Have you ever been go states after a promising sales conversation

or after quoting for a project?

Then join us for part two of my conversation with sales expert, Helen TB.

Helen Chaz, actionable strategies on turning those cold leads into hot sales.

Catch it all on this episode of architecture business club,

the weekly podcast for solo and small firm architecture

practice owners, just like you.

He wants to build a profitable future proof architecture business

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Now let's continue the conversation with Helen about sales.

Do you have any thoughts on when we do that outreach to people that we

have engaged with already, or perhaps we've sent a fee proposal to, and

maybe it's crickets that if we, maybe we feel like we're being ghosted.

Do you have any thoughts on how to, to deal with that?

Is it something where, are there any actions you would suggest

that we could do if we feel like we're being ghosted by somebody?

Yeah, sure.

So first of all, it's not personal.

And second, it's usually what happens before.

So sometimes people get very like, Oh, well, that must be because of my price.

That's must be because they didn't like me.

That was something this we simply don't know.

And so we've got this gap and our brain's just doing its best job at filling

in what it thinks the reasons why you might, it, it might be that, but like,

you know, we really need to have that conversation to find out what's going on.

So for me, um, the, this happens, Because there's a step missing prior.

So if we go back a step, when you're in your discussions, whether it's in

someone's house, or they're in your practice, or you're on the phone, or

you're on a Teams call, you always, always get the next steps booked in on that call.

So it might go like, OK, so you're going to need a fee proposal from us.

It's going to take us a couple of days to figure that out, or a week.

Just again, give your best guess.

So we're gonna be quick.

So we're gonna be more complex.

Just give your best guess of how long this is gonna take Um, so that would take us to

this date I would open my calendar up and I would ask them to do the same thing So,

okay, so that would take us to this kind of time Um, when are you free that week?

And what we can do is we can go through the proposal together Once

you do that, I had I actually coached some architects on this and once they

started doing that Um, Because they were so confident in their offer and

so certain and they made the process so slick and so easy, people were like, oh

I don't need the call, I just want to book, I just want to go ahead with you.

So they started having these calls, they started getting better at

troubleshooting, they started answering those questions in that initial call.

So that's the ultimate thing where you get like a, we'd call it like a

one call close, where everything is happening in one meeting or one call.

The more you offer the second call, and you get that firmed up, and those

firm next steps, and you get better at answering that, You'll probably plug

that into that call and eventually you'll just do it all in one go, but

you always get that second call booked in and it's not like oh in a couple of

weeks, it's not vague, it's specific dates and times and you send them an invite.

Even if I was going to someone's house or I was ringing someone, I would

invite and say Helen ringing John on John's mobile 10 o'clock on Friday.

You know, it's very specific next steps.

Once you've got that booked in, they're going to show up to it.

If they don't, then it's either an unqualified lead or there was something

missing in the process of the conversation that made them not want to tell you

that it was always going to be a no.

So there's usually something that's just gone a little bit awry there

with the connection with you guys.

But that would be how I would solve for that is that go the step before

and get the follow up booked in.

If you've got a lot of people that are just hanging.

I would go back and ask them a direct question.

Don't fluff it up.

Don't try and make this softer.

Literally just ask them, is this something you're still considering

or have you moved away from this now?

Just let me know either way.

And it makes it really okay for them to tell you a no because a lot of people

ignore because they just don't want to say to someone's face it's a no.

They don't know the reasons why it's a no.

They don't know they're undecided and they need some help.

They don't really want to say that they don't get it.

So we've got to make it really okay for all of those scenarios

to come out and up and flow up.

There's a couple of great suggestions there.

I have done that actually, that, that the thing of following up and booking

in the next call, that is something that I've done over the last few

years, and that does really work.

And the way that I've kind of framed it is that, look, this is

roughly how it's going to work.

Following this, this call today, I'm going to firm all this

up, put the proposal together.

Uh, And I guarantee that after I send it, I'm sure that you, you're going to

have some more questions that arise.

So to make it easier for you to save you time, grab your diary.

Let's book in a follow up call now so that you can make a decision whether

that's yes or no, but just so you can make a decision and it's fine either way.

So I sort of gave them the reassurance to say, look, I don't mind whether it's

a yes or no, but I know that you're going to have these questions, so let's save

everybody time, book it in now, and then usually I would just say, look, typically

15 20 minutes is enough, because you might just have a few questions, and then

I've never had anybody that said, No, like people just say, yeah, yeah, that

Makes sense.

And it's really helpful.

It's actually really customer centric.

It's really customer focused.

Yeah.

And, um, the other, the other suggestion that you made there about the, being a

little bit more direct with that email for those people that maybe, maybe you miss

that step of booking in the next call.

