$100M Sales Closing Techniques with David Meltzer

David Meltzer, a renowned entrepreneur and speaker, turned a multimillion-dollar setback into a comeback, mastering ethical sales and business strategy. Join us to hear his powerful insights on creating value and building genuine connections.

In this episode of The Takeover, Tim is joined by David Meltzer, who shares his compelling story of building a $100 million business, experiencing bankruptcy, and achieving a successful comeback.

The conversation delves into the importance of sales in business success, we’ll talk more about:

1. David Meltzer's Journey
2. Key Components of Sales Communication
3. Ethical Sales and Communication
4. Managing Client Relationships and Lifetime Value
5. Sales Role-Play Exercise

For free sales resources, training, and his book, you can email him at david@dmeltzer.com

Follow David Meltzer on his Instagram: @davidmeltzer

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About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy: Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• PEMA.io is a Inc 5000 Outbound Marketing Agency specializing in Enterprise Sales & Appointment Setting. With over 7-years and 1,000+ clients served in the industry, PEMA is the leading agency for cold outreach appointments & systems. Learn more about PEMA.io here: www.pema.io/discover

Chapters

• 0:00 Trailer : Sales as a Moral Obligation
• 0:44 Introducing David Meltzer: Building and Rebuilding Success
• 3:27 Key Components of Sales
• 11:07 Post-Sale is Key: Managing and Developing Relationships
• 13:55 Sales Role Play: Demonstrating a Sales Conversation
• 16:44 Focus on Getting Callbacks and Free Resources

Transcript

00:00
80% of your clients though will bankrupt you. It's the 20% that actually allow you to manage and develop the 80%. I very much believe if you feel this person will be better off with your help, it becomes a moral obligation that I become a good enough communicator that I can show the value of what I sell is greater than what I'm charging. I see sales as the capability of articulating value to exceed what I'm asking. Know your product service solution or brand so well

00:29
is an arsenal to infuse credibility, emotional attachment, reasons and impacts. Welcome to The Takeover, where we show you how to dominate every area of life and business. Let's get winning.

00:44
Welcome back to The Takeover. I want to bring to you today a very special guest who has not only built his company to a hundred million dollars, but he lost it all, went bankrupt, and then built it back again. This man grew up poor. He was a multi-mayor in his early thirties. He got to a hundred million dollars, retired, lost it all, came back, became the CEO of the agency that was the inspiration for the movie Jerry McGuire.

01:09
now runs his own marketing agency and is back to that $100 million status. Now, not only is he dominating in business, but this man is dominating in his personal life. He's dominating in every area. That's why I'm excited to bring him today. Welcome to the show, David Meltzer. It's fantastic to be here. Any opportunity I have to hopefully empower other people on how to make a lot of money, help a lot of people with that money and have a lot of fun. I'm always available.

01:36
I love it. Well, and just in case whoever's listening, you basically, you grew up poor. You saw poor brought me pain. So money must bring me happiness. You built multimillions early thirties, got to a hundred million in your thirties, retired, had it all, but you lost it all bankrupt and you built it again. So, I mean, I think there's so much we could unpack in a lot of different levels. What I saw as a really big common theme was your willingness and ability, wherever you were in life was to go hit the phones, sell.

02:06
talk to people, and I'd love to kind of hear a little bit about how you felt like sales played a role in your life to create what you really have been able to build over the years. I think it still plays the biggest role in my life because I see sales as the capability of articulating value to exceed what I'm asking for. And in an abundant philosophy, which for me,

02:30
takes a lot of wisdom, practice and experience and knowledge, but also faith, desire to get me to where I want to be. And so for me, sales is the cornerstone because value is misconstrued, especially in sales. I'm here to be of value and service in my life. I'm here to be productive, accessible and gracious with my journey. And there's only two ways that we can provide value. One is to give people more of what they like. Or two.

02:59
It's the takeaway what people don't like. And sales is the capability, the skillset that allows us to articulate that value to exceed what we're asking for. But in order to effectuate that process, we need to know several components. One, how do we stimulate interest? Two, how do we transition interest? Three, how do we articulate that value to exceed what we're asking for? And four,

03:27
Most importantly, especially today with social media and the total addressable community reaching over 7.6 billion people, we need to learn how do we manage and develop that value so that we can create a neighborhood, a community of people that want to help each other and know how to help each other. In other words, we want a community of people that will buy from each other and sell for each other for a lifetime. Not just a product service solution or brand, but

03:56
kindness and love and generosity, good ideas, all of those things are falling within the context of sales. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, everybody is selling, you know, when you're communicating, you're selling, it's either you're good at it or you're not good at it on one side. And then if you are good at it, you're either using it to help everybody have a win-win or self. I know for me, I grew up super shy and I was always like fascinated. I would see people that could walk in a room.

04:24
And they could just create the energy. They could talk to anybody. And so I became kind of a student of how do I do that? And I would throw myself into a lot of uncomfortable situations. And, you know, what I found, it was two things. It was number one, just figuring out a good process. And number two is getting your, like your nervous system to not freak out when you're having different types of conversations. So I very much love the process, the practicals, the tacticals, the qualitative.

