“Even though they’re not going forward for a particular reason with their fit for their organization, that doesn’t mean that they can’t reach out to somebody else that they know because of the experience, then their circumstance might be different.” – Carl Sajous in today’s Tip 1578
Do you do front-end and back-end referrals?
Join the conversation below and check out the full interview with Carl!
Fringe
Carl Sajous on LinkedIn
Carl Sajous on Sales Success Stories Interview
Submit a Sales Tip
Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]
Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today I’ve got another clip from my deep dive interview with Carl Sajous of Fringe on the Sales Success Stories podcast. Listen to this:
Carl Sajous: That’s the goal, doing right by the referral. I’ve been so fortunate in my career that a large percentage of my success has come from just pure referrals. Of course, there’s outbound and there’s cadence and videos from Vidyard and all the things that we do all the time. But the best conversations, the best transactions, the best sales processes have been with direct referrals. And I know that’s again cliché, but because that’s part of my process, that’s also the largest part of my success. And I value that so much. I think there’s people who reach out, they’re like, Hey, I don’t even know if you’re still here, but you’re the first person I thought of about X. Or your experience, our experience was so positively, I wanted to run this by you. What do you think? And it might be a competitor, but they’re still running it by me to get my opinion because if I say go with it, then they’ll go with it. Or if I say, You know what? I really truly think that Fringe is the better solution, then they’re going to go with Fringe. I love that because they found so much value in our interaction that they felt like they can reach back out at any time.
Scott Ingram: I think we’ve so lost sight of the value of that. There’s been so much emphasis the last, really, decade on scaling the outbound motion. It’s all about sequences and cadence, and we have to just pummel people to death because it’s the only way to break through. What if we just had somebody that introduced us and walked us right in the front door? So much easier. Is there a referral process that you have? Is this part of your approach?
Carl Sajous: Yeah. It’s on my template when I’m going through my discovery calls and my demos when other people come in. It’s at the beginning and it’s also at the end. And so if they decide to move forward and we continue to go through implementation and things like that, and I circle back with them afterwards, you’re talking about what happens after the sale. When I circle back with them, one of the things I will ask is, Hey, this was a great experience. Thanks so much, et cetera, et cetera. Who do you know who else who can benefit from this experience? You saw it from beginning to end, right? What do you think? Who else in your circle? What other HR professionals, et cetera, CPOs can benefit from this? And even on the back end of them saying they don’t want to move forward. I want to ask, right? What was it? Was it me? Do I need to improve? Again, we’re all flawed human beings, so do I need to improve? Or is it a product thing? If it is, then that’s fine. I need to know that so I can galvanize and help the product team. And we can share that information. Again, I like to build relationships through and through. So they don’t recognize that request or to ask from a posture of, hey, product team, get this, get this. It’s just like, hey, what can we do to help get this billed because this is going to yield a certain result or whatever the case might be? And so that’s how I typically go about it.
Scott Ingram: You said it was front-end and back-end. You talked about the back end. What’s your front-end setup? What is that piece for referrals?
Carl Sajous: On the front end, it’s at the end of the discovery. So I was like, Hey, we uncovered a lot of problems that you’ve talked about. I know you might belong to a few groups. You might have friends in the space who might be experiencing a lot of the similar things. So today it’s turnover. It’s burned-out employees, it’s retention issues, et cetera. And so who else do you know who might need to have a conversation? Because that’s all it was. It wasn’t like a heavy discovery call like in the traditional sense. It was just a conversation just to get to know each other and your situation. Who else could benefit from a similar conversation to uncover some of the things that they might need solved? And so I do it again on that front end and then also on the back end, even with closed laws, I want to know again, why they didn’t move forward. But then even though they’re not going forward for a particular reason with their fit for their organization, that doesn’t mean that they can’t reach out to somebody else that they know because of the experience, then their circumstance might be different.
Scott Ingram: For a link to my full interview with Carl and to connect with him on LinkedIn, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1578. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!