Building a Sustainable Sales Process for your Business

Transcript

Karen K  00:00

Welcome to episode four of season three of the maker work podcast. And today we're talking about how you can grow your business and specifically around successfully selling and as Lachy we're planning this series because it is all about growth. We started talking about sales as a key growth driver for businesses. And in 2022 it's shown to be a softer environment for many businesses. There's some hesitancy in the economy, which is perhaps due to our looming federal election is a war in Europe. We're still living through a pandemic of borders really just being opened. There's an awful lot of single lifetime activities that are happening all in one year. And as the owner or founder you're usually the salesperson for a small business until you're big enough to hire your first salesperson. But even then it can default back to the owner when the financial pressure is on. So this episode is all about how can we build sustainable sales processes. And joining us for this topic is Peter Soloway. And Peter is an entrepreneurial sales leader for small businesses. And he's built both early stage businesses himself and also being the first sales hire leading a SASS company from $1,000 in revenue to surpass its first million and Peter now supports founders looking to grow and scale their sales. seeing results like tripling sales in six months. So welcome, Peter.

Peter Solway  01:50

Thanks. Good to be here.

Karen K  01:52

Hey, it's great to have you. So to start off, you know, I'm personally hearing from different sectors that 2022 is a softer year so far when it comes to sales. But even if you're having a Gangbuster year, there's always room for improvement and growth. So what would be your advice for business owners looking to create more sustainable sales processes in their business?

Peter Solway  02:16

It's a good question, John. I think when it comes to sustainable sales process, it comes to planning right like so often to get a business started. We kind of have to be really reactive. We have to be intuitive, go with our gut feel, like make best guesses on things right. But when you're getting to that point, if you've got your first few 100,000 in revenue, you know you've got a baseline of something in business and you want to keep it more sustainable and build kind of that fan foundation to rely upon. It really comes to actually like breaking things down into chunks, right. So you know, if you think about the way that larger businesses run, you're starting to borrow some things, some little trinkets from them. So thinking about a quarter like how much how much would we like to do in sales this quarter like what's a little bit of a stretch beyond what we've done in the previous quarter, you know, this time last year, and therefore, how much do we need to do this month, the next month and what are the inputs that are going into us achieving that? Right? So really basically looking at that, you know, on a three month basis and then doing that same thing for a year and actually just thinking through what are the mechanics in order to hit your goals from a sales perspective? And what are you learning? Like, what are you trying right? You're always reactively seeing things as an entrepreneur as a founder and trying new things. But if you're actually putting those into a little bit of structure, right I'm not I'm not talking about over restructuring, like I'm sure a lot of people have experienced when they've worked in larger businesses. I'm talking about just enough to kind of check in, you know, every month, every quarter, and what I find, you know, when I go into a business, something that really makes a difference, and I often do get a bit of resistance from founders who've kind of, you know, been in corporates previously. And had just meeting overload. One sales meeting a week, even if it's two of you, right? Even if it's you're getting you know, your friends, sisters uncle to keep you accountable for your sales each week. It's like, what sales activities did we do this week? What What leads did we bring in, you know, how did that relate to you? Know, getting the pipeline filter hitting the number that we want to hit this month, this quarter this year, right? And it sounds really basic and simple. But you wouldn't believe how much just taking that time to pause, talk through even if it's with someone who's not super, you know, sales experience. Just having that moment for pause and reflection and thinking through it really makes a difference to that cadence that you can bring to bringing in reliable sales

Lachy Gray  04:42

and really interested data what are the most common challenges that you see business owners making, that stopping them or preventing them from achieving a sustainable sales process?

Peter Solway  04:59

It's a good question. It's the biggest challenge is actually very a fair bit depending on the exact point that the business owners that right I'll talk to a couple of common ones so one really common one is the founder goes and tries to hire salespeople and goes how can I can close it 60% And they close at 10%? Like what? What is going on? Like, did I do something wrong? Are they are they just a terrible salesperson like what's happening here? And the truth is, this is one of the biggest pivot points to get through as a small business, right? Like the founder, the way that you sell parts of you can be replicated and parts calm and getting really clear on what those parts are that can be replicated and the parts that can't is what allows you to go from being the only salesperson in your business to hiring that first successful sales buyer, right? There's a reason out in the market. There's a stat sort of going around, which is 48% of first sales buyers fail right. And the key reason for that is because these nuanced understandings aren't there, particularly if you haven't got a sales background, right? If you're a founder, you've worked out how to sell right otherwise the business wouldn't be up and going. So you know taking that extra step and getting that I guess lens of insight of breaking down, you know what's going on there and and getting clear about it can really can really make the difference.

