by Nancy Calabrese | Mar 26, 2024 | Podcast
About Colleen Francis: Colleen Francis is an award-winning speaker, consultant and bestselling author who helps leading businesses achieve dramatic increases in their sales results. A successful sales leader for over 20 years, she understands the particular challenges of selling in today’s competitive market, and that business leaders can no longer rely on approaches to sales based on techniques from decades ago—or even last year. Colleen doesn’t believe in the old-school mentality that only 20% of a sales team hit their sales targets. She says, that in today’s modern selling era, we should expect 100% of the sales teams to hit 100% of the quota. Colleen works with business and sales leaders to synergize the sales DNA of the organization to seize market opportunities. Whether designing a strategy to target a new market or working with a team to improve its productivity, Colleen’s results have attracted clients such as Merck, Abbott, Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank, Dow, Adecco, Trend Micro, NCR, Chevron, and thousands of other global organizations. Her latest book, Right on the Money: New Principles for Bold Growth, provides readers with a proven, realistic game plan to redraw maps for sales and marketing in a topsy-turvy world. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Colleen.
In this episode, Nancy and Colleen discuss the following:
- Challenges of selling in today’s market
- Importance of organizational structure and flexibility in sales processes
- Effective sales questions: Open-ended and closed-ended questions
- The evolution of selling practices due to technological advancements
- The impact of COVID-19 on selling practices
- The evolution of prospecting methods and the importance of utilizing different marketing channels to reach prospects
Key Takeaways:
- We need to be open, we have to be easy to buy from and talk to.
- it’s not a question of whether you do virtual or whether you like it, it’s how your clients are operating and how can you best have a conversation with them in the mode of communication that they want.
- Prospecting is much easier as well than it ever used to be because we have so many other sources.
“I think one of the biggest challenges that we are facing in today’s market is this massive demographic shift and lack of workers. So, reductions in workforce because there aren’t people, we just aren’t as populous as we used to be, have two or three major effects on us as salespeople. One, it’s going to force companies to keep increasing their quotas because they’re going to have to grow and they’re not going to be able to find salespeople. So, we’re going to have to learn how to be more effective at what we do by combining, you know, virtual and in-person and all those kinds of things. Two, it puts pressure on our buyers because there are fewer of them, right? And they’re doing more work. They’re doing, they have more jobs. And so we’re gonna continue in this buying environment where it’s risky, people are scared to make decisions, they lack experience making decisions, they have 18 other jobs to do so they don’t have time to make decisions. So, I think that those, that one challenge in the marketplace is going to drive a bunch of challenges that we have as salespeople.” – COLLEEN
“So critical mass influence in my belief in selling is that we build the best client relationships when we have a very broad reach, high, low, you know, East-West, right? Critical mass influence is about building that so that people, so you’re easy to find, you’re easy to buy from, and everybody feels like they know you. So, it’s about using multiple types of media. So, whether it be social media, if we want to call it that, LinkedIn, your email, blogs, all those kinds of media, and reaching out to everybody that is related or potentially related to your customer. You know, Nancy, years ago, there was an ad on TV, if you remember, and I think it was for Clarell, and it was that I told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on and so on and so on and so on. Yeah, right. This is sort of the modern version of that because people are so important to the sales process, including people you will never meet. And so we have to get to our buyers, our influencers, our stakeholders. We must figure out a way to get our message to the people whom our buyers, influencers, and stakeholders might be listening to onto the platforms that they might be reading. And we also need to get everyone in our organization to do that. It’s not just a sales responsibility. It’s a marketing responsibility. It’s customer service, its operations, it’s finance.” – COLLEEN
“First of all, we have to have a combination of open-ended and closed-ended questions because that’s how a conversation flows naturally. I encourage salespeople to not be afraid of a closed-ended question because it will help you direct the conversation one way or the other depending on where it needs to be. We also must be comfortable being curious, asking the question, why? Why do you feel that way? Why are you saying that? What do you mean? Those kinds of questions so that we can get people talking about the real reason why they’re making those statements. The third thing is, from a tactical perspective, we have to ask short questions. So, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but salespeople will often fall into the habit, and I think this is a conversation breaker, where they ask the question, explain the question, answer the question, and then ask a whole entirely different question without taking a breath. And the poor prospect is, it is, it’s terrible. Multi-pronged questions, I call them. Whereas if you ask a short question, you’re going to get a long answer. And so, I think that’s another way to ask effective questions.” – COLLEEN
Connect with Colleen Francis:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Colleen Francis, founder, and president of Engage Selling Solutions, helping organizations develop and review sales strategies to ensure they meet their business objectives. Colleen is driven by a passion for sales and results. A successful sales leader for over 20 years, she understands the challenges of selling in today’s market. And in addition, Colleen is an award-winning writer, consultant, and bestselling author of popular sales books, including the recent Right on the Money a recognized thought leader in sales leadership. She is an inductee in the professional speaker Hall of Fame and has been named the number one sales influencer to follow by LinkedIn. Well, it’s a kudos to you Colleen and welcome to the show. I’m so happy to have you.
Colleen Francis: I am really happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. [1:26]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, it’s been a long time coming. Well, why don’t we start by sharing what you believe are the challenges of selling in today’s market.
Colleen Francis: We only have 20 minutes, right? So, I think one of the biggest challenges that we are facing in today’s market is this massive demographic shift and an absence of, let’s just call it that, or lack of workers. And so why do I say this? So, reductions in workforce because there aren’t people, you know, we just aren’t as populous as we used to be, have two or three major effects on us as salespeople. One, it’s going to force companies to keep increasing our quotas because they’re going to have to grow and they’re not going to be able to find salespeople. So, we’re going to have to learn how to be more effective at what we do by combining, you know, virtual and in-person and all those kinds of things. Two, it puts pressure on our buyers because there’s fewer of them, right? And they’re doing more work. They’re doing, they have more jobs. And so we’re gonna continue in this buying environment where it’s risky, people are scared to make decisions, they lack experience making decisions, they have 18 other jobs to do so they don’t have time to make decisions. So, I think that those, that one challenge in the marketplace is really going to drive a bunch of challenges that we have as salespeople. [3:04]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, talk about, I guess, what people have to do today to be successful in 24. Anything in particular that you would recommend that they start doing right away?
Colleen Francis: Yeah, so I think that they really need to be, well, they need to first be really easy to buy from, right? Easy to find, easy to buy from. I wrote in Right on the Money, I wrote that we’re in this selling environment where it’s sort of wait, hurry up. And it’s because buyers are spending a lot of time talking to others, researching on their own, trying to understand the lay of the land before they reach out to suppliers. And we know that Gartner tells us that 75% of all new sales are made, they’re started when the buyer actually does online research. So we have to be easy to find so that they know where we are. And we have to be really easy to buy from and talk to. We also need to be open. [4:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Wait a minute. What do you mean by easy to buy from?