Maybe you've got somebody that you emailed something to, such a great

idea to follow up with a direct email.

I've tried.

Something very similar and the wording was similar to what you described.

The direct version was kind of something like, because we haven't heard from you,

we assume your priorities have changed.

Yeah.

Something like that.

So it's sort of saying that, you You know, we're assuming you're not

interested in doing this anymore.

And then often either you don't hear anything or people will

be like, reply straight away.

Oh no, no, John, it's not that it's not that it's just that, you know,

something else happened or we've had a change of circumstances.

We still want to do it.

We're still thinking about it.

And it starts the conversation again.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I love that.

the other one that I've tried, which has been really effective

is, um, It's a similar idea, but it's a slightly softer, more empathetic

approach where literally if I've been sending them like follow ups to say, you

know, we're waiting to hear from you.

Do you want to go ahead?

And we're not getting a reply.

I'll just send them like a one liner email and just say like, are you okay?

Yeah.

we've not, we've not, we've not heard from you and actually we're

just concerned that like, are you all right, and then that has worked as well,

where people have replied and said, you know, and actually sometimes it has been

something like that, where it's like, Oh, you know, we've had a family member

passed away or, or, we've been, someone's been ill or something and, and we've

really not had a chance to think about it.

And

It's so nice.

that response.

because again, it's really customer focused, isn't it?

It's about them.

It's thinking of them.

It's putting your feelings of discomfort to one side.

Um, they might get angry, they might shout, they might say,

just F off and leave me alone.

Honestly, in 25 years of sales, I can count on one hand how

many times that's happened.

Um, and when you think about each of those times, it's been.

It's stuff that's happening for them, it's not you, you know, like, and

you just strike them off and you move on, I kind of think next, just next

opportunity, next thing, how many people out there need an architect right now?

I mean, there must be hundreds and hundreds of thousands.

If your community got their heads together, you still couldn't

service between you all, all the opportunity that's out there.

But when you're sitting there and the diary's a bit sparse and the phone stopped

ringing and the emails aren't coming, it's really hard to kind of think like that.

So, so it's, yeah, just getting into that, the demand is there.

Maybe that's a really good thought.

Like demand is there for my services.

Maybe that's like something that just really invigorates you a little bit.

Yeah, maybe we should print that out and stick

it on your desk or something.

People need me, they need this result.

yeah.

I mean, are there any other thoughts that you have about how we can stay

focused and, and stay in our lane, working towards our long term goals

when we're having those slow months?

Yeah, so for me, I always think of high impact, high action stuff

because what tends to happen is we'll go and like, file our emails away or faff

around over here with some like system.

Um, it's, it's not gonna change the diary.

What we really need to be focusing on is conversations, offering, whether

it's like a, I have a calendar link.

How many times do I give that link out?

How many times am I asking people to take that next step with me?

What, how, where am I showing up?

What am I doing?

How can I help my audience?

So it's all like.

impactful stuff for the receiver or the audience.

So when the temptation is to go and like clean the kitchen or

do something, you know, for me, I've got a flavor of cleaning.

That's what happens when I get a bit angsty.

Um, but it's, it's that, that's the thing.

It's like, right, stop.

I know why I'm doing that because it just feels easier somehow.

But actually, I really want to get like, how could I be really

impactful to my audience right now?

I could jump on and do a live.

I could jump on and talk about a client's situation and how I've helped them.

Um, I could jump on and just share some insight about the process and how

working with me would make it easier.

Um, I could share like a little visual of a timeline just to put some of my ease.

I could show some before and afters.

I could go out when it's a nice day, take pictures of all my work,

you know, like, I could go and do that, get a portfolio together.

So there's all these kind of things, that's highly actionable stuff.

Messing around with CRM systems, integration, tweaking the

website, cleaning the stuff, reorganizing the office.

sought out.

Yeah, it's not going to help you, like, change the diary.

It literally boils down to conversations, adding value, getting better at selling.

That's it.

That's like the evergreen work.

If you're avoiding any one of them three things, We probably need a conversation

or like, like lean into me a little bit because I post a lot of content.

There's a lot of stuff out there that, you know, I get out there on my platforms

that will help you, especially when you're in that kind of technical world.

It feels like it's really hard to translate that technical isms to, you

know, the language that your audience use.

Got it.

Yeah.

So there's a lot, there's a lot of actionable stuff that we can do there.

