Sales And Business Development (EEEK!) For All Technical Consultants

so over to you thank you good morning how is everybody you just jooy the church service we sat this is what it felt like when I was listening to um interesting to take on how psychology of hackers works right today we are going to be talking about sales and business development for technical consultants with the word each in the middle of it because I think a lot of people all crap sales how do I do this what does it mean I don't like it just a quick show of hands who likes sales one of you two of you three of you okay that means most of you don't I'm not going to ask why but there is going to

be a bit of participation so I will be asking you some questions but before we go there just an interruption so my name is Tim uh I run a company called toggle switch uh we do sales transformation sales coaching for companies who are wanted to get better at how they sell um so why this talk I spent a long time in sales and the last 8 10 years has been very much in and around the cyber security industry uh to the point where I was managing pen testing teams response teams forensics that sort of stuff and a lot of really deeply technical but massively talented people who I used to work with and the thing about these people is

they became the secret weapons of your business they became the people who could really open up the client in an amazing way far better than any of myself think it and so therefore I thought let's do a talk here at inside which is clearly focused on very technical subject of cyber security and I'm going to give you some ideas in some concepts of way how you can possibly look at sales in a more positive sense and give you some ideas of what you can do because it's really not it's not that scary at all does that sound okay good so that's like why this talk why cyber security um my background I've worked in three cybercity companies uh

I've since gone independent I've worked with many more since but as an employee I been working in through uh if you going find me on L you'll see where it was but I'm not going to go into the detail of where that was but you can find out later and I think the other interesting thing with C it's really technical it really featur that especially working for a company that sells a product like it's so easy we got this amazing product there's all these amazing features we got to talk about that all the time and that is not ideal because customers generally don't like and why is this important to you I don't know what all you all do for but you've

all made a choice come in this room so that's great thank you but I think if you work in any business where you are one of the technical Specialists or not but if you are part of your job will be to help you build the client relationship and build out where you go and you'll probably S I hate this I don't like this these clients I don't know everything there's loads of stuff that gets in the way you want to go and have those conversation clients however some of you are probably of mid- level Jing your careers you probably s do I have to get involved inself my answer is probably yes because you can

be the technical specialist you can be the best in the world and they'll think you're good but but quite bluntly if you can be the person that helps open up your client relationships and helps build that trust with new organizations you could be the best in the universe the the customers will love you and your business will love you and other businesses will love you so I'm I'm doing this as a sort of a way to try help you get some steps to build that confidence that you can take some steps in Building Sales with although I'm not ever going to so that's what this talk about before we go anywhere I'd like somebody to share a

sales experience that you've received so is anybody willing to talk about a really really bad sales experience that you've been with

cool go thank you tell us what what was it what did youy um actually think we didn't buy yeah we wereing

[Music] sub gave them they demo they sale went to the money

chased for a long

time I love the word pleasantly persistent was it Pleasant or was it just persistent or you just be [Music] nice yeah so that in that case like very once you got to the point of like you're not buying it they were just very pushy cu yeah this is regular okay has anybody have a good sales experience anybody been oning I actually enjoyed that I like that experience I'm sure you I last year yeah but I went to and

off and I think a lot of the time sales get just push everything on you but um he was really what I looking for electric car try suggest that there was any other bu really listen to what looking for didn't my wife was with me he spoke to I think historically people c i

experienced so it was a really good experience push addition prod was really gooded was a really nice experience cool good two good examples thank you um so what you just saw there were two styles of selling we saw push which was very much persuade propose reason explain asserts you must have this by now if you do this by next week we'll give you a 10% discount you know end quarter end of quarter now and we'll give you 25% off your license Fe do this by this point like that's all pressure and I don't think many people like that but lots of companies do it and that's the thing that's the thing which I think puts a lot of people off sales it feels

like you're having to do something which feels disingenuous and unauthentic and that's not where we all want to be the converse of that is pull so literally you're trying to pull the person towards you and you do that by what I call bridging so it's like you're trying to find common ground you're trying to talk to you trying to understand what they're about in your case it was two of you and the person was selling to you they made sure that they understood both person's requirements and both person's needs rather than just assuming I need this person I need to speak to them because they're the WR andev um so yeah lots of question like

