In this live training, I have Niraj Kapur joining me to discuss how you can prospect and sell on LinkedIn.

Katie Thomas, CPA (00:00):

So hello everyone. If you’re joining me, let me know if you can hear me and see me in the comments. Comment down below where you’re joining from. If you’re here on replay right down below hashtag replay. So today we have a really awesome person with us. We have Niarj Kapur. He is a Salesforce top sales influencer for 2021. He’s a best selling author of not one but two books. He’s a sales coach and LinkedIn trainer. And he has been so kind to give us a little bit of his time today to teach us all about sales. So I know this is going to be a really cool presentation. You’re going to learn a lot. And with that, thanks so much Niraj for joining us.

Niraj Kapur (00:52):

No, it’s a pleasure. Hey Katie, good evening, everybody. In Irelend, it’s eight hours ahead of the west coast of America. And wherever you are in the world, it’s fantastic to see you. And thank you so much for joining, give you as much value as I possibly can, and look forward to hearing your questions afterwards.

Katie Thomas, CPA (01:08):

Awesome. And so if anyone has questions, as Niraj is going through his presentation today, feel free to comment them down below. I’m going to be watching the Facebook group and making sure that we feed those questions to Niraj. And then Niraj also left some time for Q and a at the end. So don’t be shy. Ask your questions. I’m serious. When I say Neeraj, I is just a wealth of knowledge and we’re so lucky to have them. So with that, I’m going to turn it over to Niraj, to take it away and present on everything he has.

Niraj Kapur (01:42):

That’s fantastic. Okay. Perfect. Little Katie. Can you see the screen? Okay. Yeah, I can see it. Okay. So we’re talking about sales prospecting without the sleeves. So it’s about how to build confidence in sales, leveraging LinkedIn, objection, handling, writing an email people reply to prospecting. And of course the Q and a for yourselves at the very end. Now, the only rule I have is police techniques because we listen to what I say, 50%. You’ll forget Mauro and 95% forget in a week. I learned that from turning a four day Tony Robbins event in London in 2018. And he said, if you take notes, all of a sudden you’re number 40%. And when you take action, it was up to 70%. When you got one-to-one coaching, it’s a hundred percent. I want you to think 70 to a hundred percent home with you, 20%. So police take notes, lots and lots of notes.

Niraj Kapur (02:38):

And then tell you a quick story before we start. There’s a big TV show in America called the apprentice in the UK is called the apprentice. And yeah, I want sugar. And you have current rating. They’ve been running it for many, many years. Han is one of the most successful female entrepreneurs in the UK. Just over three years ago of her songs at university of Buckingham in England is near where I, when I was doing some teaching on sales at university of Buckingham on, they invited me to speak. That was fantastic. And then Karen was speaking there and was just fantastic. And Carol barely spoke. She was eloquent. She was very funny. She was, she was quite brilliant. And she goes, do you have any questions on, there was complete silence. And nobody said, I raise my harness account. I have a question. I wanted more time with my family and I wanted less stress in my life.

Niraj Kapur (03:26):

So I set up my own business. Everybody unfortunately burst out laughing. And she said, how’s that working for you? I said, not too good. It’s awful. It’s so stressful. Nobody realizes how stressful it is having your own business. What advice can you give me please, to a newbie? Someone who’s worked their entire life in corporate London, 23 years in corporate London, and now I’ve got my own business. Now I’m really struggling. And she goes, that is a fantastic question. And she gave me her answer. And then afterwards, she says, you know what? Asking questions is just a great thing to do. People think you have to have right answers. But when you ask the right questions, you help other people. And she says, you told me you’re a sales trainer. And I said, yeah, I’m a really good sales trainer, but I’m not finding much work at the moment.

Niraj Kapur (04:04):

And she goes, do you have a business card? I’m like, yeah. She goes, okay. I’m the vice chairman of west hound football club, a premiership football club. We need a sales trainer. Somebody will call you next week. I couldn’t believe it just because I asked a great question. This opportunity came to me. And just so you know, it’s been three and a half years. And Karen Brady still hasn’t returned my phone calls. I called her for months. I spoke to her PA not late, no luck at all, by the way, what was good about that evening while so many of my peers were there and they were saying, you know what? That was a great question. You’ve really helped me asking that question. So when you ask a great question, you’re not just helping yourself. You’re helping so many people who are going to be on this call, who maybe are a bit shy or introvert or a bit unsure.

Niraj Kapur (04:43):

You’re going to help so many people when you ask questions. So please bear that in mind. Okay? All right, here we go. Not how do you build confidence in sales? You build it through a vision board. This is the first thing any of my clients have to do before we work together. Because if your confidence is negative, or if you’re frustrated about something or I’m angry about something, you’re not feeling great about life in general. And by the way, this happens to all of us. A vision board is vital because it keeps you centered on it keeps you focused, and it keeps you in a positive mindset. Now, what is a vision board? It can be an a four or a three sheet and a consists of two things. The first half of the vision board are the things you’ve achieved in life. Because in this world, we’re very quick to criticize ourselves.

Niraj Kapur (05:32):

I’m a very slow to phrase ourselves for the great things we do. So police have stopped. Just remind yourself. That’s what we should put us for reminding of all the good things you’ve done in life. And the second part of the vision board is all the things you want to achieve in the future. Now, this should be a mixture of materialistic goals and personal goals. So a personal goal or a meaningful goal can be like family, a partner, kids being an uncle, being an loving your parents, loving your children. What ever matters to you in life. Remember this is about use, not about impressing somebody else it’s about you. And then a lot of you will have, of course, the materialistic goals, which is a nicer car, a bigger high school holiday home, a dream of the day. So many people have Australia or the Northern lights or some kind of dream there.

Niraj Kapur (06:20):

This is what you’re going to be thinking about. And you put these in the vision board. And I look at the vision board, it’s on my phone, it’s on my laptop, it’s on my fridge. And it’s by my bedside table. I am looking at it 60 to 70 times a day without even thinking about it. And so means if I’ve had a bad day or a member of staff has called in sick and I’m doing their work as well as mine, or just say a big rejection from our clients, I thought will become a client or a client. All of a sudden can’t pay their bills. These things are going to affect your mindset. And the mindset is going to your sales justice. It’s going to affect other things as well, but it will affect your ability to sell. It will affect your ability to function as well as you can throughout the day. So the vision board keeps you centered. The vision board keeps you focused. The vision board helps you when you’re going through rejection in no matter what it is, not just seals anything. So please have visions that inspire you and encourage you. Hi, neurologists, have a quick question.

Katie Thomas, CPA (07:20):

How often do you update your vision board?

Niraj Kapur (07:26):

Every quarter I look at it and see, do I have to make a change trip? Not in 2019 and 2020, I was going through a very painful divorce. I lost my mind emotionally on my wallet financially. It was pretty horrible smell. My vision board was changing more than usual, but the moment my vision board hasn’t changed in six months, which is great. That I’m really happy about that. But every quarter, I mean, obviously I’m looking at it every day, but every quarter I sit down for half an hour to think, okay, is there anything I would change? Anything I would add is nothing I’m going to take away. That’s a brilliant question, Katie. Thank you. I’m also in the vision board, you’ll have things that inspire you. This is my rock back in England, and we do lots of rock gigs for cancer research.

Niraj Kapur (08:10):

Cause I’ve lost a lot of friends in my life and cancer and our guitar player on the left mic. He served in the army for 20 years. So we need a lot of army charities, well to raise money for army veterans. But that’s, that’s my why that makes me happy. We’re playing all these gray rock songs for covering the Beatles and the who and Jimmy Hendrickson early Fleetwood mark. And it’s just, it’s brilliant. It always puts a smile on my face. The other things on your vision board is just get yourself moved. Think of some kind of exercise you should be doing. This is good for your mindset as well. First thing in the morning, I’m swimming. I’m walking a meditate. I’m just doing something that’s not just the mundane of going straight to work. Please remember as important as your work is. I know a lot of American clients, I have an American people I know, and a lot of the Asian people I know as well, they have an incredible work ethic and the work almost becomes our life.

Niraj Kapur (08:59):

Sometimes. Please remember as important as your work is as important as your career is, your career is not your life. I cannot stress this. Not as somebody who’s achieved great success in life, but is this, it, it don’t reach that point in life. It’s not a great place to be. And if you want your recommended reading list, just go to everybody works in sales.com. There’s book recommendations that are on personal development or business autobiographies. I can recommend for people to read this, go on to the website, scroll down to the homepage. It’s there for you. So this is your vision board, and that is your mindset on your gut to really get that right? Don’t forget. There’s other things as well are common sense, like, especially for man, when you’re struggling with certain issues, talk to people, women are fantastic at this. Men aren’t tend to keep these things to ourselves.

Niraj Kapur (09:47):

So a lot of it is common sense, but don’t forget common sense. Isn’t common practice. So that is a vision board on the confidence side of things. Everybody please, as one of your takeaways, because everybody should be having takeaways. They want to implement at the end of this, at least three takeaways, every single person should implement. And one of those takeaways should be to create a vision board if you haven’t done one already. Okay. So the next part of prospecting is your LinkedIn profile. Linkedin is the world’s biggest business platform. In 2020, there were 660 million users as of June, 2021, there are 760. It was just incredible. It’s going to keep on growing. Nothing can touch it. So make sure you get your profile, right? And then we’ll come on to afterwards pike and prospect, but there’s no point prospecting unless you get the basics, right?

Niraj Kapur (10:42):

People always want the magic solutions. And my advice is, please get the basics right first. Then you can improvise and do whatever you want, but you’ve got to get the basics, right? So the first thing people see is this thing here, it’s called a headline banner. Your headline banner should all be your logo. Your logo means nothing to most people. It doesn’t what people care about is how do you help them? So, you know, I have a client’s new cake or a Clinton. What they don’t do is say I’m going to content. That means nothing. There’s loads of accountants out there. What you want to be thinking about is standing right on the content she’s in her twenties and nobody took her seriously. So she started speaking in public and I trained her up and she raised a sports cars. And that’s what she talks about.

Niraj Kapur (11:27):

She’s known as only the sports driver, because all she does is a sports car. She stands out the most pictures of her with a sports car, but that’s her brand. So you want to be thinking, how do you start? I saved my clients $2,000 a year on their tax report. I want to content with a sense of humor. I don’t mind, but it has to be distinct. Don’t just say, you’re doing what other appointments you’re doing. How are a good thing, but what can you put on your banner about how you help people are what makes you different? That’s very important. Also make sure you have your contact details here as well, make it easy for people to contact you. All right. So think very carefully about your headline banner. And don’t just say kind of do more than that. Okay. I’m a sales coach.

Niraj Kapur (12:15):

That’s what I do. But luckily I got this award from Salesforce. If you have any industry award, that means something that dot there. If you’ve written a book, I’d standing with that there and you have the book, you should do one because I don’t know many accountants. In fact, I know hundreds of accountants, not a single one is written access to a really good idea. I don’t know a single a continence written the book. There you go. So just think, what can you say in your job title is a bit different or that at least tells people what you do. Don’t just say our content. That’s not enough. No, I’m going to work from top to bottom just to make life easier. So underneath your headline, banner on your job title, you have your abide section. This is really important. And most people either have two lines, which doesn’t really tell anybody what they do or they cram it full of information, just too much or many cases it’s empty.

Niraj Kapur (13:09):

All three are unacceptable. You got to tell people what you do, tell them how you help them tell them the kind of clients you work with by all means. Give example the clients. If you’re fiercely protective of your clients. I understand that if you mentioned your client’s names, leave your competition Chester. Yes, they will. Because all my plans get chased every day, but the competition they do that told me that. But I choose to do that because that’s credibility on my part. But you can simply say you work clients in these sectors. If you want to, or if you have a data protection thing going, but let people know how you help them. The kind of clients you work with, maybe take them on a journey. This is what happens. The moment you become our client, make it special. Tell them about the accounting experience.

Niraj Kapur (13:57):

Don’t just say it to your tax returns. You got to do better than that. You’ve got to raise your standards. You really do because everybody else has just doing what’s average in life. You want to stand out, you gotta be better. So spend time working in this, this is probably the search will take the longest to get right. Get us the most important section. Now underneath the ABOG section, or do you have a well, we can keep going on and on and on. But really what I want to talk about is testimonials because we keep going Don and Don and Don, you eventually come to testimonials or some people call them LinkedIn recommendations. Now, when you go in a whole day, what do you do? You go online, usually all to Google and see what are people saying? You might go to TripAdvisor or some website.

Niraj Kapur (14:43):

When you go to Amazon, a bipolar, what do you do? You’ll look at the Amazon reviews. Use testimonials recommendations, call it what you like. They matter so much. You need to have them on LinkedIn. You got to have them in your website and you send proposals, declines. You got include presentation, got include testimonials as well. And the testimony should have the client’s name, the person’s job title and the company they work for. Again, don’t just say J Smith, USA. Okay. That doesn’t mean anything. You’ve got to have a person’s name, job title and the company they work for. Okay. And the reason I’m saying this is important, isn’t just for the reasons I’ve given mine is because during lockdown, I was pitching for a lot of new business. I lost all my businesses, March, 2020. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. Everything disappeared, 48 hours.

Niraj Kapur (15:34):

It took me almost rebuilding it back on my feet. That was really scary. And one of the things that really helped me cause I was doing paid for webinars. My competition were being free. Once again, standing on I wrote second book. Well, first of my competitors didn’t even write the first book. And one thing I did was I started asking for testimonials for people and there’s quite a few bits of business I was pitching for. Anytime you ever want a client, it’s always good to ask the client. Why do you choose me for, if you ever lose a piece of business, it’s also important to ask, what did I, what could I have done better? These are really important question to ask. Most people don’t ask them, why did you choose me? And what could I have done better? And whenever I asked them, why did you choose me?

Niraj Kapur (16:18):

Sometimes I say, you know what? It was quite competitive, but you have 30 LinkedIn recommendations your competitor. Or he kept telling me that they’re the best in UK are the best in Europe. They have five recommendations. So keep that in mind, recommendations really to matter, please get that. Right right now I’m not wanting to go into LinkedIn in any more detail because that will take up the entire session. But I wanted to kind of touch on the most important points on your profile, your headline, banner, your job, title, your a, a section on the recommendations. Okay? So the next part of LinkedIn, which is very important is the content you post. A lot of people don’t know what call it that they should propose and that’s okay. That’s everybody goes through that. So the first thing you should do, if you’re ever unsure is liar can comment on other people’s posts or more.

Niraj Kapur (17:12):

Don’t just go to somebody’s post and go grant. Awesome. Cool. Like it’s five words or more. The LinkedIn algorithm likes that. So please bear that in mind. The second thing you can do, as you can see from the cockpit company here, it’s just help other people. This is a cockpit company. I knew that are going through a tough time. So I promote their business. There’s nothing in it for me. I am disappointed to say I didn’t get free cupcakes, a little personality. I think I deserve them, but I think they have the three copies, but it was just me helping somebody who is struggling. That’s it. And I got tremendous Goodwill off the back of it. I needed a post afterwards thanking me for, you know, because not a lot of people are the way to help other people. So our other clients of yours that you have already on LinkedIn, you should be promoting them.

Niraj Kapur (17:55):

You should be liking and commenting on leash, share, you know, helping them as much as you can never take your clients for granted your clients, for lack of a better phrase or your bread and butter take good care of them, but also make sure you’re always looking for new business as well, because prospecting is very important. It’s the heart of your business. So make supporting other people on liking and commenting on their posts, no personal stories up until March 20, 20 personal stories. Weren’t that big a deal on LinkedIn. It was all business, but the last year and a half has given us permission to talk about our personal stories. And I currently get almost five more engagement on a personal post than a business post. Now a lot of people might say, you know what? I don’t want to share my personal life and all my traumas.

Niraj Kapur (18:43):

That is absolutely fine. What I’ve done. I think I can put two examples. Oh yes. I have two examples of personal posts. This one was very deep and very personal and it talks about the difficulty of loneliness. I’m approaching 50 years old next year. I’ve been single for three years. I get being single I’m on evening. I was alone. Mcdonald’s car park and I bumped into an old France, very obsessed experience. And she was saying, oh my God, it must be so difficult being alone at your age. And how are you going to find anybody? And all the divorce was really messy. I heard, you know, on all walls was spreading rumors and make me feel bad about myself. And I talked about loneliness and how difficult it is being the only in life and the things you can do that people are struggling. It was a very difficult post to write in terms of tone, but it was my first ever post-it got 110 balls and precious at the moments, but 120, but it’s doing a man say 7,000 likes 355, 4 minutes.

Niraj Kapur (19:34):

And it’s me talking about struggling with loneliness. And I was shocked. Number of people who responded. I picked up the bot 800 followers off the back of this. I had so many personal comments, but also one or two clients were thinking of doing business with me, connect with me, see Neraj and folding her posts for a while. I love this post. You did. Can we have a meeting next week? And then the meeting can burst of business. So you never know what’s going to happen. You never know sometimes where the business is going to come from, but please bear in mind. Isn’t it fun to meet people by people on most levels, if you’re a Nike or Microsoft is different, but in most companies, people buy, okay, this post is interesting because it took me 10 minutes to write. And as you can see here, 204,000, this was taken last week.

