Ask the Expert Sales Team Ready with Jim Padilla

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Hello, hello Amplifyou family Michelle Abraham, your host here today. And I have gotten an awesome ask the expert interview for you today. I've got my good friend Jim familiar with me today from gain the edge Hey, Jim, how are ya?

Hey, Michelle. So bad beer?

Well, we're I'm super excited to have you here because not only are you going to talk to us about all sorts of great things around sales and systems and processes. But I've also had first hand experience in your program, working with your team. So I'm excited to share what your brilliance with our amplify you audience today. So guys, let me show you a little bit more about Jim. So Jim is the founder and CEO of game the edge which is a done for you provider. And industry leading sales system is kind of like the unicorn sales professionals. He coldly and CO heads it with his wife and entrepreneurial partner in crime, Cindy Padilla, through their unique blend of laser targeted selling systems, inspirational team building expertise and 60 plus years of combined sales experience, Jim and his wife have generated over a quarter of a billion in sales for a long, a long line of high level visionary entrepreneurs. They just want to say guys, the who's who's in the industry of the online businesses have all worked with Jim and Cindy. And that's, you know, I love how you kind of built this business. And specifically like around like vents, invert and now like the vents are like everywhere virtual and in person. And it's really cool. So Jim, I'm super excited. You're here with us today. And I want to just dive in with like, why are sales and having sales systems so important to us as entrepreneurs? And why why you did? Why do you guys see the done for you services? What made you guys kind of like think that that was what our industry needs for our poor thought leaders out there?

Yeah, well, you know, again, thanks for bringing me in, to be able to share with your with your audience. We've been very blessed to work with a lot of amazing leaders and changemakers and people that are really changing the world. And the thing that we've we recognize is, if you don't have it, this is like simple boil this down to a simple equation as possible. If you are the person that is required to do all of your sales, or you can imagine somebody else being able to do the sales the way you do them, then you're the problem, right? Because the offer shouldn't be centered around you. The offer should be be able to delivered without you. Right, our goal is never to make you great at sales. Our goal is to remove you from the sales process. And that's easily done. When we can dial in the offer dial in the dial in your prospect journey. Your avatar sales systems, we build sales systems, or pipelines is everything that makes it predictable and simple and easy to lead people to the next step and lead a salesperson, right our goal is to have make sure that you can have a system in place that allows an average salesperson to sell your product consistently and predictably. And if not, if you don't have a system for that, then you're the system, which means you are not replicatable you are not scalable, and you're stuck where you are

here. I thought I was doing so good a sale this old. And so guys, I shouldn't be the one doing the sales. And that's exactly where I was when I came across Jim and Cindy's program. And it's interesting, because I was doing a lot of sales and sales are being good. But what I learned was that oh my gosh, like I'm selling me and not. And so I thought there's no way someone else could come in and take this over the way I'm doing it right now. And it was true. But, you know, I'm here to say that we've been successful. And now we have Jason who's absolutely amazing. And during our sales for our team, and it's only been a few months and but he's you know, someone else can sell our product and services and in podcasting services and amplify you now and I never thought that would happen.

Right? And that's where a lot of us get right. We just get to a place where we've been doing. You've created this. This is your baby who invented it. It's in your heart. It's in your head. It's in your DNA. And so it's really hard to imagine to somebody could step into that But that's, that's what the, if you get a good quality system in place, it becomes the glue between what your excellence is, and somebody else being able to package it. Well.

Yeah. And for our listeners, hey, can you kind of unpack it? What does that look like? What is like a system? What wherever the pieces of the system that are needed for it to be working like a well oiled machine?

Yeah, well, you know, you need to make sure that you have a quality offer. And here's, here's the real rub. Guys, this is the simplest way to determine if your offer is rockin, then your bank account will reflect it. Right? You need a clear, compelling offer that is simply packaged. So here is the thing, you all no matter who you are listening, you have a fantastic solution. Problem is probably not packaged really well. Which means you can talk to it because you know everything about it. So you can get somebody really excited about it. But to try to have somebody else talk about it, it would lose a lot of its flavor. And so we take it and make it really strong and packaged well, so that we can, the goal is that we could help produce you with your own offer. Right. And so you need to have a great offer, you need to have a very clear and compelling avatar, with a bleeding neck problem of bleeding that crop

I love you're saying I always think of it in my head, because firstly, I have a bleeding neck problem that they do in my head all the time now.