why do you want this what's it for what are you trying to do what you trying to achieve lots of listening which sounds easy we'll talk more about this later uh disclose stuff you know if you say I have that same feeling or I have that same problem or I experience that too and you're not just going to be like similar uh you will find you attract people um in terms of like Sal where would you rather be push or pull I certainly know where I am right one of the best compliments I got last week was from a customer who said to his team at the conclusion of some work and I really enjoyed working with him

because I never felt like I was once being and that was cool it was like cool that worked clearly do work from do as well okay I'm going to go into a bit of theory so there's not much this is probably the least technical Talk of the entire Theses called but there is one equation coming up shortly which I will share with you has anybody heard of a phrase called consultative selling you not heard of it some of you yeah cool right so consultative selling is a way of selling to people to customers in a way that is meant to help them figure out what their problems are and you help find a way to get Solution

that's what consultant selling is there's two definitions of this this is kind of sales 101 for's been in sales for every's not been in sales this is probably needy the reason we're trying to help a customer is because we're trying to enhance their C profits that's ultimately what we're trying to do and we do that in two ways we can either reduce their cost or increase their margins both of those will increase the cost and we do that by helping they're trying to something in their business that is not currently work in the most fundamental way now that's the highest level of consultive salary definition the second I really like actually because this gives you Clues as to what

we do this is like the art of how you sell without being Sal person um it's to ask questions and identify problems and then collaborate to create a solution together that's it that's what sales is you know you literally figure out what the other person is about what they're doing how they're working what's working what isn't working and if you do that you'll identify the problems and then you will work in a collaborative manner which basically means join your work together and figure out how to fix whatever you're trying to fix if you do that that's kind of good it's also probably what you do when you meet with your friends and you meet with

your family discussing like problems that you having in real life it's probably what you just do naturally as a human being but the put sales in front of so that's that's what consultative selling is but before we go any further than that I'm going to ask you a really big question what is trust let me start with let's s into this a bit so how long does it take to build trust want to guess it depends scenario yeah totally like what give me some examples what might be scenario if you familiar with a person or that product to try and sell or something like that or um sometimes I ask this question like how long do it take to build trust with

somebody some people say oh it takes a long time it take weeks months years um I would argue actually can take minutes it very much does determine on the situation so let's just say hypothetically there was a firearm now and there's a fire door there and our room where everybody out we trust you immediately you look like you know what you do within seconds whether you do what you don't doesn't matter you trust your there was an example I had a few weeks ago when some went actually um I had a leaking pipe in the of my living room and it was gushing water to my house and to be fair I developed trust with the first one return with the

first hour bringing up lots didn't and so his level of trust from here to here and his price point of what you're willing to pay from there to there is because of an emergency coming through so trust can be developed very quickly but you've got to do it the right way um I'm going to give you a few examples trust that fell hell I by the way I'm putting these examples up I'm not showing any opinion on this because I'm not allowed my wife distinctly said put these up by but do not share your opinion so I'm not casting an opinion but I'm just showing the picture and the interesting thing with this guy is that a lot of us

did clearly trust him because we voted him to be prime minister or something time but we did enough people in this country voted for this guy to be prime minister therefore we trusted him enough and then he did stuff and we went and now whether we trust him it's a different thing who trust that which I know was complet random because it's not even really it's a fictional character been made of and yet people go yeah I think I would trust my than and one's F one's completely made up and our perception is based on like Snippets of what we've seen in films and TV but what what's the difference what's the difference between bis Johnson today

a lot say sorry not a lot yeah probably not a lot but one you trust one you know or one you at least want to spend know okay who's from the north sorry say the

