Sales, Business, & Entrepreneurship Secrets: A Conversation with Ethan King & Al Simon

Auto-generated transcript below. Please excuse typos.

Hello. This is Al Simon with Sandler training by Simon, Inc. Your host on Gwinnett Business Radio X show “Simon Says, Let’s Talk Business”. And on this show, we talk with high performing, only high performing business professionals. We do it so we can sharpen our skills, learn new ideas, concepts, insights, share best practices, and get to know really smart people. So listeners listen carefully, take some notes and look for our guests’ contact information at the end of the segment so that you can engage with them. If you’d like, and today you’re going to want to, because we have a terrific guest today. And as always at the end of our guests segment, I will have our ask Al a sales tip with the questions our guests right in with. Okay. So our guests today, Ethan King, Ethan, welcome. He think King is the founder and CEO of Zeus Closet.

Speaker 2: (01:11)
Thanks for having me… great to be here.

Speaker 1: (01:13)
Yeah, really good to have you, I’ve been looking forward to this because Ethan is an entrepreneur and I just love people who have that entrepreneurial spirit because they’re creative, they’re driven and they’re smart people. And so Zeus’ Closet is your business Ethan, or at least one of them, but you really want to talk about the lessons you’ve learned over your 17 years of entrepreneurship is that, right?

Speaker 2: (01:35)
Sure. Yeah. I want to do whatever I can do to deliver the most value to your listeners. So you lead the way, Al. You are the Sherpa here… whatever you want to talk about, about my background or my bio, or whatever you want to share that with your listeners.

Speaker 1: (01:50)
Yeah. Well we can do, we can do something. I want to, you know, want to get your insights going and, but you raise a good question. So you’ve been an entrepreneur for 17 years, but how’d you get there? What’s the backstory and all that?

Speaker 2: (02:01)
Yeah, that’s fantastic. That actually leads into my first point is that your story is really the soul of your logo. Like a lot of times people look, people think about a logo being a shape or a drawing, whatever, but it’s really, your brand is really the essence of you. Especially as a small business, your personality, your core values, all that is going to shine through into your brand. And your ability as a leader to distill that across your brand is what is going to make you successful and leave a legacy that lives on beyond you. If you think of like a leader, like Steve jobs and what he did for Apple, and now that, you know, he’s long gone, but the brand still lives on is does cash profitable business in the world, right? So that’s the, that’s the dream of every entrepreneur is to lead that type of legacy.

Speaker 2: (02:54)
So with me, you know, I really didn’t share much about my personal journey, my personal background until in recent years, I’d say about five years ago, I started sharing it. And that had a lot to do with EO, which by the way, is how you, and I know each other through entrepreneurs, organization, great organization, a worldwide organization, but the Atlanta chapter that we’re both in is very strong. Yes, yes, yes. So he has about 14,000 members worldwide. It’s started at 1987 by Verne Harnish and a few others. But one of the core things, when you first join entrepreneurs’ organization, you go into this thing called forum training and they break down the walls of the entrepreneur and it’s like, okay, cut all the crap, go vulnerable and really share that 5% of vulnerability that you don’t share with the rest of the world. And that you, maybe you don’t feel comfortable sharing it with your employees, your spouse, but what’s really bothering you.

Speaker 2: (03:53)
What’s really eating at you and you can feel free to share it here because it’s a safe space. Everything is confidential. So this, you know, in this forum training was the first time I had really broken down it and I shared with public map. But at that time I was very ashamed of a lot of things that I shared in when I was a teenager. You know, I got in a lot of trouble. I actually got kicked out of college for doing like petty stupid stuff. Um, you know, stealing stuff, shoplifting that. Yeah. And, um, I actually, I found myself in a jail cell twice before the age of 19. And that’s when I really had that kind of come to Jesus moment. Like, you know, Hey, this isn’t the future for me. I don’t, you know, I don’t want to be another statistic. You know, my stepdad was like, I’m not going to bail you out of jail again.

Speaker 2: (04:44)
Wow. And, um, so my background, I was an art major growing up. I was really, I was into drawing and painting and my parents naturally said to me, Hey, you know, you’re not going to make it as an artist. Artists don’t really make any real money until after they’re dead and you want to make money while you’re still living. So there’s some of those sound advice, me being the stubborn, hard headed, hit a kid. I was, I wanted to prove them wrong. I majored in art anyway. That’s how I ended up, you know, getting in all this trouble, trying to, trying to prove a point, trying to make money. Anyway, long story short took the wrong path. They were right. When I graduated from college with an art degree and a criminal record, it was pretty tough for me to find productive employment. So I ended up working at it’s a very odd jobs, probably the most, the worst one, the most memorable one was I worked at a strip club for about two years and I was the, the bar back, meaning I, my job was to clean up the bar, take out the trash.