And that's your bullseye. That doesn't mean it's the only person you sell to. It's just the more of the few of somebody think about the difference between somebody with a sore neck, right? I wake up with a sore neck a lot of times, but I don't go to the hospital because I have a sore neck. But if I woke up and my neck was gushing blood, I'm pretty much going to the hospital or I'm going to die. Right. And you want to have that same, that same thought perspective with your offer. No matter what you offer, there is a bleeding neck version of somebody with that problem. That person is the point you want to be leading towards you. And then you need a really strong prospect journey, which was just one that's something that leads people one step at a time towards the solution. Right? And many times we don't we just have stuff, we have messages, we have email, we have things, but are you intuitively leading them so that every time they take a step towards you, they're like, Yeah, this feels right. I'm in the right place, right? It's affirming their process and their decision in the leading into that intersection of problem and solution. Right. And then when you know, and then understanding that 90% of the people who are ever going to buy from you are not going to buy from you today, they're gonna buy from you in the future, right? Well, too many times all we do is focus on how many people can I how many new people can we introduce into my world? And how many offers can I make to them? And then how do I get more people? Well, what about the people who've been in your world, and if you have an active, intelligent, intuitive process that allows you to follow up with these people, and bring them back to the table with you to have a conversation so that you stay relevant and valuable over time with them. So that when they're ready to buy, you're the person that they buy from. Most people don't do that, because they don't know what to say or what to do. And they don't have a system for ensuring that they say or do it. When you do. And all of a sudden, you'll start seeing that you'll start making more sales from the back end than you do from the front end, because you're staying around in these people's world. Right. So these are just a handful of the systems that you have, that you have to have in place, which then make it really easy for a salesperson to be able to deliver value, all they have to do is show up and serve and clothes that connect the dots. And then you're closing sales, it doesn't require a magician to try to force people to buy your product.

Right? And you're not selling yourself anymore. You're selling this system and you're selling something that's replicatable which I love. Yeah, that's so interesting. There's so many pieces that are involved in it, but how do you even get the entrepreneurs like where I was like, I was so stuck in the day to day of everything in doing lead generation and, and and sales myself that how so how do you get people sales team ready, because ideally, you want to bring in a sales team into your into your business so that it relieves the visionary entrepreneur from doing that part of it. And so there was there was quite a bit of things that went into play into getting ready for that. And above and beyond all the things you just mentioned.

Yeah, well, the first step of this is understanding that, you know, and I hear this all everyday because I talk to people all the time about this, and most people are like, but I like doing the sales, and I have fun with it. And God bless you. I like it too. But my guess is you didn't lay awake at night dreaming about your business so that you could be selling people stuff every day. Right? I'm assuming that's not why you got

it. No, it did not involve involved a beach share on a beach with a margarita.