And the message I'm taking from that is around pro act being proactive, that

if you haven't got enough, if you're having a slow period and you don't

have enough customers and you need more sales, that there is actually a ton of

really actionable stuff that you've just mentioned that we can be doing, um, in

order to, to fix that problem and to plug, plug that gap in our pipeline.

something else I wanted to ask was about understanding what our clients

really value in order to in order to help get those sales, do you have

any suggestions there about how we can get a better understanding of our

clients and what they really value?

What they want.

Remember.

Don't forget to download the architecture business, blueprint the

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Now, back to the show.

Yeah, so you can just ask them, and I know that sounds like really

stupidly simple, but you can just ask them, you can ask them down the pub, you

can ask them when people are just talking to you and I have spoken in the local

micro pub and talking about things and we realise we have this connection and

this is where this opportunity came from.

So you just never know who you sat next to and what they're dealing with and I think

everybody knows someone who knows someone who will need an architect at some point.

So, you know, you can start having those conversations for sure.

Yeah, I think, um, I mean, that's so true, isn't it?

Everybody's got to live somewhere.

And a lot of people live in a property that they own, or maybe they, um, have a

business and have a building that might need renovating or replacing or something.

So there's probably all sorts of, well, there is, there's all

sorts of opportunities there.

If you're having those conversations and letting people know, uh, about

what you do and I guess being curious and kind of asking questions,

maybe, maybe reaching out to.

I mean, if you've got a list of past clients that you've worked

with, if you want to get a better understanding, that's a great place

to start by asking them, isn't it?

To say we're following up with, we're just trying to learn a little bit more

about, what your questions were that you had in your mind and what did you

really value about what we, what we did

Oh, yeah.

I love that.

And if you can get those kind of testimonials, not

just like, Oh, John's great.

John's brilliant.

It was great working with him.

They're kind of a little bit more vanilla testimonials.

Now, if you can kind of get the whole snapshot of what told you

you needed an expert, like at what point did you want to reach out?

What problem did you have?

What things were you saying in your head?

Um, What, how was it working with us?

What can you do now that you couldn't do before?

What's the result that we got together?

Did we get that faster, quicker?

Was it easier?

You know, like if someone was on the fence, what would you tell them?

You know, and then capture that whole experience piece and you can just do

some little, you can chop that up.

You can get that out, you can start putting links together with lots of

these, where you can just send people, here's a load of stuff that we did

for people, and especially if like, on here, say we crop this, this thumbnail,

you could put, you know, like, for example, for my clients, like, John

made 5k months in 3 months or less.

You know, it's super compelling what the result is.

So, you know, got planning permission within X amount of months.

And I know there's variables in this industry, but if you can

demonstrate that you can get people through a process quicker or easier

or with less guesswork, that's ultimately what they're looking for.

So we have to plug that into our marketing.

You could, and the best way, the best way to get that value out

is to get the client to say it.

It's all good and well, you typing it and then the next layer.

So that is them typing it.

But if you can get a video of them saying that, that's, that's

like where the magic happens.

There's so many stats about conversion.

So again, you might be thinking, well, people don't want to go on and

proclaim that they were struggling or they needed help or whatever.

It's just a thought that you've got.

You need to actually ask your clients, you ask enough people.

And again, it's how you frame this of like, I could really do with your

help, I want to reach more people.

You've had a great experience.

We want to really get across how it's been and I think you'd come

across great if we did a short video.

Would you be open to helping us?

Um, you know, you can just name your name there or maybe they've

got a business, you can put your business name on it, you know, give

them a little bit of something back.

But generally speaking, they're happy to help, they want to help.

If someone messaged me and said, Oh, I need your help, Helen, I suppose

you could Like do a little thing.

Oh, it's like a nice little ego rub that someone's thought of you.

So like most people are generally happy to give a testimonial.

Just very rarely do people ask.

It starts the other way around.

More people are willing to give, less people ask.

So ask.

Um,

to ask.

Ask a little bit more often, you might feel comfortable because often that even

generally speaking, I would say this probably goes to most service business

owners and particularly with architects that they might ask for a testimonial.

If they ask at all, they might just ask once really timidly

at the end of the project.

And it's like, well, actually.

It might be one or two peak points throughout the project

where that might be a nice time.

Like maybe when you've just secured planning permission for that tricky site,

maybe you've sent them a nice little gift or something as well to kind of

celebrate getting planning permission.

Now, wouldn't that be a great time to ask for a testimonial?

Yeah.

When they're on a bit of a high and they've got that like really peak thing

that they've been struggling with that key milestone and really video and photography

is one of the best ways to capture this.

And imagine that if someone comes onto your LinkedIn or onto your website

and they've got all this like, massive case study of all the things that

you've got involved in and all this like milestones and hurdles that

you've helped your clients with.

And it's feels like that you're going to be a safe bet that you're going

to help them get through that faster.

