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Connect with Erika
https://erikawarfield.com/turbo-charged-sales-6-keys-to-unlock-your-best-client-avatar/ - Be sure to click the link to Erika’s free gift on the "6 Keys to Unlocking Your Best Avatar Client"
https://erikawarfield.com/contact/ - And to see if you’re a fit for a Fractional VP of Sales... feel free to book a call here
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikawarfield/

Connect with Russ
https://russjohns.com/
https://thepiratesyndicate.com/
https://nextstepnext.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nextstepnext/

Audio digitally transcribed by Descript

[00:00:00] Introduction: Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast™, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let’s get this party started.

[00:00:10] Russ Johns: Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Good morning. Thank you so much for being here, Erika, how are you today?

[00:00:15] Erika Warfield: I am well. How are you?

[00:00:18] Russ Johns: Going crazy as ever. It's an early morning. And I was thinking about this when I woke up about when is the time change because Arizona doesn't do daylight savings time. So everybody shifts and instead of two hours away, 'cause you're in central time. You're in Texas will be one hour away and then I'll have to rethink everything again and do the math. Small problems. But the thing I want to talk about today is you were on the other night with Scotty and Evan and I had a conversation with Evan and there's some things that I am not doing that I need to do. And I want to see if there's a way that you work through this process of just building out a workflow for sales. You're a master at sales, you've done amazing work. You've put some crazy great content out there and we all get in this rhythm of life. And I'm just thinking to myself, we have to figure out what the rhythm is going to look like, what the rhythm is going to be for ourselves. And so how do you decide what your rhythm is and how do you decide when you're going forward? Do you have a routine that you get into and something that you produce results with?

[00:01:37] Erika Warfield: That's a really good question. I know for me, I mentioned the six most important thing to do list, and that's, when we talk about owning our own business, I don't care what kind of businesses and I don't care if you're somebody who's in multi-level marketing. I don't care if you're an attorney. I don't care if everybody isn't. Regardless of your vertical, regardless of your title, you are in sales, especially if you and people don't realize this, the doctors and attorneys who go off and hang their own shingle and open their own private practice, some of them will tell you, wow, I wish I would have had sales and marketing classes along with obviously my specialty, and so I go back to the six, most important thing to do list and that's all about there was a book called, Just eat the darn frog, eat the frog. And it's about doing the things you don't want to do first. And so on that six, most important thing to do list. And obviously for entrepreneurs, that's going to be like 13, 20, 40 things on your overwhelm yourself, and then you'll feel bad at the end of the day when you don't get half of the accomplish. And then you had the silent to do list waiting around your house. The things that need dusting, the laundry, there's the silent to do this. So we boil it down to the six, most important things. The top three have to be revenue producing. So in the morning you would be doing prospecting. Now prospecting could mean actual sales calls, outbound sales calls. It could mean the messaging on LinkedIn. It could mean If you're maybe a speaker, you're prospecting for speaking gigs, it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but basically some form of revenue producing activity. The client fulfillment stuff shouldn't come until the end of the day. Really having your schedule and place and your block times of here's what I'm going to do, my prospecting here's when I'm going to be looking for speaking gigs, here's what I'm going to be doing. My client prospect calls like discovery calls. Here's what I'm going to be, doing my client fulfillment. And then here's what I'm going to be working in my CRM, which is usually at the end of the day for me. And so I really try to plan it pretty significantly. With that said there's what 1,440 minutes in a day or something ridiculous. And yeah, it's like Scotty Schindler says you get to pick which ones you get to work, so when you own your own business, you don't have to be in at nine and leave at five. You can plan for the balance. So I'm not quite sure if I answered your question that's part of it, getting hyper-focused on, on what the schedule is going to be. And I think the other thing I've kind of moved towards is not so much, yes, there's the to-do list, but I block it in my schedule is blocked timing. 'cause I've noticed when I do a checklist, I get super freaking stressed trying to figure out where everything's going to go within the day.

[00:04:37] Russ Johns: We don't want you to be stressed.

[00:04:39] Erika Warfield: No, we don't.

