Justin Stephens 0:01
The biggest problem most businesses have is they run out of prospects. Run out of opportunities to do a flurry of activity to generate some more, they get some more. And then, they do all the work without prospecting, which means they then run out of work and do a flurry of activities. And that’s the peaks and valleys in business. So, if you want to eliminate those peaks and valleys, you have to do one thing consistently. And to be candid, you gotta pick up the phone, you’ve got to talk to prospects, you gotta get out there and consistently build your business.
Richard Matthews 0:43
…
Richard Matthews 0:53
Hello and welcome back to The HERO Show. My name is Richard Matthews and today I’m live on the line with Justin Stephens. Justin are you there?
Justin Stephens 1:53
I am here. And I’m excited to be here.
Richard Matthews 1:57
Awesome. So glad to have you here, Justin. So what I’m gonna do real quick for those of you who don’t know who Justin is, is introduce him real quick. He is the president of Prospecting Done For You. He’s a father of 3 amazing kids, and a serial entrepreneur. Prospecting Done For You was birthed out of an epiphany that you had while observing how many companies continue to focus on things that don’t actually make them money and after suffering loss, painful loss of business a few years back, you needed to make a pivot. And this is where you sort of came up with Prospecting Done For You. So to start off this whole conversation, why don’t you tell me what it is that you are known for in space. What it is that you do. And you know, like, the kind of customers that hire you, like actual work that you do in the space.
Justin Stephens 2:40
Sure. So I’m what I’m known for is I come in and I help people generate leads consistently. And the biggest problem most businesses have is they run out of prospects, run out of opportunities, do a flurry of activity to generate some more. They get some more, and then they do all the work without prospecting, which means they then run out of work and do a flurry of activities. And that’s the peaks and valleys in business. So if you want to eliminate those peaks and valleys, you have to do one thing consistently. And to be candid, it’s you got to pick up the phone, you’ve got to talk to prospects, you’ve got to get out there and consistently build your business. And so that’s what we do for companies as we come in and we do the crappy work that no one wants to do of prospecting, lead gen. And then we send those leads, he will either work with companies to close them altogether, or we’ll send them to their sales team for they have a sales team to close them. And so we work primarily with companies that are doing, typically they’re doing over a million dollars in revenue. That price point of their product or service is around 25k-30k just to get started, and they have a high lifetime value of the client, 250k plus. And so we come in, and typically they’ve got salespeople that are highly paid, they’ve got like 100k base plus salary. And so it makes all kinds of sense to pay a team like ours to just focus on keeping those salespeople on sales calls, and we partner together to change the world.
Richard Matthews 4:34
So what are some of the industries that you serve?
Justin Stephens 4:38
Two primary focuses, and so first is manufacturing. And whenever I say that people say, that’s not sexy at all. And I say, I know. That’s why I’m in it. Because it’s not sexy. It is old school, the sales and marketing processes in manufacturing are about 20 years behind everybody else. All the other industries. And so when you come in, you can make a huge impact by bringing these companies up to speed, getting them these new results using new technology, things like SEO. I was on a call with a prospect looking at their website, I assumed they were like a brand new company because it looked like my 7-year old did their website. And I mean, not to insult my 7-year old, but it’s just, you know. So I’m on this call with them. I’m talking to them; they’re a 100-million dollar company.
Richard Matthews 5:43
Wow.
Justin Stephens 5:44
They’ve got a piece of garbage on their website. And so there are all these things that companies just don’t know about in that world. So another fact is another reason I picked this market. The manufacturing world, just in capital expenditures, just in improvements to processing lines, does $1-trillion in the US every single year. Now as 7-billion with a B is money that was invested without enough pre-work put in. So the result didn’t work. One of my clients sells robots, conveyors, palletizing systems. And so literally, you will be in a factory where they just bought, let’s say, they spent $2-million to put in a robot. And so they’re going through the factory, and I’m on the line, there’s a robot doing nothing. And someone else on the line, both people doing what the robot was bought to do. But they didn’t do the right programming the right work on the back end. So there’s a ton of revenue in this industry that’s not being captured. It’s not being utilized right because people can, sadly, afford a $2-million coat hanger. And I just want to help and have a little piece of that pie. So that’s one of the reasons why I picked manufacturing. And the other niche I focus on is SaaS companies. I just love software. I think it’s awesome. And it’s a great way to build a business that you can sell. And that’s what I’m all about is building businesses, turning them around and selling them.
Richard Matthews 7:44
Awesome. That sounds like a lot of fun. Especially like I did not like I realized manufacturing was big, but I didn’t realize it was you know, waste $7-billion big, and not miss it.
