Talking To The UK's Most Hated Sales Trainer | Benjamin Dennehy | Modern Wisdom Podcast 128

Benjamin Dennehy is a sales trainer. Being able to sell is a skill many people want. The ability to control your income by selling things for other people sounds like a pretty easy way to make money. So why do so many salespeople struggle to be effective? Benjamin identifies the key failures he sees on the sales floor, breaks down his best principles for a good selling framework, gives his thoughts on Grant Cardone vs Jordan Belfort and much more. Extra Stuff: Check out Benjamin's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamindennehy Jordan Belfort vs Grant Cardone - https://youtu.be/-Ls3KDa7PMY Mike & Benjamin React To Jordan vs Grant - https://youtu.be/0WynqwgqtzE Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom #salestraining #grantcardone #jordanbelfort - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Most people think selling is the gift of the gab, the ability to convince and the ability to get across complex ideas simplistically. Most salespeople are losers. They went into, well, forget it. No one's in sales out of choice. Most people at school, when they're asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? I thought maybe one in every 10,000 said a salesman. 99.9% of people in sales fell into it. They needed a job and they ended up in the sales and they got stuck. And about three or four years in, they realised they had no transferable skill. So then they just go from sales job to sales job. And what happens is, is most salesmen, when I ask the average M D, be honest, be really honest. Do you have salesmen or do you have order takers?

• 0:44Speaker 00

  And they scratch their head and they say, I'd say I have order takers. Cause they work out that most of their sales come from existing customers who just give them orders. Most sales, yeah, they came to us, they needed what we had and we were able to fulfil. So they placed orders. And when you break down the actual selling, which is finding people that didn't know they needed what you have, and then enabling them to discover that you did, they go, no, we don't do that. Now that's selling.

• 1:11Chris Williamson?

  I'm joined by the UK's most hated sales trainer, Benjamin Dennehy. Benjamin, welcome to the show.

• 1:17Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me, Chris. It's an honour to be here.

• 1:20Chris Williamson?

  Ah, no, we've got mutual friend and past guest, Mike Winnett. You've been spending a bit of time with him recently, right?

• 1:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I did. I was up there last week, actually, filming another episode together, having fun. Yeah, he's cool. He's a good man.

• 1:33Chris Williamson?

  He's great. So why, why are you hated? Why are you the UK's most hated sales trainer? Why?

• 1:39Speaker 00

  I get asked that all the time. In fact, I gave a speech on it last Thursday to a room full of businessmen. There's no international standard by which this is measured.

• 1:48Chris Williamson?

  Have you got a mug? You must have a mug.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  No, not on me. Actually, I do have a mug.

• 1:53Chris Williamson?

  Okay. You know that when someone gets that number one dad mug? And it's like, oh, you guys, this is the awarding body for the number one dad.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  If I can get it for you, seeing as we're at mobile and I'm, I'm in a hotel room for anyone that wonders why it looks all weird. Cause I'm up in London on business. But yes, so product placement.

• 2:10Chris Williamson?

  Nice. UK's most hated sales trainer mug, link in bio.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  So I created it. I created the character. I was given some advice by a very. By a man who created his own brand. Have you ever heard of Brad Burton?

• 2:31Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  He's the UK's number one motivational speaker. And I asked him, how did he become number one? And he said, read my book, page twenty six. So I read his book, page twenty six. And he said, I made it up.

• 2:46Chris Williamson?

  And he got you by the book.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I thought, well, that's quite genius. And basically, the rule to idiot, I guess, I'm not not a marketer, never trained in it, never studied it. But it's not hard to realize that the easiest way to get known is to create a message and just keep hammering it. Like, let's get Brexit done. That was a classic, you know, or take back control. Simple message, just push it out over and over again. So I created the UK's most hated sales trainer by, first of all, what did nobody want to be? And I looked at LinkedIn and everyone's number one, the best leader, professional guru Jedi, all self-aggrandizing BS. Well, I thought, what does no one want to be? No one wants to be hated.

• 3:30Speaker 00

  And so I thought, well, I'll go, I'll go with the UK's. And then I thought, it makes no sense. And I thought, well, that's what makes it genius. It makes no, why would you be hated? And then it gave me carte blanche to just be myself, which is naturally quite blunt and direct. So that worked well. And the weirdest thing was standing up in a meeting and introducing myself.

• 3:52Chris Williamson?

  I am.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  The UK's most hated. If people would look at you, it's like, what the hell is this guy? What? Why are you hated? No reason. I just, you know, just.

• 4:02Chris Williamson?

  It's an open loop. It's definitely an open loop.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  But it's grown into something quite, well, bigger than I thought it would get. And people constantly say it's a great brand. It's amazing what you've come up with. It's just brilliant. How did you think of it? And it literally is. I just create a space and own it.

• 4:18Chris Williamson?

  I like it. Well, niching down something that a lot of people in business will get advised to do, right? And I mean, if you create your own market, you are by virtue, you are the market leader. I mean, I think back to Mike's, the UK's number one demotivational speaker.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah. I mean, who, who, who possibly could come into my world and say, no, I'm more hated.

• 4:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly. You think you're hated.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, I'm more hated. It's not, it's not a competition, you know?

• 4:50Chris Williamson?

  That's great. So before we get into it, I know, I know that this is what you spoke about with Mike. And if Mike puts that episode up before this one goes, the link to the particular episode I'm talking about will be in the show notes below for anyone who's interested. But Wolf of Wall Street, real Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort and Grant Cardone did a podcast together about, it's actually three months ago now. I don't know how it slipped through my, slipped through my little web of internet stuff. But for anyone who hasn't seen it, well, actually you've, you've seen it, right?

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Well, I, me and Mike Winnatt did a Gogglebox and we filmed us watching it and commenting on it. And we, we didn't watch the whole thing. So I must have watched maybe a third of it. But what I saw, it was an interesting dynamic.

• 5:33Chris Williamson?

  How would you, how would you describe it for people who haven't heard it?

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Um, it's two very, uh, uh, uh, I'd say ego men, uh, put together in a room. Um, obviously Jordan has set this up. So you just notice in the cammering and the lighting, he looks much better. You know, it all reigned from the, the, the, the start against poor Grant. Grant is on the back foot, I would say throughout most of the interview. Uh, and I think largely because when you actually ask him specific questions, he can never give an actual answer. He's a lot like a politician, you know, there's no substance behind what he's saying. And he gets caught out very, very easily. And obviously Jordan

• 6:18Speaker 00

  is doing this on purpose. And Jordan's obviously a smart guy. And so he's just, he's just setting the guy up to look stupid. And I think. That was a whole point behind it for Jordan.

• 6:28Chris Williamson?

