EP73: You‘d Better Believe It

This week, our Market Dominance Guys, Chris and Corey, interview Matthew Forbes, Head of Strategic Accounts at ConnectAndSell, about an epiphany Matt had that increased the meetings he set by almost 400%. Wow! What could possibly change that would explain that kind of increase? Well, it’s actually a simple change, but it’s a very necessary one: Matt came to truly believe — deep in his soul — in the potential value of the discovery meeting for his prospects, even if they were never going to do business with ConnectAndSell. His messaging script didn’t change at all. It was his belief that did. Listen to today’s Market Dominance Guys episode, “You’d Better Believe It!” to learn how Matt came to make this meeting-setting leap.

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The complete transcript of this episode is below:

Matthew Forbes (01:20):

I have a friend who I used to work with. We discovered 16 years ago who was like, "enough of me looking at your crap online. You've got to tell me how you're doing this. I need to go talk to more people." So, we went through it very, very quickly, but it would not be Insperity. It would be just him and plausibly could grow from there, but I think they were once a customer.

Corey Frank (01:43):

Flight school has not been grounded. Flight school is taken off. I love it. We're going to talk today. We're going to interview big Matt Forbes about belief.

Chris Beall (01:53):

So here's the little story Mr. Forbes and I had a conversation three or four weeks ago, right before I bought this house. And it went on for a couple hours. He refers to it in one way. I refer to it in another. I'll let him describe it, and something happened inside Mr. Forbes that changed his conversion numbers to the point where he is now the gold medalist on two consecutive flight school experiences across one of the most experienced ConnectAndSell calling teams on earth, our account executives. And he didn't win by a little-

Corey Frank (02:33):

He cheated.

Chris Beall (02:34):

He won by a lot. [crosstalk 00:02:36]. He cheated. He did cheat. He cheated by believing in the potential value of the meeting for the human being that he was talking with. Even if there's never going to be any business. I know, he's been deeply corrupted. I thought it'd be great to have Matt share his story while we listen.

Corey Frank (02:52):

Okay, Matt, are you a Sales Director at ConnectandSell? What's your specific title?

Matthew Forbes (02:58):

Oh, I'm the Head of Strategic Accounts, Mr. Frank.

Chris Beall (03:01):

I was going to say you remember the guy at the end of the Rocky and Bullwinkle and everything goes down and the guy with the broom, comes out, and sweeps everything off?

Corey Frank (03:08):

Yes, he's the one

Chris Beall (03:10):

That guy.

Corey Frank (03:10):

He's the one. I love it. Okay. All right.

Welcome to another episode of the market Dominance Guys with Corey Frank, and as always the prophet of profits, the head of the market domination department for many companies, even though they won't admit it, Chris Beall, the CEO of ConnectandSell. Chris, good afternoon.

Chris Beall (03:32):

As always Corey, it is a good afternoon when I'm here with you.

Corey Frank (03:35):

And we have a guest, Chris. You know how we feel about guests. We don't have to repeat it, but I think this is a very appropriate guest for what we've been talking about the last few weeks, which is the system of the cheat codes. I think it sounds like what you and Matt had been cooking up here is probably the Occam's razor of cheat codes. I think you could say, because it's right in front of you, but you have folks trying to make things a lot more complex than they are.

And we have Mr. Matt Forbes, who is the Head of Strategic Initiatives over at ConnectandSell. And we're going to talk to Matt about an initiative that sounds like he not only spiked the ball, but spiked the ball, picked it up, threw it in the stands, then went and grabbed it and then spiked it again, based off some of the results that you've had. And so I know I'm on bated breath to find out what some of this data is, and cause Chris knows, Matt, that my MO for the last couple of years, as we've been doing this 75 plus episodes is to take anything I get from anybody smarter than I, and claim those ideas as my own. That's what I do. I'm a shameless, shameless thief. So with that, Chris, talk a little bit about the background of Matt, the project he was working on, and exactly what he uncovered here.