Lachy Gray  06:23

Although that's certainly something that we talk about in our business. Mark, my business partner is the sales guy. And we've we've hired a second salesperson he's been with us for over a year and something that we've we talk about a lot is that you know it's a found a selling their own product is so different when we can't expect anyone else to have that level of knowledge and also just having lived and breathed it for so many years. So but I imagine even still that's in theory, I think we understand that but in practice, it's quite difficult, isn't it to to see that because you want those sales to come in relatively quickly. So what's your advice to someone in this situation where they have hired another salesperson who's perhaps the first non founder, person selling in the business what's your advice to them to try and move through that or move through this phase?

Peter Solway  07:18

Look, it really comes down to brain tried and tested sales principles or sales methodologies to the way that selling is done right. And they're the things that are replicable. Out of the founder. And sometimes the founder hasn't even kind of tapped into some of those. So it can be really beneficial to this founder closing at higher rates and things learning those. So there's a really basic methodology called BANT. There's a little bit more of an evolved one called Taz. And there's a book out called the Challenger sale which I also recommend the three different methodologies that you can kind of look into to start learning about what are the questions that you can ask you know, and what Why do you ask those questions and and those types of things, the more that you get clear on what they are, and they're very, it's quite interesting often I get asked you know, Pete, what's Do you have an industry specialty? I say, Look, I don't, I don't do real estate and I don't do cars, but most other industries when you're selling business to business, like founders and the early stage chains really understand the industry and you need that to be successful in sales, right? But the tried and tested sales principles are really about human psychology and understanding people and understanding the context of the world that we live in. Right. And those principles are really quite similar across various businesses. So certainly, I mean, that's where I see value when I go into businesses and and you know if you can get a sales coach or someone with this, got that experience, sales background, you know, they just know certain questions, certain threads to kind of pull out and when you discover those for your business, which often come off the background of just practicing those methodologies for years and years, it can really make a massive difference.

Lachy Gray  08:58

Absolutely. Yeah. Just like guess a slight tangent and just want to take a look at where some businesses are at at the moment in the current economic climate, as Karen mentioned, and I think one word that I borrowed from Karen to sum it up is hesitancy and it's certainly something that were seeing in some of our potential customers in Indiana. Since he is not a huge amount of confidence, so how do you recommend your customers approach sales in a, in a hesitant market?

Peter Solway  09:41

It's a it's a really good question. And to be honest, this is like in order to sell in a hesitant market, you kind of need to step up your customer empathy. Right? And what I mean by that is you hear in marketing, a lot of they talk about niching, and they talk about your target market and your ideal personas and things like that, right? So it's really tapping into the depth of that understanding. around your customer. I guess is kind of part one of my answer to that question. The other part is being okay to walk away from sales. Right? And being okay and doing it quickly. So early on, you don't just want to qualify people in you want to qualify people out, right? If there's too much hesitancy if that just isn't the money to spend on you get out of there, stop spending time on it. Like the amount of small business owners I talked to, I was speaking to one the other day and they talked about you know, receiving 100 leads from a partner and you know, they closed one sale out of it, but they called every single one of them and spend time with every single one right? And look respect to the business owner because they were getting their hustle on and going off and chasing business. But when you're thinking about sales, it's really about how much time do you spend in front of people who not only need to buy but also have the means to buy? Right? They have, they have the need. They've got some problem that you're solving. They've got access to the money, like it makes business sense. Sure your thing might go and take them into the stratosphere but if it puts them into not being able to sleep every night because they've spent that money on you and like that's just not a good business decision. Right? So establish that really early and just be empathetic and really clear with your questioning upfront. So you can discern height. Cool. Like, I'll give you one example. I spoke to someone the other day and I looked at what was going on in our business I said you've only got a very small amount of money to spend to get you out of you know, the impacts of COVID you with your stage of business. Go and focus on your digital marketing and your website right often. That isn't my advice, but in this particular case, I could see some areas where that's going to give her the greatest sales uplift. I said once you've got that sorted, come back and let's have a conversation. Right? I've stopped spending any time I've been really an integrity I've given her really valuable advice and hopefully in 612 months time she's got to a point where that makes sense to come back, right. That's how we've that's how you exchange value and look after your time as well as your prospects. And so doing that is going to allow you to have more time to focus on those really specific relevant prospects. So that you can sell to the people who can and need to and have the means to buy in this market. Now, certainly, if they're hesitant, and that's just the general feeling. Go and don't poke at that. Right. This is the challenge of sales methodology. It's, you know, someone says to me, cool, I don't have the money I go okay. Let's talk about that. Right. Let's tell me about that way. Like what what funds are available? What sort of revenues are you doing right? And if they give me a valid answer about why that they don't have access to or it's not the right time to I go awesome, do that don't do this, but if they do, and there's hesitancy because they're scared because they've been burned the last couple of years or because, you know, they've had a bad experience, you know, from a similar interaction in the past. I'll go and challenge that baby expert and maybe authority on what it is that you know about because if you've got the experience to go, Hey, point this way a little bit, and there's a little bit of tension there but you're doing it from that place of I really genuinely can say that doing this is the right move for your business, then press on that don't let the fear get in the way at the end of the day. It's of course their decision, but it's your job as a as a salesperson as a business owner as an expert in your field of whatever it is that you're providing service, product, etc. To be able to challenge people and go Are you sure about that? Are you making a fully holistic decision about this? Or is it fear and hesitancy and emotion overtaking that decision that you're trying to make? Anyway, a bit of a long winded rant to that one but I think it's quite a quite an important point to there's a few elements there right about thinking about the way that you approach sales that really shifts the game. Yeah,

13:49

no, I really got a lot out of that pair. And I was thinking about a number of things. Sorry, Lachy.

Karen K  13:54

So one of them was so paid on I came across each other on LinkedIn. And I'll ask you a question about this sued about your strategy being a distant friend but one of the things for me is I made a lot of business owners on LinkedIn, I love having conversations with business owners engaged I think was businesses. And sometimes you just kind of go okay, this person's got my kind of values. And so we've had you know, different conversation that I've referred us to serve my customers as well. But you've also been really generous in your time, including today on the podcast, he also joined one of my business accountability groups. And, you know, I think all of that comes through so when you're talking about being genuine and showing empathy to your customers, I think that's the key is that it's got to be genuine because if you were being genuine, you're being you know what, I would watch Tim salesy, which is a terrible word. Then those opportunities wouldn't have come along because you would have been just another one of 100 salespeople that's contacted me on LinkedIn, that's not really a question. It's just a comment that you know, what you're saying really? resonates with me because I've seen you doing that, that inaction so I think they're very good points about just being really aware of what your customers are going through right now and trying to generally help them.

Peter Solway  15:05

Yeah, thanks, Ken. Appreciate that. And the thing that I would say often Often people talk about sales as this dirty word. Right. And you know, what, fair enough because I've met a lot of dirty salespeople, you know, and a lot of the, you know, the late 90s sort of sales tactics and things that were going on out there were very manipulative based, right. And the big shift that I had and that I'm having when I'm talking with founders is that sales doesn't have to be manipulative. It doesn't have to be inauthentic. It doesn't have to be pushy, right? It should be pushy when you're coming from a really solid business perspective, and if it's not get out of there. And when that landed with me, the way that I approached sales, how much fun I had how good I felt about myself. changed completely right and as I see that shift inside of founders inside of people who didn't consider themselves people and fell into sales like roles, there's this shift in mindset of you know, all I can actually just be a really good human and being sales and make really good money. Right? What a concept like it's actually it's really huge, but when that lands, sounds becomes a joy, it becomes fun. And you know, and you can make good money out of it, which is, you know, a great well rounded approach to your working life really

Lachy Gray  16:23

Yeah, it's so refreshing to hear that perspective, I think because even I sometimes have that perception of sales people from yet you know, buying a secondhand car, and then they just sort of paint all salespeople with that same brush, and it's interesting. I just want to circle back to the you're talking about challenging objections, I guess. And I'm curious, in your experience, how often is the objection that's shared with the supplier? Whether that's Yeah, we don't have the budget or it's not a right fit for requirements or We're parking this for six months. We're going to come back to it. How often is that the real true objection, versus the one that's more most comfortable to share? And trying to let them down softly?

Peter Solway  17:15

That is, that is a really good question. I'm going to pull it out of the air and say you probably get an authentic answer 30 to 40% of the time. I could be wrong that's that's not based on science guys, that's, that's a gut feel thing, right? And to be honest, will never really be sure, because you can't indefinitely prove whether someone's giving you the real truth of the answer. And there's layers of truth and that's a whole rabbit hole to go down. But what I encourage people to do is when you get an objection, ask the question in three different ways, right? Someone says to you, okay, I don't have the budget. Oh, no worries. So what budget do you have access to? I don't have budget at all, but he said in the previous conversation that like getting access to this sort of money is no big deal is something changed. You know what I mean? Like so it's, it's poking the same question from a few different angles. And honestly, probably the biggest secret to this is learning how to be vulnerable in a sales situation, right? When you as a salesperson get nervous that someone hasn't responded to you or someone's kind of done something a bit odd instead of, you know, getting defensive and getting on the attack and trying to find the thing or convince them or whatever else. Just being real with them and going hey, I noticed this what's going on and being perfectly okay if they say something that really does make a lot of sense, and it's fair enough to walk away. But if you go, I was talking to one of my clients the other day, right? And they said, all they you know, this, they've sort of been dragging me out, you know, every email response takes a week to sort of get back I'm just, I'm not sure if these guys are going to buy. It's a perfect. He's my feedback for you hop on a call with them, and tell them exactly that. Hey, I noticed that your email responses coming through every week. Is this just like are you just like super busy? And it's sort of a priority, but it's not that big a deal. Like where does it where does it fit in for you or is there something that like we're not doing right like what's what's going on here? I want to be respectful of your time. So just just be real with me. And then I can kind of cater to that. And if you if you share from that vulnerable place where you're willing for them to just give you something that kind of kills the sale. Why often you actually get to the bottom of what's going on and the insights you get from that allows you to objection handle on a level you never could have had access to before because they trust you because you're not coming in and attacking and convincing and persuading you just being a human. Right and going you're another human. Let's have a chat. Let's be real.

Lachy Gray  19:39

Yeah, I love that. I think it's I think it gets forgotten that businesses humans dealing with humans. Yeah. And it's I think, for some reason, it can be rare to actually tell the truth, especially in a sales environment about what's actually going on. It's really strange isn't it when you when you think about it, and you step out of that? What come in and motive situation and go Well, if both sides actually had a clear understanding of the requirements, and the potential for the supplier to meet those requirements. There's so much heartache and energy and time that could be saved. So I think theoretically, it makes a lot of sense. I understand. It doesn't always go that way. But I do think it's refreshing to hear you talk like that, because it's certainly not common in my experience for to think about sales in that way. And I think trust is such a good point, because you might not get the sale now. But people walk away and think, Wow, what a great that was actually a really positive interaction. And maybe I'll refer you to my friend who's got a business who's doing something and away you go. So you're sort of playing along in that way, aren't you?

Peter Solway  20:56

Yeah. 100% the long game in the human game.

Karen K  21:01

Yeah, I like that. That's one of our conversations, Peter and you said to me, do you like selling and I said, I don't mind selling but the bit that I really dislike is when people just ghost you and I never understand that. It's like, just give a reason. So what you were saying just then Lachy really resonated with me because that is my most frustrating part of running a business is when people just stop communicating. It's like I don't actually mind what the reason is I just like to have it's like when you apply for jobs, and you never hear back, right? It's like a huge frustration of people. So so I'll go back a little bit to what I mentioned before so I you had said to me that you take that your distant friend approach to selling and we've kind of covered a little bit of it. But I think that you know, one of the things as a business owner the difficulty in I guess giving sales to someone else, is that fear of that other person being overly salesy and not representing your business correctly. So can you expand on what your process is when we when you talk about a distant distant friend

