too. We will do anything possible to avoid that kind of rejection, including going out and asking for the business.
- [06:16]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [06:18]
John Chance
You know, back. Back when I was just getting started, I had a routine on Fridays. I would just pick up the phone and call five people. I was not trying to sell anything. I was not trying to do anything. And I can't tell you, I used to laugh. In fact, I wrote a big blog post about this that about half the time, one or two of those phone.
- [06:35]
Duct Tape Marketing
Calls would start with, oh, I was just meaning to call you.
- [06:39]
Alex Goldfain
Yeah, yeah.
- [06:41]
John Chance
It was like, okay, get out my order fading.
- [06:45]
Alex Goldfain
That's it. When you show up when nothing is wrong, you are saving the customer from having to think about it again. Whatever is in their head, whatever the need might be. If you don't call them like you just shared, they're going to have to think about it more, probably repeatedly, because once usually doesn't do it. You don't think about something and do it. Typically you think about something many times and then you might do it, but you might not.
- [07:08]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [07:08]
Alex Goldfain
And it's incredibly valuable to do what you just described. And that's why my clients, you know, and I've had tens of thousands of salespeople go through this and, you know, run these processes that we're talking about. We constantly hear from people, you know, while I have you or I'm so glad you called. Can you please check on this for me? Product, service, whatever it is.
- [07:32]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [07:32]
John Chance
So would you say that this is just a. Like, this is a habit, this is a system, or is it cultural in an organization or is it all the above?
- [07:43]
Alex Goldfain
Yeah, you need both. So I say that outgrow is 2/3 mindset work because, you know, behavior always follows thinking, and we can't outsell our mindset. So if we think we're bothering the customer, we're going to sell accordingly. But if we think it's our obligation to help the customer and they want our help because they're better off with us than with the competition who isn't as good as us, then we sell that way. We sell as though we have a lot more value for the customer. So it's 2/3 mindset work. In outgrow. We have an acronym called COPE business. On COPE, confidence, optimism, positivity and enthusiasm. And we need those mindsets because we have to bring them to the salespeople that we work with. We have to bring them to the organization. So culturally, an outgrow organization that runs outgrow becomes more cope, becomes more confident, more optimistic, more positive, more enthusiastic. And when you are those things, much easier to make proactive calls, to offer additional products, to follow up on quotes and proposals, and to ask people, what else.
- [08:52]
Duct Tape Marketing
Hey, small business owners, let me ask you a quick question. Is your marketing actually working for you or just working you over? If you're tired of chasing random tactics and want real clarity, it's time for a strategy first approach. At Duct Tight Marketing, we help you build a marketing system you own, one that fits your business and finally puts you in control. No more chaos, no more guesswork, Just a road map you trust powered by smart strategy. And let's face it, a little help from AI today. You ready to shift from overwhelm to confidence? Head over to DTM World Ownit. DTM World/Ownit.
- [09:36]
John Chance
How ready does a person using this system need to be for if I start with a call with. I just wanted to see if there's anything I could help you with. I sell widgets, but the guy tells me, you know what, we just fired our accounting firm.
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Duct Tape Marketing
We're really screwed.
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John Chance
How prepared do I have to be to say, you know what, I think I can help you with somebody, you know, unrelated to me. I'm not gonna make any money off this, but I think I can help you. I mean, how prepared or how much of your system do you think, you know, relies on just being the person who solves problem?
- [10:05]
Alex Goldfain
I think people just want to help people. You know, I think, and I also think our starting position is people just want to be helped. You know, calling your customers, your prospects. People just want to be helped. That's starting point number one. Then when we are showing up, we are simply offering to help people, which is what they want. You know, John, over 100 million outgrow actions log. Tracked and analyzed over 23 years by over 400 clients. So we log our activities and then we see the, you know, where the responses, the results, the outcomes. Not one time, not once has any customer ever said, I'd rather you not make my life easier. Today hasn't happened once. People just want to be helped. So if you're calling to sell a product and somebody has a need that you don't provide, well, then try to help them. Common sense, you know, human relationship stuff. In fact, I would argue that already happens. You know, if you're watching this right now, how many times does one of your customers ask you for something that you don't offer them and you went and found a way to get it for. Maybe you connected them to your competition, even maybe you went to your competition and got what they needed for them. That happens all the time. And when you do that, the customer remembers it forever.
- [11:25]
John Chance
Once I've got that trust, you know, I want to keep it, and I keep it by just not allowing them to call anybody else. Right. I'm the only one that they would call regardless of what their problem is. And it takes a little extra work sometimes, you know, your stuff you're not going to get paid for directly, but as you've seen in your research, pays off time and time again. Speaking of research, how would a company set up measuring this? You know, because you might make 10 of those calls and nothing really happens today, you know, so now the salesperson's like, ah, you know, that's not really paying off. So, you know, is there a way to measure. You talk about them. Actions. I think I. I think that's what you called them.
- [12:05]
Alex Goldfain
Yeah.
