Embrace Your Uniqueness: Unleash Impact Through Differentiation with Jason Howes (Episode 160)

Chris Schwager:

Welcome to the Video Made Simple Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Schwager. This week, we're talking again with Jason Howes from Arrow Sales Consulting. Shit, I think I might've messed it up. Is that right? Jace,

[00:00:14] Jason Howes: Arrow Executive Sales.

[00:00:16] Chris Schwager: What did I say? Arrow Sales Coaching. I should know it by now. Jason is one of our really great DIY clients and advocates of the DIY Video Program.

[00:00:31] He's referred us so I can't help but get him on the show again, uh, because again, one of these episodes as you know, if you've been listening to my show, it's all about leveraging people's time. And, uh, Jason and I are working very closely at the moment. To put on an event called, uh, what's called, what's called, I'm, I'm struggling today.

[00:00:54] Jason Howes: Differentiation Matters, Chris.

[00:00:55] Chris Schwager: Differentuation, yeah, yeah, good.

[00:00:57] Jason Howes: Differentiation matters.

[00:00:59] Chris Schwager: Differentiation matters. This is an exciting opportunity for you to see us in person. Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, the first event coming up on the 17th is in Brisbane. What we'll do is we'll put a link to it in the show notes. You can go ahead, check it out. There's a great little video with me and Jace spruiking our stuff and giving you all the value that you're going to be bringing, we're going to be bringing to the event. It's going to be a fun night. It's it starts at 5:30 pm. It's going to be drinks and canapes. There's going to be giveaways. Um, you'll get access to have a look at the DIY Video Studio in the flesh and even get an opportunity to record your own video there, which we can supply to you with social media. So load of stuff. Uh, free executive coaching with, with Jace and video coaching with me as well as part of that.

[00:01:54] Jason Howes: Chris, you forgot about the million dollar view there of the Story Bridge. You'll get to see the sunset over the beautiful Brisbane River, the Story Bridge. You'll have a phenomenal view out there. You get to catch up with the with the lovely team at ServCorp in Brisbane. I mean, it doesn't get any better, really.

[00:02:14] Chris Schwager: Mate, it doesn't, mate. And you know what? 79 bucks, it is a very affordable night to do some networking. A couple of hours overlooking the sunsets in beautiful Queensland.

[00:02:26] Jason Howes: Very romantic, Chris. Very romantic it'll be.

[00:02:29] Chris Schwager: Well, bring a partner, bring your spouse.

[00:02:32] Jason Howes: You should, because the champagne will be flowing, the beer is actually on tap. It's gonna be incredible, the leather lounges, the furniture. You cannot get better than the Golden Tower. Mate, the Golden Tower in Brisbane is famous. In Brisbane, it's a magnificent building. It is, it's in Riverside, you'll get to see the demolition of the old Riverside center. It's gone now, but you can see where it used to be. And now that's a famous site in Brisbane, in, in, in the skyline there, it is no longer there. It's, it's going to be a magnificent development there. I think it's a 2. 1 billion development law. I could be highly wrong here.

[00:03:12] Chris Schwager: Well, let's move on because Jace is here to do one thing and that is one thing only and that is to support him in getting his message about DIY recruitment out. And so I thought, why not combine it with DIY video production as well and get him on our show to, to give you an observation of how we're going to go through this. Uh, to interview him so that Jace, by the end of it, we'll end up with snippets of, of information that he can use to promote the event. Um, for him, uh, he's got a great, actually just talk about that coming up as well, Jace. Um, your sales recruitment event for DIY is coming up very soon. And Jace is all about getting bums on seats. So give us a 30 seconds on that.