04:52
And so a lot of people listening kind of know the way that we communicate sells and building value. And I very much believe that it is an ethical duty. If you feel like that this person will be better off with your help, with you helping them, then they will be without you. Then it becomes a moral obligation that I become a good enough communicator that I can show people that the value of what I sell is greater than what I'm charging. So I know that's a big theme for you, David, is to not.

05:21
sell to get, but sell to give. And can you kind of walk through when you're looking at cells from more of an ethical standpoint, how do you see that both on making sure you're doing right by somebody as well as making sure you get good at it so you're not letting people not buy your service? Yeah. So there's five components for that that can help people.

05:41
with articulating a quantitative value to exceed what we're asking for as a moral obligation to give $100 for exchange of $20. Who wouldn't do that? And so these five things need to be credible. One is credibility itself. Most people overlook the most important part of sales, which is integrity. And let me tell you why. Because the minute someone perceives that you're overselling, back end selling, lying, manipulating or cheating.

06:09
they're going to start looking for other areas that you're not telling the truth. And your statistical success in articulating that $100 in exchange for $20, in articulating the quantitative value to exceed what you're asking for diminishes exponentially if you lie, oversell, manipulate, cheat or miscommunicate. See, a lot of people do it unintentionally. Some people do it intentionally.

06:37
But I say the most important thing in this process is to go through everything that you say, practice saying everything that you say so that you can go through it with a fine tooth comb of integrity where you may mistakenly say something or you may misconstrue something. You know, I see people that can't help themselves and say, you know, our revenue is up 300% this year. Well, what if somebody asked you, well, what was your revenue last year? Uh, $3.

07:06
Well, it seems like you're a liar. Yeah. It seems like you're overselling me. So number one thing that we want to look at is credibility. And let me, let me, let me ask a question on that. So credibility is so let's say there's, you know, two people selling on a phone. One person's like, you have that temptation, the sales person, the entrepreneur. Oh, can it do that X for me? And the sales person, the entrepreneur knows like, ah, I think that's a little bit of a stretch, but I could say yes and appease the prospect.

07:33
But you're saying if you do that, you're actually diminishing trust. Whereas if I can just be honest and I can say, well, actually it wouldn't do that. Here's the right expectations. Does that then build credibility? If one takes away, does the other build? Absolutely. When you'd say, just to be clear, it may or may not do that, but what is your objective and then you can say, would it help you if it did this and that this is a capability in which you have.

08:02
which then can supplement synergistically the value that they may be looking for. And what it may do may be better than what you were about to lie or shade the truth with. And so you get a duplicative credibility of one that you're not a liar in two. You have a better thing that they just didn't know your product had the capability of doing. In other words, make yourself equal, then make yourself better. Yeah.

08:28
And I think too, it's like what salesperson says actually it probably wouldn't do that and is honest about that. So you're actually like, oh, this, this person, if what they tell me in the future is probably going to be pretty credible as you would say. Absolutely. Which leads to the second component, which is emotional connection. People buy on emotion for logical reasons. So

08:48
If you're credible and then you can get the emotional connection of finding out what they like and don't like and giving them more of what they like, taking away what they don't like, you're about 90 some percent of the way there to success. Now, all you have to do is articulate the reasons why it's going to give them more of what they like or take away what they don't like, show them, which is new to the sales process more than ever, which is the impact it's going to have.

09:14
You know, that's why sustainability and all the different politically correct ways to sell value of the, you know, good, the marketing goodness, the kindness, all the generosity and philanthropy of charitable marketing and compassionate capitalism. Now the last component of selling that I find interesting is that most people are taught to feature and benefit dump. I say know your product service solution or brand so well that your capability is an arsenal.

09:44
to infuse four things, to infuse credibility, emotional attachment, reasons and impacts.

09:53
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10:10
And so if you take these five components in your life, not just in selling product services solutions or brands, but selling ideas and communities and philanthropies and whatever else you're communicating value with credibility, emotional attachment, reasons, and impacts infused with capabilities that you actually have will be the secret sauce in sharing a vision and value in your life. And then the last component is know that whenever we come to a decision, implied written or.

10:40
verbal, even with consideration, which means payment, that time, emotion, and value will change. And as long as you keep that in mind and keep it at the forefront of the conversation and utilize things like go, no-go plans or a three-no rule or other tricks or components or frameworks that you can use, when you know that all the work is after the agreement or decision, then you're in the bonus round in your business, your life will thrive.

11:07
It's the concept of when you, when you quote unquote, close the deal, it's not like, okay, now we've won. It's like, okay, now we've, we've been paid in advance for something we need to deliver and that's where you step into. You know, we talk a lot about lifetime value. You know, it's one thing to, you know, mow grass and have to mow it every week and keep getting new clients every week. Or if you build those firm relationships where you're delivering, you know, as we have one client spent.

