57 Unique Ways To Increase Sales With Brilliant Strategies & Tactics For Small Business
Glenn Poulos Interview 2022-10-24
[00:00:00] Joey Myers: Welcome to the Lead Generation Strategies podcast. I'm your host, Joey Myers. This podcast is brought to you by lead generation seo services.com, and that's with an S at the end of services, and Enfuego Media.
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[00:00:43] Today I want to welcome Mr. Glenn. Is it Palos or Polos, Polo?
[00:00:48] Glenn Poulos: Poulos.
[00:00:49] Joey Myers: He wrote a book that you can get on Amazon titled Never Sit in the Lobby, 57 Winning Sales Factors to Grow a Business and Build a Career Selling.
[00:00:58] What's cool is that the 17-book reviews so far, and this is a newly published book, he's got an average star rating of 4.9. So that is awesome.
[00:01:06] First, thanks Glenn for joining us and welcome to the show.
[00:01:12] Glenn Poulos: Thanks Joey. Great to be here.
[00:01:13] Joey Myers: Glenn and I were talking right before this, that with everything going on in the economy now, I think real estate is on the, I don't want to say the chopping block because I got a lot of real estate friends, there's some good and the bad going on, but things have turned since the interest rates have moved up.
[00:01:28] We were talking, Glenn's in telecom and just talking about some of the innovation and creativity we got to do now. There's no better time than now to talk sales. Glenn is good at sales.
[00:01:40] So Glenn, give people a background of your background. Just catch us up to speed in a paragraph or two.
What’s your background?
[00:01:46] Glenn Poulos: Sure, no problem. I've been basically selling in a sales company of various favors for about 37, I think years it is now. Since around 1985. I think my math's okay there and [00:02:00] I was a civil servant for the federal government.
[00:02:02] I live in Canada. I live in near Toronto, and I work for Environment Canada, similar to the Weather Service.
[00:02:07] My boss said, Hey dude, you're in the wrong business. You need to go into sales. I convinced a guy to hire me in a tech technology sales company. Using the kind of instruments, I was working on at the government. I went to a company that sold them and started selling them.
[00:02:20] Then five, six years later, I started my own business. It was a sales company selling same kind of technology products and grew up for about 15 years and ended up selling it to a public company.
[00:02:32] It's probably too long of a story to go into, but the reality is that the public company was probably not the best partner to pick, and they closed our division, and I had to start over.
[00:02:41] After 15 years and I had to rebuild the company. I started a similar business and grew it for another 15 years. In February I sold it again, a different company and my second, my second exit, and this time it was with a very large company out of Washington, DC, a private equity firm and for an all cash deal this time not a bunch of shares.
[00:03:00] During the pandemic, that was when I didn't have anywhere to go or anything to do. We're all locked down in Canada and decided to write the book. Lots of stories in those 37 years, which we can probably get into at the right moment here today.
[00:03:11] Joey Myers: Very cool. Very cool. Thanks for catching us up to speed there and I got to apologize. I called you Greg, and it must have been an auto correct thing. It's Glenn, I'm sure it's not the worst thing that you've been called in those years.
[00:03:21] Glenn Poulos: No, it's your podcast. You do whatever you want.
[00:03:23] Joey Myers: I could have called you whatever I wanted.
[00:03:25] Let's start with getting back to we got to the present now. What's the biggest problem that you solve for your clients in this telecom business?
What's the biggest problem that you solve for your clients in this telecom business?
[00:03:32] Glenn Poulos: We're bringing the today's advanced technology to the markets that we serve and the geographies that we serve.
[00:03:38] Depending upon the exact technology, it's either across North America or across Canada. Some of it is just in Canada, some just in the US, some across all North America. We're scouring the globe, bringing advanced wireless solutions to the market. And these are typically smaller companies exploded in terms of their size and they bolt onto the world class wireless companies [00:04:00] like Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and companies like that that are household names.
[00:04:05] We help build the wireless network. In our territory, in the markets that we serve, and we like to say there's a lot of wires and wireless and we sell wires.
