Hello, and welcome to today's webinar. Our speaker today is Todd Cohen. Before I turn it over to Todd, I'd like to let those of you who are live with us know that you may submit questions during this webinar via the chat box in the lower left side of your screen. This webinar will also be recorded so that you may watch or re-watch on demand at your convenience. And with that, I will turn it over to Todd. All right. Thank you, Liz. Good morning, everybody. Todd Cohen coming to you from my, oh, I guess the best way to describe it would be my virtual studio here in Philadelphia, PA. Don't get too carried away with the word studio. It's really just my home office with a big green screen and me actually wearing a clean shirt. So I'll leave the rest to your imagination. I am always, always excited to present to my friends and colleagues and clients who are part of AED and whether you're a member or a guest today, a very, very warm welcome. I hope you are all safe and healthy and washing your hands 8,000 times a day as we're all told to do. So listen, this morning's webinar is really something that I have been thinking a lot about and it really came out of a conversation I was having with a client actually in your industry. And, you know, the conversation, I won't tell you that, I won't take you down all the road of the conversation, but suffice to say, you know, I looked at him and he looked at me and we said, you know, how do we replace the time lost for selling? And the obvious answer is, you know, we can't. We can't put time back in the day. We can't put hours back in the day. We can't go back and beat up on the sales team. We can't go back and say, do three times as many, I mean, you can do these things. I don't think you're going to get a whole lot of, you know, results out of them. You can't come back and say, do three times as many proposals and cut the price in half because we're all about margin and utilization rates and the things that put money in our pockets keep us profitable and keep us healthy so that we can serve our clients and our prospects and we can close more. And I believe more importantly now so that we can stay present with everybody. So what I want to do is share my thoughts about how we can recover lost selling time, but not in terms of replacing hours. It's actually all about what do we do now because what we do now matters. So I'm going to give a little disclaimer out there. Listen, this situation stinks, but we are strong and resilient people. A virtual keynote does not give you the right to recede from the human population. I always like to say don't be a dummy. Now, I say this with a smile on my face and you would see a smile because, you know, what I've noticed, and not so much from this industry, but in general across all the industries I work in, is that when we are working virtual so much, it is so easy just to recede, to become complacent, to move a little backwards. Don't confuse that with being lazy because nobody is being lazy, at least that I can see. What I can see is it's a little easy to sort of get lost a little bit when we don't have the wonderful benefit of ongoing human contact. And, you know, one of the things you may want to write down is people need people, and that is something that is a cornerstone of this particular presentation. So about a week ago, or it might be two weeks ago, I actually published this special report called Post-COVID-19 Revenue Recovery. It's all about the culture. I made this widely available. I put it out in my newsletter. I made it available on LinkedIn, on my website. At the end of this presentation, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to tell you how you can get your copy. It's absolutely complimentary. It is really, I'm biased, it's well-written, but truthfully, my wife, who is the writer in the family, really, really, truly helped me write this and make me sound like I actually know what I'm talking about. And so in a moment of vulnerability, I'll share with you that while speaking may be my strong suit, writing isn't. And I think you'll really, really enjoy this paper. It's about eight pages. The feedback has been phenomenal on it. And I'm going to make sure that everybody on this call has a copy. And I'll show you how at the end of this. It's very simple. It's a three-step thing. Basically, send me an email. Okay, so let's move on. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a passionate belief that when this is all over, there's going to be two kinds of professionals, two kinds of organizations, two kinds of companies. You can couch this any way you want. There'll be those with very active and rich and robust relationships. And candidly, there will be those that have let complacency seep in and kill relationships. And I have to say that as crazy as that may sound, I'm already seeing it. Across all the industries I work in, not just your industry, I'm seeing weird examples of complacency. And nobody wakes up in the morning and says, listen, I'm going to be complacent today. And when we're in this virtual environment that we're in, we simply have to work differently, harder, and smarter to maintain those same relationships. Because, folks, at the end of the day, what really matters is it's not your client's job to remember you. And if you want to write anything down, I hope that you'll consider writing that down because it's not your client's job to remember you. And I say that a number of times throughout this presentation because two facts, to my observation, are clear. And I've also been validating this with lots of my clients, CEOs and operations folks and DPs of sales and CFOs. Look, we cannot replace lost selling time. It's gone forever. The selling time that we would have had at our disposal had COVID-19 not happened, well, we know what we've lost. We know the amount of time that we cannot be in front of our clients, that we cannot have the same kind of valuable interactions that make our businesses run and hum so well. So the second fact is we can't wait to act. Plans for recovery must begin now. And I want to share with you that I actually wrote this a few weeks ago, so really, if we're just now beginning recovery plans, we