Niraj Kapur (20:24):

It’s currently on 246 thoughts. It just won’t stop. And this took me 10 minutes to write. So a picture of me and my daughter. I hadn’t seen her for 11 months locked on because she was in England. I was in Ireland. Then she had COVID very badly. Luckily she was okay. My parents hadn’t been vaccinated. Then she had her final exams at university. I hadn’t seen her for 11 months. It’s a picture of me and my don’t that’s it all I’m saying is I really missed her. She’s an introvert. I’m an extrovert. She’s not a hugger. I’m a hugger. So therefore I shook her hand, which was just weird, but she’s not a hugger. She doesn’t do it. Hasn’t helped me for years. It doesn’t sound like that’s not her nature. And I put her suitcase in the car, wrapped her arms around me.

Niraj Kapur (21:08):

She told me she missed me. And that was really sweet. And I burst into tears at the airport. So I’m feeling emotional talking about it, but that’s emotional walls. And that’s all I said in the post. I miss my daughter. Here’s what happened. Therefore I’m not post went viral. So I want you to think about your personal stories. What things have happened to you, either in your life or recently that you can talk about what traumas have you overcome? What battles have you had, everybody is battling something. You will be amazed and surprised how many people will connect with you. Yes. You’re going to get a few ideas to criticize it, but overall LinkedIn’s a very supportive platform. Most people are very supportive. So think about your personal story, the testimonials. So the importance of testimonials when you get that testimonials and promote them and get your audience.

Niraj Kapur (21:59):

So when I click testimonials, this is from Barclays. So I’ve never worked with the Barclays or a Google Santander, any of the big banks in London or big corporations. I get in Barclays testimonials. When I work with smaller businesses, I give Laura Laura and her partner, least that’s it. It’s a small business. So it’s not about connecting testimonials. It’s about having the right kind of testimonials, not how do you ask for a testimonial? This is very important. Don’t just say, hi, can you give me a testimonial? You got to do better. What you can say to somebody is work I’ve delivered for you. Where are you happy with it? Fantastic to deliver everything I promised. Oh, brilliant. Thank you. Well, I’m sure, you know, testimonials are really important for small businesses. Would it be okay if I just send you a LinkedIn recommendation on my behalf and you kind of just tweak what, what I’ve just said to you w okay.

Niraj Kapur (22:54):

On about 80% of people will say yes, and all that 80%, half will completely forget. You’ve got to chase them up, but that’s okay. Business is in the follow-up. So please chase people up, but make sure you don’t just say kind of have a testimonial. Where are you happy with my service? Did I over deliver? I’m sure. You know, testimonials are really important for small businesses. Would it be okay if I just sort of send you an email or LinkedIn recommendation based on what you’ve just said for you to kind of tweak in a man? Would that be okay? Wonderful. Thank you. That is testimony. Testimonials should be, it should be conversational and it should be framed in that way. It’s not what you say in life. People perceive what you say. So make sure you always think very carefully about your words that you use.

Niraj Kapur (23:41):

So that’s testimonies. No. What else in LinkedIn video video is where I get my business from. So you got this wonderful Movember mustache. Last year, I looked like a biker. That was the first one I ever did. And I do videos every Monday. Sometimes I do twice a week. You don’t get Massimo on two views on video, but what you do get is people who are really interested. And I get most of my business inquiries and LinkedIn by doing video. So I want you to bear that in mind, a little bit cottons or introverts, because many of my clients are conscious and introverts. So I would never just say, look, you have to do video. It’s not that simple. So what I’d recommend you doing is record a video or Facebook or WhatsApp, send it to your best friend, send it to your colleague in the office, make it 10 or 12 seconds.

Niraj Kapur (24:33):

Now next day, do you want this 15 seconds next day? Do you want this 20 seconds then 30 seconds and 35 seconds. This is how you build competence. Don’t just go straight in there and do video 60 seconds long. It’ll break your heart. I know I’ll never get the video again. Okay. Everything should be done in baby steps. This is really important. 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds trot with your partner, your kids for fun. You know, just try it with your friends first. That’s what I did. I’m not a natural extrovert and come on with the years. But for a long time, I was an introvert. And also at my age, a lot of people don’t want to use video. Am I answering to that? Very simple. I am bold. I have master beers. I have a good Gansu and nose. I mean, look at me. I look like Shrek for God’s sake. I, I, of all people should not be using video, but I use it every single week. Okay. So don’t worry about how you look. I promise you. Nobody is judging you as much as you’re judging yourself.

Niraj Kapur (25:37):

You agree about a hundred videos now. So I’m more confident now, but a hundred videos ago, I was not confident. But again, this relates back to the vision board where you should have an appeal on your practice. Have a look with your patient board because by looking at the pictures of your family or potential family or kids, or best friends or parents, or what ever it is that inspires you in life, that lifts you up. It gives you a bit of a kick and a bit of adrenaline. And that will give you the courage. You need to take a shot of alcohol, of course, but I wouldn’t recommend that in the video just to be safe.

Niraj Kapur (26:17):

So video document another way when I talked at the beginning, again, everything I’m saying is very deliberate. I thought, but how do you stand out? Isn’t new content put together a PDF document, have a few pages about how you stand on, have a few pages of recommendations from customers. Put it on LinkedIn as a PDF. It’s called a document. Some people call it a car sales. Some people call it a slider, but this is great because people can this educational document. And on the very last page, I also have a call to action. Here’s my details. Contact me. Now, if you want help with mindset with coaching, with sales, with LinkedIn, but give most of the value up front and have a little call to action at the end. Again, this is good selling people who are terrified of selling. This is actually a really easy thing to do.

Niraj Kapur (27:04):

Linkedin is one of the easiest ways to sell because people who use LinkedIn are pretty much bought into it. Okay? I talked earlier about introvert versus extrovert. So video is Spence tastic, and I encourage everybody to do it. First of all, make sure your practice. You have another option on LinkedIn, which is voice notes. This is how Katie and I talk all the time. So get LinkedIn on your mobile app. That should be on your mobile app. Go to the person’s profile, like message. If you’re tired of typing all day, want to save a bit of time. I’m very big on saving time. I’ll leave a voicemail. 30 seconds. If I typed it, it would probably take me a minute. I’m leaving about 20 voice notes a day for people it’s anything from replying to messages to sing happy birthday, just saying, congratulations. I saw your post on LinkedIn.