Speaker 2: (05:43)
Whenever somebody got on a hang over, I had to clean it up, clean up the vomit and stuff. So it was a pretty humiliating job, you know, at first sounds like a teenage boy’s dream, right. To work in a strip club. But no, it was, it was not, it was in a very grimy, dangerous part of Evan, Atlanta. You know, I could go on with the stories about the hostile stuff I witnessed there. Oh. But yeah, but it was the only source of income that I could find at the time. And my natural talent in art led the strip club DJs to hire me to do promotional products for the strip clubs. I was doing the flyers and the posters and things like that. I was like, Oh, okay, well, this is cool. I get to kind of use my talent a little bit, but then, you know, a lot of guilt came with that.

Speaker 2: (06:27)
Cause I’m like, what am I really using my talent to promote here? I grew up in a, in a Christian household and my, my stepdad is actually a minister. So it aided my conscious to be creating these graphics that I couldn’t put in any portfolio to try to get a real job. So I was kind of trapped in this whole little ecosystem. Yeah. That’d be Atlanta strip club nightlife. So to abbreviate the story a little bit, I was continuing down that path, but one night I had a wake up call and I was on my way to another gig and I got robbed at gunpoint. I got carjacked and they took everything and I thought this guy was going to kill me. Like I ran for my life and I could hear my car screeching off in the distance as he drove away with all my equipment, all the stuff in the car.

Speaker 2: (07:11)
And that’s when I said, you know what? I took it as a sign from God. I was like, I’m done with that lifestyle. I never set foot back in the strip club industry again for ever since then as a career. And it’s no coincidence that after that doors just started opening up in my life and I got a call from Tyler Perry famous. Oh yeah. Movie mogul. Yeah. This was before he was the, the famous movie, mobile Tyler Perry. He was just doing stage plays at the time. I didn’t know who he was and got an email from his assistant. Like, Hey, we’re looking for a graphic design firm to do all of the graphics for our plays. We ended up in a working relationship for over 10 years. He’s a very inspiring figure in my life and mentor. At the same time, I started up a side business with me and my girlfriend or my girlfriend and I Monica.

Speaker 2: (08:00)
She was in a sorority. I was in a fraternity. We started up the side business called stuff for Greeks, where we sold fraternity and sorority paraphernalia on the internet. And it was a relatively new thing that ended up taking off. And we became one of the leaders in the industry and we still are to this day, 20 years ago. And then as that grew, we decided to open, we outgrew our home basement and we were able to purchase an office building in West Midtown Atlanta with the little money that we had saved up. And then we, so we moved our offices there. We opened up a retail store. We called it Zeus’s closet. We wanted to lose connotation to the Greek world, but we also opened up to other verticals. So now we serve as school uniforms, the film and TV industry, you know, we do any type of embroidered, customized apparel.

Speaker 2: (08:49)
Our core distinguishing factor is that we do advanced design. Everything is done in house. So can do it as fast as same day service. We have very low or no minimums, even for most of our products. So we’re able to, to serve a market that most of our competitors can’t serve when they’re like, well, you got to have a minimum of 36 pieces and it’ll be at least two weeks. Well in this day and age of fast moving everything, and you have smaller businesses, you have a lot of, a lot more startups now, especially in the era of post COVID era, you have a lot of work from home type things and people don’t need, or you think uniforms a hundred uniforms. It’s like, Hey, I need an outfit. Me and my wife or our five people here. And I, we got a trade show tomorrow. So we’re able to service that market with fast turnaround times, advanced design, a very low minimums.

Speaker 1: (09:39)
Let me stop for a second. So this is interesting because the talent, the skills, the drive was always there. It’s just that you were trapped in this ecosystem and habits that were not productive. Right. Then you made a decision

Speaker 2: (09:54)
To change, right.

Speaker 1: (09:56)
And your, your businesses and your career took off.

Speaker 2: (10:00)
Yeah. Yeah. That is an amazing story. And when you put it that way, you know, it’s the same, we’re given, you know, the same tool set or the same cards in our hand. And it’s about arranging them in a certain way and playing them in a certain way. Right. And if you don’t play it the right way, then your life can go in a completely different direction. My life could have hit it in a completely different trajectory. Had I not made that decision to change. Right. Right.

