Episode 223 Sell Futures Not Features By Michael Killen

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Show Summary

Rob Cairns sits down with Michael Killen to talk about his new book Sell Futures Not Features.

Show Highlights:

1. What is wrong with sales today.
2. Why clients do not care about features.
3. Why results matter.
4. Why you need this book.

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Show Notes

Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here

In today’s podcast I’m here with my good friend Mike Killen and what we’re going to talk about is his new book Sells Futures, not features, which launches this week.

How are you today, Mike?

I am really, really good.

Thanks Robbie, I’m doing well.

How are you doing?

Doing well, it’s great to have you again and it’s always great to talk about.

Some of your writing because a lot of people come region material.

I’ve read your previous book, it’s well written and I’m sure the new one when it comes out will be just as as great to read.

I hope so.

I mean, we’re.

We’re literally hours away from launching and I’m still finding the occasional typo, so they make themselves very obvious when you feel like you’ve submitted them.

But yeah, this is.

This is one I’ve been wanting to get out for a while, it’s non.

The previous one.

Very marketing agencies and funnels and quite specific, this one.

This one is a broader, a broader sales book for just entrepreneurs and business owners in general.

Yeah, so just just for some quick background.

I know you’ve been on the podcast with me before.

What are you working on these days?

What’s your focus besides book?

Predominantly, it’s yeah, it’s it’s my main focus is on sell your service as a as a business and we have a flagship program which is running at about 15,000 USA. So that’s our kind of core. My core focus. I’m trying to get the sales team.

Ramped up and make.

Sure that they’re.

Fed and watered and healthy and whatnot.

So a lot of my time is on.

Sales calls sales training training at the sales team and just really helping.

The other members of my team.

Kind of see the fruits of their labor because it’s all well and good everyone creating content day in day out but.

When we start being able to turn readers into leads and into sales, I think that’s when people I think that’s when people finally see it click, you know, it can feel a bit sort of ethereal beforehand, so that’s that’s the part we’re doing now.

Yep yes.

Is is putting the hammer down.

On the the sales conversion part and it seems to be going OK, but catch up.

With six months time.

To see if I’m saying the same thing so.

No, well we’ll be.

Talking I’m sure is there.

I have to ask you, is your sales process because your product is a higher value.

Is it a longer sales process or do you manage to close pretty short?

Do you mind share?

No, not at all, not gladly.

I mean, if I even go over this in the book, it’s about a.

We have case studies of customers that we have closed.

Whereby I have reached out to them on day one, completely cold and by day 14 they have bought UM.

We tend to, you know, do some kind of outreach.

We qualify quite quickly and then we get them on a 10 minute call just to qualify them.

Make sure that they’re.

Suitable for us and we’re suitable for them. And then we’ll take them through to a 45 minute conversation whereby we’ll either take.

Full payment or, you know, a deposit or something?

I I would say about a third close on that call and then the.

Next, well, you know this.

The next two thirds require follow up and they can be anywhere from between.

30 to 90 days I would have to guess if I’m looking at my tracker now, if that’s if that’s accurate, so it’s it can be up to about 3 months, but it’s not.

It’s not terribly involved, it’s just making sure.

You’re catching up with people sending them 4567.

So those are the splits.

I think at the moment.

Yeah, and I and I think the reason I asked that question is we all know that sometimes the higher value takes a little longer to close.

Sometimes shorter products take less time to close, so.

Yeah yeah, but I think a big part.

Of it is to do with.

With your finding and talking to the right people, Yep, I was hesitant to have two phone calls for a long time until, uhm?

Someone else explained to me like if you have two phone calls, you’ll end up having fewer phone calls in the long run, and so that’s been a big help.

Is making sure that we’re going after the right customers, but you know?

I’ve had people in fact again, like talking of the the book.

I’ve already had people saying to me hell, have you got like come ’cause?

I think I launch it for like it’s $0.99 on Kindle and then we do it for the lowest possible price for the hardcover and for the.

Paperback and I already have people saying to me like oh, if you got a discounted version like it’s $0.99 I I physically can’t go lower than that. I suppose I can get free so yeah.

No, I and and and honest honestly.

I’ve already preordered at the time that this record this way after about conscious.

That’s very good, yeah?

I’ve preordered both the.

And the paperback, and I’ll tell you.

Oh, thank you very much.

Oh good.

You’re welcome and I’ll tell you why I.

I love Kindle books for searchable, so if I’m searching something quickly for reference, I love to search them.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I’m, uh, I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this with you, but I have on this podcast.

I’m a book a week guy, so kind of the way I do.

Reading is.

I give up an hour of TV every day.

And I read and that hours often before bed and one of the things that I do is I read a hardcover or paperback book because I don’t want to screen time before bed.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

So I’ve got and the other role I’ve got interesting and I’ll mention it to you just for fun.

Every two business books I read, the third one has to be a pleasure book.

And said, that’s.

Yeah, it can get a little bit dumb.