exhibites yeah yeah yeah there a good reason for why we we'll come back onto pton later because when you comes to the equation of what trust actually is we'll talk about that more here's from the Northwest here's from lire good because the next example will resonate with you uh who knows this company those of you don't live in Thea you be like I have no idea what company is uh boo is the poshest of supermarkets it's it's like better than weit it's pricey it's super high end it's super quality the stack Lely it's nicer it's way nicer than might be and all the stuff they buy they try to sort within like 30 40 mil of where we are

like literally from here and if they can't if it's a pineapple going to get somewhere else but like tomato potatoes Carr Le everything is all brilliant store loads of people trust it and yeah it's really expensive if you go in there and you want a treat you know you're going to get something nice which is why I so anybody who lives up in this part of the world that's why people foods and it's quite good it doesn't spread anywhere else in the country because I think it get ruined if it did last one relevant technical one what every thoughts to Microsoft have any anybody from Microsoft in the room okay good now we don't need fa but like big

multinational and people have really different opinions on this one I've found some people trust them a lot some people don't depends on the perspective depends where you're looking really splits opinion in terms of where we are but the I showed you those pictur because I just wanted to provoke what do you think of trust and where do you sit with it because the point of that is when you're dealing with customers and when you're trying to engage relationship you're trying to go trust with the people around you you're you're literally trying to win them over in a sort of nice authentic way and not a pushy way that's what we're trying to do and I would argue the back to the bis

johnon and pingon their examples or Johnson was very much felt like he was in it for himself whether nothing P be in the world which is for p be benefit nothing which might be why there's a difference in how you trust it okay so this is the only singular equation you're going to get in this presentation if you want to see math go through all the presentations there are loads of math presentations today I'm sure I'll be looking forward to going to watch some myself so this trust equation I can't take credit for it this time might developed it so I'm not taking credit for this at all if you want to read a book on it there's a whole book

on this subject uh but in essence I'll tell you what the BS about now trust equals these things trust equals credibility so credibility can be things like how long we've worked in the industry it can be my education it could be your qualifications and cyber security has a lot of qualifications in it soly if you work in pentes you got qualifications up to the ey what you're trying to get if you haven't got that yet um companies get ISO 27,1 cyber centrals Cy centrals plus you know they're all raising the credibility of that company in terms of yeah we're secure you know protecting themselves if that's what they need to do so that's all credibility any questions any thoughts

that before I Mo on okay next next you've got this thing called reliability so reliability is pretty obvious to most people it's basically doing what you say you're going to do as a human and as a business if you promise to do something do it and it can be as simple as if that meeting starts at 2:00 get there at 5: to 2 get there 2 minutes before the zoom call starts and you're not joining the zoom call going all C S 3 minutes like had a technical problem up zo all did that stuff that's just rubbish just get that 2 minutes ear make sure it works that's correct that's reliability that's just like you know thinking ahead

putting the other person you going to speak to First ahead of you just go sorry I'm really late um as a company is being consistent in what you deliver and getting that reputation of what you are but as a person you you can control this right third one of these is really interesting because it's a word that's not used a lot in buiness and not a lot in how we work how we operate so this thing called intimacy and by intimacy I don't mean like having an affair with your colleagues I don't mean that at all um I mean how intimate are you with the people you doal how well do you know them how well do you understand their

drivers and what's bothering them what's Mak them get up every day what makes them be the person they are how often do you spend time to think about how that you are in that relationship with your colleagues or even the customers that you deal with or how often are you sat go yeah yeah well I can't because I got the pressure if it's deliverable or I need to dis thing and that all gets in the way let me bring this back to a human example so imagine you are stood at a bsot I know not many of us catch bosses all the time but imagine you are you probably have to B sometime in your wife in last few

years and when you stood there and the bus is like 20 10 20 minutes wait for it and there's somebody sat next to you it's not uncommon to start conversation with that person next if only two people stood there couple minutes say and the first questions you're going to ask or the first thing you might say is what if you're stood up B inra with somebody you don't know exactly everybody says oh yeah weather's going stay or whatever it's something neutral about the weather and then the second question might be I wonder when the bosses come this class I only you been I've been 15 minutes and then you have a choice you you could continue to like continue to