The thing that they're really struggling to get their head round.

I mean, that would have most people leaning in.

So for sure, talking about the results you deliver, talking about how you do it.

It's the thing that I see missing for most people's content.

And that's the thing that, Really, if you look at it,

your clients are searching for.

So if someone said, well, go with so and so, they're, they're great.

The first thing you do is go and look at their website.

You're going to have a look at their LinkedIn.

So it's that kind of stuff that we need to make sure that's

bolstered as much as possible.

Um, the other thing you can do, it's just really simple stuff.

You can go onto like LinkedIn and do a poll.

I mean, I know lots of professional people that have second properties that

have investment properties that needs.

Like an architect's expertise, um, and so thinking that your audience

isn't there is going to be a problem.

And that's usually one of the thoughts that causes you to back off and

not be visible in the first place.

But you can go and sort of ask people, what are you trying to

achieve that you're struggling with?

What's like hard right now?

Like, what are you running into?

What would you like to do quicker, easier, better that you'd need an architect for?

And like you do some polls and just start asking, but you get to ask

the audience, like whether it's virtual or whether it's in person,

like, what are they struggling with?

And then you just go and solve for that, even content in products,

offerings, like you like, Oh, that's what they're struggling with.

That's what I need to position myself.

I get to demonstrate how I help them through that process.

Super quick and easy.

Um, that's what gets people leaning in a lot quicker.

Um, a lot softer.

that's a great idea.

I would say with the poll thing, um, great idea to run polls and the key, I guess,

with anything like that, or any content is in, it's in the follow up, isn't it?

Oh, yeah.

you know, that once people respond to that, if they take part

in that, then you've got a list of people that you can then follow up with

according to how they've responded.

And, um, the thing, the idea about the video testimonials.

Brilliant idea.

And I imagine there might be some people listening thinking, well, well,

Helen, that's a great idea, but I can't afford a videographer and this,

that, and the other, and actually the videos don't need to be anything fancy.

Like I've seen some really impactful tech video testimonials for

businesses, and it's literally just like the clients recorded it either

on the smartphone or it's just been a snippet from a zoom meeting.

And, um, actually.

There's a way that you can do that.

Sometimes if you just reach out and say, can we get a testimonial?

Okay.

Some clients will do that, but others might be a bit,

Oh, I'm busy or not too sure.

There's another way that you can kind of reframe that ask.

Something that I've done is that I've reached out to say, look,

we'd like to get some feedback.

You know, would you be willing to hop on a zoom call for

like 20 minutes or something?

And what you can do is you can basically include the ask for the

video testimonial on that call.

So when you're asking them the questions about, you know,

just remind us, what was it?

That you, you know, you were really struggling with and what

did you find particularly valuable about what we did for you?

You can ask those questions as part of this getting feedback.

And then if you, um, ask for permission and you record that

zoom meeting, you could then say, well, look, this has been so great.

Thanks so much for all that amazing feedback.

Would you mind if we took a couple of snippets out of this to use, uh, as a

testimonial on our website and because they've then already recorded it.

It's far easier for them to say yes to it than just getting a cold email invite

saying, can you record a video for us?

And we don't really know what to say and blah, blah.

Yeah.

I've done that before in a webinar webinar and someone came

on and um, it was unsolicited.

I did not set this up at all.

Um, but she, she said like, this has been super helpful and can I just say,

I've just booked a call with Helen.

I've signed up and the call went like this.

So if anyone's thinking of booking a call.

Like, what Helen's just said, I genuinely, that's how I've experienced it.

So, and I just thought, oh my God, what amazing sound bites.

So I cropped it.

Um, I'm saying I did it, the person did it, because I don't know how to do that.

Um, but then sent it to her, and just said this bit, and

we blurred everybody else out.

Um, and we said this bit was just gold, can I use it?

And she was like, oh my god, use it.

Like, just share it with as many people.

Because I want more people to have the experience.

And she said, I think a lot of people hold back from booking a

call with you, because they don't feel ready, or they don't see it.

Think it's Helen's a salesperson I'm gonna get sold to here.

That's not how you run a permission based sales call.

So she said, I wanted to tell people what it was like because I want more

people to get to that stuff, that good stuff that you helped me with.

So generally speaking, people want to help you.

Um, and so crop that video and sent it out and other people have booked a

call and I honestly, I think that has got to have compounded that for sure.

Like for sure.

So the things that we care about, like how we look, I often

think, Oh, I can't go live.

My hair's greasy.

The real thing about my face and my hair and everything.

And people have said to me, like, it's like, don't really care what you like.

We don't notice if you've got your hair tied back or not.