[00:04:13] Joey Myers: Exactly. The conundrum there. Glenn, you've been in the telecom industry for how long.
[00:04:17] Glenn Poulos: Since 85, 1985
[00:04:18] Joey Myers: okay let's just look back of the changes in that industry, you talk about technology and say, I know it moves really fast. So maybe in the last five years, five years ago versus now. How far it's come?
[00:04:31] Glenn Poulos: Do you mean technology to be a salesperson?
[00:04:33] Joey Myers: Start with the technology. The technology in general, and then we'll get into the sales side of it.
[00:04:37] Glenn Poulos: Our business is governed by the G’s of the world. We started in 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G. And we're praying there's a six G, right? Some of our customers are right in the coming, finishing up their 5G builds and everyone's heard of 5g, right?
[00:04:51] But this requires technology overlays by the carriers. For the last five years, they were coming out of the LTE 4G space and into the much higher throughput. It's all about speeds now and multi rich content coming to you via your phone and totally different.
[00:05:07] Imagine the difference between, just serving voice calls at a stadium with 50,000 people compared to every single person on Facebook and Instagram and live streaming video up to the bandwidth requirements are just out of this world. That's really the biggest change, is that technology and how 5G has enabled that, those kinds of speeds and those kinds of applications to run on people's handset. That's probably the biggest change that I've seen.
[00:05:32] Joey Myers: I've seen some, in the crypto space too, some of the blockchains, like the way some interesting stuff where they're multiplying just a simple we've got a router and you've got a certain extension.
[00:05:42] You've got a certain area that router will give you wireless.
[00:05:44] Glenn Poulos: You mean like the Helium network?
[00:05:45] Yeah. There's so many. There's the Helium Network that was a great thing and I ordered a few myself, right? Because it's just so cool.
[00:05:53] But there's a lot of them out there now. You can have your own sort of wet base station on your house. Or at your work or wherever you [00:06:00] have real estate, you can put up little mini cells. It's a nano cell or a femto cell even. It's so small in terms of its footprint and sell that, sell your internet service.
[00:06:10] It connects to the internet and to the back end of the carrier, like T-Mobile or Verizon, AT&T and they pay you for the people coming on the network, and as people roll onto your helium box or whatever, you get paid for that and you get paid in crypto.
[00:06:25] Joey Myers: It's cool.
[00:06:25] They're not up and coming, I guess they've been established for a little bit now. They're just like you said, building their network, the people's network. But one of the cool things that I had seen in an article, was it the low Ray Ma, what is it?
[00:06:35] The long range. Where it can take a signal and it can push it out to 2.6 kilometers. So now your radius is like 2.6 kilometer. It's crazy how much bigger. Is that something that the telecom industry is trying to adopt or trying to modify to match?
When it comes to signal strength in the telecom industry, are you guys making moves to compete with new tech in the crypto world like the Helium Network?
[00:06:51] Glenn Poulos: Yeah. It's funny, the area that I'm involved in primarily, the footprint's shrinking.
[00:06:56] Really the market we're serving is that high, super high-speed market where they're raising the frequencies and so the distance will shrink. That technology is a little bit lower frequency, and it can penetrate farther, and it can go through things like trees and other obstructions.
[00:07:11] Whereas the advanced technology. Some of the stuff we're working on is up in the 60 and 80 gigahertz range, but it's only a few hundred feet that these base stations will go. But the data, the bandwidths are insane, this is what the carriers are testing right now.
[00:07:26] So there's at both ends of the spectrum. There are systems that can serve rural or semi-rural or suburban markets where you want to spread it out cause the people are spread out and then the dense urban, super dense markets or stadiums and things like that where there's 50,000 people, in a small little footprint.
[00:07:44] But in your neighborhood that might only amount to a couple hundred people in the same space.
[00:07:48] Joey Myers: Interesting. I didn't know that. Makes sense though, where you get a higher intensity bandwidth or whatever you can download faster everything, but obviously, your zone's going to shrink a little bit because it's not using microwaves or whatever it is.