talk or you can shut up uh if the person's reacting fairly warm towards those questions because they were obiously want to just pass the time of break he might continue the conversation and questions where you're heading today would not be an unreasonable question to ask and then might go well going to X all right who go now for this I've done this I've done this and I do it as a bit of a practice sometimes to see what's going on people I'm just to see how this worked and I discovered people going for job interviews and going to get their greatest greatest thing they can find the world I found people going to the hospital and they're going to see

relative and deeply worried and concerned and they need to get them a certain time and the found out all sorts of stuff from this very very simple engagement but the point of it is it was just a degree of intimacy that built over the time so it started with something really simple and over time it developed into something bit deeper so in the 10 minutes it might get quite far through and I always imagine this is like peeling like an onion so the layers of the relationship start at the very very peripheral edge of the relationship the first layer of an onion which is what's the WEA whether's a bit CRA today or whatever it may be and as you build

through the layers you start to get deep principal level of in was going on in that relationship in that in that conversation and clearly at stop there's a limit to where you're going to go but there isn't a limit to where you could go and you do this in work you can go deeper than you think clearly if the first question you ask somebody [Music] is what do you think about the war in Ukraine if I was stood next to that person the bus stop weird like that's a really odd first question and that's because I haven't developed any intimacy therefore not developed any level of trust about person to start but if I ask that question s of 20

minutes in we' be talking about all sorts of subjects we may well answer that question and we may well talk about it but there's clearly a time in the build so you got to like layer this through work way through right there's something below this equation the divide by which completely kills trust dead and it's this thing called self orientation so by self orientation what I mean is by how much you think and put yourself first by the things and the actions and the way that you operate how much are you putting yourself first because if you put yourself first all the time nobody will trust you sense so quick reflection how much do you put yourself first you don't have to

answer that by the way because that's a disos strangers you don't know uh but have a think about it have a think about it when you're like going outside to speak to people who hav met before how much of that conversation is all about me and how much is all about them how much you sat I need I need to speak to this person I need to tell them all about me but they run away if tonight c a house party if you're there you might get stuck with the person who just talked about themselves for the next 45 minutes oh God I need to get away you're not going to hang around for that

and that's what that is and in companies it happens all the time look I'm going to tell you about our great product here's the 27 features which are amazing well they're amazing to you but they don't mean anything to me as a customer because I don't actually need any of that stuff so when you go to talk to customers and you walk into the room like here's a demo here's a product demo about our stuff you I don't know what I want yet here's a demo that's promise we give you um and they go to the 20 minutes of demo and the 30- minute call and then the last five minutes because said you want to

buy it how self orientated is that conversation but completely completely self orientated yet load of companies do otherwise I wouldn't be the job do what I do which I'm really pleased keep going keep getting paid by companies to do what I do so this is where I mean like renew your self orientation and you as technical people have an influence in this because you can be different you You' Haven got this badge called sales person you're not expected to sell anything you're supposed to be there with super capable super expert loads of credibility you know you've done research you've written papers you've got badges you've got certifications they the customer trusts you because of that and then if you spend all your time

like being developing inally client understanding their business their problem what they're trying to do their goals and their BL they will trust you beyond belief which is why I started with I really like working techical people in the team I worked with because you could build huge amounts of trust with the client in a way that I couldn't possibly do sometimes because they look at me go you're selling I'm they not I could manag to dissolve and diffuse that perception but lots of sales people don't which is why I like if I can work on a bunch of technical people today and help you overcome some of this little bit you'll be more impactful in how you can develop those