[00:03:57] Jason Howes: So Chris, look, a great opportunity to learn how to recruit, using science and predictive data. A lot of people are still guessing when they're hiring. It is the biggest area that you can go wrong in business. We see too many times people just simply hiring for industry experience. They don't look at sales ability. So we have a crystal ball that we can show you on the day. We can also show you how we use video technology through the DIY to interview, to communicate the results with our clients. It is the best way to do business. So we, our objective is to save up to business and sales leaders and HR professionals up to 20 hours per hire. We give you the sales assessment link. You can use it in house so you can actually bring the recruitment back in house, save money, save time, but also give you more confidence to hire using data than just listening to someone who interviews well, Chris, because they've had so many interviews. And, and that's not being disrespectful, but I mean, there's a lot of salespeople these days. You talk about long service in business. As a salesperson, if you get five years out of a salesperson, that's probably the new long service because a lot of people don't hang around and look, unfortunately a lot don't hang around. A lot of it is because of poor performance. So they will up and leave every year or two, or maybe they're managed out of the business as well. So, I mean, our priority is to bring the best tools and systems and processes to business leaders so that they can recruit in-house, do it for probably one third of the cost.

[00:05:36] Because you think about it too. I mean, even though companies say, Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna recruit in house myself. It still takes time. I mean, you look at 20 hours of our business leaders time interviewing candidates, who say what they need to say, but they don't perform when they start. So, I mean, what we do is we actually find out before they start. So we don't waste any time at all. We get the applications. Let's just say, for example, you've got a hundred people apply. 50 won't even do the assessment when we send them the link cause they applied because they needed to. We would then drill down to about 20% who will actually meet the criteria, which is actually built for our client and the objective management group.

[00:06:17] Sorry. There's 20% who meet the criteria and that we actually specifically build for the client. So we actually work out what, what do you want this salesperson do? What's most important for the role? And the main roles that we help recruit for business development and sales management. Two of the hardest roles to hire for. So again, we will only provide you with the best candidates. So again, as you said, you got 100 down to 50 down to maybe what's that? Maybe 10 that are recommended. Then you go looking at the resume. What's their experience? Are they moving around? What's happening here? What's happening there? So it's like having a crystal ball using the assessment.

[00:06:57] We're going to flash up some, uh, obviously you're not going to flash up.

[00:07:03] Chris Schwager: By the way, Jace, this has not been edited. So, you know, you can stop startling your life, but I'm not editing this for our show. So it's got, we're running right through, but you're doing well. You're doing well. Keep going.

[00:07:15] Jason Howes: Um, so, I mean, look at the end of the day, it's, you know, we want to be able to. Help you attract more candidates. I mean, a lot of business leaders I talked to, they're not attracting enough candidates to apply. And sometimes that's because of the way the ads written as well. I mean, we help you craft a compelling advertisement that actually helps you attract more people to your business. We talk to you about work perks, you know, areas that will attract compared to what other companies are doing. I mean, there's a lot of offers out there at the moment to, to leverage good candidates away from where they are. So we help you do that. I mean, we help use our network. That's, that's very got a widespread within the, uh, the industries we operate in because a lot of the times, you know, people are just putting an ad on seek and not everyone's looking on seek because in theory, like, I mean, a lot of the good sales people. They're not actually even looking for a job at the moment. So I mean, if you just chuck the ad on seek, it's not going to attract them. So we put it across multiple platforms and we help you save time, save money and hire with more confidence. And the idea of the training is to actually teach you the processes.

[00:08:24] So we hand over all the certified documentation from the objective management group, which is actually supported 110, over 110,000 hires around the world. So you think they know what they're doing. Okay. So for companies that think and for sales leaders and not not being, um, you know, negative here, but just being realistic, you don't have time. You will never talk toward how to recruit. Sales people have become very good at interviewing because I've had a lot of practice. So you need to look at a different way to recruit. So the course itself is a one day event. You will be focused on learning. Best practice. You'll get the systems, you'll get the processes, you walk away with a brand new job advert, not one that's been kicking around the business for 10 years, and you've just changed a few words here and there.

[00:09:12] I've done that. You know what I mean? I know how it works. It's hard to write a compelling, creative job advert to actually attract more people to your business. So we give you all the tips and the strategies, and help you use this to be able to hire yourself. But we're also here to support you. So you think about it. I mean, most companies don't want to spend any money on recruitment, right? Even though it takes them probably 20 hours, even though that then 50% of hires fails, so potentially it's costing you 20 grand anyway. So for the investment for the one day workshop, which is over $1,000, is actually a fantastic return on. I mean, if you can't get 20% return on investment, I'll give you the money back. Because I'm so confident that this process and this system and our tools will help you hire quality sales professionals and ones that won't cost you money. They'll actually make your money, Chris. And that's, they'll make your money. And that's the big part, the difference between a quality sales professional, one that's actually motivated to sell. We pull, we really drill into motivation. So we understand what motivates these people and why would they want to grow sales? Because in a lot of situations. A lot of salespeople are not motivated to actually generate new business. That's why only about 10 to 15% of salespeople can actually successfully, um, generate new business.