[00:07:59] Glenn Poulos: Exactly.
[00:07:59] Joey Myers: Let's move [00:08:00] into the sales part of things. I have Glenn on because he's a sales guy and he's an expert in this. Typically, our audience are like real estate agents, are maybe dental practice owners or service-based industry, business owners, things like that.
[00:08:14] I wanted to have Glenn on so that he can share some salesmanship stuff. Because I think currently in the economy, there's no better time than to talk sales now, to better our sales processes and things like that.
[00:08:24] Let's talk about real estate agents. They're very good, personable people for the most part extroverted, but there are some introverted ones.
[00:08:33] They base most of their business off referral. Now what may need to happen, which as you probably would agree, is more of, I would say, more of a defensive lead strategy, right? You don't really control it, you can't control it, but it's a sit and wait type of scenario. What's your advice for a business, what are like maybe the top two sales strategies that you would use for those type of people?
What's your advice for a business that focuses more on referrals for leads?
[00:08:54] Glenn Poulos: It's always funny when this comes up because a lot of the techniques in the book are somewhat, they come across sounding a little bit old school because of the stories maybe are from a while ago.
[00:09:03] The lessons are universal as I'll explain in a minute. But, so the way I explain it is that, I suggest people like realtors and anyone that needs a large deal, say lead funnel or deal funnel coming at them to basically try to work with outsource companies to drive those deals to them and not have them spend their time generating that kind, basically the way I explain it is when you're in front of the customer that's selling, everything else is marketing.
[00:09:30] You should hire good companies to help you with that. You're either a marketer or you're a sale. You could do both, but you can't be in two places at one time. I recommend people use services and I think you're the expert on this in terms of AI and lead generation and things like that.
[00:09:45] Bringing up the salesman's job is to take those leads and get in front of the customer and then stay in front of the customer through a series of techniques and, just methodologies, so that they're constantly building that rapport and that relationship. Those people [00:10:00] then pass on your name willingly to everyone else because you're such a pleasure to do business with, if I can say it that way, right?
[00:10:06] I'm constantly trying to help either my guys or other people that I'm talking to or coaching to figure out which side of the spectrum you want to be on. The lead generation in the marketing where the chairs are comfortable and then the sales job where the chairs have nails in the bottom of them.
[00:10:22] It's funny and its true salespeople, they're happiest when they are in front of customers and, but sometimes they get a little bit tired and they sit in their chair and the chair gets comfortable and having just another coffee or whatever, but really the real magic happens when they're in front of the customer.
[00:10:37] They must build systems and processes to drive them with leads so they can make that phone call, schedule a meeting, get in front of them, and then when you're there, drive the next meeting and the next meeting. That's the one trick that I always tell people.
[00:10:50] They're saying like, oh, I'm having a hard time getting another appointment with the guy. I said you should have come back with the appointment. Like the next appointment is easy because you're going to make it when you're there. Now, of course, if the whole thing's dead and done and whatever, maybe there's no follow up meeting, but most of the time, especially even if you just got the deal, the next meeting will be a celebration lunch or whatever.
[00:11:09] Or even a coffee drops off bottle of wine, whatever you're doing if you're a realtor, but you always want to be, when you're finishing the last call, you want to book the next meeting so that you can be, when they're in that flow with you, they're going to agree to that next meeting.
[00:11:21] Now that's done and then you can start building calls in that area around. ,
[00:11:24] Joey Myers: That's great advice. I was talking with a realtor down, I think it was down in Malibu, and it was a two-gal team. Business been around for a while. One of the gals was the mentor and then she got hired on and they were busy doing their sales and working the referrals.
[00:11:37] But like you said, not having time to pull in new leads. I think it's great advice to delegate that out to somebody, a marketing team that can do that and bring that in. I thought that's great. It's hard to do two things at once. I've done that myself. I like the sales side. You must pick one or the other, I think.
[00:11:54] You have a chapter that you talk a lot about the importance of leaving a voicemail and or email. [00:12:00] So can you go into some of those strategies a little bit?