Speaker 1: (10:28)
All right. So this is, this is key because our listeners, I bet there’s a whole bunch of people out there who wish their career was not what it is right now. And they’re wondering, you know, should I go back to school? Should I go to trade school? Should I, what should I do? But it starts with a decision, right? It starts with a decision to change your life.

Speaker 2: (10:50)
It does. And what I would tell someone who’s feeling that way. It doesn’t, we all kind of feel that way from time to time, especially if you’ve been doing the same thing for a long time, you start to ask yourself, is there more to life? And what am I missing here? What, you know, what possibilities am I not exploring? And I’m a big believer that you can really have it all in a sense, if you do it in a certain way. And my tendency is to follow, like, like really listen to what the universe is trying to tell you by the questions people ask you. Like in my business stuff for Greeks, people were trying to hand us money. So at first we started out as just graphic design for Greeks. I didn’t know how to do any type of clothing. I didn’t even know what it was called.

Speaker 2: (11:37)
I’m like, how do you get a jacket made? I guess you go take it to a seamstress or something. And people, we would design jackets for people and say, you go get the made somewhere. You know, we don’t do that. And people say, yeah, no, I want you to make my jacket. I’m wanting you to just do the whole thing. And I’m like, I don’t know how to make Jack. I can’t help you. And eventually enough people asked and I said, you know what? Okay. Yeah, we’ll do it. And I’ll never forget this Bureau paid us $200 to make her a jacket. And we didn’t have a clue out of doing wow, but now, so I’ve, and that’s how I operate is, you know, once you pay me money, I’m going to fulfill, I’m going to over deliver. That’s one of our core values. So I had to figure out how to make this girl’s jacket and deliver on the promise.

Speaker 2: (12:17)
So we, and this is how long ago it was. We had to open up the phone book and flip through and figure out, Oh, embroidery, maybe that’s what it’s called. And we found a company that, and we showed them an example of like, can you make this? And they said, yeah. And, uh, you know, they, they made like literally football uniforms or baseball uniforms and stuff, but they were like, yeah, we can make that. So they made it, you know, we marked up the price a little bit. So we gave, we fulfilled the girl’s order. And that’s how we got started early out in business. And a business model was born and business model was born, you know, and eventually we got our own machinery and brought it in-house and hire staff and so forth. But that’s how a pivot works in my mind. So if you’re thinking about a pivot, listen to what’s out there and find what’s in alignment with what you enjoy doing and what the market wants and will pay for. And then that third thing, you know, this is, and you’ve probably heard this before that hedgehog is that third part is what makes your offering unique. So those three things, what you’re interested in with the market will pay for and your own unique twist on it. And that when you find that sweet spot, that is when you will make the money and make the impact and do what you enjoy doing

Speaker 1: (13:26)
Excellent stuff. Now you gave me some one-liners here that you’re going to explain to our listeners. And I’m interested in learning what these things are. Like. One of the things you said was you can share with us the real secret to giving the most memorable business gifts. What’s the secret.

Speaker 2: (13:43)
Yeah. So here’s the secret. So in my industry, another thing we do is promotional products, and everybody gets the swag, right? You have pins with your logo on it, mugs with your logo. Those are probably the two most popular promotional product items. And it’s our tendency to give to St. Clients a gift that has our logo on it. Right. But the most memorable gift is actually something personalized that has their name on it. And no mention of your logo at all. They know who it came from. And this isn’t a unique idea. I actually got this. Well, I knew it in the back of my mind, but it confirmed it for me. When I read a book called Giftology by a guy named John Ruhlin. Yeah. I’ve heard that book. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought it was an EO event and they sent us a beautiful knife, a Cutco knife, and it had my name and my wife’s name engraved on the knife. It didn’t have any mention of EO or anything else on this knife. But every time I pick up that knife to cut something, I think of EO, even though their logo isn’t on it. So if you really want to make an impact to your clients, give them something personalized unique to them with their name. If you, if you want to give them a jacket, great. Give them a jacket with their name on it, their logo on it. Not your logo. Every time they put that on, they’re going to remember you.

Speaker 1: (15:03)
That’s great advice. I love it. Yeah. Cause that makes it let’s make it makes it special. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. I can’t tell you how many pens I have around the office and training center that have, uh, you know,

Speaker 2: (15:17)
And what that’s done is subconsciously what that says, when you receive that pin from somebody who has their logo on it, it’s like, Hey, I value enough for you to I’m marketing to you. You know, it’s kind of insulting your intelligence. It’s a little bit, we all do it. We’re all guilty of it. But you know, if you make that shift, I guarantee you will see a big change in the retention of clients. Do you want, what you want is adoring fans, like people who were your friends, your loyal customers for life. Yeah.