Right? Exactly. Okay, I own a sales organization. And I don't dream about selling people. Right, and I happen to be good at it. But we want it you actually got in business because you want to serve people. You want to change people's lives. You want to bring people's message for you You want to build a movement, you wanted to build an empire, whatever it is that you want, or sip my ties on the beach while somebody else is running your business. Whatever reason you got into business, I'm pretty certain it was not to chase leads and convert sales, right? And so the first part is understanding what is the true value the measure of the value that you deliver to your business. And when you are doing so, how are people experiencing you, and your, your, your brand, as they're moving closer to buying from you? Right, so you always want to be thinking about that. And when you're putting us when you're building a sales process and system, that's the main thing, the core at the core of it, you are constantly moving people closer to an understanding of why they should do business with you every edit with every step of the process, whether you're delivering a podcast episode, whether you're sending an email, a text message, a voicemail drop, or doing an event, every single thing that they experience of you should lead them one step closer to understanding, wow, I really like this, it's not about them buying stuff from you, because they're gonna buy or they won't, and some of them will buy Now some will buy 30 days, some will buy 60 days, someone buy a year and a half from now. But every time they're with you, it should be reaffirming the decisions that they've made so far to stay in your world and follow you. And here's the real key distinction. You know, we're in a, I don't like calling it the the recession or whatever I'm not as isn't about fear mongering, it's I call them exciting times, because in these kinds of times, is when opportunities are the greatest is when people are fearful. They're full of doubt and concern and frustration and anxiety and they don't know what to do next. And they're retracting those that when they need you to go on offense, the people who are going to win in these times are people who have a system, a plan and a strategy and are going forward, to be found and to grab these people and lead them towards a solution. When you're that person, people are going to follow you. Right Jr. David Starr Jordan, one of my favorite quotes, says the world stands aside and let's pass any man who clearly knows where he is going. And of course, woman as well. Right. But when you are clear and on purpose, and you have an attractive odor to write, you have a sense to people like oh, wow, like, you know, there people are attracted to confidence there, especially when they're when at times when other people are uncertain. And so when you know exactly where your leads are coming from, you know exactly what they're doing, you know exactly what the what they need, you know exactly how they're solved their problem. And you consistently are beating that drum all over town, people start marching behind you, and they want they want to be there. They want to know what you got and how to get it.

That sounds like so many of our experts we work with are there. They're the they're the movement creators, they started to get that following behind them, oh, people, they've done those, right, those things are writing where they're so magnetizing, to the people that are following them. Podcast hosts are like suspicious, especially, you know, got bad magnetism behind them. And so I think that's really cool. What can we do say are some of the things that you're seeing that are defining the difference between the people that are doing things right and getting ready, and that people aren't successfully able to bring that team in are not able to? What are the things that are they're doing wrong? Or they're not able to do?

You know, the biggest thing that I see is, is that people don't have patience. Everybody is so busy. I it's hard. I mean, I, I see so many awesome solutions and ideas out there every time every day scrolls through my my feed or in my inbox, like, Oh, that would be cool. Let me check that out. It's a new software, it's a new solution. It's a new lead generation tool. It's a new AI. And everything is a good idea. Unless you try them. All. Right, you need to be crystal clear on what it is what problems you're trying to solve. And you need to go deep in that platform if you if you're working on optimizing your webinars and become the best webinar deliver on the planet. And don't worry about all of the other platforms. Don't worry about doing events and doing launches and doing all stuff. Just focus on the webinar. If you're great at doing workshops and events, then do those, right have a process and a system that leads predictably from one step to the next. Maybe you do a webinar that leads to an event that then you know fills a launch or something but but that's okay. You use them to make sure you're delivering it and wearing it out. You should plan on anything you're doing to do it multiple times so that you get better at it every single time. Too many times we try one oh, that didn't work the way I want it. Let me go try this other thing. Let me try never

doing email marketing again. Nobody responded. Right?

So stop chasing the greatest solution. Anytime somebody says this is the best way run, because there's no such thing. There's the best way for this thing at this moment at this time for this product for this offer at this price point. That's the only thing they can say you can guarantee his work is the best for anything else. The moment they're saying that is because they're trying to get you to buy their thing. Right. So stay totally in tune with that. anything you have to be doing is always sharing your message so that new people are wanting to follow you. And then when people are coming in, you got to have the responsibility and the diligence to make sure that the people who have already raised their hand to say, I want to learn more, your job is to ensure that you're giving them what they need to continually learn more. And that doesn't mean making offers to them every day, although you need to be making offers every day, but not to the same person, right? Offer Michelle the same thing every single day, making offers to new people, because I'm always looking at sharing my message and challenging people to come into my world every day, giving them an opportunity, and then serving them until they're ready for another opportunity.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What would you say is like, the best lead generation these days? Like there's so many different ways you constantly have a flow of lead generation? How do you keep that going? And I know we were just talking about the super chats recorded, like, I was so good at lead generation, and then I now have a person that's doing sales for me and like, Oh, my God, I really need to do more lead generation, because now I have someone else that's helping. So how do we how do we keep that constantly generation on so it's like a tap that we can turn on?

Well, lead generation is always a crazy thing. And there's a there's a lot of different approaches. The first thing that the best advice that I can give is, you need to be visible constantly. You need to give people an opportunity to step into your world every single day. And now you can decide now people will say nothing works like video, well, maybe unless you stuck on video, right? Then then maybe that's not the place. If you got to determine are you great on audio, video or in writing, and then go deep with one of them, potentially all of them, but pick one, if you're phenomenal at writing blog posts in content, then write, copy, write content, and share it until your hands bleed. Right? Because right now, you know, Grant Cardone says, you know, he's controversial and different people like him for different things. I don't think he's the greatest sales trainer on the planet. But I really really admire his insane commitment to success. And one of the things that he says that I wholeheartedly ascribe to is right up there on my whiteboard is best known beats best product every day. And I wholeheartedly subscribe to that. How many times do you see somebody who is half as smart as you half as good as you've been doing this half as long, and they're crushing it simply because they got seen more often. And there be more people know them than No, you write best known beats best product every day, you have to be visible. And the whole world is online now, which means there's a crowded marketplace. So your job is to be as visible as you can in as many places as you can, as many of the right places as you can where your ideal client with a bleeding neck problem is. And then you need to stop all the nonsense and the Bs, and you need to speak to the problem all the time, speak to the problem in a 360 degree perspective, talk about it from the left from the right from above, from below. Because every way you can talk about it demonstrate that you really understand it, share stories, share case studies, share the pains share the deep desires, and the pains and the thoughts of the things that they have. Like you don't just say, Oh, it sucks not having clients, because that's true. But then what else does it do when you can't make sales every single day, I talked about how you can struggle, it sucks when you don't have when you have to start making sales to people that you don't really want to sell to, but simply you need a paycheck today. So you need to sell this person even though you don't really want to work with them. Right? And then it starts, you start questioning your own success and confidence. You watch these other people who you know, you're better than you've been doing this better in your world known expert, but your bank account doesn't reflect it. So now you're shining wonder, Am I even good at this, should I even be doing this? Whatever is going on, right? So I'm just speaking to the, to the mindset of the person that I know I can help and serve. But I'm speaking at a level of depth and distinction of clarity, that has painting very specifics in their mind. And the more specifics you can paint in their mind, the more they're interested in meaning to know more because they want to, they want to fill in the blanks for the rest of they're going to assume that you understand you understand that piece of them are going to assume you understand all of them. And they're going to give you the opportunity to demonstrate how you can fill in that picture for them. Right. But you have to be bold, you have to be clear, you have to make sure that when you speak about what you do that you speak about it in a way that nobody else does, and that you're clear and compelling about it. And then you're unwavering and unmoving in your opinion, your perspective and your position around it.

Now that makes a lot of sense for us. I see people like having messages but the message is slightly different here and slightly different there and slightly different there. But not it's not it's the same messaging is not going deep on that same message and that solution, and it's getting confusing, I think for the listeners are for the audience.

Yeah, you know, first of all, give, give other people credit for being smart, right? You don't need you need a different message for people. You need to reinforce the message that you share. I have people who listen to my stuff all the time, they've heard the same message from me 100 times, if not 1000. And they still listen because they agree with it. And they own it. So when you share a perspective that other people resonate with, they start to believe it, then they start to buy into it, then they start to own it. And then he starts sharing it as if it's theirs. Because they feel like God, I am so so resonant with what he's saying that they start giving themselves credit for having the idea. This way our brain works this way our subconscious works. So your job is not to sprinkle them with messages is to hammer your message home over and over. Right, because that which gets repeated gets remembered. And that's what gets remembered gets believed, then most people are so busy trying to sound different all the time that never give a chance for a message to grow roots, and go deep in somebody's world.

So as you take it as a compliment, so insert sounded like, overtime. Absolutely. Don't be offended by it. It's like your bleeding neck thing. I think of that thing all the time. Hey, know where it came from?