It can get a little bit heavy.

That’s interesting.

I I listen to a lot of audiobooks, especially in the morning.

I find if I’m walking or exercising or driving the car, that’s a good time for me to catch up, but I I tend to get the Kindle version exactly as you’ve stated for.

Reference yeah, and I’m an audible guy too, and being a podcaster at last count, I’ve got like 31 podcasts on my podcast catcher just a few, and I’m one of these guys, Mike, I can’t read. I can.

And here to suck.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

Work in silence.

So if I’m not recording or I’m not audio editing, I’ve probably got something on in the background.

Right?

And you often it’s inaudible, or a or a podcast so.

I wanna dive into the topic because I sent it before we went to record.

I love this topic.

Self self futures not features and.

Just eat.

The reason I find this topic so compelling, spending a lot of time in the WordPress web design space, spending all at a time in email marketing space which you and I both do.

Over time with clients, clients get hung up often on what they’re using.

Are they using WordPress?

Yeah, yeah.

Are they using Convertkit?

Are they using Infusionsoft?

Whatever they’re using to do their marketing?

And I say it does.

Matter yeah, what matters to me is getting clients results and getting them leads to convert to sales your.

Thoughts yeah. 100% and years ago when I was.

Coaching much more heavily in the word press space.

I used to say to people like I’m building my business from the standpoint that one day WordPress might not be around.

You have no idea what the future is is in hold, right?

And we’ve seen this time and time again.

Then people do it. I mean, you’ve got the extremes. We’ve actually you and I’ve talked about this before, where you have people building their businesses on Facebook and YouTube and that company changes the algorithm and the bottom of your business falls.

Out to me, exclusively basing your entire business around a tool or a platform is falling into the same trap.

So as long as I have my database, you know, and we’ve talked a lot about creams.

That, to me is the important asset because most marketing tools or website tools or whatever they’ve got to the point where they’re much of the same now, frankly, and.

What I want to think is.

What is the most amount of?

Results I can get out of what I currently have or what I’m capable of using, and I think.

It kind of comes from two sides.

As sellers and vendors and experts, we often rely heavily on trying to sell the platform.

As I say, we try to sell the features and the detail.

And customers sometimes will latch onto that as well, because it’s often their only frame of reference.

It’s their only anchor point, and if we as experts haven’t done a good enough job saying.

Uhm, well what we want to do is.

You know, warm up the pipeline first and then reengage with people and then follow up and blah blah blah as you state it actually shouldn’t matter what the the technology is that does it.

It’s are we using the best strategy we have available using the resources that we have at hand and.

I think a lot of people try to rely on selling the the platform because that’s their anchor point.

That’s all they understand, and it’s it’s a signature to me that they don’t understand enough about the the strategy.

I don’t know if you think that’s fair or not.

’cause I know that you’re you’re heavily.

Involved on both sides I I truly think that’s fair. I think you’re like 100%.

On the money, because I I actually think.

Selling the platform and.

I think the only place I even try and sell the platform a little bit is one of the services ioffer are WordPress security services, so it’s really hard in that particular niche type of service not to sell the platform ’cause that’s platform specific, but beyond that.

I rather sell my clients results every day, every day of the year.

If we do this, you will get potentially this if you do it right.

I think that’s more important and we were kind of talking.

You were talking a little bit about the social.

I want to dive into that a little bit ’cause it’s important.

We know back in November, December, Facebook had a one day outage and what I’ll share with you is I have a new client.

Who on that one day outage? Because he was only selling his products in the Instagram marketplace, which is part of the Facebook ecosystem. He figures he lost $27,000 USD.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly, yeah, it’s crazy, isn’t it?

And and we can’t keep relying on those platforms because they keep changing the algorithms they keep changing the rules they keep making it really, really hard.

I mean, I was sharing with you my ongoing problem how I can’t post my own domain on Facebook, and it’s been like that forever.

And and it’s getting even more difficult with things like tracking cookies not being blocked, and all kinds of things going on.

And I I truly think we’re getting to the point on the web where companies are just gonna say, OK, we can’t track him.

So our service is now $10 a month. Do you want it? Or I think we’re headed there? I really do.

Well and.

His his signing.

It’s perhaps a bit controversial.

I think businesses should be saying that, as in, I think it’s an advantage because.

If 50 years ago, if we were selling widgets, if you and I said alright, let’s go into business and start selling some widgets and we wanted to advertise.

So we went to the TV, went to radio into magazine and if those.

Companies said that’s fine.

We can do that for you, but we can give you 0 information about who you’re going in front of what the metrics are, what the results are, what the number of reads are.

We’d be like, well, that’s kind of useless, but our hands are tide, so why don’t we measure the success of the campaign?

By how much money we?

Pick and then hold.

We would hold the media by to it to a counter.

We would say you know we’ve bought media from you, but we haven’t made sales.

Nothing gone through.

You can’t provide us insight on how that’s working, so why would I continue to work with you?

