The very lovely Tom Garfield of brand new notebook gave a properly valuable talk on how to sell your services as a small business without selling your soul.
Properly actionable points, delivered with a good dose of humour, our favourite way to listen and learn. Thanks Tom!
Okay, so I’ve been selling for a long time, I’ve been selling for 15 years. I started my kind of proper job career, in a sales role, it was commission only.
I’ll tell you the story in a minute, but, I’m not really a natural sales person. I wasn’t one of those kind of people, and really, it was about me finding a way to sell well, without the whole sales-y vibe that a lot of us get.
Who runs their own business? Can you hold your hand up?
Cool. So I imagine all of you sell, or you’re responsible for bringing in new work.
Who else doesn’t run their own business but does presentations and pitches and sells ideas to other people, maybe as part of the new business team?
I think pretty much everyone here then, is selling in some way.
So a lot of the time we hate sales because we think it’s icky or pushy or all of those things, and it doesn’t have to be.
So my talk is on ‘how to get really good at selling without selling your soul’, or how to sell like a proper human being who isn’t a dickhead.
A little story first. It was 2009, I was 22, and I was, working in retail and restaurants before this, but I found myself between jobs, and I was living with a mate in a flat in Leeds.
And when I was between jobs, I looked on Gumtree. Gumtree was like, I mean, you probably all know Gumtree, right?
So I looked on Gumtree and I happened to come across this ad from two kind of geeky web designers who were like, we’re really, really good at web design. But we aren’t really good at talking to humans.
We need someone to make sales for us. We can’t pay you, but we’ll give you 15% of everything we sell.
And I was like, I could do that. I can have a go. Why not?
I didn’t know anything about these two things at the time. And now I like to think I know a little bit about those two things now.
I don’t know nothing, I said, and they were like, just trust me, you’ll be fine.
And I was like, okay, they give me a Yellow Pages and a phone and I got my best walking boots on, and I hit the streets really full of optimism and naivety and I was ready to go.
I was like, yeah, I could do this. I’ll just talk to people and tell them about web design and they’ll be like, yeah, we need a website and I did it.
And I went out and I knocked on doors and I made phone calls and I got a lot of this…
No. People were like, no, not interested.
But I kept going. Every single day. I was not going to give up.
Three weeks later, still no.
I didn’t get a single sell in three weeks until I got one tiny little, yes.
And that ‘yes’ was brilliant because I was like, actually, I could sell, I can actually sell, and I made money!
I made £225. That was my 15% and about 70 hours of work, which is £3.21 an hour. And yes I was in Leeds, but it’s still not enough.
So I moved back down to Kent, where I live, and I beefed up my CV and I got another job, this time at a proper agency or what I thought was a proper agency.
I was still only 22. But the boss was really sales-y in that kind of sales-y way. Right. He was like you’ve got to make deals and shaft the customers.
He didn’t say that, actually, but he was kind of that way. He would rather make money than do the right thing by the customers. And he gave me all of these books to read.
There was books like this. I don’t know if anyone’s ever read these books. But at the time I was like, okay, can anyone spot a common theme?
How about now? Yeah old white men.
I’m going to be an old white man, and I didn’t like it. He was like, get on the phone. It’s a numbers game. I was like, I didn’t like the way it was.
It was like a call center vibe, and it was really like low end website design and it was just like stack them high sell them cheap.
And it was just rough and it wasn’t my way at all, and I thought, there must be a better way than this. And because everyone was just like, we don’t want, you know, you’re just coming to us and we like, not interested.
We don’t care about what you want because there’s no reason for us to know who you are. There’s no like, why are you calling me? It was all cold call calling, cold email.
And it was like really bad lead generation. It was like automatic spamming. Hated it.
He was, the boss I had was like these kind of people, like, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this movie called Glengarry Glen Ross, which is all sales, really like rah aggressive sales technique and like, he was really like bro marketer kind of person like yeah hustle and all that stuff and like The Apprentice and I didn’t like it at all.
I thought it was just shit. And instead of, instead of that, all this stuff, persuasive and pushy and selfish, all these things, manipulative, etc., etc. ruthless.