Speaker 1: (15:46)
Yes. Here’s another one. That’s another one-liner that I’m got a feeling I’m going to agree wholeheartedly with this one, because I think I’ve shared, I believe it dependent on the details here, but you said simplicity always wins. What’s that one about?

Speaker 2: (16:01)
Yeah. So, so in our industry and probably in every industry, but I’m going to speak from experience. Their pricing is super complex. It’s like if you go to most embroidery shops and ask how much does this cost to get my logo on, on these shirts, they’ll say, Oh, we charge $2 per thousand stitches or whatever. How many stitches are in their logo? The average person does not go around knowing, Oh, my logo has 8,000 stitches. So this is going to call it $16 or whatever. No. So we coming into this industry, you say scrap that we’re getting rid of that. It’s flat fee pricing. Our pricing is very simple. It’s very transparent. It’s on our website. You can calculate it yourself. It’s easy to figure out. So that in every industry you have these convoluted terms, these convoluted

Speaker 2: (16:45)
Models that have been passed on through the years. And I challenged you to just to stop and look at it and be like, why, why is it this way? And why do I have to do it that way? I don’t have to do it that way. Let me put a twist on it and just amplify it. If something is hourly or something, make it flat, make it productize it. Maybe see how that goes. So that, that’s the challenge. Like when I say simplicity always wins. That is what I made. Because a frustrated mind, they say, if you confuse, you’ll lose, right? Yes. If your customer has to burn mental calories, figuring out what you’re talking about, what am I going to get it? How much does it cost? What do I have to do? What are you going to do? When am I going to get it? The more mental calories they have to burn, the less likely they are to do business with you.

Speaker 1: (17:30)
That is so true. I’m a big believer in simplicity, in everything, but especially in the case of price. And I think we’re that, you know, we’re pricing complexity gets into the mix as people like to do cost plus pricing, right. They cost plus their intended margin. And so, and then they start thinking, but yeah, we, we can’t include this and we can’t include that. So that has to have their own cost plus. And so they get getting in, it just starts getting really complicated really quickly, right? Because they’re worried about margin and that’s, you know, and I’m not saying that, you know, that, that, uh, all the bean counters they’re wrong because they have their role. And, and it’s a very important role. And by the way, my wife plays that role for us. So I better be careful here because I think she might be listening. But, but I

Speaker 2: (18:14)
Plus it’s important. You, you make, always make sure that your margins are in line. So when you come up with this creative flat pricing, you have that built in there. Like we, we have great margins built into what we do and people will tell us, like our customers don’t know that. They’ll say, you know what? I went with you guys, because I just understand you guys are probably more expensive than these other people, but I didn’t know what they were talking about. They weren’t reliable. They weren’t responsive. You can actually be the more premium product, the higher price product with simplicity. So that’s another advantage to simplicity. Good. Have those margins built in

Speaker 1: (18:47)
Good point? Okay. Here’s another one I can’t wait to hear. You said what you don’t say is just as important as what you do say. So you think there’s some words we should avoid, obviously, huh?

Speaker 2: (19:00)
Yeah. And this is another thing, and I know a lot of your listeners are in the sales side note, we’re all in sales. This is the most important skill you can have. But the scare words like in our industry or shipping, right? Nobody wants to pay for shipping. Just think about it. I mean, how many people have an Amazon prime membership? Just because I don’t want to pay for shipping. I don’t even know what Amazon prime costs, but what is it? $200 a year. But I, I expect free shipping. Nobody wants to pay for that. So avoid that type of terminology where people feel like they’re wasting money, avoid the word, rush fees. So in our business, yes, we offer rush service. You can come in and get same day service. You can get next day service. And we show you the different pricing at those different levels.

Speaker 2: (19:42)
But you’ll never see the word rush fee because if somebody sees, Oh, this costs $50, plus a $25 rush fee, they’re going to try to like, I don’t want to pay that rescue because it’s the, it feels like you’re paying for nothing. Whereas if you just say the same big prices, $75, the next day price is $60. And they’ll say, Oh, I’ll take the same day price. It’s the whole psychology of it. So just avoid those words. Here’s another quick one. Avoid using the word dollars, especially in a high-end product. Why say the word dollars? If you’re say, if you’re selling something to say that’s 10,000, you know, say, well, your investment today is just 10,000. Unless you’re have a global product where you need to distinguish USD or euros or yen or whatever. It’s like, you know, it’s just an investment of 10,000.

