0:00:00 A: I’ve been trying, and, you know, I’ve been tested. Welcome to the Friends in Business podcast with your hosts, Ben Wright and Jemimah Ashley. Ben, known as the sales strategist, and Jemimah, our resident visibility expert, are here to share their wealth of knowledge and experience with a little fun along the way. Whether you’re a leader, entrepreneur, or aspiring business owner, this is the podcast where we share everything we know about business to help you succeed.
0:00:31 A: Let’s get started. Welcome to the Friends in Business podcast. Ain’t nothing gonna stop me now.
0:00:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: Ben, how are you?
0:00:44 Ben Wright: Hello, Jemimah.
0:00:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: Did you forget my name for a second? That’s what that felt like.
0:00:49 Ben Wright: I actually forgot if it was morning or afternoon because you probably can’t see in the back. I’ve alerted it now, but we have had tradies crawling all over the house the last few weeks because we’ve got some renovations happening. We’re already in dream home, but of course, once you get into dream home, you want to make it dreamier. So we’re in that process, and I’ve learned that there’s just not one way to do things, even with things as common as flooring.
0:01:17 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:01:18 Ben Wright: I have had. What are we up to? I’d say we’re up to four ways that have been suggested to do the same thing.
0:01:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:01:24 Ben Wright: From experts. And then we’re fortunate we have builders in the family, so we’re able to, I guess, vet some of those conversations. But it’s just interesting how even things that are done time and time and time again still have multiple ways. So my head’s been spinning a little bit this morning. That’s why we say, are we good morning or good afternoon? But I’m pleased to say it’s still morning.
0:01:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: Great. Excellent.
0:01:43 Ben Wright: And it’s beautiful. And it’s sunny. And another day in paradise.
0:01:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: It is beautiful. And this is, honestly paradise. It’s been really interesting watching the tradies come through because I’m obviously, it’s not my home that’s being renovated, and I’ve gotten to see some of these guys over the last few weeks and got and have conversations with them and watched you guys really go through. Oh, we could do it this way, that way. And again, I just would think flooring would be. We need a floor. I didn’t realize there were 19 types of floors on different. And it really, really alerted me to thinking about, you know, one thing we’re going to talk about today is a bit about the sales process, about the different parts that go into that And I’m very aware that occasionally we can hear a tradie playing with. So you might see some guest presenters today in the background.
0:02:22 Ben Wright: Sorry, many apologies. It’s actually, before I get into that, it’s funny. Our best idea for our renovation has come from our four and a half year old who walked in one day when my wife and I were talking, daddy, mummy, why don’t you do this? And it’s amazing the power of these little brains
0:02:41 Jemimah Ashleigh: Outside thought.
0:02:43 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This jack out of the box idea and we’re running with it. So no doubt she’s gonna wanna stencil her name Amali somewhere into that part of the renovation.
0:02:51 Jemimah Ashleigh: She should. Absolutely. I’m surprised. Look, I need to put my name in there somewhere just because I’ve been here for all of it too. It’s been pretty great.
0:02:57 Ben Wright: Well, I’m surprised, being my daughter, she hasn’t hit us up for a commission check..
0:03:02 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, give her time She’s not quite five yet.
0:03:04 Ben Wright: Well, shall we get into sales process? Yes, that’s our topic.
0:03:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely.
0:03:08 Ben Wright: For today.
0:03:09 Jemimah Ashleigh: So you’re a sales strategist. So this seems to be very much your. This is your wheelhouse. Right. And it’s been one of the things I’ve loved to getting to work with you a bit closer as you just like this is the process and these are the results we get. And man, you’ve got some processes.
0:03:22 Ben Wright: Yeah, look, you’re absolutely right for me because what I focus on is bringing balance to the lives of sales leaders. To do that, they need to have some strong systems and processes so that their teams will deliver repeatedly in a predictable manner. So it’s not just doing the same thing over and over and over again, but having the confidence that they’re going to be able to do that.