Close the deal, bro. Hustle. Sell us to Inupiaq or Yupik people, not allowed to call them Eskimos because it’s not what they like. So it’s that, I researched that. It’s really interesting.
I spent a long time reading about that when I should have been doing this talk. I thought there must be another way. There must be a better way to sell than this, because this is just yuck.
I hate it. There must be a better way. And I think there is a better way. And that better way is, these things.
So, 1. Be an expert. I was cold calling and I didn’t know what I was talking about.
Exercise objectivity. I was only interested in making a sale. I wasn’t interested in what they needed because I just needed to make a sale.
I was like, come on buy the thing, yeah, buy the thing. And I’m like, I don’t need the thing. I was like, I don’t care buy it. It didn’t work.
Give them some space. Don’t be needy. Don’t be, leaning forward all the time.
Ask thoughtful questions.
Be nice but strict.
Don’t hide your objections, just because you want the sale.
Apply your own rules.
Lead and reassure and feel comfortable with your value.
I’m going to talk about each of those.
Selling well is more about being an expert advisor than it is about being a ballsy swindler.
You’re not there to be like, come on, we’re going to sell the thing and you’re going to be, you know, king salesperson and make all the commission.
I hate that kind of vibe, and I really, really don’t think it’s the right thing for anybody except for maybe the people making money, scamming people.
So really what you want to do is, you want to make sure that you are seen by the prospect as someone that is there to advise them independently, and also someone that’s there that really knows their stuff.
You know, you have to actually be good at something. I wasn’t selling well because I had no idea what I was talking about.
They said, why do I need a website? I said, everyone’s got a website. You need a website because they’re websites, right? That’s all I kind of knew how to, didn’t know how to say anything. And then imagine like a doctor acting like a car salesman.
Imagine if you went to a doctor and you had a consultation and you said, I think I need a knee replacement, oh, we do knee replacements.
Absolutely. Yeah, we can do that. We’ve got a space on Wednesday if you want a knee replacement. Two for one. Bone looking a bit dodgy on both there.
So, could do a discount, maybe… You got any friends or family that also need a knee replacement? We can do that. We can absolutely do that.
It’d be weird, right? It’d be like, oh my God, get away from this doctor.
So the goal is to be the doctor, not the salesperson, right?
You’re going to be objective. You want to be away from the situation and say, okay, hold on, slow down.
You say you need this thing. I don’t know that for sure. I want to take some time, ask questions, discover what it is that you really need.
Because very often, if you’ve sold much in your life, you’ll know that what people think they want and what they really need is very different.
And also you are the prize – this is a statement from someone I really love and Mel’s going to laugh at this, called Blair Enns who’s a sales training company owner and a sales advisor.
A lot of what I value comes from from him, but you are the prize.
A lot of time in sales what we’ll do is we’ll sort of, see the client or the potential client as the price to be won.
They’re the one that we want to win. We want to get their business, we want them to work with us.
But the truth is, if you’re really good at what you do and you’re an expert and you actually are willing to, able to create them value, you’re the prize.
Especially if you’re in a competitive environment with lots of people who are not the prize.
Right? We all know that there are people who do what we do and not very good at it, right? And they might get, they might do better marketing. They might be louder, they might attract the business.
But the delivery of that business? Not so good.
So you’re the prize to be won, if you’re really good at what you do and they need what you do, it’s your duty to sell to them.
Because, well, some of you might be one of those people I’ve just talked about, but hopefully not. There’s not that many that come to these things because it’s a nice place to be and you don’t need, you don’t need a sales person mode.
You just need expert mode. You need to be the same person that you would if you weren’t getting money, if you weren’t reliant on the business. If you were selling to your friends and family, there’s no reason to be the ‘sales’ person.
So that’s why you need to exercise objectivity.
What I mean by that is pretend that you are a mediator between your business and their business.
Pretend it’s not your business you’re trying to get business for.
Pretend that there’s this business which is yours or your outcome, whatever it is you want, their business here, and you’re in the middle and you’re there to say, is this a good fit?
Is it right for them? Is it right for them? Because if it’s not going to be right, you don’t want to get the sale, and it’s not right for them, it’s not ethical. It’s not right for you.
It’s either at best a headache or at worse, a huge, massive issue, and a problem. So you need to detach yourself from the outcome of the sale.
