The Essentials of Following Up No Ever Thought You | Corrie George - 2026

Most salespeople treat follow-up like an afterthought: a quick check-in email, then nothing. I sat down with Corrie George https://www.linkedin.com/in/elieffcorrie, founder of YESA and Canada First, and former president of Grant Cardone Canada, to talk about the follow-up system that's actually helped him close hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Most Sales Are Won After the Fifth Contact According to Salesforce, less than 20 percent of sales happen in the first few points of contact.82 percent of sales happen between the fifth and twelfth point of contact. Most sales reps stop following up long before they reach that window, which means they're walking away from the majority of their pipeline. Know Where Your Buyer Really Is in the Buying Cycle Before you follow up, figure out where the buyer actually is. Some people aren't even aware they have the problem you solve yet. Corrie says salespeople often compete with a purchase in a completely different category, not just a direct competitor. Understanding that stage changes how, and how often, you should be reaching out. The Four Types of Follow-Up: Information, Education, Entertainment, and Service Corrie breaks follow-up into four categories, and they have to happen in order: information, education, entertainment, then service. Skipping the order, especially jumping to entertainment before you've built credibility, makes a rep look unprofessional instead of likable. Information Follow-Up Covers Your Product and Company This is the follow-up most reps already do: spec sheets, product comparisons, and warranty details. Corrie also uses this stage to introduce the buyer to the service team they'll work with after the sale, so promises made during the pitch feel real. Education Follow-Up Turns You Into an Advisor Education follow-up gives the buyer something useful whether they buy from you or not, like an honest guide to navigating your industry. Corrie points to the movie Air, where Nike won over the Jordan family by telling them exactly what to expect from competitors before ever pitching a shoe. This step also means telling buyers the hard questions they should ask your competitors, even when it makes your own company look more exposed. Entertainment Comes After You've Earned Trust Entertainment, things like memes, a pizza delivery, or a Rubik's Cube with a clever note, only works once you've already built credibility. Trying to build rapport before trust exists makes a buyer more suspicious, not less. Service Follow-Up Closes the Loop Service follow-up means offering something small and free, like a low cost version of your product, a free workshop, or a discounted service, to prove your competence before the big ask. It comes last because you don't want to give away value to buyers who are still early in the process. Physical Follow-Up Beats Digital Every digital follow-up competes with hundreds of unread emails and notifications already on a buyer's phone. A physical card, book, or package sits on someone's desk with no competition, and Corrie treats that as one of the most underused tools in follow-up. Play the Long Game With Every Prospect Some deals will close this month, some in three months, and some won't close for a year. Reps need to plan follow-up around that reality instead of giving up early. Corrie's rule: do something today that your future self will thank you for. "Don't expect him to spend fifty grand with you if you won't spend fifty dollars on him." — Corrie George Resources Learn more about Corrie's sales trade school, YESA. https://yesa.ca/Learn more about Corrie's home security company, Canada First. https://canadafirst.com/Keep track of your sales activity and boost your results with the Prospect Pro sales tool. https://prospectpro.io/Step up your sales game with Sales Mastermind. Get accountability, stay motivated, and tackle the blockers keeping you from hitting your goals. https://thesalesevangelist.com/sales-mastermind/Visit Blue Mango Studios for help creating podcast production content. https://bluemangostudios.com/Join our LinkedIn cohort and learn to prospect the right way. https://thesalesevangelist.com/linkedin-prospecting-course/ Sponsorship Offers This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot. With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales https://www.hubspot.com/products/sales. This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation. Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/UCMfjZbX. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. 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• 1:28Speaker 00

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• 1:53Speaker 00

  You got a follow-up. Many of us just don't do it. Today, we're going to talk about one thing you can do to make sure your following up actually works with your prospect. Check it out.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Hey, hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to another great episode of the Sales Evangelist Podcast. I'm your host, Donald C. Kelly, the Sales Evangelist. And I'm so excited for another great episode. I'm so excited to be here today. And on this episode, I'm bringing on the one and only Corey George. Now Corey runs and he worked with Grant Cardone, running the Canada franchise a while back. And then also Corey runs, he has his own sales education organization, working with some large brands in North America, as well as working right now has in a security company in Canada. And Corey's going to talk us through a process that he has four points when it comes to doing following up and why we're supposed to do it and how we make sure we do it.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  You're going to love it. Before I dive into that though, I want you to be able to subscribe to the podcast if you haven't done so already. It's the Sales Evangelist. Obviously you're listening to it. If you're a first time listener, if you've been listening for a while, please take this link, share it with one other person that could benefit from it. As we dive into the episode today, listen to the things that Corey shares, the four steps, the four different ways of following up. And he gives four avenues. It's one, it's entertainment, education, information, and service. Now that's not the exact order, but he'll guide us through the order and it's so good. That's all I'm going to say. Check it out.