Peter Solway  22:10

um, so So the distant friend mindset is something to coach into the salesperson, right? It can happen but it's very rare that you see the distant friend mentality in sales people who are affordable for small business owners, right? I often see in people who had 200 grand a year plus, right and if you're hiring a salesperson, you probably got 80 grand salary budget, you know, just so so that's that this is where the management piece comes in. And to be frank, like this is this is why I've got involved in the work that I do, right? Often you hire a sales manager when you've got five to 10 salespeople, right? You've already got it set up or you get a sales director or a sales leader in at that point, right? But there's this this key kind of earliest stage point where the the sales management sales strategy, sales mindset kind of approach needs to be brought in to kind of get you there in the first place. Right. And so it's getting through going and working with someone that you can afford and helping upskill them and develop them and grow them right and sometimes I talk to business owners, and they're like, Man, I'm a I'm a developer or I'm a you know, I'm an introvert, I don't want to be managing salespeople, like kind of just hire a salesperson, they work it out. And the truth is like, Yeah, but they're going to cost you 200 grand plus like minimum. So the reality is if you want to build out that sales engineers need a development plan for them. Now if you're if you like sales, and you're interested in growing it and you're out there reading the Challenger sale book and you've got a sales coach and you're evolving yourself then you can start growing and mentoring that person like you would any other team member right. This idea often I see it in business, like early stage business in a lot of conferences and talks, they popularize this idea of, Oh, you don't need to be an expert in anything, just like grab all these experts from all of these areas. It's like there's truth in that and there's also a little bit of a lie from my perspective, right? The truth is, yes, go and grab these other experts who've got these domain experiences and you don't need to be deep in those areas, but you need to know enough to be able to tell if they're pulling your leg or if they're good or if they're not, you need to understand people or like a form of management enough to kind of set up the structure for them to be successful. Right. That's your job as the business owner is, how do I set up the baseline so that you can come in and use your specific skill sets and be successful? Often business owners forget that in that kind of mindset, if that makes sense. So

Karen K  24:42

yeah. It's like how do you get those magical people? I think that's the other question that everyone's asking at the moment as well. You know, it's just not that easy to go out and get expert sometimes, particularly right now and you need to grow people up in the business but you don't have that specialty skill that can be difficult to do.

Peter Solway  25:02

Totally, totally. Yeah. And look networking has been a great one, finding good mentors, coaches, other small business owners to collaborate and get kind of referrals through I mean, that's why even though we live in a world of digital marketing and outbound sales, and all these things, right, like referrals really grow business because when you build that trust, you can kind of say, oh, that person's sort of an expert in that space. And if I talk about sort of the development of a salesperson, right, like, think about the way a larger business is structured, right, it's really, really clear. You come in and you learn how to do sales, you're on the phones, maybe you're an SDR right, which is a sales development. Rep. You're out there trying to find business, then you learn how to navigate business, then you learn how to close deals, then if you hang around and get enough experience, maybe you go up into bigger size deals or maybe you start to go into sales management, right? So there's kind of the sales executed the sales manager, and then there's the sales leader, right, who's sitting the whole strategy for the various different sales arms of the business, right. And there's that structure and levels of learning that you go through. You need to take someone from the point in their learning development that they are to that next stage at keep them engaged, but beta you know, get the success out of them that you need because as a small business what you need to do is have people go up that ramp faster, right? We don't we don't have the luxury of time of someone staying at the same level for three years, right? Maybe we do but our business is going to grow really slowly. So taking, you know the lessons from these larger businesses without you know, becoming overly structured and overly managed and overly governed, which us as small business owners is probably why we're small business owners. We hate that stuff, right? But there's a little bit of diamond in the rough from those approaches, right. And the really interesting thing that I've seen I've been learning more and more about marketing and collaborating with marketing teams as well. They've got the same structure. You know, you have your marketing executed. Then you have the manager who understands the different, you know, areas of marketing, social media and webinars and this and that and then you've got a strategic marketing director, who understands the whole plan the whole funnel, right and so so thinking about that as a development pathway for anybody that you bring into your business and trying to, to me as an entrepreneur, it's my job to understand like, how developed are they or what's my best guess on where they are in that journey? Right and is their level of skill set good and like gonna cover where we're at and the problems we have in our business right now. That's a tough thing to understand a little bit intangible and things so I'd certainly encourage small business owners to like really be conscious and and spend the time making their best guesses around that and try and get support from other small business owners and mentors and things. To understand that skill. Yeah, absolutely.

Lachy Gray  27:50

Yeah, I love that message as well. Peter, and I think it's, it's similar to the previous episode of The Last week on onboarding is acknowledging that if we want to grow our people, we have to invest time and energy to support them and make that happen, and actually thinking about what a success look like for our sales person in three or six months and how am I going to help them get there? And I think perhaps with sales, there can be this perception that they kind of autonomous and they'll work it out because of the nature of the role, but actually as you mentioned at the beginning, I mean, there's still so much context that you have to give and, and we should treat them as any other member of the team and give them that support to help them be successful. I think that's really important. And I just want to ask you about hiring a salesperson just briefly. What What can we look for when we're because I see salespeople by the nature of the job, pretty good at talking pretty good at selling themselves, but how do we know what they're going to be like in the role itself and you got any tips for us there?

Peter Solway  29:01

That's that's, wouldn't it be amazing if we had a magic wand that could work out exactly how good a salesperson is going to be for our business look, like I said, there's the onus on you as a business owner to be ready to hire the salesperson, a partner that I work to and refer to often James Michael from justify talent has a really good scorecard, four minute test and it really clearly works out I use first sales hire ready and it just breaks it down really, really spectacularly so I highly recommend that if you from from your end as a business owner to work out if you're ready to hire the salesperson. From the salespersons perspective, there's two key things that I that I asked him to work out like a kind of what are they worth to see how much money to spend on them. And it also gives you a sense on what level they're at. Right? So the question is I asked them like when it comes to talking about what it is that we're selling, right? Tell me about what's the most important right? Like to really understand the product and be able to navigate all of the questions and objections and an intimate details around the product and the offering or understanding the business problems that the person that you has selling to right now some people can kind of work out that that's a little bit of a loaded question. Good on them and you can hear them answer be here but you listen out in the way that they talk if they're really product focused or they're really business problem focused because if you if it's it's a key moment in a sales person's development to go from being a demo junkie to business solution provider, right? And when you become a business solution provider a you're worth more you should be making a minimum of 100 grand a year and you're worth more than that right? So if you don't have the budget then expect to get somebody who doesn't have that hasn't had that moment of development in their sales career. And if they're over that, then that's fantastic. You know that that is going to make a big difference in the number of sales that they can bring in go the extra extra investment in in them as a salesperson, the other key question that I like to ask is there's three elements to sales, opening, opening a sale, navigating a sale and closing a sale. I don't know any sales people that are absolute experts at all three. I know a lot of salespeople kick it out of the park for to get them to be real and honest and self self opt into which of the two that you nail right. I worked with someone previously man he could cold call he could outbound like an absolute weapon. Couldn't close a deal to save his life though, right? And so having that understanding in the hiring process allows you to go do they fit into what I've currently got set up if I hire this person, where do they need help or where to you know, where do they need support? Like for example, myself, I know my weaker end is the cold outreach, right that initial outreach. Once someone's been referred to me, man, I'll navigate the deal. I'll close them all up, sell them, I'll make them a customer for life. Right? That's my genius, right? And because I'm open and honest about that, if I'm working with a good sales manager, they would then be working out the marketing is going to generate new leads or they're gonna support me on the lead gen front. And what I do as a sales manager is I've got really good agencies that I work with that can do outbound for me, or I set up partnerships or I work with an SDR who just loves the outbound thing, right? And then you have the complete pitch up. That kind of makes sense. So when you're getting clear about those areas, it helps you build out a strategy behind hiring the right salesperson. Because it's kind of twofold. Like I said, it's for the business, like where are you at? Where are they and how do we set it up? So it all works. It's together?

Karen K  32:46

I think, yeah, it's um, I think sales can be like the dark art in business. So I think the way that you're explaining it is helping like demystify it a little bit. And you know, and it's helpful when you just sort of go okay, here are three things and offer me anyway, it's helping me reflect and go, Oh, yeah, that makes sense. And hopefully people listening to these they're going okay, now, I understand. I'm looking for a salesperson, which are the bits that I actually need help with and what am I looking for? So, yeah, I thought that was really helpful. And I guess related to that. I've had many conversations over the years where a business owner will say to me, my salesperson isn't selling at my first question is do they have goals and are often told are not really? And it's like, well, you know, that's kind of kryptonite, like a salesperson needs to have goals but but the other thing is that sometimes they don't actually know like, is it the salesperson? Is it my processes, aren't they is it by product? They're just not sure what it is. So do you have advice in that situation with someone's thinking that I'm just not getting the sales? What do I do? Where do I go to it's easy to blame the person but what do we look for?

