Cure for Slow Sales | 359

Share this post:

Dan Kuschell

May 16, 2022

Dan Kuschell is a husband, dad, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor. He runs Breakthrough3X, a company that gives you instant access to a Fractional CMO Team. Breakthrough3X helps founders and CEOs grow their businesses 3 to 10x and generate more clients daily with a simple system that gets them free from the day-to-day. Dan has owned 12 companies since 1992, building multiple businesses with revenues exceeding eight figures before selling. He is also the Host of the Growth to Freedom podcast, where he interviews industry leaders and experts in a variety of fields.


Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • Dan Kuschell shares some of the negative perspectives around selling and how they can impact your business
  • Dan’s introduction to sales and what he learned from his first mentors
  • How to rethink selling in a new and empowering way
  • Three steps to transform your team’s sales
  • Dan’s key tools for shifting your selling game and how he can help you reset your sales system

In this episode…

When you think of selling, what comes to mind? Is it negative, or is it positive and empowering?

According to Dan Kuschell, the beliefs and misconceptions that many business leaders have around selling may be holding them back from success. Instead of looking at selling in a negative light, Dan suggests reframing it as a way of helping and empowering your clients. By transforming your viewpoints around selling, you can transform your sales game and start making a greater impact with your business.

In this episode of Growth to Freedom, Dan Kuschell shares his tips for reframing the way you think about selling. Tune in as he breaks down the common negative beliefs around selling, the mindset that can help you transform your sales, and the three steps for resetting your systems and achieving sales success. Stay tuned for more!

Resources mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com.

Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall in growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com.

In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Episode Transcript

Dan Kuschell 0:00

Hey welcome to growthtofreedom.com, the show that brings you inspiration, transformation and leadership, we’re helping you connect the dots, see the blind spots, and get unstuck. So you can go out and generate more leads, more sales, more profits. More importantly, so you can go out and have a bigger reach, a bigger impact and make a bigger contribution.

So recently, this week, we were doing a team on site, essentially, a breakthrough session where we take a company and their entire team through our process to get clarity on their sales model, their sales process their, their clients, and a whole lot more. And one of the staff asked a really great question. They’re like, Hey, Dan, like, what do you guys feel? is selling what is selling? Right? So today, I want to take a few minutes and share with you a new way to be thinking about selling. Because let’s face it, you know, if you had to fill in the blank selling is what, you know, a lot of people say it’s bad, it’s evil. It’s, you know, this, it’s that right? But what if selling was good for somebody? What if selling was a vehicle to transform people’s lives? How would that shift the game and your values as your company, if you had that mindset, right, so today, not only do we want to talk about what is selling some of the misconceptions, some of the false beliefs, also want to give you a viewpoint of a selling system, and give you a three simple step approach that can transform your business. Regardless if you’re brand new. Regardless, if you have a small team or regardless, if you have grown your business, like I had grown our company before selling it to 175 employees, where we had over 100 Representative salespeople, essentially, working for our company, right? Every day doing like 300 Plus presentations every single day. And so I hope you’re excited, grab a pen, grab a piece of paper, this is going to be a great segment for you to get some great walkaway value. So what is selling after all right?

And, you know, before we get into the full content, you’re something to really be able to do, let’s assess where you are today. In your business in your your ability to sell, right? So if you had to assess your sales ability, personally on a slow scale of one and a high scale of 10, right? Where would you rate yourself? separately? Where would you rate your business, right? Because your business and you may be completely separate so on a low of one, and then a high of 10? Right? In order to get you from where you are to where you want to go, it helps to have a good reference point. Now, let’s talk about some of the beliefs around selling. What are your beliefs like when I asked the question of front selling is what what did you fill in? Did you have something that was negative? Or was it something that was transformational, empowering and a whole lot more?

When I asked the question, ‘Selling is what?’ — what did you fill in? Did you have something that was negative? Or was it something that was transformational, empowering, and a whole lot more? - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

So let’s talk about some of the problems that exist because there’s a huge problem around the idea, the framing the concept of actually selling, right. And it’s one of the biggest reasons most people are held back in their ability to sell what they what they offer, right?

There's a huge problem around the idea, the framing, the concept of actually selling — and it's one of the biggest reasons most people are held back in their ability to sell. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

So According to Webster’s Dictionary, right, so what went on, my team really went on and found the definition of selling and it was shocking to see like the negative framing around most of the definitions related to selling so number one from Webster’s to deliver a give up in violation, right? Trust loyalty, and especially for personal gain, right? That doesn’t sound very positive, or here’s to a to give up property to another for something of value such as money. Now, this one’s a little bit more positive, isn’t it? Right? Let’s go to to be to give up in return for something else, especially foolishly or dishonourably. Again, another negative framing, number three a to deliver into slavery for money. Again, negative framing, three be to give into the power of another again, is that positive or negative framing? So is it any wonder there’s four, I think four, six total definitions four of the 670, almost 70% are negative in the framing from Webster’s three, see, here’s a positive one to deliver the personal services of or for money, right? A little more and more positive five A to develop a belief in the truth value or desirability of right gain acceptance for that’s a little bit more positive to persuade or influence, right to a course of action, or to the acceptance of something, again, a little bit more positive fine, be.

