From Prospect to Client: How to Build Unshakable Trust in Your Sales Process

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true, actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome to episode 26 of the Coaching Equation podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. And this is an episode that you are going to want to come back to over and over and over again. Because it is going to be a game changer in your sales. Listen, in all of the sales coaching that we've done, in all of the sales calls that we've run, in all of the sales teams that we've managed and run, in all of the sales consulting that we've done, one of the key biggest problems that we see is an inability to establish trust with a prospect. And quite frankly, it's something that a lot of people are confused about and mistaken about in terms of how to really do it.

1:26 The beliefs around how to establish trust are broken, quite frankly, and they have been for a really long time. And in this episode, Brooke and I are going to set the record straight and show you how to establish trust before your sales engagement, during your sales engagement, and how to establish trust. And even after your sales engagement, whether your prospect decided to buy on the call or not. So get ready to sharpen your sales sword today. This is episode 26 of the Coaching Equation Podcast. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, alongside my co-host and co-founder, Brooke Bishop.

2:06 What's going on, brother? Yeah. What up? What up? This is gonna be a good one. This is gonna be so good. We are gonna get laser focused and straight to the point today. One of the biggest problems that we see in sales and marketing and business in general is establishing and maintaining trust with our prospects and our clients and our customers before, during, after our sales engagements. And While we could look at this through a lot of different lenses, we really wanted to spend some time today focused on sales because it's one of the things that we find people have questions about constantly. And honestly, one of the things that we find people are pretty misguided about in terms of their beliefs about what actually...

2:47 actually creates trust. So let's kind of break this down into three sections. So we've got our sales engagement, whatever it is, whether it's a phone call or an in-person meeting, etc. And let's begin with how we start to cultivate and create trust prior to the sales engagement. That's a really good question. I think this is actually honestly where 90% of the hiccups happen is in that segment, right? It's this bridge between what did we use in our marketing messaging? And then now we're in a sales conversation. So there has to be this dynamic prior to a sales engagement where the first key component that I believe is consistency. So we have to be consistent. And this is true.

3:28 I mean, you see it in a marketing aspect. If your ad doesn't match up to wherever you're sending somebody, even if the messaging isn't exactly the same, it's like your bounce rates go up and people are like, wait, this isn't the thing that I thought I was clicking on. And that's just a fancy way of saying they don't trust what you're offering. So I think that that's really the first piece as it relates to whatever your messaging is on that front end, as well as the branding piece. Yeah, I completely agree. And that's one of the areas where... There are so many different areas where sales and marketing come together on a bridge, right? And this is one of them, where whatever we've got out there from a marketing perspective, absolutely has to match up from one step to the next in order to get us into a sales engagement where that person is like, Oh, well, they've already kept their promises.

4:15 I'm sure the next one is going to be kept as well. And getting to that... We talk a lot about on the marketing side of things, where people are at in the customer journey. And this is vital when it comes to thinking about how we can establish trust with them because it's different depending on where they've been in your customer journey. If you've got somebody who you've got on a sales call and they've been hanging out in your ecosystem for like 2 years, watching your YouTube videos or grabbing your podcast or checking out your social media posts or your email list or whatever, and they've just now picked the time to jump on and do a sales call with you, that person is much further along.

5:00 They've engaged in multiple things, hopefully anyway. in that span. But when they've engaged in something or subscribed to something before they get to the sales call, you've already earned a certain amount of trust up to that point. Whereas if you have somebody in a cold traffic funnel that maybe just grabbed a lead magnet or just saw your pre-recorded webinar and they've now landed on your calendar on a sales call, that That person is probably going to require a little bit more warming and trust building prior to the call than somebody who's been hanging out in your ecosystem for a couple of years and just finally decided to pull the trigger. You're spot on, dude. The mass majority of the world talks about the law of manifestation, right?

5:42 There's also another law that's really important. There's a few of them, but the law of gestation. And so, the ones that have been engaging with you for a longer window of time, to your point, it's likened to, you know, you've been planting seeds and you've been fertilizing them and you've been pulling the weeds out and you've been watering it. And as soon as they get on your calendar, it's like, hey, there's about to be some fruit that comes off of the tree. And we have to be mindful because this is just such a critical piece of the puzzle. Everybody loves to buy. So, I'm going to say this again because I think this is really, really important. Everybody loves to buy. Nobody likes to be sold. That's so true. And so if we think about this, we've been cultivating and investing in these people and we've invested in their world.