Justin Stephens 7:58
Isn’t that great? So next time you’re at a grocery store, variety box, okay. Let’s see, Tree Top sells applesauce packets, right?
Richard Matthews 8:12
Yep, my baby loves them.
Justin Stephens 8:15
Exactly right. And a variety pack is when they take 4 regular applesauce packets and 4 cinnamon applesauce packets and package them together. It sounds super easy, right? The equipment purchase. The changes in the supply chain that have to happen in order to put 4 and 4 together. You’re talking multiple millions of dollars.
Richard Matthews 8:47
That’s insane.
Justin Stephens 8:49
It’s insane. It is so crazy. And that’s what a lot of us consumers have no idea. Before I got into this world. I had no idea. And so we’re, we’re working on a line to literally separate couple packages. We had one prospect that they’re opening content packages. So like you get a package of cinnamon and a package of regular, you open it, put all of the contents onto a new line that then goes and separates them and puts them into two other packages accepted mixed, like literally a project we’re working on. This is the crazy world of manufacturing. And I feel like –
Richard Matthews 9:40
So when you come when you say working on prospecting for these companies, you’re working on helping them like secure the robots or you’re working on helping them secure like what is it that you’re actually working to help them help secure?
Justin Stephens 9:51
Love the question, so we work with the company who does robots. They do conveyors. They do pallet-sizing machines. Shrinkwrapping.
Richard Matthews 10:02
Okay, okay, that makes sense.
Justin Stephens 10:04
And so we go out and we try and identify the manufacturing plant that one of their clients came and said, hey, instead of 2 regulars, I want 1 regular and 1 cinnamon. Can you do that? And they say, sure, it’s gonna cost you this much. And the other companies, that’s great, get on it. And then they come to hire someone like us. And we do all the engineering, all the programming, all the behind the scenes stuff that make it so you can package 200 a minute of these variety packets.
Richard Matthews 10:41
That is insanely cool.
Justin Stephens 10:44
I feel like I live in How It’s Made. It’s crazy.
Richard Matthews 10:48
So my next question for you is your origin story. We talk on the show all the time about how every hero has an origin story. It’s where you started to realize that you were different. That maybe you had superpowers and maybe you could use them to help other people. All right, so how did you get started into this whole world of entrepreneurship? And how did that bring you to this place where you’re working with, you know, Prospecting Done For You.
Justin Stephens 11:11
Love the question. So when I first got started as 13, I was in the back of a cab, and I’m one of four children. So it was, you know, those bucket seat trucks. So me, my parents, and all 4 kids in a bucket seat truck, like, it’s like sardines in here, right and I was 13 –
Richard Matthews 11:43
Back before seatbelts were required.
Justin Stephens 11:46
Hundred percent. So, we’re driving to school, we lived an hour outside of Boise. My dad had just bought this Sandler Training Franchise and we’re listening to these sales training tip CDs. And I had no idea what he did. And he said, I asked him, I said dad, what do you do now? Because before he also owned a remodeling company, so I was born and bred entrepreneur, like, it’s all I know. And he said, Well, instead of me explain it, why don’t I show you? So summer between 8th and 9th grade. First time I ever went through sales training, and it radically changed my life. And so after college, I went and started working in the family business, I ended up spending 10 years, became an owner. We were having a lot of fun doing a lot of crazy stuff. But it was a franchise, which means they get to create the rules. It is my choice whether I play by those rules, and I wanted to use the internet. I wanted to use internet marketing and publicity to go all over the world instead of the geography that they restricted us to. So I said Mom and Dad, I love you, and I’m leaving you. And that’s when I spread my wings. I, the first thing I did, I had this idea. I love live events. If you don’t regularly go to 3 or 4 live events a year, you should, I’m telling you, they are life-changing. So I had this idea I want to change the world by connecting people with the right live event to change their life. And I went all in. We sold our house. We moved from Boise, Idaho to Orlando, Florida. We closed retirement accounts. We sold our car. We invested everything into this idea. And about six, seven months later, I looked at my wife and I said, honey, I love you. But I can only pay for rent one more month. We got to figure something out. Right. And so, that’s when I pivoted. And I was like, Yeah, I could force it. But is that what I should do? Is that what I could do for my family? And so I pivoted, and that’s one of the I learned a lot of lessons. One I would highly recommend is never to start selling low ticket. So we were doing a free event to $100 upsell to a live event to a $25,000 coaching program. That was our value letter.
Richard Matthews 14:32
An ascension model.
Justin Stephens 14:34
The ascension model, here’s the problem with the ascension model. If you’re starting at free and then moving up, it takes a lot of free people to get to the payday. Don’t start with free. Just go to the high ticket offering whatever that may be. So and that was what I learned there is you got to start selling high tickets. So my first pivot was I made so many boneheaded mistakes. I had a ton of fun and I don’t regret a single second of it. But I did make a lot of boneheaded mistakes. And so I was like, I can help other entrepreneurs avoid these mistakes. So that’s what I pivoted to us. I can help them with sales, I can help them with marketing like I’ve been doing it my whole life. So I go out, I start selling other brand new entrepreneurs. The problem was my ideal client was off. So lesson number two failed business attempt number two, which I only did that for about a month, month and a half before I was like, yeah, that was another boneheaded idea is you have to sell to someone who has money. Don’t sell to broke people. it’s a path to nowhere. I promise you. So I started selling to broke people and I love new entrepreneurs, I will help them all day long. If you are getting started and you’re like, I just, I just think I need a half an hour, I need an hour of your time, just reach out, I will give it to you. I will gladly give it to you. But I’m not gonna try and sell you anything because you got no money. So I love you but –
Richard Matthews 16:25
I have something I wrote down. I was looking through this old notebook from years ago. Let’s see if I can find it real quick because I was just looking at this the other day and it was like notes from when I first got started in the business. And if I have this sitting here, it’s like one of the lessons that you had learned and I realized that it has been a huge, like, what would you call it? Like benefit to my life was just understanding that one lesson that you have to sell to people who have money first. And see if I actually have it in here says essentially, essentially, that find someone you have to find, find someone who has money and has a problem they want to solve and solve it for them in a unique creative way. Right? And that is essentially how you start and run a business is you have to find someone who’s got money first. And that that has a problem. And if you, you know, hit those couple of things, that’s like the biggest help, right, it’s being able to find someone who’s got money and solve their problems.
Justin Stephens 17:36
I totally get it. And so that’s why we started talking about who I work with. The entire reason I work in the manufacturing industry is because they have money and lots of it. And they’ve got a really big problem. Getting leads. Getting in front of the right people. And so that’s what I’m able to come in and help them do. Getting in front of the right people, because so that’s what happened after I did this whole coaching thing for new entrepreneurs. I was talking to a past client from my training days and helping them and we’ve been good friends throughout this entire journey. And I was just coaching them helping them and they said, you know what, Justin, they’re in this manufacturing world and they said, I don’t know what you would do, but we would pay you $5,000 a month to do it. And I said, okay, right. I needed the money. I needed help. They knew me. Not a system, not a process. So the other piece of advice if you’re getting started, stop trying to go sell cold people. Go to the people that already know like and trust you; have a problem that you can solve and solve it for them. They will pay you because they know they can trust you. It’s crazy how this works. So that’s how I got started with Prospecting Done For You. I dove into their business, and I did everything I can. Everything. In order to make it profitable and justify my existence. As a business owner, your entire job is to justify why your client should pay you again next month, every single month, that’s what you’re doing. I’m telling you if you just focus on that your business will grow, stop going after new clients. Focus on the ones you got. So I dove in, I was spending 20-30-40 hours a week on this one client. It was like a job. And here’s what I realized. Most entrepreneurs get started and they’re told: you have got to stop trading your time for money. And so we make this vow. And we say: I will never trade time for money again. And instead, we trade time for no money. And we’re like, yeah, I’m not trading my money. I’m not time for money. I’m not being taken advantage by the man. And I’m broke and My family’s not eating, but that’s okay. Right. So the first thing you’ve got to do, especially if you’re getting started, go out there and create a job for yourself. Right? Do it as 1099 I told them, listen, I could spend this much time because if you’re not paying me I still have this much time. I’m just don’t have your money. Right? So be candid, be transparent like that. When you’re getting started so that after about a month and a half, they started referring me to all the people they were working with. They were like you got to talk to Justin. He’s doing amazing. We set up systems. Set up processes. And that’s where I figured out the reason I have always been successful in sales. and it’s not because I’m particularly good, right? It’s not, it’s because I show up way longer than anyone else is willing to. And it’s because I had a system that would remind me to show up. And so that’s what we do for our clients. We build an 18-step follow-up sequence that takes like four months to get through. We do stuff like this is crazy. We put letters in the mail, right? We send people boxes, we get on the phone, we do social media, we do emails, we get them from every angle because what we want to have happened is when they think, man, we need a new conveyor. We want them to think Tight Tech, that’s one of my clients. So if you need a conveyor, I can hook you guys up, let me know.