Niraj Kapur (27:54):

I thought it was brilliant. I just want them to say, well done. I’d liked the format, but I have to send you a personal message. Again, people love this. And the last few months, number of people, who’ve actually picked up the phone and call me and said, now you’re the first person to wish me happy birthday and a voice note. Thank you so much. I didn’t even know you could do that. People love this. It’s a wonderful way to communicate. And if you’re introverted, if you’re shy, voice notes are gold. So go to the person’s profile on your mobile app, click message. Hold on the button. You get up to 60 seconds. So think about, and last thing of course is WhatsApp. I’m not crazy about WhatsApp. However, sometimes kind of pull the blinds. Whatsapp is a good way of communicating. I got more success with WhatsApp than texting or picking up the phone because a lot of people don’t like to be on the phone.

Niraj Kapur (28:44):

I’m not saying you should pick up the phone. Of course, I think the phones are important, but I know a lot of the clients I know generally don’t do that. Naturally. If we know somebody, well, it’s almost better to pick up the phone. If you’re ever unsure about something, you want to clarify something, pick up the phone by no longer cognitive neuroscience, prospecting by phone. That’s why I’m not covering for spending any great detail because I nervous. That makes a lot of you. And it’s a much different, much longer conversation, but another nice, better prospect on LinkedIn is, you know, thank you for liking Mac. Martika make sure you always look at people’s profiles. Before we communicate with them. It shows respect and also gets conversation going. Remember I’ve said earlier, people buy people. It’s the human touch. The accountant I have in Northern Ireland.

Niraj Kapur (29:31):

He is not the best Northern Ireland. He’s not even in the top 10. Why did I hire them? He plays tennis with me and he’s a really nice guy. Yes, he’s a lovely guy. He’s a genuinely nice human being. People buy people always remember that. So here’s your somebody you lacked not of mine. I looked at his profile, his extra music, all of a sudden, we’re talking about rock music. A month later, he bought my book a month later, he attended my seminar. Two months later, he became a client, okay. This is how relationships are done. Again. I use the word relationships, but didn’t the same leads. Relationships never underestimate. The importance of sales is relationships. Sometimes not prospecting somebody. Again. I researched this guy, awful creator or a huge company in the UK and the CEO’s company was sponsoring events. My friends were speaking up.

Niraj Kapur (30:26):

I sent them a personalized invite, not the generic. I I’d like you. That’s not memorable. What did I say earlier? You have got the standards. Everything I’m saying here is for a reason. And so much of what I’m saying here connects to what I’ve said earlier, although I’m sure you’ve all noticed that anyway, but it’s very deliberate. All of a sudden, a personalized invite next, except in my invite, we speak, we talk, he’s a CEO of a multimillion pound company. There’s a personalized invite and he doesn’t get nanny off it. Right? So what happens when you’re speaking to clients on their problems and you get objections and I’ve asked a of my customers and I’m asked a few of my clients as well, what happens? We’ll have objections. Do you get a lot of people are costing with the continents and trying to do things themselves to save money, which isn’t a very smart idea.

Niraj Kapur (31:18):

Papering that a lot with Clintons, you’re a bit bigger for those staff. That’s a big problem. A lot of kindness appliance just said, you don’t walk. I got no money. Call me back in three months or my budget’s frozen. I have no idea what’s going on right now. These are very valid objections under the most common objections I’m hearing. So what do you have to do about it? What you don’t do is call somebody back in six months, three months. Because if you call somebody back in three months, they will have completely forgotten who you are. They will have completely forgotten that. But what you do tries to engage in some kind of a conversation, okay? I understand your budget’s frozen. How long has it frozen or when do you think you might be in a game? But the most important thing is number five.

Niraj Kapur (32:04):

This is gold in the time being so we don’t lose touch. Is it okay if I keep in touch with valuable content that will help. And what the viable content has to be is a newsletter. You should, everybody should have a weekly newsletter. They sent the customers which gives advice or just one tip. If you don’t start building one place, because it’s one of the best ways to communicate with your audience and your future audience, very important, build a newsletter. If you don’t have a newsletter list yet. Why often do is before? How can you said it is? I would share my content on LinkedIn saying here’s an article I wrote about how to get better response in LinkedIn. I know LinkedIn interests. You here’s the link. So what I’m keeping in touch with the people I call somebody back in three months or six months.

Niraj Kapur (32:53):

Now they know exactly who I am because every single week they’re getting viable content from me. This is very important. And it’s something most people do not do. And all my clients do this. They start getting a results, sometimes classroom with six months after two or three months and be so impressed, lock and contact you first. Sometimes they will. Sometimes you got to go through the whole three or six months, but at least when we call them, you’re warm. They know who you are. They’re not starting from scratch again. And they’re unlikely to say to you, oh, call me back in six months again, because you spent three to six months giving them buyable content. And this is where a lot of people go wrong in sales. They just give up to Eastland. Please keep in touch with valuable content. And I’m saying it again.

Niraj Kapur (33:38):

People buy people never forget that. Okay? Somebody says, call back in three months. Can I keep in touch with valuable content? What I also do is, as I mentioned from the competition, I find out who their competition is. I subscribe to Google alerts and every now and again, I’ll say, I know what your competition is doing this. I just thought I’d let you know clients love it. When you do this again, you’re being a person of value. That’s what selling is selling is not closing a deal. Selling is engaging. Selling is helping selling is advising, selling as being a person of value. It’s very, very important. None of people give this consideration and just one of the best sales tools you can have. Okay? You can email people reply to emails, the most common form of communication in the world. It’s not the best form.