are behind the curve. Now, the beauty of this industry, what I'm seeing is that people get it, right? And the other wonderful thing I'm seeing as I talk to many people across your industry is that there is a deep caring and passion for people and maintaining our staff and our group and our people and making sure people are paid and taken care of and healthy. If you could see me right now, I would be tipping my virtual hat to you all because this industry, ladies and gentlemen, excels at that. And that's what I'm seeing. The reality of it is we have to think about the plans we're going to make today, yesterday, a week ago, so that when we can get back to some semblance of business as normal, not only are we ready, we've already begun. So our job is to make sure that we actually have clients to turn to when this is over because it's not about you or your troubles or your payroll issues or any issue with your business. It's about them. As much as your clients care about you and don't want you to suffer in this, they care more about themselves right now to make sure they can put food on the table. So if we remember that it's not about you, it's about them, then it's the boomerang roll. It all comes back to us. Now, if you're rolling your eyes a little bit and you're thinking, no I mean, you know, you would be surprised at how many people across all industries, when something like this happens, we go instinctively into And then the pressure builds and then our clients smell desperation. They smell, they get a whiff of something and they go, yeah, maybe I should stay away or maybe I can get the kind of deal they didn't want to give me before. We want to make sure we have clients to turn to when it's over and we want to make sure those clients view us as well as they viewed us prior to COVID-19. Our currency right now is people and culture. Our currency is people and culture. Now, I understand that money is how we make the world go round. However, if our people and our culture are not in place now, then the rest is elementary. It becomes moot very, very quickly. Now, I said this a few moments ago. I can't emphasize this enough. I'll never be able to say this enough. And it was a CEO in your business that actually said this to me first. I've heard this over my career and I was amazed when he said this to me because I just sort of thought, you know, I haven't heard this in so long and it's so true. It's not your customer's job to remember you. And just because your customers, your clients, your prospects may have business, they may be spending money, they may have opportunities, it doesn't mean right now they're going to remember you because they're going to take care of themselves first. So what we do now matters. I guess another way of saying this is how we show up today is absolutely how we will be remembered tomorrow. Please, please write that down. How we show up today is how we will be remembered tomorrow. What you're doing today, what you did yesterday, what you did last week, what you did a month ago when you were interacting with clients, with your own organization, with everybody who helps you help a client say yes, that's what I call a sales culture. Every interaction today will be remembered tomorrow. So friends, the question I have for you is how are you showing up today with every interaction, every email, every phone call, every video call, every virtual webinar, every Zoom, WebEx, whatever it is you're doing. And if you're like me, I'm looking forward to the day when I never utter the words pivot, virtual, or Zoom again. I'm looking forward to getting back in front of people again. And we must, must be cognizant about how we show up today because that has a direct impact, a direct influence. It's into the mainstream of how we, you, will make money tomorrow. Guaranteed, there is no doubt about this one. Because if we're not careful, our relationships will fade. You know, we'd like to think that everybody's loyal to us without fault. And I'd like to believe that as well. But at my age, at this point in my career, I'm not naive about that. People right now are looking to survive. And as much as we think we may have things locked down, we can never take that for granted. That is the dreaded curse of complacency. And two things kill companies, complacency and silos. The more work we do on this now, the quicker we'll get off to a fast, profitable, revenue-rich start when we can actually get out into the world again in a way that's meaningful and productive for our entire organizations. Because out of sight, out of mind. Now, if your clients can actually see you, notice the word see you, well you can figure the rest out. And you'll get a sense of where I'm going with this. Because as I said a moment ago, complacency kills. Now, I know there's some folks on this call who have heard parts of this presentation before. And I am thankful that you've opted to join me again because this is something that I don't think we can ever hear enough. This is something that I have to remind myself every single morning of. We can't get complacent because your customers, your clients, your prospects, your coworkers, your colleagues, the people that create your culture and your currency can tell, see, and sense complacency. We can't let that happen. And I'm going to share a little bit more about that in a moment. So our goal is very simple. It's about staying connected in ways that we're not used to doing. We have to work smarter, more efficiently, and yes, even a little bit harder to maintain the same level of parity that we had pre-COVID-19. So let me share with you, if I could, some very specific tips, tools, tactics, skills, if you will, about how to stay present when working virtually. Because you see, when I first wrote this presentation, it does me no good to tell you the tactical things you can do, write more proposals, cut your price, do that, do that, because you don't need me to tell you that because we don't want to do those things. Everything I'm sharing with you, and write this down if you would, please, is all about the mindset, the mindset and behavior of how we're approaching everything. This is all about the mindset and the belief that, ladies and gentlemen, those who are present achieve permanence. Those who are present achieve permanence. If you believe what I said a moment ago, that there is even a shred of chance that our clients will not remember us or can sense complacency or might look for other options, and it's happened to all of us. Nobody has a lock on the market and nobody can take anything for granted, especially in COVID-19. Those of you who lived through the downturn of 2008, 2009, 2010, and it certainly hit this industry exceptionally, exceptionally harder than a lot of other industries, we know how important it is to make sure that we are front and center when we can't physically be front and center because being front and center equals strong revenues. So how do we recover? Well, as I said a moment ago, it's all about what we're doing now. So in this white paper that I'm going to share with you that I'm going to tell you how to get at the end of this, I talk about what I call the recovery mindset. Again, I'm not going to give you recovery tips and sales tactics because you know what those are. I mean, we could always change the compensation plan or change up the sales team or change this or monkey wrench with that or adjust this and you know what, at the end of the day, those things aren't going to give us the leverage we need today. Today is about the people, the mindset, and how we're approaching the business because that's what our clients and that's what our people are going to remember. And I will keep reiterating that point over and over and over again because this requires a leap of faith on your part. This actually requires us to take a deep breath and say, wait a minute, wait a minute. We have to think differently about how we're interacting with everybody. So this recovery mindset is all around this concept of being present. Now those of you who have heard this presentation before, this is new content right here. It's all about being present. It's all about how we show up. It means open-mindedness. It's as one of your colleagues said to me recently, we're teaching our people to be a friend without expectation. I love that. It's about maintaining and creating meaningful relationships, making sure you're approachable. Our listening skills need to be sharper and more honed than ever because our clients, your clients, the people who put money in your pocket, ladies and gentlemen, listen to them and simply be there. You do business, I do business with people who show concern for me. I don't need my problem fixed. You can't fix COVID-19. I need you to, as the last one says, just show your humanity. Show me that you're in this with me. So here's eight-ish. Originally it was five, then it was six, and I keep learning from my customers, about things that they're doing. To those of you who attended the Day and a Half Sales Management Workshop that I conduct, that AED sponsors, you know that one of my passions is talking a lot about the power of presence because presence equals sales. Presence is the selling tool that we all have. People make a buying decision on us before they ever say a word. That's where recovery begins by shifting, changing, enhancing our mindset that, you know what? The very next interaction I have is going to lead to revenue. It may not put a dollar in my pocket today, but it sure might keep a dollar out of my competitor's pocket. Number one. And before I get into number one, just remember this. It's all about mindset. Mindset, mindset, mindset. When we go to the office in the morning or the virtual office, I know some of my clients are still going to the real office. In a lot of cases, our service departments are wide open. Our service departments right now ostensibly are our best salespeople. And at the very end of this presentation, I'm going to give you a very, very simple four-step way for your service organization, your parts organization to move customer relationships forward and, yes, put revenue in your pocket right now. Number one. If we want to sell more, we need to engage more. How we engage has changed. We know this. We can't let up on the engagement. We have to work harder to get people present and engaged with us. If you hear anybody saying, I think, I hope, I feel, I bet, or I assume, put a smile on your face and gently say, no, no, no. Tell me about the engagement. Tell me concretely what happened. How did we engage? Every engagement, every email, every phone call, every single time we interact with a colleague, a customer, a prospect, our parts, our service managers, departments, personnel, whoever it might be, finance, HR, we're getting a sense of we're in this together, or we're getting a sense of we're siloed. The more we engage, the more we do, the better relationships we have. So I'd like to propose the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds simply says, whatever you were doing before is now only a third as effective. It's true. I don't know if it's thirds or fourths or halves. But if you'll suspend disbelief for one moment and just go with me on this, right now, whatever we were doing before is about a third as effective. So our phone calls are only a third as effective. That's why we need to insist on video if we have the capabilities. And if they can't do videos, we need to find ways that guarantee that those folks that we want to connect with are present with us. We have to work smarter and harder and differently just to maintain parity. If you're wondering, as many of your peers have voiced to me, why am I not getting the same feedback? Why are the things I'm doing and I was doing not working the same way? It's because we're in a different environment. People's attention, the way we engage, the way we are present has changed. We can't expect the same results from doing what we were doing before. That's why I say recovery begins with mindset. Recovery begins with behavior. People and culture are your currency. This is an incredible time for us. And we have to think differently about how we work. Step away from the email. No conference calls. Video only. Now, I realize not everybody has the option for a video. In fact, Liz was mentioning to me, very quickly AED will be in a full video mode. And I'm looking forward to connecting with everybody face to face. Video guarantees presence. You see people's reactions. Here's a tactical tip for you. If you want to present a proposal to somebody, don't email it and say, get back to me when you can. Don't email it to them and say, here it is. Let's find time to discuss it or shoot me a date or let's set something up. You make a time to present that proposal over video the same way you would do it in person. You send that proposal 15 minutes before the call. And then you log on and you walk people through it. It's no different than being there live. You see, we have to work a little harder and a little differently. Face to face is meaningful. It's the most meaningful way to sell that we have. The next thing to do, besides making sure we're always on video if we can, is the multitasking. It corrodes relationships. You know the interesting thing about multitasking is like presence, you can't hide it. I know when somebody isn't with me. I know when somebody is doing something else, especially when you're on video and somebody's eyes click away and you know they have two screens on their desk or you know their phone is close by. You know for a fact the minute they click off and there's nothing more frustrating. And oh, by the way, that corrodes relationships and that corrodes our ability to make up the revenue that we've missed because people aren't present with us. This is why video is so critical. By the way, video is available to everybody. You can get free accounts. I'm not gonna shill for anybody. I happen to be somebody who uses Zoom because I find it to be the easiest. Whatever you do, do. Don't multitask. If you're sitting in front of a customer, are you gonna sit there and look at your phone or your watch or be obviously not present and disengaged? Of course you're not. Why would you do it here? People are smart. They sense it, we know it. I can tell, you can tell when somebody's clicked off. Decide how you wanna show up. This is another rule of being present that leads to profitability. How do you wanna show up? When you're doing that video call, what are you wearing? What do you want people to see? Now if you could see me, you could see that, well, I actually shaved this morning and I put a nice clean pair of jeans on and my white shirt that says Todd Cohen and everyone's in sales on it. And I actually thought about how I want you all to see me. This is no time to be letting down our guard because frankly, ladies and gentlemen, nobody wants to see your fuzzy slippers. I don't care. I don't wanna see them because these are my slippers and right now you're thinking, I don't care. I don't wanna see them. In fact, I forgot that I even had them until my wife reminded me that she gave these to me for a holiday. Make sure you're making eye contact. This is where not multitasking leads to revenue. Eye contact is a dead giveaway. It's a surefire sign. You know what? That somebody's listening to you. How can you do that if you're not insisting on video? We have to work harder and smarter and more efficiently to maintain that same level of parity. I want you, when we're done with this call, to walk around your offices, either virtual or if you're in your office. Think differently about how you're engaging people. If you walk into somebody's office and they're looking at the screen going, yep, go ahead, I'm listening. No, they're not. We know how frustrating that is. Or if you look at your watch while you're speaking with somebody, even though it may be innocent, it sends a message. Eye contact matters. And if you have a hard time making eye contact, here's how you do it. You start what's called the rule of 28. Write this down, the rule of 28. Every day, practice making eye contact with somebody. Five seconds, 10 seconds, 11 seconds, 12 seconds. At the end of 28 days, it will become a habit. You've changed your behavior. I've done this, it works for me. I can be a little ADD, I know it. I can be a little all over the board. I freely admit it, I work hard in maintaining eye contact. Now virtual, if we want to drive revenue, we have to send the message to people in ways that we never have before. That I am here, I am present, I am engaged, and I am in this with you. And we've all heard that expression, I'm in this with you. Now we're defining it. Don't take anything for granted. So let's do a little quiz question, shall we? Presence can be more effectively maintained. Well, the answer's already there, okay, but we'll have a little fun with this anyhow. Presence can be more effectively maintained in person, electronically, both or neither. So if I were asking you all to vote, you're really smart people at AED, so you would of course say number three. You can maintain presence in person, obviously. You can certainly maintain presence electronically. Listen to how I'm speaking, I'm raising my voice, I'm lowering it, if you could see me again, I'm standing as I'm talking. I bought myself a pop-up desk, a Veridesk. I'm speaking the same way that I speak in my keynotes, the keynotes that you've seen me do. I'm not changing my routine, please write that down. Don't change your routine, very important. Next rule of maintaining presence and driving revenue and recovering lost selling time, use names. People have a name. When you use somebody's name, it's the same impact as maintaining eye contact. It sends the message to people that I am with you. You know how your competitors are looking away and looking at their watches and trying to scoot their eyes to the right or to the left? Well, guess what, that sends a very strong message. Using somebody's name sends the right positive message. So Liz McCabe, thank you for setting this up this morning. I know my colleague Rich Anderson from ECA in Philadelphia is on this call this morning. I don't know who else is out there, but if I knew, I would call you all out by name. Because when you hear your name, you snap to attention. You know the message that sends? Is that as a vendor, as a partner, as somebody who wants to do business with you in the same way we were, I'm here now. This is how we replace those hours, by thinking about how