How to Double Your Sales Conversions with No Extra Spend on Marketing – In Just 7 Minutes with Mike Irving

Resources/Links:

• Get instant access for FREE and learn how to double your close rate with this book ‘Sales Scripts Are Dead: The Resistance Removal Sales System Is Alive!’: https://go.advancedbusinessabilities.com/

Summary

Have you ever felt the frustration of potential clients slipping through your fingers despite your best efforts? This struggle of converting leads into sales can be a major hurdle for many businesses. But you can always have the chance to double your sales conversions without additional marketing costs.

Mike Irving is the Founder of Advanced Business Abilities and passionate about helping you remove the resistance that restricts you in life and business.

In this episode, Mike shares his unique “Resistance Removal Sales System,” which helps double sales conversions by identifying and eliminating internal and external resistance in sales conversations. He emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and personal growth, using techniques like centered breathing to manage stress and improve focus.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 02:38 – Mike’s ideal client: Business owners, CEOs, sales professionals, but specifically it’s people who are conscious of being commissionable, meaning they have a strong moral compass.
• 03:39 – The problem he helps solve: We help them stop yanking the rug out from underneath their own feet.
• 05:57 – Symptoms of the problem: There’s not enough sales or not enough growth in the team because they feel stuck and they have that pressure.
• 06:46 – Common mistakes clients make: They attempt to force themselves to change and they work really hard.
• 07:31 – Mike’s Valuable Free Action [VFA]: Mike Irving: Centered breathing is about taking a breath down into your belly; See that shallow breathing activates your fight, flight, faint, freeze mechanism and it doesn’t support you to be completely present which is where you can intentionally direct your attention.
• 09:25 – His Valuable Free Resource[VFR]: Download a free book called Sales Scripts Are Dead: The Resistance Removal Selling System is Alive. Click here: https://go.advancedbusinessabilities.com/
• 09:58 – Q: Why do I do this? A: I met the people that I now refer to as my research team in 2006. And after that is when I actually learned how to sell. I started studying the mind and performance and these people have helped me to create the basis of what we do here at ABA now.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“The number one and most valuable performance tool that is available to every single person is what I call centered breathing.” -Mike Irving Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. I’m joined today by a nomad in the form of Mike Irving. We’ll unpack that in a moment, Mike, but very well welcome, sir. Where are you right now?

Mike Irving 00:21
Thanks very much, Tom. So right now I’m talking to you from about three hours northeast of Toronto in Canada. We’re up in the Lakes District, a little log cabin out in the middle of nowhere. It’s quite cool. I’m using Starlink to talk to you right now.

Tom Poland 00:35
Starlink, my goodness. Thank you, Elon.

Mike Irving 00:36
Exactly.

Tom Poland 00:37
And where were you this time last year?

Mike Irving 00:41
So this time last year, I was getting ready to take off and head to Vietnam, and then over to the US and down to Mexico. My wife and I packed up the house and we bought a shipping container and we’re now traveling indefinitely, spending some time close to her friends and family and mine down in Boston. Yeah, the business has allowed us to do that, which is pretty cool.

Tom Poland 01:02
But where did you live prior to this great nomadic expedition you embarked on?

Mike Irving 01:08
Based in Perth for 21 years and five years prior to that in Sydney. Perth in Western Australia.

Tom Poland 01:14
Most remote city, Perth, Australia.

Mike Irving 01:16
Indeed.

Tom Poland 01:17
We better get onto what folks are here for, all of that was very interesting that Mike’s the sort of guy that just packs up and travels around the world and keeps his business running. Also says something to the marketing systems and sales systems that he’s set up and that he’s going to share with us just a bit of an insight into one aspect of that system. And I’ve opted in Mike to your funnel as it were, and it’s books. It’s good stuff. So I can’t wait for you to share some of that. Subject today folks is How to Double Your Sales Conversions. It’s one thing to generate leads, it’s another thing to be able to convert them. And we’ve all had those frustrating experiences where we have new client inquiries. They just seem like they should be working with us, great benefit working with us, but they’d fail to convert.

So Mike can share how to do that without spending more money on marketing? He calls it the resistance removal sales system. And for those of you who don’t know, Mike’s the founder of Advanced Business Abilities. He’s passionate about helping people like you and me remove resistance that restricts the flow of business, and therefore also by default, by connection, the flow of life. Mike, I’m going to start riveting on, I’m going to start asking questions and ask you to start sharing. Seven minutes starts now, sir. Question number one, who is your ideal client?

Mike Irving 02:38
So, thanks. And our ideal client is described more psychographically than they are demographically. The demographics, male or female, doesn’t matter. Business owners, CEOs, sales professionals, but specifically it’s people who are conscious of being commissionable, meaning they have a strong moral compass. They also agree with a statement that is that you create your own reality. So our ideal client is they’re already successful to a degree, but they feel like there’s something that’s holding them back or they’ve got more to offer the world than what they’re currently showing. They’re willing to inspect the ways that they create their own reality, and they’re willing to inspect the ways that they might be reaching down and grabbing the rug and yanking it right out from underneath their own feet without knowing that they’re doing it.

Tom Poland 03:27
Well said. So that opens up kind of almost a can of worms with my brain, I think. But let me not explore that because you may cover the next two questions. Next question is, what’s the problem you solve for them?

Mike Irving 03:39
The primary problem we solve is we help them stop yanking the rug out from underneath their own feet. That is going to involve working out what is it about them that’s causing them to yank that rug out. Right? So you said earlier, we help to identify and remove the resistance that restricts a person from getting what they want.