Yeah, it's important. I mean, I want people to be able to repeat my stuff. You know, I mean, sometimes people get offended. And I've seen you know, we we share our leads made easy concept, which you've seen, and it's a waterfall exercise, it's a really good delineator on on time and readiness of people who are ready to buy from you. So it's not just an avatar exercise, it's more of a wind exercise. But we have tons of clients who teach that inside of their own webinars or inside their own content, because it's such a good example. I can be like, That's my IP. And like, No, I love the fact that people resonate with what we're teaching so much that they want to teach it to. Yeah, that's cool, right? That's, you should see that as a sign, you know, just a total sign of confidence and competence in what you do, that other people want to teach it. It's like hallelujah, you know, I create content every day, I could care less. You all have, just share your best ideas, and you will come up with new ones.

Right, I love it. And speaking about your content, I know you have a podcast to share with us where we can listen more about all the things you're up to through your podcast.

Yeah, it's the sales team ready podcast. And I don't like the name of it, because that's the name of our product, which is, uh, you know, our mastermind group is that as you know, and so we just decided to name that, but it really should be scaled to the mountaintop and prophet. So you know, because it's all about people wanting to reach the mountaintop experience of what you're capable of. My objective is not to get to convince you that the mountaintop is worthy. My job is to work with motivated people who already want the mountaintop, and show you how to get there. Right? So we want you to buy wholeheartedly into your dreams and your desires, throw your fears and doubts out of the way and get moving, and then just start grabbing on. Because you know, we've got support to help you get there and you got it. And once you know that you are capable of leading a movement, changing the world creating something powerful, then you need to be sold out to that mountaintop. And then when you start climbing the hill to start appearing, right? And we are that there are so many people that are on that journey that are more than willing to reach out that hand and say, Come on, I got you. Right, you but if you're too busy, at the base of the mountain, just staring up there going, boy, I don't know, someday, maybe no one's gonna help you there's nothing, there's there's nothing to help you with. I don't need to help you stay on there. So once you get moving, then the help starts showing up. Right, you're stating to the world, I am an action and I have commitment. And I'm ready to roll. Now I just need the help to make it happen.

Right. And when that help comes, it makes it easier and easier to move up that. Now know, Jim, you've seen so many entrepreneurs out there or that run events and there's the the million dollar events, and then there's like the $10,000 events, what's the difference between the two?

You know, it's really the biggest difference between the two is somebody who has a, a clear positioning, and better resource, really, what it comes down to is if you have a product and offer that seasoned, an event that season and an audience that season, you're gonna run out that you got hundreds and 1000s of persons events, right. But if you have a newer product, a newer event and a newer audience, then you know, you gotta be okay with with milestones and benchmarks. We have pulled six figures results out of rooms of 10 people that have you know, put 22 people in a room and generated a half a million dollars in revenue. It's all about the strategy behind it. And again, it's about it's not about how many people are in the room. It's about getting the right people in the room and then building the right experience around them. Right, so that doesn't matter. And we've done plenty we've done both. We've done six figures and events with eight people in a room that paid $5,000 to be there, and then sold them into a $25,000 opportunity and seven out of the gate bought. And then we've had times where there's 150 people in the room that we've delivered, you know $100,000 Because it was just volume and it was the wrong people and if it did everything didn't click but then approves another 102 200 to $300,000 in this in the six months beyond the event, right? So it's not just doing an event, it's understanding what role does an event play in your overall business strategy? Yeah. And so you always want to be thinking about that. And, and so don't don't rule yourself out, the main thing I said is always if you're going to do an event, or a launch, or podcast, whatever it's going to be, always plan on doing multiple. And don't, don't ever do one standalone event, plan on doing two, or three so that you can literally implement the hardest work is coming in the first one, right? And you can optimize it, and do it again, and then optimize it and do it again, then pretty soon it starts to rinse and repeating by itself. And then now you're just focused on getting more people in front of it. Right, then you could turn it into an asset, a digital asset that becomes a recorded module that you can sell, or use as training material and support. Right, there's, it just gives you more credibility, you can break up key pieces of your event, and turn them into sound bites that you can put out just like on a podcast, or sharing with people. Right? Yeah, I