- [12:06]
John Chance
You know, these actions. Is there a way to then turn them into a system of KPIs, so to speak, that, that do kind of motivate people to say, oh, this worked.
- [12:15]
Alex Goldfain
Yeah. So in the book, there are scorecards and metrics that we use all over it. Examples. And I don't know if you can see our video right now. You can see a couple baseball bats behind me. And we call it swinging the bat. So we don't track the hits in Outgrow. We track the swing because we know what the batting averages are. So we are simply asking outgrow participants who we call outgrowers. We are asking this. These are people who face customers for you. We're asking them to try to take our act, to take our actions, because we know, you know, in baseball, you can hit the ball exactly right, dead on. And it flies right out of defender and it's an out. And sales is the same way. You can do everything right and, and hit the ball perfectly and then, you know, getting the win is largely out of our control. You can't really control if the customer's in a good mood. You can't really control if the customer has an itch when you're calling to scratch. I can control making my call, but I can't control if they need it in that moment. I can't control the timing. The other thing we know is we need eight or nine no's for every yes that we get in sales. If you win 10 to 20% of the time in sales, you're one of the best in baseball. You can fail 70% of the time and go to the hall of Fame. In our work, we fail more than that.
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John Chance
I don't know. As good as pitching is these days, Alex, I'm going to say it's, you know, seven and a half times now.
- [13:41]
Alex Goldfain
I know it's dropping, isn't it, these days. 250 is a good batting average, right? In baseball. We're both baseball fans. We were chatting about that before we started our conversation here. Anyway, we do track the efforts because we know what the success rates are. You know, I'll give you an example. We have a technique called the did you know? Question. And we have another technique called the reverse did you know? Question. Both of these are detailed in the book. So the did you know? Question or D Y K did you know? Is you suggesting an additional product or service to your customer that they don't already buy from you. They probably buy it somewhere else. They probably need it. They probably buy it from your competition, service or product. And so what we know statistically is that 20% of those close, 20% become a new line item. So if I say to you, hey, John, did you know? I do keynote speeches. What about longer workshops? How about one on one coaching? Of course. I work with organizations. If I ask you five of those and it's gonna take me 20 seconds, maybe one will close and turn into a new line for us to work on. And so let's say somebody listening to us has 10 salespeople and each one of those 10 asks five did you know Questions and they're tracked. We do enter them into a system. We have an outgrow tracking form. It's a simple web form. You enter it in and at the end of the week, you get data back from us. We send the data back to you. It's all automated 10 people ask five digital questions a day. That's 50 a day, 250 a week, a thousand a month, 12,000 a year. If my math is right, that's top of my head. 12,000 did you know questions a year. If we can get 10 people to give us 20 seconds a day, 20% of 12,000, that's the success rate is 2400 new line item. That's a fact. It's not. I hope they'll add 2400 new line items if they can get five did you know questions in 20 seconds from 10 people a day, every day. That's where the complexity comes. That's the hard part. Not asking the did you knows? It's the choreography. It's doing it all the time. Every day they will get 2400 new line items. Then the question becomes, how much money per line item and how many times a year will that new thing be purchased? Because many people sell things repeatedly. It could be monthly, it could be quarterly, it could be twice a year. You do the math. Almost always, five digital questions a day gets you to millions of dollars in new revenue. As a fact, statistically, for sure, if you can get five digital questions a.
- [16:11]
John Chance
Day, and I bet you every salesperson listening has had an experience where they walked into a client's office and the client said, oh, yeah, we just did this new thing over here. And then they said, oh, did you know that we do that? Right?
- [16:24]
Alex Goldfain
And then, you know what you hear is you hear you do that. I didn't know you did that, right? And you're like, dude, I just told you that I do that like two weeks ago, I know it was you because we were talking to each other just like we are now, and you had the exact same reaction. Two weeks ago, I didn't know you did that. Now I'm telling you again, two weeks later, you still don't know. So the takeaway for us salespeople is just because you tell somebody something doesn't mean they know it means you told them. Doesn't mean a register doesn't mean they remember.
- [16:52]
John Chance
So this is a good segue to non sales department folks, right? I mean, how can they contribute to this kind of proactive sales culture? Sounds like they could be asking did you knows 100%.
- [17:02]
Alex Goldfain
I mean, we're constantly working with customer service people, managers, frontline people, what it develops. You know, clients have called it a non traditional sales force, even people like project managers. If you're in construction, client execs, you know, engineers and architects who are like, I Didn't become an engineer to be a used car salesman. Alex. Thanks, dude, but that's not for me. And again, mindset work. You're not selling, you're helping. People need more help from you. So, yes, it is. For anybody who faces customers, John, who can ask a did you know question or two, and the calls even that are incoming, you know, proactive calls are a big part of our work. But if they come to you, if you have a counter operation or a sales floor of some kind, or if you're just customer service picking up the phone all day, you can say, do you need this? How are you on that? We just got some of this in and ask your did you knows.
- [17:56]
John Chance
Yeah, so, so does that, you know, does that need to be in an SOP somewhere so that everybody's trained on it, or is it more of a look for moments of truth?
