Post Election Follow Up Strategies | Ep38

Speaker A

00:00:00.960 - 00:16:17.810

This is episode 38 and on it I go over strategies you can use to follow up with stalled out Leads Once the 2024 election is finished, regardless of who wins. This is the Bottleneck Breakthrough podcast.

I'm Josh Long and this is all about helping you find and fix the biggest challenges in your business to unlock growth and profits. Hey. Hey. I don't know about you, but I am more than ready for this presidential election to be over.

This whole year has been quite the roller coaster, especially regarding the election, but for small businesses it seems to be quite the excuse to delay, defer, wait, put off, kick the can down the road on taking action.

And so this whole episode is focused on what you can do as a business owner to go follow up with your prospects that have used the election as an excuse to stall, wait, hesitate, kick the can down the road as I said and last year I shared a strategy on being able to follow up with past prospects and use an end of year planning meeting that you do for your regular clients and just offer that to your prospects that didn't move forward. And I know some clients and friends use that strategy and re engaged a number of people and got plenty of accounts reactivated.

So I'll talk about that again here in a second.

But also want to add some strategy depending on who wins this election and how you can prepare accordingly to follow up with your prospects with some key strategies and at least trigger some ideas for you to do some intelligent outreach.

Because I don't know about you, but the whole hey, just checking in, thought I'd see how you're doing if you've made any decisions yet, kind of follow up is pretty worthless in my book. I talk about golden retriever salespeople and that that's the most common type of sales profile today in the US Very, very friendly.

Just like the dogs. The dogs are the most popular breed in the US for a reason. They're friendly, they're trustworthy, they're not going to harm anybody.

But they're not necessarily inspiring dogs. They're not going to wow you with much if you train them perfectly and you take them hunting, maybe.

But the typical golden retriever is pretty forgettable.

And in sales, most people turn into golden retrievers by just checking in and supporting and seeing if you have any questions and chasing whatever ball the prospect throws.

And like a golden retriever, a good salesperson, a dutiful, friendly salesperson will chase that ball down and bring it right back and say great, you got any more questions? And so it's getting out of that default state and being strategic with your follow up.

And so my goal with this episode is to give you some verbatim stuff you could go run with or at least trigger some ideas that you can follow up more strategically. So before getting into it, obviously 2024 has been a tough year.

I would say that the recession we're in and heading, barreling towards the cliff to fall off of probably started in early 2023, maybe late 2022. I won't get into all the details of every marker that I saw, but that's when the layoff started, that's when FTX failed at the end of 2022.

Silicon Valley bank went under in early 2023. Those are kind of like the canary in the coal mine of the beginning of a recession.

And jobs have just been cut and cut and cut, lots of people laid off and quick aside. I will not stop suggesting going and recruiting top talent and just go upgrade everybody that's not performing.

There's so much talent on the market right now.

And reach out if you want help getting those top recruits because I am just overwhelmed with the amount of talent out there right now that I'm able to get for my clients.

So with that recession's been going on for about a year and a half coming on two years and in September when the Feds lowered rates, that lit a fuse that historically says that the cliff of the recession is on average about 11 months later. And this is repeated over and over. If you're curious, there's some guys on YouTube, I can't think of his name right now, bald guy with a beard.

And anyway, he talks about it and has shown some great graphs.

But the short of it is that once the Fed has been as the Fed's been, raising rates to slow down an economy and put a wet blanket on inflation and spending and growth, they overdo it every time. And then inevitably they have to pull rates back. And once they pull rates back, it's the, like I said, the fuse is lit.

Meaning that there's going to be a flurry of activity. And especially with the election going on, there's a flurry of activity, a flurry of hope, let's say.

But it's really, as stock traders call it, the dead cat bounce, that the stock was already dropping and before it fell, falls off the cliff. It bounces like a dead cat and bounces back up just a little bit to give people hope and then it continues to fall off the cliff.

And so that's what we're facing, everybody. I Know that pays attention to these things. We all feel we're in the same spot of facing down the barrel of that cliff that's coming.

Bad analogy there, but very barrel of the gun towards the cliff that's coming. But Akhil Patel is a guy that's been talking about this coming for quite a while.

My buddy Perry Marshall got into him, client of ours, Damien Deegan over in the uk, big fan of Akil and Damian introduced us to his stuff. Gosh, I want to say 2021 around there.

And so Akil has been saying that there is a monster recession coming probably the end of 2025, beginning of 2026. And that all aligns with the fuse that was lit with the Fed raising rates, I mean, sorry, lowering rates in September.

And so as we look at this and we think about how tough this year has been, I say for a lot of my clients, even if they had up years, it was a lot more effort than in the past and they had to get just about everything firing on all cylinders to have growth. Otherwise, most businesses have declined. This year, things have gotten harder.

And with that, all of these prospects are just kicking the can down the road. They're hesitating, they're uncertain, they're not sure what they should be doing next.

And so you've got a great opportunity here with this election coming up that when it is over to do some strategic follow up. So I think the, when you fold it in with the end of year planning strategy, it's a great one to punch.

And so as we think about being again, more strategic, I would say think through what you're doing with your best clients for end of year planning. Best planning for 2025.

What are you doing to get things lined up so that your best clients are as engaged as in that you're as embedded in their business as possible going into 2025. And so doing the offer of saying, hey, Mr.

Prospect, I know you didn't get started with us, but we're doing end of year planning with our best clients and wanted to offer that to you free of charge. Let's have a strategy session, go over what your 2025 plans are and how we can help you with those.