Colleen Francis: It’s a good question. So, I think it’s two things. I think it’s the organizational structure, right? We can’t be cumbersome in terms of having contract hoops that people must run through and 12 legal processes and not be flexible, right? I think we must be open and willing to have conversations with people in multiple sources of media. So, it’s not just a phone call. It might have to be an email conversation or a LinkedIn conversation to start. I think we must also have organizations who are willing to work as a team. So, what we’re seeing is effective right now is where we have a group of stakeholders or buyers inside an organization and they’re coordinating their sales conversations with a group of sellers, managers, leaders, experts inside the selling organization. Of course, the salesperson is orchestrating all of that, so it adds a layer of complexity. But when we have these multiple contact points or multiple conversations going on, we have a much wider understanding of the value we bring. We have more stakeholders involved. They start trusting us more as an organization and its going to speed the sale forward. [5:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Why do you say, and I’ve read this, that you say best practices are dead? Why is that? Yeah.
Colleen Francis: No, yeah. I started to say to people that we need to focus on better practices. I think the reason I say that is because best practices sound like they’re timeless and can’t be changed. That’s the best practice, right? And so, it’s a little tongue in cheek because there’s always going to be some best practices, right? I suppose. We could always say we have to build rapport and people must like us and trust us. But the way we do that today with one set of customers might be very different than the way we do that in three months from now with a different set of customers. So, what I encourage sellers to do is look at what’s working in an opportunity or with an account or with someone in your office right now and say to yourself, should I be applying that as a change in my sales process? And then don’t get wedded to having to do it that way for the next year. [6:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Right, right. Well, I think what you’re saying is you always must reevaluate best practices. Yeah, and how often do you recommend that you do that?
Colleen Francis: Yes. Well, I honestly recommend that people evaluate individual best practices in sales, like the types of questions you might ask or the people you’re reaching out with, you know, on a quarterly basis. So, I would do, you know, a quarter in review and say what worked and what should I do more of and what didn’t work so well and why and how should I change that or eliminate it. [7:13]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Now your recent book, Right on The Money, I’m curious what prompted you to write it, and what does it mean?
Colleen Francis: So interesting about this book is it was written and already to go in on January 1, 2020, let’s say. So, I wrote it through all of 2019. And I was inspired by a lot of the changes that were going on, you know, in 2018, 2019. And then of course, the world changed, especially the selling world in, you know, the first quarter of 2020. And I had to rewrite the whole book because the speed of change happened so much faster in 2020. So much of what I wrote about in 2019 wasn’t true anymore suddenly. And I got a firsthand look at what very successful sellers were doing to sell in that pandemic because my clients were all classified as essential services. So, they had no choice but to be at work and to be servicing. They were in the oil and gas industry, manufacturing sectors, agriculture. So, they had to make it work. They had to figure it. Nobody could just kind of sit back and say: “Hey, we’ll just wait this out”. Everybody had to find a way to make this work. And so, um, I reoriented the book, um, in, um, that year to be really focused on, uh, you know, what the next phase of selling is going to look like. And right on the money is really this balance between being customer centric or customer focused, and metrics are internal focus, like sales velocity focus. So, companies that focus too much on their own internal targets and make calls, make calls, make calls fail one way. Companies that over-rotate and take this attitude of, oh, the customer is always right, and they often fail for a different reason, and what we need is a balance. [9:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, huh. You know, speaking of COVID and the pandemic and how it switched selling, there were so many people, I don’t know how many now, but in the early days that swore that they couldn’t sell, they must only sell face to face. Now I have spent my whole career selling virtually. What do you have to say about that?
Colleen Francis: Well, I had an interesting experience during COVID with a bunch of sellers who had, they were very experienced, let’s just say. Their manager called them the silver foxes. And they, when things shut down and they weren’t allowed to go on site to see their clients, or they weren’t allowed to come into the office, they literally crossed their arms and said, oh, when this thing clears up, we’ll go virtual. But other than that, we’re not doing anything. And you know they soon learned that wasn’t going to be any time soon. So, they had to learn how to use virtual selling. And then people would say to me, well, COVID is over. We can go out. We’re in Texas, right? Or we’re in Florida. We can go out. And then, you know, Texas gets a massive ice storm or supply chain, you know, happens, or people don’t go back to work, or offices don’t go back to work full-time. And so, you’ve got people all over the place working from home. And a lot of sellers who put there, you know, their stake in the ground realized, wow, if I want to have an effective meeting, I’m going to have to stay virtual or be hybrid because I’m not going to, you know, the buyer’s house where they’re working today. So, yeah. So, I’ve said, it’s not a question of whether you do virtual or whether you, or whether you like it, it’s how your clients are operating and how can you best have a conversation with them in the mode of communication that they want. [11:12]
Nancy Calabrese: True. I think you raise a good point. It’s about them, not about you. Yep. You have developed a concept of critical mass influence and how to use it successfully. Tell us about that.
Colleen Francis: So critical mass influence is, so my belief in selling is that we build the best client relationships when we have a very broad reach, high, low, you know, East-West, right? And critical mass influence is about building that so that people, so you’re easy to find, you’re easy to buy from, and everybody feels like they know you. So, it’s about using multiple types of media. So, whether it be social media, if we want to call it that, LinkedIn, your email, blogs, all those kinds of media, and reaching out to everybody that is related or potentially related to your customer. You know, Nancy, years ago, there was an ad on TV, if you remember, and I think it was for Clarell, and it was that I told two friends, and they told two friends and so on and so on and so on and so on. Yeah, right. This is sort of the modern version of that because people are so important to the sales process, including people you will never meet. And so we have to get to our buyers, our influencers, our stakeholders. We must figure out a way to get our message to the people who our buyers and influencers and stakeholders might be listening to onto the platforms that they might be reading. And we also need to get everyone in our organization doing that. It’s not just a sales responsibility. It’s a marketing responsibility. It’s customer service, its operations, it’s finance. I mean, everyone who has access to a computer can, can get on LinkedIn and share the company’s message, right? Um, and it could just be, it honestly could be Mary from accounting who posts a company, um, message on her own personal LinkedIn that causes another finance professional down the road to say: “Oh, wow, we need that tier”. [13:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. That’s right. You know, speaking about your comment, it would be easy to find how often do you recommend posting on LinkedIn and other social media sites?
Colleen Francis: Right? Ha ha ha. So, my formula, because I’m also really cautious, I don’t want salespeople on social media eight hours a day, right? So, my, no, we got to pick up the phone and call, right, eventually. So, I have a process called the tempo triad. I ask people to select three different media types. For most of my clients, it’s some combination of LinkedIn, maybe Facebook, book, or Instagram if they’re in a really visual type of product. For some people it is X or formerly known as Twitter or something else. Maybe it’s an email or a marketing message. And I asked them to do three things. One comment on something that one of your clients or associations is saying, so people see that you’re paying attention to them. Two, repost something that a client or an influencer or an association is doing again, so they see that: “Oh, Colleen’s paying attention to me”. And three, post something unique. So, it could be something that your marketing team has written or you or something about your product, but something unique. At a bare minimum, I like to see that done three times a week on all three of those platforms. [15:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Okay. Huh. I saw on your website, you have a video, how to ask effective sales questions. Talk to us about that.