Very often, and I still do this all the time. You’re like, oh, I’d love to work with them. I’d really want to work with them.
And you then make all kind of concessions and you’ll ignore red flags and you’ll be like, no that’s fine, don’t worry about that, I’ll deal with that, that’s fine. We’ll do business, and you might bring your price down, whatever it is, you need to.
In order to be ethical, you need to advise that person as if you weren’t getting anything from it.
And if it ends up, that it’s not right. Be willing to walk away, completely willing to walk away from it.
This is difficult. If you haven’t got a lot of prospects. If you aren’t doing much marketing yourself, if your pipeline’s a bit dry and an opportunity comes in and they’ve got money and you need the money, it’s really hard to do this, but it’s going to be better in the long run.
It’s more ethical to do this. If you have a red flag, that’s something that you can’t deliver or something that they need, that you’re not happy with. It’s rarely worth it.
So, give them some space. You’re vetting them as much as they’re vetting you
The idea is that they’re not there to vet you and interview you and say, what can you do for us? Why are you good at what you do?
All of that should ideally be answered before the sales call.
There’s nothing you can say in a sales call that is going to convince them verbally in that moment.
What they really need to do is find that information from things like your website, and your marketing.
So, what kind of stuff you putting out on social, what kind of stuff you’re putting out on your marketing, how are you building a perception of expertise, authority, credibility, so that when they get into that sales call, they’re not in vetting mode.
They’re not like, are we sure this person is good at what they do? Are we sure that that they’re the right person for us?
Now they should already believe that you’re perfectly capable of doing what they want.
But whether or not you’re the right person is the call that you’re there to have.
Don’t be needy, neediness stinks. Everyone hates it.
There’s a big difference between please go out with me. Please go out with me. Please go out with me. Please go with me, and, I had a really good time, I’d love to see you again.
That’s not needy, but it is enthusiastic. It doesn’t mean don’t be enthusiastic. It means don’t be needy. Don’t be desperate.
And if you are desperate, try not to look it, because it’s a bad vibe and it puts people off.
Ask thoughtful questions. We’re all told that we need to ask questions in sales, but very rarely do we dig deep enough because we kind of don’t like pushing too hard.
We’ll let something go if someone doesn’t give us the answer we want or a shallow answer, so, why are you doing this and not something else?
Now that’s not something that someone that really wants to sell something to you would say, why would you do, why, you sure you need this, you sure you need to do this?
And if it’s true that they don’t need this, be willing to say so. Be willing to let it go.
Do you know what? Actually, I think you’d be better off not doing what I sell and doing something else, at least first or, there’s alternative there for you.
Again, you need that pipeline in place to feel confident and comfortable that you’re able to kind of reject some opportunities.
Have you thought about other ways to achieve the same result? Similar question.
But if they say we maybe don’t need a website, maybe we need sales training, or maybe we need better branding, or maybe we need some copywriting done for our marketing brochures, things like that.
What’s the consequence of doing nothing? This is a really cool question, I like this.
It encourages them to think about what would happen if you didn’t do anything. If you just stayed the same, three years time, what’s going to happen?
Now that might be, do you know what? Actually, not a lot. I think we’re all good.
But if they do need what you do, it’s going to really get them to think about the emotional consequences, oh no, our are competitors will be far ahead of us. Our brand will have a really poor reputation, etc. etc.
This is a really cool question. If we were talking to each other a year from now and things have gone really well for your business, what’s happened in that time? And then shut up, do not talk.
Silence is the most powerful tool you have when you’ve asked a question.
If you try and fill that silence, you won’t get the answer. So, Penni, if I should ask you a question and I say to you, a year from now, CoWork Club’s gone really well. What’s happened in that time?
(Penni: We have a group of awesome people who are coming to events, engaging with it, and we’re getting those kind of messages afterwards to say that they’ve met someone awesome they’ve got to work with, or that it’s in some way made an impact on their life).
Awesome. So you get that, so much from there.
Now that’s someone who is very willing to answer that question, if you had someone that wasn’t so willing, Mel, if you could be a bit of a dick about it and sort of be, a bit obstinate with me.
(Mel: I’ll try..)