we're showing up now. It's a mindset shift, ladies and gentlemen. There's no easy check a box answer to this. Ask questions throughout. If you're presenting a proposal, if you're having an interaction, hopefully it's video. Now this setup is a little bit different because we're all on silent because of the number. We have over 100 people attending here this morning. But I always say, ask questions. So again, my colleague, Rich Anderson, who is out there, I would say, Rich, how have you maintained presence? And I know Rich can't get on the call. Or Jeff Harmston, or any of the folks that I know, that I work with and know through my workshops are out there. Don't ramble and drone on. Increase your odds of engagement and differentiation because that's what counts, folks. You wanna replace lost hours, you can. You can't. The only thing we can do is make sure we're present now so that when the time is right, your customers say to you the golden statement. Ready, here it is. You know what? You were there with me when I couldn't do something. Now I'm ready. You see, that's the opposite of complacency. That's a mature business leader who understands what I call emotional intelligence, EQ. If you want a great book to read throughout all of this, pick up the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman. That book will change how you see people and how people see you. Do a book club on it. Some of my clients, some people on this call have started a book club. Think about that. What a great way to engage people. Ask people, well, you know I like to do this. Ask people to write things down. So write this down, everybody. Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to write this down. Write down, write this down. There, I said that a couple times. Write this down. Because you know what happens when you ask people to write things down? Now they're more engaged with you. Where you might not have done that in the past, now we have to work a little harder. Now we have to do things a little differently. No, actually, we have to do things a lot differently. You can't replace the hours. What you can do is change how we show up. Because everything that I'm suggesting to you, if you do it and you do it consistently and you do it correctly and you make it a religion, people will remember you first. And that's what I want to be known as. As a speaker, as an author doing what I do, I want my clients to think of me first when their business is ready. I want you to understand that's how I think and that's what I want you to do as well. Because I'm 100% certain that will drive revenue. Affirm, confirm, and reaffirm. Never, ever miss an opportunity to say, does that resonate? Is there anything about what I just said didn't make sense? How can I help you sort through this? Are we on the same page? Now, by the way, everybody has their own way of affirming, confirming, and reaffirming. One of the things I like to do is say, write this down. In my workshops, I always say, what's sticking with you? What part of this particular module stuck out? Okay, guys, give me questions. Bring it on. Level me with them. You see, I'm willing to be very vulnerable and open myself up because that's how people see that I'm real and you all do the same thing with your customers, your people, because you're caring, good, decent business people who understand that at the end of the day, we're all just people trying to figure this out. I implore you to be more present than most because that will drive revenue. So are you all listening? Okay, I know you are. This is just a gratuitous attempt to put my perfect doggie in there. And that's Luna, by the way, and you'll get her email at the end of this. And we're gonna be taking some questions at the end of this, by the way. Okay, so second quiz question. Using somebody's blank screens, you are present. Using their rank, title, company name, or name. Well, the answer is obviously name. It's obviously name. So when I hear my name, I snap to attention. This is an extraordinary time for you to work on your humility, your vulnerability, and your ability to acknowledge. If you wanna be top of mind with your clients, don't try to fix something that doesn't need fixed. Don't try to solve a problem that they don't need solved. Simply be there to listen. Are you calling every client you have right now or reaching out to them in some fashion and saying, hey, how are things? This really stinks, doesn't it? And just shut up and listen. I do this every single day. I call clients past and present. Because really, I wanna hear how they're doing. And I do it, write this down please, without agenda. I'm offering this webinar this morning not because AED asked me to. It's because of my partnership with AED and because we've worked together so long and because I believe so passionately in this. Because I can pick up the phone and call Liz McCabe and say, Liz, I have something I think the membership might like. I do it without agenda. I know you all do the same thing. I see we have some questions coming in. We're gonna try to get to them as best as we can. Here's a tactical thing for you and something we often forget. Now, if you take everything I've said so far and line it up in a neat little circle or a neat little line, now we have the opportunity to end every conversation with an ask to move the relationship forward. You see, as I said before, I never ever wanna hear anybody say, you know what, get back to me when you can. Or, you know what, shoot me a date. You see, and write this down please, we never wanna abdicate the moment to move something forward. Because right now, your clients, your prospects, your colleagues, we're all trying to figure this out. I need a little help. I need some guidance. Please help me help you. Ask me, help me do that. Don't expect me to know what the next step is. Because in this environment, the rules have changed. If you wanna replace hours and replace selling time, this is an extraordinary way to make sure that something is gonna happen after every interaction. So when we're done with today's message, I'm going to absolutely have an ask for you. And it may not be the ask you're thinking. Because I wanna