Niraj Kapur (34:28):

It’s not the most effective, but it’s the one. Most people feel safer using. Most accountants I know, feel safest on email at the same time. Most people cannot write emails. They haven’t a clue. So written down five of really basic things. And given an answer here as well, I can get these kinds of appalling emails every single day on each twice as bad as each other. Nobody. I mean, nobody wins by selling, but tell me because 99.9% is terrible. It really is. And you have to get it right. So what I said before resource person, don’t just find them on mass emails, give value, tell them something that will help them with our clients that they do not know already. Did you know that this happened? Or here’s a way you can save money or here’s a way we help people.

Niraj Kapur (35:19):

This is really important. Tell people of the value you offer them. All of us have a call to action. Very, and I will call you next week. If I don’t hear back from you, I will happily chase up the next week and have a PSTN. PS is the magical thing in your eyes. I think you’re muted. Yeah, probably my hands right here. Okay. And the final thing is have a PS. PS is magical. All the 12 copywriters and markets in the world. Talk of the PS and the PS can be something you saw on their website. So many you saw Palm tents, something you saw their LinkedIn profile. Mention it again. Most people don’t mention this. My clients mentioned this is my constant clients mentioned this. They get resolved. There’s two steps, there’s progress and there’s results. That’s what I care about when I work with people and this works, everything I’m sharing with you, by the way, this is not research.

Niraj Kapur (36:29):

And 10 years ago or five years ago or six months ago, all of which by the way is out of date. This is happening right now. This is working right now. So please take action on this. And ah, there we go. Newsletter. I mentioned that earlier, always have a newsletter. It’s a way of communicating with people. Always rocking the first person. I make it very personal. Every single week, Thursday day, UK time, you get a newsletter from me. This is absolutely key. Another way to prospect love being sleazy. It’s talking events. Now this can be a networking event. This can be your own masterclass. This can be a local chamber of commerce. A local Institute of directors. Doesn’t really matter. Just make sure your potential audiences there that does matter. I speak in at least two podcasts a month. I used to speak in podcasts.

Niraj Kapur (37:27):

Only 30, 40 people listened to now 2000, 3000 people a week, listen to those podcasts. So I’m getting client inquiries from there. I speak. Banks will hire me. I spoke to Institute of directors. Many times I speak at Salesforce events every quarter. Now this is so cool. It’s a new audience. Speak at charity events. We’re the kind of people that attend charms the bowls and buy tables at charity balls. There are people with lots of money. Those are my clients. And so many charity events, mainly for the charity mainly to entertain my clients of course, and technology, but also to meet new people. These are all great ways to prospect, but not many people give consideration to. So think of what networking events can you speak at charity events? Can you attend? What webinars can you hold? That will give value to people. Please bear this in mind because it’s a very important part of sales.

Niraj Kapur (38:21):

Okay? And finally, everybody works in sales. There’s about 84 videos. There. Most videos are between one minute, two minutes long. So there’s no reason that every day you kind spend two minutes watching a video, that’s nothing and covered a sales mindset, personal development, right? Personal development and the mindset and the LinkedIn. This is key to you. Some of the sales stuff, Israel, but some of deep for you and that’s okay. We are still going to benefit from it. The modern law. And the reason I’m saying subscribe is because every week I’m uploading new videos. This is a bonus. I wanted to get everybody here. You’re not miss out. Not kidding. If you want me to share these slides afterwards I’ll make a note sends PD. Yeah. So what I’ve done is in this PDF, you have 1, 2, 3, there’s just five links of postop done that have gone really big, but people are really engaged with, I want to show you how diverse they are, but at the same time, they’re fairly simple.

Niraj Kapur (39:21):

Apart from the sport post, which is quite complicated. All these posts are so simple. They don’t take long to write. I don’t want to think. You have to spend are ours and ours. Okay. And oh, I just want to remind everybody, this is my first book I was in the top 129 times. Also Warren say Warren Buffett, Warren. Buffett’s always the Tony Robbins, obviously Simon Sinek. Start with why this is really important. Opposite Richard. Bronson’s losing your virginity. 29 times. My first book was there. This is the international one. This would be the best seller in both countries. My fall off. It’s just the best set on UK. That’s fine. I’m still bright. Part of it is appeared opposite. Steph Golden’s books, period, opposite Bernay books. That’s pretty cool. Okay. There’s loads of information. These books are less than 160 pages deliberately because people are busy.

Niraj Kapur (40:18):

That’s why I didn’t write a 300, 400 page book. It’s 160 pages per book. They’re very easy to read. You can get them on Amazon. Most of the companies I’ve worked with in their hurdle. Most of the accountants I’ve worked with. You wouldn’t have heard all, but I just wanted to give you names of people. You may have heard of Dutch. Just example of the bigger corporates I worked with. And again, when I said Pete, absent, LinkedIn, all of us have a call to action on your last page. This is my call to action. I use hi. Can I help you? When a prospect mindset hit your sales target, do it. And please bear in mind. If we do not invest in yourself, why would anybody invest in you? This is a really important question that most people don’t ask themselves. Whether they want to say, I don’t want to get, I don’t want to spend money on a coach. Okay. But if you don’t invest in yourself, why would anybody invest and use a very, very important question to ask, please connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on LinkedIn. I don’t mind everybody works in sales. I mentioned as a recommended reading list there, and there’s a 10 skills to present each mentee as well. And that’s me. Katie borrow away. Let me know what questions are. Are please.

Katie Thomas, CPA (41:30):

Awesome. Well, that was so helpful. Thanks. So for sharing Niraj. So the first question comes from Tina and she won. She said that she has an issue with prospects, ghosting her when they told her they were interested. So how would you handle that?