Chris Beall (04:51):

The project has been going on for a few years. I would say it was punctuated by various things. A lobster dinner in Boston once I remember was kind of a little slice of it. Matt and I have been talking for a long time about the relationship between what goes on inside of us and what happens on the scoreboard. As you know, and I think the ... I don't know how much of our audience has bothered to plow through my endless diatribes on the subject. But it's my deep belief that we are seen as what we believe as, as who we are, by what we believe in, how we say what we say, and we're unaware of that connection. And I go back to a time when one of our big customers asked us to do an outsource project and Corey your YoungBloods.works doing outsource projects, right and left and helping people get lots of appointments and move forward with their businesses.

And we took on this project with a company that we're very, very familiar with. We knew exactly we thought how to be successful setting appointments for them. Mind you not ConnectandSell's normal business, but we were asked to do it, and we gave it a whirl. So we took our own SDRs and applied them to this. And they were terrible. Even though we got the script right, we got all that stuff right, they were terrible. So about three weeks in, I asked this question, which is, do our SDRs believe in the potential value of the meeting that they're offering to these human beings they're speaking with, even if there's never going to be any business. And the answer was well, how could they? They've never spoken to anybody who attended a discovery meeting for this particular customer and could come away and say, "You know what, here's what I learned. And it changed my life."

So I went out and I found a couple of those customers and had them speak to the SDR team directly and say, "this is how that discovery call changed my life, independent of buying that product." And voila, immediate four times improvement in output measured as meetings per hour and yet no change at all in the script. There was a force hiding inside these people, and I just needed to go in and find it. And the way we found it was by having them talk to somebody who had experienced the value, then they could believe in the value of the meeting and they could sound like they believed in it. And so I've been on a little bit of a kick ever since then, but it's the hardest thing because sales reps are naturally inclined to want to do things that produce results that go in the direction of producing results that eventually produce commissions.

That is they have quota to make, and we incentivize them that way. And then we kind of hope they will put that aside and instead do something that might be more effective. And we did a whole episode on this, the dog, the piece of meat, and the chain link fence, a whole episode on it. And we know what a dog does in those circumstances. All of us are dogs when it comes to sales. We look at a piece of meat or smell it on the other side of the fence, and we try to go through the fence instead of backing away from the fence and finding the gate, which is generally about 10 feet to the right. So what do we get? A bloody nose, lots of frustration. So Matt and I have been talking about this for years on various, in various levels. And I don't know what kind of conversation I would characterize it as, but it was a long one. Cause I was out on a barefoot trot that went long, long, long-

Corey Frank (08:18):

Hang on a minute. Did Chris just say that he had a long conversation? I mean stop the presses.

Matthew Forbes (08:24):

It's shocking. It's absolutely shocking that 10 minute call went about 2:20. Yeah. Who knew.

Chris Beall (08:30):

2:20. And the next thing you know, Matt's going to tell you what the rest of the story is because it's, it was quite remarkable. And he told it to me a few days ago and I, it brought tears to my eyes and not just cause a cold wind was blowing out of the Southeast here in Green Valley, Arizona.

Corey Frank (08:49):

And you were wearing a kilt, right? Exactly.

Matthew Forbes (08:50):

Exactly. I've worked with Chris for nine years and you know Chris, right? Lot of abstract concepts and they don't, some of them are perfect and some of them are over my head as just a dumb old sales guy. And we had this two hour and 20 minute conversation about what do you believe and not, what do you believe? What do you believe in your soul about what you're selling? Do you really believe that someone should take a meeting with you that everyone should take a meeting with you? And of course, as Chris is being Chris, I'm like, "Well of course I believe, Chris, I truly do love ConnectandSell. I think people should use it." And after the call, I kind of got to thinking, do I actually believe that? And I do, but do I believe it in my soul? Like deep, like truly. And I don't think I'd ever realized the fact that I really do believe that deep and that in turn, I think lets a lot of people off the hook when I'm talking to them on the phone.