So here’s my question to you. How would it impact you? Right with those beliefs, especially the negative ones around so Think. So if you or your team have some of these beliefs and minds jet sets around selling, how might it be costing you? How might it be getting in the way of you being able to fully enrol people in your vision in what you do what you offer your product, your service, whatever it might be? And on the other hand, what if you were able to make a shift? Right? What if you were able to have like, we’ll call it the ultimate sales, reset, or more importantly, your team, you know, your your support people, like when we were running our company with 175, team members, we had everybody, including like a janitor go through our process of selling, influence, Vision values, and a whole lot more. Why? Because we wanted everybody to see themselves in the engagement or enrollment or selling of what it is that we offer, right, so a sales rep reset. So here’s part of that reset. See, selling isn’t what you do to someone. What if it was what you do for someone, right. And that little shift can make such a big difference, right in the culture and the values.

Selling isn't what you do to someone. What if it was what you do for someone? That little shift can make such a big difference. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

So quick story, my introduction to sales, my very first mentors in my early 20s, or late, late teens, early 20s, my sister got me a position in this marketing company, all the way back in 1989, and 90, and I remember his name, his name was Carrie, I won’t give the last name. But his name was Carrie. And I remember him saying to me, Dan, you will never amount to anything in sales, because you don’t know how to speak. And your teeth are so messed up, you don’t have the image or the likability or trustworthiness to be any good at sales. And like, and that was like a big hit to me in my late teens, early 20s. Because I had recognised that the ability to influence or sell was like one of the highest, most profound professions in the world. My uncle actually was a vice president for Hewlett Packard. And so I was driving on this journey and then being told by one of my first mentors, or bosses that I would never amount to anything. Now I had a choice to make, I had a road to take, I could have listened. Or I could have done and chosen what I chose, which was to go find other mentors who did truthfully, right. So it doesn’t matter where you’re at, it matters where you want to go. So I encourage you to think about and I started studying and I started investing in programmes and mentorship and coaching and a whole lot of things literally over the course of my three decades. 30 plus years do I invest in, you know, over a million and a half dollars in my own self education. One of my first early mentors was someone named Tom Hopkins, and you can check out our podcast with Tom at growthtofreedom.com. And just look in the episode Tom Hopkins. Right? So Tom had this great framing of what selling really is a reframing or a reset. So selling is what helping people, right selling is helping people. And I encourage you to be thinking about like, what if you view selling is helping somebody? Right? Selling is helping somebody? Right? On the other hand, what else is selling, selling is influence, right? selling his influence. I love this definition. You I hope you’ll love this definition. And I might be going a little quick. So you can come back and rewind this a little bit. But this is a great definition from brilliant guy named Dan Sullivan, of Strategic Coach he says selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that is good for them. So they can emotionally, emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. So many levels of so profound, as far as what that is. So how would these new beliefs serve you and your team and shift the game for you, if you were really able to get them into your culture into your way of being and operating your business, right? We could mean everything. In other words, like imagine it like being the mind of a child, right? Being the mind of a child.

So I want to introduce you to three steps that can transform your sales, right? And transform your company’s ability to influence persuade, and help more people have a bigger impact, have a bigger read, give you the ability to make a bigger difference have a bigger contribution in the world. So number one is installing new beliefs, new values related to the idea of selling and help your team define it. Like when we did this the other day to finish my story that I started with and close this loop. When we redefine this question for them. They were like oh my gosh, that is an amazing way to look at it. We need to have all of our team from the you know, higher level all the way down to entry level people understand what we believe that selling really represents what it means. It’s something you can be proud of. It’s something you get to do for somebody not to Now, right, so what would happen if you installed the new beliefs number two, is develop a blueprint for selling, right? In your business, right. And there’s all kinds of frameworks, there’s all kinds of coaches, there are all kinds of people. What I want to do here for a second is I want to introduce you to a couple tools that you might choose the model from when they use ours, or, you know, engage us to help you build it for your business, or you find somebody, but the key is to have a blueprint for selling, right, a blueprint for selling. So let me show you a couple of quick samples. Alright, so the first sample I want to show you is this tool we created. And when we work with our private clients, not only do we work with this tool, but then we custom design it for our private clients as well.