Cent relationships that you can force with your customers uh before move on any questions about okay I like pictures a lot because you probably remember the pictures more than my words at least some of you will which is why I put a picture of the universe and put a picture of a scary face at the beginning of the pack to make and the univers where you can get that's the place you can be the reason I put a seesaw is because I would like you to imagine that you you are sat at this side of the seat so at the high end and your customer sat at the the heavy end and that's because the weight of your

interaction with that person should always be bowed or weighted towards the customer and if you find that the conversation is all about you all about your company all about your features you've gone too far you're going to start dening TRS so imagine that Seas where you're and imagine in that conversation where am I at this moment in time if you're in the WR Place change it and go back on to what are you doing how's it work for you and be really curious and inquisitive because that's the like natural four-year-old tendencies that we all seem to move by about the age of 14 go back to the for and imagine yourself on the playround where do I see

it okay so what makes us self orientated in case you hav't yes already uh I would like to remove and minimize your self orientation as top tips to take away the fear of selling these things make us self orientated so it's things like wanting to talk about yourself now why do you do that it might because you're nervous it might because you don't know what to say you don't know how to act it might just be because You' got a massive ego you need tell about it uh it could be all sorts of reasons and I'm not saying any of or anything like those things but those are just perceptions of what happened but the more you talk about

yourself and the less you ask questions and listen to talk the less they're going trust it doesn't mean don't disclosing it doesn't mean talk about yourself it just means get balance in this uh clearly wanted to talk about your business your product your features that clearly is a big blocker um how many people have spoken to feel like they're not listening to you and how does that make you feel so don't do it today and listenting is a really interesting subject because it's easy to go yes I listen my ears are open however there's this other thing in in the way between like listening and understanding which is our brain and our brain has filters in it

and our our brain is filtered by going oh I like that I don't like that that sounds weird you know you're making conclusions based on what you hear all the time whether you like it or not and to truly listen you need to switch as many of those filters off as you can and if you're working in a sales capacity which I have work a lot of sales people do you need to switch off though when a client says oh we have a real big problem with eggs I need to switch off that oh great I can sell to that because if I do I'm going to come across as completely self orientated I literally listened to a

call yesterday with another company and this was their best sales person and they were talking to a really big company and the company the intro two minutes when the guy introduced himself like Global head of whatever he was said yeah we've got we've got a real big problem with this in their case inter Communications real big problem with inter Communications across all our sites and divisions around the places we operate which they are Global govern but we have a already immediate need in London and so after this two minuts of introduction the salesperson went well there were two choices at this point the salesperson could look well tell me more about what's going on with

your communication why is that not working they didn't do that they went so how big requirement and I like you you killed it in the first few minutes like you look completely self orientated you don't give a stuff about this what you care about the deal what they should have done is spent the next 10 minutes figuring out why in Communications is not working across the company get back to London they've also got me they come back later but they didn't so not listening is because of felt it is because of the things in our head insertive remove them try and get purity of what you're hearing as much as you can and fact will

help uh talked about that already so w dwell on it and the last one especially if your technical people is how you handle a crisis because often you get involved in crisis major of the business that we're in cyber security stuff doesn't always go right um so therefore how you hand stuff like this is really interesting just quick story of like how I want to handle the crisis I used to work for a very big Bank um not in cyber security uh we were running the sou corpor account management team and one of our biggest customers was a massive travel company like Global big travel company who you have probably book travel through and we stopped their booking

because we messed something up so for several hours they could not transact any qu business which is not great when you are a Global multibillion Travel documentation and this got to my desk probably within about 3 minutes of it happened because it went through the account manager and the team then it got to me other right and everybody's like what do we do we just messed it up this is like wor like big clients really important like okay and then had other people ringing me up going tell we need to get on so we need to manage the mess manage the message to the Cent really carefully what do you mean by manage the message do you mean like try

and off escate the truth of what's going on here and no no no we don't mean what do you mean by manage the message well what's happened said what's happened is we cut their credit by we haven't told them about it we've just stopped all payments Deb you can't say that well that is the message and you can't say that why not because they guess so it wasn't long it's about 12 minutes in and this all happened really quickly and I had people from very high in the bank bringing me up going you cannot say this like I just did so I rang up with a CFO about this global company and said we've just stopped your

