Relationships Win Framework: Sales

Brad: 00:00:00

Welcome to Student of the Game podcast where we help you master the fundamentals, fall in love with practice and win at the game of life. I'm your host, Brad Knoll. Welcome to the classroom. Welcome back to another episode of Student of the Game.

And you know, here we love to master the fundamentals, fall in love with practice and win at the game of life. And in this four part series we are talking about the Relationships Win framework.

It is a framework to help you build your business relationally, to fall in love with your clients, to build relationships, to deepen relationships, and then to repeat this cycle. And you're going to create some momentum by doing this. So if you remember, just a brief recap. First base, we use a baseball analogy here.

We're trying to score some runs, but first base is connect. You got to connect. You got to connect. You got to connect and you got to do it without anything in return. You do it because you're a good human.

And then from connect, you want to create conversations. Not all connections are going to create conversations, but you want to connect, then you want to build conversations.

Once you get into these conversations and you spend more time listening than talking, you're going to uncover some needs from people.

And these needs, you may have somebody in your life and your database and your sphere of influence in your circle that you could introduce this person to. Somebody just bought a home from us. They're moving from out of state and they asked for some daycares.

You never know what people are going to need from you. And so the introductions, you need to be a pro at introducing the people you care about to people that will make their life better.

Once these introductions happen, occasionally somebody's gonna have an introduction for you. And what do you do? Well, you make the sale. You make the sale and then you round the bases. And that's where we're scoring runs here.

We're in business, you know, to, to make sales. Now, sales are a byproduct. I wanna talk about sales today. I wanna talk about sales from an aspect that you may not have thought about before.

My mentor says everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die to get there. Think about that. Everyone wants to go to heaven, no one wants to die to get there. Right?

Everybody wants to make a sale, but not everyone's willing to do what it takes in order to make that sale. You think about this. I've been doing this for, for 20 years.

And I can tell you the thing that I've fallen in love with is building relationships, connecting with People and serving others at a high level.

If you can do that now you get to be to the place everybody wants to be, where people are introducing you to their friends, families and their coworkers.

Whether you're a landscaper, a financial planner, an appraiser, a title rep, a realtor, whatever business you're in, thing that you need to sustain and to stay in business and to put food on your table is introductions. You need introductions to people that want to transact. All right, so let's talk about sales.

In terms of the thing that I believe the most when it comes to sales, there's really three sales.

All right, the three sales in my world that happened, the first sale is the introduction, you know, when, when I've got clients that are talking behind my back and just happened today, had a meeting, I've been in the office here today, had a meeting with somebody who was introduced by a family member. That family member sold their other family member on why they need to call me. All right, that's a first sale.

The first sale is when you're introduced, alright? The first sale is not when you're sitting down in front of them. Think about that.

In a relational business if you get introduced to somebody, the first sale has already been done. By the time that customer gets to you, the sale, the first sale has already been done.

That's, that's the magic behind running a relationship based business.

If you're not in a relationship based business and you're cold calling your door knocking or you're, you know, buying leads, the first sale has to be you convincing somebody to do something. That is not the relational model. The relational model is somebody introduces you that has a problem and that problem needs to be solved.

And at a very deep level we believe the only reason a business exists is to solve a problem. Let me say that again. The only reason your business exists is to solve your customers problems.

One of the things that Nolteam real estate we understand at a very deep level is the problem we solve is people are going through a lifestyle change and they need to make a change in their housing and that's a problem that they're going through, whether it's a good problem or a bad problem.

You know, some of the good problems are I graduated college, I got my first job, I'm getting married, we want to buy a house together, I just got a raise, we want to buy our dream home. Like these are good problems, right? Some of the bad problems in real estate, somebody passes away.

Unfortunately somebody's going through a Divorce, unfortunately, somebody lost their job. Unfortunately.

You know, we see all of, all of, all of humanity who are going through lifestyle changes and they need to make a change in their housing. That's the problem that my team solves. What problem do you solve?

If you think about that and you become amazing at solving your customers problems, that's the second sale. The first sale is they get introduced to you, the sales already happened.

The second sale is when you can communicate, you know how to solve their problem, then they might sign a contract with you.

And the third sale for us is actually doing business, actually getting a buyer out there, getting them under contract, helping them navigate, you know, know the many homes for sale, the, the opportunities there are with different lenders and lending options. You know, there's many sales that happen along the way. Little, little micro sales, but at the, at a, at the core there's three sales.

The introduction was one sale. Us being able to solve their problem is another sale. And then getting an offer accepted and navigating a transaction is the third sale.

