505: Time Management: Life Is Long, Here’s How To Get Your Time Back | Chris Croft
Powered by RedCircle
Leading expert on time management and selling negotiations, Chris Croft from Chris Croft Training and Management joins us this week for part 1 of a 2-part series. He is one of the most viewed authors on udemy.com and on Linkedin Learning with 36 courses, 24,000 views a day, and 18 million students in total. His Negotiation Skills course on udemy is the most popular negotiating course in the world. This week he joins George Leith to discuss time management. Chris has this brilliant ability to make the impossible very attainable through incredibly clever tactics and his realist approach to taking on projects. We are all very busy, and time is historically known as being a “scarce resource”. Let Chris guide you into finding its abundance in this week’s episode of the Conquer Local Podcast.
Chris’ 5 choices you have for getting more time:
- Say no – ie. “I can’t do it.”
- Negotiate – ie. “I’ll do it, but only if this…”
- Say yes and give it to someone else – ie. establish a trusted team you can delegate to (like Producer Bret for George)
- More efficient systems – ie. standard emails to send, files, spreadsheets for automation etc.
- Be less fussy – ie. is your input really going to impact output enough to justify your time and energy expense? If not, don’t sweat the details.
Conquer Local is presented by Vendasta. We have proudly served 5.5+ million local businesses through 60,000+ channel partners, agencies to enterprise-level organizations. Learn more about Vendasta and we can help your organization or learn more about Vendasta’s Affiliate Program and how our listeners (like yourself) are making up to $10,000 off referrals.
Are you an entrepreneur, salesperson, or marketer? Keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.
Introduction
George: This is the Conquer Local podcast. A show about billion-dollar sales leaders, marketers leading local economic growth, and entrepreneurs who have created their dream organizations. They wanna share their secrets, giving you of the distilled version of their extraordinary feats. Our hope is with the tangible takeaways from each episode, you can rewire, rework and reimagine your business. I’m George Leith and coming up, a two-part series. We’re very proud to feature Chris Croft. Chris came from an operations background having started with an engineering degree from Cambridge. Qualifying as a chartered engineer and working as a senior manager in manufacturing for 10 years. He gained an MBA and worked as a university lecturer for four years before starting his own training company 21 years ago called Chift Training. He’s one of the most viewed authors on Udemy and on LinkedIn Learning, with 36 courses, 24,000 views a day, and 18 million students total. His negotiation skills course on Udemy is the most popular negotiating course in the world. Get ready conquerors. Chris Croft is coming up next on this week’s episode of the Conquer Local podcast.
George: Chris Croft joining us from Poole, England. Chris, how are you today?
Chris: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here. Yes, Chris Croft.
George: It is.
Chris: Thanks for having me on the show.
Time Management
George: It’s the afternoon where I am, but it’s the evening there and you’re getting ready to have some curry in a few minutes with your family. So thank you for taking time out of your evening to join us for this recording session on the show. And we’re excited to speak to one of the world’s foremost experts on negotiation, but I, when we’re doing the research, we’re gonna get into negotiation a moment, but I need some help, Chris. I noticed on one of your YouTube videos that we could talk for hours about, you know, project management and time management and things like that. And I just seem to not have enough time in the day to get everything done that I need to get done. I was wondering if you could help me and give me a bit of that wisdom of yours on what might I be doing wrong?
Chris: Well, in a way it’s good to be too busy, ’cause it means you’ve got lots of ideas and lots of imagination and lots of stuff you wanna do. So it’s not all bad, but if you are too busy, you only have five choices, and I’ll quickly tell you about all five, all right? Really fast.
George: Wow, thank you. I appreciate that.
Choice 1: Say ‘No’
Chris: But there are only five. If there was only one, it would be easy, ’cause we would just do that one, but the difficulty is there are five and you gotta work out which one to use when, okay? So the first thing is saying, “No.” You can get more time just by saying, no. And, I dunno whether you are good or bad at this, George, I didn’t hear you say that.