• 3:28Speaker 00

  Corey, welcome to the show, man.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks, Tom. Appreciate it. It's good to be here.

• 3:32Speaker 00

  I'm looking forward to this conversation about following up because I think this is really underrated. I think many of us in the sales arena feel, especially new sellers, younger salespeople, those not experienced feel that if they are doing multiple follow-ups, they're going to bother the individual when that could be far from the truth. So I'm excited to get your insights today. I bragged about you a little bit in teaser. You had some experience with Grant Cardone, but you're doing some major stuff right now. You mind telling us that just for one minute?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I run two companies. So previously I was the president for Grant Cardone, Canada. I launched his first franchise. We were their number one licensed partner for six years straight. At the time, we did 5.2 or 5.3 million at our peak of selling the sales training. It was, we were a small team, but second place was 600 grand. So first place, 5.2 or 5.3 million, second place, 600K. Selling sales training is an echo chamber. It's difficult because if your sales process isn't perfect, you're judged on the sales process. Whereas like if you're selling a car, you know, if I'm buying a BMW M5 or something and the salesman messes up the sales process, but I love the car, I buy the car. When you're selling sales training, you mess up the buyer at ease. You don't bring up their concerns first.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  You know, you don't do a good buyer appraisal, find out what they like about their current purchase. They judge you for that and they attribute it to your product. So sales, selling sales training is a blessing and a curse. You have to be switched on every day. And if you're out, if you let things go out in your life and you go into a slump, man, do you go into a slump? Cause you can't sell being great if you're not being great.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  Man, you, you spitting truth there.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, oh, you know, this world 100%. I mean, this is your game. I moved out of that space. I decided to build my own sales company and actually build a trade school of sales. So I go after major sales contracts, selling volume products. And then I use those as like a job placement and a practicum so that I can recruit students who want to learn sales, but they do a sales job with me, but they do 90 minutes of training and study a day. And we've grown that business. Last year, we sold $280 million worth of telecom. My cut of that was just shy of 50 million. This year, we'll probably do close to $70 million of my own collected revenue. Like that's my company's commission on the whole deal.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  And then I also own a home security company in Canada because the crime is a problem up there. We basically put blast. Yeah, I'll tell, but we maybe talk about that now or we talk about it off air, but Canada has a really bad home invasion problem just due to our bail policies and some really stupid things that have happened in Canada recently. So we put blast proofing window film on windows that prevent people from smashing your window. It's invisible, but you could take a baseball bat to your window over and over and over. Eventually the glass breaks, but you can't get through it because it's got this polymer film on it. Yeah. It's like a force field for your windows.

• 6:31Speaker 00

  Dope, man. So, yeah. Well, I thought you guys were so nice up in Canada. You know, you're not, not breaking in people's house, but I stand corrected.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Now, Canada's, Canada's, there's a veneer there. There's this, there's the front and then there's what's going on behind the closed doors, you know?

• 6:45Speaker 00

  Oh, snap. All right. So I'll be careful in Canada there. Well, one of the things that you, I mean, your companies, congratulations and all your companies and the success that you've had. I think it ties back in some part, I can't speak for you, but from our previous conversation, if you're not doing great at follow-up, I can't imagine you doing 70 million or doing, you know, help becoming like one of the, the top sales training sellers in, in the North America. Or even with your home invasion company, I just don't, I can't see that you're not going to be successful if you have a lack, improper follow-up system. So let's dive into that real quick. Everyone needs to have a process, but most people don't follow up. Talk to me about that.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, hopefully most of your listeners have a sales process, right? So they're going into a sales process. They understand you need to put the buyer at ease always before you can even fact find. You can't go into fact find somebody and ask them what their problem is right off the hop.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  Keeps you up at night.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  What they're trying to solve and you know, there's a much better way of, you know, you want to put the buyer at ease. And then after you put your buyer, and that might be saying something like, listen, my goal here is to give you the information you need to make a decision. I'll leave the decision-making up to you. And my policy is if it's not a no-brainer, I don't ask for your business. Okay. Let's just see if we can help you make a good decision or at least get some good information. Now the customer's like, oh, I'm going to make the decision and this guy's not going to ask for my business unless I think it's a no-brainer. Puts the customer at ease, right? Then you say, hey, I'm going to do it in the shortest period of time. If you want more time, you can ask me, my goal is to have this done in the next 15 to 20 minutes. Puts them at ease on the time. Now I can say something like, hey, you know, listen, we know you're going to make a good choice with or without us. So why don't you tell me right now,

