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Dennis Collins: Welcome to another episode of Connect and Convert. Insider tips for small business owners who are looking to accelerate their sales. Hi, I’m Dennis Collins. Hey, my connect and Convert partner, say hello.

Leah Bumphrey: Hello, hello. Leah Bumphrey from sunny Saskatoon is at your service.

Dennis Collins: Saskatoon is always at your service.

Thanks for joining us again today. Leah, we’re gonna talk about something that doesn’t even sound like it might be a sales conversation. Why is it that BFFs don’t close deals? Now, for those of you who may not know, Leah,  explain what a BFF is.  

Leah Bumphrey: That is “best friend forever”.

That is people that you have a tight relationships with, and you don’t have to be texting to know BFF. That’s been around long time,

Dennis Collins: Long time, but I wanna make sure everybody understands. So, let’s start today. Leah, you are a storyteller. You love to tell stories. Would you tell me a brief little story right now?

Just something, whatever you want.

Leah Bumphrey: You know I was thinking last night, Dennis, you and I were talking about our shared love of the Canadian Mountains and getting out there in that fresh air and it’s gorgeous. And when our three boys were much smaller, no size 13 feet, then we would go skiing.

And one time we were skiing and we made friends with one of the surfers in the restaurants and she loved the boys. Great manners. They were plowing down all kinds of pasta and food, anything she would recommend. On our last day, we asked her, we’ve got a couple of days and we’re done skiing. What do you recommend?

And she gave us directions to go to an actual outdoor rustic — not a park — but a hot springs in the mountains. So we had to travel up this goat trail. We got just about to the point where I was looking down the edge from the passenger seat thinking, okay, we’re not gonna do this.

Anyways, we got up there, there were actual hot springs by the Raging River people from all over Europe, Canada, and the state. The boys have never forgotten that. And when you and I were talking about the Kenmore Banff area, I remembered that.

Dennis Collins: Wow. What? Gee, that’s great. But listen to this. Let me tell you something, Banff.

I love Banff. Do you love Banff? Banff Springs Hotel. If you wanna talk about a spa treatment. I mean, you aren’t gonna believe they have three different pools – cold, warm, and hot. And you jump in the hot and the cold and go back and forth. And I mean, it’s the most amazing thing. You don’t have to climb up any paths or anything, you just go.

Leah Bumphrey: That’s a little fancier than what we were seeing with the water raging there and a little bit of snow on the side.

Dennis Collins: Well, and speak of the snow. I’ve never seen so much snow in my life as I saw in Banff. I mean, it’s piled up by the foot. You call it centimeters, I think, in Canada, but we call it feet in US. 

I’ve never seen so much snow. Have you ever seen anything like that in Banff? It’s crazy. I love it.

Leah Bumphrey: It’s gorgeous. You’d almost ski down the parking lot and the road. 

Dennis Collins: Yes, it’s great. So, what just happened there?

Leah told the story. What did I do?

Leah Bumphrey: You had a story too, kind of connected, kind of not.

Dennis Collins: Kind of connected, kind of not. But let’s say this was a sales situation. Have you ever thought to yourself or had your salesperson say to you, if you’re a sales manager, “I’ve got this deal, this client loves me, my rapport will pull me through,” and then it didn’t close.

Have you ever had that happen? Leah?

Leah Bumphrey: I have. And it hurts. That one hurts your heart.

Dennis Collins: That one hurts the soul, the heart, right? So what I was trying to do when you were telling me the story was relate to your story, but top you. Hey, remember the game we used to play as kids? Can you top that? A person says something, blah, blah, blah. Hey, I can top that. Oh, I can top that. So I was trying to top what you said. I was trying to embellish it beyond what you said, and it continued into a fairly not-long-conversation, but certainly not a brief conversation. Did you hear how that went?

Leah Bumphrey: Absolutely. And what did I try and do? I tried to bring it back.

I tried to bring it back to my story, but that didn’t happen.

Dennis Collins: But what happens in a sales conversation? We are taught, it’s drilled into our brains. Rapport. Rapport. Rapport. That’s first. That’s foremost. That’s essential. It is.

But let me ask you this question. Can rapport go south? Can it go wrong? Can you ever have too much rapport? 

So, as you know, if you’ve listened to this podcast, you know that I listen to many, many hours of recorded sales conversations.

Boy, do I learn from those conversations? Several come to mind. There’s one I’m thinking of right now, Leah. I actually thought I was listening in to a frat party or a social conversation. It was almost like being on a first date. Boy, that’s hard for me to remember, but it reminded me of being at a party.

You know, customers, they have needs, but I gotta tell you something, they don’t need a new best friend. I call it forced bonding. That’s what I heard on that recording. I am going to make you like me no matter what. I am going to comment and top every story you tell because I think that’s relatable.