6:25 We've been positioning as a trusted advisor. Now, as it relates to being a trusted advisor... To be a true trusted advisor, because I think this terminology gets thrown around way too loosely these days. But I would almost re-anchor the languaging in and recommend we become fiduciaries. What's the distinction there? So trusted advisor almost, and this just might be my personal opinion. I see trusted advisor as this kind of like, hey, I want you to trust me. Therefore, I'm a trusted advisor. We'll even hear people anchor into themselves like, oh, I'm your trusted advisor. And there's this dynamic of like, you should trust me, which is usually the first big red flag. But there's the parallel to that as a fiduciary. Fiduciaries have your best interest at heart always.

7:07 If we look in the financial world, a fiduciary is required by law to always do what is in the best interest of their client. And if they don't, they're liable and on the hook. So if we as coaches really showed up that way as fiduciaries for our clients, it would be a very different experience. And I believe we'd be giving very different feedback that wouldn't be as self-serving because trusted advisors become almost this manipulative thing of like, you need to trust me so therefore I can move you. Well, I love that. And I think it's the difference between giving lip service to the idea and taking actions that foster that. Right? Love that. I'm telling you, you should trust me versus I'm doing things that are causing you to trust me.

7:49 Right? If you can do the latter, that's real. And that's also, by the way, where good sales and marketing can really excel is when you're actually taking actions that are causing and fostering trust instead of saying, well, you should trust me because of blah, blah, blah. It's not about lip service. It's about what you're doing. Yeah, that's so good. And I love the distinction between the trusted advisor and the fiduciary. And, you know, one of the things too that I think as we're talking about, you know, we have customer journey, but then we also have the journey of where somebody's at on the road to whatever transformation you're trying to take them to and being respectful and honorable of that.

8:30 There are some people who have been on this road for some period of time and they're up to their eyeballs frustrated that they can't solve a problem and they're super ready to solve a problem and they're very in tune with what's going to happen if they don't. And there are some people that are going to be a lot further at the beginning of that journey where maybe they realize that maybe there's a problem, but... We're not in life and death situation yet. And maybe the circumstances haven't started to mount up to create a lot of collateral damage in their lives yet. And I think being willing to understand where those people are. And I think that's a key word for me is the willingness to understand and empathize about where people are in their journey.

9:16 I think that in and of itself creates a significant amount of trust. I love that you just used that word empathy because I think, again, this is another one that I think a lot of times people misconstrue. The undercurrent of that is genuinely caring, right? And so, I think that we get lost at times when we get into a sales engagement, our outcomes become more critical than the client's outcomes, which means we've now moved out of empathy or we've moved out of being a trusted advisor or we've moved out of being a fiduciary. And we're now fixated on our outcome. instead of holding that space and trusting that God, the universe, whatever his or her name is, is going to align things in the proper way so that we can serve the client and in return, be supported in our business and generate a new paying customer.

10:00 Yeah, I completely agree. I think one of the things too, before we kind of move into building trust during the call that I want to bring up is that kind of going back to the idea of somebody being at a different stage of the customer journey than another. You know, one of the things that I'd be remiss if I didn't say is that we can and should once somebody books a sales call with you. and you have any amount of time in between when they book and when that call actually happens, you should be making sure that you're sending them curated pieces of information that they can go through that helps to fortify and establish some level of trust. So number one, it's client results, of course, are a great way to help to establish trust.

10:46 You don't yet have that personal trust, but you have the trust from them that you can get an outcome for somebody. Be even more powerful because we all have terminal uniqueness and nobody is like we are, right? We want to know that not only have you gotten results, but you've gotten results for somebody like me. You can take it even one step further by, you know, if you've done a good job of cultivating testimonials and client results and things like that. Sending a testimonial or a client result that really matches where that person is at or who that person is or their life circumstances, etc. Can really help to build a little bit of trust as well. It's a really good point. And I think this it's a landmine for some, right?