Colleen Francis: Oh, so many things we could be asking about. So, one thing I think it’s really effective is to, first of all, we have to have a combination of open-ended and closed-ended questions because that’s how a conversation flows naturally. So, I encourage salespeople to not be afraid of a closed-ended question because it will help you direct the conversation to one way or the other depending on where it needs to be. We also must be really comfortable being curious, asking the question, why? Why do you feel that way? Why are you saying that? What do you mean? Those kinds of questions so that we can get people talking about the real reason why they’re making those statements. Third thing is, from a tactical perspective, we have to ask short questions. So, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but salespeople will often fall into the habit, and I think this is a conversation breaker, where they ask the question, explain the question, answer the question, and then ask a whole entirely different question without taking a breath. And the poor prospect is, it is, it’s terrible. Multi-pronged questions, I call them. Whereas if you ask a short question, you’re going to get a long answer. And so, I think that’s another way to really ask effective questions. [16:36]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, that’s pretty bad. Wow. You know what? Now I’m going to really pay attention to the questions people are asking me. I don’t let you know if I catch them. You know, I guess, has selling really changed all that much?
Colleen Francis: Ah, you raise a good question. I think there’s a number of things that are similar and some things that are different. I mean, obviously technology, right? When my dad was selling, he didn’t, I remember when a first beeper came to the house, right? It wasn’t even a pager, it just beeped. So, the advent of technology has, that’s really been the game changer and it’s done a couple of things. You could argue that what hasn’t changed is we still have to have built trust, we must ask questions, we have to meet buyers, right? We must engage in stakeholder alignment. All those things are the same and we’ve had to do that for decades. The tools in which we do those things, execute on those have changed. Some buyers prefer to use online sources. I was having a chat with one of my own clients on Friday afternoon via text. [17:52]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Colleen Francis: We were negotiating, you know, we were talking through a six-figure contract, but it was the easiest thing because she was on a plane. She could text, but email would have been too slow. I couldn’t call her because she was literally waiting to take off. And so, I must be comfortable being able to have a professional conversation over text. Now that makes my life easier and it makes it harder because as a sales pro, I’ve got to be a master of all these tools. On the other hand, it makes it easier because I wouldn’t have gotten 15 minutes of her attention, you know, on a Friday afternoon if I had insisted on a face-to-face or a phone call. So, I think that that’s really critical. [18:32]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Wow, yeah. You know, when you said about technology, when I first got into sales, there were no faxes and no computers. I don’t know how I did it or how we all survived, but we did, there was the phone, there was the phone. That’s interesting. It’s a good thing.
Colleen Francis: Yeah. And that’s hard because a lot of people will say, well, I don’t like that social media stuff. I’m like, well, I don’t care if you don’t like it or not. If your clients are there and you’re not there, then you’re invisible to them. Right. So prospecting is much easier as well than it ever used to be because we have so many other sources. We, I mean, you know, 30 years ago, prospecting to me was either cold calling, pure cold calling from the phone book or physical door knocking. I mean, you can’t really do a lot of physical door knocking these days. A lot of doors are locked. Phone books don’t exist. So, LinkedIn is kind of our phone book, but people aren’t answering their phones. I mean, there’s a whole lot of businesses that don’t even have main switchboards anymore. [19:38]
Nancy Calabrese: I get it. I get it. But you know, it’s perseverance. And to your point, you must try different marketing channels to get the attention of the prospect. Colleen, we are out of time. I cannot believe it. It went by so fast. How can my audience find you?
Colleen Francis: Yes. Well, true to form, I’m an easy person to find. So, you can find me on LinkedIn by Colleen Francis. You can find me on my website, EngagedSelling.com. You can find me on Facebook, on Twitter, on TikTok, on Instagram. Simply, I am all over the place. My doctor says to me, Colleen, I’m not even on social media, and I see you on social media. [20:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Ha ha. You’re all over the place, huh? All right, so people out there, don’t be shy. Take advantage of this lady’s expertise. She’s knowledgeable, but she’s also a lot of fun, Colleen, and I really, really enjoyed her conversation. And I hope we can do this again in the future. Would you come back?
Colleen Francis: Absolutely. We’re great fun.
Nancy Calabrese: Love it. So until we speak again, people make it a great sales day, make it a great Colleen day, and give her a call. See you next time. [20:59]
by Nancy Calabrese | Mar 22, 2024 | Podcast
About Tracy Beavers: Tracy Beavers is the founder of Tracy Beavers Coaching, where she helps business owners ditch the overwhelming burden of business ownership. She crafts a clear roadmap of action steps and creative solutions to get clients from where they are to where they want to be. Gain clarity. Gain focus. Keep your sanity. For 12 years, she worked as a claims investigator for an insurance company, which provided valuable insights into human behavior under stress. She gained expertise in navigating complex and painful situations, coaching individuals through challenges, and identifying their next steps. Combining this experience with her marketing education, she has transformed her passion into a business focused on helping people. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Tracy.
In this episode, Nancy and Tracy discuss the following:
- Exploring why entrepreneurs and individuals fear sales
- Tracy’s method of selling without explicitly selling
- The importance of building genuine connections and relationships
- Finding authenticity and ease in entrepreneurship
- The importance of community for entrepreneurs
Key Takeaways:
- Everybody is fearful of sales.
- Looking at their entire business structure, I can determine their needs.
- I believe in building a business with authenticity and with ease.
- We’ll never get started if we put too much pressure on ourselves out of the gate to have something perfect or all the bells and whistles with it.
“When you first start a business, or maybe you’re a year or so in, there is a lot of overwhelm that comes with it because you start the business with a passion for doing something. Let’s say it’s helping women with health and wellness, or like me, I’m a business and sales coach. Then you find yourself being the chief cook and bottle washer, learning the tech, building the website, building the courses, and spending all the plates and doing everything, which feels like a lot. And so, what I like to do with my clients is talk to them about their business, get a very solid look at the framework of it.” – TRACY
“Selling without selling is a style I created over my years of experience because I would have people come to me and ask me routinely, how are you so successful in sales? You know, how do you gain market share so easily? And the way I do this is through the selling without selling method. My approach is to take the sales out of the equation. I want my clients and students to take the word sell or sales completely out of their language, out of their brain, and park it. And then we’re going to show up as our best selves. We will look for opportunities to make true human connections with other humans who want to make a true connection. And then we’re going to see where the conversation leads. Because in sales, it’s not, not always about me. The next person I meet will want to buy something from me.Rather, my approach is the next person I meet I want to see where the relationship goes. They could be an ideal client for me, but they could also be my next best collaboration partner and open up, open, and introduce me to their entire audience. They could also be my next best referral source. ” – TRACY
“The biggest thing that I will say that I want everybody to remember and audience lean in when I say this being an entrepreneur is freaking hard. You cannot go it alone. It is a roller coaster of emotion. People that are, it doesn’t matter if you’re on day one, day five, or year 15, and you’re making $80 million a year. Everybody feels imposter syndrome creep in, everybody feels doubt, everybody feels afraid, and the people who aren’t willing to talk about it are just not telling you the truth. And so, what I highly recommend for everybody is to find a community of support, even if it’s a free community.” – TRACY
Connect with Tracy Beavers:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Tracy Beaver’s CEO and founder of Tracy Beaver’s Coaching, where she helps business owners ditch the overwhelm of business ownership. With 20 year’s experience, Tracy has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs with everything from overcoming the fear of sales to growing their business visibly through organic marketing strategies. Tracy is a public speaker and a published author. She has been featured on top business podcasts and has been a regular contributor on one of her hometown’s premier TV shows. She is the creator of two online programs, Business Visibility Made Easy and Be a Confident Entrepreneur. Welcome to the show, Tracy. This is gonna be a fun discussion.