business and said I know it's because of this said I know I said I'm really sorry we need to talk really quick about how we get this back in place there's things you can do to help with like like genuine it's something that we've done and yeah sorry and we got it back up running in about 90 minutes but the point of that was we could have off fiscated we could have managed the message but it was better just to go clean and that CFO still speaks to me he doesn't work at that set travel company anymore but we did a lot of work together we did a lot more work because the level of trust went from here to

there because I was honest and and I wasn't self orientated in managing the message that went out the country and if you're working cyber security you're going to come across incidents like that not NE where you drop a credit line but there will be places where there breaches there hacks mess ups UPS configuration anything that will mess things up it will stop things working for your customers so don't don't manage the message that way if your have faith in the trust that you can go for it okay good right so I'm covering quite a lot of BR I know I'm trying to give you like the top tips of where you can take this there is this

thing called customer buying cycle which is the psychology of people people go through sales and we could go through this for hours but I'm going to try and paraphrase to the CH this whenever somebody buys something the first thing they need to do is they go through this thing at the top of awareness of needs which is basically you know I wake up I I think I need something I don't know what it is yet but I've got a sense that there's something I need to fix somewhere there's something going on in my world and if if it's a business it might be I know we're spending too much money on X or we're not getting the performance we

out of why but if it's personally you know I'm I Lally sat here at Domino I'm really happy with the two cars we have par the drive and I said to myself I'm going to keep one them for 10 years but there's something B in the back of my head might might want new I don't want it yet but you know it's building my awareness of need is starting to grow know that that might take 6 months to 6 years to form now but it's going through my head at the moment and I've said to myself I don't want to B the car for 10 years because I just don't want but I'm probably going to break my about five

years time do it anyway and that's because of this way and that's all sorts of things going through my head I see I see other things I see advertising I see my friends I see I see my more dat than they used to you know all that stuff play my head a bit and the same thing happens with your app there'll be something something in my business yeah not quite right I can live with it secondly once they decide they need something they go and assesses this is where most companies go and play lots of companies don't play in that first place it's quite tricky to find it's not it's not obvious this could be really obvious

because the company decision request proposal they' run a competition they want something so that assessment alter really obvious let's go let's go submit proposal trouble is your competitors gotw need compl shake what they so now you're competing and then when they decided they want to spend a million quid on great new product X they have to can afford it that's a lot of money there's a lot of risk in there how do we mitigate that how do we manage that decision to make sure it's avable and then de and then they and then good so where do you play uh uh where do you play awareness of needs you guys can play really well in this place so if

ever your s in Broad open discussion with a customer whether it be a customer meeting events Seminars cour the annual reviews whatever it is technical like project reviews whatever it may be just be bloody curious just ask questions like how's it going how's the business how's that working tell me more about that a great question if they say something like oh yeah this isn't working quite as well you want it really tell me more about that is a brilliant question to ask everybody because it shows your interest it shows you curious but genuinely don't follow it through how long has been happening how long has that been going on so they're like some sample curiosity questions I propose you

take away think about and start using the people you deal with as you get through to the assessment of Alternatives um Dem Drive Me Nots who does demos here's like involved in doing company demos nobody okay cool this is it relevant to you then but if it was relevant demos are really bad usually buy solution tech companies who just go here's our demo 20 minutes regardless of what is you want to buy I'm going to show you my standard demo and I propose do it through single time start completely differently start what they want and then do the Dem tell the story of what after uh some of you may get involved in proposal we want this technical piece on like how

we're going to satisfy this thing um that's what you do there you tell based on their needs not just what our usual Bo technical stuff was this is an interesting one because you're technical you know about this subject really really well so my theory here is go stress test their thinking and stress test it by asking questions okay so you're about to go and connect to this new thing what are you worried about what sort of things are conning you have you thought about and you probably know what the three or four pitfalls are going to be have you thought about X have you thought about y what's your plan to overcome Z that's where TR test go be

that consultative trusted advisor we go you're asking things of them which will be really useful to them and basically really open to answer questions any questions before I jump on okay and then the last question that we can play apart from obviously achieving results and whoever all we do at this point when they're trying to manage risk provide reference customers so you may have the best relationships with some of the most interesting people in your customer base if you can open up that link to a potential future customer and get that really honest open technical to technical conversation going on that will help Le lot of that decision making off your expertise and critique insight a bit like stress testing they

