3 high-ticket closes in 2 to 3 months.
Built a qualifying question into the top of his sales conversation and closed 3 high-ticket deals in 2 to 3 months.
Watch the interview3 high-ticket closes in 2 to 3 monthsMike M. is president of Buckeye Business Performance. He spent years in corporate America building brands, taking a dozen concepts from startup to scale, including Victoria's Secret PINK.
Consulting turned out to be a different game. The work was familiar. Getting the work was not. He was good at pulling people into his funnel and starting conversations, but too many of those conversations were with people who were never going to buy, and he was writing off some of the right people from a profile or a website.
Carla built a qualifying and disqualifying question into the top of his messaging, so that a prospect sorts into one of his two offers, or out of both, at hello. Mike puts the saving at about 20 percent of the time he used to waste, and another 20 percent he had not been digging into.
In the 2 to 3 months after, he closed 3 high-ticket deals with people he says would probably have fallen through under his old process.
The interview
Carla Cherry with Mike M..
Hi, it's Carla Cherry of Power Offer Consultants. I'm here with my client, Mike M. of Buckeye Business Performance, and I'm excited to dive into the wins that we had while working together. You were a rock star in the corporate world and moved over to consultancy. Tell everybody what you did beforehand.
I spent years in corporate America building brands. In fact, I've taken a dozen different concepts, whether it be a new market, a new brand, a new concept, from the startup phase to past $100 million, including working on Victoria's Secret PINK, where we went from startup to $1 billion in sales in the first three years. So it's been a wild ride, very fun, but completely different than what I was doing in consulting. Not so much from the work I was doing, but from my approach of getting business. Completely different. And that's where I wasn't as experienced. I was behind, I'll admit it.
I love this, because people come from corporate where they're absolute rock stars like you, they go to start the consultancy, and it's a little harder than they thought it was going to be. So what is the biggest win from working together?
Again, I've built a lot of brands. So I've been good at attracting people into my funnel and creating those conversations. I do have some powerful statements that work, but I was talking to too many people who were not the right fit. And I was sort of assuming some people weren't, that really, really could have been. So that was where my struggle was: moving the conversation forward and being productive with that sales time.
You came to me and said, I want to be able to articulate who this is for and move the needle in the right direction. So we looked at your messaging and we built a qualifying, disqualifying question right up top. We got them into one camp or the other, because you offer two different things to two different targets. Once we put that into place, what did it do for you?
Oh, wow. It changed everything. It wasn't rocket science either, Carla, but it was that methodical approach you have of digging into each level. We hit that and you're like, whoa, we've got to fix that. And so we found that spot where, as you said, there's really three answers when someone's speaking to me. I want option A, I want option B, or you're not for me. I'm projecting that I'm saving about 20 percent of my time on one side, where I was wasting it before, and another 20 percent that I wasn't digging into. So I'm able to reinvest that. Definitely got more productive, having the right conversations with the right people, and the results are there.
So you're not spending 20 minutes of the conversation, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, getting to that point. It's literally at hello: pick A or B. And when they pick A, we built the result into A. Talk about the sales psychology of it, getting people to buy in, and wanting them to disqualify themselves. If they're not your client, you save the time, you get off the phone and move on to somebody who is.
Absolutely. Like I said, I've been able to reinvest the time into the folks that I previously looked at their profile, maybe looked at their website, and maybe assumed they weren't a good fit. I've had a couple of closes recently of those people who I probably wouldn't have spent enough time with in the past. But now I have the time, because we're doing the right things up front. And honestly, it's better for them too. I don't want to be wasting their time if it's the wrong fit, thinking that I'm going to help them raise funding because I built brands. That's not what I do. So it's better for everybody involved. If you can get off the phone in five minutes, great. Or if it's someone you should be talking to, but you kind of wasted the call because you didn't get to the point fast enough, they can fall off your radar.
A hundred percent. When you're working for a big brand like Victoria's Secret PINK, you're not necessarily sitting face to face in a B2B sales call. The money's already there, you're building the brand. It's a whole different ballgame when you're sitting face to face and having to make a sale. What I tell my clients is to build out the customer journey stop by stop, and it starts at hello. Which bucket is this person falling into? A dialed in sales process can make or break your business. So what is it done for you in closing, and for your time and your business?
I'm just thinking back over the last two or three months and I can already think of three closes that maybe would have happened if the stars had aligned, but probably not with my old process. They're people who would have probably fallen through, and I wouldn't have spent the time that I could have after learning that they really are on a track, and they even know which one.
And you're in high ticket. So when you talk about three sales, those are three good ones.
Oh, yes. Yes.
What would you say to somebody who's looking to work with me one to one and improve their sales process?
Oh, definitely do it. You're not going to find the same thing I found, it's going to be something different for you, but I could tell by the process and the methodology that we went through that you will find your win, wherever that might be in your process. So definitely don't waste any more time thinking about this.
Thank you so much for joining me. I love being able to go in and tweak one or two things that turn up the dial for you.
I'm certainly glad that I said yes. You get a lot of pitches, you get a lot of people you talk to, but there was just something about you and your experience, knowing your past and what you've done and the success that you have. It just was right. And I'm glad that I wasn't afraid to make a call and say, let's go.
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