Tracy Beavers: Thanks for having me Nancy, I’m excited to be here. [1:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, I’m so excited to have you. So, one thing that jumps out to me, as I said earlier, that you help business owners ditch the overwhelm of business ownership. What do you mean by that?
Tracy Beavers: Well, when you first start a business, or maybe you’re a year or so in, there is a lot of overwhelm that comes with it because you start the business with a passion for doing something. Let’s say it’s helping women with health and wellness, or like me, I’m a business and sales coach. And then you find yourself being the chief cook and bottle washer, learning the tech, building the website, building the courses and you’re having to spend all the plates and do all the things and it feel like a lot. And so, what I like to do with my clients is talk to them about their business, get a very solid look at the framework of it. What is their goal? What is their vision? What is the end game for them that they want to, what do they wanna do in the world? And then we backtrack and reverse engineer to what do we need to focus on now? What can wait? What can we put in their parking lot of things to execute when the time is right. Like, you know, you can’t come out of the gate as a business owner and, um, try to do all the things at one time because nothing’s going to get done well. And so, like, for example, for me, I’ve been in this space several years, and I’ve talked about and thought about having my own podcast for a long time, but its ha the timing hasn’t been right. And so that’s where that overwhelm can creep in. If I’m not careful, I could put a lot of pressure on myself to get that podcast out into the world. [3:07]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Tracy Beavers: But what I’ve got to do is figure out where in the business that makes sense to do. So just mapping out the priorities so that they can take it one step at a time.
Nancy Calabrese: Interesting. Why are so many entrepreneurs fearful of sales?
Tracy Beavers: Oh gosh, it’s not just entrepreneurs, it’s everybody. Everybody is fearful of sales. I mean, ask any little Girl Scout who loves to be in the Girl Scouts, but now all of a sudden, she’s gotta sell cookies. It’s intimidating to everybody. And I think, just in my experience, from having over 20 years in sales experience, primarily from corporate, and then in my practice, being able to help people overcome the fear of sales and find their path with sales. It feels icky. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of history around sales. Snake oil salesmen, used car salesmen, that stereotype doesn’t feel good. And we have all had experiences where someone has been overly aggressive with us in a sales capacity. And it did not feel good, and we did not like it, and we are afraid we’re going to come across the same way. [4:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Tracy Beavers: And we don’t want anybody to think badly of us. We don’t want to be judged. We don’t want to come across as aggressive or salesy or spammy. And so that’s where we stop. We’re like, you know, we may think we’re the best in the world at what we do, but when it comes to actually selling it and pitching it, it’s like, oh boy, what is everybody else going to think? You know? [4:46]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Huh. Well, how do you sell without selling?
Tracy Beavers: Yes, that’s a style that I created over my years of experience because I would have people come to me and ask me routinely, how are you so successful in sales? You know, how do you gain market share so easily? And the way I do this is through the selling without selling method. And my approach is we take the sales out of the equation. I want my clients and students to take the word sell or sales just completely out of their language, out of their brain and park it. And then what we’re going to do is we are going to show up as our best selves. We are going to look for opportunities to be of service, make true human connections with other humans that want to make a true connection. And then we’re going to see where, where the conversation leads. Because in sales, it’s not, not always about me. The next person I meet is going to want to buy something from me. [5:50]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Tracy Beavers: Rather, my approach is the next person I meet, I want to see where the relationship goes. They could be an ideal client for me, but they could also be my next best collaboration partner and open up, open and introduce me into their entire audience. They could also be my next best referral source. Again, introducing me to people that do want my services, or that might introduce me to more people. And that’s how we become successful in sales. We lead with our heart, we focus on being of service, and if what you’ve got to sell or offer is in alignment with what that person is looking for, then the sale will automatically happen when they find out what you do and who you are, and that you are truly a kind, warm-hearted human being who’s not going to try to pounce on them the minute you find out they have a need. [6:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Right, no, I agree with you. So, I saw on your website, and I don’t remember what it was called, you start with begin with the end in mind, then create a roadmap and then stay the course for success. Can you elaborate on those points?
Tracy Beavers: Absolutely, it goes back to your first question of how do I eliminate overwhelm? And so We begin with the end of my meaning. Okay, Nancy What do you want to offer your audience? What do you want your paid offers to be? What do you want your business to look like? Do you want to have a podcast? Do you want to have your own Facebook group? Do you want to create a course or a group coaching program? Do you want to use? Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, or do you just want to focus on one platform? And so, we kind of get those things mapped out of how do you want this thing to go? And keeping in mind what income do you want to make? You know, I have a lot of people that are like me, I started building my businesses alongside my full-time career because I had a full-time career that was well over six figures. And there was no way with our family that I could just walk away from that. and not make any money for a while. That wasn’t going to be fair to my husband and my children. And so, I help a lot of people do that. And so, one of the questions I ask them is, you know, what income are you looking to replace? And then we reverse engineer through and think, okay, if you’re trying to replace six figures a year, that probably isn’t going to happen in the first year out of the gate, but what could happen? What offers could we put together? [8:36]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Tracy Beavers: What marketing strategies do you need? And then we roadmap it. And I literally make a roadmap list when I work with my elite one-to-one clients. And you and I were, you know, if we, you, and I were in one-to-one coaching and we got off of a 45-minute session, I would say, okay, Nancy, I’m going to go in and update our notes. And I have a Google Doc and a Google folder where I keep all our work together. And on that Google Doc, I have road mapped out your entire business structure, so that I can see where some of the holes are. Like, do you have enough lead magnets? Do you have enough offers? What’s the pricing of those offers? And is that going to get you to the income you want? Do you have a podcast? Do we need to, all that stuff. And then after our session, I’m going to say, okay, Nancy, for the next two weeks until our next session, these are the four or five things I want you to focus on. You’re not gonna scroll off into any other direction. We’re going to focus on these things. And the other things we’re going to get to but that’s where the roadmap comes in handy. Because I don’t want you getting too far ahead of yourself and getting overwhelmed. [9:41]
Nancy Calabrese: Got it. How do you know? How do you know what to prioritize in a person’s roadmap?
Tracy Beavers: Great question. So looking at their entire business structure, I can determine and their needs. Like if they’re telling me I’m not making any money, okay, we’ve got to dive in and figure out some offers we can put together, some marketing we can put together to get some income coming in to get that pressure off of them. If they tell me, okay, Tracy, I have this idea for a course, I just went through a great course that teaches me how to build the course, but I don’t know how to create the pre-launch runway, the launch itself and the post-launch runway and have good results. And so what, what is the most emergent need for them? And then we, then we work from there. [10:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Interesting. You know, how long in you on average does it take for a business to turn around?