If it's greasy, we're more interested in what insight when you pop up live.

We're like, Oh, Helen, what, what she's got to say, you know, so then they're

not thinking the same stuff that you are.

And so it's very much like an us thing that I've got, um, a lady in my network

and she's in construction and she just does videos of her at site in a high vis.

Just going to just knock this building down, you know, and it'll, it'll snap

and she's like, this is what we put up, you know, and obviously there's

a time lapse and sometimes she's done a recording where she's time lapsed

and you can see them digging out, excavating, putting foundations in,

building it, and then it's finished.

So you can get super creative with this.

And she's just doing everything on an iPhone.

Like, some of her videos are just iPhone of her at sight, just like that.

Our people love stuff like that.

it's so

so real!

Like, cause it's real.

And actually she did one and got her boot stuck in the mud and like, and

she just carried on going with it.

Cause she was like, this is what we're dealing with.

A waterlogged sight.

Just lost a shoe.

You know, when she did it, she went back and it was in the mud

and she said, but we'll keep going.

And that's like one of the things that you get when you work with me.

And I thought this is just bloody brilliant because it's real.

Whereas most people would have been like, right, stop, cut, start again,

just get it out in its rawest format.

It's the most real.

When you try and market stuff up, that's when it loses the edge.

That's when it loses its meaning.

It loses the whole point of what you were trying to do.

So just like get it out as raw as possible.

It comes because that's what your audience want to see.

They don't want to see something manufactured and polished

because it's not relatable.

It's not believable.

Yeah.

I totally agree.

Helen we could do wrapping things up now.

I think, what, what would be the main thing that you'd like Everyone to

take away from our conversation today.

do not hold back when you're holding back, whether it's

about being visible, whether it's like doing the thing, posting,

asking the question, ringing the client, that's what keeps you unpaid.

That's what keeps the diary sparse.

Do the thing that you're most scared of, because when you're holding back,

it's actually not very customer centric.

It's you, it's very self, it's like self centered because you

just don't want to feel something.

Um, usually it's discomfort of some sort.

So feel that discomfort, sit in it for longer, and go and do the things

that you know you should be doing.

Because this isn't all rocket science, if you ask someone to write down what do I

need to be doing, speak to more people, invite them to stuff, do more quotes,

you know what you need to be doing.

So it's just, it's over to you guys now, it's like time for

some action, so you need to go and like, literally take action.

Great advice.

Um, was there anything else you wanted to add that we, we haven't

already covered about the topic?

I

Well, I think we've covered a lot.

Yeah,

we're,

covered a lot.

yeah, I think value and result like that's key.

If that's not in your marketing, go and put that in.

I love that.

Yeah.

Value and result.

Yeah.

Make sure that we're sharing, sharing

Yeah, that is up front and center.

Yeah.

I like to ask.

a question to all of the guests and it's nothing to do with the topic.

It's about travel.

Um, I love to travel and to discover new places.

And I wondered if you could just tell me about one of your favorite

places and what you love about it.

Oh,

Yeah, sure.

So we actually go every year, a couple of times a year to Cape Verde.

Um, and we go to the island of Sal.

And it was quite new to us, we didn't really know about

it, um, about seven years ago.

We've been going like a couple of times every year.

I actually feel a bit sick because we were gonna look at buying something

out there and we just didn't have the appetite for that risk of buying a

property or getting a loan or anything.

But I really kick myself now because it's, it's getting more commercialized

and now there's like a one or a two in front of like the, Property prices,

whereas we could have got a small loan and bought a small holding out there

and now it's just exponentially gone up.

Um, but yeah, I like it because it's quiet.

I like it cause it's, it's like Tenerife was 40, 50 years ago when it first

started, um, you know, it's got the heat, it's got the sun all the time.

It's very, very consistent weather.

So that's why,

that sounds lovely.

Yeah.

Helen, this has been absolutely fantastic.

You shared so much value.

Really appreciate you being a guest on the show.

Where's the best place for people to find you online?

yeah, sure.

So in the online world, it'd be LinkedIn.

and there's probably a link, isn't there?

That.

Yeah, I can put a link in the show notes.

Um, if you're not on LinkedIn, then you can join my mailing

list where twice a week I send out tips about how to sell better and

they're all designed to be consumed in about three minutes and actions

like highly actionable stuff.

Um, and again, there's a link for that there.

So LinkedIn, if you're not on that platform, the mailing list.

Awesome.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Next time where your party hearts as we'll be

celebrating architecture, business clubs, one year anniversary.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of architecture business club.

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Remember.

Running your architecture business.

Doesn't have to be hard and you don't need to do it alone.

This is architecture business club.