Let’s say you and I are talking in a year from now, and you’ve got a brand new website and you’re really, you know, happy with the result.
What is it that’s happened in that time for you to feel that way?
(Mel: I chose to go with someone other than Brand New Notebook).
Right, why do you think? Why are we on this Call?
(Mel: I can’t be mean to you, it’s not fair).
Alright. Is anybody able to be mean to me? No? Ok, let’s give you an example.
They would say… I don’t know we got a new website that’s good.
Why’s it good?
I don’t know it’s generating more leads for us.
Cool, you not generating enough leads now?
No, I guess not.
What’s the consequences of continuing on not generating any leads?
They’ll probably think. You have to give them that time to think. It’s really important. It’s really important to be nice, but strict.
What you don’t want to do is be a doormat because you’re not just a doormat.
Experts are empathetic, but they don’t let it distract from the right thing to do.
Just like a doctor. Just because you want a knee replacement, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for you.
So really, if someone comes to you with, I want this, I want that, and I’m suffering or business is a bit slow, can we do a discount or things like that?
It’s very possible that it’s not the right thing to do to offer a discount because that will devalue the product. It will cause a bit of tension between you and them in the relationship.
And that will mean that your ability to deliver that value for them to create their business, to get them out of the hole that they’re in is potentially, you know, much, much more diminished.
Remember your job is to mediate.
So, you’re not here to be nice. You’re here to be fair. And sometimes that means telling them they can’t have something or something they’ve asked for is not the right thing to do.
And again, be willing to walk away and say, I’m not sure this is a good fit.
Sounds like you’re looking for the cheapest option. We’re not the cheapest option.
What we’re here to do is deliver something really high quality, that gets you the results that you really want.
If that’s something you want, great. If not, maybe we need to end the call but part good terms.
See what they say. Be willing to walk away.
That’s the most powerful thing. A lot of the time, we’re not willing to walk away. I’m very much not willing to walk away a lot of the time and have to remember to be.
And it’s really important what you need to do is say, I have some concerns here. I have some issues you’ve asked about.
You’ve talked about this, but I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do. Are you willing to talk about that? Lots of different examples that I’ll give you in a minute.
Don’t hide your objections. You are not there to impress and be interviewed like a job interview in the same way, you’re there to vet them. So, if you’ve got concerns, tell them the concerns.
So, for example, in my word, it would be, yeah, we’ve got a website. It’s not doing very well at the moment. We kind of, you know, we’re kind of interested in getting a new website.
My objection there, my concern there is that doesn’t sound like they’re all that bothered about getting a new website.
Doesn’t sound like you’re that bothered about getting a new website. You sure you want this?
That’s something that someone who’s not trying to be pushy would not say.
Oh, okay. Yeah, well, that’s cool, we’ll do a website.
That’s probably what they’d say. If you’ve got red flags, bring them up, don’t ignore them. So if someone says, let’s say someone’s being a bit pushy, a bit aggressive.
Can we do a discount?
I’m really sorry we don’t work with people that are kind of pushy. Sounds like your’e being a bit, like really trying to get the price down.
We like to have a really good relationship with our clients. Maybe there’s, maybe there’s some cheaper provider you could find or something.
They’d be cool with that, maybe they won’t like it, but you don’t want to work for them anyway.
And dig deeper on shallow answers. It’s really important.
If they say, why? Why do you need the website? Why would you like to, have your tone of voice work done?
Oh, we want to sound better.
What does it mean to sound better?
Well, we’re kind of like, forgettable at the moment. And, people aren’t really engaging with our social content.
Okay, what’s the consequence of that?
Always dig deeper, don’t let them get away with it.
It’s really important you find out the answers, because that’s going to help you work out whether or not it is the right thing to do.
And that’s the whole thing that we’re trying to do, is work out whether or not we are the right business for them, and they need what we do. And apply our own rules.
This is really important. It’s really important to set your non-negotiables before the sales calls.
So if you’ve got things that you won’t work on. Or if you’ve got types of people that you really don’t want to work with, or if you’ve got a policy, right, that you kind of say, we get paid 50% up front.
If you want to get paid 50% upfront, if you want to get paid 100% upfront, and that is a rule – stick to it.
Don’t let the pressure and the real time speed of a sales call deter you from your non-negotiables.