Tracy Beavers: Tell me what you mean by turn around.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, with your coaching, right? When do you see most of your clients get the light bulb going off? You know, like that they’re totally aware of the changes that need to be made and they’re implementing them.
Tracy Beavers: For some of my clients, it happens immediately. Immediately meaning within two or three sessions of us working together, which I meet with my clients every other week for a four-month timeframe. Because I find that four-month timeframe is the sweet spot of, you know, two months is too short, six months feels a little too long. But it doesn’t take them four months to get to their goal. Some of my clients have. You know, like one of their goals was I want to increase revenue for my next launch and my next launch is in 30 days. And we worked together, and their next launch produced $15,000 more in sales than it did in the previous launch. Um, I have, it does vary. It varies upon and it varies because everybody’s business is different. Everyone’s ability to act fast and quickly to get the results is different. Um, you know, if I’m working with somebody who is absolutely an entrepreneur and that’s all they’re doing and they don’t have a full-time job, they’re going to be able to act quickly and implement faster versus someone who has a full-time job in a family and needs to move a little slower. And then also, if I’m working with someone who’s been in business for a few years and they have a bankroll of income saved that they can use for expenses and do some things like hire out some things to get it done faster or you know, get, you know, hire the help that we need to make this thing move faster. So the end, and in the end, I can’t promise anybody results because that’s up to the individual person. But what I can do is map out their priorities, give them the awesome ideas, the creative solutions that they’re looking for, the out of the box thinking. And then it’s up to them to execute. [12:52]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. You’ve stated that business growth does not have to be a struggle. Can you expand on that?
Tracy Beavers: Yes, it doesn’t. I believe in building a business with authenticity and with ease. And what I mean by that is, you know, we think that some of the things we do in business have to be super fancy. That they have to have fireworks and sparklers attached to them and everything has to be over the top. And the best thing anybody’s ever seen in an online business. And that’s just not the truth. If we put too much pressure on ourselves out of the gate to have something perfect or to have all the bells and whistles with it, we’re never going to get started. And so, I help my clients find the ease in growing their business, primarily through that roadmap structure that I lead them through. And with me prioritizing, it brings a sense of calm where they feel like they can exhale and they’re like, okay, I’m going to focus on what Tracy has outlined for us. And the other thing I do for my clients that’s special is they have unlimited box or access to me in between our bi-weekly, our bi-monthly sessions. And what that allows them to do is also exhale and breathe. Because if we had a session today and you went in to execute on some of the things we talked about tomorrow, and you got stuck in how to question. [14:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Tracy Beavers: You don’t want to wait two weeks to talk to me. That’s not effective. That’s not effective coaching in my opinion. And so you could just simply hit the button on the Voxer app and say, okay, Tracy, we talked about, you know, executing this strategy. We talked about my creating two new lead magnets. Here are my ideas. I’m trying to name them, trying to get some graphics ready for them. I’m going to send you the graphics. I’m going to send you the wording I have so far. I need your feedback. And then, I look at it and I voxer you back immediately. Well, within 24 to 48 hours, if I’m traveling or, you know, something comes up, but most of the time it’s fairly immediately. And that allows you to have that comfort and guidance, you know, and not feel like you’re in this alone, wondering, am I creating something that nobody’s going to wanna buy or download? [15:18]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. You know, also in doing my research, you stated that you had to be honest the first year and building your online business was way more difficult than it looked from the outside. Why was that?
Tracy Beavers: Oh gosh, yes it was. So primarily because the online space is a completely different beast than anything I had ever been involved in. So, I have had businesses off and on, gosh, ever since, let me think, maybe in my 30s. And so, I’ve been an entrepreneur off and on for a long time. And then seven years ago, I decided to get really serious about it because I was fed up with corporate. And so, I hatched a plan to leave and I started building. And here I come in from a very successful marketing and sales career. Every business development role I had; I was very successful. I gained market share for companies like Crazy, built multi-million-dollar portfolios, had people coming to me all the time asking for advice. And I’m a highly educated, intelligent woman. And I thought, and much like you, I’m sure. We’re used to mastering things quickly and learning fast and producing. And I got into this online space, and I was like, what the heck is everybody talking? I felt like I needed a decoder ring, first of all, because what’s a funnel? What’s Kajabi? Oh my gosh, do I need a website? How do I build a website? What platform do I use? What’s a lead magnet? You know, what’s a sales funnel versus a list building funnel? [17:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Tracy Beavers: Do I need to run ads? How do I do that? I was just like; you’ve got to be kidding me. I felt like, I really was like, oh my gosh, I feel like I’m learning an entirely new language and skillset. And I was, because tech’s not my love language and in my 20-year career, I didn’t have to build a website. I didn’t have to, I could create something and record it, but I didn’t have to tuck it in somewhere for somebody else to access it, you know? I mean, it was just, what’s a landing page? I was like, what do you mean? What’s a landing page? They go, you have to build a landing page. I’m like, what is that? I don’t know. What’s that? So that’s how I was just like, oh my gosh. And then I thought, what have I gotten myself into? I was like, man, I just want to help people, but building this infrastructure in order to reach the people and be able to help them, that was a lot. [17:52]
Nancy Calabrese: What is that? Wow. Well, I can’t believe we’re up in time. What is the one takeaway you wanna leave the audience with?
Tracy Beavers: Oh, that’s such a good question. Let me think, because there’s so many things. The biggest thing that I will say that I want everybody to remember and audience lean in when I say this, being an entrepreneur is freaking hard. You cannot go it alone. It is a roller coaster of emotion. People that are, it doesn’t matter if you’re on day one or you’re on day fifth or year 15 and you’re making $80 million a year. Everybody feels imposter syndrome creep in, everybody feels doubt, everybody feels afraid, and the people that aren’t willing to talk about it, they’re just not telling you the truth. And so, what I highly recommend for everybody is to find a community of support, even if it’s a free community. My free Facebook group is a prime example of that. We have over 2000 entrepreneurs in there. It is free for you to come in and promote yourself anytime and post something that you need help with or something that you’re excited about and feel that community of love and support around you. When other people, when you say, my podcast downloads are in the toilet, somebody help me. And the podcast person will come and be like, yeah, let’s talk about it. Let’s have a coffee chat. How can I help you out? And so get into some communities where you don’t feel alone and know that it’s normal. And some days, I always say this at the end of every one of my live weekly trainings, some days everybody wants to buy what you’re selling and other days nobody can remember your name. [19:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Tracy Beavers: And so just don’t, just remember that’s totally normal and get into a community and don’t try to do this by yourself.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, being at the top is very lonely and you need somebody to, you know, you need a coach. And Tracy, you’re a great coach. How can my people find you?