Speaker 1: (20:29)
There you go. Love it. Yeah. Another example of simplicity wins too. Right? You said, speak their language. What do you mean by speak their language?

Speaker 2: (20:38)
Yeah. So, and I guess it’s all kind of ties back to complicity, but this is another psychological thing in every industry. Like in our industry, we have convoluted terms like digitizing. If you come to us with your logo, let’s say you want the Alzheimer or the business radio X logo embroidered on something. It first has to be digitized for embroidery. Yes. Well, people come to us and they use different terms. People will say, I need to get my logo. Digitalized. I need to get my logo vectorized. I need to get it set up. I need to get the artwork creation there. They’re all talking about the same thing. Right? So when you communicate back to them, whether it’s on a phone call or in an email or a text message, whatever it is, use the same word they used, why it changed the language again, that only confuses people. It only frustrates people, you know, at the worst, it kind of makes them feel dumb when you say, well, there’s no, it’s actually called digitizing. And here’s how much it costs. What does it hurt? If somebody comes to me and says, how much will it be to set up my logo for embroidery? Well, it’s $160 to set up your logo, farm blurry. Why say, well, it’s actually digitizing. Here’s how much the digitizing.

Speaker 1: (21:44)
Yeah. Yeah. Now they’re just more confused and you’re right. You made them feel like they asked us stupid question. How’s that going to do for a repeat customer? And it’s not good stuff. Yeah. I love it. This is really good. We’re getting a little short on time there. I want to skip to the one you said the man or a woman with a thousand dreams that, that, what is that?

Speaker 2: (22:04)
There’s a great quote that has stuck with me a long time. The man or the woman with who has his health or her health has a thousand dreams. The man or the woman who doesn’t have their health has button one. And that, when I heard that, that really stuck with me because obviously you, if you don’t have your health, you can’t focus on anything else. It’s kind of a passion project that I took on this past year in 2020, you probably remember a lot, a lot of crazy stuff happening 2020 thing. And stress levels increase when stress increases, cortisol, increases people, gain weight. You know, a lot of us put on those COVID-19 pounds. Well, I was no exception. And I said, you know what? I’m going to do something about this. I’m going to get back in shape. I did that. And I posted this picture on my Facebook of my before and after.

Speaker 2: (22:47)
And I had a six pack and people were like, Oh my God, what did you do? What, what’s your formula? And I was like, Oh, well I just do this. And this that’s what everybody knew how to do this. And I’ve found out that people don’t know how to do it. Now I have a lot of friends who have weight problems. So let me down this rabbit hole. And I started this side business called six pack dead. And if your listeners are interested, you can go to six pack dads.com. It’s a six week challenge. And it’s more than just a fitness challenge. There’s a lot of the mental, the mindset, the mental, the sleep, mindfulness, everything that goes into it. Plus the workout, the diet, the nutrition, my exact formula that I use to keep a six pack at the age of 42, I was fortunate. I ended up on the magazine cover itself, Atlanta over 40 and fabulous. I was, I was covered in winter last year. So a lot of crazy stuff happened. Uh, I took this health pivot. I never intended to be at, be in any type of health business. And now I am.

Speaker 1: (23:41)
All right. Six pack dads, 6packdads.com. Okay. Then Zeus’ Closet is zeuscloset.com right?

Speaker 1: (23:51)
Right. So again, this is Ethan King, our guest, the founder and CEO of Zeus’ Closet and 6 Pack Dads. And, uh, what’s the best way to is it that these email are these website addresses. What’s the best way to get ahold of you for listening.

Speaker 2: (24:03)
One of those website addresses will take you to those respective businesses. If you want to follow me, just simply go to my website, EthanKing.com. I have links to all the social media channels, ways to follow me. You can email me ethan@ethanking.com. I’m not some super important guy. I actually check my email. I’ll respond to it.

Speaker 1: (24:22)
What do you mean? You’re not some super important guy. You must, you most last important guy. I’ve talked to today, man.

Speaker 2: (24:30)
Awesome.