0:03:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, I love that. They’re going to do the same thing over again in a predictable manner.
0:03:46 Ben Wright: That’s right. Without feeling like they’re too scripted.
0:03:49 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:03:50 Ben Wright: Because as soon as we take the flare away from most sales roles. Right. There are some that are mechanical and based on repetition, generally roles earlier in your career. But as soon as we take away that ability to show some flair and build true relationships, what we then have is robots. And we don’t need that because they will be replaced by AI tech. In fact, AI tech now at a sales level is good enough to take over phone based selling for some industries already. And I’ve spoken to recently to people who have master’s degrees in AI, specifically around the sales funnel. It’s ready to go.
0:04:29 Jemimah Ashleigh: It’s changing the world. It’s going to change our jobs. And this is a part of that that’s really interesting. For me, when people talk about AI, it’s going to take my job. I was like, no, it’s not. We’re going to have to integrate it into our current roles.
0:04:38 Ben Wright: That’s right. That’s right. But we’re not talking about that today. The point I’m trying to say is that any good sales process that I’ve worked with and worked with dozens, in fact, I’m close to 100 hundred businesses that I’ve worked with around their sales process over the last few years is that if you get it right, it allows freedom for a salesperson without them running rogue.
0:04:58 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:04:59 Ben Wright: So what we want to be doing is having salespeople that follow a process but also have that natural flair. So actually, last time I spoke about a sales process, it was six podcast episodes. We’re going to do this in one. So it’s going to be nice and chunky, which means that it might need some broadening of the horizons. Right. As we go along the journey. Okay. So sales processes will typically work between five and 11 stages.
0:05:22 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:05:22 Ben Wright: I see them down as low as three, but I’m very much a believer in simplifying the complex. So traditionally, the teams I work with will work with five. So we’re going to go through those five stages right now.
0:05:34 Jemimah Ashleigh: Five stages.
0:05:35 Ben Wright: Let’s go number one, lead generation.
0:05:37 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:05:38 Ben Wright: Right. So this is all about making sure that we have leads coming into our business.
0:05:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:05:44 Ben Wright: Traditionally, I will hear from a sales team the comment that says, isn’t that marketing’s responsibility? And my comment is always very, very predictable that the best businesses I see at this have a quota for the marketing team and a quota for the sales team. Right. And in fact, any salesperson who can deliver their own leads will always have a job. You will always have a job if you can bring leads into your business. So the lead generation stage, this is where we look at how we’re getting leads from a sales funnel point of view rather than a marketing funnel. You can certainly do it from both. It’s what do we do when the leads come in? So how do we qualify them? What are the questions we’re asking? What are our response times? What’s our goal at the end of qualifying a customer?
I’ve worked with a terrific business recently that was in the building landscape. And their goal originally in this lead generation process was to condition their customers around price. But what they found was that the customers weren’t moving to the next stage effectively enough because they’d scared them away around price before. They’d built a strong enough relationship and educated them on their service.
0:06:48 Jemimah Ashleigh: I imagine bill shock is probably the number one thing. If you’re not like, oh, we’re $20,000, but it doesn’t matter what you say after that, unless you have already qualified the value. I think most people at that point will bucket price if you haven’t qualified that enough.
0:07:03 Ben Wright: So qualifying value is important. But more important is to understand what your goals are of that process. Because for some businesses, they actually do want to scare people off early. If people are just kicking tires and want the lowest price, they want to be clear with them that says, right, if that’s what you’re looking for, we’re not your partner. So having those goals really clear, having KPIs set around what you’re asking, how long you’re gonna take to get back to customers, and then most importantly, what your next stage is. Are you getting it booked?
0:07:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:07:31 Ben Wright: Getting a meeting booked, for example, they are the key requirements out of a lead generation part of your sales process. Right. What I do see businesses missing is actually just formalizing that. We end up having leads come in and salespeople will just freeform. This question here, that question there, another question tomorrow. So we want to document that now with all of these five stages. I’m going to talk a little bit around how we systemize it and how we build some processes in a moment. But let’s go through the five stages.
0:07:58 Ben Wright: So number one, lead generation.
0:08:00 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:08:01 Ben Wright: Number two is your meet and greet and your needs analysis. So I wrap them together. This is the first typically face to face meeting. Sometimes it’s done over video, sometimes it’s face to face, sometimes it’s over phone. But this is that first meeting where we start to build rapport. That is generally the number one driver. We’re going to be building rapport. And to do that, we need to be understanding what our customers want.
0:08:27 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes. 100% rapport is everything. Especially when it comes down to I’m going to give you money. We’re going to trust each other here for sure.
0:08:35 Ben Wright: So it’s what’s the problem I’m solving? Or the opportunity to capitalize on. We start to talk about decision making, timeframes, start to understand who the decision makers are.
0:08:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:08:43 Ben Wright: And again, we need to have a process really clear here around what we step through with our customer.
0:08:48 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:08:48 Ben Wright: We’re often collecting data through the meet and greet and the needs analysis. So that we can go back and pull together our proposal. So it will often include a site visit or real understanding around the customer’s current situation. It’s really important that we’re looking at the outcomes that customers are looking for. So not just the problem to solve or the opportunity to capitalize on, but what needs to be ticked off through their decision making criteria for this to be a successful project.
0:09:15 Ben Wright: So this is the point where most businesses I work with don’t spend enough time.
0:09:21 Jemimah Ashleigh: And if we weren’t to spend enough time in this part of the process, what happens?
0:09:25 Ben Wright: Yeah, it’s a good question because what happens is we end up back at this process later down the track and often it’s too late. By the time being we’ve quoted someone. And if we’ve been talking about floorboards and we’ve come and quoted 160 mil floorboards and the customer only wanted 120 mil floorboards. Right. By the time then we come back, we’ve often lost that trust and that connection, that emotional bank.
0:09:50 Jemimah Ashleigh: You weren’t listening to me. There was not the conversation part and it was just as simple as I thought we’d agree on something else. Never mind. Thank you very much.
0:09:57 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. And I love the saying what’s my obvious is not necessarily their obvious. The reason we often miss this is quite innocent. It’s not because we didn’t want to know what the customer want, but we were so focused on thinking about what we’re going to say next that we forgot to listen.
0:10:12 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:10:12 Ben Wright: So there’s a really effective question technique here that I encourage every team I work with to use and that’s to follow up a first question with a second question. So instead of worrying about what you’re going to say next or the topic next when you’re listening to that question. This is the first. So. So we ask our first question. Instead of saying, okay, what am I going to think about next year? You’re actually listening to their response so you can come with a follow up.
And what it does is it deepens our knowledge of what the customer wants. All right i.e., how are you today? Great. That’s a standard question. What are you looking for out of this project? And the customer might come back and say, well, with my flooring, I need it to be nice and tight and I want thin lines because I don’t like the big broad look. Okay, great. So what type of width lines are you looking at here
0:10:55 Jemimah Ashleigh: Versus I’ve asked about the floors. We should go to the walls next.
0:11:00 Ben Wright: That’s Right. Exactly right. So really important in the meet and greet and needs analysis that we spend time there because the later we leave it to get this right.
0:11:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:11:08 Ben Wright: The less likely we are to close the deal. Very, very important. But it takes discipline because most customers are going to want to move us through to get to a solution stage. So if we can have the time to be talking around their needs and really understanding what they want, that’s when we win it.
So lots of strategies to do this. We can talk probably talk about this another episode because it genuinely is six episodes long. But let’s move into number three. So number one is lead generation. Number two is meet and greet and needs analysis. Number three is all about our presentation or our quotation. So hopefully at the end of our meet and greet and needs analysis, we’ve booked our next meeting. So we’ve gone back to the ranch, we’ve pulled together our proposal, and we are ready to present to our customer. This is the stage when we really need to be, before doing anything else, reconfirming what the customer is looking for out of this proposal.
Hi. I’m just reconfirming that you were looking for 120 mil width boards in a light oak color to be installed at this point in time. All right. And before we move any further, yourself and your partner need to be involved in the decision. So we’re reconfirming exactly what they need, who’s making the decision, and then finally when they’re wanting to do it by. And just before I get into it, your home renovation is actually starting in three months’ time. So we need to make sure that we’re looking at a go, no go around about eight weeks before that. So we’ve got time to bring the product in, to cut it, to do our preliminaries and install it. Right. So we’re reconfirming all of our assumptions so that if we have anything wrong, we can adjust it. As we’re going through our quote.
0:12:42 Jemimah Ashleigh: I just wonder how many people forget this number three point. Like already I’m like, this is a silver bullet moment for me because the amount of times that I’ve either spoken to someone and been like, they’ll, oh, I’ll get back to you about it. And I hear nothing.
0:12:56 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:12:56 Jemimah Ashleigh: Or I have the conversation in any way, shape or form of, you know, I think we discussed this and you’re like, we never talked about that. What are you talking about? And it’s just all later. You never got back to me. I’m like, you never Got back to me, you’re the one trying to make the sale, mate. That’s not how this goes.
0:13:09 Ben Wright: Yeah, and that’s because we didn’t build enough of a common understanding around when we need to be moving forward. And look, this is my. When you talk about bread and butter topics, yours is around visibility. This is it for me. I mean, I work with this. And we’ll talk about a format in a moment. But so we’re in the quotation. We’ve reconfirmed our needs, we’ve reconfirmed our decision making timeframes and who’s making the decision. We’re then presenting, representing what’s important. This is really the piece when we start to talk about price but also soft closing and if we have confirmed with our customer exactly what a go no go looks like in our needs analysis stage, i.e., what do we need to be ticking off to have this moving forward? The quotation becomes really easy because we tick off. Here’s what you said you needed, here’s our solution, here’s what else you said you needed. Here’s how we’ve approached it. Here’s the pricing we were looking around. Here’s what we’ve got for you today. So we work through that quotation. I have a golden rule with any business that I work with and that is if you can present face to face, so that can be over video or that can be face to face, you take that opportunity because it also allows you to continue to build rapport.
0:14:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:14:16 Ben Wright: At this point in time we also want to be looking at objections. Objections are best brought forward. There are so many sales teams that I work with that will try and avoid objections through speed of process or avoiding those questions. But what happens is we get so late down in the process that it actually stops the decision going forward. So by bringing them forward.
0:14:38 Jemimah Ashleigh: I had very visual flashback then to trying to buy a car and the guy’s like, and it will cost you this and you’ll get this free thing and you’re ready to sign and puts his hand out and I remember looking and going, I don’t have idiot written on my forehead. Like firstly, slow down to no, we’re not there yet. We’re absolutely not there yet.
0:14:54 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. So that’s a high pressure,
0:14:55 Jemimah Ashleigh: 10 minutes moments and bless him, but he didn’t get the sale. What’s interesting about that is I really like that there’s this running towards the monster problem and going, oh, we know what your objections are because as good businesses we’ve gone through we’re not the cheapest. We’re also not most expensive. But this is why you’ll come work with us. We know why people are coming to us.
0:15:17 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah.
0:15:18 Jemimah Ashleigh: Discussing that with them, going, why this might not be. This might be slightly higher. These are the reasons why that looks like this might be not the timeframe. But this is the recurring issues, why we’ll have that.
0:15:27 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re absolutely talking about bulls running towards a storm, cows running away from it. In this instance, the easiest way that I see teams bring objections forward is to ask a question.
0:15:37 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:15:38 Ben Wright: Along the lines of what’s getting in the way for you to be able to make that decision. Even we do this all the time and I still stumble with my words occasionally. Right. So if we can actually understand what is stopping our customers moving forward, we bring those objections out. But it’s very, very important we do it when we have them face to face or on the phone or when we’re talking about our quotation. Because from that point forward, it gets harder to drive that real engagement around. What’s getting in the way? And then of course, before we leave that meeting, we should be talking about decision making timeframes again and soft closing. So where are we at? How have we gone today? What’s missing? Is there anything else I need to cover? What do you need to do from here to get this moving forward? Do you need to talk to your partner? Do you need to get decision makers internally within the business? Do you need to go to the board?
0:16:24 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:16:24 Ben Wright: Do you need to go to global departments? Right. Often we will have local decisions are made at a global level. Right. Do we need to go to the finance team? So we need to be making sure that we’re soft closing as early as we can. Right. And we do that through the objection handling process. So that’s number three. Number four, we’re starting to move into the close.
0:16:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:16:47 Ben Wright: So this is when objection handling actually comes to the fore because customers will start to throw in more readily. What’s getting in the way of this happening? Now, we can work our darndest to have this done through the quotation process, the stage earlier. However, it doesn’t always happen. So we need to be ready at the closing stage of our business to be asking for it. So many salespeople that I work with are afraid to ask for the business.
0:17:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: Why do you think that is from someone who works so heavily in sales? Is it because it is that moment? We’re going to be now specifically asking you for some money and that is where I’m going to trip up. Yeah, this is what I tend to say. So a lot of my clients have trouble with, oh, then I have to ask them for the money. Yes, but that’s how you pay your mortgage and you build your business and you’re able to help more people.
0:17:36 Ben Wright: So for me, my experience is generally it’s a fear of loss. Right. As salespeople want to lose something. But my comment to these people, there’s a few around this, but the really important ones are you’ve never really actually had anything here.
0:17:48 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:17:48 Ben Wright: So you’re not losing a deal because you’ve never won it. Right. And we don’t want deals in our pipeline just because unfortunately, salespeople are judged not just on their sales numbers, but also on their pipeline numbers. And those that have big pipelines that don’t close are often regarded as not having strong enough skills to be able to bring that deal into the business. The second piece is, and this is really impactful for those listening, if you have a product or a service that you really back, doesn’t matter how small or large you are, if you know it helps people or businesses or whatever your target type of customer is, the more time you spend with someone who doesn’t need your help, the less time you have to spend with those who do.
0:18:28 Ben Wright: So take the fast.
0:18:30 Jemimah Ashleigh: I love that. The more time we spend with people that don’t need our help, the less time we have to spend with people that do.
0:18:36 Ben Wright: That’s right.
0:18:37 Jemimah Ashleigh: I love that. Because we’re solving a problem.
0:18:40 Ben Wright: That’s right. So we are better to take a fast no so that we can go and find the yeses and it’s okay to do that.
0:18:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: I love that. I want that on a bumper sticker. We should get a merch shop.
0:18:50 Ben Wright: Yeah, we’re going to put that on your car, not mine. Okay, so last one. We’re looking into our key account management or our post sale management. This is different for different types of businesses. But just because we’ve made that sale, we need to start looking at our one loss deal reviews. So what went right? What went wrong? What can we do better next time? Working with our delivery teams. Often our delivery teams, customer service operations around making sure the customer’s happy, but also systemizing, getting back in touch with the customer once the installation is completed or once the service has been fully rendered or once the contract’s coming in. How did we do?
0:19:25 Ben Wright: What else do you need? Right. We spoke about three ways to grow revenue.
0:19:29 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. Retargeting
0:19:29 Ben Wright: This is customers coming back. What else can we do for you? Who else do you know that could benefit from our service? Right. What maintenance plan do you need to go on? What else can we be talking to you about? Or when should we reengage? Because when we do that, we are building an evergreen funnel. And salespeople so often worry about closing the deal now they forget about what’s next. The cheapest way to bring in revenue being existing customers returning. So that’s our five things. Lead generation.
0:20:01 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes. Lead Generation
0:20:02 Ben Wright: Meet and greet and needs analysis.
0:20:04 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:20:05 Ben Wright: Getting in front of customers to present our quantity quotation, the post quotation or the post presentation. Close. And then our post sale management, be that key account management or your one off sale. Now those five things are all wrapped around with ongoing approaches to. Objection. Handling.
0:20:26 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:20:27 Ben Wright: Really, really important. That is actually present through every single stage. It’s not a stage on its own. And they also are wrapped around by systems. And this is the part that’s really important. Whenever we have these stages, we need to be having KPIs measures. So we’ll have our stage and our activities. We’ll have our measures, our KPIs, and we’ll have the systems that back them up. Your CRM, your financial reporting, your quotation software, your inner team workshops. Right. Lots and lots of things we look at from a systemic point of view to make sure that we’re running a great sales process. Now, the kicker here is that that sales process I do on one page takes one hour on one page with every team, but it’s most effective when the whole team build it. So my number one piece of advice that comes out of today’s podcast is to make sure that once you decide to go down the process of formalizing your sales process, the formalized sales process that still leaves room for individual sales activities is bring your team together and build it as a one pager. We have. I have a free template. Everyone knows where I am. You can find that free template through the strongest sales team website. Right. We typically won’t talk about that in this podcast.
0:21:37 Jemimah Ashleigh: Recommend it. Go grab it.
0:21:38 Ben Wright: This is a unique situation. Yeah, right. And it’s very easy to do. But once you get that done, you will actually see where your gaps are in your business because you’ll see where the holes are. But you do it as a team. Everyone gets involved, build it together and you’ll deploy.
0:21:52 Jemimah Ashleigh: Just because so much of that work is sometimes in isolation. Barry might do a really good job of the close and the follow up, but you might have seen you’re doing something slightly different and suddenly there is a communal. Oh, why don’t you try this? This works well because some of this stuff is really quite often done in isolation.
0:22:05 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:22:06 Jemimah Ashleigh: And we’re just looking at that one sale close. It’s a great idea to have the whole team doing it. The silver bullet for me today. Really great question. I really love this idea of the fast. No, they were never going to sign with you anyway. There’s no loss here that you spend more time here. You were never going to make the sale. Keep going with it. Because I think there is that moment of, you know, I don’t want to get rejected for the price. I don’t want it to be all this time is wasted.
0:22:27 Jemimah Ashleigh: The time was wasted anyway. This is sunken time. There is a fallacy here that you had something to begin with. Let’s try. Yeah, that would be my takeaway.
0:22:35 Ben Wright: Excellent. I like it.
0:22:36 Jemimah Ashleigh: Got a question for you.
0:22:38 Ben Wright: Sure.
0:22:38 Jemimah Ashleigh: Can you make friends in sales?
0:22:40 Ben Wright: Oh, absolutely. I think there is very little differentiation between really good business relationships and friendships in a number of circumstances. But I also think we need to be careful that we don’t blur the lines when a business relationship is more appropriate than a friendship.
0:23:00 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes. Agreed.
0:23:01 Ben Wright: Excellent. Well, nice way to segue out today. We have been your friends in business. We look forward to talking to you again in a week’s time. Bye for now.
0:23:09 Jemimah Ashleigh: Thanks, guys.
0:23:09 A: I’ve been trying and you know, I’ve been tested. Thank you for listening to the Friends in Business podcast. This episode was brought to you by your hosts, Ben Wright and Jemimah Ashley, recorded in beautiful Noosa, Queensland. For more insights and resources, Visit [email protected] and Jemimah. Jemimahashley.com if today’s podcast has helped you, we’d be so grateful if you could leave a review and share with someone you know.
0:23:41 A: This will help more people in the world benefit from the hard work we are putting putting in to bring you the best content we possibly can.