But this tool is called How to summon by selling less the guide dual enrollment master using the interview method. Now, why this tool is so powerful. Why is this important for you? Literally, we were able to take customer service people and turn them into high performers, by teaching them how to have casual conversations that convert, which is really what this tool does, right? It’s an enrollment Mastery Tool, geared around interviewing and having casual conversation. So if you like that idea, you’ll love this tool. If you don’t like that idea, then you might want to find something else. It serves you right, but this tool walking you through, it’s basically 12 sets at the framework identify something fascinating, and how to do that. Why are you interested? Why now something called Dan Sullivan calls the R factor question, which is a derivative of something was created from the most brilliant minds ever. Psychologists, creators of psychology, in its early stages, Emerson, run the R factor like what would have to happen for you to feel happy and satisfied, narrow the focus, what’s the number one thing you need the most help with right now? Right? I firmly believe that if you or I, or our teams make a goal to literally just get into a conversation with five people a day and ask the question, what do you need the most help with right now? And then work to truly be a servant leader from that perspective. In a matter of years, you’ll have everything you could ever possibly want in life. Right? So narrow from the focus from broad to specific, deeper, the understanding, what do you feel you need to have success, customise the offer, get agreement, verify their right fit, and enroll that client, right. So this is a tool that we built, in turn customer service people into super high performers, right, that ultimately led our company grow into a couple of million a month, you know, collectively over the years, using this tool, or derivatives of this tool that we’ve updated, and iterated, and so on, for almost two decades is, you know, probably generated between us and our lucky clients, hundreds of over $100 million in business, maybe a lot more, quite frankly. So this is wonderful.

You know, here is another example of something we custom designed for our client, one of our clients, the sales playbook. So we literally took that framework of those 12 steps. And now we expanded this. And again, for sake of time, I’m not going to go through every piece of this. But basically, it’s the introduction, this is the framework for success in selling writing six P’s right, it’s again, the values around selling the company, the mission, the vision, the founders, you know, as well as the experience the offer itself, like what are we selling what students say, right? You know, having success stories, having other clients who are using what we offer the guarantee, right? Because now, if you have a good guarantee, which we recommend, we can reverse or minimise the risk, right? The actual script itself, in other words, the checklists that we walked through customised to that client, as well as handling objections, other tools, voice broadcasts, leaving messages, follow up. So ideally, you start to get the power of what this tool really creates, setting up your cockpit. Like if you have a virtual team, how do you set them up for success? What tools are they training in about the company how to do role playing, right, the different tools for role playing. So literally, this toolkit goes through every single possible thing. And again, this is custom designed for a client. So my question to you is, if you had the checklist in place, and or something robust like this as a tool for your business, how would it shift and transform the game for you? And more importantly, if you were wanting to get the weight of selling off of you and have someone else maybe that could be better than you? Or a team of people better than you in selling? To help free you up? How would something like these two tools help you? So that’s step two is the blueprint, right? Step one, reset the framing the belief system, step two, is get your blueprint in place for your selling system.

So that now leads to step three. Right? And step three is essentially, to reinforce it to practice it to create an accountability system. You know, there’s an old saying that says, you know, tell them what you expect and then inspect what you expect. Right? And that’s one of the key used to building a great business, right? So you’ve got three simple steps, reframe the belief system, get a blueprint in place, and practice and reinforce it. Now, you might be saying yourself, Dan, you know, this is amazing. And you of course, have a choice, you can put this in place on your own, right, which I encourage you to do. Or you might say, Well, Dan, we could use some, you know, we have questions around this, or we could use some help around this. If you want help implementing some of the strategies we talked about, you know, in this case, the sales, building your custom sales system for you and your team, right? And you’d like to talk about how we might be able to help you do that or answer some questions around this, let’s talk, you know, it’s really, really simple, you can take the first step by going here to schedule a time, and let’s talk and let’s talk about your business. Let’s talk about your situation. Let’s talk about some of the things you want to accomplish. And if we’ve got a good fit, we’ll talk about how we might be able to help you and if we don’t, we’ll refer you to someone who might be a better fit than we might be. So to take that step, go to breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com, we make it super simple. Go there, check it out.

And by all means, I encourage you take action, with what we’ve shared with you in this segment, you know, reframe, and reset the belief system around what selling is right for you and your team. Ideally, positive versus negative. Ideally, it’s what you get to do for someone not to them, right? You know, consider the definitions, consider your three steps. Step one, the belief system. Step two, get a blueprint in place. Step three, reinforce that blueprint and accountability with your team. And if you do, like, I can’t promise you that you’ll build a company like we did that grew to over 27 million a year, and we were able to exit unable to sell, or us working with our clients where we help them instal sales systems and grew like, you know, some of our clients have grown upwards of $30 million a year. Now, we’ve had other clients who were just wanting to get freedom from the day to day and they were happy with a six figure plus growth spurt, add on to their their model, right, and anywhere in between. Regardless, these three steps can help you. I encourage you take action, put them in place, test them out, test them out for the next 3060 90 days. And ideally, you can report back and let me know if you have questions. If we can serve you if we can help you. Again, take the first step, you can go to breakthroughstrategycall.com. Or reach out to us find us on social media, respond to an email, whatever the case might be. Enjoy the day, seize the day, make it a great, great week, make it a great month, make it a great quarter make this your best you’ve ever had. That’s it for now. We’ll see you in another section. Thanks for listening to this episode of growth to freedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. Do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free Small Business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Share this post: