If you saw my LinkedIn clip from last week, you'll be familiar with the start of this call. 90% of the time, whatever the prospect tells you up front is some form of a lie. There are a number of different lies, white lies, exaggerated lies, deceptive lies or in this case they can lie by omission. They don't struggle to find good bilingual sales people, it's managed out of the US. This is what I was initially told. We outsource all of UK business development to an agency. We hire SDRs locally i.e. we would never hire a German speaking SDR in London to prospect into German speaking markets. Some journey we went on there. I know that every business has problems with hiring sales people. When they tell me it's not a problem, I don't believe them. When you're speaking with your prospects no that they are never telling you the full story. Keep asking them questions and challenge them where appropriate. You'll get the truth out eventually.

Last week I talked about ditching the pitch. Most sales trainers promote them, most sales people use them. My thoughts on them have changed, however. You can open up a conversation much quicker by leading with a question. If that's the purpose of a pitch, why not just do that? The question then becomes, what question to ask? If you're using a pitch, you can take the biggest problem you know prospects are experiencing and turn into that into a question. In my world of recruitment, I know that finding good bilingual sales talent is difficult. They're in both short supply and high demand. I also know that the best ones aren't actively looking for roles but could be open to exploring new opportunities. When businesses only rely on job ads to collect applicants, they're going to be missing out on good sales people. And good salespeople pay for themselves. Using all of this knowledge, I can create a number of questions from it but all I'm looking to do is open up a conversation. So I start with an iteration of this one... 💬 - "I speak with a lot of tech businesses, often I hear that finding good bilingual sales talent can be difficult. I assume that's not something you've experienced in your world?" I could ask... 💬 - "Do you find hiring bilingual sales talent difficult?" But it's too direct. You will want to add some context to the question to both soften it and make it more relevant to the prospect. More prospects will open up. The question is framed to get the answer no. I either hear, no it's not a problem or no it has been a problem. Conversation started.

Since I started prospecting in the world of recruitment I've ditched it. Of course, I'm talking about the 30 second pitch here. And I have to say, I prefer it. It's not the first time I have opened my calls by leading with a question. I did use it in a scenario where the product I was pitching was niche and listing off 3 problems just didn't make sense. I wanted to get straight to the point. What I didn't do back then was think about how leading with a question could be applied to a product/service that solves multiple problems. It is more challenging to navigate a call this way. More challenging but not impossible. There are also some benefits to leading with a question: 1️⃣ - Less people reject the call upfront. 2️⃣ - I get to a conversation much quicker. 3️⃣ - I can disqualify quicker. Pitches can work, of course they can. I've spent years using them but they were never perfect, nothing is. Here are three problems I've noticed: 1️⃣ - Asking for 30 seconds might not seem a big ask but in the context of an unsolicited call, it is. Prospects just want you to get to the point. Who are you and why are you calling? And this is the reason why you hear "Well what's the call about first?" You end up having to go in with a question any way. 2️⃣ - Pitches contain a lot of words. They can be hard to follow and when they don't recognise what you're talking about they will likely switch off. It's easier to craft a well thought out question than it is to craft a 30 second pitch. 3️⃣ - The purpose of a pitch is to open up a conversation and direct the conversation down the right path. Does this prospect recognise any problems that you can help fix? If you can do that be leading with a well crafted opening question, why not do that? - - - If you're not going to ask for 30 seconds, you're opener will need to change. Here are two I've been using. "I'll be upfront this is a sales call, up to you, you can hang up now or I had a few questions for you?" "I'll be upfront this is a sales call, I had a question for you, after that you can decide whether we carry on talking or not, sound fair?"

What's happening people. I trust you're all well and back into the full swing of things. Here we go again. Another year, all fun and games isn't it. Later today I'm going to be making some changes to The Academy. Moving forward, it's going to be FREE to access with courses being available to buy for a one off fee rather than a monthly subscription. I've also updated the learning material. The structure of the courses will change, the way I teach this will change and there are some new ideas in there as well. What I teach is difficult to master, most people quit. I'm always asking myself the question, how you can I make some that's difficult to master easier to learn? One day I had an idea. 𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 + 𝐓𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬. Sales is simply the art of communication, all we have are words. There are a number of different communication tools that we have at our disposal. Prospects buy based on emotion and they're more motivated to move away from pain more than they are towards pleasure. This is a rule. The number on rule for cold calling. Master the tools, learn the rules and Here are some examples... 𝐓𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬 - Open questions - Closed questions - Pattern interrupt - Pushing prospects away - Reversing questions These are all tools that you can be using. 𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 - People based on emotion. - Prevention is better than cure. - You can't win an argument. - Failure is the greatest teacher. - You don't have to answer questions. These are all rules. Learn the rules. Master the tools. Once you believe that you don't have to answer questions and you've practiced how to reverse a question without blindly answering it, it will become second nature to you. Our beliefs dictate our behaviours.

Christmas. Less than one week away now, can you Adam and Eve it. 🎄 Hopefully you will all have the opportunity to take next week off and have some time to properly switch off from work knowing that all your prospects will be as well. It's a good time to switch off but also a good time for reflection. New year, new you. Unfortunately most salespeople don't do this. I never used to. I would never take stock of the last year: what went well, what didn't, what could I have done differently...as a result, nothing changes. No lessons learnt, just rinse and repeat. Nothing changes. Whether you had the best year of your sales career, the worst year or a simply a bang average one, I would still recommend putting your thoughts down on paper. Doesn't need to be that complicated: 1️⃣ - What went well? 2️⃣ - What didn't go so well? 3️⃣ - What are you going to do differently next year? You will have loads of experiences, thoughts about those experiences and lessons learnt that are bouncing around your subconscious mind right now. Unless you take time to draw them out, they will stay there. What a waste. Putting these thoughts down on paper draws these out into the conscious mind. It will also give you some closure on 2023 and then you can start looking forward to next year. What action are you going to take? What do you want to achieve next year and what do you need to do to achieve that? Break it down into smaller steps. It doesn't need to be complicated. 3-5 things to work on. It might be more consistency with your prospecting efforts. Reducing no-shows, disqualifying better. It might be that you're looking to get promoted, progress your career. What do you need to do to prove to your current employer that you're worthy of it? What do you need to do to prove to yourself that you can do the job you're after. One of the things I want to improve on is playing the rookie, playing dumb more in all types of conversations. Cold calls, meetings other conversations. What do I need to do to do that? - Be more conscious of it, first and foremost. Practice more. Continue to reflect on calls and conversations and analyse where I could have done better. Then it's a case of tracking progress and monitoring it.