And like I said, the only reason a business exists is to solve a problem. And in real estate or any, any service business, it's, it's really about being in the solution side of things. Like what solutions can you provide?

I heard, you know, some buddies of mine, you know, some, some, some mastermind groups, you know, one of the guys says problems are the price of progress. Problems are the price of progress. You, if you don't have a problem, let me just say this.

If you don't have any problems, you don't have any business, you don't have any customers, you don't have any clients. If you don't have any problems, you don't have any clients. People come to you because they want you to help solve their problem.

You have other people's burdens that they place upon your shoulders. Now part of your responsibility is to make sure you have the capacity to handle that. Life's busy, man. Listen. Life's busy.

I'm recording this on a holiday weekend. Drove in from the lake, got my hat on backwards. If you're watching this, you know, but I'm showing up because you need to hear this.

Maybe you needed to hear this today. You are in the solutions business.

If you have clients, it means they're putting their burdens, they're putting their challenges, they're putting their problems on your shoulders. And you, my guy, my gal, you got to step up to the plate and help them solve those problems. That's where we start having sales.

Sales is about Closing a deal, it's about delivering a solution. When you solve problems, I really believe sales take care, will take care of themselves.

If you focus on solving people's problems and serving them at a high level, the sale will happen. And if you don't like the number of sales you have, it's because you're not serving enough people. I'll say it, and I'll be bold.

I'm not telling you you're not good at what you do. I'm telling you you need more connects that lead to more conversations. And then you need to be a voracious introducer of other people.

Go help other people win. We say that all the time on here. Serve the introduction, not the problem. Serve the introduction and then solve the problem. Don't serve the problem.

Don't mix words. Don't serve the problem. Solve the problem. Every introduction is a door to someone's problem waiting to be solved.

Approach each introduction like a diagnosis session. Discover what's really going on. Do a fact find. Do a deep dive.

Just met with somebody who wants to sell property, and then one of the first questions, what do you charge? My response back to them was, how fast you want to sell your house? Do you not owe anything? You want to sell it for $5?

I could have a hundred people lined up on the streets. You sell for a million dollars and it's worth 500. Might charge a little more because nobody's coming. So ask, listen, understand, and offer solutions.

Pitching. People talk about your pitch deck. People talk about, you know, pitching or closing strategies. You know, coffees for closers.

You know, close the deal, right? I think the deal in. In my world, my belief system is the deal closes. You don't close the deal, the deal closes. And again, don't mix words here.

When you close a deal, the emphasis is on closing, which is, in a sense, convincing. You know, a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion. Still. We use that with parenting. We use that with my friends.

We use that with our team. You try to convince somebody against their will, they are going to be of the same opinion. Still, I think that was Nelson Mandela. That was deep.

You know, one of the things is give you an example.

A friend introduces you to someone who's thinking about downsizing, and instead of jumping to list their home, one of the things we do, we try to help them understand timing, options. The emotional readiness. That's a big deal. The emotional readiness. Think about that.

You know, if you're in a business where you're a financial advisor and you make more money selling life insurance. And all of a sudden you meet with somebody like, I'll sell you life insurance. But get to know them first. Ask them some questions.

You know, find out what they. What they have going on in their life.

You know, if you're selling, if you're selling shirts or, you know, you're an accountant, like, you got to understand the problem you're being hired to solve first. And then it's about building relationships.

And if those people aren't ready, if you get introduced to somebody and they're not ready to make that move, then you go back to first base with them. You just keep connecting. Keep connecting, have more conversations. More things will be uncovered. Maybe you need to introduce them to some more people.

In my world, sometimes before somebody buys a home, we ask them if they have a financial advisor. And that's.

That's uncommon because a lot of times we know if they go to financial advisor and the financial advisor wants them to be a little more conservative, they're not going to buy as big of a home with us. You know, in real estate, that. That happens. You know, we want people to be confident homeowners. That's it.

I don't care if it's $100,000 buyer or $10 million buyer or seller. We want people to be confident homeowners.

And in doing that, we have conversations with people and introduce them to the people they need in their lives. It's like building a team. Zig Ziglar says, stop selling, Start helping. I love Zig. Zig's the man. My grandfather was my mentor.

Getting into real estate. He. He had a real estate business for 55 years. If you haven't heard this on the pod before, it's the first time you're hearing it.

I'm a third generation realtor, and my grandfather told me one time it just completely blew my mind. After he knew I was going to conferences, he had.