feel like that's where people just stop as they do a while just continue doing it until it's at that rinse and repeat stage. That's a really good, that's a really key piece. And speaking about events, I know you guys have a really exciting event coming up pretty soon. Can you share with us a little bit about that

we do is it's called sales team already live. And actually, I think they're my marketing, I'm so detached from the day to day. But our marketing might not even be the name of it anymore. But sales team ready live is what we have the working title is. But here's the key. As an outsourced sales company, people come to us have been coming up to us for eight years to hire salespeople and put salespeople in their company. And so we step in as their sales division to do that. What we recognize is that over the years, nobody comes to us ready for sales teams. And so we would jump in and start building out all the systems and the processes to make it happen. And then over this last year, we decided, you know, let's take all of those systems and processes and this productize them and offer them to people who are not at scale yet but want to be there. So hear that six figure entrepreneur that is wanting to scale that mountain to seven, then sales team ready event is where we're going to open up all of our our playbook, and we're going to help you build a sales playbook. So that you can have the systems in place that will help you be ready to hire a salesperson, whether it's a company like us, or if you building your own sales team, you still need a system in place so that they have, they can do their job predictably and consistently selling your goods without having to be some kind of crazy magician, unicorn, Rockstar, salesman,

or yourself. And I remember going into that event last year, with you guys going, I'm still gonna do my sales, I'll still do my sales, but I want to learn all this stuff that I need to get in place first, and boy was I wrong. And so a lot of that was wrong by the help and the support and the systems and then what the training is like invaluable, it was so good to learn all those things that need to go into place. And I had, I thought I had I thought I was pretty smart. But I had no idea what I was missing and how much stuff I was missing in order to make things work and be able to have a salesperson, the sales team, for our business. And this made a big impact, it made a huge impact. So make sure you get yourself there guys.

Definitely just understand, just like in your business, you know, efficiencies of infrastructure is a real thing. And all that means is we've you know we deliver 25,000 sales conversations a year, which is more than you're probably going to deliver in any 10 lifetimes. So it stands to reason that we've got a lot of systems processes strategies, we've solved problems that you haven't even encountered yet. You know, and so we're working with a company like us, it's just to help lay out those systems and all the all of the setting you up for success so that somebody can sell your products consistently without you, rather than you trying to figure it out on your own. Because you don't get a gold star. If you figure it out on your own. You just you get the gold therapists figured out. And so this lets some people help you just like in your business, you know, the things that you do that you do super well that you can do in your sleep that other people need to pay you for.

Yeah, and then when it comes to comes to this, something like this, you don't know what you don't know either. It's like you have no idea. You and your body letting it letting a team come in that has so much experience is is invaluable. So make sure you guys go check out we'll put the links to the events in the show notes. And we'll put it out on our social media as well but it's a definitely not to miss event. Just go for the go for the event. You're gonna learn so much and get so much out of it. I promise. I know I did. So Jim, thank you so much for spending this time with us today. I know you're you're a busy guy and I'm so glad that we were able to catch you and bring you on for this episode. I think this is really helping our podcasters think beyond beyond just their podcasts and bringing their podcasts into their business using the podcast as lead flow and and starting to get a I'm ready for bringing on someone other than themselves to do the sales in their business. So thank you so much.

Amen. Thanks for trusting me to be part of your success team.

No problem. Any last words for our listeners out there today to,

you know, just recognize that there are people out there who are praying for what you do, what you do matters and you deserve to be paid well for it. So don't feel like you have some obligation to the world to give your services without expecting to be paid well for it, right. So make sure that you have the wherewithal to collect the revenue, get the cash register ringing so that you can actually deliver the kind of impact that you are called to. And you can create the movements, the charities, the the services that you're capable of. But it unfortunately, the way that works in this world is need to have resources and the capacity to be able to generate revenue predictably, even on days when you're not working. So take action, be responsible, do the things necessary to stand out and increase market share in these exciting times that are coming.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Jim. Have a fabulous day amplify you listeners, make sure you go check out the event coming up soon. In our show notes in go check out Jim's puck SLC. Ready, and we'll talk to you soon, Jim. Thanks so much.