11:27 With a very large coaching company we were working with at one point, the owner of the company had a very equally sized ego to go with the size of the company. And it was fascinating because the show rate for the sales calls was not fantastic. It was like somewhere around 50%. And we're strategizing creative ways to boost show rate. His thought process was let's send them all kinds of information about him, right? So that they could know more about him and the results that he was getting people. And I'm like, well, but they're not gonna be working with you. They're gonna be working with one of your coaches. Yeah. Now, the other piece that we looked at is he wanted people to know his greatness. And when we looked at the journey, it was like, wait, these are people who are at that stage where they booked a call, but they didn't show up.

12:08 We should be talking about all the reasons and the benefits of just showing up to the call, like that next step on the path, not what things are going to be like at the top of Mount Everest. It's like, let's talk about base camp. We just got to get them to base camp. And if we can get them to base camp, we can get them to camp number two. And I think that that's another area where a lot of people will, they do this in their questionnaires where they over qualify the heck out of people. You know, they send tons of text messages. If you don't respond, I'm going to cancel our meeting. And they do these pieces because other people have told them to most of the time. But really think from that client's perspective of what stepping stone are they on and what is that next stepping stone? Because if you can just move on from one to two and then from two to three and then three to four. You're going to build. It's like the pyramid, right?

12:49 Like that foundational step is so critical. And that's that first step, to be honest. Like do that step right and just get to the next layer and then next and the next and next. Yes, yes, yes to that. And I think also you bring up a really good point in that a lot of us believe it going back to kind of the way I opened the podcast of misconception. A lot of us believe that we're going to build trust. by, you know, like the person we're talking about here, by showing how magnanimous we are, you know, how awesome we are, how awesome our stuff is, how crazy awesome whiz bang our approach is, blah, blah, blah. Nobody cares. And if anything, it's a turnoff.

13:30 And so one thing that I would say to you is if you're in a position where maybe you're at the beginning of your journey and you don't have a lot of client results, or maybe you're further along and you You are much better off telling a story about how you overcame an obstacle that would be somewhat similar to theirs and relating to them. Then you will be propping yourself up on a pedestal because when you do that, even though you're sharing your story, it becomes about them because you're going to relate. Listen, I've been where you are. I know what this is like. I remember what it felt like when blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, these were the struggles I was going through.

14:11 I'm sure you can relate. In that situation, we're bringing them in and we're having a with conversation. We're not telling them something. We're not doing something to them. You know, so I would just say that I think that's an important one for people. Maybe if you're at the beginning of your journey, the further along you are in your journey, let your clients results do the talking and, you know, your story can continue to remain in the background. Love that. Yeah. And well, I have a piece I want to share on the next segment that I think will be pertinent just because it's not something that most people do, but... Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's move it along. So now we've covered kind of what to do before the call to build trust. So what do we do during the call? Once we get somebody on the phone, is that where the plan ends or... Yeah, no, it's interesting because that's where I was going to take things.

14:54 What to do on the call. And this is a fascinating one because I used to think I knew and it wasn't until I asked for feedback that I got true, honest answers. So something that I did that I had never seen anybody else do, at least not in our industry, was I started sending follow-up homework behind my sales engagements. I love that. And the follow-up homework was basically a feedback form. It was a survey. It was, Hey, what was your biggest takeaways? What did you like? What did you not like? Was there anything that was off-putting? Is there anything that if you were to do that call again, you wished would have happened differently? And you know, like I started asking, I think it was like five to 10 questions, but it was fascinating because there were certain things that like red flagged that I had multiple people saying like, Oh, you know, I was really frustrated. I don't And I'm like, what?

15:36 I read every single person's homework, but I never told them I read their homework. So, they didn't know. So, I'm like, oh man. So, I changed my conversation. So, I opened every conversation with, hey, thank you for taking the time to do your homework. I did have a chance to read it. Guess what? Never got those hiccups anymore. And that really helped establish trust as well because I was asking for their feedback, even if and when they didn't purchase. So, that was just a little clever way to really learn more. And it was after the fact. So, they had nothing to lose and there was reciprocity. So, another law, law of reciprocity. But they were willing to share that information. And I really wanted to know more from the people who didn't buy than I actually did the ones that did. You know, one of the things I want to mention about that, I love that you did that. And I think one of the things that I would mention is that that's a way to build trust because it shows that you actually give a shit.

16:22 Right? Like most people are so transactional in their sales calls that, you know, if they get somebody comes off the call and they don't buy, it's just like, well, okay. You know? Next. Next. And I love that you cared enough to try to figure out why maybe somebody wasn't in a position to do it or decided not to do it and or why they did decide to do it. Because once again, that shows that, hey, I actually care about why you decided to make a decision to do this and what you're looking forward to and what outcomes you want to get to and all the things. You know, and speaking of outcomes, I think that as we get on the call, especially because we can start communicating our outcomes prior to the call. But especially when we get on the call, one of the biggest misses is clearly communicating outcomes.

17:06 You know, in our 12-week sales mastery program, Close Everyone, this is what we call pre-framing. And we set expectations for the call. And this is something that's interesting. You know, I actually just listened to a sales call this morning, ironically. where the salesperson just kind of flubbed the pre-frame a little bit and they didn't express their outcomes. They just asked what the prospective client would like to take away from the engagement. That ain't getting it done. You know, that's pretty much like, you know, deciding you want a really good ham and cheese sandwich and flopping one piece of bread down and just eating one piece of bread without the meat and the cheese and the other piece of bread.

17:50 It's... This is a really big one because, you know, we've heard the thing in sales for years about creating micro yeses along the way and things like that. Well, you know, you talked earlier about planting seeds and that's kind of what we're doing here. We're planting seeds and dropping breadcrumbs along the way that we want our people to pick up. It's like when we say this is how the call is going to go. This is what we're going to do. And these are my outcomes for the call. What are yours? And then we're all in alignment before we move forward. Well, now all we have to do is keep up our end of the bargain. And instantly, without even saying anything in their mind, they're going, oh, okay.

18:33 Wow. He actually did exactly what he said he was going to do. Oh, wow. This call is exactly what they said it was going to be. You know, it's huge. And a lot of people miss it. No, you're hitting the nail on the head. The way I look at it is it's more maintaining alignment. Because what happens is happening. If we think of it as like, if we were going out on a jog together, this might be a terrible metaphor, but I'm going to run with it. See what I did there? Oh, look what you did there. You're so cute. You're so clever. I'm funny. Funny. Okay, so if we're going on a jog together, if we're running side by side, having a conversation, what most salespeople or what most people in a sales engagement do is they start running faster because they want to get to the finish line. And then they're still having the conversation. They look around them and they're like, where the hell is the customer? And they look back and like, oh, crap, I just sprinted ahead of this person.

19:16 Or the other part can happen is where the customer is like ready to go and they're sprinting to the finish line and the person selling slows down because they're out of breath. And then they're again, similar happenstance. So trust really is it's going to come from maintaining alignment, having those proper checkpoints of looking around, making sure they're there with you, checking that they're running at the same pace, making sure you're not talking over them, making sure you're not steamrolling, listening to them. Like there's this element of trust comes from staying with them. Now, here's the key piece. You want to add about 5% extra energy. So they're going to elevate their game. That's the difference between selling coaching versus selling anything else is you have to get them to step up just a hair more than they're comfortable and increase their pace. Yes.

19:56 You know what that reminds me of as a lifelong musician? It reminds me of like a really good band. When we've got somebody on our sales call, this isn't a me versus them thing. We're trying to make beautiful music together. That's what we're doing. And if you've got a really good band and all of a sudden the drummer decides to speed it up like five clicks, shit's going sideways. Or like your lead guitar player goes rogue, goes all like, you know, Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future, you know, like... You know, playing channeling is inner slash playing Chuck Berry, you know, sliding on the ground on his back and shit like that. People are going to look at you weird and it's going to be pretty funky dynamic, right? Everybody's going to be kind of looking around like, what is going on here?

20:39 So I love that. And I think it's such a great analogy in terms of alignment, because really, that's absolutely what trust is at the end of the day is it's alignment. Yeah. And speaking of alignment, I think one of the things that helps to keep us in that alignment, which is contradictory to what a lot of people believe, you know, a lot of people believe that creating alignment at the beginning of a sales call is the old bullshit rapport, which is like... Oh, hey, Brooke. Hey, where are you from, man? Oh, man, you're up in Fort Collins. Gosh, you know, I just used to go to this little bakery and I love it up there. And boy, you get out to Horsetooth much. Oh, yeah, yeah. Gosh, I used to spend all the time. What do you think about the Broncos anyway?

21:20 How long have you lived in Colorado? Wow. Where were you from before? 15 minutes later, you think you've got all this rapport and you don't. You haven't built any trust. All you've built is the prison of a bro call, which we'll get into that maybe on another. We do a whole training on that specifically or a whole podcast on that. Can we weave in the prison of bro marketing too? Can we put those two have a baby? Yeah, maybe we'll just be a bro podcast. But so if it isn't that, which it isn't, by the way, how do we create real trust when we get more into the sales call? So not to sound repetitive or redundant, we need to tell people what we're going to do.

22:03 We need to do it. And then we need to tell them what we did. But this goes back to all the way to the beginning of the marketing. We need to tell them what we're going to do, then do it and then tell them what we did. Now, this is a really important one that I had a lot of hiccups in the beginning with, by the way. When I first had my very first appointment setter, guess what? They were compensated for getting meetings to be booked and for meetings to run. So very quickly, they got a little bit loosey goosey in terms of what they were saying to get people on the calendar. And then people would come to the calendar thinking they were going to get one thing. I would go to tell them what the outcomes were. And there was a complete chasm of what their expectations were. So you've got to have make sure you're whoever's booking appointments, whether you're on the web or whether you're appointment setter. Your communications between, you've got to tell people what you're going to do, what they can expect.

22:44 And then you have to clarify at the very beginning of that engagement and that sales call, this is what's happening. Are we aligned? You've got to get that alignment and you've got to get their confirmation that they're with you and that you have the same outcome in sight. Guess what? Then you do your rock star, follow the seven steps, close everyone. And then guess what? At the end of every conversation, you reflect back and you tell them exactly what you did. And this applies to webinars or however you sell from stage or wherever else you're at. So... I think you bring in a really important dynamic here, which is team communication, because if it's only you, then that's great. And it's all your responsibility. But if you've got anybody involved in getting somebody on your calendar that goes from a marketing department to a marketing firm to an appointment setter to a VA, you know, Anybody that's involved in that process has to be aligned with the messaging and, you know, what we say we're going to do and all of those things.

23:34 And then, you know, when we do get them into the call, the other piece of the puzzle is it isn't we don't build real rapport, which is a fancy word somewhat for a certain level of trust. Right. We don't build real rapport through the old bullcrap, you know, way. We do it through meaningful questions. You talked about the seven step process and close everyone. This would be our discovery process where we're going to ask. ask really good, solid, deep dive questions. And we're going to continue digging until we get to the bottom of what the real struggles are, what they really want, what's the gap that we need to bridge and what are the consequences of staying stuck versus the dream and amazingness of getting to the other side of it.

24:14 When you can do that, that builds insane trust because most people are being, are used to being placated or talked at. Or, you know, you ask one question and then all of a sudden you tell them a story about this one time at band camp. Nobody cares. They want to talk about themselves. And the further you dig, the more you're going to create an experience that's unlike anything else that they've experienced before. And that will build massive amounts of trust. If we think of, you know, the person we're closest to in our life, whether it's a spouse, a boyfriend, girlfriend, whomever it is, if when you're holding presence for them and, you know, you ask them a question and they give you an answer and then you ask a question that's in left field, especially for those of you who have a woman in your life, women pick up on this so dang quick.

24:57 They can feel that break of presence. If your questions don't link together properly, and if you're not really holding space and hearing them, and I mean, not just hearing them with your eardrums, but I mean, hearing them viscerally in your body and understanding their world, it is an immediate way to kill trust and rapport. And so that questioning piece, it's funny, you know, we talk about this all the dang time, but within Close Everyone, you could do all the other six steps flawlessly. Like you could literally be hitting grand slams on the other six. If you jack up discovery, pfft. Forget about it. Completely toast. Yeah. So in terms of just from your perspective, in terms of those questions within, because I know a lot of times people will just ask questions in discovery and they never ask any other questions.