George: I’m awful at that. I’m awful.
Chris: Yeah, so am I actually, I think it’s a trait that salespeople have. You know, we struggle to say no to customers or anything because it’s always potential. It could lead to work. It could be interesting. And I’m terrible at saying no to stuff. So that’s the first thing, to get better at saying no. And by the way, if you say no to just one hour a week of all the things you’re offered that would save you 50 hours a year, which is like a whole extra week a year you could get.
George: Amazing.
Choice 2: Negotiate
Chris: You know, it’s a lot of time. So, just a little bit of saying no is the first option. The second option is to negotiate. Which is a bit like, it’s like a partial no. You know, it’s to say, “I’ll do your podcast, but I’ll only do half an hour,” or you know, “I’ll come and see you but I won’t get there till the afternoon,” or, “I’ll do this bit of work, but if you give it to me in spreadsheet format, then I’ll look at it,” you know? So again, you could probably save an hour a week by just doing part of a job or negotiating over how long you spend. That’s the second option. If you can’t say no or negotiate, let’s say it’s an important customer or something like that. The third option is to say yes to it and then just not do it. No, I’m kidding! You can’t have that one! You know, no! Although often people do. No, and it’s interesting
George: What?
Choice 3: Say ‘Yes’ And Give It To Someone Else
Chris: Because that’s the default choice. If you don’t do any of these other five, you know, you’ll end up saying yes and not doing stuff, but I think that’s really bad. And you know, I think it’s bad for you. It’s bad for them. Customers really don’t like it. You think you’re gonna get away with it, but you never do. So, anyway, so the real third option is if you can’t say no or negotiate is to say yes and give it to someone else.
George: Hmm.
Chris: So, you’re working with Bret. He’s great. Just give everything to Bret!
George: Just gonna delegate everything to Bret.
Chris: Yeah. And delegating is, it’s my biggest regret from when I was a manager, I wish I’d done it more. We always think we can do it better or quicker or whatever. But, you know, actually, once you’ve got good people who you trust, like Bret, it’s so good just to give them stuff.
George: Mm-hmm.
Chris: So that’s your third option. And even if you’re not a manager, you know, I pay a guy to cut the hedge in front of my house. And every time he does it, I have to pay him 40 pounds. It’s a little dagger in my heart. It hurts me every time. I think 40 pounds, I could have had that 40 myself. I could have cut that myself. I could have spent all day doing that hedge, but a day of my life is worth 40 pounds, surely? But that’s the next option. Delegating. There’s only two others.
Choice 4: More Efficient Systems
Chris: If you can’t stop it coming in and you can’t give it to anybody else, you have to do it yourself. There are two ways you can get more done and people always focus on these, but, really it’s better to stop it getting in, in the first place. But you can get more done by having more efficient systems. So you can have standard emails you send to people and everything really well filed on your computer so you can find it instantly and have spreadsheets that work stuff out automatically. And, I think you could save an hour a week by having better systems probably. But I think most of us, our systems are probably quite good. The main thing is anything that repeats you need to have a system for it, any repeating tasks, you need to have a way of doing them really efficiently and particularly a repeating problem. There’s just no excuse for a repeating problem. You know? So if you quite often find that your car’s run out of petrol or your car won’t start or something, you have to fix that. And I’m amazed how many people’s lives are full of repeated time wasters. So there’s just no time for printers that jam up or whatever. So, better systems.