From a sales perspective, what’s your advice for leaving a voicemail message or email?
[00:12:02] Glenn Poulos: Always leave a voicemail, I do go on ad nauseam in the book about that and whenever I'm asked about it, but there's a story in the book that where I tell.
[00:12:09] There was a time, some years back when I was going through a divorce, and I was let's say down in the dumps and I wasn't at my best and I had stopped responding to voicemails and stuff like that. The quick version of the story is that it became a standing joke.
[00:12:23] Oh, leave a voicemail for me, right? And it was like, Oh yeah, haha. If you'd never want to call back, leave him a voicemail. But when the guy, one of my work coworkers finally, ripped the Band-Aid off and told me that story. Like for me it was like, it shook me to my core, and I never forgot that.
[00:12:40] It was shortly after that, that company closed after I had sold it and I had to start my new business. And I vowed that I would always pick up the phone if possible, and I would always return phone calls. If it was a salesman and they'd gone to the trouble of leaving me a voicemail, even if it was for like toner cartridges that I didn't need, I would still phone them back.
[00:12:59] My attitude about the voicemail is It's so annoying when someone, I call it drunk dialing, right? Where they call you and they call you and they call you and they never leave a voicemail and soon enough, you like, area code 5 86 or whatever and it's like anyone from 5 86, I'm not picking up.
[00:13:13] Because you know it was that guy who called once you couldn't take the call, whatever, you know who it was. And then he just keeps drunk dialing you over and over, never leaves a voicemail and now you're wondering what the heck it was about.
[00:13:23] I always say, always leave a voice. If you're going to make the phone call, don't be that guy that phones and then hangs up and then calls back an hour later.
[00:13:30] Leave a voicemail never more, less than 20 seconds, never more in 30 seconds. And they say, why less? No. No. Why can't it be less than 20 seconds or whatever. The reason why is because a lot of people. Not everyone, but a lot of people, they look at the time amount on the voicemails, and if they're under a certain length, they just delete them because they're thinking nothing of any merit could be said in seven seconds.
[00:13:51] Jack from Xero, call me back, click. Maybe I can understand what that was, but still, it's not a very good voicemail. 20 to 30 seconds, then I'm always prepared for the reason [00:14:00] why I'm calling, right? One of my rules, when you're visiting or when you're phoning something in your hand and something in your mind. When you're calling them, the phone is in your hand and your deal.
[00:14:08] The reason you're calling is what's in your mind. Same in your visit, could be literature, could be a quote, could be a mouse pad or a water bottle or a pen, whatever your company's giving. Something in your hand, something in your mind to talk about and you want to start off with, I'm calling because you know, we've been working with companies like yours. Increasing productivity, reducing times, increasing production capacity, whatever it is your business does.
[00:14:29] Some sort of a compelling, and I call it like a greedy need that you're going to fill. And say, look, I want to get 15 minutes on your calendar, whatever it is.
[00:14:38] If you can give me a call back, I'll send you an email to follow up. And then you're giving the guy an out, he doesn't have to phone you back and then it gives you an opportunity to phone back. And he knows, he says, oh yeah, that was that guy and he's got that production capacity increase or whatever.
[00:14:52] That new car, you know that three-bedroom house whatever it is you sell, right? You're more inclined to pick up the call the second time, or I'm going to follow it up with an email and I could then, if I'm so inclined, I could reply to the email and say, we’re looking at three-bedroom houses, but not today.
[00:15:09] Can we do it in two weeks or what? I'm just building up a series of patterns and companies that I'm dealing with on an ongoing basis. Eventually, by doing that, phoning proper voicemails, compelling reason for calling, follow up with an email, phone back.
[00:15:22] Eventually you end up and then depending upon what goes on the phone call, and always trying to get in front of them because then you're gauging the competition. What else They're looking at, what the environment is they work in. Your competitive product could be sitting on the guy's desk right now.