• 8:27Speaker 01

  you know, what do you like about your current provider? Like if I was selling a service, like what do you like about your current provider? I always start with what they like. If I'm selling a car, what do you like about your current car? What do you like about the current deal you got with your car, the current financing terms, the current deal? What do you like about your current insurance plan? What do you like about your current sales training company? Cause it's much easier for them to tell you about what's right about their decisions. They're going to have to get that off before they'll ever tell you what's wrong. That's just the human condition. People don't spend their day being wrong. They spend their time being justified about what their past decisions. So just like you have a, you have a process for that, put the buyer at ease. Start your fact finding on what they like about their past decisions, what they like about their current provider, and then ease into, okay, where's the delta? What are they trying to improve? That's a process that I'm sure most of your listeners are following.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  And then present, never present before you do a fact find, you're wasting time. Now on the follow-up process, what's people's follow-up process? And the, most of the people in the sales game who are even good closers, good salespeople, it's blank. Or it might be, I, you know, I do a two-day check-in, you know, and then I might send an email and then I'll text them something and then that's it. And they don't have a structured follow-up process that is as structured and as burned into their approach as their sales process. You see, and that's a problem because only about 20% or less, according to salesforce.com, I got the stat while working with Grant, less than 20% of your sales are going to be made in those first points of contact.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  82% of your sales will be made between the fifth and the 12th point of contact. Okay. And again, these are stats from the space, from CRM businesses. So between the 12th, fifth and 12th point of contact is where 80% of your sales are going to be made. The question is, how do you get over, first of all, this trepidation or fear of following up? Because when you think about following up five times, you're like, shit, man, I'm going to be annoying this guy. I'm going to burn the deal. This guy's going to start ghosting me. He's going to start ignoring my calls. I don't want to seem contrived. We had a good relationship, you know, it went well. And the real answer there is, okay, well, you have to rewind and say, where is this guy in the buying cycle? Most salespeople don't understand that, you know, and we learned that, by the way.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  So we did $5 million a year selling for Grant Cardone. 95% of that, maybe more, was from a cold call.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  You're crazy. That's crazy.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Ice cold, cold call. Our first year, we did 98,000 dials with four guys.

• 10:55Speaker 00

  Oh my goodness.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  98,000 dials. We did, I have my stats here. 2,922 hours of talk time. We did 1,400 appointments. We did 1,023 demos. And then in our first year, we did 2.6 million with four guys. We were, but we, that's eight, what was it? Eight month year. We only, we started in April and that was us figuring it out. Okay. Now next year grew, next year grew. But that's starting with, they don't know who you are. They weren't thinking about buying your product. Okay. So when you want to follow up with somebody, you have to ask yourself, where was this guy in the buying cycle?

• 11:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Now, everyone wants to pride themselves on, I'm a closer. I always close, but I gotta be frank, you should close who can be closed, but you also should be good enough at the game and your sales process and objection handling to recognize who's just not there in the buying cycle yet.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  A thousand percent. I think that gets underrated tremendously. And that should be a stat that's just as praised as much as the ones that you do bring in.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  Didn't waste our time on what XYZ.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. You have to know where you are in the buying cycle. So, you know, if I knock on a door, I talk to somebody cold or everyone's at a different place in the business cycle, right? Versus the sales cycle, the sales cycle sometimes, you know, happens earlier where you get a person into a sales cycle before they were in. And part of that sales cycle is making them aware of the problem. Door to door, people notice this a lot. Cold calling people notice a lot. Outbound sales guys notice this a lot is that sometimes the sales process happens before some of the other key aspects, like they trust your brand.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  They know who your company is, you know, they might not even be shopping. You know, sometimes they're shopping a different industry against yours. Like you're selling windows and doors and they go and spend that money on home theater system. So they're not even always that sold on the particular field you're in. You know, some people think they're selling a car. For example, I'm building an engine. I've got a 1968 Chevelle. And I'm putting a, a big block aluminum, aluminum block, big motor in this thing. And I was in the deal, you know, talking about negotiating cylinder heads, what kind of pistons we're going to put in this thing. And I paused that project and I went and bought a Dodge Demon. I got a really good deal, you know, like a bring a trailer deal on a Dodge Demon. So this guy thinks he might've been competing with another engine builder. He was competing with a completely different purchase. Right?