move our relationship forward. I want you to end every conversation with an ask. And that ask simply may be, hey listen, you wanna get together next week and grab a cup of coffee virtually or maybe if you're in the office, have a grab a cup of coffee. Don't ever leave a conversation without knowing the next step. Don't, as I said a moment ago, write this down. Don't ever abdicate the moment. Be approachable. Approachability is profitability. We all know what it feels like when we walk up to somebody and there's a look on their face that says, get away. And you know what? If your customers sense that, then we may have a real deeper problem. If you're not approachable, stay home. And if you are staying home, don't get out of bed. If you're not approachable, you're doing more damage to yourself, your reputation, your customers, your sales team and your profitability than anything else I could ever teach you. Nobody wants to do business with somebody they think is gonna bite their face off. We all know what that feels like. Rinse and repeat. Everything I'm sharing with you, ladies and gentlemen, is rinse and repeat. This is all behavior. This is all mindset. These are all things you can start doing immediately when you're done with this call. Because what I can promise you is, your relationships will improve. They will get better. You will see silos come down. Silos kill companies. Here's another quiz question for you. Eye contact means that you are intense, you're listening, you have an astigmatism and need to see the optometrist. Or you simply just like to intimidate people. Well, the answer is, as you can see, number two. Eye contact means you're listening. So, as I said at the beginning of this, I was gonna share with you an idea that we can now share with everybody about how in fact, we can practice everything I've suggested to you. Everything I'm sharing with you, that I'm 100% sure works. I've been sharing this with your industry for years. Every time I do workshops inside companies, I always end with this and I always hear this works. So I'm gonna give you a brief introduction into the secret sauce of recovering sales. So in addition to everything else I've shared with you, this is about making sure that we understand that sales recovery is making every interaction count. I want you to write that down. Because if you don't get this piece, ladies and gentlemen, guess what? Nothing else matters. Because this is what I mean when I say we have to work differently, harder, smarter, more efficiently. We cannot, write this down, take anything for granted. If we take things for granted or we get complacent or we assume, hope, think, feel, I bet, now we've lengthened our own corporate recovery. I'm gonna say that again. If we let any of these behaviors, these negative behaviors, sort of seep into our souls and impact how we show up, we've now lengthened our recovery. So you see, today isn't about adding hours. It's about making sure we're prepared so that when we can get back to doing business the way we want to do it, we're already way ahead of the game. 100% certain what I'm sharing with you today will work. Sales recovery is making every interaction count. Every email, every phone call, every I hope video call. So this is what I call ELSA. Many of you on this call have heard this because you've been through my workshops. And I believe, and I thank you for listening to this again. And I believe you can never hear this enough because we all know, and I'd like you to write this down, we need to be exposed to something between three and seven times before it sticks. Well, for many of us, this might be the third time. Some of us, it's the fifth time. Some of us, it's the first time. ELSA will change how we sell. ELSA will change how we teach people around the organization, as I say, how to build a sales culture, how everyone's in sales. The E is for engage. Well, we have to engage differently, as I said earlier. Every engagement has to matter. If we want to sell more, we need to engage more. Don't sit at your desk wondering how to engage. Reach out and say, I'd like to do a video call with my entire team today, one-on-one, and ask the following question. What can I do for you? How is this working? Let's talk about your proposal. Whatever it is you want to talk, you must engage more. Anybody who thinks that we don't have to engage more and differently is going to be complacent very quickly. L is for listen. That shouldn't surprise anybody. Listening is an art and a skill. We have to do it differently. This is where the rule of thirds comes in oh so well. We have to listen differently, and how do we listen differently? Because we're on video, we're making eye contact, we're asking people to write things down. We are affirming, confirming, and reaffirming. We are sending the message to our world that your company and me in particular, I am here and I am ready, and when you're ready, I will be ready. You don't even have to say it. Your behavior, your mindset will send that message, and that's how we replace this time. You can hear the passion in my voice. Make a suggestion. Right now, your customers, your colleagues, your clients, your co-workers, they don't always know the next step. Don't assume it's going to be a no. Don't assume that they know. Make a suggestion. I close about 40% of my speaking and workshop business because I make a suggestion to my clients about here's what we can do next. Have you considered video? Have you considered workshops? Have you considered an all-in, whatever it might be? You see, I never assume that people know what's next, but somewhere in there, it's always a safe bet with our clients and our customers. If they like you and they like your service, which they do, they want to know what's next. Your service personnel, your parts personnel, every single person who's active in your business has the power to make a suggestion. If we're not showing them they can do that, we are essentially firing some of our best salespeople. Now, I want you to think about that, because you want to talk about replaced hours? Let's talk about the people who are interacting, and what are we doing today to help them sell without