Tracy Beavers: Yeah. You need a coach. For sure. Thank you for that, that’s so kind. So, they are welcome to connect with me: Tracybeavers.com is my website. I have a contact button there where they’re welcome to contact me, reach out by email. I’m easy to find on Facebook, I’m Tracy Lane Beavers. Connect with me as a friend, send me a DM, and then come join my free Facebook group. It’s called Be a Confident Entrepreneur, Get Visible and Grow Your Income. And you know, come join the party. Come join the party in the group. [20:29]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Now what’s the name of the Facebook group again?
Tracy Beavers: It’s called be a confident entrepreneur, get visible and grow your income.
Nancy Calabrese: Love it. Folks, take advantage of all of Tracy’s expertise. I know that I’m going to join the Facebook group and I think that’s a wonderful gift that you’re offering to entrepreneurs. You just don’t want to go it alone. So, thank you for joining me Tracy and I hope that we’ll do this again in the future. And until we speak again and folks, until I have my next podcast, make it an awesome sales day. [21:15]
by Nancy Calabrese | Mar 19, 2024 | Podcast
About Lisa Scotto: Lisa Scotto is the founder of LMS Growth Consulting, a Business Development Strategy company, and a Co-Founder of Your Cohort, women founded fractional C-suite executive team. Lisa brings to the table 20+ years of sales and marketing acumen, working for some of the largest entertainment and media brands. Past experiences include operationalizing an alternative revenue model for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, developing custom products at Crain Communications and the World Economic Forum, and initiating the sales and sponsorship team at Superfly X. Additionally, she has spent half of her career working at the Walt Disney Company in various sales and marketing roles.Philosophically, Lisa approaches sales as a discipline and believes that good salespeople don’t just sell – they add value. She is passionate about working with teams that are open to new ways of addressing growth challenges and are committed to driving results through collaborative, forward-thinking approaches.Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Lisa.
In this episode, Nancy and Lisa discuss the following:
- The importance of focusing on the big picture in sales strategies
- Sales as a discipline: consistency and adding value
- Research-driven approach to identifying prospect pain points
- Sales preparation as a key to success in sales
- Lisa’s journey from selling popcorn at Disney to consulting
- Transitioning from corporate roles to entrepreneurship during the pandemic
- Sales as relationship-building through meaningful conversations
- Intentionality in prospecting calls: planning and adaptability
- Lifelong learning and ongoing training in sales effectiveness
- Crafting high-power questions to make sales calls more engaging
Key Takeaways:
- I think in most organizations people do their day-to-day tasks and they’re not thinking about how this connects to the larger picture.
- I rely on extensive research, and this is not just a quick Google search five minutes before the meeting.
- My strengths naturally align with sales.
- Whoever’s asking the questions is in control.
“I do believe sales is a discipline in the sense that to have results, you need to show up consistently. And I like to use a gym as a reference, right? You don’t roll up to the gym one day and decide to lift 250 pounds. You must sort of show up every day or every four days a week, right, over a consistent amount of time for you to build that strength and to build that muscle, right? So that requires discipline. Just like sales, you can’t roll up to a client meeting without having done your research, without understanding what the client’s problem is. How can my specific service or product help with that problem? And I believe to be good at sales, you need to develop that as a discipline, right? You have to do that hard work, week in and week out to see the results because you never know which call or which prospect or which meeting is going to be fruitful, right? You must plant all the seeds, but you don’t know which ones will be fruitful in the end.” – LISA
“I like to really try to leave no stone unturned and uncover where there might be opportunities. So, I’ll give you an example. Let’s say I’m pitching a Fortune 100 company, and they just had their annual meeting. I might take the time to review the video of the annual meeting and really understand what is the CEO talking about, right? What is the senior-most leadership team talking about and does that relate to my product or service, right? […] And then try to relate that to my product or service. Another tip that I’ve done that actually scored me a fantastic meeting with a large organization was I looked at various job openings at a company and mapped based on the roles that they were hiring that they could use my product at the time, right, and scored a meeting with the senior level leadership team.So, it’s almost, again, with the lens of adding value, I think your research must go deeper than just rudimentary. It does really need to dig deeper so that you can best understand the client, where they’re coming from, what’s the conversation going on in their organizations.” – LISA
“There’s this sort of idea that in the past, we went to school and then our school chapter was completed, then we went to work, right? And that was sort of the progression of adult life. You went to school, then you went to work, and then that was sort of where your learning started and ended. Nowadays, there’s so much opportunity for people to learn, and not just about a function or, you know, a specific industry. There is an opportunity to learn across different industries and across functions. And I think that ultimately makes you a better salesperson, right? Like if again, if you could connect dots that other people aren’t connecting for clients, that’s the gold right there.” – LISA
Connect with Lisa Scotto:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Lisa Scato, founder of LMS Growth Consulting and designed partnership strategies that build audiences, boost brand awareness, and drive growth for blue chip organizations. In her latest endeavor, she’s taken on a more advisory role partnering with companies to transform their business models. Whether working with a startup or a Fortune 100 company, she employs a client-centric approach grounded in her strengths of building trust and discipline. Welcome to the show, Lisa. I’m so happy to have you.
Lisa Scotto: Thank you so much, Nancy. That was a wonderful intro. [1:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, you know, you’re a wonderful lady, so why not showcase you, right? So I read somewhere that you believe that when leading revenue growth strategies, you focus on the big picture, spotting organization opportunities that drive results. Why the big picture?
Lisa Scotto: Well, I think it’s important for everyone within an organization to connect themselves to that larger goal or that north star. And oftentimes I think what’s lost in organizations people is have their day to day that they’re doing and they’re not thinking about how this connects to the larger picture, how can I help in a more broad fashion. And I think it’s really important to really to have that 30,000 foot view and keep that in mind no matter where you fall within an organization. [2:14]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. And you also, I know that you approach sales as a discipline and believe that good salespeople don’t just sell, they add value. Talk more about that.
Lisa Scotto: So, I do believe sales is a discipline in the sense that to have results, you need to show up consistently. And I like to use a gym as a reference, right? You don’t roll up to the gym one day and decide to lift 250 pounds. You must sort of show up every day or every four days a week, right, over a consistent amount of time for you to build that strength and to build that muscle, right? So that requires discipline. Just like sales, you can’t roll up to a client meeting without having done your research, without understanding what the client’s problem is. How can my specific service or product help with that problem? And I believe to be good at sales, you need to develop that as a discipline, right? You have to do that hard work, week in and week out to see the results because you never know which call or which prospect or which meeting is going to be fruitful, right? You must plant all the seeds, but you don’t know which ones will actually be fruitful in the end. [3:35]
Nancy Calabrese: So how do you know what value a prospect would need? You know what I’m saying? Prospects are different. So how do you determine their value?