Richard Matthews 22:03
So so there were a lot of really cool things in that story that I want to just highlight real quick. So the first one is the ascension model versus the descension model. And that’s something that in the space that I’m in, you know, we help a lot of entrepreneurs build their coaching and training programs, and the ascension model-descension model is a very, very common argument that happens, right? That you’re like, hey, I want to have like, you know, free up in and then we should buy a book and then after they buy the book, they should buy the, you know, the small program, and they should buy the big program, and they should buy the big mastermind and those and those models do work. Right. So I don’t want to put out there that they don’t work. The problem is, is that they cost a lot of time and money to get the, to get the systems to a point where they’re actually profitable, right? Because you have to, you have to test every single aspect of that and you have to be able to pour money into getting the first step of that funnel to work and pour money into the second step of that funnel to get into work and pour money into the third step of that funnel to get it to work. And it can take months, sometimes even years to get to the point where the whole funnel is really, really working. But the primary benefit and the reason why everyone wants them is that free front end offer allows you to reach a really, really wide audience, right? That’s the reason people are interested in it. The problem is, if you’re getting started, and you don’t have deep pockets that you’re willing to pour all over your business, it’s an expensive model to a fault. Now I have a couple of clients personally, who are in that place where Hey, they’re doing $10-$50 million a year now and they want to add an ascension model to their business and they’re willing to fork over the cash to do the research, right. They’re willing to lose money for months on end on the ads to get the front ends to work. Right and we just I just got a phone call yesterday where they’re like, they were super excited because we had our first 997 sales that took us four months to get there with the front end ascension model development right. And they were like Like I’m so excited over this, this low ticket offer, but the high ticket brand that they’ve been running for the last seven or eight years, they have the volume to pay for that and to pay for that development and allow them to add scale. Right. And the other thing that it does for them is they’ve sort of tapped out their high-end market. So they’re in the market now of developing and creating clients who are their ideal fit, right, because of the space they’re in. They’re like, I need to, we need to be able to take someone from here and bring them here. So we have more people in this space to close on our sales. Right? So it’s a really useful model, but it’s not a front end model. It’s a back end model. Yeah, that’s the mistake I think a lot of people make. So just to continue that discussion, the descension model for people who are our guests who are listening to this, the descension model says basically start with your high ticket offer first and then sell your lower ticket stuff afterward. And the primary benefit there is that if you have enough marketing money to get your offer in front of 100 people if you have 100 people see your high ticket offer; You have a much better chance of closing one or two or three of them and putting money in your pocket than if you take that same hundred dollars and put it in front of your free offer. And then they have to see your this offer in the next offer, you’re only gonna have three or four people ever see your high ticket offer that actually puts money in your pocket. So, I regularly recommend if you’re in the first couple of years of your business and you haven’t hit that, you know, six, you know, six, mid-six figures in revenue regularly avoid the ascension model like the plague.
Justin Stephens 25:27
Like the plague. Here’s, here’s the crazy thing. It is so much easier to sell $10,000 than $1,000. It’s easier to sell $100,000 than $10,000 because the perceived value of what you’re getting is that much higher. And the other thing so there are three basic models, there’s done for you, done with you and do it yourself. Right if you look at the ascension model for you, do it yourself, done with you is coaching, done for you is done for your product. When you are selling done for you, you are selling time.
Richard Matthews 26:11
Time at a discount.
Justin Stephens 26:13
Time at a discount. Everybody wants to buy time. It’s one of the hardest things to sell is training and coaching. You know why? Because you got to get them to give up their money and their time. Right?
Richard Matthews 26:26
Absolutely.
Justin Stephens 26:27
If you’re working with people who are high net worth and have money, they don’t care about money. Some of the circles I run in, like, I am so uncomfortable. To be totally candid like they throw around. I’m like, you did what. Oh my god, that’s so crazy.
Richard Matthews 26:51
I went to a yacht show recently and I was talking with the yacht salesman. And I was like because I just want to find out like what is it like selling to someone who has like money to burn. And they were like, it’s literally it’s like the most insane thing ever, someone will come to a yacht show like this. And they will pick a yacht. The way that you pick and pay for a yacht, the way that you pick and pay for socks at Walmart. Right? They’re like, why buy the red pack or the black pack? And they’re like, I’m gonna buy that one. And then they just hand over all the money. And they’re like, oh, did you want an extra 10% for your commission? Because you were so useful. Here you go. Right. Like, like, that’s the way that people with money act.
Justin Stephens 27:28
It’s so true. But don’t ask them for their time. Right. They guard their time, way tighter than they guard their wallet. So if you’re getting started, always, like you said, do the descension model. Start at the very top and do it done for … service like if you’re getting started in the business. The reason I’ve had the success I’ve had is because I did not try and get people to come to a training program. I did not try to get them to download my free lead magnet so that I could then nurture them into a training program into Done For You. Now I picked up the phone. I started reaching out and I told people to listen, your people suck. Let me do it. I didn’t say that but right that’s the –
Richard Matthews 28:20
The central message.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