  I think so as well. I mean, like I say, for the people who haven't seen it, Jordan Belfort is verbally incredibly articulate and very agile. And he's a, he's a, he's a quick thinker, whereas Grant appears to have a party line. He does sound like a politician. He's got that. This is, this is what he's said before. And every so often, it looks like, it looks like Jordan Belfort's skipping down the road. And Grant, every so often trips over his own feet and finds something he can rely on to say, and then keeps on drilling that. And you are right. I mean, in every internet review of that exchange, Grant comes out as a real, a, a sort of a real charlatan, I think, a real bad guy.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  He, he, cause he's used to, I think, I'll nick Mike Winnett. Mike Winnett refers to him as a studio salesman. As in, he's a showman and he gets up and he's used to talking to audiences. And when you're in an audience that can't ask questions back or challenge you and they just absorb what you're saying. You remove that into the real world with a guy that knows what he's talking about and is quite shrewd and he just fires questions at you, just like Andrew Neil does with the politicians here in England when, you know, he rips you apart because they don't have any, any specific detail or, you know, and that's what happened to him.

• 7:44Chris Williamson?

  Well, when, when you're up on stage, you're always going to be an authority, right?

• 7:47Speaker 00

  Hmm. Exactly. But when you're reduced to just you and a guy that knows more about you and has got the questions. Yeah, it's tough. Jordan did it all, but he set him up. It was a bit cruel, but.

• 7:59Chris Williamson?

  A little bit, yeah. And then there's been some after beef and stuff like that. And during the middle of it, Grant Cardone saying like, we should do a MMA fight and.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  Charity fight. Yeah. You can see his ego's getting bruised.

• 8:10Chris Williamson?

  Man, it's such like alpha posturing. Yeah. I really, anyway, the, for the people that are more interested, uh, link will be to that podcast. Plus, when it finally goes up yours and Mike's Gogglebox episode, which I can't wait for, um, that will be linked in the show notes below. So you should totally go check it out once you've finished. Listening to this. So we're, we're talking about sales today, right? That's the, uh, currency that you traffic in the sludge and the mud and the feces and the blood and all that. The hay bales and stuff. So let's, let's start absolute basics. What makes a good salesperson?

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Oh, uh, it's like what makes anybody a professional.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  And a professional is someone who's mastered the basics, has consistent habit, behaviour and belief. So it's all the unsexy stuff, actually. Um, a golfer, Tiger Woods is good because I, he probably, he had some natural aptitude. Let's not fault that. But he spent his life practising how to make every swing work, getting in the right mindset. Every stroke is planned, prepared, choreographed, mapped out. He knows what's going. And every shot he's in, he's present. He's not thinking about the last shot. He's not thinking about the next shot. He's in total control. That is a professional, just like a top lawyer or a top surgeon.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  They're in total control and they've done that cut a thousand times. They've asked that question a thousand times and they just know how, when and where to deliver it and where to cut. And so it looks like you're, you've got an amazing talent. So, yeah, I do, but do you know how many times I've done this? And, and that is it. It's, it's, it's, it's learning to follow a process and get good at it. And that's all I got good at doing. I just read books and started doing stuff that people said you should do to get good at it, rather than just read them like most people do and then stick it on your shelf and take, you just need to think better. All right, I'll be more positive today. That'll make me rich. Bollocks.

• 10:11Chris Williamson?

  Difficult to repeat, difficult to scale those things. So what are, what are those characteristics? What are the, what are the, what are the strategies or the, the particular approaches that someone should have? They've got a, as approach to sales, as you've said, what, what are the things they should be drilling every day?

• 10:28Speaker 00

  Well, prospecting. Every business sinks or swims on your ability to generate leads. And I hate the word leads, but basically I want to talk to decision makers in my target market that may or may not have problems I can fix. Now, I don't know if they have problems I can fix until I phone them and ask them. Now, I've chosen them because statistically, they fall into a category of person that should. Doesn't mean they will. So my job is to consistently be speaking to people that may need what I have, diagnosing if they do. And if they do, we figure out how we move forwards, or we figure out they do need me, but they can't afford me. Or we figure out they do need me, but they can't make a decision,

• 11:12Speaker 00

  or the decision's not there. So it's all about prospecting. And prospecting bizarrely isn't selling. It's a different word, prospecting. It's a skill set in and of itself. Getting in front of people is a skill. Then, once you're there, you begin the sales process. And to me, selling is all about disqualifying, not qualifying. It's the exact opposite. And why do I say that? Well, put it this way, there are more reasons for a person not to work with me than there are to work with me.

• 11:39Chris Williamson?

  There's only a couple of reasons to work with you, but there's an entire universe of reasons to tell you to fuck off.

• 11:44Speaker 00

  So I'm going to figure out all the reasons why you can't work with me and have you argue with me over why I'm wrong, and that's not a reason why we can't. And when I go through that process, it's completely reversed from what most salespeople are used to do. It works because the prospect does all the work. They're the ones arguing with me that, no, no, no, no, no, we don't want to try outsourcing our prospecting. We don't want to hire new people. We don't want to fire people. We don't want to increase our prices. They rule out all the alternatives. And then what's left is me.

• 12:14Chris Williamson?

  Your product.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  My product and me. So there are many ways to fix a sales problem. You don't need a sales trainer. Put your prices up. It's easy. You've got a salesman can't sell at that level. Right, so you can't put your prices up. Fire crappy salesmen. We don't want to fire them. We're nice people. You said, oh, there are many alternatives. And my job is to get them to rule out all of them. So what they're set with is me. And some people drop out on the way. I tell people I'm the nuclear option. I'm the last person you should get in.

• 12:48Chris Williamson?

  You're the final, the final button. You've got to have both the keys, turn them at the same time, presidential order.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  Exactly. And if you're not ready to turn your key, don't get me in.

• 13:00Chris Williamson?

  Do you have many, um, salespeople? So I can only imagine what it might be like with you going into an established sales floor. You've got this quite brash guy.

• 13:15Chris Williamson?

  Got your back mate, that's fine to pre-record anyway, where are we? 11:50, there we go.

• 13:24Chris Williamson?

  I can imagine when you go onto a sales floor, let's say that a company does decide to bring you in.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:29Chris Williamson?

  What's the atmosphere like? Because again, I've spent my total career of being an adult. I've spent about nine months in sales for a particular insurance company, doing outbound warm sales. But during that time, even my small exposure there, a lot of posturing, a lot of like, sort of the grand cardons of this world, right? The alpha male go-get-it environment. So what happens when you step in and you start saying? Well, I mean, what do you say to people first?

• 13:58Speaker 00

  The first time I walk into a building, I get this look of disdain. People see me and, I mean, I'm what, 42, slightly overweight, I have long hair, I wear a cap, I wear braces. I look a bit of a moron and I walk in and I get this look and I get this look all the time. It's this look of, what, this guy?

• 14:26Speaker 00

  And that, and when I see that, inside my head, I think.

• 14:31Chris Williamson?

