If you still get objections, you opened wrong

Ha ha. Thank you. Thank you, Nick.

my god, that it got it started 15 years ago. so so firstly I have to say, Mika, it's nice to meet you. I'm I'm in Sydney, in Australia, so we're we're talking across the the half the globe. So thank you for having me on on the on your show. To answer your question, I have I started my own business 15 years ago after 25 years in the corporate world, when I finally had enough of all the politics and the bollocks that goes on. and I had a a philosophical discussion with my with my then boss that I didn't enjoy and he didn't enjoy either. So we we left and and the discussion was about how to do how to approach new prospects and sales. and I have to say I was a a senior sales executive there and the discussion was around how many calls has your team made today. Or this week or this month, right? And it was all about reaching out to as many people as you can and asking them to buy something. so the the philosoph philosophical discussion and what I realized was really needed in in the business world is to stop thinking about what we are selling as a business and how many people we need to reach out to sell stuff to so that we can hit our sales targets. and rather turn it around and and think about something from the buyer's perspective. And the mindset shift is going from we've got all these products or services, how can we sell them to we've got all these prospects, how can we help them to buy from us? Right, there's a difference between reaching out and I call it ambushing, because 'cause really that's what we're asked to to do in in in in business, is to reach out to as many prospects and hit them up and say, as as you put it earlier, open your wallet, you've got a beautiful wallet wallet, open it up for me. Right. And it's all it's all about give me your money. Right? But to to the to the prospect, it sounds like I'm being ambushed, I'm being harassed, I I don't know anything about you, I don't know anything about your services.

The first thing you've done is say buy from me and you haven't even told me why. So so that first buyer experience is really critical in business, and I don't think you can burn all these prospects in the first call and give them a negative experience and then try to reel them back. Right? In sales, in sales, we talk about opening, objection handling, and closing. My point is: if you open right and you explain what you do and why. people should buy from you and you have a really good value proposition and maybe something controversial some controversial insight or knowledge that you can share with them that makes them lean forward and say, gee, I'm I'm really interested in that. What what what does it mean to my business? How could it work? And yeah I call it the the lean forward moment, creating a lean forward moment so that they get interested and then want to know more. Rather than telling them everything they need to know and then say, will you buy from me? Which is the the the standard approach. Right? so if if you give them if you give them some value in in the first place, then they'll stick around longer they'll be interested. And you don't burn all these prospects because once you harass somebody, they'll never want to hear from you again. They go, that's a guy Peter who's harassed me last time, I'm not gonna talk to him again. Right? So I call it opening is the new closing because if you open right, there should be no objections at the end that you need to handle. If you're still getting objections at the at the end of your sales cycle, you haven't opened right.

Ha ha ha.

Well, it I was prepared for the change 'cause I had actually been in business mu albeit much smaller, before going into the corporate world. And I had I I realized that it would ta I would take at least I would have at least to have a six month buffer, financial buffer, to be able to start a new business. So I did I didn't go in into it blind and I didn't just chuck Chuck the the the the dummy out of the pram and and walk off and you know and and start my own business. I w I was prepared for it and I actually planned it. But but the the key experience to me was that I used to I was used to dealing with large businesses, you know, multinational corporations, CEOs, senior executives, sales leaders in very large businesses. And they knew me as an executive in another large business. But then when I when I went out on my own, I found and I I kinda naively thought at the time, you know, 15 years ago, that I know all these people, I can just sell to them. And and that was what I wasn't prepared for was that these same people knew me as one thing, but now I introduced myself as something else and they kind of didn't trust me. They can they kind of said, Well, Peter, you know you as a corporate animal, now you're stepping out for yourself. That's nice. Good luck to you. Right? And and so all these people that I thought I could just sell to actually evaporated. And I had to reinvent myself and make sure that I had a really clear ICP and the reason to call them and a value proposition and all those things that I now teach SMBs myself. Because even I, who'd been in the corporate world for twenty five years, wasn't really prepared for that for that change. And and I had to learn the hard way, but now I'm helping other people themselves but they can actually take the take what they need from from my advisory and and implement it much more quickly and with l much less pain and hopefully usually with much much more income and revenue as well.

Spoda.