making them uncomfortable about selling? That's where I come in when I talk about ELSA. And finally, the A shouldn't surprise you. It's for ask. As I said a moment ago, don't ever leave a conversation without asking for a next step. If anybody from this point on ever says, get back to me when you can, I will come through the phone, you'll see my big, grizzled hand say, no! I'm gonna send you a picture of me shaking my finger, going, nope, try again, and nobody really wants that, I know. Hopefully you're all laughing when I say that, because I can hear my wife laughing in the other room. ELSA, engage, listen, suggest, and ask. It is so easy, it is so correct, it works, because right now your clients are looking to you to guide them. Write this down if you would, please. What are you doing to help your clients through this in terms of guidance? Hey, we're not done yet. Here's some market-facing activity that you can all do now, some additional relationship-building things that I've seen a lot of your people, a lot of people in your industry, start to do to good impact, to good effect. Start a virtual study club. One of my clients, Rich Anderson, he has his sales team reading a book, reading books, reading books that are out of the norm a little bit. Read Emotional Intelligence, read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, read Good to Great. There's so many amazing books out there that can build relationships and get people thinking. I'm actually doing a book club with some of my clients right now. They love it, it's without agenda, we're all having fun. Update your client lists. Listen, I shouldn't have to tell you that one, folks. If you haven't already started that project, well, then we need to talk. Update your LinkedIn, participate in conversations, and you know what? Write a recommendation for somebody. I'm writing three recommendations a week. The recommendations I've been putting off and saying I gotta write that, I gotta write that, I have to write that, that person did me a solid. They didn't ask for a recommendation, but I'm gonna go ahead and do it anyhow. Get on LinkedIn, update your profiles. People are looking at LinkedIn at an exponentially higher rate right now. People are looking at social media at an exponentially higher rate. Participate in conversations. Don't just thumb up something. Say, hey, this is really interesting. Ron, I really appreciate your comment on this. What do you think about that? Call everyone you haven't talked to. I say one to three months or longer, I don't care. Call everybody. Ask for a video call. People are answering the phones. Unleash your creative side. What can you be doing? What have you been putting off? And in a moment, I'm gonna show you how to actually make that happen. Work on professional development. Hey, you're all here this morning because you know AED offers these. You know maybe you'll, in this one, hopefully you'll pick up a nugget or two. Never miss an opportunity to better yourself because that's how we differentiate. You see, replacing, recovering lost selling time isn't about the impossible, putting more hours in a day. It's about how we're behaving now so that when we can go back to where we were, by golly, you are getting out of the gate stronger than you ever have. It's about thinking differently about every interaction. Here's a fourth quiz question. Uh-oh, no arrow there. Maybe this one will work. At the end of every conversation, you have earned the right to hang up, walk away, ask for the next step, or send an invoice. Hey, if anybody on the phone is in accounting or finance, I know you wanna send an invoice. But guess what? The answer is ask for the next step. What's next? Help your client take the next step with you. Don't be afraid. Now is not the time, ladies and gentlemen, to stop employee education and training. It's the time to change your culture. It's the time to energize it. It's the time to leverage everybody and how they're interacting with everybody. Recovery lies in the hands of your people. The decisions you make now will have long-term consequences for your recovery. Do you have a sales culture or a silo culture? Please remember that every single person impacts the customer's decision to say yes. That's a sales culture. That's a healthy culture. It's a culture where people understand what sales is and what sales isn't. In a moment, I'll share with you a special report that I'll give to you. I had it out there for a year. It's called Smashing the Sales Stereotype. Here's a final word. Please let your customers inspire you. I don't pretend to know all the answers in my speaking business. I ask constantly to help me make better decisions, to help me say, what should I be doing? Guess what? This next piece, which I'll show you in a second, is something that somebody from your industry actually came up with. So fifth quiz question. ELSA stands for Entertain, Listen, Sing, or Ask. Energize, Learn, Sing, and Assume. Sorry, I'm laughing. Engage, Laugh, Suggest, and Accomplish. Engage, Listen, Suggest, and Ask. Because I know you've all been paying unbelievable attention to this and not multitasking and just imagining me in my virtual studio jumping around. The answer is Engage, Listen, Suggest, and Ask. This is the idea that my client gave to me. I shared with you at the beginning of this that my client said to me, listen, I gotta figure out how to catch up, play catch up. So he and I talked and I shared with some other of my clients what I was thinking, and this ad campaign came out of it. And I'm doing this in a five by seven card that I'm doing snail mail to different client segments. I am so grateful to my clients because they chose to give me a suggestion which meant that they understood my business well enough. We were present with each other, and I don't have a sense that, you know what, I have to figure it all out. My clients right now, my customers, my colleagues, they're my inspiration. I dare you all to call your clients and say, what do you want from us when this is over? And then you could even laugh and say, and don't ask me to cut the price in half, and don't ask me to lower my utilization, and don't ask me to lower my rental