  Got you.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so I'm used to people giving me a look of contempt, which is the look I'm looking for. Because it means part of their defence will start to drop. So when I first get into a room,

• 14:45Speaker 00

  and I won't mention the company because I'm working with it, but I got put in a room full of a lot of, you'd say, alpha males, in a very, very, very tough sales sort of environment. There I am and I'm sitting in this room, 8:00 in the morning. I couldn't even figure out how to turn the lights on and I'm waiting for these people to come up for the training. And their CEO had hired me and hadn't told them that I was coming in. He basically just put in their calendar, "Training." And so they start to trickle up one by one. And one of them recognizes me eventually says, no, I recognize you. You're you're the guy from the YouTube video. I go, yeah, he goes, oh, no, no, no one told us you were coming in. But anyways, I get fifteen guys in the room, all alpha males, and then there's me. And you could tell they all

• 15:30Speaker 00

  looked bored. They didn't want to be there. They were off the phones. Uh, five hours later, though, after the first session, I walked out with a another ongoing order with the guy singing my praises, saying, it's unbelievable. And I I only recently learned that the CEO had put a plant in the training, because they've built a very successful business off the back of telephone prospecting. And basically, his brief was is, we're really good. This guy cannot be as good as what we are. So find the holes, find out what, just find the flaws. And that guy became the biggest champion.

• 16:09Chris Williamson?

  Amazing. It's like the ultimate. What is it? Is it Stockholm syndrome?

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Stockholm, yeah. Well, that's with hostages. So they were hostages. We bonded. Uh, and so that is quite common, because people look at me, and again, it's all choreographed. I do, everything I do is deliberate. And so I want people to think that. I want people to think this guy can't sell. I want these people to think this guy looks a bit of a, what the hell would I learn from this guy? Because what happens is, is their expectations are are are set, that when I challenge them and get them to realize that I know more about their problem in a very non-aggressive, non-ego-driven way, they start to move. And, yeah, and that's, that's why I like it. I love walking into a room and getting that look of disdain, because then I think, got one.

• 16:57Speaker 00

  Because if they're all happy to see me, then I know I'm screwed. They shouldn't be happy to see me.

• 17:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I bet. So we've talked about what you think makes a good salesperson. That is someone who drills the basics, who has a framework, they stick to, they follow it.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Consistent consistency. And prospects every day, a little bit often. I'm not talking seven hours straight, but consistent prospecting, yeah, very important.

• 17:23Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so that's what makes a good. Salesperson. So what are the common things you see that make a bad salesperson? Because from my experience, I've I know a number of people that are in all sorts of sales, from normal telesales on bottom end consumer products, B to B, B to C, IT stuff, recruitment. And there's some guys and girls who are in those positions. And I think you've got that job because you're a bit extroverted, you're a gobby shite, and you've managed to fall into a position that it looks like you have the simulacrum of competence. What you have is sort of loudness and brashness.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's very common. So, yeah, most people think selling is the gift of the gab, the ability to convince and the ability to get across complex ideas simplistically. Most salespeople, people hate this, but I say it because I am one, so I can say it. Most salespeople are losers. They went into sell. Well, forget it. No one's in sales out of choice.

• 18:29Chris Williamson?

  It's kind of like last last ditch, isn't it? It's like the the job that is always going to be available, even when the the cockroaches are the only thing that's left on this planet after nuclear war. There's still going to be a job for a salesperson.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  Exactly. So most people at school when they're asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? I thought maybe one in every 10,000 to the salesman.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. So for those who watched this, who wanted to be a salesman at school, don't write me and say, well, I wanted to. I get it. One in 10,000. But 99.9% of people in sales fell into it. They needed a job and they ended up in the sales and they got stuck. And about three or four years in, they realised they had no transferable skill. So then they just go from sales job to sales job. And what happens is is most salesmen, when I ask the average M D, be honest, be really honest. Do you have salesmen or do you have order takers? And they scratch their head and they say, I'd say I have order takers. Cause they work out that most of their sales come from existing customers who just give them orders.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, most sales, yeah, they came to us, they needed what we had and we were able to fulfill. So they placed orders and when you break down the actual selling, which is finding people that didn't know they needed what you have. And then enabling them to discover that you did. They go, no, we don't do that. Now that's selling. And then I ask them to close their eyes and listen to them on the phone. And I say, do you hear grownups or do you hear a little wimp kid or do you hear an angry kid? And they say, I hear children.

• 20:03Chris Williamson?

  What do you mean?

• 20:04Speaker 00

  If you listen to the average salesperson on the phone, they're very needy, beggy and pleading. Uh, sorry to disturb you, it's now a good time.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  That's a loser thing to say. Yeah. You've just interrupted a busy person and your first thing to do is apologize for wasting their time.

• 20:21Chris Williamson?

  Before you've even wasted their time.

• 20:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's like, well, you sound like a bit of a loser. So, uh, yeah. So, a- and you hear them begging people and then they start arguing with people. So imagine being a doctor who specializes in the flu. And you phone people up and you say, uh, people typically have an appointment with me because they have a running nose. They, they're feeling lethargic, uh, and they've got a sore throat. And the guy says, I don't have any of those. He goes, well, yes, you should.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  This is what salespeople are like, right? And they argue with prospects and, and because they're so, because they said, well, you must, you must have these problems. And we're phoning you because we know you're a company that should. That's true, but maybe not right now, just like everyone will get the flu at some point. It doesn't mean the moment you call them, they recognize it. And, and so when you listen to them on the phone, they're very needy, very beggy, very pleading, very, um, subservient. Uh, they're scared to ask questions and they spend most of their time doing the talking. Cause all a prospect has to do is fire one question. It's what is it that you do?

• 21:25Speaker 00

  And then they vomit on them.

• 21:29Chris Williamson?

  So let's, let's sort of linger on this point for a second. What, what is the power dynamic that you want to have? Is it the complete reverse of that? Is it halfway between the two?

• 21:39Speaker 00

  Parathy. So I spend my life phoning M Ds and C E Os. I have to sound and act like an M D or a C E O because that people buy people like them. It's not people buy people. If people bought people, there would be no sales problems, would there?

• 21:56Chris Williamson?

  You just find the most likable person that you can, put them on the phones and then they'd sell.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Not likable, like them. So a guy in a Hawaiian shirt will sell to a guy in a Hawaiian shirt.

• 22:05Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  A guy in a Hawaiian shirt talking to the guy in the pinstripe suit, it ain't going far very quickly. Cause they're two different characters. One will talk one way, the other, the other. So they don't, they're not like each other. So when you phone up an M D or a C E O, you have to sound and act like one. And what do they sound like? They're short, sharp, clipped, authoritative and direct. If you don't sound like that, when you get through to me, I instantly hear, oh, I'm so sorry to disturb you. And look, let me just have 30 seconds to introduce my company. I think loser.

• 22:38Chris Williamson?

  So what's the alternative? What's your approach?

• 22:40Speaker 00

  My approach is just blunt. I say, look, I'll be upfront. This is sales school. So you can either hang up or let me have 30 seconds. What do you want to do? Force them to make a choice. And most say, oh, go on, then what's it about? I go, well, look, if you don't like it, we can end it at 30 seconds. Fair, fine. And then I talk about what I fix very authoritatively. And if he asks me a question, well, what is it that you do, Benjamin? Well, I fix problems like this. You're going to tell me that doesn't interest you, right?

• 23:09Speaker 00

  Uh, well, no, no, no, no. Well, how do you, oh, how do I fix it? Well, I'll be upfront with you, sir. That's what you're going to pay me a lot of money to figure out, right? If I tell you that now, you won't need me. And they go, well, no, no, that's fair. So my question is, do you recognize these problems in your world? Yeah. Okay. So a few more questions before I agree to meet with you.