thinking would just take it a bit further uh and share stories similar situations you've seen seen this in s this company this examp it just brings more confidence back to that credibility point when you're building trust with the okay I'm nearly done I could have made this talk last an hour and a half and I have made it last the whole day with some company and it's clearly a lot more interactive Workshop type environment but today I'm just throwing it out you can see more sticks and see how much you take away so I have built simplifying sales top tips if there is a slide you want to take a photo of it's probably this when

I'm finish the whole build small bits to it so if you want a slide to photo this will be useful take number one credibility remember to build credibility so things like company track record your track record your qualification your case these Awards um all of that will be credibility don't forget it be reliable I know that sounds really really really obvious but be as reliable as you can be turn up on time do what you say if you said you're going to deliver that report that feedback or that action by Wednesday at 4:00 do it by Wednesday at 5: to 4: or earlier if you're going to turn up to the zoom meeting don't turn up 3 minutes

late if he said I didn't realize zo was about to go like upload itself and de figure and things like that just do that 3 minutes before the meeting so you tell on time and then there's an interesting one called consistency of behavior which is a bit more subtle so if somebody comes at you friend old old colleague old customer and they come at you with really exciting news and you go yeah yeah it's amazing or they come up really bad feedback I really don't like that you get all angry and offensive that's not very consistent and you may feel some of that stuff if you are has a tendency to have extremes of reaction to

personality try to level it out a bit so that you do show some dis your happiness around that but don't go mental on both extremes because if you do people won know what to do when they come with you with feedback or questions or ideas because they they'll think don't know how they going to react so it's an interesting one just to have a think about is that have that level consistency of behavior of way you play and try certainly when you deal with your customers just always be that calm predictable steady like in the case of when the CFO for the travel company rang me up I wasn't panicking I wasn't trying to be defensive I was just there in a

moment and like yeah yeah it's really bad I'm really sorry and honest but equally when we won the award to go and grow the account and take it to all the places I wasn't like yes amazing I was like cool thank you that's really good of you thank you for giving it the business it was a similar sort of level of response but just honest and P um intimacy imagine your stood next the person at the bus stop next time you're stood talking to your client how much do you know about your client I know people say to talk about football teams and kids and families and all that stuff and not everybody will want to

talk about that stuff and certainly L speak done like football I found um which is called my son footb which is devastating I'm leaving no Legacy of support for the club I support but that's fine um but yeah remember like ask ask how people are like just start with simple stuff and if you if you're talking to somebody in a business context how are you getting on how's the business going it's a really great question how's the business going is an amazing starting question for anybody anywhere if you don't want to go on personal stuff start start business stuff how's your business going how's it going and they will they will answer and then just respond all right

that's cool yeah that's interesting tell me about that that's really interesting and see what we say so explore spend time exploring uh share feelings you know well that sounds well that doesn't sound very good or that sounds a bit like risky or you know express some vulnerability well I've had that similar situation yes um I I felt that when this happened too because we're only human we're only normal you got to make time for it and then this is the one I Ed in For You especially I don't put this un people I put this in for you today this bottom because it's the most important one this is your superpower you are not sales

people it's really cool you're not so you walk into a room re and they trust you because you're not a sales person so use it and be curious and ask questions and don't sit there going I need to talk to the person about all the stuff I know because you don't they don't want to know about everything you know yet they might do but they don't today because you don't what they need so use that as your superpower so that you can you can win more trust with and that's I'm trying to help you do here is think about the structure of how you can be more trust filing clearly you need to remove or minimize

your self orientation remember the Seesaw be curious like curiosity is something we need get born with when we're young and like honestly we all lose it about 10 to 15 it disappears in Psychology some re get it back go be super curious about everything around in the world including customers and you'll find that they like you for it quite a lot because you'll start asking great questions and people well what's a great question well the great question is the one that's most inquisitive about the thing you just heard so I can't tell you what the great question is because it depends what they said but removeing filter you stop thinking about it too much you'll just