Choice 5: Be Less Fussy
Chris: The final option, if all your systems are as good as they’re gonna be is to be less fussy, to not be such a perfectionist. I don’t know what you’ll like as a perfectionist or not, but some people are just really, really fussy about every detail, and the key really with that, is to discriminate between important and unimportant. Because important things have to be done really well. I mean, this podcast we’re making is really important and we wanna do it as well as we possibly can, with microphones, and headphones, and preparation, and I’ve got notes of things I wanna remember to say, and you know, that’s important. But there’s a load of stuff in life that’s not very important. And you wanna spend a minimum on that. I mean, I can’t believe in the supermarket, you get behind somebody who’s trying to find a packet of ham and they want it to be exactly the right weight. And they’re looking for, you know, it’s gotta be like 0.3 of a kilo and the 0.4’s too big and 0.2’s too small. And, they’re rummaging through all the packets to find one exactly the right size. And you’re thinking, “Your life is not worth spending it rummaging through packets of ham in a supermarket,” you know? And there’s loads of things like that. Like just ironing shirts. I mean, it doesn’t matter does it? So, being less fussy is the final option.
George: Right.
Chris: And that’s all you got. You got those five choices saying, no, negotiating, delegating, better systems, being less fussy. And a combination of all of those will save you a lot of time.
George: Well, speaking of producer, Bret, like I completely threw off his script because I had Chris Croft on the podcast, the foremost expert in project and time management and I’m sucking at it. So thank you for that. Those are all written down now
Chris: I hope it’s useful.
George: And I’m gonna text you or WhatsApp you when I use these over the next couple of weeks, now that we’re friends and
Chris: Great!
George: You’ll be able to see that even an old dog like George can be taught new tricks. So thank you for that. All of those things are things that I lament over that I need to get better. And, you know, we are, and the reason I wanted to ask the question as well, is we’re recording this in late December and we’re moving into that, you know, take a good look at last year and then look at the year ahead and start to plan some things out.
Chris: Yeah.
George: And I’ve already identified that that time management is something that I definitely need to get better at. And thank you for that. You’re validating some of the items that I know I need to do better job of. So now let’s get to the that I’m sure that our audience is also very excited. They’re like, “Whoa, that was a freebie!” Now let’s get to the thing that our audience of sales professionals and sales leaders and entrepreneurs all over the world are going to really love, and that is these top tips around negotiating. And, we all know that negotiation is an important component of sales, but it’s also, it’s an important component of business.
Chris: Yeah!
George: There’s always a negotiation going on, it’s not just when you’re trying to conduct a transaction.
Chris: Yeah.
George: It’s also when you’re working with your staff or you’re working internally. So, you know, how did you arrive here at this expertise around negotiations? Like, what led up to this Chris?
Chris: Well… Thanks for bigging me up as an expert on negotiating, but in a way I don’t think I am an expert actually. I think what I do is I just explain the basics really clearly to people. And I think when you go on a negotiating course, or when you want help with negotiating, 99 times out of 100, you’re not doing the basics. And what you wanna know is just the absolute basics. And if you do the basics, you’ll be 90% of the way there, you know? And, I’m planning to go through the top, my top 10 tips in a minute, for sales people, I think, ’cause you’re right. A lot of negotiating, they focus on buyers buying and getting the price down, but actually salespeople are negotiating much more than they realize as well. And, so I’ve been thinking about particularly negotiating from the sales point of view. I think that’s probably what most of your audience will wanna know?
The ‘Negotiation’ Stage: All of it is the negotiation stage!
George: I wanted to ask about something you just said there because I think that that’s a really interesting point. I was doing some one-on-one work with some sales reps this week and they were like, “Oh, I’ve got this client at the negotiation stage.” And I’m like, the whole thing is the negotiation stage. Is that what you’re saying?