• 23:32Chris Williamson?

  Power's shifted.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  It's all about I'm in control. I know that if you have problems I can fix, you should be grateful I phoned you.

• 23:42Chris Williamson?

  It's a great way to put it. Another thing as well that I've got in my head is that if there are any salespeople that are listening, you are ringing people and speaking to your prospects or your leads, whatever the terminology that you prefer is. You're speaking to them every day. This is for you common trodden ground, whereas like even me, who has had the same phone number since he was at 14. So I'm on, I'm on like a bunch of different like cold call lists and all the rest of it. Even for me, I only get one a week, maybe, or maybe one every two weeks. So for me, this isn't, this isn't my environment. This isn't where I'm supposed to feel comfortable. It's you. You're supposed to take charge. You don't get on the bus and then there's no bus driver there and you go, yeah, you gotta drive it yourself.

• 24:25Chris Williamson?

  Or get into the, the operating theater and you go, well, right, there you go. There's the sutures and there's the, the scalpel and you better open yourself up and blah, blah.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  No, you've got to be in control. I know what I fix and I'm damn good at it. So the question is, do you have problems? And I need you to feel and believe maybe this guy's got something. He certainly sounds like he knows what he's talking about. And that's not blagging and that's not, not, not gift of the gabbing and it's not the crap you see on The Apprentice and all that. You know, in the real world, that doesn't work. You can badger someone into buying from you. Don't get me wrong. But these are the people that then phone up a few days later and said, actually, I've changed my mind. That's, there's nothing successful about it. It's almost like a lawyer winning trials and then the jury comes, they say, actually, we changed our mind. We, we don't go along with that. Actually, you were wrong. So, yeah, I mean, that can't happen. It's a bit flippant, but that's what I'm getting at.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  And so it's not hard to steal money from people. It's not hard to lie to people. I mean, all of these can be done. Just because someone gives you money doesn't make you a salesman.

• 25:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, a salesman. I mean, just because you represent yourself in court a couple of times, doesn't make you a lawyer. Yeah. Just because you pull a splinter out of your foot, doesn't make you a surgeon. Yeah, so you can do things and maybe have some success, but it doesn't make you a professional at it because a professional has consistent outcomes and they're more interested in how they get to where they're going as opposed to whether or not they get there. That is the key thing. I don't care if someone buys from me. What I care about is how I got to the point where they made the decision they weren't going to buy from me because if they should have bought from me and they've decided not to, it means I've done something wrong, which means I can fix it.

• 26:04Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  Whereas if we get all the one they buy, I can say I know exactly why they bought as opposed to I think it's because they liked us.

• 26:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you were saying to Mike that you you're able to walk backward through your particular sales pitch to most people.

• 26:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:19Chris Williamson?

  Every which way dissect it, however it needs to be dissected. Here's the inflection point. Here's the question point, et cetera.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  Yes, if somebody, if I was to ask the average salesman, talk me through your last sales call backwards and they'd they'd they'd struggle and I'd say, well, this is it. I gave him one last reason not to meet with me. We then, before that, we agreed what would happen by the end of that meeting. Before that, I asked him to invite me in. Before that, I finished on a series of six questions which are designed to move from intellect to emotion. Before that, I got permission to ask those questions. Before that, I asked him, did any of the three pains that I suggested relate to? Before that, I did my 30 second pain commercial. Before that, I did a pattern interrupt to get permission to do this again.

• 27:10Speaker 00

  Before that, I thought to myself before I picked up the phone, this guy's lucky I'm calling him.

• 27:15Chris Williamson?

  That's awesome.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:17Chris Williamson?

  That is, that is.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  And that's process, it's structure and every call I make goes the same way. It never changes.

• 27:25Chris Williamson?

  Well, again, with that, so there'll be some online marketers listening. Youssef and Johnny, two co-hosts of the show, will be listening as well and they they traffic in Grant Cardone's world, right? They traffic in the world of click funnels and of online marketing and they actually now coach coaches online to start their own FitPro businesses. But they want the, they bizarrely actually want the same thing as you. So Johnny always says to me that the single most painful sale that he can make is one where someone's typed in the URL of his website and then gone through the process from there because he has no idea where that person's come from. Did they see an advert online? Did they once watch a, what is it, a blog post that's then been expanded out

• 28:09Chris Williamson?

  into an article and they've seen somewhere? Was it a referral? Was it a podcast? Was it a this? He's a, I need to be able to track what's happened so that I can then dissect it, scale it, retarget, do all that stuff. And what you're talking about here, it sounds like is a verbal equivalent of that, right? You want to be able to-

• 28:27Speaker 00

  Process and structure. Selling and on the phone and face to face is the art of human communication. It's a communication skill, which means you have to have a structure to that communication in order to, which is designed to move a prospect from a point to a point. And at any, at any point along that journey, they can exit it if it's not right for either of us. But if we get through it to the end, we're going to work together. And so I'm not really a sales trainer. I just teach people how to communicate and I give them a structure, how to ask questions, how to nurture, how not to ask questions, how when, knowing when to struggle, the art of deliberately struggling, the art of getting

• 29:09Speaker 00

  things wrong on purpose. So my job is to teach what a rookie did out of ignorance, a professional does on purpose, but deliberately.

• 29:18Chris Williamson?

  And then we can scale, then we can replicate.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  Scale and we can replicate. And yeah, that's why I like it. It's theatre.

• 29:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it definitely is. So I wanted to move up a level now and I wanted to, there will be a number of people I know that are listening because I'm going to send it to them once we're done, who are either managers, coaches or CEOs, team leaders within businesses that are doing sales. And I know that all of them have, there's, there's a real, a real unique atmosphere between a-

• 29:54Chris Williamson?

  Team leader, coach, manager, whatever it might be, and CEO and the guys on the sales floor. And I think it's a very, a very unique dynamic between them. I wondered what you typically see in terms of good and bad strengths and weaknesses when you do see this relationship when you go into businesses.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Well, often, sales managers are good salespeople that got promoted. And the problem with that is, sales management skills are different from being able to sell. So what happens is you often lose a good sales manager to get a shitty manager. So that's quite a lot. A lot of times, CEOs and business owners, they've slightly lost touch with their sales team because they've extricated themselves from the sales, but they know how to do sales. And so most, most MDs and CEOs I get in front of, they often say to me, you know what, Benjo, I just wish my guys were like me when I set up this business. I was out there, bang, bang, bang. And I said, look, that's why you own the business and they work for it.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  Because if they were genuinely like that, do you think they'd be here working for you?

• 30:58Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 30:59Speaker 00

  No, no, they wouldn't. No. No. We have to appreciate that most, and the good ones. So what we need to do is find the ones that we can invest in. Coaching is about the getting best out of them. So a sales manager has two roles. Hire the best people and get the best out of them. That's it. One of the biggest problems is that most sales managers in most companies have their own sales targets. The problem is, is you've got, actually now, where do you think they're going to spend most of their energy and effort? In hitting their sales target. So they spend more time focusing on the thing they shouldn't be focused on. So a sales manager should not have a sales target. He should be targeted on what

• 31:40Speaker 00

  all his guys do. So his job is to get the best out of them, to monitor their minimum behaviours, to hold people accountable, to challenge them and ask questions, not to accept excuses. You know, and they accept excuses left, right and centre. Don't accept excuses. They need to give their people structure so that they can hold them to it. The biggest problem with salespeople is we like to leave them to their own devices and that's what salesmen love. It's a badge of honour. I don't need a process. I'm all right with this. You know, I've done a million of these meetings. I just go in there, people by people, they like me and I'm good at presenting. It's like, imagine asking your lawyer, why are you so good? He goes, ah, I don't know.