[00:04:40] Russ Johns: And I love the feedback and the six things, some people actually go boil it down to fewer things in six, but. I love the idea of revenue producing results. What is moving the needle. And one of the challenges that I've had over the years, cause like I say, I'm, professional squirrel hunter is defining what produces an outcome, what produces? Yeah. What's the 80 20, and what's the 20% I need to focus my time on. I always get distracted along the way, with things that looking back are more like procrastination activities, and that goes back to eat frog. It's just do the damn work, start the process, get the thing out there, finish it and knock it out and get it done. And sometimes. Starting is the hardest part. And, it's like for myself, I love, that's why I was doing the show every morning is a way to knock off something substantial in the morning and get it done and show up and have a conversation that kind of ignite ignites my brain and gets things moving. So it's one of those things. And I just want to give a shout out to some of the people we got in the community here. Yeah. Hey pirates. Jed's here. Michael Baker. Good morning, Gabe. Hey, I love what games do have you noticed what games doing with the. Gabe

[00:06:12] Erika Warfield: Really good at giving back and highlighting people who are live streaming and people don't understand that you can give props and highlight your competition or highlight people who could be partners and you'll end up with not engagement and prospects coming to you because they see your heart. Yeah. Yeah. It keeps doing some good stuff.

[00:06:35] Russ Johns: Yeah. I love it. Love it. Good. Keep doing good work, Bob servant leader. I love that. Thank you so good morning, Russ and Erika to my favorite folks. Thank you so much. We still gotta get, we still gotta get a Bob and Dr. Cobb on a Wednesday night. Session. I haven't, I need to follow up I'm I fallen off my rhythm.

[00:07:00] Erika Warfield: I think Bob and Kevin Ward would be to have on together. I think they'd be really great.

[00:07:04] Russ Johns: Oh, that would be good. At least, I love the communications inside here. Ken from Malta, he's in the house. So great. So great to see you, the amazing Erika Warfield. Thank you much. John is in the house. Thank you, John. Thanks for being here. Jenny Gold, Jenny. Good morning pirates. Always a pleasure. And man, I love the highlight others. That's the name of the game? Absolutely. Absolutely. It's great. Let's do it. Okay. We got it in. We got it in. So Erika, following up from our conversation with Scotty and full transparency, I had to tell you a story. Before we did Scotty, I was doing a live stream for another client and had my echo cancellation off, so my audio is not ideal. Rookie mistake. And it's oh man, what a great crew to have on the show and have rookie mistakes going on.

[00:08:05] Erika Warfield: Oh, I did that with my live too. The last live stream, I completely forgot to hit my unmute. Once I played the prerecorded part and I come back live and I must've been talking for a good 15 seconds. Didn't notice the comments, everybody going you're on mute. I was like, okay. I was in radio. That's embarrassing.

[00:08:28] Russ Johns: And that's the life we live for being out here and putting ourselves out there every day. Live, of course. I just want to talk a little bit about the process of deciding and defining some of the criteria of client work versus prospecting. I'm building a system or I've continuing to evolve my systems in prospecting. And when I go out there and engagement is key and also just following up with people. And there's so many people that I could follow up with. Do you have any unique systems or techniques that you used over the years to, to remind yourself to follow up with people?

[00:09:09] Erika Warfield: I think a CRM is key and if you don't have a CRM, at least have an Excel spreadsheet, but what I love about a CRM is you can set up the feature tasks so you can tell yourself, touch base in a DM tag, this person, the other thing that I do is in my bookmarks, I set up, I tag or bookmark the links to people's personal activities. So when you go into their activity feed, you'll see activity articles, posts, and you can go into posts and all save those URLs to everybody's post feed. So if, for any reason, like this week, it's been tough. I haven't even gotten to look in the notification fee, but I know, yeah. I know that I can go in to everybody's save bookmark and I can catch up on their post. So that's one way of doing, keeping up with what's going on within LinkedIn, especially people who show you a lot of love in return. The other thing is, yeah, just really relying on that CRM and setting up your tasks once you've done it and then setting up the next one,

[00:10:16] Russ Johns: I really like that. So you add the URL to their posts in your CRM?

[00:10:22] Erika Warfield: No. I just do it in like my Chrome book marks. I bookmark the tab.

[00:10:28] Russ Johns: Okay.

[00:10:28] Erika Warfield: So if you look at the top header of Chrome and you've got bookmarks, and once you have somebody's post feed off of their profile page, you can save that. You can bookmark that. And then you'll have a list of LinkedIn, super connectors, LinkedIn, friends, LinkedIn, whatever you want to name it. And then you can go in and just hit every single post. Everybody's personal posts and catch them all up, at once that is. And I learned that tip from a couple of different people. And that's a really quick way if you're not able to sit by your LinkedIn all day, every day.

[00:11:09] Russ Johns: Which I'm not, I would like to, but I can't. I would like to, I want to, I could spend all day engaging in LinkedIn. So that's, I love that idea and because I do it, my CRM, I do their LinkedIn profile, but that's two steps away because you're actually cutting out a couple of steps by having to go into their profile and then go into their feed and go into their posts.

[00:11:38] Erika Warfield: No, you just saved their posts.

