IAM2408 – Franchise Broker Journey: Overcoming Day 36 Sales Slump

Gresham Harkless shares the harsh truth about sales in entrepreneurship – not every conversation will lead to a sale. It's crucial to accept that not every potential client will become a customer, no matter how much effort is put into the process.

Gresham discusses how candidates sometimes get cold feet due to the perceived risks, even when they see the opportunity and believe in the business.

He reflects on how often sales that seem certain don’t close, while those that seem unlikely can unexpectedly succeed.

He also mentions that in franchise sales, it's common to speak with 100 to 150 leads, but only one will convert to a franchisee.

One key takeaway from Gresham’s experience is the importance of moving quickly towards a yes or no answer to avoid wasting time.

In addition, he recognizes that sales is a journey that requires patience, perseverance, and sometimes, talking to many people before finding the right fit.

• Blue Star Franchise: http://bluestarfranchise.com
• Browse the Franchise Inventory: https://bluestarfranchise.com/franchise
• Is franchising right for you? Check this out to see: http://bluestarfranchise.com/assessment
• Franchise CEO (A CBNation Site – coming soon) – http://franchiseceo.co

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Transcription:

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Intro 00:00

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:29

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And this is a special episode of our I AM CEO Podcast.

And this is actually going to be a snippet of a snippet, so to speak. I'm just doing an intro because I've been starting to document my journey into starting what is now called Blue Star Franchise.

We're also going to do a kind of sub site within CB Nation called Franchise CEO. So you'll see some links in the show notes related to that.

But just wanted to give you a little bit more insight, give you a little bit more color in some of the aspects of why I'm actually doing this.

Because one of the things I was doing as I was going through training to start up this new business was realizing and hearing from the founder of FBA, the Franchise Brokers Association, that it'd be really cool to document your journey going through and building this out.

I think it's something that would be super helpful, obviously for people that are looking for and thinking about starting franchises.

But frankly, if you're starting anything, any type of business, I think it's really cool to kind of just even see the journey and how it's been going from there.

So I'm going to share a few of those snippets from the, from the first couple of videos that have been created.

But definitely, of course, subscribe to our YouTube, check out a lot more where I figure out exactly where we're going to post this.

So I'll have that information that's available to you. But regardless, if you're a builder, continue to keep building, continue to do your thing.

The world definitely needs exactly what you're trying to build and needs you to be your unique self.

So make sure to run your own race, because nobody can run your race like you. This is Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh here. And I believe it's like day 36 or so of this Franchise Brokers journey.

And today I wanted to talk about what no one usually wants to talk about when they're talking about entrepreneurship and business, which is the sales and I have had the luxury of luxury or gift or curse.

However you might name it of like being in sales jobs before and I remember actually one of my first sales jobs.

And I had a boss that was really really a manager that was really really adamant about understanding how many things you had in the pipeline, where they were at, are they going to close, are they not going to close, when are you expecting them to close.

And that exercise, while it was very uncomfortable to be one of my first jobs, and the job that I ultimately ended up leaving because I was laid off before from another job, was going to get laid off from that job just because they were doing a lot of restructuring and cuts and things like that.

But I knew that when I took the job, but I knew that I had the opportunity to kind of learn about sales, which is always what I wanted to do.

So the reason I bring all that up is because as I go through this process, I'm starting to feel those sales things that happen.

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Here's a reality. If you have not been in sales, haven't been in business, every person you talk to will not become a closed client and customer. And sometimes that's really difficult to kind of understand.

Probably even more difficult to not say that it's about you, to not make it internal, to not blame yourself.

It's that fine line between saying, OK, I did the things that I could do, but there are things that I could do better.

But ultimately, the decision may be beyond, what I am supposed to do. And, in franchise brokerage, you're not actually doing the sales.

You're actually talking with candidates and getting them along the journey. But I actually had a call with somebody that hopefully will come on the podcast.

We talked around financial, but he said basically the biggest impediment, biggest issue that we have is not people getting qualified.

It's actually getting people to get over the fear and fear is such a really big thing. And sometimes when those things happen or those thoughts, get into your head or the person or the candidate's head about what they're going to do, when they're going to do it.

Oh, that's a really big number. That's a lot of zeros. They might see the opportunity, might believe in you, but they may not necessarily kind of continue on.

So I actually had one client or candidate, I should say, that didn't get over the finish line. Actually, he's building a house.

I had a really great call with him. I thought things would really go well. But it also kind of reminds me of something that Traynor said, which, again, is in the back of my head.

And I know this from experience as well, too, is sometimes the things you think are going to close are not going to close and the things you expect not to close end up closing.

So it's just like understanding like you just want to continue to kind of stay present with the activities and things that you can do.

But again, one of the numbers that I heard was that you'll talk to sometimes 100. I've heard 150.

I have not heard 200, but you can probably easily go that way. Leads, people you actually talk to or people that are say that they're interested, raise their hand, say, hey, pick me.

And one out of those will actually become franchisees, which is astronomical to me for somebody who is super passionate or not astronomical.

It's actually crazy to me. Just because so many people, I'm very involved in entrepreneurship and business.

I think it's one of the most exciting things that you can do. Exciting for good reasons, exciting for not so good reasons as well too, but it's all part of it.

But to hear that it's one out of a hundred or one out of 150 or whatever those numbers might be, the reality is that it's rare, rare, rare.

I've even heard it called the one percent, the one percent of people that will actually go in to start the business.

So when you start to kind of see those things happen, what you want to do is get closer to zero or closer to no or closer to an answer as quickly as possible so you don't waste your time.

That's one of the really big things that you have to master. And sometimes it's talking, to many different people.

But I think one of the things that I've gotten more and more realization about is, again, having this digital marketing business is how can you start to generate your own leads.

Because I think what happens, and I don't really know this, I haven't talked to people, is after you start buying leads, you start investing in buying leads, you kind of get in this hole.

And when you're in that hole, you have to kind of dig yourself out. And don't get me wrong, when you have the opportunity to get a candidate over the finish line, that ends up helping out with that hole.

But I think because we get so attached to doing it full time, we get so attached into having to win every time we have the conversations that it puts so much pressure on us to have to succeed.

So that's something that I want to do, this kind of disruptive, transformational, and I'm filling and testing out some different ideas right now.

So look forward to see how those things pan out. But again, it is a sales journey. You have to talk to a lot of people, kiss a lot of frogs before they become princesses. So remember that when you're going through it.

Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help. And of course, I look forward to giving you more and more updates.

Outro 06:44

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a five-star rating. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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