Tom Poland 04:02
Right. And is that the rug you’re referring to? The fact that they’re doing things in sales conversations, which are almost self-sabotaging.

Mike Irving 04:09
It absolutely can be. So they can be communicating in a way that actually activates resistance within their prospect. Most of the time when they’re doing that and they’re activating resistance in the prospect, that’s happening because they have resistance within themselves showing up in forms of negative thinking. Well, incorrect belief systems.

Tom Poland 04:34
I was going to ask you about that because you’ve got people who you, I can’t remember how you described it, but consciously, they care about making a difference in the world. They care about other people. So is there this conflict, internal conflict between doing the right thing by people but wanting more sales?

Mike Irving 04:53
That can be an internal conflict that they experience. They also can experience an internal conflict because they will sometimes feel like they’re hitting the wall. It can happen very subtly where they’ll feel degrees of stress or anxiety or pressure, right? They’re thinking about things in the business that keep them awake at night a bit and they’ll occasionally feel like they’ve hit the wall and yeah, they don’t know what to do in order to get over or under that wall.

Tom Poland 05:20
So for whatever reason, it can be frustrating for them because they’re not getting a result that they feel they should be getting that they want. And a big part of what you do by the sound of it, is that you’re smoothing that process out. So they’re feeling like it’s a natural process and, but also at the same time, you’re removing resistance without any of the smoke and mirrors or BS or hype stuff.

Mike Irving 05:41
Spot on.

Tom Poland 05:42
So we’ve already talked a little bit about the symptoms, but question three of the symptoms. Is there anything else that’s going on in their life other than this friction and this failure to convert this frustration? If you like anything else that would give people a heads up that they probably need to look at your work a bit closer.

Mike Irving 05:57
Yeah, look, they’re obviously somebody who’s already to a degree successful, but they somehow feel a bit stuck. So it might be that there’s not enough sales or not enough growth in the team because they feel stuck and they have that pressure. They can be really easily distracted because their mind runs over time thinking about all this. And that takes their attention away from where they want it to go. So as an example, instead of being able to spend quality time with the family, their mind is away thinking about work and they’ve wasted the time they wanted to spend with family.

Tom Poland 06:31
Some conflicts and some friction and some frustration. So we’re talking about people that are proactive and that want to solve the problem. Question four is, what would you say, just real quick, what were some of the common mistakes people are making when they’re trying to sort this out?

Mike Irving 06:46
The number one most common mistake is that they attempt to force themselves to change and they work really hard.

Tom Poland 06:55
Right.

Mike Irving 06:55
Being different.

Tom Poland 06:57
Trying to bend themselves out of shape.

Mike Irving 06:58
Yeah. Well, the only thing that that does is create a continued demand for that amount of work and that force to be different. Now the problem is that sometimes on a short term basis, forcing yourself to be different can work.

Tom Poland 07:14
It works, but you’ve got to tie, and this is the friction I was alluding to before about wanting the sales, but wanting to be true to themselves and being caring human beings. Yeah, let’s flip it then. What’s the top tip you can give people that may not solve the whole problem, but it might take them a step in the right direction?

Mike Irving 07:31
Okay, so this is going to sound potentially foreign to some people. So hear me out. The number one most important thing, in fact I actually talk about this as the number one and most valuable performance tool that is available to every single person is what I call centered breathing. So it’s the very first thing that I work on with every single person who engages with our organization. Now, centered breathing is about taking a breath down into your belly, not a bigger breath than normal. So it’s not about going into a Zen place. And it’s not that. It’s taking the same size breath that you normally would, but instead of taking that breath up in your chest, just moving it down into your belly. See that shallow breathing activates your fight, flight, faint, freeze mechanism and it doesn’t support you to be completely present which is where you can intentionally direct your attention.

Tom Poland 08:31
Yeah. And for just for the sake of time, so I know this is going to come as a surprise to a lot of people, but I can if I may underline the validity of this because it disconnects the emotional turmoil that the mind is experiencing by being attached or having aversion to a particular outcome. So I totally understand it and it’s incredibly valuable, but it’s so simple that people often miss it. So they got to look at, that’s a fantastic top tip to stop the hamsters on the wheel, on the brain, on the mind running, running, running, running, running. Just to get this nice deep full breath right down into the belly so that we are deactivating that fight, flight mode. And there’s another if could throw in there, which is, out more, find out something else. Let’s wrap up, first of all by giving people a link where they can go to, to download your free guide because you’ve got one I’ve downloaded. I thought it was excellent. And where do people go for that?

Mike Irving 09:25
The site that they can go to is go.advancedbusinessabilities.com and there you’ll be able to download a free book that I wrote called Sales Scripts Are Dead: The Resistance Removal Selling System is Alive. And we’re also giving away a free bonus mini-video course on sales skills.

Tom Poland 09:43
I noticed that. It looks excellent. Folks, the website is go.advancedbusinessabilities.com. Go get it. Very worthwhile stuff. Um, 20 seconds, I’m going to give you. What’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t?

Mike Irving 09:58
Why do I do this?

Tom Poland 10:00
And so you can travel the world.

Mike Irving 10:02
Well, no. Quick summary. In 1998, I started a direct sales business. I taught sales for 10 years. At the end of 10 years, I was really disillusioned and frustrated and thought there was something wrong with me. I met the people that I now refer to as my research team in 2006. And after that is when I actually learned how to sell. I started studying the mind and performance and these people have helped me to create the basis of what we do here at ABA now.

Tom Poland 10:32
Mike Irving, thank you so much for your time.

Mike Irving10:34
Thank you.

Tom Poland 10:35
Cheers. Thanks everyone.

Tom Poland 10:36
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.