He had retired and before he had passed and I had told him some of the conferences I went to and that I heard Zig Ziglar. And he told me a story. He's like, yeah, I was the president of the Indiana Auctioneers association way back in the day.

And we hired Zig to come and present. And I'm like, wait, like the Zig Ziglar? And he's like, yeah, he wasn't the Zig Ziglar at the time.

He's like, I picked him up at the airport and brought him down and had dinner with them. I'm like, oh, my goodness. That's a story. Sorry, back to the podcast. I was getting a little personal there.

So, number one, serve the introduction, solve the problem. Serve the introduction, solve the problem. Number two in sales is sales are emotional decisions about logical problems.

Another way we say that is people buy emotionally and then they justify logically. People buy emotionally and then they justify logically. People make decisions emotionally and justify them logically. I've done that.

I mean, done that with cars, with golf clubs. You kidding me? Oh, this club's gonna go, oh, man, this driver.

I get so much more clubhead speed, and it's gonna give me more distance and nah, you know what? I just wanted a new club because my driver kept going right on me. You know, I bought emotionally, and then I justify all the.

All the metrics of this new driver. And what this is going to do for me is going to lower my scores, make me happier, and be better husband, better dad, you know?

Anyway, you get the point, I'm sure. What do you have in your life that you bought emotionally? Think about that. Your last big purchase or small purchase, what did you buy emotionally?

And then justify it logically to somebody else. Like, we see this in real estate all the time. Somebody walks through a house, oh, my gosh, I love it. I love it. Let's buy it.

Let's hurry up and make an offer. We make an offer. Multiple offers. That's great. All of a sudden, we're done, and they're explaining it to their family.

Well, it's, you know, it's so much closer to the school, and, you know, our commute time's a lot less. And, you know, they just put in a new ac, so it's going to cut down on our cooling costs. So sales are emotional decisions about logical problems.

You win when you make people feel safe, understood, and supported. Think about that. You know, you win in sales when you make other people feel safe, understood, and supported.

Solving their felt need is just as important as solving their logistical problem. How people feel. People forget what you said, they'll forget what you did, but they'll never forget how you made them feel.

That's Maya Angelou right there. We have that hanging up on the. On the office.

Maya Angelou says, people forget what you said, they'll forget what you did, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. And I believe my business is where it is today because I doubled down on the feelings that I wanted people to experience when they worked with me. Me.

I wanted them to feel something different. I wanted them to be understood. I wanted Them to feel heard and listened to. And that takes time. You know, it's a crock pot or a microwave.

Does your food taste better in a microwave or a crock pot? I take a crock pot all day long. Come home, come home after a long day and smell that thing in the crock pot.

I'm like, whatever it is, it smells good, you know, in the microwave. It's. That's as quick as reproduced.

So some of the examples that I have when it comes to people buying emotionally and justifying logically is sometimes a biggest concern isn't really the square footage. It's school district commute, is family nearby. We just had that. Somebody's moving in from out of state and families nearby. And then we solve that.

fall into place. Do you need: 2000

Well, this home's only: 1700

And I like Simon Sinek has a lot of good stuff out there.

One of the things I saw a while ago, there's a YouTube video, I don't know the title of it, but he talks about the emotions and he says people don't buy products, they buy better versions of themselves. People don't buy products, they buy better versions of themselves. What is this thing going to do for me to make me a better version of who I am?

Is this going to save time for me? Is this going to reduce my stress? Is this going to help me keep more money in my pocket?

Those are all reasons that, you know, we can solve problems for our clients. Sales are emotional decisions about logical problems. Think about that. Student of the Game is brought to you by Knoll Team Real Estate.

Our mission is to eradicate mediocre real estate transactions on your largest financial purchase. You shouldn't have to deal with average.

We do this by helping you save time, reduce your stress and helping you keep as much money in your pocket as we can.

You can help us out by introducing us to your friends or family who want to make confident real estate decisions, whether buying, selling, building or investing. At Noel Team Real Estate, we are connected to a group of realtors who sell one in every eight homes in North America.

If you know someone moving out of your area, there's a great chance we can connect them to somebody we know like and trust. Remember, relationships win. Now back to the show eq. People talk about EQ a lot. IQ eq. EQ is emotional intelligence.

Do you have the emotional intelligence to meet people where they are? You know, I get a lot of people ask me about real estate. Hey, can I get into real estate? Hey, can I meet with you about getting into real estate?

I'm sure I'd love to. You know, one of my passions is to expedite people's learning curve.

If I can help you learn faster than what it's taken me, it's taken me over 20 years to get to where I'm at today. I hope I can help you do it in five, six, eight years, 10 years.