25:38 Like what's your take on just as it relates to trust and rapport? Like what kind of questions do you see as being the most critical? I mean, of course, we can go like inside of Close Everyone. We have what we call our Codex 8. And that's kind of eight different types of questions that we can ask that will help us get to the truth of both the pain, the dream and the gap as quickly as possible. But I'll be honest, rather than hitting on one of those where I think I'd like to put more emphasis is rather on the deepening questions that people miss. Because see, even if you took our Codex 8 line of questioning and you utilized every single one of those questions without going deeper, there's not a lot of value there simply because if somebody says to me, if I say, well, gosh, Joe, tell me something.

26:27 You mentioned the fact that you've been trying to get to 25K in your coaching business for a really long time now, and you're still not getting there. And you've been hacking away at this on your own for four years now. I have to ask, what's the most frustrating part about working your butt off, trying everything under the sun, and still not being able to get to that 25K mark when you know that there are so many people that are so much frustrating part, right? Well, if he gives me an answer and he says, wow, well, you know, I mean, I just, I think the most frustrating part is that I do feel like I've tried everything. Like, I feel like I put in all the effort, but I'm not seeing the results and I just don't know what I'm missing.

27:09 I just feel lost. Now, what most people would do in that moment is they'd go, oh, wow. Okay. And so, tell me how that's affecting your wife. Right? Like, what? That's where we need to use deepening questions to create even more trust, where we go, lost? Wow. Tell me more about that, right? When we talk about deepening questions, just a few examples are like, tell me more about that. What do you mean by that? Or just even repeating the word, lost, right? Allowing them to elaborate because the very first response that somebody is going to give is a surface level response. And if we stay at surface level, we're not going to get deep enough for them to create enough leverage for themselves to move past the point that they've been at, that they've been stuck at, you know, into the position in the place that they want to be at.

28:03 Can we take a soundbite of that last little clip? There's so much gold in that. Holy crap. And as it pertains, because I think there's this bridge that has to happen, right? We kind of look at these three different segments of a sales cycle. We have like before we have a sales engagement, we have during our sales engagement. And then we have two to three different paths that can transpire after sales engagement, right? And I know that one that's critical, and I'll just kind of hit this on a high note. And I think this one's self-explanatory, but I want to make sure that we mention it. If when somebody enrolls with you, it's equally critical to make sure that what you tell them they're going to experience when they decide to work with you, That's exactly what happens. Like if you say, Hey, I'm going to send you a welcome email, send the damn welcome email. If you say you're going to get access and login credentials, make sure that goes out, make sure that they receive it.

28:45 Like whatever that process is, it's super imperative because here's the reality. You might have perfect trust and rapport. They're going to give you money. If you break that at the point of onboarding, be prepared for either customer service issues or be prepared for a cancellation request. The other 2 buckets, those that perhaps go into follow-up or perhaps somebody who chooses not to work with you. What are some of your strategies and ideas as it relates to maintaining that trust after the fact? Yeah, I think that unless I end a sales engagement and somebody is just absolutely not a fit for my program at all, or I just go, Wow. Glad I don't have a direct opt-in because that person is a total asshole and I never want to work with them.

29:28 Unless that's the case, if we end the call and it's anything like I'm not ready or I don't have the money or I need to think about it or, you know, I'm just at the beginning of my journey and quite frankly, this is not painful enough for me to invest 10K yet, whatever. I'm not done. Like I have more work to do with that person because either a, we have an opportunity to potentially get back on a call very soon to try to button that up. Or it's a situation where it's not a no, it's just not now. And I think that's one of the things that I see that drives me absolutely bananas is that sometimes when it's a not now, we throw a temper tantrum.

30:08 And it's like, oh, well, you know, if you don't want to do it right now on this call, then you're just dead to me. And, you know, why would I even bother with you? But it's one of the reasons that we have a very clear and structured follow up process and system inside of Close Everyone, because we want to nurture those people. We want to honor if for any reason their journey is, you know, they're not at the spot in their journey where yes is the right thing for them right now. And so what I like to do in those situations is, number one, I want to tell them actually what I'm going to do. Hey, Brooke, you know what? I appreciate that, you know, you're not ready right now. I will tell you, and you remind me so much of my client, Chris. And I'm not sending this because I want you to feel obligated or anything like that at all, man.