11:33
about a million with us and we were like, okay, look, this client, if you can get, cause we delivered for them, you know, month over month, year over year, and just talking about that LTV. How do you feel like having that delivery component after the sale is played into your revenues, your success and your growth? 80% is imagining developing that vision. 80% of your business will create a community of people that are buying from you and selling for you for life. 80% of the business is done there. Remember.

12:01
80% of your clients though will bankrupt you. It's the 20%, like the one that you're talking about, that actually allow you to manage and develop the 80% that would bankrupt you because you're just breaking even or losing money off of them because of the demands they're putting on what you do. I thought it was just my business. You've dealt with the same thing, David? Oh yeah, well even, I was gonna say that I coached a chairman of one of the biggest oil gas companies in the world, and he had a client that did $20 million with him.

12:31
And the new client that did $2 million with him. And he said, David, I spend more time on the $2 million client. That someday will be a 20 million, about 10 times the amount of time, energy, and money on that $2 million client that I do the 20 million. And I said, Hey, here's what you need to do. Stop servicing the $2 million client. Let them go to a competitor and then take all the people in the resources and put it on the $20 million client.

12:58
The $20 million client will become a $40 million client way faster and bring you more clients that are like them. And meanwhile, you just cursed your competitor because they're going to send 10 times the resources thinking they stole a $2 million client from you. And you just made a net $18 million. And you're throwing, you're throwing a grenade in the enemy's camp. And they think they, they think they won.

13:25
I know you do the two minute drill. If anybody doesn't know what the two minute drill is, look up David Meltzer, two minute drill. Would you do a reverse two minute drill in a sales role play environment? You selling, you selling me. Absolutely. What are we going to sell? So I'd love just for context, everybody kind of, when I teach on sales, they do it around what we do. So we're like, we do high scale appointment setting for bigger companies to basically feed their sales teams. We're generally talking to like CMOs of maybe 50 million, $200 million company. Perfect.

13:55
Hey Tim, what are you doing today for your sales calls? Oh yeah. I mean, we do, we have a Facebook funnels. All of our team is set up with like LinkedIn sales navigators. So they do their own prospecting and then, you know, obviously be a cold calling and stuff what's working best. Uh, yeah. I mean, I would say what's kind of working best would be the Facebook ads when they're working good, they're, they're up, but you know, that, that can be very seasonal in our client acquisition costs.

14:20
The cold calling does well when we have the right SDRs on, but they're kind of hard to keep on the team. You know, those can come and go. So it's, those are probably the two best channels for us consistently. What's your budget for that today for those two things? I mean, we're, we're doing about 120,000 a month on Facebook ads. And then the SDRs is mostly just the salary do like a 30,000 base plus commission on that. We have about 20 of those. So what revenue are you generating from that each month? I mean, we're doing about 3 million a month right now. Perfect. And what's your biggest challenge right now?

14:51
I would just say consistency. You know, we have great product, you know, some, some months can be up. We can be hitting high. And then some months we, you know, the teams aren't performing our Facebook ads is down and we just, we just don't have enough meetings for our closers. Would it help you if I was able to double the amount of revenue that you had, but also create a more consistent revenue by providing you better assistance with the ad buys as well as the maintenance of the salespeople.

15:20
What we've been doing for the last 20 years is working with people like you. And I have several different people that you can talk to of how we've been able to double the amount of revenue, but create a consistent forecast of what the ad spend per revenue will be, not just on the digital ad side, but also on the employee side of things. Would it help you if I was able to do that? No. Yeah. I don't know. What does that look like? What it would take is we only work month to month and guarantee.

15:48
quantitative value number one, what it would look like is a 30 day scoping so that we could shadow you, see what you're doing today, and then put forth a document that would scope out the project to show you where we would keep things the same and what we would do different in order to effectuate more revenue with more consistent results. Does that sound fair? Yeah, sounds great. Can you see any reason you want to move forward? No, just got to make sure it's in the budget. There you go.

16:14
and we'll work with you and guarantee it's a little mitigate all risk. All right. That's a general template of how I would sell anything. It's funny because I have two minute drill, which is a pitch, but the pitch for me is just to stimulate interest, to have that conversation. I think too many people try to sell during a pitch where, think about this. If I could get twice as many people to call me back, I would double my sales without getting any better. But the irony is by having twice as many calls back, I'll get better. So statistically I'll get.

16:44
better at even closing as well. So I focus my primary training on getting people to call back and then what to do with them to transition that interest to articulate that value. And I'm happy to send everyone those exercises and guides as well as for your community. I will sign a book, send it to them, pay for shipping in the book. So anyone in your community that wants the sales guides, free training or my book, just email me david at dmelter.com and I'll be happy to get into more depth.

17:14
on how to be more statistically successful in all the sales, personally and professionally. Well, I love that I was able to put you on the spot. I've gone through a lot of your, your sell stuff, very aligned. What amazing value. Anybody listening to this, make sure to email David, get connected there. David, it's just been such an awesome pleasure to have you on the show and we'll talk soon. Yes. Remember everyone, be kind to your future self and do good deeds. I appreciate the opportunity. David at dmelter.com. Thanks so much, Tim. Thanks David.

17:40
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