[00:15:37] He could be wearing that guy's shirt, right? It's oh, okay, I know who you bought from last time. Those are some of the reasons why around voicemails and why I'm compelled to leave them and some of the guidelines around how I leave them.
[00:15:48] Joey Myers: Very good advice. Since the last couple years, we have this more Zoom environment as well. What's your advice? Before we get to that, one of the things that I've actually picked up on recently, get back to the [00:16:00] voicemails or even email is not doing too much in a voicemail or an email.
[00:16:05] Not trying to, hey, check out this website. Hey, trying to do too many things that are like two, three steps. It's just one step at a time. What's your advice on that?
What’s your advice on killing many birds with one stone or just one bird with an email or voicemail message?
[00:16:14] Glenn Poulos: Voicemails and the emails in that area, the book, it all goes together. Also, with the email as well. If it's like more than a couple sentences then you need to talk to them on the phone or do it when you're visiting them, because nobody, everybody hates a novel over email.
[00:16:27] Oh my God, I'm already like a paragraph in. I'm already bored, and you're not compelled to read this guy's three paragraph email.
[00:16:33] They think they've crafted the best things in sliced bread. Nowadays on LinkedIn you probably get three a day of those and they seem well written, but they're missing the mark in terms of being, intuitive towards the person they're writing to.
[00:16:44] So I always keep the email succinct and it's just a follow up to maintain the contact and the voicemail. Again, I'm always in that range of trying to be 20 to 30 seconds and really, I'm just really what I'm trying to do is drop that, what I call that little greedy tidbit, right?
[00:17:00] Which is, there's a new house that hit the market. There's a new technique of this, There's a new production method of that. There's a new instrument, a new box, a new widget. Whatever it is you sell and try to say, and then, you would try to drive him to be compelled to want to talk to you about it.
[00:17:14] Then say, look, I'll follow up with you later today, tomorrow, whatever. I'll also send you an email. Feel free to get back to me, do it quickly and I always skip all the other, BS pleasantries, right? I acted out in the book where I have these two scenarios where the guy calls up and it's Oh, hey, how's it going?
[00:17:29] It's Glenn from acne. Did I catch you at a bad time and like that I'm already set off at that point. Then it's Oh, do you have a minute and to chat, and I'm like, Dude, you're already 30 seconds in and I can't stand you.
[00:17:40] Joey Myers: Let's go.
[00:17:41] Glenn Poulos: It's Jack from acne, we've been working with some factories in your area, saving them, saving them 20% on their maybe electricity bills or gas bills on their tow motors.
[00:17:49] On their forklifts, on their trucks, tire wear, whatever. Whatever it is you sell. I wanted to see if I could get 15 minutes of your time to go over some of the things, this, that or the other. And don't start off with all those fake [00:18:00] pleasantries that just annoy people.
[00:18:02] I literally script it right out in the book how I do it. I always skip and the other thing is I don't say, how are you? I always say, because if I say to you, how are you? You always are going to say, pretty much fine. How are you? Because you were programmed that way by your parents.
[00:18:18] It's a programmed response, but if I say hey Joey, I hope you're doing well. I just wanted to drop a little tidbit. I just wanted to drop this little morsel of knowledge on your plate, like nowhere in there you are compelled to that reciprocity of asking me how I am.
[00:18:33] Because you don't care.
[00:18:35] Joey Myers: I don't know you.
[00:18:35] Glenn Poulos: You don't know me or whatever. But I still asked you how you work indirectly. Hope you're doing well. Boom. And I'm straight in, no delays. Just get straight to the point and it's unbelievable.
[00:18:45] I don't know if you get a lot of sales calls like on the phone, but because I try to pick up all the phone calls and stuff.
[00:18:50] Sorry
[00:18:51] Joey Myers: speaking of phone calls. That was right on, that was right on par right there.
[00:18:54] Glenn Poulos: That was a little timer thing. Sorry. But it caused me to completely lose my train of thought.
[00:18:57] Joey Myers: That's okay. I know we're getting up on our time here, so I know that's what that was probably reminding you of, which is good. I'm going to be respectful of your time. Maybe one more question.