And so by measuring the conversion at the.

Actual point that.

It really matters which is the cash flow.

I’d I think it holds holds those types of businesses to more accountability, and I think we should start saying all right?

Well, we’re just going to start working.

We’re going to start.

Chop making sure that we measure it via the the physical money we make and and if if you can’t provide insight on that bit that happens in the middle.

Then we don’t have to use you.

Evidently you’re you’re missing out on something, so there’s some, there’s some.

Some funny changes which have been happening recently that a lot of people have seen.

Coming for a.

While and I don’t know.

Maybe maybe it’ll end up making things making things better, but that maybe I’m.

Going into conspiracy theory nonsense.

No, I I I don’t think.

You are. I mean, we know the EU’s taking a hard line. We know in EU.

Yeah, yeah.

S California is starting to take a hard line.

We know countries like Australia have taken a hard line.

There’s all kinds of controversy in Australia with.

Platforms using newspapers and journals and things like that and and by the way, Canada is taking a hard line, so it just seems the only one not taking a hard line is the global US and there’s something I.

Yeah, yeah.

I don’t get.

No, I don’t know and you know it’s dumb.

But there’s always I don’t know.

I suppose I see it from both sides and in some respects there’s.

There’s always there’s always something like before the pandemic, it was Brexit.

Before that, it was I kind of remember what it’s called now.

The GDPR, you know there’s always something which is going to prevent.

And stand in the way of people.

And commerce and, and that’s sort of half the battle I suppose.

Is is making sure that you can overcome that ’cause there’s always a reason to not buy.

It’s true now it’s worth mentioning too.

Before we move on is the only two things you really own.

Is your website and your emailing list correct?

Yeah yeah, and even even my website seems to becoming more and more outsourced.

You know, because I have people working on it or one.

Has people working on it and the reality is and I.

I would say this, I’ve said this before and I I will say it again.

I I no doubt in the future if I had to choose between losing my website and losing my database.

I’d rather lose the website as difficult as that would be I I would rather keep the database of people who know who I am, ’cause that’s ultimately where the relationships are built, and I think a lot of people.

I would agree.

There must become some kind of like stoic philosophy paradox, whereby the.

The more you value the concept of the website, the more you have to appreciate that one day that resource could just disappear.

And I think you have to build that into your business as well.

I think you have to, as you state you know, Facebook went down, I mean.

Uh, a WS servers recently had a bit of a time of it.

Yeah, and people entire applications.

Are on that you know, not one.

Multiple applications are hosted on that thing.

So it’s only going to become some point where you won’t even be able to get into your house.

Yeah, because you’re you’re killed.

I’ve heard that case happening actually.

It has, yeah it has happened.

It has happened, yeah?

Which is crazy, right like?

You fair or have you ever heard of Juicero?

I have

Which to me is just that to me is the height of.

Confusing what like the Internet of Things and why connectivity can be such a benefit.

And you’re right, it basically meant well.

If your server, if your router, your phone line, your ISP, or someone server somewhere doesn’t work, you can’t use your juicing machine.

Yeah, what a dumb.

Unbelievably, you know, I can’t know what they call it.

Is it?

Breakage point there’s so many points of failure in that to be able to just get some juice and we are slowly, slowly, and thing is, a lot of businesses are built that way.

A lot of businesses are Juicero brands.

They just don’t know it until something breaks and goes wrong and then.

All of a sudden it’s it’s woe is me, but you can see it coming if you pay attention to it.

It’s true, uhm, OK so.

Let’s go back to this, uhm, you say you should sell futures.

Do you want to expand on that a little bit?

Yeah, of course so.

I believe that.

Human beings are goal driven animals.

I think we all move towards goals and.

Whatever those goals might be, and we can kind of talk.

All day about big goals, small goals, whatever, and I think too many businesses.

It is believed that the strength of their product is in the features, whereas we have seen repeatedly that.

A customer is more likely to buy.

When their vision of their life is better, the future vision of their life is better compared to where it is now and your job is to explain that vision to them and help them believe in that and it just so happens that your product is a really good way to get there.

Uhm, so that’s what I tend to mean by to sell futures, not features.

Sell sell the.

Happy lifestyle that people are looking for.

Yeah, and that and for anything.

And I said that the the kind of the the the tagline I suppose for the book is.

Uh, how any entrepreneurial business owner?

Can find hidden desirable benefits, no matter how boring their product is, even if they aren’t confident in their product.

That are so compelling and desirable that you can’t help but sell more of them no matter what it is you’re selling.

I think we can find hidden, desirable, compelling benefits to it that will obviously increase sales and increase your prices.

And and that’s kind of it in a nutshell, I suppose.

Yeah, that’s so true.

So you know, I think a lot of people we’re talking about earlier in this business they get. They also get caught on the whole shiny tool syndrome and we, you know what that’s like and somebody new up at GoDaddy posted a questionnaire they said what what’s your favorite WordPress plugin?

And I my response was it depends what you needed for and the one and the one you use, and I wasn’t being sarcastic or condescending.

I I’m not.

A big fan in my business of switching around tools.

Uhm, the you know.

Depending on the flavor of the day, I think you’re better off to learn what you’ve got.

Hang on.

Maximize what you’ve got and become an expert in what you’ve got.

Before you start working at the shiny object every day.

And and this is.

This is something I try to talk about in the book is actually.

It’s a bit of a gory term, so I apologize, but it’s called kill the hostage because so many businesses.

Oh no, that’s a good point.

Yeah, so many businesses hold themselves hostage to the tool that they think they need.

So a really quick example would be I want to create You Tube content.

And I know you’ve talked with with a couple of your colleagues about this on the podcast. I want to create YouTube content so I have to wait until I can get a 4K camera and a road wireless microphone.

And that is holding that the technology there of the camera is holding you hostage and is preventing you from growing the business.

And a lot of the time we think yes, but I need to have the world most complex marketing platform or the best looking website. Or you know XYZ before I can do this and.

In my circles I would call that the lifeline and it’s exactly as you.

Date until you are doing it.

Badly and executing.

The strategy and using what you’ve got buying anything will just accelerate the results you’re already getting. And if you’re not getting anything then I’ve got 100 times.

Yeah, it’s so.

Zero is still zero, and I think too many people think that the technology will magically transport them and help them skip some steps.

Right?

You know, we know that it.

Doesn’t it’s the same problem with podcasting, right?

You you do some podcasting?

I do some podcasting and people don’t jump in and I I have an old saying that says you should deal Nike saying just do it like do it and refine.

Yeah, yeah.

And I’ve done that. I’m I don’t know at the time it just recorded him about 222 episodes.

Yeah, I know it’s crazy.

She would, which is crazy and I never thought I’d be there and I’m actually doing a talk in a couple weeks at the add a room web agency summit on how to build your business using a podcast.

Uh, yes yeah very good.

Excellent eight true.

And and one of the things I’m I’m in the process of producing is a little secret in preview is in eBay.

Look on some tools to get you started with podcasting without spending the bank on that, because I think a lot of people jump in and say I need that $400 mic before. I’m not sure what I’m gonna do. I need that.

Yeah, yeah.

$30 a month podcasting plan. I need this. I need that. And before you know it, they’ve spent over $1000 in technology and then what are they gonna do with it?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, exactly exactly, and that’s the thing like well, and I always find that really funny.

Because let’s say you had the world best.

Camera and podcasting equipment and studio. I’ve got news for you. No one’s going to pay attention to you for the 1st 50 to 100 episodes anyway.

So like you might as well be terrible and get that side of it down.

There was an example that my.

Uhm, kind of I I I used to play golf when I was a kid and I don’t.

I mean.

There was, there was a there was a product years ago called the Bald Eagle and the idea is it was a regular golf ball.

Would had 6 bald spots on it.

And I remember saying to my golf coach at the time, like.

Do you? Do you reckon that that their claims are true? That it can really add 50 to 100 yards and he said?

All you need to know.

Is ask yourself.

Are the professionals using this right now?

Are they using this tool right now, or did they use that when they started and you look around and go?

No, of course not.

They’re not using this like right?

So do you really think that if a professional isn’t using it to get X amount out of it, and those guys will do everything they can to get the next?

Percent of performance out.

Then it’s never, ever, ever going to make a huge difference to you.

Someone could create an outstand.

We’ve seen this with films like Upload for example.

That are filmed on Leica and even back then. It’s like a 2017 iPhone.

What they can do with an iPhone is way more than I could.

Ever do with.

You know an 8K red camera or something, and so you’re right, just getting into it, doing it, doing it badly, and learning the skill set before you start investing into the tools, is it? But it’s people don’t like being told that.

For a lot of reasons I guess.

Yeah they and and they and if you don’t try and do it, how do you optimize what you’re doing, which is as marketers, the one thing you and I always try and do is optimize what we’re doing and be better at it and buy.

And that’s not about throwing.

You know darts at the dartboard.

It’s about looking at metrics through testing, seeing what works.

What doesn’t work.

You know things like that?

Yeah, absolutely 100%. Yeah singing from the same hymn sheet.

Yeah, now I know we are in the book.

What would be the number one point you’re trying to get?

Across would you say?

The number one point would be you can sell.

As many items as you want, whether it’s a product or service, even if you’re unconfident in it or you’re uncomfortable with sales or your customers seem uninterested, you can sell that same product for as much as you want.

It’s probably not the product fault.

It’s probably your fault, but you can still do it.

Uh, I think a lot of people feel that.

Their product is very boring or you know.

They’re unconfident in the results that it can get.

This is something that comes up again and again is things to do with experience, and I believe that.

One can sell.

Anything they want for as high price as possible, it’s just about getting a couple of things in alignment, and hopefully that’s what I want to show with the book because.