• 13:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Cause I wasn't that far into the buying cycle with him. Now, the good news is I keep seeing this guy's YouTube videos. I keep seeing promo and this guy's followed me up on giving me tips. We're building my dad's Chevelle as well. So he sold me some parts for my dad's car and he's followed me up and given me some advice. And that's what we're going to talk about today. He's given me some advice on my dad's engine. So he stayed in front of me, but not necessarily, he's never asked me, he never follows me up and asked me about this motor. Now he could, it would be a good idea, but by being in front of me, being a, a piece of counsel, being a piece of advice for me, he's constantly keeping the sale warm. And people don't have that. They don't have a manual funnel. You have to have a funnel, a manual follow-up funnel for your sales process

• 13:54Speaker 01

  to kind of check all the boxes that a buyer needs to go through.

• 14:02Speaker 01

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• 15:06Speaker 00

  We have four points and we're going to tackle each one, probably just like in a few minutes. The first point was there's a four points to follow, a follow-up to entertain, educate, inform and service. Can you just take a two minutes and just tell us about that?

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So there's, there's four types of follow-up. Okay. So you have information, and this is what most sales guys do. They follow up by sending you the data on the car or the, you know, the warranty information or how our product, you know, all the features and benefits of our product. Or they send you a brochure to your phone or to your email. And that's information about your product. Now, that doesn't service the customer unless they're buying from you, unless they're buying your product, right?

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  So there's only so much you can do that because we're talking about the sale. We're talking about you buying something from me. So information though, it is very important. Information would be spec sheets, right? It would be a product comparisons, your product versus the competitor. It'd be Silverado versus F-150. It would be your Dell computer versus a Hewlett Packard. It would be your windows, your storm windows and doors versus the competitors. It would be your alarm system versus the competitors. But it's information that really is about your product and service. Now that is important and that's to check the boxes of the customer being aware of your product's benefits and features and advantages, right? That should happen in a sale. If the sales process didn't take care of some of that understanding, that's why you're following up with that.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  So, you know, it's important to have a, you want to have an understanding of, every buyer needs to go through a set of cognitions or realizations about your product, your company and you before they'll purchase. Now, some of them have had a bunch of those cognitions already before you talk to them. So they're in easy sale. They've had a cognition that they like your company, that they trust you and that they like your product. They've had a lot of realizations, right? They trust the company. They trust the product and service. They think they need the product and service. So they've had a lot of those realizations. Then when you hop into the sale, it's an easy sale. But sometimes you're in a sale and they'd not had those cognitions yet. They don't really think that your company's better than the competitor. They don't really think that you're a easier to deal with salesperson than the competitor or than another sales guy.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  So they haven't had those realizations yet. So it's your follow-up processes job, if you don't close the deal, to go and check those boxes one by one in a natural way. So information would be about your product, why your product is better. Okay. Information might also be about your company. So you want, you know, I'll send a video of my factory tour. I'll do a factory tour or a tour of my operations. Like I'm, I just, I'm pitching a giant telecom company right before I hopped on this call. I'm going to send that senior vice president, a video tour of our facility as one form of follow-up. Now, if you're selling a product, you send a video tour of your facility and, you know, make sure your facility is clean and tidy. And maybe in that video, yeah, maybe in that video,

• 18:03Speaker 01

  you introduce that person to some of the service technicians or the service staff. You know, so they know they have a face to a name of the people they're going to be working with after the sale is made. Right? Because salespeople make promises, but they don't necessarily deliver. So, you know, in my follow-up process for the information step, I might send them a video introducing them to the service staff. Who's going to be supporting them? Who's going to have their back if anything goes wrong? That is one of my steps in my follow-up process, but that falls under information. Another one is education follow-up. So this is a big one, Donald. This is one of the easiest ways that people can make money. Okay? Education, and if people are listening to this, they can write it down. Education follow-up is information that doesn't require them to purchase your product