Speaker 1: (24:31)
This is great. Thank you so much, Ethan, for being with us. Thank you for sharing your insights. Really good. Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, once again, this is Al Simon with Sandler training by Simon, Inc. And, uh, we do sales and sales management, training and coaching. Typically our clients are looking to us to help them to build a skill sets, to be able to take care of the, the frustration of not having enough on their pipelines for one thing and not closing up deals for another or closing deals and having a discount to do so. We work with all those kinds of issues. Plus, uh, our clients are always looking for us to help them hire the A-players. So anyway, we have this segment we call ask Al and I’m getting ready to do that here. Ethan is because we, our listeners send in their questions on sales, and if you’re listening and you want it, you have a question you want me to answer on the air?

Speaker 1: (25:21)
My email address is al.Simon@sandler.com, al.Simon@sandler.com, S a N D L E R. And send in your question and each show, I pick a question to answer on the air and here’s one, a listener sent in the, the question is what’s the biggest gotcha that you ever experienced from a sales prospect. I had to tell you, I thought through this one for a long time, because there are several, but maybe the biggest one happened like in the first month of my sales career, 1977. Yes. I’m that old 1977, uh, right out of college. And I was working for NCR corporation, selling cash registers in Columbus, Georgia. This is pretty glamorous right here. This is, this is exciting stuff. And, um, now I remember I was downtown Columbus and I was calling on a clothing store, a men’s clothing store, and the owner of the store said, do you have any references for me?

Speaker 1: (26:27)
Do you have any references for me? And I want to talk to other clothing store owners who are using your cash registers. So, you know, I went off to some research and there were only a couple. And so I provided this guy with the names, phone numbers of these, a couple of, uh, clothing store owners, and then went back to him. I don’t know, a week or so later, I don’t remember anymore as long ago. But I remember when I went back to him, he laughed at me, Ethan, he laughed at me. He said, you better check your own references. Cause these people are not happy and I didn’t get the business. And that was a real lesson, right. There is a real lesson. So, so let me share with you, you know, now that I’m in a sales training, coaching business, because, and mostly because I’ve got all these bruises, these lessons like you eat, then, you know, you learn lessons from mistakes.

Speaker 1: (27:22)
And, um, and so here’s the thing. If you’re going to, if you’re going to get references in and in many cases, prospect want to talk to references. Okay? Think about that. Your prospects are going to talk to your customers and you’re not going to be there when they had that conversation. Think about that a minute. All right. The situation is dangerous, right? Because there are no questions that are out of bounds and you can’t really do much about the answers now. So here’s the, here’s the thing. First of all, obviously vet the references before you give them out, vet them, prepare them for the call, make sure they understand who’s going to call them. And why talk to the person that wants the references, ask them, what kinds of questions are you going to be asking? What do you, what do you want to know?

Speaker 1: (28:08)
Uh, what do you hope to learn? Make sure you understand all aspects of this dynamic, uh, conversation that’s going to happen without you, and then prepare your referenceable account for, and coach them on how to answer for one thing. For sure. I tell my clients, you know, if I have someone call you, please don’t talk about the, no, please. Don’t they’ll probably yeah. Ask and it’s okay to say to my prospect that the, you know, the investment is significant, but use those words, the investment is significant. That’s the words I want them to use. I don’t want them to use numbers. I don’t want it to say, wow, Al’s really expensive. Or, you know, you just, the investment is significant and the word investment is key. There. It implies an ROI because then when I go back and talk to the prospect again, we’ll talk about the investment and we’ll talk about the ROI, but see, that’s my job as a salesperson.

Speaker 1: (29:00)
That’s, it’s not my customer’s job to tell my pricing to my prospects. You’ve got to control that you got to have control of that. And by the way, if there are no referenceable accounts, you know, really in the space in which your prospect wants the references, like in the case of my gotcha that you wanted clothing store owners in Columbus, Georgia. Well, if you don’t have any referenceable accounts in the vertical or in the geographic area, whatever it is just say. So just say, so, you know, Mike, I’m sorry, I don’t have anybody currently using us. And that space, is that a problem? Can we talk about it and then, and have that conversation with your prospect and find some other way to allay their fears or to give them the information they were looking for, that they were hoping to get from a referenceable account.

Speaker 1: (29:47)
So anyway, most people just fire off the names and phone numbers and email addresses and say, okay, you have at it. And they don’t take the time to really do this well. And in the thing, when you give out references is I know it can really hurt you, or it can really help you, but you have a lot of control over that. If you take the effort in time to do the control. So that’s the sales tip of the day. The ask Al segment, talking about how to handle reference checks, reference requests from prospects. So this has been Al Simon was Sandler said, Sandler says Sandler training by Simon ake on business radio X Simon says let’s talk business, Ethan. Thanks for being loose, man. Thank you is really good stuff. All right.