Corey Frank (09:52):

Is it a change in tone? How would you dumb it down to a guy like me, Matt, of same phrase used without belief and maybe a same phrase used with belief. You have, you're Never Split the Difference book there and our friend Chris Voss, right? The inner partner, right, Chris? From many years ago, talked about that's right versus you're right. Talks about that in his book and how a lot of folks, when they talk, they're waiting to hear for "You're right. You're right. You're right." Which in essence means "just go away." I don't believe [inaudible 00:10:26], but when you say "That's right," now I have some trust built up. So what, what is it that you've discovered in this that could help a guy like me develop a belief mentality, an intention mentality?

Matthew Forbes (10:38):

First, you really got to decide what you believe as a sales rep. I mean truly you have to actually ask the question cause you inherently should believe. You sell it. You work there. But even me at nine years, I really had to ask myself the question. So the script didn't change because unlike a lot of sales directors and certainly some at ConnectandSell, I read the script. It's right there. I mean I physically, my wife makes fun of me. Right? I get on a call and the call starts here and I turn and I read because I do know that an opening script works word for word and you shouldn't stray. So it's not the words. We know that for sure. It's really the belief. There's some tonality difference, but there's a piece where when you try to get off the phone with me, I'm not going to have it because I want to truly help you.

You're lucky if you take a 15 minute call with me, I'm going to teach you something you don't know. And it may just change everything for you. It may not, don't know, but you're going to learn something. And that's when things started to change and I ran my numbers. So here are the stats, Corey: Matt Forbes, last year, 42,000 phone calls on ConnectandSell. My meeting booked rate was 9.2%. And that's a blended rate between first calls and the second calls, right? It's about 60% first and 40% follow-up. Matt Forbes last week was meeting booked of 26%. Something changed. Matt Forbes on that Friday call blitz was meeting booked at 35.7%. I went five for 14 on net new calls, same list, same script, same everything. Now there was ... we're in a flight school. So there was competition. And I admit that the competition is just so valuable.

It's ridiculous. But those numbers, when I look at where the other reps were, they didn't go up as high as I did as a percentage, not even close. And I really think it's that last notion of it's not that I don't want to let you off the call because I want to book a meeting. It's I don't want to let you off the call because you deserve to hear what I'm going to say. It literally could change how you go to market. I mean, I believe that in my soul, I think I always believed it, Chris. I don't think I recognized it. I don't think I was willing to come out and say, "Look, here's the deal." And that's what changed. And honestly, it's different now.

Corey Frank (13:14):

How long of a time frame was that, Matt, again that you were on the phone for those five meetings?

Matthew Forbes (13:19):

Session dial time: two hours and 29 minutes. Talked to 26 people-

Corey Frank (13:19):

That's incredible.

Matthew Forbes (13:23):

Went seven for 26. Yeah. That's insane. That's a Friday afternoon, but that's a Friday afternoon.

Corey Frank (13:30):

Friday afternoon. You know Chris, I think probably one of our first episodes, we talked about this concept of the promise is that the market is always on fire. And that... Think you had said, Chris, that the message is water, right? And that that's the mentality you need to have is that the proverbial go to the person at the end of the bar on his left side at the end of the day, "How was your week?" Right? You have no idea, right? They're on fire, and the message is water, but it sounds like we need to make a little caveat to that. Now, certainly after talking with Matt here, right? It's not just the message is water, right? But the delivery or this belief, this intention messaging is the fire extinguisher. Right. Water's good. But as you know, Chris, from working in a restaurant, we've heard this many times, you don't put water on a grease fire.

Chris Beall (14:22):

That is so true. I know somebody just the other day who burned themselves by making that mistake. I shouldn't laugh, but they survived.

Corey Frank (14:30):

What do you think of the tonality difference versus the ... I mean, Matt, you're calling it something internally that there was a, sounds like it's more of a, a switch than a dial of belief. Like, listen, I'm trying to help. Right? I have a belief that my discovery call will open up. Whether you buy my product or not, the discovery call has a cape on it. And you just need to show up for the discovery call, whether you buy my product or not, you're going to find something new about the industry, you're going to learn something new about your business, et cetera. Is that bottled? Can that be taught? How would you teach it to a new sales guy like me where I'm reading, what you're reading, Matt, I'm reading your script that's on my wall. I'm holding it on every call, but I'm not getting the converts that you are.