Chris: Yeah, totally. It’s weird because selling is like a moving towards, “Please buy my product, George, please. I know you’ll really like it.” And then, you know, “Please let me be on your podcast or whatever.” And then negotiating is like a moving away. It’s like, “Well, I’m not sure if I wanna be on your podcast. I mean, you’re gonna have to pay me quite a lot to be on your podcast.” Not that you are, but you know, but that would be, the negotiating is like, “Well, I don’t even know if I wanna sell this to you really.” And, if somebody asked me to do a talk in like say Moscow or something, I’d go, “Well, I’m not sure if I wanna travel that far.” And, “You know, it’s a difficult place to go, you’re gonna have to pay me quite a lot for that!” So then I’m in negotiating mode, aren’t I? So the key is, do you do all the selling first? “Please buy me or my product, it’s great.” And then when they say, yes, I want it. You then go, “Ah, well that, but I don’t really wanna sell it to you after all now we’ve gotta negotiate.” That’s kind of weird! So what I think the best way to do it is actually to do the two simultaneously. So while you are selling, you are also negotiating. So, for example, an early part of the negotiating is to try to find out what the other person’s weaknesses are. So if I discover that you’ve got nobody else booked for your podcast and you really want me, for some reason, you are obsessed with having me on your podcast, you know, I’ve discovered that. So then I know I can charge you more for it. So, therefore I wanna find out what are your weaknesses and clearly I can do that while I’m selling, ’cause I can say, “Oh, really? Who else have you had on the podcast and who have you got coming up? And why did you wanna have me on there?” And so while we’re still building up the relationship, I’m also sniffing for your weaknesses, you know? And then part of selling is when you propose some sort of a solution to their problem, but that’s really the opening offer when you negotiate, isn’t it? That’s when you put the number on the table and you look at them and you see if they react or not. So I think the two processes should be interleaved where you are doing both of them absolutely at the same time. And most salespeople don’t really think about that. They concentrate on one or the other. And I think if you do all selling you are then quite weak when you come to negotiate.
George: Mm-hmm.
Chris: ‘Cause you’ve basically begged them to buy. And it’s quite hard then to say, but it’s gonna cost. And if you do too much negotiating, you end up maybe not getting the sale. So, I’ve got a problem with my roof at the moment, some tiles have moved, water’s coming in, it’s a bit of a problem. And I’ve been talking to these roof guys and they all go, “Well, that’s gonna be difficult, Chris. I mean, whoo. I mean, access is not easy. And those tiles are very fragile and you’re gonna have to take loads off. You can’t just put one new one on you know.” And, I’m thinking, don’t you want this work? You know? So, they’re just negotiating from the start and I’m thinking, “Well, if you’re gonna be like that, I’ll get somebody else.” They’re going, “Oh, I can’t do it till January.” I’m thinking, well, I’ll get somebody else. So they’re not doing enough selling, you know? And what they should, and when they eventually come out with a price, I’m gonna think, well that’s expensive. So what they should be doing is saying, “I’m really great. I’m gonna look after you. I’m really a nice guy. You can trust me.” And then they should say, “It’s gonna be a bit expensive though, Chris, but don’t worry about it ’cause you’ll have,” you know? So they should be doing both in like a 50/50 ratio, I believe.
George: Chris, when you mention that, I love the roofing analogy. It’s a great analogy. But before that, what you were talking about is, is actually the negotiation is the building of the value of the transaction, where you’re having that conversation. And you’re starting to build the value. I gotta move all the tiles. I’m sitting here going, “Oh yeah, that’s expensive. I know it’s gonna be expensive.”
Chris: It’s a real problem I’ve got at the moment. Yeah.
George: But they’re setting this stage for, there’s not gonna be as much sticker shock because you’re saying, “Well, here are the things I’m gonna have to do to accomplish that.”
Chris: Yes.
George: And, it really is part of the value proposition of sitting down with the customer, the negotiate. So it’s not something that just happens at the end. It’s probably too late if you leave it to the end.
