I help B2B salespeople sell more in less time
so they have the income and the time to enjoy the lifestyle they desire
I have never been a Sales Executive, an Account Manager, a Rep or a Senior Account Manager because I feel a salesperson should be comfortable with the concept that they are a Salesperson.
I sold B2B for almost 25 years. The first 23 years was in Industrial sales of some form. I sold into many industries including paint, plastics, furniture, tanning, agriculture, rubber, construction, adhesives, inks, food, cosmetics, veterinary and cables. And I negotiated supply contracts to import goods from the USA, UK, Canada, Germany, Netherlands and Japan.
Naturally,I attended many sales training courses at home and overseas and I'm an avid reader of sales and management books. During my 25 years I was trained in the Lee DeBois sales system, Consultative Selling, and Persuasion Engineering.
Being in sales is one thing but doing it well is another. I have sold as much as $8million in a year. My worst result was 94% of budgeted sales and 99% of budgeted profit. I sold my way to a shareholding in the last company I worked for and was semi-retired at the age of 46.
But I was probably not what many people imagined a successful salesperson should look like.
At times, some people regarded me as a fairly weak salesperson because I wasn't particularly pushy. I didn't make enormous numbers of sales calls and I wasn't interested in pressuring people into buying something they didn't need.
The problem with that assessment was that I was making considerably more sales than most of the people around me.
I learned that I didn't need to push harder. I needed to understand more.
I listened. I noticed. I asked questions. I tried to understand the buyer, their business, what they were trying to achieve and what might get in the way.
One of the descriptions of me from an overseas expert that I particularly liked was “the best detective I have ever seen.”
That is quite close to how I came to think about selling.
Very often the important information isn't sitting there waiting for the salesperson to present a solution. You have to notice things, become curious, ask another question and sometimes connect things that the buyer hasn't connected themselves.
I also used to say that part of my job was to “grease the wheels.”
That might mean making something easier for the buyer, solving a problem internally, helping two people understand one another, finding information, or simply doing what I said I would do.
For me, good selling was never about doing something to the customer.
It was about helping something useful happen.
Semi-retired because I will NEVER stop working and because I have a desire to help other salespeople live a good life, free themselves of money worries and retire early.
Selling is one thing but teaching and coaching is another matter.
Selling successfully is one thing. Helping someone else become a better salesperson is another.
So after my selling career I deliberately studied coaching, communication and how people think and make decisions. That included coaching training through the University of Sydney, Meta-Coaching, NLP and training in group dynamics and workplace training.
Combined with 25 years of actual B2B selling, that study helped me begin putting into words many of the things I had previously done almost instinctively.
I have always believed that there is a better way to do almost anything. This is the Japanese concept of Kaizen (continuous incremental improvements). And I'd like to help you improve too.
My motivation throughout my sales career was to help companies achieve what they were trying to achieve.
If I could genuinely help, I wanted the business.
If I couldn't help, I got out of their way.
Over time, that developed into a very simple principle:
Always Be Caring.
Care enough to understand what the buyer really wants.
Care enough to tell them when what you're selling isn't right for them.
Care enough to keep your word.
And care enough about their result that making the sale isn't the only thing that matters.
I certainly wanted to make money. Selling was my livelihood and I enjoyed being successful at it.
But I also wanted selling to be enjoyable.
Fun and profit, if you like.
And what I discovered over 25 years was that those things weren't in conflict.
You don't have to become more pushy to become more successful.
In fact, much of what eventually became Buyer-Responsive Selling grew from discovering the opposite: the better I became at understanding buyers, noticing what was happening in conversations and responding appropriately, the less I needed to push.