[00:11:40] Russ Johns: So that's nuggets of knowledge. That's golden nuggets right here today by the amazing Erika Warfield.

[00:11:50] Erika Warfield: I wish I could claim it. That was not my brain child. I've learned that from a couple of...

[00:11:56] Russ Johns: Well you can claim to share it today.

[00:11:59] Erika Warfield: Yes, I will always say, I will always give a contribution..

[00:12:07] Russ Johns: Hey, I love giving people credit for what they do. I love highlighting others. That's the whole purpose of the pirates, it's let's help each other out. Let's all we're sailing on this vessel together. Let's make sure we're contributing to the cause. Let's make sure that we understand that #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree.

[00:12:24] Erika Warfield: Yeah. So yeah, I would, the biggest tip is if you don't have a CRM, get a CRM, there are a lot of affordable CRMs. I know one that was recommended to me at one point was something called less annoying CRM, which I think would be really good from anybody. Who's a solo preneur that anybody who has a team. So it should be like stupid, affordable. I personally use keep Infusionsoft because I liked the ability of creating landing pages. Like right now I'm working on a digital. Like a three, four month long digital course. So to be able to have that in terms of a landing page and have it be stupid, simple. The only thing that I wish Infusionsoft was better about was I have a free gift on my WordPress website and I can't integrate. And so I'd already built out that one landing page and keep infusion soft was basically like you'll have to recreate it or pay us. And I was like, no, I'll just keep transplanting the CSV files until I have time. But I would say, yeah get a CRM, whether that's less annoying CRM, which by the way, I've not used, I've just heard great things about it. And that it's stupid, simple and affordable. Zoho is really good. Piper. It's good, but I don't think pipe drives plays nicely with a couple of different things, but yeah, pipe drive is good.

[00:13:42] Russ Johns: I used to use nimble for years, and then I went to pipe drive because the integration with dub, however, just for everyone that's here today, and everyone that listens to this in the future dub actually has a CRM built in. Which is incredibly valuable. And also it's a lightweight, it's not like Salesforce or Infusionsoft.

[00:14:04] Erika Warfield: Not to give Dubb free press. Love you Dubb, but...

[00:14:11] Russ Johns: I got a webinar coming up at two today.

[00:14:15] Erika Warfield: I was going to say was, I know that they can do landing pages. Do they have payment integration? Because that's the other thing you can do with a CRM folks. You can integrate payments. You can do the invoices. There's a lot of good things.

[00:14:27] Russ Johns: There's a lot of good things. Yeah. Invoices. It'd be interesting to see how that would work out. I'd have to set it up. I use another invoice platform. So the thing about it is you have to come up with a system that works for you. And I always make a recommendation of remove the friction because the tool that is best for you is the one that you're going to use. You have a system and not use it, it's worse than not having it 'cause then you just have overhead and you just have a waste of time. So it takes a moment to set up and it takes a little while to actually create these things and get these systems built up. And once they're working for you and you can go in like prospecting, you set an hour aside every morning or every day, some point in time and go through your contacts, go through everything and touch points. People, you lose track of people. There's a lot of people that I used to I've had on the #PirateBroadcast Erika, that now their emails are bouncing and I don't know, maybe they got a job or what to new company or something like that. And because I haven't been in contact with them constantly all of a sudden I'll email him, give him an update or something and....

[00:15:44] Erika Warfield: and I think as I'm looking at everybody here of many of everybody here, they're in business for themselves that I can tell. Thank you. J D, that's very sweet. Thank you so much. I find that if I keep smiling, nobody knows if I'm freaking out,

[00:15:57] Russ Johns: This is my freak out, this is my freakout smile.

[00:16:00] Erika Warfield: Going back, yes, there are systems and this is something that I want to talk about because I've been hearing it a lot lately, everybody running around saying. You got to write a book, and I just want to get peace of mind for somebody. If you're not at that stage where you're trying to do the ad-ons, you're in a place you can add the digital course. You're in a place where you could write the book, there's. The first three years of your business. And I'm constantly in year one, basically, the first year you're trying to figure stuff out the second year, you're trying to work stuff out. And the third year is when you start rocking it out. So in those first three years, that's when you're really trying to set up the systems and to have grace and peace and patience with yourself as you do it, Rome wasn't built in a day. And I dunno why I'm taking this tangent. I think it's because I've been hearing it a lot lately just within my mentorship circles and all of a sudden it's, oh, you gotta do this. You gotta do that. And like the book and, the book shouldn't really happen until your third year of business.

[00:17:01] Russ Johns: I already wrote a book.