• 18:48Speaker 01

  to benefit from.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Okay. So if I'm selling a car and I get the customer says, oh, they want to sell their car privately. They don't want to trade it in. They want to go and sell their car privately. Or yeah, I'm probably going to wait till after winter or whatever. You know, basic objections on purchasing a vehicle would be, there's a lot of them, right? I want to shop around, et cetera, et cetera. So education follow-up is you becoming an advisor. Okay. You becoming an advisor to the customer, even if they're not your customer yet. You start working for them before, and it falls into this philosophy of do more than you're paid for. And soon you're paid more for what you do. So I become an, I become an advisor to that guy before he ever buys anything from me.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  And I have information in writing because people believe what they see. They don't believe what they hear. And I build material that is advice. So I would have a document, a nicely made document that looks very official that says eight steps to get the most amount of money when selling your car privately. Cause most sales guys are going to fight that. Oh, don't sell it privately. It's going to take you too long, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now I'm going to try and sell the guy on trading his car in. But if not, I'm going to say, great. Hey, you know what? I got a document for you. It's actually put together by all of our in-house staff, our actual used car department on how to get the maximum amount of dollar when selling your car privately. And it's eight tips of how to sell your car privately and get the most amount of money. And there's information in there on how to detail it, how to photo, how to photograph it.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  You know, what to write in your ad, what not to write in your ad, where to post it. You know, how to price it exactly, et cetera. Okay. How to showcase the car. And now I'm providing information to this guy who came in to look at a car, who didn't buy a car, and I'm going to send him that information on day five of follow-up or day three of follow-up. I'm not going to ask him about the car, not ask him if he sold it yet. I'm not going to ask him, hey, you know, I, I could do, I can take another 500 off the car. I'm not going to do any of that. I'm going to give him some educational follow-up that he can benefit from, whether he buys the car from me or not. That's one tip. Okay. Here's another one. This is a big one. I educate them on how to navigate my industry.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  It's like insider information.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Correct. So I build, again, I build a document though. Okay. If you look online, these click funnel guys and all, they do this online, right? They sell an educational piece that's free, a free webinar workshop, and it teaches the customer something, provides benefit before the purchase. So what I want to do is I want to say, great. 12 things you need to know when buying a car in 2026. Six things you need to know when shopping window providers. 14 things the, the insurance industry doesn't want you to know about when negotiating your policy and premiums. Okay? And I'm going to put that information together and it's going to bring up all the stereotypes and stigmas of my industry. So if I'm selling telecom, you know, the five reasons people hate telecoms

• 21:38Speaker 01

  and what to do about it, you know, fine print, bundles, contracts, bad customer service and hidden fees.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Right? So I'm going to send that information to my clients. And that might be a day nine follow-up. Okay. But this is information that is not about my product or service. And what's happening, and I would advise at everybody after watching this podcast or listening to this podcast, go and watch the movie Air with, about Michael Jordan and Nike.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Because Matt Damon in that movie goes to see Michael Jordan's mom. And he's the underdog. At the time Nike, or Nike, if you're English, was not the premium basketball shoe. The premium basketball shoe was Adidas and Converse.

• 22:19Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  And Jordan wanted to go with Adidas. So Matt Damon, representing Nike, told the customer, the Jordan family, what they were going to run into while shopping sponsors for shoes. He said, here's what's going to happen at Converse. Here's what's going to happen at Adidas. And here's how to navigate it. Here's the questions you should ask them. Okay. Now, when she goes into those other sales presentations, she has Nike in her ear and she's measuring everything Adidas tells her. She's measuring everything Converse tells her against what Nike told her.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  And Nike told her that selflessly. Now, obviously Nike's going to benefit. So I educate my buyer on how to navigate my industry and I tell them the truth. Now, I also make sure that my salespeople are great. We're honest. We have a transparent sales process and I make sure that I have great service so that I can navigate those customers. Cause I am going to make the customer more difficult as well. The byproduct here is that customer becomes more difficult for the competitors. Cause they know how to ask the hard questions. You know, right now I'm being shopped. I run a sales company. So I'm going to educate my buyers on the hard questions that they should ask sales companies about their retention, about how many salespeople they really have versus how many are revolving door. If their salespeople actually make base salary and why not? Do they not make enough money that you won't invest base salary in them?

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Are they not profitable enough for you? So you educate the telecom company. That's who I'm selling to right now on how to ask the hard questions of the sales companies. And it differentiates me. So that's education. Okay. So education follow-up as well can also be things like, so it's non-industry specific or non-product specific. It's usually about your industry, how to navigate the industry, do's and don'ts of shopping your product and service. And then free educational webinars or workshops. So you put together a free video that you host on an evergreen on a website, a landing page, and it's educational material. And you can do this for any industry. What do you need to know about buying a car? What do you need to know about the half ton industry right now? Maybe, maybe you work in Texas and you sell a lot of pickup trucks. What do you need to know about the half ton industry? What you probably need to know is that General Motors has a serious problem

• 24:25Speaker 01

  with its small block Chevy right now, the crankshafts and the six two. Like whatever it is, I'm a huge car guy. You know, you add, you educate the guy. So that's education. So one, information. Do a video tour of your facility. Do an introduction to the service team and the, and the executive team so that they know who's going to be backing them up. You would do, send them product spec sheets. You would send them information about your product, competitive analysis against someone else's product. That's information. Education is how to navigate your industry, do's and don'ts, tips and tricks. And then the next one is entertainment. Okay. Entertainment's very important. Now, it would come after a combination of information and education. You would never do entertainment education if you haven't built value in you as a provider,