[00:10:33] And they're the people we find are the ones that have had training and development in the past. They may not just be from your industry, but they'll have some sort of experience within the industry itself. So they may not have sold your product, but they, they, they understand the industry. And I would much rather teach someone about uh, the product than I would be trying to find someone and teach them about sales.

[00:10:58] Chris Schwager: Well, there you go. Learn how to attract and recruit quality sales professionals with science. That is the event. It's on Eventbrite. I'm going to include that link into the show notes as well so that you have that. It's coming up soon. But if you want to go deep diving into the world of sales for yourself and recruitment and getting things done properly, Jace is the expert and there's nothing better than trying to get in front of somebody that's been in the game for decades and understands some of the challenges and pain that you're currently faced with and how to overcome that. And so go to that event. Get on there. If you're in Brisbane, you want to sit in and you want to learn, learn, learn and improve the quality of your business.

[00:11:46] Jason Howes: Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Chris, it's going to be exciting.

[00:11:51] Chris Schwager: Yeah. So, so for our event, the Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, you can go to the Ridge Films website there to, uh, under training, what's the best URL here? I can include the link in the show notes, but basically differentiate. Differentiation Matters. This is the most in demand sales video event in Australia, featuring both Jason, myself, as said, if you're interested in sales automation and video, this is going to be a triage of beautiful. Is that even a word triage? I just made that shit up.

[00:12:25] Jason Howes: I think it is Chris, actually. Yeah. Look, if you're.

[00:12:28] Chris Schwager: If you're, if you're an Australian business owner, you're a sales manager, you're entrepreneur, you're ambitious about what you'd like to do in your business, then integrating video, sales, automation, AI, all of these things into one is going to be hugely advantageous for you. Even that advantageous. I had to watch what I'm saying because sometimes.

[00:12:49] Jason Howes: It's best to keep it simple, Chris, because you really can't stitch yourself up.

[00:12:51] Chris Schwager: Well, yeah. Well, what I was saying to you earlier, what I was saying to you earlier about things like at the end of the day, and to be honest, and those types of things, like I'm finding I'm so much more heightened to those, to those types of words now, because they are, they serve no purpose.

[00:13:08] Jason Howes: And you're right, I actually, because you should be honest, no matter what you say, it's actually not, it's not a great one.

[00:13:13] Chris Schwager: Actually again.

[00:13:15] Jason Howes: Who me? Come on. Get off my back, man.

[00:13:17] Chris Schwager: Oh, we are from Queensland.

[00:13:19] Jason Howes: You're stalking me. Look, I mean, Chris, I was actually born in Victoria, actually, mighty Magpie supporter, go the Pies. Um, but look, I mean, I, I think, um, the big thing for me is I just got some comments in the last few weeks. I mean, I, when we recruit, we actually send, you know, videos from the DIY to our clients, explaining the results. I keep it around sort of look if it's a bad one, two minutes, if they're a good candidate, I'll go maybe three to five minutes. But the feedback I get from my clients is like, this is incredible, man. I'm looking at the results. You're telling me about it. I don't have to read an email. I don't have to look at all these statistics that I actually don't really understand anyway. So the communication that we use through our, um, our prospecting and our business development and also just general, um, you know, customer communication, like the video for me is just fantastic. It's actually made my day a lot more exciting as well. I really enjoy it. Cause I don't really like sitting there typing emails anyway. So it's actually like, it's just a fantastic way to do business. I come to work and I'm excited to do it. I can turn on the video here. I can shoot it. Um, look, editing, I'm not great, but you know what bit, a bit of raw footage is good sometimes too. You know, you let a few things happen, but. Look, I mean, I, for me, it's been a huge game changer working with yourself and using the, uh, the DIY video. And again, I think I'm only just getting started with it. So.

