My partner runs the sales calls while I do ops and handle appointment setting. How would you develop a skill in my situation? I'm open to solutions outside business too.
Yeah, I mean on the articulation bit, you should just be doing the sales calls. Obviously, your partner should run the sales calls if they are the person initially contacting the lead and getting in touch with them, just for congruence's sake. There's nothing stopping you from doing sales calls or being on sales calls. Probably one of the biggest unlocks I had is when I just stopped deferring and delegating all of the sales work to my partner because I thought my partner just had some magic sales sauce that I didn't. The reality is they really didn't. And I was reminded of this just a couple of weeks ago when I jumped on a call with one of my business partners. Now I have a few, right? Because I run different businesses and stuff like that. And I just remember like, 'Wow, you know, this person really knows a lot about their product and how to sell them.' But then I jumped on a call and I was just like, 'Whoa, wait a second.' Like, 'Why did they say that? That seems kind of weird. Hold on. They're talking about this. That seems suboptimal. Why are they not asking the customer more questions about themselves?' And then I was reminded, oh, wait a second. Like, first principles, I'm actually really good at this stuff. I don't even need to know a lot about the product to know how to sell it. And it made me be like, 'Right, right. Why the hell am I deferring and delegating these sales calls to this person?' I'm like, if I really wanted to learn how the product worked and how best to sell that, I should be doing the sales calls myself. So, guess what? I started jumping on a bunch of sales calls. Now, I deeply understand the product and how to articulate the benefits of said product. Yeah, you just got to do it, Roby. Hopefully, that makes sense. Okay, I'm going to drink this coffee because it's pretty early and I got to jump over to breakfast soon.
I do this kind of thing in Maker School, where we run through what a sales call looks like, show how to do a high‑quality call, give bullet points, and talk about kickoff calls. I don’t gatekeep automation knowledge—I do the builds live. If you want sales help, check out Maker School. Briefly, here’s how I structure a call: first, I set expectations and frame the conversation (e.g., confirm we’re on the same page about time). I start by asking why you responded to my outreach, then a few more questions about your business, and finally I explain how I might solve your problem. I want you to walk away with something tangible, so I’ll prepare a free document, asset, or template to give you by the end of the call. After that, we follow the frame we set: I ask ‘why me?’ and ‘why now?’, then I run a customer audit—covering your acquisition, fulfillment, onboarding, client management, HR processes, etc. After you walk me through those, I discuss my solution and send a proposal with the scope. I prefer not to handle objections or do hard selling on the call; I’d rather let the value speak for itself, which comes from my background in heart‑based sales. That’s my approach.
To answer that question, I close deals primarily by not trying to close the deals. Prospects are extraordinarily attuned to sleazy salespeople; we're pretty sophisticated as a market. If someone pushes sales tactics, I think most qualified B2B leads—people who aren't broke, have money to spend, and have had some success—know the game. So I tend to close deals by being very straight-up with the person I'm talking to and treating it more as a consultation than a sale. I ask them questions about their business and see if I could be of value on the call by giving answers, not just when they pay me. I find that this congruence comes across better than lines like 'But wait, Pete, one last question.' or 'Jack, if I could make you this much.' That stuff is all nonsense nowadays. So I'd be a lot more congruent, not putting on a face. Simple things: don't negotiate against yourself; when you give the price, be quiet. Those little things aren't something you can't just read in a sales book by Chris Voss and then not get the 80/20. Hopefully I've answered why I don't live stream—I think it's restrictive in the schedule right now, I've tried it before, and I really need to stick to a weekly thing, which I don't want to do.
Yeah, so he's referring to my low-ticket product called Maker School. Now, I don't know if you guys know, but there's a difference between a low-ticket or a pretty affordable product, and then a high-ticket or a I don't know, maybe 5 to $10,000 per month product. Um mine is low-ticket. It costs a very little money in the grand scheme of things, specifically relative to the the amount of value that I provide. Um so, basically the way that, you know, my positioning and and mental model works is my audience was beginners. They're people that want to get their very first customer for a paying service. And so, odds are they're not going to have a lot of money. Uh they're not going to be able to afford a high-ticket product. Yet, at the same time, I also don't want a tremendous amount of responsibility. What I find typically occurs with a high-ticket product is you end up being responsible not for just creating the product and then marketing it. You also are responsible for selling it, actively selling it through like a high-ticket call funnel, a sales funnel, uh some sort of flow like that. And then finally, um I personally have worked with a lot of high-ticket products. Sorry, my alarm's going off. And I find that typically because they have to make crazy promises in order to justify the return on investment, uh a lot of them end up kind of falling prey to bad business practices and uh that sort of stuff. So, this is where people will get you on some coaching call that's $10,000 a month or whatever and then do whatever the hell they can to sell you. Typically, you know, you have people making poor financial decisions cuz they're all incentivized to push really hard and it just ends up I think souring the whole business model. So, I I wanted none of that. I wanted no calls. I wanted uh something very scalable. I wanted something super lean that I could manage entirely on my own without a sales system or sales team rather. And then I wanted to just be able to, you know, wake up, do my marketing, um um crush with the business model and then do the same thing the next day. And uh that's ultimately what, you know, I did with low-ticket MRR. Now, that's not to say I couldn't start some high-ticket coaching program, but I don't really want to make my money primarily through like a high-ticket program or anything like that. Uh I don't really want to make my money through any sort of programs. I'd much rather make my money through providing real tangible value to the world. Education is just one part of that. So, yeah, that's why I'm not doing that.
Your job is not to sell at this stage; your job is to learn everything you can about how the prospect is running their business. Approaching the call from a learning perspective rather than a sales perspective actually increases the probability of selling. Many people rush to sell too early and miss that building rapport and perceived authority is the best way to sell. You can build rapport by paraphrasing what the customer says in slightly different words, showing you understand them. Approach the call with curiosity and ask questions; genuine curiosity increases the chance of closing a deal. Set expectations at the start: let them know you're just there to learn about their business and that a firm decision isn't required by the end of the call unless they want it. Your goal is to see if you can help them, and ask a couple of quick questions to verify that. Now, to frame the conversation, ask what made them respond to your outreach, what they're looking for, where they're coming from and where they're going—think of it like a doctor diagnosing.