But when I meet with somebody for the first time about real estate, I usually ask them this important question. I said, let's do a little, little case study.

How would you handle meeting somebody in the morning for coffee who's a business owner and you're networking and you're trying to build relationships and connect and make some introductions.

And then at: 10:30

And so they wanted to meet with you, pick your brain, see how they could handle it. And then in the afternoon, you're meeting a widow who just lost their spouse and they're going to need to put their home on the market.

And then at 5 o', clock, you have to deal with some inspections that are going on, because that's due by the end of the day today. So you gotta get some of that signed.

And then in the evening at 7 o', clock, you're, you're dealing with somebody who just got a promotion and they want to buy their dream home. And if you think about how you as a person, how we as a person need to show up in real estate, it takes a high level of emotional intelligence.

And this is, I go back to capacity. You have to have capacity. You have to in invest in yourself. You have to pour into yourself so that you can give back to other people.

You know, the, the example that I just gave, and I can give a hundred examples just like that, where every single person we meet, every client we meet is going through something. We're the second stress in their life. Moving is the second stress. The reason they're moving is the first stress. And so we have to be aware.

It's why a lot of young realtors struggle For a little while. They understand the technology, they understand the contracts, they understand, you know, know how to be efficient.

But what they don't understand yet if they haven't been married, is how married people make decisions. If they haven't had kids, they haven't understood how kids live in a home if they hadn't had anybody move out of the house, an empty nest yet. Right?

And so like, we only can experience life at the level in which we're going through. And it takes somebody who has that emotional intelligence, somebody has perspective to be able to see past that.

You have to be able to see past whatever it is your clients are going through.

I mean, if you're a health coach and you've got somebody who you know is overweight, you know, you've got to understand what are their habits, what's their mindset like, what problems do I need to solve for them? Maybe it's not solving the lose 100 pounds. Maybe the solving is you got to get up and drink water every single day.

Very first thing in the morning, you got to drink some water. Let's get the habits right. Before we can get the outcomes right, we gotta get the habits right on our team. You gotta get the connections right.

You know, I really don't know if I can help you if you don't have 500 contacts in your phone. If you have 500 contacts in your phone, I can help you build a relationship based business. Business. And you could take this to the moon if you want.

And so as we go around the bases and we talk about sales, it starts with connecting. Connecting with people in a genuine way. Creating conversations. Those conversations lead to introductions. How voracious can you be?

How, how can you introduce and improve the quality of life to your clients without wanting anything in return? But then when the introduction is made, you got to be great. You got to be great. There's got to be greatness in the moment.

My friend Michael Lennington and, and Kristen Tabert, they talk about greatness in the moment. We all have the ability to be great in the moment. And can you stack moments on top of one another?

One great moment after one great moment after one great moment. And if you do that and people come to you to solve their problem, you have the ability to then make a sale. But I'm ask you to do this.

Number three, detach from the close. Attach yourself to the solution. Be in the solutions business. Don't chase sales, chase solutions.

Not every introduction will lead to a sale, but every solution you provide builds credibility. It builds trust.

The character and the competence that you exude will now allow you to walk into doors that other people that are focused on the sale don't have the ability to walk into. Could be in real estate. A lot of times we give people free staging advice. A lot of times we give them a free market analysis.

A lot of times we show them homes with, without any strings attached. Now there's a buyer's agency agreement that's signed, but, you know, oh, it's a retainer fee. We're not Uber.

I'm gonna charge you for driving you around. There's a lot of things that we do. Sometimes we tell people not to list their home right away.

Sometimes we tell them like, hey, let's, let's hold off on buying right now. Let's, let's get your life figured out.

Let's figure out what we're doing with your credit score, with your down payment, you know, any gift money that, that, that's. There's some potential to have. I want to be somebody's go to solution expert. I want to solve problems at a high level.

We talked about the go giver in a couple of these. I truly believe, and this is the law of compensation is your compensation is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.

Let me say that again. The law of compensation, how many people you serve, it's based on how many people you serve and how well you serve them.

If you're not making enough money, if you're not making enough sales, reframe your thoughts. Chase the sales, chase the connections, Chase the conversations. Fall in love with that practice. Fall in love with deepening relationships.

Fall in love with introducing people. One year we had a business mixer. And our theme that year was, was 200.

This is when our business was really small, but our, our theme that year was 200. And people would come in like, well, 200. What's that for? What's. What is 200? Our goal? And we just kept saying, our goal is 200.