In order to know what they are, you have to set them in advance. Because if it’s gray, if it’s woolly, you’ll kind of be vague in the sales call and you’ll give away stuff that you shouldn’t be giving away.
Okay, yeah we could probably turn that around in four weeks.
You won’t will you? Or you’ll have to work 100 hours a day to get it done.
Or, a bit of branding as well? Yeah, it just be a little logo, like it’s nothing like big. It’s just like, if you could just do, like, a little graphic and?…
Oh, okay.
Things like that, right. You want the sale?
There’s a five grand job there. And they’ve asked you to add another thousand pounds worth of work in for free.
Do you really want that, or is, you know, maybe it’s worth it, but if it’s not, don’t let them get away with it.
Say, I’m really sorry. But in order to do really effective bit of branding, it’s going to need to be a separate thing.
This is really cool. You can just say it’s our policy.
You run a company, for a company of one person, it doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean you can’t have a policy.
You can write it down a bit of paper. You say, it’s our company policy that we get paid 50% up front.
And then don’t talk anymore, see what they say. They’ll usually say, oh, okay. Really powerful.
Lead and reassure, this is really important.
We want to lead, but not in a dictator-y way.
Lead the client through a clear and reassuring process. This is really important.
Experts and people who are reassuring lead someone through a process of what happens next.
If they’re like, yeah, okay, I’m interested what happens next?
It maybe they need more discovery work, you need more, another call with different people, or you need to talk them through what happens if they buy from you.
But make sure they know, that you know, what you’re talking about.
It’s very, very common, and I do this all the time actually, you kind of just go, oh yeah, what happens next? Err.. you do it all the time, right.
But you then go, what happens next. What does happen next? We do like a call… I’ll send you an invoice… and we’ll start the work, sound good? Not really.
it’s a bit, these people have probably never done this before, very often.
They need to understand what happens, and that’s reassuring, helps you get more sales. Because people go, I trust this person, I trust they know what they’re doing. They’re put together.
And answer the questions before they ask them. What’s really important is that you bring up objections before they have a chance to.
Because if you bring them up, you’re bringing them up as, we need to discuss this.
If they bring them up, it’s like, you haven’t thought of this and you’ve got to tell me why this is a, you know, something that’s not a problem, which is really about, a lot of time about money.
If we bring up the concept of money before they do, it becomes their objection to answer not our objection to answer.
Have you got a budget? Question is usually no, we’re just trying to get prices at the moment.
Okay. So you haven’t allocated any specific money to this yet?
No, not at the moment, we’re just kind of getting a feel for it.
If you’ve got something worth offering and you’ve got something worth selling, which is hopefully where we are.
When should a client first see or hear your price?
Anyone got a response? Anyone got a contribution to make? (I think it could be A or B, depending on who you are and what you do)
When’s usually the first time that someone will see a pound sign?
For me for a long time, was a proposal. I didn’t talk about pound signs until I wrote it down and sent it.
Take the price. I don’t want to look, this is the price, right.
It’s a bad time. Bad time to do it.
They’re in their own head. They’re not in the moment.
There’s no chance to talk about it.
So this is how I think. I think it should be all three.
You need a broad range on your website and in your marketing, a much narrower range, if you can during a sales call. And an exact fee in the proposal.
You want to bring them through that process. 1. Because if, on your website and marketing is a broad range and they’re nowhere in that broad range, you don’t want to get on a sales call with them.
If it’s not going to happen, you’re not going to convince them in a sales call. So you want to get rid of that first.
You’ll have better quality sales calls.
During a sales call, you want to give a narrower range, and this is where you get really comfortable with saying money out loud.
No one likes doing this, but you need to be able to say, it’s going to be about 5 million pounds with exactly the same straight face as you would £4.99, and then shut up.
During a sales call it’s really hard to do this well.
So, Penni, if you ask me how much the new website is going to be.
(Penni: How much is my new website going to be Tom?)
It depends on a few factors, but typically charge between 5 and 10,000 pounds for a website.
(Penni: You waiting for me to respond? I’m just going to smile at you. Okay [laughter]).
Is that within budget? I won’t keep going.