[00:14:43] Chris Schwager: Yeah, that's right. I had one of my other coaching clients on a call yesterday and he had shown me what he had started with his reply enquiries, in his nurture sequence, basically reply enquiry, have the meeting and then basically, it's a pretty much a glorified proposal walkthrough style thing. But he, he had, the way he'd composed this was he pretty much jotted all of his notes into an email, which fucking looks, it was out of control. And, and he goes, do you think I need a, a video to compliment this. And I said, mate, it's got to substitute it. I said, your, your emails, even though you think you're doing a really great job here at trying to let video do the, the work and do the, you know, do a lot of the rapport building and stuff. It's, it's not enough like people, you've got to expect that, that people just have enough time to read, say, one or two lines and then serve up the video to handle all of the wordy, articulate, detailed, robotic, technical stuff. Because that's when you can sit in, say it in your own terms, give good reason why it is priced the way it is, deliver expertise in the process.

[00:15:58] Obviously the that. is so important in ongoing report building as well. But I said, mate, scrape that entire bloody email back to a single line and say, watch the fucking video because that's where you're going to get all the information. And then, and then really it's just becomes about how do you articulate? And I, and I, I keep digging on people about their use of language that doesn't propel the video in a forward direction. So, you know, at the end of the day, to be honest, actually, shoulda, woulda, coulda, we, us, me, all of these types of words are not, are not progressive at all in the world of video. So you just got to try and acknowledge that their time is still essential and critical that they don't have to sit through a bloody 15 minute waffly bullshit video, you're going to give it to them in a short, sharp, here's the point. Bang. This is what you want to do next. And then now act, sign, pay, whatever it is.

[00:17:02] Jason Howes: I'm going to actually, Chris, I'm going to push back a little bit on you here. And I love, um, I love listening to how people, um, work through client interactions and proposals and stuff like that. Here's another way to look at it. So I, um, this week I've had a couple of really good meetings. For me, it's about getting a commitment for the next step. So if I've had a really good discovery conversation, I will say, look, this looks really good, I'd like to go away and come back to you with a little bit more information.

[00:17:28] What I've done, what I do then is ask for the next meeting on that time. So organize the next meeting there and then lock it in, right? Then what I will do is actually then have a talk. So I'll actually send them an email on a summary and go, this is what we spoke about. You know, how does that, is there anything I missed out? There's some key points. And then I would want to response back from them as well. So I think the idea of sending a video proposal is good, but to be honest, I'm not gonna say to be honest, .

[00:17:54] Chris Schwager: See?

[00:17:54] Jason Howes: Stop it.

[00:17:55] Chris Schwager: You're, you're aware that

[00:17:56] Jason Howes: what I prefer to, what I prefer to do is organize a time to go through the proposal. Yeah. On a, on a, on a Zoom call. Right. Go through it. Yeah. Then, then say, look, is there anything else we've missed? How does this look to you? Yeah. Is this something you are interested in, um, moving forward with you? Try and close. If not, what you do then is you then a, after the meeting you say, look, I'll just then do a video walk back through recorded and say, look, we spoke about this and we spoke about that and some of these are something. So you because what you want to do is you really want to build on those each contact point with the with the prospect as well. You know what I mean? Because it's all it all values the building of that relationship.

[00:18:35] I have seen it in the past. And I have done it myself. If I do a video proposal, I find they tend, there's no next step once you do that. You know what I mean? Like, I think it's really important to still use it, but I probably wouldn't use it just by itself.

[00:18:51] Chris Schwager: Well, how do you go? Well, yeah. And that's based on a, probably a process that either using yourself or your recommend to others. And I, and I acknowledge that everybody's processes is different, you know, and so reply enquiry in a lot of um, examples with my video coaching clients possibly won't work. It's either not feasible to do a reply that the transaction value is too low to make it feasible to do, but also just do they have a long winded sales process? Is it, are they working on something that takes them six months to close or are they typically closing a lot quicker than that?