• 25:10Speaker 01

  but that might be memes.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  Think about all the things you wish you had help with in sales. Finding the right buyers, knowing which account to prioritize, reaching out with the right message at the right time. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is built to help with exactly that. It uses AI-powered recommendations to surface leads and accounts that match your goals. So you spend less time searching and more time selling. You get real-time account insights that help you grow your pipeline, personalize outreach and stay informed about buyer activities. It can't replace the work of selling, but it gives you the data and visibility to sell with more focus and confidence. That's what we need. All of this is powered by LinkedIn's network of over 1.2 billion professionals.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  The most dynamic buyer network working just for you. Accelerate your sales with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator now with a free 60-day trial at LinkedIn.com/sell. That's LinkedIn.com/sell. Terms and conditions apply.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Since 2013, we launched this podcast. The goal of the podcast was to share wealth of information and I feel that we've successfully done so. As a natural byproduct, listeners like you would reach out and ask, could I coach them? Could I train their team? Could I come and speak in an S K O? Could I consult for them? And that is how we gain the majority of our business and still to this day. So in 2019, one of our clients saw what we did and asked, could we do that for them? We experimented with it and we started a podcast production agency. Now we create podcasts for some of the biggest brands in the world. And it's amazing. I would love to show you and your team how we can create podcasts for you and use it as an entertaining source, but also educational and a lead generation.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  If you're interested, go to bluemangostudios.com. Again, bluemangostudios.com and our team can show you exactly what we did. It's amazing.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  Why is that a no-no?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Because the entertainment aspect is you're trying to build rapport. Right? So I'm going to send a guy a video. I mean, I'll give you an example of this. Okay. This is later in the deal. Once I have that guy sold that we're the right, right? I've got checklist. Is he sold that we're the right company? And then what goes into that sold that we're the right company is proof of service, executive team, facilities, right? You know, my thoroughness, my earnestness for the deal without being needy. We're the right company. Good. There's a bunch of little sub-checked things that I can send. I can check off all those boxes with a couple of videos and maybe even some mailers. I want to actually mail physical stuff to this guy. I'll tell you about that later. I do not want to rely wholly on digital follow-up.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  All you salespeople relying fully on emails and text messages and phone calls and social media, you're missing out on easy money because every advertisement, every follow-up particle you send this guy, if it's in his phone, you're competing with every other thing in his phone. You're competing with 500 unread emails. You're competing with every Instagram notification. You're competing with Twitter. You're competing with YouTube. But if I send him a physical book or a booklet or a demonstration catalog, and I had to spend a little bit of money on that, heaven forbid, that catalog sits on his desk. It doesn't compete with everything in his phone. It's literally sticking him right in the face every single day. So I don't rely on digital follow-up. But let's just say I had a guy, he was early in the sales cycle.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  He wasn't, you know, I, we built good rapport. I piqued his interest. I brought him up from maybe not interested or mildly interested to strongly enthusiastic, but he didn't pull the trigger. Maybe there's another influencer in the deal. Maybe he's not the decision maker yet. I don't know. We don't know this yet. We didn't ascertain that in our sales process. It happens. Okay. Now I'm going to check my boxes that we're the right company by when I follow up. I'm going to have a follow-up schedule. I'm going to literally write out a follow-up schedule. Okay. Follow-up schedule, day one, or when he leaves, I'm going to text him within 10 minutes of him leaving. I'm going to send him a video, thanks for coming in, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's it. You're going to leave him alone. Day three, he's going to get a handwritten card or some kind of thank you or something that's physical, maybe with some kind of value, some kind of a pamphlet or something like that.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  I want, I want him to have something physical in his hands. A day five might be educational tips, things I know he's going to benefit from. That'll be educational tips. That can be in email. It can be in a text. Probably better to send it physical though. You send them a package in like a nice manila envelope. And some sales guys, the amateur ones who don't make any money are saying, well, that costs money.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Don't expect him to spend 50 grand with you if you won't spend $50 on him, by the way. Okay. But, uh, you know, so I got a follow-up process. Now let's say I'm like 10 days into process. I've got a good relationship. I've been following up. I sent him a bunch of value-add information and we know, and I got the other influencer on the call. They're down. Now they're talking because this is a B to B sale and they're working on timing. And again, it's not a closed deal. I'm going to send him some entertainment.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Okay. Now B to B dude, I'll send that guy a pizza to his office and we'll remove a slice of pizza and we'll say, only Cardone Training Technologies has the missing piece to your success. And I will literally, and I've done this, by the way. I mean, I can show you, it's literally on the slide, I got a picture of the pizza. Or I'll send him a Jerry Maguire meme where Jerry Maguire is on the phone saying, show me the money. And I'll say, don't make me go Jerry Maguire on you guys. Okay. Or I'll send them a Rubik's cube and it says, sale shouldn't be this complicated. Or insurance shouldn't be this complicated. Or I'll send him a lottery ticket and say, hey, if this lottery ticket doesn't win you a million dollars, don't worry, our product's going to make you a million dollars in profit this year alone.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  I'm gonna have fun with it. I might Photoshop his picture onto some kind of meme for fun. But you see how you can't do that. You can't build rapport until you have credibility. Any salesman who tries to build rapport before they have credibility, they're putting it's the wrong step. Think about it this, if you talk to somebody and you don't trust them and they're trying to build rapport with you, you're in your head thinking about what they're saying. But when, you know, like, uh, do I trust this guy? This guy's kind of cheesy. Uh, he's, you know? But once you trust somebody and you know they're legit, you relax.