I’m relating to you. But what is the customer thinking? This person is creepy. Why are you being so friendly? Overly friendly. You’re a stranger. What do you want? Why are you manipulating me? So the client is thinking, why is this person acting like they’re my best friend? Do you find it creepy when somebody does that?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, it’s an overstep, right? That’s not why we’re connecting with them. And it becomes those cringe-worthy… We’ve all watched a movie where it’s like this – why would they have the character do that? Well, when it’s in real life and we’re part of it, that’s even worse.

It makes you cringe. Yeah, it totally wipes any credibility the person has and you don’t want to do business with them. Because remember, the reason they’re trying to be friends is because they want you to do business. It has the opposite effect on us.

Dennis Collins: The best kind of rapport Leah is called strategy rapport.

What is that, you might ask? Well, I invite you to stay tuned to this podcast. In one of our episodes, we will talk about why strategy rapport is so effective. How do you do it? Why does it work? The key to doing better in sales is strategy rapport. So what are some of the takeaways that we can get?

We are not getting paid to bond. We are getting paid to actively listen, understand, and solve the client’s problems. Anything else is off-focus.

Leah Bumphrey: It’s a basic human need and we have to remember, people want to be heard. So if we are trying to help them, we have to hear them first.

Dennis Collins: If we over disclose, if we try to force bond, it becomes all about the salesperson. It becomes about us. The sales conversation is supposed to be about the customer. Not us. Let the client self-disclose. By the way, it feels good. Dopamine is involved.

So as promised, what is today’s breakthrough challenge? Here’s the challenge. Do not take the bait. It’s human nature to want to go back and forth and contribute and continue.

This conversation I referred to earlier in this podcast lasted probably seven or eight minutes out of a one-hour call. Wow. Total off-focus. Stop yourself. No long elaborate comments on everything the customer says. Discipline yourself. Make a brief comment, refocus, and redirect the conversation to the goal.

What is the goal? Listening, active listening, listening to understand and responding to the customer’s needs and let us know how it’s going. That’s our challenge for this week. Now, Leah, reach into your question file. It’s time for “you ask, we answer.” What’s today’s question?

Leah Bumphrey: This one we’ve had a few times Dennis, and I think it’s fantastic because it encompasses maybe not some of the more specific things that we’ve talked about, but the general idea of us doing this.

Where did we come up with the name Connect and Convert? One listener actually texted in and said, it sounds like you guys are getting a little religious here. Like converting to what? The other one, is this an engineering thing? What are we connecting to? So Connect and Convert. What do we mean by that?

Dennis Collins: Wow, that’s a great question. Connect and Convert. Well, we looked at what the mission of this podcast was and said, how do we convert more leads to customers? How do we convert more leads? And the answer is connection. Connect leads to conversion. So that’s how we came up with that. We will strive in this episode and others to talk about how to make a connection.

Today’s lesson was don’t overconnect, don’t overdo it. TMI. You don’t have to be a BFF. You need to make a connection. You need to solve, listen, solve a problem, and move on. So that’s how we came up with it. Good question.

Leah Bumphrey: I think that when you first told me about what you were doing, it was something that I wondered and I think, based on the number of people who have asked us, that’s exactly right. Because this is about helping people make sales because people in sales love what they’re doing, but we’re doing it to make a living. So how do you do it in the best way possible to take care of yourself? That’s right. And the connections you make are not necessarily your best friends.

Dennis Collins: And the connection leads to the conversion. That’s the whole concept, right? A strong, solid connection leads to conversion. So that’s that. Thanks for the question.

To close out one of the other promises we made at the front, does this stuff work? Let me give you an example. One of my coaching clients a year ago had very poor closing rates under 30%, which is not acceptable.

What did I hear on the recordings I heard? Responding to every little comment a client made if they talked about their dog. He had to talk about his dogs. If they talked about their vacation, he had to top that by talking about his vacation. It was, again, like being at a party, you know?

Oh, we’re trying to have a party conversation. One of the reasons for his poor closing rate is because of exactly what you said earlier. You lose trust, you lose focus. And all of a sudden they said is this person here to entertain themselves or to help me? And he was there. He thought it was hilarious.

He was entertaining himself. So we made a few changes. We showed him connection leads to conversion. We showed him that forced bonding leads to no sale. A year later, he now leads his sales team. He’s over 60%, I think he’s sixty-five percent closing ratio. He now understands how to build rapport without being creepy.

He leads his team.

Leah Bumphrey: A little tweak. Fantastic. 

Dennis Collins: Focus on the customer. Don’t focus on yourself and your need to top everything they say. Listen to their needs, respond, and solve their problems. Until the next time, this is Dennis Collins and Leah Bumphrey.

We say farewell. Have a great sales day. We’ll talk to you next week. Connect and Convert.

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