Yeah. So so one is that that people go, here's our product, open your wallet, right? and and people go, well what what does your product do? What what's what does it do for me? You know, it might have all these nice features and it it might be a great service or whatever it is, but what does it mean for me? And and so you really need to open up what with what's in it for you. And the other misconception is that everybody has the problem that you're sell solving. Right. I'm I'm approaching you in a cold call, a cold email, a LinkedIn introduction, and I assume that that you have the problem that my product will help you solve. And I don't know anything about you, but I'm trying to sell you something before I know anything about you and I don't even know whether you're in the market for the thing or selling and I don't even know whether you have the you need my product or service. So I just make an assumption that everybody needs the service and we'll we'll just have to sell harder. But my matter is, you know, sell smarter and not harder. So so the the the tip that I give my my clients and and this is some free advice here for your listeners if if you start your your business introduction, hi, I'm Mick and I do podcasts, then people are still wondering, okay, who is Mick and why is he calling me? And that's nice that he's doing podcasts, but what what's in it for me? Whereas if you say my clients are small business owners who are still wondering how they can scale their business. That's that's for the service I'm offering. And you don't even say what you do, but you just get them interested, right? They say, Okay, well I'm I'm a smaller business and I want to scale my my my revenue. How can you help me? And and the the the key here is, Mick, this is really important, is to get them intrigued To the point where they, like I said, lean forward. But more importantly, they ask you a question. They say, How how do you do that? Or would that work for my business? You know, what do I need to do? As long as as soon as they ask you a question, they've opened the door for you to sell to them. And they don't feel ambushed anymore because they've asked you a question, right? So the trick is at the first point of contact not to go, here's my stuff, buy it. But but to go we do this for people like you, you know, is that of interest? And and and if they don't even ask the question, we do pe we we we do this for people like you. And then they go, Yeah, I'm not interested. Or they go, Yeah, and how does it work? You know, and you go, Okay, thanks thank you. I'm glad you asked. Blah blah blah blah blah. Then you can talk about yourself.

Well yeah, I don't know about Didn't really. === TAKE 02 — session 45405064-bca7-4efc-b8d8-fa92c1f4b882 (times = Take 02 session time) ===

N no, I I I call it but I I call it prospect engagement rather than prospect ambushing. But poke the bear, okay. If if you like, yeah.

Well then then they like I said earlier that you have they have given you their maybe inadvertent permission to sell to them. They have asked you about your business, so now you have earned the right to talk about your business. And you can you can t tell them you know what other ideally you don't actually talk about the nuts and bolts, the the logistics of what you do. You talk about What other people like them have achieved by using your services. And what that does is it helps them to want your services as well. Because you've proven to them that it works with other people, but other people who look like them. And then they'll wanna go, they wanna know, how does that work for my business? And you can then say, Well, what do you do? How many clients have you got right now? What are your plans? you know, have you got in have you got enough money to pay for my services? You know? Are you are you serious enough about it? And you can pr practically qualify them in or out by g getting them to talk about their business.

Exactly right, yes. Totally. Yeah. And you can talk about how other families have enjoyed the vacation, yeah. And make them and and make them imagine make them imagine how they could enjoy their vacation and yeah.

Well it's it's hopefully coming out as a Christmas present. But it's called the first sales rep hire trap. Because in my dealings with SMBs, I've found that there's a common recurring theme. And there's a trap that small business owners repeatedly fall into and it's costing them time, money and effort, and it just delays the success of their business. And that is that when they first start out start out in in their business as a as a founder, they find themselves having to do everything because they're it. They are the business, right? So they got to do their stock taking, they got to do their stock management, they got to do their accounting, they've got to do their marketing, and they've got to do their sales. Now, most of them don't have a sales background. They they come from an industry or they come from some knowledge expertise and then they want to sell their services or sell their products to the wide world out there and make some money because that's the point of being in business, right? And they find that they have no expertise in selling. They don't know anything about sales. They don't really like selling because it's icky and and they feel like that it's they don't they don't really enjoy it and it's not them. But they have to do it. So they take the easy way out and they go, well, okay. I don't like selling, but I have to sell, so I know I'll sell to people that already know me, people in my network. So they reach out to their people in their network and they sell to them, and that actually works, you know, and and they go, great, that selling is easy, it works, you know, really well. And I can sell to more people that in my network. But there comes a time when they run out of network. When they've sold to everybody, or that at least they've spoken to everybody in their network. And now they need to reach out to people that they don't know. And that feels even ickier. Now I've got a I've got a cold call or I've got to send cold emails or I I I gotta hit up people on LinkedIn or whatever it is, right? And they go, okay, so I don't like selling. I don't know anything about selling and it's distracting me from growing my business because I've got to work in the business as instead of on the business. I know I'll hire a sales rep. They'll do all that for me and I can focus on growing the business. So they might spend some months, time and money recruiting somebody who then comes into the business and says, where is your ideal customer profile? what's my value proposition? How can I attract these people? What's what have you got, what framework, selling framework have you got set up for me so that I can hit the ground running and earn my commission from day one? And the business owner will say, Well, I haven't got any of that. You I thought you bring that with you, right? And and one of two things will happen. Either the the rep will try to set it all up for the owner, meanwhile is not selling, and the owner will run out of patience and and go, This rep is useless, he's not selling anything. Let's get rid of him, get somebody better. And then they repeat the same circle of of of failure again. Or the rep goes, there's nothing here for me to sell. I want to earn my commission. I don't want to build something before I can even start earning the first dollar. I'm either here, I'm going to somewhere else where I can make more money. And and the poor business owner then has to start again. And I've seen in in small business that they they don't do this once. They do this two or three times because they blame the rep, not themselves. And so eventually they come to the conclusion that aha, I actually need to have a selling framework in my business. before I hire my first sales rep. And that's the trap that they don't have that. So the book describes the problem, the the the typical consequences of the problem, and then the solution to it as well. And there's a there's a a 10-step competency framework that you need to set up in your business before you hire your first sales rep if you want to be successful. The The other benefit of having a a selling framework is in your business is that once a second and a third and a fourth sales rep starts, they can jump straight in and use the same framework and the customer experience and the way that you go to market is consistent, is the same. Whereas if you let one rep come in and do it their way, and then another rep comes in and does it their way, and then another rep comes in and does it their way, sooner or later you'll have to untangle that spaghetti warren. because it it'll create a mess for your customers because they have a different experience depending on who they deal with. And what it says on your website ha has nothing to do with what they're experiencing from the rep, you know, and and and so it's it's it's a nightmare to untangle. So you can save yourself all that heartache by just getting the business set up first properly before you hire your first sales rate.