While I don’t want everyone to become.

You know?

God gone artist selling snake oil.

I believe it’s the opposite.

I believe it’s the opposite problem.

I think.

I think we’ve got a a marketplace full of extremely talented and experienced, UM.

Vendors and service providers and business owners who are not charging what they’re worth, and they’re not making the sales that they deserve because they have some some.

Mindset blocks, or they’re not using the right sales process?

And I don’t.

Not charging.

I’d like to change that.

Not charging with their worth.

Now that’s an interesting topic and a road I’ve been down on this podcast with other people myself and think I’m a big fan of.

In what you’re worth.

And if somebody doesn’t wanna buy, they’re probably not the right client for you, huh?

Because they don’t value you and.

I think that client wouldn’t value you.

If you charged half, they would be in the same mindset and I think by not charging what you’re worth, you actually scare away clients that value you because they look at you and say why are you charging so much?

Yeah, absolutely 100%. It’s dumb.

It’s a, it’s a.

It’s a sign of.

Quality in in a large regard.

Large regards is having a price which makes people think oh OK.

I need to pay attention to this because there’s no such thing as middle ground.

There’s only one person can be the cheapest, and they’re probably owned by.

Google so don’t why bother going there?

Yeah, and so all right?

Well, let’s let’s put a price, you know.

I talked about this with a friend of mine today.

If I had to start from scratch right now, like everything was taken away from me, I would immediately go to selling $120,000 product.

Let’s see.

That’s the first thing I would go through. I go right what who has a $240,000 problem.

’cause I’m going to charge him 120.

1000 to fix it.

You know?

And a quarter of $1,000,000 problem.

There’s millions of those, you know, a business doing two and a half million. They’ve got a 10%.

You know margin of error on their refunds or whatever.

That’s a problem that I could sell for half that.

Price so.

Exactly as you’ve stated.

Even if I charged half of that.

If someone doesn’t understand the value of it, then they’re never going to understand the value of it, because, again, to your point, I’m only optimizing what businesses already have.

This is why I think it’s so important to work with people who have already got clients because.

I can’t, even if I double the number of clients you get.

If you’ve got zero clients, that’s still zero clients, whereas someone who has clients is is actually more likely, and I talk about this in the book.

It’s a case of.

Who benefits the most from working with you?

Someone going from zero to 10?

Great, it’s admirable, but someone who’s going from 10 to 20 is actually benefiting more.

They’re further down the line, and again I think we’re entitled to work with those types of customers because partly ’cause again, ’cause they’re easy.

No, I I also think you have to look at what you’re charging, what it’s worth to the potential customer.

And I I I say that a lot to people, so you know a customer selling high end products.

So I’ve got a client.

Right now I’m working with who sells high end car parts, custom car parts for.

Like 60s redesign 70 classic cars type of thing and.

Yeah, it’s beautiful.

I have to tell you I’m charging them more because I know exactly what this is.

Work to his business yeah, and and that’s part of the pricing scheme.

It’s not just about throwing a number out.

No, no, no exactly.

It’s like you say it’s.

If someone is suffering from a $10,000 a day problem, they will gladly pay $10,000 to fix it.

Nope, you know.

And I think we too often listen.

This is one of the, so we have this triangle for, you know self futures, not features and one side of it is uninterested customers.

Half of that might be because you’re trying to pitch the features and the system and the software or whatever half of it might be.

They’re just not interested. It’s just not that big a deal to them that they are missing out on $10,000 a day on sales like but, and if someone doesn’t care about that, they don’t care about that.

There’s nothing you can do to change that.

It’s the difference between want and need, and all too often I think people as experts.

We say yes, but you need this in your business, do we?

Need that unless someone wants it.

There’s very little you can do to convince them we know.

I mean you.

Know you asked me how my health was.

Which is, you know, good of you to remember.

I was given a list of things and for those who don’t know, I had cancer last year and I was given a list of things that would I would have.

To change and.

Do and I thought, yeah fine, I’ll do it.

That’s absolutely fine.

But that was what I needed to do, but what I wanted to do was eat burgers and sweets and chocolate all day.

You know you that.

And you see that so often.

How often do you see that people being told you need to change this about your lifestyle or change this?

And then they very quickly go back to what they want.

And it’s the same with business.

You can’t sell something that someone just needs if they don’t also want it, it might.

Not be fair.

But that that unfortunately is the way that human beings make decisions.

Yeah, and I I think when we get back to pricing too.

Some businesses don’t always do a a good job of distinguishing themselves from other businesses and in in our business we kind of the term I like is the inside advantage.

Oh no, awesome.

And yeah, there’s a really good writer, but in a mirror.

Bloom, who wrote a book called The Inside Advantage and what he talks about.

How you make your business stand out and how you make it different and how if you fight the pricing race to the bottom, you’ll be out of business.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah yeah, and he talks about that quite frequently now. The book was written in 2009 and I think the book is more relevant today than ever before to be.