• 31:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. At that point, it's no big deal.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Okay. So that's entertainment. Okay. So we've got information, stuff on your product and service in your company. Education, how to navigate the industry, tips and tricks, advice for them, regardless if they buy from you or not. And then you've got entertainment and then service. Have some free services or lower dollar services. You're going and pitching an $80,000 product, an $80,000 service. Do you maybe have a $4,000 service or a $9,000 service, a lost leader? Or something where you just break even, where you can demonstrate your competence. You can demonstrate your service to this guy, or maybe you can do something for free, a webinar, a workshop, something for this guy. You know, hell, service might even be if you're a dealership, right? Give this guy a reason to come back to your store.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Give him something for an oil change. Give him something for a detailing at your shop. You know, you would use those on the, on the buyers. Notice how service is at the end. And it's, it's between entertainment and the other ones. I don't want to start giving free services out to a bunch of buyers. I don't have deep into that sales process.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  It's the follow-up process. So that's why I said service and entertainment are at the end. Okay? Now I'm servicing the guy when I give him free education. So that is service. When I give him that education stuff, but it costs me nothing. It costs me a printout. It costs me, you know, I buy 50 of these little booklets at the beginning of my month. And I'm going to go through them. It's part of my cost of acquisition as a salesperson. But once I'm doing service, man, I might give somebody a free workshop. I might give somebody a free detailing. I might give somebody this because there might be some trepidation. You don't know what it is. They might've been burned in the past. They might've had a bad experience. They might've had, you might remind them of a past sales guy who was a manipulator. You might remind them of Jordan Belfort, you know, one of the guys who's a big con artist who manipulates people for a living, whatever.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  But this is the importance of having a follow-up process. Okay? So information, education, entertainment and service.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  Corey, absolutely amazing. I love the four points that you highlighted there. And the entertainment part makes sense with the way you have it and the service as well, where you're not giving stuff away from the beginning. And I think this just allows for many of us as sales professionals to get a better understanding. The follow-up isn't just sending a dumb email saying, just following up. There's more to that.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  If there's just checking in, just checking in, Donald.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  Stop touching my base, man.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  You know, hey, did you talk to the CFO yet? Hey, did you get your tax return yet? Oh dude, dude, I know, right?

• 34:05Speaker 00

  If there's one major takeaway, you would like a sales leader listening to this episode or a sales rep to walk away with? What's that one major piece of advice, Corey?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Be willing to invest in the future, you know, real players, like how does a building get built? Like behind me right now, there's a building. I just watched this whole building. They just did a, one of those historic buildings.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Right there. Okay. It's a telephone company from our telephone business from like the 1900s. Okay. Someone bought that building. Someone bought that building. It was dilapidated. It did not look like that. Okay? So someone invested money, somebody tore that thing, gutted it inside, stripped the face. Were they making money during that whole time? No, they were losing money. They put money into it. They paid interest on probably, they probably, they didn't buy it cash. I can tell you that. Okay? Then they poured money into the GCs and the contractors. They lost money for a period of time.

• 34:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  And now they're recouping the money because they're thinking 10 years at a time.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  And this whole area is appreciating right now. Okay? Even though Florida itself is kind of coming down, this particular downtown area is actually on the, on the up. So it's interesting, right? You have to think, everybody wants to be a millionaire, but you know, no one wants to do the work. And you have to be understanding that your efforts and your energies have to invest. You have to be willing to close the immediate deals today. So what I'm giving you advice on is not an excuse not to close deals today. If you can close the deal, close the deal. Close the deal, finish the cycle. The faster you close the deal, the faster you service the customer, the better. But being able to recognize that there's another probably 30% of those buyers that will close, but it's going to be a month from now. And then probably another 30 are missing out on that is probably going to be three months from now.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  So you have to be willing to invest time and energy. Time is money. People say this all the time. So if you don't have money as a sales rep to invest in your business, you do have time and energy, an infinite amount of energy. And you have a lot of time. So I'm willing to invest in deals three months from now.