[00:17:02] Erika Warfield: And really, even though I'm getting my digital course together, I also understand, I want to have a certain number of clients before I launch, or as close as I can before that launch. I'm going to system. That in and of itself is a system it's not just the new Shia of the actual platforms. It's what are you doing in year one? Were you doing in year two? What are you doing in your three and realizing that no matter what your title is, your sales and marketing. That's first, can you hear my dog? My dog is like scratching at her bed. She's like going completely bananas over here.

[00:17:39] Russ Johns: We love your dog. She's all good. All good. I think, the other thing that people are saying is you have to have a podcast, it's you should start a podcast. It's not for everyone. I think you'll live streaming. It's not for everyone. It's not necessarily what you need to spend your time on because it does take time because you've gone through.

[00:18:00] Erika Warfield: Yeah, you're amazing. Because although I've been in radio and TV and I've done some production and I've done enough guest being a guest on podcasts, I'd never actually driven the car on a pasture. And there's a lot of like little minutia. You have to know behind the scenes.

[00:18:23] Russ Johns: Little pieces of information nobody tells you.

[00:18:26] Erika Warfield: Yeah. And you were phenomenal. No, don't do this. Yes, do that, keep it simple. Stop messing with the banners.

[00:18:36] Russ Johns: Just say no. Yeah. This is like writing a book though. It's in the same vein as the same model is put yourself out, be seen, be heard, be talked about. And that's why I love the idea of live stream. Converting it to a podcast, creating a post generating content, micro content that you build up volumes of information that you can actually do something with ongoing. And it's a theory. It's a theory. I continue to work on it.

[00:19:08] Erika Warfield: Highlight Wendy Weiner Runge. That's hilarious.

[00:19:12] Russ Johns: What's she saying? Why do we think we figure it all out and begin a new endeavor? Do one year olds have it all figured out. As soon as I can walk the 16 year olds know how to maneuver a car in icy highways. Do men ever know what a woman is thinking? No,

[00:19:32] Erika Warfield: My husband might cause I'm pretty vocal. Let there be no doubt what I'm thinking.

[00:19:41] Russ Johns: The gap between what I'm thinking and what I'm saying is very tight. Thank you, Wendy. I love that. For myself, I love the new adventure. The mundane, the systems, the processes I get pulled down and they I'm not as interested in that piece, but I love creating the new thing. And so that's always been one of the Achilles heels for me is ah, I just, I want to go create something new.

[00:20:12] I don't want to continue building on this thing because that's not as exciting for me.

[00:20:18] Erika Warfield: No, I totally get that. You know what I think, we're spending a lot of time talking about systems. You have the best systems in the world, but if you're not talking to the right. Then it really doesn't matter. Now you're keeping track of hopium, you could have a whole... I've got my numbers, I'm working my numbers, but if they're the wrong people, then it's hopium.

[00:20:45] Russ Johns: I've never heard that I'm going to steal that hope is not a strategy.

[00:20:51] Erika Warfield: Hope is not a strategy, you're right. You're absolutely right. Wow. I have very little room to move. I've got to really focus on what my framing is. No, so I say that because you do have to know who your ideal. Avatar is and not to beat a dead horse. Cause there's a lot of people talking about it, but then they don't really talk about what do you do once you get them? What's the system or, a lot of people talking about how well they know LinkedIn and that's awesome, but can you convert? Because all that glitters in a follower count does not convert. And so you've got to have a system for that. So a lot of what I do is, Telling people, if you want to get more money from the right people and shorten your sales cycle, the first part of that system is speaking to your ideal client. Avatar, being able to target them, being able to know who they are, what keeps them up at 3:00 AM. And then from there having an outbound virtual sales strategy that's targeted and vetted pair that up with an inbound. Organic strategy. That's free outside of Google, SEO and a website that's not even converting, and then tying it all together with copywriting and you wouldn't be amazed at how many CEO CEOs. I talked to startups and not solo petitioners. I'm talking about startups or creeping into enterprise, and they're not quite sure who this, the ideal client avatar is. So imagine what it's like for. A solopreneur and then the thing that really ties it all up into a powerful weapon and puts it in a little, pretty little bow is you have to have the advantage of understanding, the copywriting behind the psychological schemas and the buyer awareness level, and then how to tap into that awareness level and to write for that awareness level and why, people really neglect the copywriting part.

[00:22:44] Russ Johns: Yeah. And it's not easy. It's not easy to get that combination in place.

[00:22:48] Erika Warfield: No. Or to get people to understand that. And I think because people think they took a high school English class or they write their business letters or that, oh, it's just writing. I don't have to place a value on that. Okay. What ROI are you getting on your writing now?