Peter Solway  33:57

First and foremost, it's go to a mentor and advisor, a sales coach, somebody with an outside lens because it's really really hard when you're in it to see it even when you've got a sales background. Right? So if you're a business owner who's got background in product or operations or marketing or whatever else it is, like, while you're in it, it's really, really hard to see where that gaps where those gaps are, and it's this is this is probably the most dark arts area of sales, right? Because it really does need experience and intuition and a little bit of experimentation. And like coming back to the the way that I was talking about selling and being vulnerable, right? It comes back to being vulnerable, right? It's like actually, where is the issue in this process? Right? Are we talking to customers and they're giving us this excuse, which makes it sound like a product problem, but actually the way that we're asking the question as a salesperson is putting up their defenses, right? Like that. It's It's question it on the product level, it's question it on the marketing level question on the sales level, and the mix of it, right, because it could be one element or it could be a combination of everything, right? And if your sales aren't working, then it's kind of a it's a product market misfit at this point, right. You might be in business you might be you know, making revenue, but you're not ready to scale until you solve this problem of like, like a hire a salesperson and it doesn't work or haven't haven't got a process behind a marketing sales ops products set up if you haven't got that and you go okay, this quarter. I think I can do this and then you actually go and do that and then you do that the following quarter. You haven't got enough of a foundation to go and scale you can do it and I've seen people Fluke it and a bandaid everything together and at some point everything is blows up. Because you haven't you haven't got that key pivot point of understanding, right? And again, like the advice comes back to vulnerability, to get the to get to the truth of it, which is really hard. When you're stressed. You're in a small business, you're managing finances, you're managing people, you know, you've got stuff going on with the kids and like there's just so many things so getting that outside perspective of someone who's got a really objective, unemotional perspective on the whole thing can really help take you down that path of getting you towards that insight.

Karen K  36:22

Yeah, that's really good advice because sometimes people don't want to do that or don't know where to go to to find someone to help them. Do that. And it's easier to really to just go the salesperson isn't working, move them on, I'll go back to doing the selling myself. But then 1224 36 months later, it's all my business still isn't growing. So now what do I do? Yeah, so I think that's really good advice.

Lachy Gray  36:47

Thank you. Um, I just want to ask you something else we're seeing at the moment, it's a lot of people moving jobs. And I know, certainly for our sales team, it's been quite challenging. We've got a very long sales cycle with data B in the enterprise space. So the first sort of the the person that they're working with, maybe for 612 18 months, get really close in and they resign. And they feel like they're having to go back to square one and meet the new person when they're hired. And then oh, I know nothing about this project. You know, let me know about it. And that's after chasing them five times just to get that phone call. what's your what's your advice for businesses in this situation where, yeah, they're the the key person that they're dealing with, is moving on and that pace of change is at faster than it has been in the past?