And you'll be amazed at the receptivity of people for that offer because it's firing on a number of psychological factors. One being the goodwill of just offering to help them for free.

Number two, it makes them feel special because you said you're doing this for your best clients.

And they may think this gets into like social proofs, or like, oh, well, if they have best clients and they're doing this with them and then we do it and we find it valuable, then maybe we could be like their best clients and what are their best clients doing and what are their businesses like? So they may, you may have questions like, well, what does it look like for your other clients?

And you may be able to share some of those details and then say, you know, in these cases, we don't share that proprietary information. Just like you could understand. You wouldn't want us sharing it with anybody else when we work with you. But that strategy is fantastic.

And so now layer in, the election's over and we'll go through both scenarios of whether Trump wins or Kamala wins.

And I'm not gonna make this political, I will be biased, you will hear my opinions come through, but it's really just how to be strategic and follow up in either scenario. So if Trump wins, for business owners and for people who have money, there's gonna be a lot of enthusiasm.

There may be some incredible cynicism of, well, we'll see if he even makes it to the White House in January. But for the most part, everybody's going to feel a wave of enthusiasm because Trump is pro business.

And Trump has proven to be very, very profitable for businesses when he was in office. And his tax strategies are helpful. And so you can ride that wave and say something like, hey, now that Trump's won, let's get ahead of 2025.

We're doing our end of year planning. I know you had been waiting to see what happens with the election.

Now that there's some certainty going forward that we've got a pro business president in there. Let's schedule a time and go over your planning for 2025 like we're doing with all of our best clients.

And so something as simple as that could cut through the noise, be very proactive, be very strategic, and get you in front of prospects that resonate with that. And you can also talk about helping them capture that wave of enthusiasm. Because a lot of my clients, you guys, are B2B service providers.

And so those companies that you help also have clients who may be other businesses or even consumers that are stalling out, kicking the can down the road. And so you can use your activity with them to help them bolster and reach out and have a trickle down effect of writing that wave of enthusiasm.

For certain markets. Obviously there are going to be people that are upset that Trump wins, but I tend to not run in those circles. So I. I wouldn't know.

I'd be up for brainstorming if you want to email me a situation where that's the case. But for the most part, everybody's going to be that you're working with or that you're dealing with is going to be positive about it.

He has proven to be very pro economic, very pro America, stop sending money overseas, help improve our economy over here, and help the middle class. So that's the angle that I would take if Trump wins.

Now, in the case that Kamala wins, I would say for your clients, the prospects that aren't happy with this, again, if. If most business owners are going to be happy with Trump, they're going to be disappointed with Kamala, and rightly so.

She's not ever proven to have any sense of business or understanding of small businesses. She's never explained an economic policy of any kind. And so there's going to be a lot of uncertainty. And I think you can play a couple of angles.

The first being that now that we have clarity, let's get you strengthened so that your business is as strong as possible going into an uncertain future, going into a future with a president that has no economic background and has been part of an administration that has done nothing but cause inflation. So we have to get ahead of that. And the other thing you can you play the angle on is to take action before taxes are hiked.

My business, my clients are. We're all in the top 3%. We're not quite 1 percenters yet. I just had to look it up.

It was average income of 652,000 across the nation, 844,000 here in California, where I live, and all over the map. But we're definitely in the top 3 to 5%. And so with Kamala in office, there are going to be no tax breaks for us.

She is not going to have any incentive with her voter base to give us any kind of benefit to improve the economy, improve small businesses.

So tax hikes will be coming, and you can play on that and you can say, hey, let's get your revenue growth going sooner so you can capture more profit and build more of a war chest before taxes are hiked. Let's get your business bulletproofed. Let's get your business streamlined.

Let's focus on maybe there's new incentives for hiring certain people, because Kamala is all about equity and inclusion. So maybe there's strategies there.

And then in regards to taxes, like, they won't be able to hike taxes immediately because she'll take office again next January, and then legislation will pass. And a good friend of mine, Adam Libman, he's a tax strategist. He's, he has a great line.

We went over this in 2016 when his clients were worried that Hillary Clinton was going to become president and was going to raise taxes. And he went to USC and he studied tax law. And he had a professor that said something that was just so, so wise.

He said, adam, it takes two years for Congress to pass a new tax law, and it takes 10 minutes for a USC tax law grad to figure out the way around it. And so I would say that anybody that becomes cynical, that says, oh, well, she's just going to raise taxes.

I don't want to make any more money, it's like, well, there's going to be a couple years that you can build the war chest before the tax man comes.

And so I would use that angle of, hey, yes, Kamala1, let's figure out how to make your business better, stronger, safer, more stable, profitable, leaner, whatever the angle is, that works with your offer to stabilize your clients businesses or your, your clients lives, wherever they're at. So I would love to know how this plays out for you. What strategies come out of this?

Obviously, we're kind of in a holding pattern until, I don't know, what is it November 3rd and then how many weeks after that. These swing states say it's going to take to count their votes.

But I'm excited that you guys can that listen to this, that take action, can get out ahead of your competition, have conversations with people that have been frozen and stuck in a holding pattern, uncertain about what to do because of this very polarizing election that's coming down the pike. So shoot me a note.

Feel free to email me podcastottleneckbreakthrough.com and I'd love to get any feedback or hear any strategies that worked for you. And if you have any questions, feel free to fire off a note, too. I'm happy to provide clarity for you to take action on this.

Hope you have a great day and I'm going to be fascinated to see what happens with this election. Take care. This podcast theme music is an excerpt from triptych of snippets by Septah Helix. It's used under Creative Commons.