Niraj Kapur (41:48):

Yeah, Tina, sorry. That happens to you. It’s a massive pain. Not here’s what you don’t do, which is what most people do. They do nothing in the crosswalk will call them back, which never happens. Or they send a follow-up email to say hi, did you get my last proposal? Never do that. Here’s a pipe. Along with somebody, you got a number of choices. One thing I’d like to do is link. Leave a LinkedIn voice note. Your personality comes across your tone, your energy or enthusiasm comes across David. Last time we spoke, you told me these were challenges there. The students I’m offering you. I know what the business world is like, things change. You’re bright. You’re right. There was something has changed. I need to know about, please let me know. Otherwise I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on how we can help overcome these challenges of yours.

Niraj Kapur (42:39):

Here’s my details. It takes about 40 seconds on a LinkedIn voice. I mentioned is nice because introverts, okay. If you’re a bit more of an extrovert, you record that as a video on your phone and you can do it like this, by the way, you can do it in your back garden, or you can do it like this. Don’t do it in their bedroom. I don’t like video. It doesn’t make good. Don’t do don’t do. I’ve seen people do the kitchen table while they’re cooking. I’m like really think about your setting. To the certain extent that back on the spine home office is spa or downstairs, living in respond. Just make it look presentable or semi presentable. That’s important. Hey, Katie has Niraj. You told me these are your challenges. Last time we spoke, I put together solutions that would help you skip common money.

Niraj Kapur (43:25):

How it hurts from you, chances are you’re just really busy and internal meetings or getting the clients just please let me know. Everything’s okay. And nothing has changed here. There. My details. Now that’s very important. Very deliberate Tina, because by saying, I know you’re very busy or you’re probably dealing with clients or internal issues. It shows you understand clients and you understand the world they work in because most people don’t. And what you’ve done is you’re reminded them of the challenges they have. You reminded them of the solutions. Don’t take any, call me back. And what were your thoughts? Good enough again, you got to get people a reason to call you back. That’s what I do. If you still don’t hear from them, which happens like comment on their posts on LinkedIn. If they’re not that active on LinkedIn, come onto LinkedIn and share posted theirs.

Niraj Kapur (44:12):

And then email say, by the way, I’ve just shared a post of yours on LinkedIn. Here’s a picture of it. I thought it was a brilliant post. Well done or congratulations. And your rebound. Congratulations, your 10th anniversary. I just saw your company’s released this new white paper I promote for you for media. I thought it was terrific. Again, you’re being to value the least these costs. We’ll be able to say, find you or come back to you. But again, it’s being personal value is being proactive. Police never wait for someone to come back to you and please never go hi, did you get my post? So what do you saying? It’s not good enough.

Katie Thomas, CPA (44:49):

Awesome answer. Super actionable. I love it. So I also received some questions even ahead of this presentation. And one was about asking for the close. So this person shared some details that they have calls frequently, and they go through their discovery process of collecting information. But when it actually comes to like asking for then like, Hey, do you want to work with me? That’s where they get caught up. Do you have some suggestions on how to ask for the close? Or maybe if you want to like take us through your sales process, that would be helpful as well.

Niraj Kapur (45:25):

Here’s what you don’t do when you close a deal, don’t speak faster. Don’t measure voice knocked. It. Don’t become uncomfortable with your body language. These are three of the most common things I see people do. And they ask for the close. The fourth thing is, do not say I will email you. Oh yeah. This email. No, no. Try to speak to them over the phone or zoom. It’s not easy. Closing deals by email. Also your tone. Doesn’t come across an email when you’re closing a deal. Everything you comes to avoid closing a deal on email if possible. Okay. So sales process should be your resource to client. It should be you then ask open questions. It then should be, you know, talking about the experiences you’ve had with the conference. What is it you’re looking for in your content? What’s going to make you happy.

Niraj Kapur (46:14):

They say somebody cheap, you know, automatically it’s gonna be a top line. And they say, I want someone to return my phone calls and emails. You know, customer experience is important. You know, always going to ask you questions, that’s fine. And then once you answers, I will recap. So just to be clear, you’re struggling with this. You want more of this and this would make you happy. Is that correct? Is there anything else? So I let them know. I have listened to what they say now, concert, introverts, and generally speaking introverts are very good listeners. They’re much better listeners extroverts. It’s very important that people you’ve heard what they say because Katie, everybody wants to be here. Everybody wants to know that their voice matters and that their opinion matters. That’s why it’s so important. Your recap of somebody said back, it shows you have listened.

Niraj Kapur (47:04):

That shows respect. Then after you do that, you give your solutions recommendations and ask them again. Is there anything else that I missed? And I know from personal experience, depending on the size of the company, there’s often a few people involved in the decision-making process. Who else do we have to influence or get involved here? This is a very important question. People won’t ask because quite often you’ll do a deal and then somebody else comes on board and does not. And well, I don’t know. So always ask who else is involved in the decision-making process, but I always pre-frame it just like the testimonial. I pre-framed things from my experience, there’s at least a few people involved in the decision making process. Who else do we have? It’s pretty good. Tell me we get everybody involved. Everything is done on Dustin. So just to recap here, your challenges here are your needs. The investment is $3,000.

Niraj Kapur (48:02):

Stop immediately stay quiet for at least five seconds. It’ll be the longest five seconds of your life. You’ll be like, oh God. And the first doctor, the first time I did it actually sweated on my forehead. You start sweating and the client would be okay. I literally wedding because I was like, I just wanted to speak people like silences. Violences are okay. Especially in negotiation because what you’re doing is you’re given a time person, a few seconds to process thoughts. Think things are gonna live five seconds, preferably 10 seconds. You don’t want to be the first person to speak and you get their thoughts now. And I do this about 60% of the time. You’ll stop 20% of the time. They say what this card from you gave me. And 20% of the time they go, whoa, that’s too expensive. No way. So you got to think, okay, what do you do now?