Chris: Yeah. It’s also the value to me, of course. So it’s the cost to them if it’s gonna be, “I’m gonna have to move a load of tiles and put a scaffolding up,” but it’s also the value to me. So they should say, “Well, Chris, you need to look at this really soon. ‘Cause if water gets into your roof, you’re gonna have all kinds of problems. But, it’s hard for me to get there before Christmas because, you know, we’ve got so many other jobs on, but I guess we could maybe do it but it’s gonna be expensive.” So they need to. So, I do this. If somebody says they might want a negotiating course. I partly go, “Well, I’m pretty busy and I don’t wanna travel,” but I also say about value to them. So I say to them, “Why do you want this?” And they say, “Well, I think we could be better at our buying.” And I go, “Really? So how much do you think you’re losing at the moment?” And they say, “Well, we could probably get another 10% from everything we buy.” And I go, “So how much is that?” And I want them to tell me it’s worth millions, ’cause then I go, “Well, the good news is I can do that for only a few thousand.” And they go, “Oh well, that’s great!” So I’m kind of softening them up by getting to think about the pain to them. So it’s partly my position of not wanting to do it really, ’cause it’s difficult to do, but it’s mostly the value to them as you say, the value proposition of why they need it. And that’s, it’s part of selling, but it’s part of negotiating as well, isn’t it? I really think the two, they mingle in together, even though one is moving towards and one is moving away.
George: Well, one of the things that we’ve talked about on this show over the last four seasons a number of times, Bret knows exactly how many times, but, is around needs analysis. And a lot of reps are like, “We’re gonna do needs analysis at the beginning.” And I’m like, “Okay. You’re gonna miss out on all of the expansion opportunity to that customer because assessing the needs of the prospect, or the customer, if they’re an ongoing paying customer, is something that you’re just always doing it.” It’s not,
Chris: Yeah.
George: And I think negotiation kind of gets bucketed that, “Well, we only do it at the end.” But now you’ve missed out on all the opportunity to get a higher value sale because you weren’t. It’s part of building the value. So thank you for clarifying that. It’s something that I think that our audience needs to take into account as we move forward. But I’m sitting here with bated breath waiting to get to your 10 tips. So you know,
Chris: Yeah.
George: Where are we going next, Chris?
Negotiating’s Affect On Profit
Chris: Well, can I say two things before we get to the tips? ‘Cause I think there’s two really important things I wanna say about negotiating generally, that I would say to a salesperson. And the first one is, that negotiating has a huge effect on profit. It has more effect than how much you sell. So, you know, if you drop your price 5% in order to get a deal, you’ve probably halved your profit. You know, most companies only make 10% profit. Salespeople think they’re making 50% ’cause they always look at the gross margin and they’re looking at just direct costs. But, if you add up all the costs in a company of everything, most companies make, say 10% profit. So if a salesperson drops the price by 5%, which is nothing, they’ve halved the profit. So, if you are gonna do that, you’ve gotta sell twice as much by doing that. And, you’re not going to. You will not sell twice as much by cutting your price from 90 pounds to 85, you know? Nobody cares about that. So, the first thing I’d say to salespeople is don’t drop your price. You know, don’t negotiate. If anything, what you wanna be doing is putting your price up by 5 or 10%. Because, if you can get an extra 10% and charge 99 instead of 90, the customer doesn’t care that if you’ve done a good sales job and yet they really want it. I mean, how much am I gonna pay for my roof? I don’t know whether it’s 50 pounds or 500 pounds. I really don’t know. I hope the roof guy’s not listening to this, but the point is I don’t care. You know, he’s probably agonizing over whether to charge me 300 or 330, right? I don’t care. I want it fixed. And that extra 30 pounds I’m not even gonna know. And so, if you can put your price up by 30 pounds, by 10%, you are gonna double your profit. You can afford to lose half of your business and still make the same money and do half the work. Right?
George: And probably do
Chris: And you won’t.
George: A better job for you, because, by-
Chris: Yeah, ’cause you can focus on just half the customers. Yeah.
George: Correct.
Chris: Yeah correct.
George: Justify the higher expense- by solving more of your problems and getting a better customer.
Chris: Yeah.