30:50 But I can just see where you are right now. And more than anything, I want you to know that other people have been there too. And I'm going to send you some feedback from Chris that you can take a look at. I'd love for you to watch that video. I think you'll really get a lot out of it. And in addition to that, you know, we've also right now, I know you said you're really struggling in your sales. We actually have our sales framework, our seven step sales framework available in a PDF. And I want to send you that as well, man, because I just want you to see that there are some answers here and mainly start moving yourself in the direction of where you really you and I both know you need to head. Right. Well, if I say that, great. First of all, that fosters trust because I'm not just like, well, get off my phone because you didn't buy, which is what most people do. I offer to give them something that I follow through on giving them something.

31:32 Then I check in with them after I've given them something. How are you? What'd you think of Chris's, you know, testimonial? How's it going with the, with the sales framework? Have you had a chance to try to implement that yet? You know, blah, blah, blah. So once again, I'm giving reciprocity, right? I'm giving, and then I'm following up in a way that says that I care and I'm engaged, not in an icky way, not in an overbearing way, but in a way that says, Hey, I'm still here and I know you still need help and I'm not pushing you, but I want you to know that when you're ready, I'm ready. And sometimes eventually that can get to a point where if somebody is not ready to pull the trigger, the trust comes from continuing to give them value through, you know, great email nurture sequences and stuff like that.

32:19 Periodically, just having a list of you and I've talked about this before. Having a list of people that you feel like would be amazing in your program if they just were ready to do it and finally said yes, right? Checking in periodically on those people, that kind of thing. I think that's on the money. And I think there's this piece that we forget, right? When the sales engagement's done. So, going back to fiduciary. So, it's actually kind of an interesting way to connect the dots, to close the loop on this. If we're a fiduciary on this, one of the important pieces is we won't get emotional. Hmm. And so after we've had a sales engagement, the second we get emotional, that's a fancy way of saying that we actually move into a position where we are now caring more about our outcome than we are theirs.

33:00 By the way, we can still care about their outcomes and we can still be passionate. We can still be intentional. We can still be, you know, we can be direct and we can be honest. But if we get emotional on the back end of that, it immediately breaks rapport. And the reason or breaks trust. The reason for that is we move into a position of judgment. Or we might not even be judging them, but we're judging their behavior. And so what ends up happening is the customer, their biggest fear, they were vulnerable with you. They shared their deepest, darkest secrets. You go down the line. If you weaponize that from a place of emotion, you will absolutely break trust with them and be prepared for them to write a negative review online about you. Be prepared for them to never refer you. Be prepared for them to never work with you. So it's really, really critical that after the sales engagement and your follow-up process, you do.

33:43 Don't get emotional because you will absolutely, it's kind of like going out and pissing on your vegetable garden that you planted. Right? Fertilizer. Did all this work. Yeah. Not that, it's not the good fertilizer. But I'm very passionate about this because I think we see this so many times where people are either like, I'm never going to follow up with them or they follow up with them and they get pissed off or they go to make that follow up call and they have an emotional meltdown when they look at their calendar because they didn't answer the call. And, you know, there's this this charge that we create around it. And I think it's really critical that we manage our vibration in that capacity. Man, that's so good. That's so good. And I think that's a great way for us to put a button on this entire episode. And this is one, quite frankly, that if you will take this and go back and listen and chart out all of the different pieces that we gave you in this episode...

34:30 Here's the beautiful part about it. This is a linear path to creating trust. It's literally just lay the steps out and do them and you will create massive amounts of trust. And the beautiful part about it is when you do that, people don't necessarily buy from people they like. That's not necessarily always true. However, buying behavior is 100% correlated with trust. And so if you want a way to do that, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Now you got the blueprint. Now you got the plan. Just go back, re-listen to this chart everything out. If you didn't take notes the first time and implement and do it one piece at a time in your business and watch how your trust with your prospective clients and your current clients changes literally overnight.

35:13 Brooke, this is a fantastic episode, dude. Thank you for everything you brought, bro. So good. Likewise, man. It's because I trust you. You complete me. Oh, and with that. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast. We deeply appreciate the fact that you show up and pay attention to us two goofballs week in and week out and hope you have a great, great day and we'll see you on the next episode. Take care, everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.

35:54 And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.