Niraj Kapur (49:09):

If somebody says you’re way too expensive, I just say, okay. Compared to them, what you don’t do is go, well, let me tell you why we’re expensive. I’ve won this award. Me, me, me, me. That’s what most people do. Don’t do. Don’t do that. Most people talk themselves out of the deal at this stage because it’s time to take a step back. Okay. So purchase of food. Okay. And what was it? They were offering. Just so I have an idea. Okay. So they’re offering this mopping is can you see how we’re offering more here? I still think I’m too expensive. I’ll just take a few things away. Like the quarterly customer service and things that they got to bring her five star. Because if you start taking things away from the proposal sometimes plus they feel they’re losing eyes. So that’s what I do.

Niraj Kapur (49:54):

I take things away and you look at the reaction on their face and sometimes go, okay, that’s fine. Because bear in mind when you don’t want to do business with me, I always ask for discount. Even if I don’t want one. But the reason I asked for this, I want to see how you’re going to react. And I deliberately do this with everybody who sells to me constantly. Ozmen insurance people, people selling me software. I deliberately aspart discount. Cause if you mumble and fumble and act nervous, I am not going to do business with you.

Katie Thomas, CPA (50:24):

I’ll probably feel confident in your value.

Niraj Kapur (50:27):

It means you’re just hopping on the food you’re doing. I don’t want to work with arch weirdest, respect act. I work with professionals. Okay? You have to know what you’re talking about. You don’t have to be the past in the past by half. No, you can deal with some kind of pressure. And this is a lot of pressure. For some people. It is negotiation and pricing makes people nervous. We start getting nervous or your body language becomes tense. Or you start talking to me like this in the morning eye contact, or you start speaking twice as fast as before those are warning signs. And that’s what binds can take advantage of you. Not all of them. Well, some of them will. So the last one telling you this noise don’t happen before that. So that’s we got to think about price. You mentioned price, recap, everything, be quiet.

Niraj Kapur (51:13):

It’s too expensive compared if it’s way too expensive. And they said, there’s no way I want to predict set this car. Don’t be afraid walking away. That’s very important as well. Not every single person is your customer. When I start my business off, I said yes to everybody. And I remember, I can’t even tell you how much I regret that. And since October 20, 20, every client I have, I love every client. I fight hard to keep as well because they’re brilliant clients. They respect me and they became my high fees. I can take anybody else. Big discount. Clearly we’re not aligned here. Values wise. I suggest you go find somebody else who’s cheap because all you’re talking about is discount and discount and money. Clearly I’m not the right person. There’s other people out there. Don’t be afraid to walk away from a client. This is very important. If they start asking me for stupid things like 50%, this constant 60%, this concept,

Katie Thomas, CPA (52:10):

I think that’s great advice. So then there’s another question about sending proposals. Do you send proposals over email? Do you have a, like a zoom call to discuss proposals? What do you recommend?

Niraj Kapur (52:25):

Okay. So when I seen the proposal to apply, before I send the proposal, they say, okay, we’ve discussed everything. You mentioned, bring it. I got to have a think about it, which is okay. Sometimes people have to think about things. I may assess another post Loper. I always make bit like part of humor. So par the cost. What else is important to you in the proposal? That’s a good quote. That’s a nice thing to say because people obviously care about the cost, but what matters to you? And then I’d like to ask the question. Not many people ask, are you a verbal or a visual thinker? Because solicitors, I take care of a few law firms. They are verbal. Everything has to be done at the same time. I’ve done coaching with designers and I’ve been coaching with architects. They are visuals. So I love to have loads of visuals in my presentation.

Niraj Kapur (53:15):

It’s very important to know what people think. And I always ask for your verbal or a visual person, how do you like information? People appreciate that because nobody asks things like this. Okay. And I double check that I also may have a time in the diary to discuss it. Don’t just send a proposal and say, I’ll call you in a week. No, no. When does it suit you to go through this proposal? Next should be in the next week to make you wait for a month. Alarm bells should go off in your head. Why a month? Okay. So when in the next week, this is a good time to discuss this and you send them an art look straight off the corner to the invite. Okay. And then in the proposal, I keep it really simple. People are always shocked me. Tell me your proposals are, so my proposals are two pages long. That’s it? They’re two pages long. The client’s challenges. My solutions. Hi, help you with the deadline is what the cost is so simple. And then I always include a few attachments and testimonials people like them because the testimonials of course matter. And that’s, that’s really important.

Katie Thomas, CPA (54:17):

Awesome. so last question, and then we’ll give you back your time. How long do you recommend spending each day prospecting?

Niraj Kapur (54:29):

It depends where you are in your business. So when I start my business all three years ago, I was prospecting three to four hours a day. I don’t just mean making phone calls. I mean, attending networking events, that’s prospect. I mean writing content for LinkedIn. I mean, pick up the phone and calling people, writing emails three to four hours a day, not I, I spent a half an hour 40 minutes cause my business is more established in some profit. I do keep prospect because clients often don’t come back to me or every now and again, I see a client I’d love to work on it, not them. And also it’s important. I do this because a lot of clients asked me that prospect. So I have to be sharpened as I have to be prospecting every day, kidding to help my cost. It’s not just helping me. It’s helping my customers as well. That’s why.

Katie Thomas, CPA (55:20):

Awesome. Well, thanks so much Niraj, everyone. You can find a Raja. Everyone works in sales. You can find them on LinkedIn Niraj Kapur. I’m also going to share the slide to Chaz, all this contact information. This was so helpful and I know that everyone got a lot of value out of it. So thank you again, Niraj. I really, really appreciate your time and you sharing some of your wisdom with us.

Niraj Kapur (55:43):

No problem. And like I said, really, please write down three things you’re going to do right now. As far as progress, I’m going to progress. We go, that was a really good talk. And you put it on Netflix. You got to have top three takeaways. This is harder to get to progress. And then you start taking action as soon as you can. Not next week, not next month, but later on today or tomorrow. I think you have the slides. You’re welcome to distribute those Katie. No problem at all.

Katie Thomas, CPA (56:07):

Okay, awesome. I’ll share them. Okay. Well thanks Niraj!

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If you have questions about prospecting or selling online, feel free to schedule a time to chat.