Lisa Scotto: I rely on extensive research, and this is not just a quick Google search five minutes before the meeting, which a lot of people, that’s what they consider research. I like to really try to leave no stone unturned and uncover where there might be opportunities. So, I’ll give you an example. Let’s say I’m pitching a Fortune 100 company, and they just had their annual meeting. I might take the time to review the video of the annual meeting and really understand what is the CEO talking about, right? What is the senior most leadership team talking about and does that relate to my product or service, right? Is the CEO talking about DE and I? Is the CEO talking about efficiency? Is the CEO talking about AI? Whatever it may be. And then try to relate that to my product or service. Another tip that I’ve done that actually scored me a fantastic meeting with a large organization was I looked at various different job openings at a company and mapped based on the roles that they were hiring that they could use my product at the time, right, and scored a meeting with the senior level leadership team. And what’s great about that is then you become also a resource potentially for those folks that could be in those roles, right? So, hey, this could be a great role for this person that I know that’s in my network, right? So, it’s almost, again, with the lens of adding value, I think your research must go deeper than just rudimentary. It does really need to dig deeper so that you can best understand the client, where they’re coming from, what’s the conversation going on in their organizations. [5:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Lisa Scotto: Right? Especially with the annual meeting. I mean, that one I find is a huge miss for individuals because they don’t think about it. And I used to tell my teams when I was in corporate America that you need to act like a defense attorney. And what I mean by that is you need to almost have the answers to the questions before you go into the meeting. So you shouldn’t be asking questions that you could easily find the answers to you should really be going in trying to uncover things that you really couldn’t find, right, via research or that, or you’re trying to ensure that the research that you’ve done is correct to weave a story about why your product or service can add value to their role, their company, you know, their organization. [6:29]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. How did you get involved in sales?
Lisa Scotto: That’s a great question. My first sales job, don’t laugh, was selling nuts and popcorn on Main Street USA at the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. From there, I was promoted to a sales role at Disney. I think it was just coincidental that I was selling popcorn and nuts. But my next role, which was in a more professional setting, less operational, was at Disney’s sales team. And from there, I took numerous jobs within Disney in various sales and marketing roles, and really just found my stride. I’m definitely a people person, definitely love to meet new people. I love to ask questions, right? So, my strengths, I think, naturally align with sales. [7:31]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, it must have been fun working at Disney.
Lisa Scotto: Oh, it was, it was black. It was very magical as we like to say.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, magical. No pun intended, right? And then what motivated you to start your own business?
Lisa Scotto: So great question. I had been doing sales and business development for over 20 years in various different organizations like Disney, like Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, as well as some not-for-profits. And really during the pandemic had decided that I really wanted to bet on myself and take all of this amazing knowledge that I had learned at various different organizations and really multiply that to help even more companies. I think when you work for one organization, right, you get to help that organization. But as a consultant, I get to help several organizations a year and really help them propel their growth much further than they thought they could by themselves. [8:31]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, wow. So, how do everyday conversations serve as building blocks of successful sales?
Lisa Scotto: Well, I think, and I love the title of this podcast, right? I think what people often miss about sales is that it is essentially a relationship, right? And people think, especially if they’re new to sales or if they’re uncomfortable selling, that I have a thing, I got to share the thing, right? I must talk a lot about the thing on the call and then that person may buy the thing. And really that’s not what sales is at all, right? Like what sales is, is you’re building a relationship with someone. And when I say sales, I mean sales in general. Like if you’re trying to sell your husband on some, an idea, right? If you’re trying to sell your kids on doing something, right? All of that essentially is sales and negotiation. So, in order to do that, you have to have a relationship with someone. You must build that relationship, build that trust. And to do that, you, you need to have several conversations, right? [9:43]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Lisa Scotto: You know, nothing that I’ve sold is being sold in one conversation, right? Many of the solutions I’ve sold, it takes several conversations to get people comfortable, to help them see that you are a trusted advisor and adding value. And I think that’s where those conversations and those relationships, that’s how they’re built. [10:08]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Cool. Now, you state that you should have an intention to keep in mind ahead of prospecting calls. What do you mean by that?
Lisa Scotto: Well, going back to the discipline sort of theme, I think you do need to be very intentional before you get on the phone with a prospect. So, what I mean is that oftentimes people, again, are not connecting the dots on behalf of the client. And as a salesperson, for you to show that value, you need to be helping them connect the dots and connecting the dots for them. And I think that’s what I mean by the intention. You may get on the phone and things may take a different turn. You must be nimble enough and agile enough that you can sort of make those moves and change tracks or change discussion. But I think before you go on a call, you should have an intention of, okay, this is how I think I’d like this call to go. I think that the client could use this service. I know we provide this service. I’m going to think about these case studies or examples of how the client can use this service, right? So being very intentional before you get on the phone. And again, this goes back to if you’ve ever mentored or had junior folks on your team, I think they think, right, when they look at senior leadership, senior leadership gets on a call and they’re sort of just winging it when as senior leaders, we have done all the prep work, right? We make it look like we’re winging it when we’re not winging it at all, right? But so, I think it’s important, especially as folks come up the ranks within sales to understand that necessary prep work that needs to go in order to make it look like you’re, you know, just very casual and relaxed and all that good stuff. [12:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, why do you feel, I mean, I feel like this, so maybe I’m putting words in your mouth. I feel it’s really important, no matter where you are in your sales career, to have ongoing training to sharpen your skills. What are your thoughts on that?
Lisa Scotto: Absolutely. Especially because things are changing so rapidly. The speed with which technology is changing and morphing requires that we become lifelong learners. I was on a call last week with an economist from the Wharton School, and there’s this sort of idea that in the past, we went to school and then our school chapter was completed, then we went to work, right? And that was sort of the progression of adult life. You went to school, then you went to work, and then that was sort of where your learning started and ended. Nowadays, there’s so much opportunity for people to learn, and not just about a function or, you know, a specific industry. There is an opportunity to learn across different industries and across functions. And I think that ultimately makes you a better salesperson, right? Like if again, if you could connect dots that other people aren’t connecting for clients, that’s the gold right there. [13:33]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, huh. What are your tips to make sales calls less awkward and more interesting?
Lisa Scotto: Oh, I love this one. My biggest tip is to ask high power questions or power questions, which means again, going back to research, you need to have done a lot of research to be able to craft really specific questions to get your prospects to open up and share more. I think I’ve witnessed a lot of sales calls where the salesperson, I like to say, throws up on the prospect. They show up, they speed through the deck, that’s inevitably way too long. So, it’s a half hour call, 20 minutes, the salesperson has spoken, and 10 minutes are left for the client to say something and ask questions, and then the call’s over. I’ve always said that should be a good thing completely in the reverse, right? If you have a half hour, right? If you have a half hour call, you should be talking five minutes out of the 30 minutes as the salesperson. [14:45]
Nancy Calabrese: I agree. Yeah. Yep, no, I totally agree. And I think it’s the quality of the questions that you ask, and it should be directed towards them, what their issues are and uncover their pain points. And tying in with this a little bit, is it more difficult for women to feel comfortable and confident in their sales endeavors versus men?