[00:19:24] So how do you, how do you cast, I guess, how do you bespoke-y, it sounds very bespoke-y because you know, I, I embed a generic video into our proposal for people that just want to buy a DIY. Hey, $12,700, boom, this is it. This is the standard offering. And here's the video that basically recaps on everything that I've said in our meeting, which is, well, not everything, but it's not specific to their needs. It's very much, Hey, this is the demo of the hardware. Again, if you need to get buy in from decision makers, this is the video you want to show them because it covers off all the essential benefits of why you are looking to invest in this in the first place.

[00:19:57] So how do you go. Is every client for you bespokey, slightly different, kind of little nuances, or is it pretty much the same structure for everybody and then you're just swapping out little elements? How does it work?

[00:20:11] Jason Howes: Oh, look, I think everyone is different, Chris, but I think there's a couple of steps that are really critical. You know what I mean? Like, it depends whether they're urgent. If they're urgent and they're coming to me, I've got a problem, I've got to fix it. Then, yeah, you've probably got a chance of closing the deal quicker. You know what I mean? But if you...

[00:20:31] If you're chasing them, it's a different story. So for me, the big thing is that if I've seen someone today and we've had a chat and we're talking about, if I asked them for that next follow up meeting and they say no, well, they're probably either the wrong type of prospect or there's, there's not enough urgency or their problem, I haven't provided enough value. So I suppose that's the thing. If someone won't commit to see you or talk to you again and give you their time, well, then you're probably barking up the wrong tree. So I think that's the thing for me and most of us actually present too early in sales. That's the trap, right?

[00:21:02] We go, hello, how you going? I want to sell you something. Yeah. Guilty as charged for years. I mean, again, I learn every day on this and I really monitor a lot of analytics through my, um, my CRM membrane. Shout out. Love you guys. Um, but I mean, like I think a lot of salespeople present too quick and then they send the proposal and then it's ghost.

[00:21:22] Chris Schwager: Yeah.

[00:21:22] Jason Howes: You hear nothing. You see nothing.

[00:21:25] Chris Schwager: Yeah. All of what you're saying I do, including like the setting, the proposal after the meeting. Is it relative to the threshold of pain? And I say this because we, we often have for 21 years, we've been selling professional video services. I had this discussion with a colleague yesterday. I said, there's nothing romantic about it. There's no real significant pain or needle, you know, like urgency in a lot of time, lots of time. There's urgency cause it got a fucking deadline, but they're not experiencing significant pain. When DIY clients say this, they are fucking crying out their eyes. In some cases they're like, I tried this, I can't get it right.

[00:22:03] I, whatever I do, I look and sound shit. I can't get my message organized. Blah, blah, blah. They are really, really suffering. And so therefore for me to go straight to, Hey, well look at what I've got and this is how I'm doing it and you can do this too. Let me show you how that I find that's just so much quicker than, than beating around and the bush around it.

[00:22:25] And after that meeting, I do have eight tenths of the time, do you have the next follow up scheduled in as well. And it's usually about a week, but often some of my, well, there's, there's no, most of the time there's no pressing urgency so they can wait until they get cash flow. It could be a, it could be three weeks, it could be three months type thing.

[00:22:49] So they usually, you know, moving office, that can be a problem for them and things like that. So, but usually it works okay. And if, and in the rarity that they don't have that next follow up, yes, it's absolutely flagged. But if I've got a prop going out and they haven't committed to a follow up, then I'm definitely following them up, right?

[00:23:07] There's no, I'm, I'm, I'm hitting them. I'm hitting them up and saying, look, you're either in or out. And depending, gauging on their interests, they'll, they'll... cause it takes cause now props are far more effortless for us to generate because it's not some bullshit pest bespokey thing, where you've got all these line items and stuff. It's literally checkbox type of menu. Hey, here's a McDonald's. You want pickles with it? You know what I mean? And boom, off it goes. And so it's, it's efficient. I love it and it works. So, um, I, I still, I'm still overly critical though, based on your coaching with us, um, about extending the rapport, period. Um, and making sure they have enough --

[00:23:50] Jason Howes: oh Chris, there's no doubt. I mean, you, you do talk very fast as well, mate. So, I mean, you fired up. So, I mean, like, you know, for the average person, for the average person. Yeah, no, but I mean, like, I think you, you see, you know, yourself, like a lot of people in sales get happy years. I don't know whether you heard about that. It's like an elephant, man.