Peter Solway  37:44

Yeah, it's a it's a really good question. Right. And the advice that I'm giving right here comes with the caveat, do this with deals that are your most important deals because it does take time. So So you just need to have multiple people multiple contact points, right? Often it can be tempting to just have that relationship with that one person and, and grow that deeply. And I do encourage that because having that that relationship and that vulnerability, and that insight as to what's going on in the business really helps you build out your business case. As a salesperson, right. But at least having periphery of who do they report into who's to the left and to the right of them, like who else who else is involved in this decision? Who else does this decision impact is the key thing right? Or is involved in in getting this to move forward? Right? If you as a salesperson are really nailing your job and understand why the business needs to buy what the business case is for them to buy, and how it really solves a problem for them. You know, if that person moves on, ideally, you're getting an intro to who it is replacing them and you've built a relationship well enough to do that. But if not, you can pick up the phone and or jump on LinkedIn and go out to them and go hey, I was talking to blah blah, blah. Understood you had this problem. We were looking at it solving it this way. Just curious. Where's that at like, what's what's happened now that the change of this person leaving has happened right now inevitably, this can kill deals like I lost this specific deal with a with a university. I won't go into details but because a key person had moved on, but it was it was the function that that person was doing that our product solve their problem. Now that that person had moved on, it meant six to 12 months for the rehire and train ups to get to the point where that problem was relevant again, right? So I walked away, but other circumstances where someone's moved on, and there's still the business problem there. Then you go off throw it like no tomorrow, right? Like, you've got a business problem here and we can solve it like it's your job salesperson go off to that go and find the person go and, you know, get hungry and do the Challenger objection handling and that type of thing, right? So that's that lens of it may work. It may not work, but um, you know that all of this stuff takes time, right? So if your average, you know, sales dollar value is $5,000, right? Don't go and do this on a $2,000 sale. You got to manage your time, right? Go and get three people involved in the sale when it's 20 grand, right? Because you want to mitigate mitigate that risk. So it's been really strategic with, you know, the deals and how you're spending your time as a salesperson. You know, to get to the bottom of solving challenges like that. Thank you.

Karen K  40:27

Now, we're pretty much out of time, which is a shame because even what you're saying I have more questions, but we've, we've got a lot out of this episode and just key takeaways. For me, I think one of them was upfront. You talked about planning being the key to sustainability in small business. And I think that particularly resonated with me because I do see so many businesses that don't have goals and you know, even if they're not going through a whole goal setting process just knowing like what are you trying to achieve in terms of revenue and profit, you know, and just looking at that on a quarterly monthly basis, having those weekly sales meetings with your cousins, uncles, neighbor, you know, I think that's really good advice. Like just to even just get started to know where you're at. Given some good methodologies and acronyms, and books that we can go and look at a lovely idea, I think because empathy is important to me, but really being empathetic with our customers and also being empathetic to ourselves and understanding when do we walk away from that sales? So when do we just say you know what, I spent enough time on these so it's now time to, to move on. And I think the last one that I'll put out as my takeaway is just that, that mindset so you know, when I'm bringing in a salesperson, what are the two out of those three things that I really need in my business and how am I assessing that person to make sure that they have those two things that are going to help me so that I can not be that statistic, which she said was 48% of first sales hires fail, which is really? Yeah, so let's be on the other side of that statistic. How about you Lachy?

Lachy Gray  42:10

Yeah, it's so much so much goodness. They've had I was furiously taking notes. I think a reminder that in the day, we're selling to humans, right. And a huge part of that is building a relationship based on trust. And I really like to hear that some of the frameworks that you shared, and I think it's a great opportunity to dig into those objections in what can feel like an uncomfortable, perhaps conversation to have but I think gold is there. If you can get a clear articulation of what's actually going on that business. So very valuable. Thank you.

Karen K  42:53

Yeah, thanks, Peter. We'll put links to your contact details as well and also those acronyms that you shared in that book, and everything else that we've discussed will be over on our websites just follow the links to the podcast section@yahoo.com.au or amplify hr.com.au. And if you so value from this episode, we'd love it if you could leave a rating or review Apple over at Apple podcasts. You can get in touch with Peter on LinkedIn. He's very active on LinkedIn and will respond to you. Also at Peter soloway.com, says Peter, P E T E R, Sol, W A y.com.

Lachy Gray  43:32

And coming up in the next episode, we discuss different approaches to goal setting for your business and your team members.

Karen K  43:38

Any that's connected to today's episode like we planned. So that podcast episodes coming up in two weeks from now, so click the subscribe button to be notified of when that's available. Peter, did you have any final comments?

Peter Solway  43:55

Guys, sales doesn't have to be dirty and make it you can make it fun and clean and make a lot of money doing it right and feel good about it. It just takes a little bit of extra work and a little bit of extra learning. invest that in yourself. It's the greatest gift that you can provide yourself as a business owner. From my perspective anyway, so enjoy.

Karen K  44:19

Great advice. Any final thoughts from your Lachy?

Lachy Gray  44:22

Yeah, I love that. Everyone can be a salesperson. That's my my next challenge.

Karen K  44:29

So thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you next time. On the Make It Work podcast. Thank you