rates, and don't ask me to change my lease factors. Build relationships, that's how we recover time. So as we begin to conclude here, actually as we're about to conclude here, ladies and gentlemen, here's my ask for you. Would you like my special report called Post-COVID-19 Revenue Recovery, It's All About the Culture? If the answer is yes, then I ask you to send me an email, luna.toddcohen.com. And if you would, please, in the tagline, just write special report. I'll attach it, and I'll send it right back to you. Next Monday, the 11th, at noon Eastern Standard Time, I'm having an open session, Q&A. A lot of people on this call have already signed up. We're gonna have people, hopefully, from across industries. It's open, it's live, it's unrehearsed. There are no slides. I don't know how it's gonna go. But you know what? Bring your lunch, have a little fun, laugh at me as I try to come up with something different. And that's what I want you to do. It's constantly thinking about, how do I engage differently? Ladies and gentlemen, I believe passionately we have an extraordinary opportunity to show people who we are, not just as business people, but as people. This is what gets me up every day. I get to practice my humility, vulnerability, my ability to acknowledge, my approachability in ways I've never had to do before. Guess what? No one ever said this was gonna be easy. We will get through this. And I'm sorry, that's a cliche. I'm not gonna tell you to wash your hands again. I'm certainly not gonna tell you anything else that you've already been hearing. Here's what I'm gonna suggest to you. Start engaging differently. Start thinking about the mindset and the behavior that we have to bring to the table. Because if you think you know the answer to all this, then you are ahead of everybody, because nobody does. Nobody does. We're all trying to figure this out. If I can bring this message into your organization, my ask is, please reach out to me, Luna at ToddCohen.com or Todd at ToddCohen.com, and ask. Let's talk about that. Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook. I'm very easy to find. I'm posting content constantly. Some of it goofy, some of it worthwhile, but all from a place of passion. Ladies and gentlemen, you've given me 54 minutes of your valuable time. I am very fond of this organization, this industry, and everybody I've had the wonderful opportunity to meet in all my work with AED. I hope and I know that will continue. I am here if you need me. You know how to reach me, super easy. So on that note, I will have a sip of water, and Liz, if you're out there, Liz McCabe, I will turn it back over to you. All right, well, thank you, Todd. We did get a couple questions that came in, if you wouldn't mind taking those. The first one is, how do you change the habits of your sales force? Well, so I see that. So Salvatore, I see that you did post that question. So without knowing more information about specifically what you're talking about, habit change, by the way, is one of the hardest things in the world. And I'd like to know a little bit more about the habits you're referring to. So if they're technical habits, that's one way of approaching it. If it's behavior or mindset habits, they are different ways of approaching it. So what I'm gonna suggest to you, Salvatore, is I would make an offer to you. If you'd like to talk to me about this one-on-one, I would be more than happy to spend as much time on the phone video as you would like. If you just send an email to luna at toddcohen.com and set up a video call, let's do that. It would be my pleasure because it's a longer conversation, candidly, than we have. The short answer, quickly, is what you model and what you hold people accountable to is what they'll do. And you have to quite literally say to somebody, that's not the behavior we're modeling in this organization versus walking away from it or letting it go. Or the worst thing we can do is because somebody's a high performer, letting them get away with bad behavior. And if somebody's a low performer and they're getting away with bad behavior, that's a different conversation. So there's all sorts of variables in this, Salvatore, and I'd like to spend a little more time digging in. And I'll make that, frankly, I'll make that conversation open to anybody if you'd like to join in. Liz, any other, I'm sort of getting a whole big stream here so are there any other questions? Yeah. Yeah, one more. Do you have a one-to-one video resource that you recommend? Yes, me, one-to-one. No, so if you're asking about are there video resources out there, there's way too much. What I do have that I can offer, and it's absolutely no charge, is I have four hours of what's called a sales culture online classroom. It's content that I created about, oh, a year and change ago. And I was doing it under a subscription model, I just couldn't keep up with it, and I'm redoing my website, so I'm making that content available. I know the good folks at Equipment Corporation of America have it, and I've made it available. If you would like those video resources, it's almost five hours of video, so there's a lot there. And it plays off of a lot of this, and it plays off of sales culture. Again, send me an email, and I'll be happy to send you those links. I'm giving away the store here, folks. The only thing I'm not giving you is Ginsu knives this morning. So, sorry, that was too easy. All right, anything else, Liz? Nope, I think that's it for questions. Thank you again, Todd, for joining us today. And yeah, if anyone else has any questions, feel free to reach out to Todd directly. And just, you know, thanks again for your time this morning. Yeah, thank you, everybody. I wish you nothing but health and happiness. And again, at the risk of the cliche, we are gonna get through this, and we are all gonna see each other in person live again one day very soon. Be well, everybody.

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recovering selling time

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approachable attitude

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ELS framework

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