Honest with him.

Why do you think that is then ’cause I’ve got a theory on that?

Why do you think that is that?

It’s more relevant ’cause also agree with you.

I don’t because I think a lot of companies are getting into the price battles, and they’re they’re, oh, I, I get calls all the time. Oh, I can find somebody that will do it for $500 cheaper, you know.

Go ahead, go ahead with that if that’s what you need, go ahead.

But what I can also tell you is when they come back to me to fix the mass.

I’m going to triple the price, so we’re going to give them.

Yeah, yeah 100% absolutely. Of course, I completely agree. Yeah, and The thing is as well.

Because the barrier to entry for all businesses has never been easier and it physically gets easier every day.

You know the platforms I’m using now.

Even five years ago would have cost 10s of thousands of dollars.

Yeah, alone 20 years ago when we were both when I was just getting into marketing and.

That’s why when people say well, I can find someone who can do it for 500 bucks. I’m like, yeah, I know you can.

And if you try and compete against that same line of reasoning, you will lose, because there will always be someone, and that’s why we try.

To create and we have to create an immovable place within the mark.

Uhm, which again is mainly kind of focused around our nation, and I know that you and I constantly come back to that.

That word, ’cause it’s so important and yet so few people have it just before we go on.

What was the name?

Of that book you mentioned, the inside advantage.

Robert bloom.

It’s a red cover.

It was one that a mentor recommended to me years ago.

It’s one that I reread every year.

I want to get that, that’s awesome.

It’s so funny when I see books like this that are published well, presumably this was.

Of why I don’t know when the first one was published. Well, it says this one version was 2007 and I’m always fascinated.

Yeah, somewhere now it’s a red cut.

It’s a red cover.

Yeah, I can see it.

It becomes more true as time goes on.

A lot of people think their book becomes more and more irrelevant, but there’s so often we see things around you.

You know growth and strategy because like I’ve said, more and more people are entering the market.

There’s actually less and less experience among vendors.

So it’s funny to.

See that.

Statements like that actually become more true the older the older we get.

I I really like that I I’m always looking for books like that.

No dear.

Excuse me, the other thing I think we have to learn to do in marketing and in any business.

If you want something, ask for it and yeah.

So I’ll give you, I’ll give you an example of that.

And I haven’t.

Alluded to this on this podcast.

I’m working on.

In interview.

On net nailing down an interview with Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder, whatever press right now and.

Yeah, yeah.

How that came about was.

I nicely called him out on Twitter and I said, you know, I’m working fine and I’m looking for an interview.

And I wasn’t rude about it was quite nice.

They said they care about this community I always have.

I’m heavily involved.

You have time for somebody who cares about the community as much as you.

Do very simple.

Yeah, well I have several friends up at automatic, the parent company and one of them reached out and said oh by the way, just you know.

I’ve put you in touch with the head of communication for automatic to try and get your interview nailed down.

So because I went and asked for it, I’m already in the process of narrowing down dates now.

Dates can take a couple weeks.

Sometimes we are show executives and that’s fine.

But the point of this is not to say people should go bother Matt.

Not at all.

Yeah, but but if you really want something or you wanna guest on your show or you want something in business you wanna review in business, why don’t you ask the client for the review, yeah?

And I.

Well, I again I have theories as to why people don’t do this, but I talk about this in the book as well as.

The two.

The two keys to negotiation.

I think everyone likes to think, especially men.

They like to think they’re very, very good at negotiation, but the two keys are.

They’re not.

Yeah, well, exactly, they’re not right and we see this so often we see this so often and I think the two keys are.

First of all, do you know what you want?

And secondly, does the other person know what you want and so often when I’ve done coaching calls and they said, you know, I’ve trying to I’m everything from trying to close a customer as you said, getting referrals is quite a common one that we the people have this roadblock.

And exactly, she’s saying like great, well how many times have you asked them?

Well I am.

I haven’t asked them like oh OK, do you think maybe that?

Might that might might indicate why you’re struggling to get this particular conversion or or problem or problem solved.

And again, I don’t know and and part of it is, I think because people don’t fully, they don’t write down specifically, and with clarity what it is that.

They want.

And the other half is they don’t make sure that the other party knows what they want and you’ll skip like 90%.

Problems as soon as you have those two points pushed forwards for whatever it is that you’re looking for in your business and exactly the same reviews, referrals, even sales.

You know no one ever lost a sale from from pitching too early so.

Yeah, go for it like the worst that’s going to happen is a no.

So, true, I’ll I’ll share with your review story.

I have a good friend of mine who owns a.

Local jewelry store

Uhm, he does well because he’s different than every other jewelry store, so difference is a big deal.

And I sat down about two years ago.

He said I’m not getting Google reviews.

I said oh every time somebody buys something.

And pays you money.

Ask him, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Say, could you go here and hand him a card and make it easy and say can you go here and right?