But very very easy to just jump in again between 5 and 8000 pounds, 5 and 10,000 pounds. Whatever it is.
But we can do something a bit less. If there’s, you know, it depends on what you need.
We could, we could maybe do something for 4, depends what it is.
Don’t think, you don’t know what they’re thinking.
For many people, 5 to 10,000 pounds, if that’s something that’s like a big project for you, it could be nothing to them.
Or it could be a lot. But it’s important to be clear on what you charge and your value and not think, what do they want to pay? And I’ll just work something out or I’ll make it fit or I’ll do it anyway.
It’s not a good way to be.
Bring up the money early. Don’t be afraid of money.
Practice it. It’s really important, practice it.
So you need to be on the sales call, and someone says, how much does it cost?
If you can, give a range, usually about 5 to 8000 pounds.
And then what are the objections? The objections might be… Oh, okay, we’re probably looking for something a bit cheaper than that.
Is it possible that we would then say, oh okay, well, we could work something out or see what we could do about that? If that’s not true, you shouldn’t say it.
So it needs to be, okay, but that’s what we charge, we’d obviously do a bit scoping to get an exact fee for you. If that’s not in budget, that’s cool, maybe we’ll part ways, but maybe in the future.
Oh okay, I mean, we could probably look at it, send us a proposal, I’ll see.
Okay, cool, I’ll send you a proposal.
And shut up, shut up.
Say things like, does that sit within your budget? And don’t talk again.
Or if they say to you, that’s quite expensive, why is it, why is it that price?
That’s how much we charge for that project. Don’t talk again.
See what they say. It’s really interesting to hear what people say when you don’t jump in again.
So, I think there is a better way.
I think it’s based around these things, which is to be an expert, which is exercise objectivity. Give them some space. Don’t be leaning forward all the time.
Allow them to almost have their own ideas, come up with the answers themselves.
Be a guide. Be someone that is there to facilitate and don’t keep pushing or asking.
Ask thoughtful questions that almost get them to think of the ideas themselves.
Why is this website important to you? Not, here’s why websites are so important.
Be nice, but strict. So be really kind and empathetic. Care about them. Genuinely care about them.
That’s really important. but don’t allow that to cloud your objectivity and your judgment of what is right for your business or their business.
Don’t hide your objections. Bring up concerns. Bring up red flags.
Don’t let them go just because you want the sale, or just because you want to keep people happy.
If somebody is a very people pleaser-y person which a lot of us are, it’s very easy for us to sacrifice our own happiness for theirs and be like, my business will suffer, but I haven’t had to tell them that they’re wrong or have a confrontation. Not a good way to be.
Which is why you need to, apply your own rules.
Lead and reassure. Have a great process.
Guide people through a journey that they need to go on.
Allow them to feel comfortable that they trust you and you’ve got it all covered, and feel comfortable with your value.
You know you’re really good at what you do. You’re really, really an expert.
You’re valuable to them. You know so much more than they know about this thing, and they want that thing.
You’re there to create extraordinary value beyond your price for them. If what you do is, is good.
And, if you charge ten grand and they make 200 grand from what you’ve done, of course you should be happy to say your price.
Ten grand, it’s only ten grand. Oh right, it’s quite expensive. No it’s not.
You want to make 250,000 pound this week. And I’m going to do it for you, for ten grand.
So, the old white men are wrong.
There is one old white man that I love. He’s my personal hero. and that is Dumbledore from Harry Potter… [laughter] He is Gandalf, it’s Gandalf.
Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. Who knows Gandalf?
We all know Gandalf. I love Gandalf.
He’s someone that I think embodies all of those things.
Now, his whole mission was to get people to go to Middle-Earth. Mordor, sorry. And probably die. And the whole time he didn’t say, you’ve got to go now, go on get going. Come on.
He was a guide. He was an expert. He reassured people.
Everyone trusted him.
He didn’t know what he was doing. He knew better than most, but not really.
He was like, okay, no, I’ve got this. I’m going to help people.
He nudged, he influenced. He was objective, he gave great advice. He asked really good questions of people, you watch the film, just thinking about this, you’ll know, you’ll see what I mean.
Because really he was the embodiment of a better way. He was all of these things really.
It’s all I want you to do, just be Gandalf.
Thank you.