George: You know, we’ve talked a lot this year, Chris, about the ideal customer profile. I find that a lot of businesses are selling to customers that aren’t ideal instead of going and looking for more that are the perfect customer
Chris: Oh, yeah, talking my language.
George: That would pay a lot. You know what I mean?
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I mean the customers who are most obsessed about price are the ones who are always a pain anyway. They’re always the most high maintenance, they’re higher cost, and you’re getting less money from them. So they’re gonna be your loss-makers. And why are they a pain? And the answer is because they’re obsessed by price. They don’t understand quality. They’re just shopping around for the cheapest one. And, that’s just not a good start. So if you’re-
George: And they have no loyalty.
Chris: They don’t.
George: They have no loyalty to the brand whatsoever.
You Will Make More Money By Losing 50% Of Your Business
Chris: Exactly. So I don’t want those customers. So, if you do put your price up by 10%, you’ll lose a few customers, but you won’t lose money. You won’t lose half. Even if you lost half, it would be great, because you’d make the same money and you’d have time to focus on the really good customers that you still had. But the reality is you probably won’t lose any if you put your price up by 10%. and you’ll make double the profit. So, I would say to salespeople, what you do on price really important, you don’t even notice it really, but really, it’s really important. Put the price up, never put it down. And link to that, my other sort of introductory thing I wanted to say is it’s okay to walk away from a customer. If they won’t pay your price, it’s absolutely fine to walk. Because the ones who won’t pay the price are a pain. We wanna get rid of them. And, actually I’ve been doing some maths about this, which I luckily, because this is a podcast, I can’t show you loads of charts and spreadsheets, but trust me, the best point to be at, the best price point to be at, is where you are losing 50% of your business on price. So, if you are a guy doing roofs and you’re charging people 300 pounds, you want half of your customers to go, “Oh, I’m not paying that. I’ll get somebody else.” In which case, great! Goodbye! Because if every customer goes, “Okay, great, let’s do it!”
George: You have money on the table.
Chris: You’re too cheap yeah, you’ve left money.
George: Yeah, you left a lot of money on the table.
Chris: Yeah. Because I mean, suppose he charges me 330 and I go okay. It could be that 330 was absolutely the maximum I was prepared to pay, and by pure chance, he’s hit on that number. But that’s pretty unlikely. The chances are if he quotes me 330 and I say yes, I would’ve paid 500.
George: Yeah.
Chris: So he is left 150 on the table. So if everybody says yes, you’re too cheap. If 80% say yes, you’re still too cheap. You need to be at a point where 50%. And if you don’t believe me, do a little spreadsheet, just do a, what if? You know, what price would you go up to where you lost half your business, and at that point, how much profit are you making per customer? I know you’ve only got half of them now, but work it out. You’ll be making more profit than if you are a busy fool down at the bottom with a cheap price. So, as a salesperson, you’ve gotta face the fact that you will lose people on price and that’s fine. Now, that really goes against my grain. I mean, I wanna get every order, you know? I hate it when someone goes, “I’m not paying that.” But I have to stay strong and I have to say to myself, “No, this is okay. Because this is gonna maximize my profit and also give me the good customers.”
George: Well, I think what we’re talking about as I listen to this and it makes a hell of a lot of sense, but I think what we’re also talking about here is pipeline efficiency. So you have X number of deals in your pipeline. You are doing needs analysis. You’re working them through the deal. You’re trying to find the solution for them. And if half of those will not pay the rate that you’re asking for you are charging at the right level.
Chris: Yes.
George: That’s what we’re saying?