Our goal that year, I think it was probably 10 years ago, our goal was to give away 200 introductions. We were tracking that year how many introductions we gave. Think about that. You know, most businesses, they just track what they get.

We were tracking what we were giving. And that's something that, you know, it's a shift in your mindset when you have that shift in your mindset.

And then what we talked about on a couple other episodes is a shift in your heart set. You know, the posture of your heart when, when you shift it to, like, how. How big can I give this year? Give of my time, my talents, and my treasures.

Sky's the limit. We are where we are because we focus on giving, we focus on serving. And so you detach from the clothes you attach to the solution.

I'm in the solutions business. Sometimes solving one problem leads to a bigger sale or an unexpected opportunity.

I know some of the biggest sales in my career is because I wasn't even expecting it. One of the. One of the bigger sales we had, let's call it last year, was because we donated to organization and we had a table at a.

At a fundraiser, and we were just there to give and support our friend who was doing some fundraising. We weren't there to get. We were there to give.

And, oh, by the way, there was an introduction that was made, and we ended up selling a really nice home. Didn't expect it. No strings attached. But I'm there to receive, and I'm there to be grateful and stay humble. Detach the outcome.

Attach to your mission. Detach yourself from outcomes. Attach yourself to missions.

You probably thought we were gonna talk about sales today, and I was gonna, you know, teach you how to close deals, teach you how to grow your business. You know, teach you how to convert. Right? All those things. That's not sales. In a relational business approach, sales. Sales are a byproduct.

Sales are a byproduct of how many people you can serve and how well you can serve them. And can you solve problems, and can you build capacity to solve more problems and greater problems every single day, month, year?

Stack that stack the amount of problems you can solve. It takes a lot as our business grows. It's one of my challenges right now.

The thing that's weighs on my mind and it's on my shoulders, is how can I help people solve more problems? My compensation is directly tied to that, and yours is too. If you don't love your compensation, go solve more problems.

Maybe solve more problems stems from being the person who can solve more problems. Your capacity. Go for a walk, go drink water. Go be a better friend. Go be a better spouse, be a better parent.

What's the real problem you're trying to solve? Right. It's the goals that we have. I don't go too much deeper into this. I'll do a recap.

But this year, we've created the Relationships Win framework, and it's tried to teach our team, and now I'm bringing it to you. I'm trying to teach our team how to grow your business relationally. If my team's listening to this, I hope, I hope you are.

If my kids are listening to this, which I hope you are. Everything you want in life is on the other side of connections. Everything you want in life is on the other side of conversations.

Everything you want in life you can get by introducing, by paying attention and introducing your circle to people that can help them win. And I know you're going to hit your goals. You will. If you focus on those three things. Connect conversation and introduce others.

You're going to hit your goals, you're gonna hit your sales goals, you're gonna hit your weight goals, you're gonna hit your financial goals, you're gonna hit those. I know you are. I believe in you. Everything you want is on the other side of connections. Well, I don't want to convince you.

Hopefully you've already, you've already, you already believe this. That's why you're listening to this podcast.

But Student of the Game is all about being observant, paying attention to all the clues that are out there. There's successful people that have gone ahead of you, successful people have gone ahead of me.

And here we are just having a conversation about how to have more sales.

And the way you have more sales is you connect with more people, you have more conversations, you give more introductions, and then you repeat the process. You see, we believe that if you connect with somebody just to make a sale, that's transactional. And I gotta be transparent.

I thought like that for a long time. It was probably 15 years, 12 to 15 years into my business where things started to shift for me.

They shifted because I stopped thinking that there was this quid pro quo of I'm going to connect with this person so that I get a referral. And I realized I'm going to connect with you because I want to be a good human being.

I want to connect with you because I want to be better at listening and having conversations. And I know you can do the same thing. Hopefully this episode has been helpful. Hopefully this four part series has been helpful.

We're going to come back with some guests here in the near future. Thank you so much for spending some time with me here and putting me in your ears. If you like this, this has been helpful for you.

Go ahead, screenshot this and tag me on socials so I know I can make more of it.

And if this is super helpful to you or you know somebody who can benefit from creating more sales through the relationships when Framework send them these episodes. Thanks for the introduction. I appreciate it.

This this podcast grows when you introduce me to more people and and I just I love sharing some content, some things that I've been working on over the years. So hope this has been helpful. Enjoy your day.

Depending on when you're listening to this, enjoy your holidays, have a fantastic season and let's go connect with more people and don't ever forget that in the game of life relationships. Thanks for listening to Student of the Game podcast. Whatever game you are playing, I'm cheering for you. See you in the next class.