• 32:25Speaker 00

  I do these things all the time and I, I, I think juries just naturally warm to me. It'd be like, what the, I'm not hiring you. And, and you ask a professional, he goes, I'll tell you why. It's because I do this at every single time. This I challenge, I challenge this, this, this, this. I know where I'm going. I have a certain. Same with a surgeon. Why do your patients not die? Ah, I don't know. It's just luck, I guess.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  You know, salesmen love that, you know, because you, and then you ask the average salesman, why did we win that order? And they say, I don't know. Does it matter? We've won. And it's like, well, of course it fucking matters because if we.

• 33:06Chris Williamson?

  You want to do it again.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  We can repeat it. Nah, nah, nah, nah, don't worry about that. And then when they lose, it's never their fault.

• 33:14Chris Williamson?

  Oh, they didn't want it. They weren't right. They weren't this. They weren't that.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Brexit, whatever. It's like, it could be you. Nah, nah, it's not me because I sold last week. Oh, for fuck's sake.

• 33:24Chris Williamson?

  With your unscalable and repeatable sales process.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  There's nothing, nothing about that. That's good. That will only get you so far. And don't, don't get me wrong. You can make a lot of money doing it that way. And, and most, most salesmen do. But it's very frustrating and it doesn't improve you as an individual or give you better skills. Uh, and I, I think, I, I'm in this just to get better at what I do. The money comes, it's a byproduct of doing something well. And successful people tell you that money is never the end goal. It happens to be a byproduct. Of doing something well.

• 33:58Chris Williamson?

  I agree. So two things. I've got two doors to hell open in my mind at the moment. First one is, if you don't promote the people that are good at selling to be the people who lead the sellers, why do the people that are sellers respect their team leader if they haven't come up through the selling process? Let's say that we have some alternative arrangement whereby it's not the best seller who's been there for a while that then becomes team leader. We get someone who's a particularly good manager, but maybe not amazing at selling, or else you just have them as a salesperson, right?

• 34:30Chris Williamson?

  What's the solution to that there? Because you need to have that respect from the guys on the floor.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  This is true. That's a good question.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Learning management skills, I've just said it there, it is a skill which can be learned. So you'd need to invest in upskilling people. You're no longer a salesman now. And the key thing that you need to focus on is getting the best out of your people. So if you ask, and this would be a good test, is you need to ask your top salesman who you want to promote, why are you such a good salesman? What is it that you do? Can you, can you distill it? Can you, can you systemize it? Are you able to repeat it? Or is it what most salesmen say? It's just, I just have a unique, it's my ability. It's just, just what I do. So no, you see, if you can't distill that yourself, you're never going to be able to pass it on.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  You need, so you need to do some academic understanding of why you're good at what you do. So a lawyer could become a law lecturer.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. And most lawyers have been lecturers, or most lecturers have been lawyers at some point in practice in law, because they can do what they teach, but they also understand why what they do works. So that is, that I think is fundamentally lacking, because if you ask the average salesperson, it doesn't matter how many years I've been in sales, why do people buy? What's the process a human being goes through to buy? Most people look at me blankly. They don't know.

• 36:03Chris Williamson?

  Surely that's, that's the, that is the thing. That's the answer.

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Why do people buy? What, yeah, what, what's the process they go through? And they look at you and most people then have some idea. They say, well, they, they buy out of need. No. Well, yes, they do. No, no, no. Well, I know, but that's, that's not the answer. What is the process they go through? Well, how does a human being buy? And they look at you blankly and they go, I don't know. And then they go, well, they buy emotionally. You go, yeah, are we getting there? And what else? I don't, I don't know. So you've been in sales for five years and you don't know this.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  That'd be like asking a lawyer who's been practicing for five years. How does the high court work? He goes, I don't know.

• 36:48Chris Williamson?

  I just, I just turn up there and sometimes, sometimes I win a case.

• 36:52Speaker 00

  I think the guy on the wig at the top makes the decisions. I don't know.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  And you know, and, and, and so it's, if you don't understand the basics, and this is it, because people don't believe selling is a profession or, or actually a skill. They call themselves professionals and they say selling's a skill, but when you ask them, can you quantify and tell me why you're good at what you do? They look at you blankly and say, I don't really know. Well then, the hell are you on about?

• 37:18Chris Williamson?

  I suppose as well that, that means that the worst person that you could promote from salesperson to team leader would be the naturally talented person who's maybe not too self-analytical and has a passion for sales.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 37:32Chris Williamson?

  Because you've muted their passion for the one thing that they enjoy doing and they have absolutely no idea why they have success at that particular thing.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 37:42Chris Williamson?

  Conversely, I'm going to guess probably why a lot of team leaders will be made team leaders. He, you know, he's just so passionate about sales and he's just got, he's got a natural gift. It's like, yeah, fucking leave him there.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:52Chris Williamson?

  Like, don't, don't take him out of that role.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  Well, this is it, but we live in a world which constantly bangs on about, you know, uh, work on your weaknesses. The school system is terrible for that. So you remember at school, you get your school report and it would say, he does really well in math, does all right in English, but his geography, he needs to try harder. And it's like, why? The hell is he going to do with geography? What I should say is he's bloody good at math and he should really spend more time doing math.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:22Chris Williamson?

  It is interesting, the fact that we go from this sort of shallow and broad to narrow and deep. And, you know, anyone who's read James Clear's Atomic Habits from this year knows that you cannot be the best in your field at everything. You need to pick your battle and you need to try and win it over and over and over and over and over again. And there is, there's some point, there's some like weird age, it's like 18 and a half or something. And you hit 18 and a half and everyone on the planet is like, right, we don't care about how broad your skill set is, we just want you to be brilliant at one thing. And that it's all about how good you are at that one thing. But you're right, before that, it's, you do, you need to cover this incredibly broad range of subjects. You don't, you've

• 39:07Chris Williamson?

  got, you haven't got a statistical brain, or you just love sport, you know, these guys that love, love sport throughout school and are forced to study all that time. You think, well, how much better could I be if I was playing sport throughout school?

• 39:17Speaker 00

  That's it. So don't work on your weaknesses, you work on your strengths. And you find someone who has strengths and your weaknesses and you buddy up. That's how businesses work. You know, this is why the MD and the FD are so different. One's good with numbers, one's not good. One wants to spend money, one's job is to stop them spending money. One's a blue sky thinker, one's a bean counter. But they complement each other. And that's how they work. And it's just like, you know, marriage, opposite, you see, you see, it's how did she get with him? It's one of those things, you know? But it's because they're so different to each other that they complement each other with their different personality traits. You know, you always get a really thin guy with a large woman. Or, you know,

• 39:59Speaker 00

  it's odd. They, they, they do. And, and that's, that's what it's like. And so, find out what you're good at, and just get good at doing it. Don't, don't worry about trying to be a jack of all trades.