Chris: That’s right. That’s right. And it’s hard to know, ’cause if you take something like BMWs, you know, they probably don’t get that many people coming in going, “How much is the car?” And then going, “Oh, I’m not gonna pay that.” Because those people have already been filtered out. They’ve already thought, “I can’t afford a BMW.” They haven’t even gone to look at one and that’s fine. You know, and BMW are fine about that. They’ve set their price so that half the people who want one can’t afford one. so you gotta work out where in the pipeline they go and that they drop off, and that’s true. But the main thing is not to be too paranoid about losing business on price. And just a final detail before we then go off the top 10, is, that some customers lie and they say it’s price when really they didn’t you or, they were worried about the quality or, but the easy option is just to go, “Yeah, it’s a bit expensive, I’m gonna pass.” Okay? So maybe with my roof guy, I just don’t trust him. He’s a bit dodgy, you know? And I just say to him, actually, it’s a bit expensive, I’m not gonna do it. And I’ll get some, I’ll find somebody else, you know? So, I think if you’ve got 50% of people saying it’s too expensive, probably only about 40% are really too expensive and there’s 10% lying. So you almost want 60 or 70% of your customers to be saying you’re too expensive. ‘Cause then it’s really 50 and that’s the number you’re aiming for.
George: Then-
Chris: So, you know, you really wanna be hearing that often.
George: Chris, have you ever ran into the case where the customer may have felt that it was too expensive, you still managed to bring them on as a client and then you just over deliver and they were like, “Yeah, there was a lot of value against that price.”
Chris: Yeah. I get that.
George: It’s almost a negotiation stage where you’re testing the go-to market for the product or services that you have. It’s always a test?
Chris: Yeah. It’s always a test. And I mean, repeat business is the thing, is much easier business than new business. And repeat business is never on price because they’ve decided to buy from you. It’s always about quality and service isn’t it? Really it’s customer service. That’s the big thing. I mean, we could do a whole podcast episode of customer service. ‘Cause that’s so important
George: Well, what I love,
Chris: For repeat business.
George: What I love about what you’ve set the foundation for here is that we’re really taking a look for ideal customers.
Chris: Yeah.
Conclusion
George: We’re using the price point based off the value proposition to see if the market will bear that price. And we’re going to remove some non-ideal customers that maybe came across the line because you were way too cheap and it filled up every, and now you’re not able to serve the ones that you really want. So, I’ll tell you what. Of all the guests we’ve had over the last four years, you’ve done a great job of setting the stage. I’m sitting here with bated breath around the 10 tips, but I believe that we need to move to another episode to get to those 10 tips. So Chris, stay right where you are, and for you folks, we’re gonna come back with one more episode from the great Chris Croft, from Poole, England, where we’ll finally unveil those top tips, but you’re gonna have to wait until next week right here on the Conquer Local podcast.
Chris: I love that. Yeah. Tune in next time, you better be there. You’d better come back and find out what the top 10 tips are, ’cause they will not disappoint.
George: A big thank you to Chris for sharing his stories this week. The odd time we get a guest and we’re like “Let’s do two!” So we’re gonna do two episodes. We’ll have our second episode next week where we get into those top 10 tips. But here are our team’s takeaways from the first episode. Time management, a big chunk of it is about saying no. And it’s not about one big fix. It’s about a number of little fixes that can get you 50 or 100 or 150 hours back. That starts to add up. But it’s the little fixes that add up over a period of time. And then in negotiating, there are a number of tactics that we need to be using. And I just wanna touch on a couple of them. Chris talks a lot about this walkaway point. Like, what is your deal floor? And I’m sure we’ll cover more of that in the next episode, but it’s about your worth. It’s about establishing your worth in the conversation and then sticking to that worth and then trying to identify the weaknesses of the buyer. Well that’s pain point stuff, right? Like where is the pain point? But also with this, recognizing that negotiation isn’t one stage of the journey. It happens throughout the entire journey of you dealing with a customer. You’re negotiating every second that you are speaking to that client or that prospect. If you found value in this episode, please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcast. This feedback helps us grow and better adapt to what you wanna hear in future episodes. Be sure to subscribe to the Finny Award-winning, Conquer Local podcast as we continue to come extraordinary sales leaders, marketers and entrepreneurs. My name is George Leith. I’ll see you when I see you.