ask um it's support empis for having a hard time which is technical people you probably can you probably understand that situation better than anybody else around you and then finally play as a team you are not in this on your own I know certainly firsthand I've got this meeting coming up one of my pent team could you come with us to this meeting second yeah it's like okay don't worry it's fine I don't know everything here's what they'll say you don't need to know anything you just need to be in the room and be curious and ask questions and that's because I was like nice you know but we're going to be better as a team

from going as a team rather than just like bushing try and sell them something so that's really important to play as a team share bounce things off each other bra St there's a lot of preparation goes into s there is but you can play an amazing part in that because you are the super weapon person hasn't got okay I'm going to leave you with one final picture and the reason I'm showing you this picture is because I'd like you to imagine you're the person stood there in the red coat and that landscape in front of you with lots of valleys and lots of mountains in it is your customer base or potentially in just one

cust and what people tend to do is they might go and wander into that Valley over there and they go in there and they feel really comfortable because been there it's like know familiar I know the people in the room uh they don't sh at me they feel I feel like it have this way this level of understanding when walk into that client and they're okay however that only helps you get there and your client might have 14 other really deep values and deep problems that they currently have but you don't know about so unless you take time to be curious and go figure out what's going on elsewhere just be naturally how's that work you mightly find you're in

this next value over on the left you know before with a load of new people which might feel a bit like not quite comfortable if I don't know anybody that doesn't matter just be naturally curious and go figure out what's going on and if you do do that you might start finding you dig out all sorts of New Opportunities which you can bring back to the business I've just been in this new Valley over here and they've got a problem with this it doesn't mean you've got to sell that problem it just means you found the problem now as a team figure out how you can okay I will stop there at that point has anybody got any

questions about anything we' got few minutes left before go so if anybody want anything about the time question um that was really interesting I really enjoyed that when you when you get to that point actually when you move from asking nice questions and getting to I can't help the cynical part of my brao on that's why you speaking to you know when you kind of move from that to the I'm selling you something how do you stop that kind of when you done all the hard hard work I guess in the back of your mind maybe sell something or can sell something to you how do you stop your mind ultimately or how do you how do you ultimately sell I suppose

it's to say know that how you yeah if you were R be going that yes not I haven't done that today uh so what would I do uh you get really really good at understanding the problem like genuinely figure it out and also to the point the customer go yeah I've got a problem that and I I acknowledge that got a problem so they're going to feel the sense of I something about it so you miss one slid I think is like I talked about collaboration when you get to that point of mutual understanding there is a problem you've got to then show collaborative Behavior about how build together a and that collaboration something simple you could be as simple if I could

you've got a real problem with the potential vulnerability of your system back I know using I know using pest a to do some of this testing but what if we came up with another solution pting scan we got more coverage so we're help save a better money we getting more more more verification more secure again we love that that would be really helpful okay so at that point how about shake some sort of some solution that could help fix that and go yeah let's do that I haven't got price on anything yet we haven't got there but that's how it start get cross into that I know it's simp it's not an exact science but

that's any other

questions is there fundamental any difference between s new customer versus selling uh depends who you ask so is the difference between you customer and selling to a existing customer I mean there is because you've already got a foot hold in the existing customer but fundamentally know you're still trying to figure out what the problems are what's going on what they're trying to fix is the same in both directions I think the interesting thing for me is selling existing customers there's a lot of sales people who don't like doing that because they're going to disrupt the relationship that they said we've got a really good relationship with if I going to speak to part of that business be

they're not going to like me that that is an interesting Dynamic that happens I don't always believe it because I think you need to be a bit more Brave about just having that sort of jump across your genuinely trying to be curious remove yourself orientation you're trying to help you're trying to be that trusted advice I don't think there is a lot of difference technically in how you do it it's just the fears of how we think about it anym okay it's now coffee time thank you so much for listening