• 35:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  And you know what? I thank myself, you know, I'm, I'm like, I'm doing something today that my future self will be thankful for. That's my mentality, right? Do something today that your future self will be thankful for. Follow up with that customer. Do something nice for him, but non-needy. Just keep making contributions to your prospect base.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Over time, you're going to learn how to capitalize because sales guys are, they're afraid to do this because they don't know how to capitalize. They don't know how to ask for the sale. Cause there is a way, right? At some point you're going to have to ask for the sale. You're going to have to have that. We could talk about that on the next one of these that we do.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Which is you actually have to do a call and do a survey of like, hey, great. What did I miss? It's called an apology follow-up. Hey, I just want to apologize. Took you through the sales process, but obviously I didn't help you find a solution. And I just wanted to know, you know, did I make an assumption? Did I have you on the wrong product? You know, and I wanted to know, like, basically, why haven't you bought yet?

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  But I had to earn that phone call. Now, sales guys don't know how to have those hard conversations in an articulate way. So they don't do any of the other stuff because they feel like they're just going to be doing goodwill. And here's what I'm going to tell you, the goodwill will pay off regardless of your killer on capitalizing on it yet. You should at least start doing the goodwill stuff, the good follow-up, providing education, providing service, providing entertainment for your prospects. Because the goodwill will pay off because at least you'll start building a good brand. And then while you're doing that, you'd be training on a program on how to capitalize on that and it will pay off. So I say, do something today that your future self will thank you for. Be willing to invest in the future of your prospects. Be willing to get paid three months from now. I'm doing a deal right now with this telecom company, probably not going to pay me till next year.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  But that's how wealthy or I'm not wealthy. I would say, um, what was it? Rich? Like, I want to be wealthy. Wealthy people are willing to invest long in the future. They put money into deals that aren't going to pay them for a decade. That's how I'm trying to do. I'm trying to start thinking with future. So salespeople should be thinking three to six months in the future at a minimum at all times. Not just this month.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  Love it, man. Well, if folks want to get in touch with you, Corey, what's the best way for them to do so?

• 37:58Speaker 01

  You can follow me on Instagram as Corey George Official. And you can also check out, you know, my companies are CanadaFirst.com. That's my home security company. And I own another company that's a trade school for sales. It's YESA. Y-E-S-A. If you're a young salesperson looking for a position where you can get educated and go through a curriculum that we built here and learn all this stuff and have a sales job. You can apply YESA.ca. It's a Canadian website right now, but we're in the US. YESA.ca. You can check that out. And there's like an apply page that they can go to.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  Love it, man. Well, Corey, thank you so much for taking the time to come on our show today. Appreciate your insight, man.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I appreciate it, Donald. Thank you.

• 38:42Speaker 00

  Hey, that was Corey George. I am telling you, that was an amazing episode. If you haven't done so already, go ahead and connect with Corey. Tell him you heard him here on the Sales Evangelist Podcast. You can follow him on Instagram as well as you can find his companies and details in the show notes. I love the outline that he shared. I love the process of making sure you're structured with your follow-up and not making it this, you know, the lame follow-ups, just following up or, you know, touching base. Giving them something of worth, that information, and then making sure you educate them. What can I give them about the industry they may not necessarily know? And then obviously you've got more things that you can do when it comes to your entertainment and the service. Check it out. Apply these principles and let Corey and myself know how you like it. If you are loving the podcast, leave us a rating and review. I truly appreciate that.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  And if you're trying to improve your LinkedIn game, make sure to connect with us. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linked. As always, I want you to thrive. I want you to succeed. But most importantly, I want you to raise your level of thinking. I want you to go out and do big things. See you on the next one.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  The Sales Evangelist Podcast is created by the Sales Evangelist Sales Training Organization. It is produced by TSC Studios. Our podcast production manager is Nancy Paul. Our audio engineer is Jershun Obayal. Our video engineer is Dusan Kunado. Guest management is done by Jill Vito and Kristy Virtus. Our content writer is Carlisa Galberith. Our graphic designer is Yurvish Savalia. And I'm your host and executive producer, Donald C. Kelly.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Sales Podcast Network.