Yes Sir, if you give him the card with her belly.

And then I said go one step forward as somebody walks in and he focuses. I would bet 70% of his business is custom work.

And if somebody got that custom piece that they’re just raving Moe.

Has submit to shoot a 32nd video raving about the custom piece and then post the video unedited.

Yep Yep yeah.

Do you know that he gets an average of four or five video reviews a week now?

Yeah, just because he asks and because he’s saying let’s do it.

Now yeah, yes they they don’t.

People aren’t walking away ’cause what happens is people have good intentions.

They walk.

Away of course.

And we all do it.

I do it with Amazon, would you?

Repeat it, yeah, I’ll do it later.

Yeah, I’ll do tomorrow.

I’ll do it the next day and do I ever get to.

Do it yeah no.

And by asking, then and there and making it so easy to do.

Yeah, it’s not a professional 4K camera.

But you know what the new iPhones are pretty good.

Yeah, exactly yeah.

And The thing is as well.

The funny thing is and again, this is the life line and This is why a big part of my overall philosophy is people are goal orientated.

So let’s say that your ultimate goal, as you think.

With this

Well, I I don’t ever want to offend people or upset people like because I don’t want to be disliked.

If you say well, I would hate to ask my customers.

Can you please give a review?

And for them to say no, or you think, well, they can’t give a review ’cause it’s not a 4K camera and everything is filmed in 4K nowadays, blah blah, blah whatever those excuses are. Those aren’t real, those are just.

Really clever motivations that you’ve made up in order to avoid having to ever have someone offended or or dislike you potentially.

But as you’ve stated, 99% of the time people are actually really happy to do this kind of stuff even if you bowl BF. Ask them for referrals. In fact, that’s what we ask for referrals.

As soon as someone signed up, I say great.

Do you know two or three other agencies that I could get in contact with?

They go, ah, you know, off the top of my head, yeah, I’m I’m I’m sure I do I great can you give me some names though?

Uh, give me give me a couple of days and go it’s OK man, take your time.

Don’t worry about it.

I don’t need them literally.

The second.

Take a few minutes and eventually they’ll come out.

You know?

People are happy to do it.

They that you know if you give them direction and you stated there as well make it easy for them.

Make it easy for them and they will weigh more likely to to to acquiesced and you can do some crazy things with.

The with those resources when people are on board with you.

It’s so true, Uhm, did you?

You’ve done an audio version of the.

Book as well.

Did you read it yourself or did you get somebody else to read it for you?

No, so I actually got someone else.

I got a colleague of mine guy called Robert Plank to do it and the reason why and you won’t know this from your side is I have to mute my microphone every.

I don’t know 20 seconds or so ’cause I have a throat problem, which means I’m constantly coughing right?

And I was like I cannot be bothered.

To do that and edit it, and he if you want to talk about some great marketing.

When I first released my first book woman, one of my third book or.

Whatever was.

He said, are you doing an audio book?

And I said, yeah, I’ll get round to it.

I’ll get round to I’ll get round to it I’ll get around to it, right?

So again, people have the best intentions.

I’ll say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll, I’ll do it, I’ll do it and he emailed me three months later.

Have you done it yet?

No, six months late, have you done it yet?

Know nine months later was like, you know you could be making nine months.

With audiobook sales right by now, I mean, you know what?

You’re absolutely right.

He did it.

It was great.

It was very painless.

He uploaded it, took care of everything.

And then I figured, let’s do the same for this one.

And what’s really funny is a lot of people say some people have messaged me and said, you know, you really should have read it yourself.

Which is interesting to me because.

I think people overestimate.

I I would love.

To have read it myself and maybe at some point I’ll do that maybe at some point I’ll go into a.

Studio and I’ll get someone to help me do it properly.

Uhm, because they’ve got quite strict.

I don’t know what you call them laws.

No, not laws like.

Content quality guidelines, I suppose, and I just couldn’t be bothered to, I just couldn’t be bothered to figure that out.

And you know, we’re talking about life lies.

There’s mine like I just couldn’t be bothered to do it, I guess, but I suppose.

But I can always do it again in the future, but also.

I must have.

Hundreds of hours.

Of content on podcasts and interviews like this and webinars and YouTube. Like if if you’re that desperate to listen to me you.

Can go ahead and do that there.

But it’s often also I don’t think anyone who has ever.

Released an audio book and written an audiobook.

Has criticised me for getting someone else to read it, which is always interesting to me.

I appreciate that having what would you call it?

External perspective is important.

Uhm, but it’s I’ve never had anyone who’s actually gone through the process, say to me, realistically, you should have read your own book.

It’s always people who haven’t done it, so whenever anyone does say I go, OK, so did you record your audiobook?

They go out, no, I.

I don’t have 10, isn’t that interesting?

So there’s pros and cons.

There there there is one thing you just mentioned, really interesting.

You’ve got hundreds of hours of content.