• 40:12Chris Williamson?

  Got you. So that was the first door to hell. Second door to hell, we'll close this one now, is if there is a problem with the process, is that not the issue with the company rather than with the salesperson? Should the company not have either more stringent sales processes that people need to go through, like?

• 40:32Speaker 00

  Well, most sales people, most companies confuse sales process for the structure they follow. And by that,

• 40:41Speaker 00

  When you say, what's your sales process? They go, well, we have a first meeting, then we do a proposal. Uh, then we'll go to pitch, uh, and then we'll win and then we'll map out. That's their sub, but that's not a sales process. That's a structure you seem to get trapped into every time you meet a prospect. No, I'm saying, when you get in front of a prospect, what's the game plan? When you walk in there, do you know how you're going to move that person from intellect to emotion, then back to intellect? Cause that's how they're gonna buy. Cause first of all, it's gonna be all intellectual. They're not gonna tell you the truth or open up to you. So what's your game plan for getting the CEO of that company to open up to you about the real reason why you're sitting in front of them?

• 41:19Speaker 00

  Uh, well, we just tend to go in and talk about what we do. Yeah. Okay. So that's not really a process. Uh, selling is a communication. I need to get a human being. I know he buys emotionally. So how do I get that guy emotionally to open up to me about why I'm there? Very hard to do if you don't know how to do it. It's not come in and vomit features and benefit. So it's, is it a company's fault? Yes. Cause most companies don't know how to sell. Most companies sell order and I, I, I, again, when, when people see what I teach, I point out that most, the buyer has created a system whereby they're always in control. And every now and then they let salesmen win.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  And most salesmen don't realize it and they think they're selling, but what they're really doing is taking an order. Cause the buyer has, actually I already decided I wanted to work with you guys. I've just put you through your paces, but I was always gonna buy. Now they'll never tell you this. They'll give you some cock and bull story about how, oh, you know, we just felt that was a fit and blah, blah, blah. But no, I, I knew from the very beginning, we were gonna work with you, but I didn't tell you that. So most buyers are, you know, they, they, they, they are willing, they, they, they're ready to place an order. Most salespeople go and they do the dog and pony show, give the intellectual justification to the prospects. It's all right, but. And they think, fuck, we're good.

• 42:46Speaker 00

  No, they'd already decided to buy before you got there. You just gave the intellectual justification for them to exercise their emotional decision. No, no, no, no, no. It's down to me. So. Why did you lose that other deal where you did exactly the same thing? Ah, well, you know, just wrong timing.

• 43:04Chris Williamson?

  So you've you've you've touched on the question I wanted to ask, and I don't know whether this is the one what the I'm gonna have to crowdsource a lot of people to pay you money for, but why do people buy? Why does a customer buy?

• 43:15Speaker 00

  Well, again, people buy emotionally, justify intellectually. So in order for someone to give you money, they have to feel it. So think about this.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  The toothpaste you have in your bathroom, you've either got a tube or a pump.

• 43:32Chris Williamson?

  Tube.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  You got a tube, I got a pump, why?

• 43:37Speaker 00

  Ever thought about it? Why do you know what a pump?

• 43:39Chris Williamson?

  I don't think I don't think I like the pump.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  There you go, I don't like the pump, utterly irrational.

• 43:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 43:46Speaker 00

  It's an emotional thing. Yeah, every morning you brush your teeth and the last thing you wanna do is be bitching about the device which dispenses your toothpaste. So you buy toothpaste emotionally. It's because I buy the pub because I love.

• 44:00Chris Williamson?

  Which which by the way is the least emotional product that I can think of.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  But it's emotionally driven. I hate mint, so I buy plain. I don't like the stripes because I hate stripes, so I get the other one, you know, and it's all of it is irrational, but when you're in the supermarket making a decision, you buy the one that makes you feel the best. So every purchase is emotionally driven. So British Telecom knows that to get you to pick up the phone right and call your mum on this weekend and pay no more than one p for the whole call is intellectually dry. How do you get people to act on that? You can't. So they they they hire an advertising agency and they create an advert. And in this advert, it's a little old lady, she's sitting in a chair.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  The camera slowly pans around, she's got a bun in her hair, she's knitting away and it's very soft focus. And then the voice just says, have you talked to your mother lately? And you think, fuck.

• 44:54Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  They hook you with guilt. That's a feeling and then they say, oh, by the way, call her this weekend and pay no more than one p. So every advert is designed to hook you emotionally, to get you engaged with it. Selling is the same. When you get in front of the CEO or the buyer of whatever your product is, and they say, we're very interested in your new software, you don't talk about the software. It's like, well, why do you need the software?

• 45:24Speaker 00

  Because we're having problems or how big are the problems? What have you done to fix it? What's the impact on the business? How does it make you feel knowing that all this is happening? And you'd soon discover they're buying not because they care about you or your product, but if you can fix this for me, you're going to take away a lot of grief in my life. That's what I want the software for. It's got nothing to do with the certification or the widgets or anything. It's if it can fix this, if it can get my boss off my back who every bloody Monday is bitching at me, I will pay double.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that's the business we're in. So people buy emotionally and they justify intellectually. Our job as a salesman is to find out what is the compelling emotional reason. Why do you need to do this, sir? And if you don't, how does that make you feel? And if the answer is, I don't really care, it doesn't bother me, they're never going to spend money.

• 46:17Chris Williamson?

  That was a point that Grant and Jordan had a real back and forth about. I think Jordan Belfort was adamant, there are buyers and there are non-buyers. Grant Cardone was, there are only buyers. Everybody wants to buy something. And his argument was, I need a wide enough product range so that when I need to speak to someone, they can buy anything, which was then framed by Jordan in a really unethical, unethical way that made Grant look like a complete dick.

• 46:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, fish, wasn't it?

• 46:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. What if they're not buying fish? Well, they are. But no, no, that, no, Grant, they are not buying fish. This person has said they don't want fish. Well, they are. And that was it for two and a half hours.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, yeah, exactly. I mean, Jordan is, is right, but it goes back to, that's why I prefer the doctor analogy, because it's more accurate. Everybody at some point is going to get the flu. And every at some point therefore is going to have symptoms that indicate they may have the flu. So my job is to look for people that have the symptoms, because actually some flu symptoms are also flu symptoms that could be cancer. So it turns out when I get there and I diagnose is actually you don't need a flu specialist, you need an oncologist, and I don't sell oncology services. So what happens is just because someone has symptoms of a problem you can fix, does it, Jordan, I, I think, uh, Kraut's approach is if someone has a symptom, I'll give them a product. If I'm an oncologist, I'll sell them a cancer solution.

• 47:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  Whereas, well, I can, I can see the point to that, but then you're the jack of all master of none. Uh, whereas Jordan's saying, well, no, some people will need what you have at a particular moment in time and others won't. The guy doesn't want fish, he ain't gonna buy fish, but in three weeks he may want fish.