[00:24:08] You get happy news. You're like, cool, this person's going to buy, man. I'm on fire. I'm putting it, I've got it in the pipeline, man. And then, um, and then nothing happens. You know what I mean? So if you want to look at a accuracy from an accuracy point of view that what you want in your pipeline is actually going to potentially close a lot of sales people's, um, you know, um, pipelines are filled with opportunities that they're not going to close or there's no next step or there's no, there's no pressure or it's not enough value.

[00:24:37] So I mean, it's. Yeah, I think it's, look, we're doing some work together on that and I reckon, uh, I reckon we can get your, your rates of, uh, your, your, your win rates up a fair bit more, Chris.

[00:24:46] Chris Schwager: Yeah. Well, I just looked at Facebook ads just for those that are interested, uh. The results from our recent Facebook ads campaign, there was 40 reply enquiry videos produced because I like to do those for everyone that comes through. And fuck all, um, leads. So that, that got about, I think that got about a week or two weeks running through Facebook. Now, I'm not dissing Facebook cause it could work for you but the cheese across, I can't believe, I can't believe how shit it was.

[00:25:17] Jason Howes: Yeah, no, I've given up completely and I suppose the big thing too, well, I think the big thing too Chris is, um, it's about being where your, your, your, your crowd are hanging out, you know what I mean? And that's why I go to events that I know that there's business leaders and companies that I'm, that I'm targeting, you know what I mean? And I think. And I, yeah, I think at the end of the day, yeah, you definitely, sorry, you need to be, um, definitely in the right audience. And I think that's a big thing for you as well. Yeah, on Facebook, unfortunately you can get a lot of time wasted and, uh, and that sort of stuff. But yeah, it's been good to catch up again and talk about.

[00:25:50] Chris Schwager: Super keen. If, you know, to meet you guys face to face, learn how to attract and recruit quality sales professionals with science. That's the Jason solo. That's him doing his own full day workshop. You'll find that in the, in the Eventbrite link. And then, differentiate it Differentiation Matters with Jason and myself for drinks and canapes and a whole bunch of giveaways, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane.

[00:26:15] Jason Howes: Beautiful views over beautiful location.

[00:26:18] Chris Schwager: James' on about the views. It's probably going to be dark by the time I get there.

[00:26:25] Jason Howes: Look the Gold Tower in Brisbane. You got one-on-one columns in Melbourne. Beautiful building. You've got the lovely, you know, location in Sydney. Yeah. Yeah. Can you lose? I mean, champagne, beer.

[00:26:35] Chris Schwager: But it probably will be dark. It'll probably be dark in Melbourne, Sydney by then. But hey, if you want to see the beautiful landscapes in Brisbane, go along.

[00:26:43] Jace, thank you so much for your time today. It was great having a chit chat.

[00:26:49] Jason Howes: Thanks for picking me up on all my words and stuff. I really appreciate it.

[00:26:53] Chris Schwager: As you, as you have heard, we've got a big portion of this podcast that's dedicated to Jason's event content. So he's marketing content for his event, which we'll be cutting up for him.

[00:27:06] Jason Howes: Learn how to recruit like an expert.

[00:27:08] Chris Schwager: Jace, do you want any, do you want any final sign off for your video before we wrap up?

[00:27:15] Jason Howes: Absolutely. Look at it. Turning up, or sorry, being involved in our recruitment workshop will be the best investment you will make in your business. You will talk about a 20% return on investment minimum, and I'm happy to refund anyone that doesn't walk away with enough value and the tools to succeed in hiring like an expert, and I'll be with you. I'm not going to leave you by yourself.

[00:27:39] Chris Schwager: Give them a smile. Give them a smile and a wave. And then start and then give me a, Hi, I'm Jason from Arrow Executive Courtship. Right. Give me one of those as your intro and we'll top and tail.

[00:27:49] Jason Howes: Hi, I'm Jason Howes from Arrow Executive Sales.

[00:27:52] Chris Schwager: That's the one. Righto. Thank you so much guys for checking in this week. I know it was a bit of a random one, but hey, that's the way we roll.