[00:19:05] Glenn Poulos: Yeah.
[00:19:05] Joey Myers: Let's stay in the real estate side and what are the two big things in an in-person meeting?
[00:19:10] So for real estate agents meeting with a prospective client right at the house. What are the two big no-noes’ on that?
What are your two biggest sales mistakes for in-person meeting, like a real estate agent meeting a client or potential client?
[00:19:16] Glenn Poulos: The biggest no-no for me is the thing I call implied familiarity also breeds contempt. I tell a good story in the book where the guy goes in, and this could be an officer at the person's home, and I see a photo and it's him and he's fishing and he's holding a fish.
[00:19:30] I start off with, Oh my God, yeah, like bass fishing. I'm a pro, blah, blah, blah. Maybe we should go do some bass fishing and the guy looks over his shoulder at the photo and he goes, Oh my God. He goes, that's my ex-father-in-law and divorced from her. God, he was an asshole. And I forgot that photo was even there.
[00:19:46] Takes the photo, throws it in, the garbage comes. And you know what? I fucking hate fishing. I only did that to shut the wife up and we're not even married anymore. Don't pretend that you know the people. Don't be fake. It's that saying familiarity breeds contempt.
[00:19:58] You hang around someone too long, you see [00:20:00] all their bad points. If you imply like you know them well, also upsets people. It's you don't know me like you don't know that I like fishing or skiing or surfing or whatever.
[00:20:09] You got to go from a more genuine approach. We have a thing, the other one is the, watch your weekend problem, which is a little thing we do. It's the same until you don't forget it.
[00:20:17] Watch your weekend problem. The watch means always check out their watch, and if it's of any quality at all, notice their watch and say, oh my God, that's a nice watch. It just inspires a lot of talking a lot of times in people where they got it, who gave it to them.
[00:20:29] Your weekend, instead of asking about the fishing or whatever, say, look, what do you guys do on the weekend? When you're not working, whatever and that you often find out a lot of things, oh, I'm a ballroom dancer, I'm a singer, I water ski. I do this, I serve, I fish, whatever. And then, what's the biggest problem you're facing right now in your business, in your home, and you're this and you're that.
[00:20:50] Whatever challenge, whatever you're facing. Watch your weekend problem. That's the other thing we always try when you're trying to inspire conversation in people, and it gets the conversation flowing in a non-kind of salesman way.
[00:21:01] Builds rapport which I'm big on building and keeping and maintaining rapport and frame around rapport.
[00:21:07] Joey Myers: Great advice, Glenn. Great advice.
[00:21:09] So to be respectful of your time, where can people find you, get more information? I mentioned the book on Amazon, but just throw it out there.
Where can people find you?
[00:21:16] Glenn Poulos: I have a website, Glennpoulos.com, g l e n p u l o s.com, and all the links are there. All my socials, very active on LinkedIn and on all the other socials as well. If anyone wants to talk, collaborate in any way, have a question. Anytime they can, feel free to get ahold of me. I'll be sure to answer the phone call or phone them back or respond to them on LinkedIn.
[00:21:38] Joey Myers: Cool. Thanks Glenn.
[00:21:39] So if you like this podcast episode, then please like review and or share. We really appreciate feedback. If you're interested in hearing more about our multimedia marketing events, then please visit lead generation seo services.com again, with an s at the end there on the website and click on the marketing events link to watch a three-to-four-minute video overview of what those marketing events are. [00:22:00]
[00:22:00] So Glenn Poulos.
[00:22:01] Glenn Poulos: Poulos.
[00:22:01] Joey Myers: He wrote a book. Again, you can get this on Amazon or at his website he just mentioned. It is: “Never Sit in the Lobby: 57 Winning Sales Factors to Grow a Business and Build A Career Selling”.
[00:22:13] So Glenn, thank you for joining us today.
[00:22:15] Glenn Poulos: Thank you.
[00:22:16] Joey Myers: All right.
[00:22:16] Hold on. Hold on.