[00:23:06] Russ Johns: I love it. When online experts say, you just have to create a better piece of content than anyone else out there. It's what does that mean? What exactly does that mean? What defines better? Wendy says a key for me is to find mentors who understand nuances that. Not in my scope, Admiral Russ, as a trusted navigator. Eric, could you agree that mentors make the journey more, much more effective and who inspires you?

[00:23:34] Erika Warfield: I think you absolutely need to have mentors and coaches, either coaches that you pay for, or you do some kind of exchange with, or they just serve as mentors in general. I think there's going to be no shortage of people who have walked the path before you have no. And I think they're huge. I have one that I've known for many years, and I don't even know if he knows the profound impact he has had on me, but he is in a completely different vertical, but he understands copywriting and he understands, sales pages and landing pages and things of that. And I bounce a lot of ideas off of him and that I'm going to give him a shout out. That's Sebastian Michaels of Photoshop artists. And so what he does is in a completely different vertical, and it's completely aspirational, it's completely B to C, but he has an international following. And he got in on a niche that nobody really explored and he pioneered it. And that was teaching people how to create museum worthy, works of art through photo. So it wasn't about the nip here or the tuck there, the filter, it was literally, how do you create art that can be shown in a museum and then how he marketed that and created this international following. And he's amazing. And he's. I hold them near and dear to my heart. He's just a wonderful human being. So there's quite a few people that inspire me that have been mentors. Scotty Schindler is one. He and I were just talking last night and he was giving me some tips and tricks and highlighting major lacuna.

[00:25:22] Russ Johns: I really enjoy Scotty and the conversation. I like what he's doing.

[00:25:27] Erika Warfield: And I'm sure there's, you would live streaming. I'm sure there's many more and I'm being a complete chowder head and you're getting a few but then two it's about paying back, at sometime at some point you got to do, you could be mentored until the cows come home. You could read every single book. You can watch every single webinar, but at some point you gotta move.

[00:25:47] Russ Johns: Yeah. The worst cases, the, I probably need to take one more course before I get started. I need to take one more course before I get started. Just start the feedback that you get, the feedback that you get from the journey gives you a lot of information. A lot of feedback on what it is how it feels, that's why a lot of podcasters start and then they stopped. They decided it's either too hard is they're not getting instant gratification. It's, it's hard to get guests. It's all of these things that contribute to stopping and failing, falling short or not finding joy in the process. If it becomes work. It's not nearly as fun to have as it is to think about having.

[00:26:33] Erika Warfield: And at some point in time in the doing, realizing that I was mentioning paying it forward, there will be people for you to mentor too. And so I had started noticing that as well.

[00:26:46] Russ Johns: I've mentored a few people.

[00:26:50] Erika Warfield: Mentored me. Google that horrible night. I was up till midnight going, what is wrong with StreamYard.

[00:27:02] Russ Johns: Poor soul for soul? I love that we got together today and had conversation about this because a lot of these things, continue to come up for a lot of people. Sometimes we just need a guide. We need somebody to help us out. And I am starting to create courses on the #PirateSyndicate. That's the whole purpose of that. When I say join the #PirateSyndicate, I have courses going on over there. How to start a podcast out of live stream, how to build systems, how to do Dunn. Dove is my, one of my go-to favorites. And I'm continuing to do that. I got a class at two o'clock today. So jump on, join in and learn a few nuggets of knowledge there with Ruben and Derrius, the founders, the co-founders of dub. And we're going to have a lot of fun. And Erika, thank you so much for being here.

[00:27:53] Erika Warfield: Awesome. I am dropping into the comments. If anybody wants to find their avatar, it's my free gift to you. And it is a link to a one sheet. As well as a 28 minute video masterclass on how to find your ideal client avatar. And you don't have to be in sales for that could be looking for a job that could be, you just want to beat your competition, in the field that you're in. Yeah, it's truly for everyone. Please accept it. It's a free gift. The video masterclass was done on to a global audience with Scotty Schindler. At any rate it's a retaking of that one.

[00:28:27] Russ Johns: Thank you so much for being so generous. Thank you. Thank you, Erika. Thank you everyone for being here today. Happy Friday, Eve. I wish you a fantastic Friday and a wonderful weekend and all the greatness and the goodness that you can connect. Yes, as always #kindnessiscool, #smilesarefree, so you #enjoytheday. Thanks.

[00:28:50] Exit: Thank you for joining the #PirateBroadcast™. If you found this content valuable, please like, comment and share it across your social media channels. I would love the opportunity to help others grow in their business. The #PirateSyndicate™ is a platform where you show up, we produce the show. It's that easy. If you want to be seen, be heard and be talked about, join the #PirateSyndicate™ today.

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