And I was just listening to Russell Brunson yesterday and we all know we all knew who Russell is in the in the space.

Oh yeah.

You know he’s legend.

Bit of and Russell was talking about in a podcast.

Yeah, sure yeah.

You should actually record and document everything you do.

The reason he was at that was.

You never know when we’re lead magnets or.

Quick info pages or things like that are gonna come from sure.

Do you have any feeling on that?

Yeah, and and you know.

To a large extent, I agree with him.

I think people do have this funny thing about.

Like getting a loom and recording.

You could record every single hour of your day, all 8 hours of it, and.

99.9% of the time nothing is ever going to come from it, but our entire process system for making sure that my team know what they’re doing is based around that.

Every time I don’t do a core roll, my core roll.

Anytime I do anything else I’ll do it on loom and send it over to him and it’s up to them to.

Kind of disseminate it, I do think.

That content creation can sometimes be.

Avoiding going out and doing sales.

So I’m I’m hesitant to say yes, everyone should be producing an hour or two hours worth of content a day.

I do believe in documenting what you do and also I think people very quickly realize if they start documenting everything they do.

They think, oh, actually, I’m wasting an enormous amount of time here now that I go back over like we have a, you know, a leads tracker and the amount of times I’ve tracked the leads that I’m going through, I’m like.

Oh man, I’m really wasting time on some.

Low quality leads, so documentation is also in in could in some respects a or documenting is is a uh culling process or an editing process so.

As a very vague rule, yeah, I’d have to agree with him, but.

I would I would hesitate to immediately recommend that because some people often do that as a way of avoiding going out and having sales conversations ’cause they think it can replace that which person.

I don’t think it can.

No, I I would agree with.

You on that one.

Uhm, as we wrap up, is there anything else you want?

To highlight though the book.

No, you know.

I think most people, most business owners and product creators or whatever don’t read sales books because they don’t like selling.

Uhm, you know I’m very privileged in that.

I like to sell so it it never really mattered to me what I’ve sold well within within reason and I think.

If you are an entrepreneur or a product creator and you think I really could do with making a little bit more money this year.

Yeah, you know this is.

Probably a pretty good place to start and and it doesn’t mean that you have to become.

If anything, it means you become more conversational and more approachable and less salesy.

You know that term that people use.

Because you’re just looking at what it is that you are trying to help the customer achieve, and that does an enormous amount of the heavy lifting rather than trying to.

Do you know pressure tactics or?

You know clever closes and things, so yeah, even if you think you hate sales, give it a go.

And if you think it sucks, then you can always always get a refund or sell it.

Sell it on eBay or use it.

If you want.

To do what, I would suggest anybody is get the book personally, ’cause knowing the way you write in having your other book sitting beside me, it’s gonna be well worth to read.

So I’ll say that.

Right away.

Push that.

And then read it and.

Implement one or two things or three things that you learned in the whole book.

Don’t get overwhelmed.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

I think I think where people get overwhelmed with courses with books with learning is they think because Mike said it, they got to do it all and they got to do it all now.

And I think with I think what you should do is the way it read books like yours is.

I actually read with a notepad beside me.

Yeah, and I write stuff down that’s important to me as I’m reading.

And it might be a page reference.

It might be a quote, it might be some wordings, verbiage.

And then also what do we need to do to deal with this, yeah?

Yeah, and I think that’s the right approach to a book like this.

Not to say I’m gonna read it all and I’m gonna be coming expert overnight.

That’s not gonna happen.

Yeah, no, not at all.

Yeah, not at all.

And and that’s it’s an interesting point you make like.

Of all the books that you and I have read, the you know scores of them hundreds of them, like you say that there’s only ever really one actionable point or one really decent thing worth taking away from them.

And it’s more important to.

Do something about that rather than trying to eat the whole elephant.

Because that’s not going to happen, and you can always go back like you can.

Always go back and there are certainly books that I go back to.

But yeah, I appreciate that I would.

I would wholeheartedly agree with you.

Just pick.

Pick one thing, maybe two things.

And do them rather than trying to capture everything.

Where is the best way to?

Find a buck Mike.

If you had to well sell, futuresnotfeatures.com is the website, but also if you just search for Michael Killen or sell futures, not features on on Amazon at the moment you can buy it in stores.

Well, you will be able to by the time this this podcast releases if you if you ask for the title, they should be able to get you a print.

Copy in if you want to stop giving Mr. Bezos your money. But also, if you head to my book dot TO forward slash futures.

That should redirect you to your local Amazon link, so there’s plenty of ways to get.

Hold of it, yeah, and how’s the best?

Way to get ahold deal.

Just email me michael@sellyourservice.co.uk

Hey I I respond to all my emails, maybe not immediately, but I do respond to them.

So yeah, I’d be delighted to help out or answer any questions people.

Might have.

Yeah, thanks for joining me today to talk about the book and good luck with the release and I.

Hope it all goes well.

Thanks very much mate, appreciate it.

 

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