• 47:59Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm, mm hmm.

• 47:59Speaker 00

  You know.

• 48:00Chris Williamson?

  So you need to be top of the list of people to call when the fish.

• 48:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:04Chris Williamson?

  Hung- hunger strikes.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  I, yeah, this is why we develop prospecting profiles. Our profile, our ideal prospect is a company in this sector, turning over this, who probably buys this sort of equipment. So that's my profile, but I don't know at any given point in time when that particular prospect in that profile will need what I have. That's why I prospect. So I'm talking to them and at some point they say, you called at the right time, Benjamin, I do have all of those issues. I didn't six weeks ago when you called. This is why you phone someone up and they say, ah, we've literally just bought that solution. Yeah. Oh, you should have called earlier. Well, I've been

• 48:47Speaker 00

  trying to be trying you for years. Well, well, that's the way it works. You've got to call at the time when they have symptoms. If they don't have symptoms, they're not going to talk. Simple as that. It's very easy selling. And that's why, uh, that's why salespeople are so frustrated, because they spend their whole life trying to argue with people why they should be buying from them. As soon as someone says no, I do one last question, fire out one thing to see if they, if it's a real no or if it's a fake no, and then I'll move on to the next prospect. That's exactly what Jordan says. I'd rather talk to the person who's likely to say yes than have an argument with the guy who's told me no, in the hope that I can browbeat him into saying yes. That's not selling.

• 49:27Chris Williamson?

  I imagine as well, so my, my brief stint doing upsells to an existing motoring product up here in Newcastle, I struggled to remove myself from being emotionally invested in the outcome of the sale. So I would, if I had a good day, I would feel good. If I had a bad day, I would feel bad.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:50Chris Williamson?

  I'm going to guess that's pretty common.

• 49:52Speaker 00

  Very common. You've got to separate your role from your identity. So a salesman is a role. It's just a function that you perform. You're a salesman when you go into the office. But when you walk out, you're, you're a, I don't know if you're married or have kids, but you're a father, a brother, a husband, a son. Those are also roles. And so what people do is they allow role bleed. So you, you allow your behaviour in your role to bleed into how you see yourself as a human being, as a person. So I had a shit day as a salesman, ergo, I'm probably a pretty crap person. So I feel bad about myself. Whereas you've got to actually know, do you think your lawyer

• 50:37Speaker 00

  bursts into tears at the end of a trial because he loses?

• 50:42Chris Williamson?

  Well, I, I hope not.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  No, he takes off his word. He goes, well, you know, you win some, you lose some. We did everything right. We always knew it was going to be tough. We always said the outcome could go either way. It went the way we didn't want to go. That's the way it rolls. I'm not a shitty person because I didn't win. I don't feel bad. I haven't had a bad day at the office. I may be slightly annoyed because I had, I did want to win, but when I look at everything we did, we did everything right. So.

• 51:10Chris Williamson?

  I suppose that comes back to controllables versus uncontrollables, right?

• 51:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 51:15Chris Williamson?

  You can't, you can't control whether or not that person is ready to buy at that time.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  No.

• 51:19Chris Williamson?

  If they're not ready to buy at that time, you were never, ever going to sell to them.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  All you control is everything up to the point they have to put their hand in their wallet. Which is a lot.

• 51:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  And my job is to get them to the point that they wanna stick their hand into their wallet. If I've got to the point and it comes to them sticking their hand into the wallet and they're not willingly put it in there, I've screwed up earlier on. I should have got out earlier. So that's why it comes down to how you disqualify.

• 51:49Chris Williamson?

  Do you ever find yourself listening, I don't know whether you've got some special agreement with UK wide sales companies where they they do not get your number. But I don't know whether you ever receive cold calls or whether you receive sales.

• 52:02Speaker 00

  Oh, I do. Oh, yeah.

• 52:03Chris Williamson?

  Do you, do you, do you find yourself allowing them to play the role of a customer just to sort of listen to them and assess? Do you ever, do you ever use it as a little case study for yourself? Or are you just fucking sick of sales and you just, you, you wanna get off it?

• 52:16Speaker 00

  I, I listen to them and I humor them. I behave like a prospect because I can't fail at being a prospect. So I can behave how I like. But this is a true story. I, um, I think it was last year. No, the year before, the year before. Oh, no, last year. It was last year. Anyway, anyway, last year. So, um, I, I was making some prospecting calls and my signal kept cutting in and out. And on two calls, talking to a managing director, the phone line just pissed off. So I was annoyed. So that afternoon, I, I, my phone rang and I answered it. There was some guy selling telecoms. Now, normally you tell them to, you know, F off, I'm not interested. But I, I, I, I said, no, no, no, no, I'll hear you out.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  And the guy was all right. He asked some good questions and I quite liked what he was doing. And I said, you know what? I said, I'm in. Let's do it. He goes, really? You, you, you wanna? I said, yeah. He goes, okay. Um, we'll move it forward. Okay. Can I ask you a question though? Before we move on, I said, do you know why I'm buying from you?

• 53:18Speaker 00

  And he said, well, yeah, because, um, you were saying, well, he goes, we're giving you an extra 10 megs of data. You're gonna unlimited it. All of this, I said, it's got none of that.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  He goes, uh, I said, I'll tell you what, this morning, two calls of mine screwed up. I pissed off at O two. I have no idea if you're going to provide a better service at this point. I don't care. All I know is, is that they're not going to be getting my money from today. I'm buying out of spite and out of frustration.

• 53:50Chris Williamson?

  Vengeful.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  It's got nothing. I said, I don't need 10 megs. I've never used 10 megs in a month in my life. And you offered me a discount before I even asked. I'm going to take it, but you were too quick. I said, you're giving me a great deal, but it's none of that is why I'm changing. I only listened to you because I was pissed off. I was emotionally annoyed. You got me at the right time.

• 54:13Chris Williamson?

  And then justified it.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  And then intellectually he gave me the reason, all right, fine, I'm in, let's do it. Yeah. So that is it. So this is why you got to know what to say. How, and you can, you can create that feeling though. So it's important what you say on the phone. So I'm very big at you don't talk about what you do. You talk about what you fix. So you identify the three biggest symptoms that your prospects are likely to suffer from. And ask them, do you have them? Cause they may say, actually I do now that I'm thinking about it. I do. Yeah, I have noticed that. Now we're going to have a conversation. So that's my job is just, I know what I fix and I know what it looks like in your world.

• 54:57Speaker 00

  You don't know what I fix, but you do know what the symptoms in your world look like. All I've got to get you to admit is you have one, some are all of those symptoms. And we're going to have a chat about how I can help. If you don't recognize any of it, I'll call you back in three months because at some point you will.

• 55:14Chris Williamson?

  These symptoms are going to metastasize into a full blown illness.

• 55:17Speaker 00

  Exactly. And I'll be here.

• 55:20Chris Williamson?

  So I, I know that you mentioned that you've done some live sales calls before where you actually essentially don't know the product, where you've gone into.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 55:28Chris Williamson?

  Companies and, and sold whatever it is, not knowing it. And I suppose that that is, okay, what does it fix? What are the problems that it fixes?