Okay, so so before starting my own business out in two thousand eleven, so fifteen years ago now, I had spent twenty five years in the corporate world. And and if if you know the corporate world it's pretty ugly. And you know, the the politics, the the meetings, the permissions, the the budgeting and all that stuff. you don't you're never really in charge of your your own yourself. You're always in charge of the you're always in charge of a business and you always have no matter how high up the ladder you are, you always have a boss ahead of you who knows better and wants to tell you how to do things. And and I I've reached a point where I had a a a discussion, a debate with with my boss at the time, who wanted more volume in in sales outreaches. So I was I was a senior sales executive. And the question was about our sales target and our prospecting. And to to him at the time, it was all about numbers. Like the more people we we reach out to, the more people we we'll hit up the who actually want to buy our products and the more we'll sell and we'll hit our sales targets. So you've you've gotta have you've gotta have this thing that's called coverage. five times coverage, which means if we win if we win one in five deals, then we need to have five times our revenue target covered in deals down the pipeline in order to reach our sales target. So it's all about volume. all about quantity and there was no talk about quality. And I I really didn't want to ambush more people cold in the hope that they would buy something from us and just make it a numbers game. I I I felt that was really ruining my own personal brand and my own personal reputation. And I was going to sacrifice my personal reputation for the big company so that they would make more money. So That that conversation led me to to believe that the buyer experience is super important and that you can't just burn ten thousand prospects in the hope that you know two or three will buy from you. So the idea was that the way you reach out and the way you engage with your prospects, and I purposely use the word engage as opposed to reaching out, is super important because if If I reach out to you and and and basically say, buy my stuff, you know, open your wallet and buy from me, that doesn't do anything for the buyer. It just they just feel harassed. And they'll just say instinctively they'll they'll react to with a fight or flight response and they say, Go away. Right? And and and once I've done that to them, they'll probably never want to hear from me again. So it's really easy to book to burn your prospect list and and actually reduce your chances of selling something. rather than focusing on a smaller number of good prospects like your ICP, your ideal customer profile, and doing a better job of helping them to get to know you and what what you're doing and what's in it for them. Yeah? So so so the example I can use is is your service. If if you reach out to 10,000 people and say, I run a podcasting service, buy my stuff. They'll still be wondering, yeah, okay, so you have a podcasting service, what does that mean for me? Whereas if you say, other people like you, small business owners who want to scale their business and and don't know how to do it, I help those people to scale their business. And and then they can go, Okay, that I'm I w I'm a small business owner. I want to scale my business. Make how do you do it? What happens? And and then you can say, Well, these are No, but but you you you you then you you then No, but but then but but then the the other important thing is that you then tell a story about somebody else who looks like them.

Where they were in the same situation as them, where they said, okay, I don't know how how to scale my business, but I'm talking to you now. So how would you do it? And you say, Well, this other guy that looks a bit like you came to me and we had this conversation and we decided to they decided to engage my services. And three months later their sales went through the roof. You know, so just give them, just play with their imagination, get them intrigued, get them interested so that they want to know more and they ask you. a question and then you can they've given you permission to sell to them and then you can talk about your your your services. So don't lead with what you're selling. Lead with what you do for people that you are like the person that you're talking to.

Well the there's the two easy ways is one I'm I'm on LinkedIn and I've written more than a hundred and twenty articles on LinkedIn, so you can you can look at those. I've got a YouTube channel. or you can go to the website at peterstrop dot com and and have a look at at what I do there. And and there is actually and the book will be published on Amazon, but like I said, it'll be you know, hopefully soon. And On the website, there is actually a a free test that business owners can undertake themselves to see how ready they are to hire their first sales rep. And it's it's it's a free service. You don't I don't need your email address or anything. You just you just go on and you find out for yourself how ready you are, and then I invite you to a free conversation about where you're at and how how you can get to where you want to be.

Yeah, thank you. So Salesforce gave me this award because I'm I'm one of twenty seven globally experts that can help you sell more faster.

All right, Mick. Look, it was it was lovely being on your on your podcast and thanks for having me on your show.