- [18:06]
Alex Goldfain
It's more change the mindset, make them confident and optimistic and positive and enthusiastic. And then say to them, please ask five a day, because that's what we're doing now. It does know. It's warm and fuzzy.
- [18:21]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [18:22]
Alex Goldfain
Above all, it's positive work because we're helping customers more. But it needs tracking and accountability or else it stops. It doesn't keep going. It stops.
- [18:33]
John Chance
So how do you get this ingrained into an organization? Because I'm guessing, you know, they can come to one of Alex's amazing workshops, get all the good ideas, and then go back to the shop and it's like, we do it for a week. I mean, how do you make it a habit?
- [18:49]
Alex Goldfain
Well, we, you know, and you just said the key word habit.
- [18:53]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [18:55]
Alex Goldfain
We say outgrow a sales doing, not sales training. Because as you just said, sales training don't grow revenue. Sales training tells people stuff probably that they already know.
- [19:06]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [19:06]
Alex Goldfain
And then they go back to their reactive life. And you know, in sales, we have to do things to make money. We can't know stuff. We have to do stuff to make money. There are some professions that can make money by knowing things. We're not one of them. We have to do stuff that we know. So, you know, we engage with clients for typically three to five years, John. And so we have a launch year where the work begins. It takes us about 90 days to create their proactive program. Then we teach it. It's a one day workshop, typically just for that client, just for that client's people. It's not open, it's just theirs. It's a private engagement. And then they begin this weekly cadence of the leader of the effort literally asks for or prescribes some target actions for the week. For example, this week, please give me five proactive phone calls to people that you haven't Talked to in six months or more. That specific five did you know questions and five quote follow ups. Three sets of actions, 15 things for the week, then people go do it. Step two, step three is they log it into our system. Step four is we put out data and we show them the scorecard. Just tracking efforts who tried and who did it, who cares and who doesn't. And then we put out success stories, we put out wins, we tell the wins, we tell the success stories in the words of the people who submitted them. That's five step sort of feedback loop that happens every week. Next week they make a new assignment of actions at 30, 60 and 90 days. We visit with them and do web meetings to review the data, to tell success stories to the group verbally. People actually speak their stories to each other, ask each other questions. Then we follow up with them in the next six months as well. So in over a nine month period in the launch year, we are with them seven times. But nobody cares what the consultant wants. The salespeople don't care what the outside advisor wants. They only care what their leadership wants. People only do what they think is important to their boss. So this work, as much as anything is about we coach the leaders. The leaders then have to do the accountability and the implementation and the buy in work and the maintaining of energy with the people who are taking the swings and doing the outgrow work.
- [21:27]
John Chance
That getting them telling stories to each other, that sort of peer pressure almost that puts on is probably a really powerful aspect.
- [21:34]
Alex Goldfain
It, it does a few things, you know, and all the research shows John that recognition is a more effective tool to make change with, to change behavior with than money is. Recognition is more powerful than giving somebody some money in private. The reason is that one, the person feels proud, you know, they're being recognized, they get to tell their story. Two, other people, it makes it impossible for them to say this doesn't work here. Because here's stories about it working here.
- [22:02]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [22:02]
Alex Goldfain
Three, those people aspire to be recognized. Next. Four, and the last thing it teaches the work, it teaches what works right. In the words of the happy salespeople, the successful people, it's education. Peer to peer, not from the top down. Peer to peer education.
- [22:21]
Unknown
Yeah.
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John Chance
That's awesome. Well Alex, I appreciate you taking a few moments to drop by the duct tape marketing podcast. Is there anywhere you'd Invite somebody to connect with you, learn about your work. Obviously learn about the book Outgrow.
- [22:33]
Alex Goldfain
Yeah. Thank you, John. They can get the book on Amazon or wherever they buy books. Barnes and Noble has it books a million has it anywhere books are sold. Actually launched as the number two best selling business book in America behind only Atomic Habits. I was able to outsell everybody except for Atomic Habits, of course.
- [22:51]
John Chance
That's only been number one for what, like six, seven years?
- [22:55]
Alex Goldfain
It's good company, I guess. If you want to learn more about Outgrow and the revenue growth that we do, please visit runoutgrow.com runoutgrow.com awesome.
- [23:08]
John Chance
Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll run into you out there at Wrigley Field or so thank.
- [23:14]
Alex Goldfain
You so much for having me. Go Cubs. I appreciate it.
- [23:21]
Duct Tape Marketing
Hey, small business owners, let me ask you a quick question. Is your marketing actually working for you or just working you over? If you're tired of chasing random tactics and want real clarity, it's time for a strategy first approach. At Duct Tape Marketing, we help you build a marketing system you own, one that fits your business and finally puts you in control. No more chaos, no more guesswork. Just a roadmap you trust powered by smart strategy. And let's face it, a little help from AI today. You ready to shift from overwhelm to confidence? Head over to DTM World Ownit. DTM World/Ownit.