• 55:37Speaker 00

  What, what, what, what, what, what is a managing director in your target market bitching about that you fix? But he doesn't know you're the solution. So I do, I work with a company that sells valves and we had to go through this process. And I said, well, they're constantly annoyed at price increases in this product range. Okay, what else annoys them? Sometimes they have problems with cladding. It's very specific and so the water gets in, that can be frustrating. Okay, what else? And another one is, I suppose if you order these things, it can be lead time. If you've got a project and you can't get them in quick enough, it can have a knockoff. Okay, fine, right, that's all I need to know. Right, let's make some sales calls. So then I just phone up engineering directors and I said, I'll be upfront. It's a sales call, you can hang up.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  No, no, it's fine, what do you say? So look, I get invited in by engineering directors. They're often in the oil industry such as yourself. And I'll be honest, they're probably already using a certain valve. But some of them complain that sometimes they have water ingress issues. And as a result, the valve is leaking. Others say their biggest concern isn't that, but sometimes lead times can be challenging. And if they don't get a part, that can have a knockoff. And a few tell me that their biggest concern is, and I can't remember what the third one was. I say that, okay, but I get the feeling you're going to tell me you don't recognize any of that.

• 57:01Speaker 00

  And it's amazing, they all go, well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I recognize that. We do suffer from that. Okay, well, of those three things, water leaking into it, a lead time or whatever the third one was. If you could pick one of those to fix, which would you pick?

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Ah, well, I'd say it's the water. Okay, I've had my 30 seconds. Can I speak to you for maybe two more minutes? Yeah, sure. So when you say the water ingress, what do you mean exactly? And then they start talking to me about their problem, they don't realize it. That's all I've got to do. It doesn't matter what I sell, it's what do I fix? How does what I fix manifest itself in my prospects world? How do I talk to them about that?

• 57:45Chris Williamson?

  So I suppose, thinking about it in that sort of a way, you are very much a Swiss Army knife as someone who has selling ability. And you need, what, a week's training probably on even the most complex of products?

• 58:00Speaker 00

  Half a day at the most.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  Takes about an hour to figure out what people fix. It's funny because most people don't, and it's funny, in every company I go into and you ask, what do you fix, what do you fix, how does it matter? And they look at you blankly and it takes ages. And isn't this fascinating? You spend all day of your life phoning up people, telling them you know them, you understand them, you live and breathe their world and you can't tell me what you fix. I said, that's shameful, isn't it? Imagine your doctor not being able to answer that question.

• 58:33Chris Williamson?

  Well, there's people, sometimes these people come in, yes, and well, sometimes they're not very well, yes, and fucking hell, like drawing a horse to water.

• 58:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's ridiculous. So this is what my job is. I help, I get people to discover it, I get them to figure it, and I teach them how to say it. Cause it's all theatre, it's all acting and, and everything I say is choreographed. You've got to say it in the right way, you've got to ask the question in the right, you've got to pause at the right moment for effect, cause my job is to create emotion. It's acting. What's the difference between a good actor and a great actor? It's not the script, it's the delivery of the script. Yeah? A great actor takes the script and turns it into something, but he doesn't have to alter the words, he just delivers it, pauses in the right place, emphasizes the right thing. And that's my job on the phone and in person.

• 59:26Speaker 00

  It's all choreographed to make the prospect feel okay about themselves and comfortable and open up to me.

• 59:33Chris Williamson?

  When you say it like that, thinking about the power that a salesperson has, someone with a real sales talent. Salespeople must be good, properly good, scalable, replicable, framework-based, salespeople, must be some of the most valuable workers on the planet.

• 59:52Speaker 00

  Yes, the whole world is capitalist, it's buying and selling. That's it. The whole world turns on that. So selling, a lot of sales jobs will be replaced by AI. A lot of these phone-based ones, because all they're doing up is taking orders and you can teach it an algorithm. I've listened to these Google AI things and I've heard one make a phone call and make an appointment. And you wouldn't know, you're not talking to a person. So all you've got to do is program a computer who has no emotion, has no feelings, and only will follow an algorithm and do the same thing well over and over again. Before long, most salespeople, you won't need them.

• 1:00:35Speaker 00

  And this is my biggest fear is a lot of salespeople don't realise they're not going to be required unless they have that skill themselves, like the algorithm, because they're going to still need you in the face-to-face, higher level. So they are under threat.

• 1:00:49Chris Williamson?

  Wow, so people need to up their skills.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, without doubt.

• 1:00:53Chris Williamson?

  Well, Benjamin, today's been absolutely amazing. If people want to find out a little bit more, where should their heads, what can they, where can they get you?

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  Well, LinkedIn is the best place to find me. So if you just put in UK's most hated sales trainer or Benjamin Dennehy, my website, funnily enough, is uk'smosthatedsalestrainer.com. But it's, it's, it's nothing sexy. It literally is a brochure designed to take card payments. I've actually had people say your website's shot. I go, well, you're not hiring a web designer. So what's, why are we having this conversation?

• 1:01:26Chris Williamson?

  That's a great point.

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not a web designer. I built it myself.

• 1:01:31Chris Williamson?

  Congratulations.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  Yes, it was easy. It's crap.

• 1:01:34Chris Williamson?

  I saw a example in behavioural economics today from Richard Shotten, who is the author of The Choice Factory and a previous Modern Wisdom guest. And this example said, outside of a butcher's shop, he said, sausages inside £10, but sausages had too many apostrophes in it. He said, the number of people that walk into the shop and said, you know, you know that your sign outside has like two apostrophes in sausages and essentially it doesn't need any. And he says, yeah, I do. Now, how many sausages do you want?

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's brilliant, isn't it?

• 1:02:08Chris Williamson?

  I love it. I love that open loop.

• 1:02:10Speaker 00

  You've got to get them in, yeah.

• 1:02:13Chris Williamson?

  So anyway, everything that we've spoken about today, Benjamin's website is fantastic, LinkedIn, where he keeps on putting up great content and his Twitter, which I've actually...

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Oh, my YouTube channel, I've got a YouTube channel.

• 1:02:23Chris Williamson?

  YouTube.

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  And if you subscribe, you can win a mug, or a t-shirt, or a cap.

• 1:02:27Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. Make sales great again.

• 1:02:30Speaker 00

  Make salesmen great again.

• 1:02:32Chris Williamson?

  Wait, make salesmen great again.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  Deliberately to wind up the woke folk of today.

• 1:02:38Chris Williamson?

  You do indeed. That doesn't surprise me at all. Also, you're going to have, at some point in the future, might be having a digital product coming out, which you might be able to...

• 1:02:45Speaker 00

  Touch wood, it'll launch in January. It's an online training platform, so a lot of people can't get to me here in the UK to come to my events, but they'd love to do some online training. So I've filmed these events, and I've chopped it all up and turned it into a training portal, which people can buy a subscription to. So that'll be, I don't know all the specifics yet, but it should be next month. But it'll all be on LinkedIn and marketed through LinkedIn. So...

• 1:03:11Chris Williamson?

  Perfect. I love it, man. Benjamin, thank you so much for your time. It's been great fun.

• 1:03:14Speaker 00

  I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.