Lisa Scotto: That’s so interesting you say that. I think it is common for women to not be as comfortable. And that’s where I would lean into the research and how you’re asking your questions. So, in order for you to be more confident, no matter who you are, you need to know what you’re talking about, right? You need to know your prospect and you need to be comfortable asking the questions. Whoever’s asking the questions is in control. [15:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Lisa Scotto: And if that applies, like think about an adult and a child, think about a teacher and a student, think about, right? Whoever is asking the questions is the one that’s in control of the conversation. So if you can master the confidence of asking those questions, then you’ll be in control of the conversation. Now, inevitably, and I’m sure this has happened to you, you get up on a call with a prospect and they are what I like to call a wet noodle. They don’t want to answer, right? No matter what you’re trying, they’re answering with yes or no answers. They’re not interested. In those situations, I have pulled the takeaway. And I will say, it sounds like now is not a great time for us to connect. Maybe we can connect at another time. Do these times next week work for you? And that does one of two things. One, it will change the sort of energy of the conversation right there then. [16:37]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Lisa Scotto: Or two, it will give you sort of more time for the prospect to feel more comfortable because maybe it isn’t a great day for them, right? Maybe they just got off a call with their boss and got some bad news. You don’t know. So again, but you’re using question, even in that example, right? I’m using a question to sort of shift the energy, to change the conversation, to put the control back in my court, which essentially is what you want. [17:07]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. We call that here negative reversing. Gee, I’m kind of sensing that today might not be the day for the call. I mean, I don’t know if I’m right, but is it true? And that you want to deliberately change, you want to get to the truth. That’s the bottom line, right? If they’re not interested, they’re not interested, that’s okay. We’re almost up with time but tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Lisa Scotto: Yes, love it. Right. Correct. Oh goodness. I think something that’s true that no one agree, almost nobody agrees with me on, especially if they’re embarking on a sales journey or a proactive sales journey, is that reducing and being very deliberate about who you’re going after will yield better results than just being super broad and unintentional. So, I’ll give you an example. Oftentimes professional services firms or agencies, creative agencies, marketing agencies, often they can service multiple different types of clients, right? Like they can do creative for any industry. They can do creative for any discipline, right? That sort of thing. However, when you’re trying to be proactive with your sales approach or proactive with your business development approach, being intentional and picking a lane becomes highly important because you can’t boil the ocean as a salesperson, right? And if you have more guardrails and more intention about who you’re going after, you could be more strategic about how you go after them. So, you can have better case studies, you can have better examples, you can have a better prospecting email outreach that really talks to their pain points versus being more general and broader. And inevitably I always get pushback on that. Because it is a bit counterintuitive, but that’s something that I’d say some people don’t necessarily agree with me on. [19:03]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, that’s okay. You can stand out of the crowd, right? You don’t wanna do what everybody else is doing, right? Okay, so we are up with time. I love speaking with you. How can my audience find you?
Lisa Scotto: Exactly. So I am on LinkedIn, Lisa Scotto, which is LinkedIn. I own LMS Growth Consulting, as Nancy said. And actually in the new year, I am working on a digital course on business development, specifically for B2B professional services and creative agencies and things like that. And there you could find me at bit.ly, B-I-T dot L-Y backslash S, G, U, connect, that’s sales glow up. So S is in Sam, G is in George, U is in Universe, connect. So look forward to seeing you there. [20:05]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, Lisa, you’re a powerhouse. A lot of fun. And look, folks, listen to the expert here. Reach out to her. She is a wealth of knowledge. And I’m wishing you all an exceptional sales day. And Lisa, we’ve got to do this again sometime. Would you come back?
Lisa Scotto: Thank you, Nancy. This was great. Yes, I would love to Nancy. Thank you.
Nancy Calabrese: You’re very welcome. Okay guys, see you next time. [20:36]
by Nancy Calabrese | Mar 14, 2024 | Podcast
About Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau are the award-winning and bestselling authors of The Story of French, The Story of Spanish, and the bestselling Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong. Julie Barlow is the author of 8 nonfiction books. In 2023, Julie published a comprehensive guide to self-employment with her husband and writing partner, Jean-Benoit Nadeau. GOING SOLO: Everything You Need to Start Your Business and Succeed as Your Own Boss, with Jean-Benoît Nadeau, drawing on the couple’s three decades of experience as freelance writers. Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and a political science graduate of McGill University, Jean-Benoît Nadeau once held a job for 29 days and has been self-employed for 35 years. A regular reporter and columnist for L’actualité (Canada’s leading national French magazine), he has also been a past contributor to the Report on Business Magazine. He has signed papers for various American, Canadian, and French publications. His freelancer status has allowed him to live in various venues like Phoenix, Toronto, Paris, and Montreal and undertake radio, film, and book projects, some of which with his spouse and partner Julie Barlow. They currently work as journalists based in Canada. He also published “The Story of French,” “The Story of Spanish,” and “The Bonjour Effect: The Secret Codes of French Conversation Revealed. ” Their books have been translated into French, Dutch, Mandarin, and Japanese. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Julie and Jean-Benoît.
In this episode, Nancy, Julie, and Jean discuss the following:
- Writers’ transition from a creative role to the business aspect
- The key messages in “Going Solo”
- Working more hours vs. thinking differently
- The importance of understanding the client’s expectations and needs
- The value of negotiating on multiple levels simultaneously
- The significance of saying “no” as a critical term in negotiations
- Constructive refusal tips: polite ways to decline offers
Key Takeaways:
- I’m a writer and a creator, but I’m also a business person, and I realized that I was the hierarchical equal of my client.
- You won’t earn more if you work more; you’ll earn more if you think things differently.
- The important thing that you do when you want to go solo is to understand your purpose and to love what you want to do.
- You immediately have intellectual property whenever you write something definite and not a list.
“The book is really for anybody who wants to start a business. But we’re working from experience and maybe addressing more people in the creative field. Mind you, starting a business is creative, period. And I think one of the issues probably applies to all entrepreneurs. You know, you want to do something, be self-employed, and work from your passion. And then you very quickly must understand that it’s a business. And it’s hard for people to switch from being passionate about something to being business-like. And so, the book takes everybody through from the very beginning, writing your business plan through negotiation and operations and management and all the things you need to understand to make your passion make a living for you.” – JULIE
“It depends on whom you sell. Sometimes, the market that you have is very small. In effect, when we’re magazine writers like us, we sell to about five or six publications. A lot of people publish these publications. But the person we must convince, the gatekeeper, is the editor-in-chief. And so, in that case, convincing them is putting together what we call the ingredients of a good idea, what’s in it for them, what’s so special about it. Sometimes, we have clients who are completely unknown to us. Some people want us to write a book on them. And so, in that case, most of the selling is just teaching the person how our business works because they have no clue. And if we do a good job there, we will have a client that will understand better where they will evolve.” – JEAN
“The book is about communication, particularly understanding your client’s expectations and needs. So, for instance, we have people who want writing projects who don’t really understand what involved the time and the work and what is involved in putting together some writing. So, part of our job is finding out how much they understand. And it’s important to do that work sort of upstream from signing a contract with somebody and because it’s all going to figure into how much you charge for it.” – JULIE
“I would say that you will quickly be busy once you have your business going. A very important thing is figuring out your purpose. Julie alluded to that. But you know, if you start a school for social dancing, you’re not going to make all the hundreds of little decisions, whether your purpose is to start a franchise of school dancing or have your clients win the Olympics of social dancing or create a shoe for social dancing. You will not choose your clients in the same way as your venue, and you won’t publicize in the same way. So, the idea of having a purpose, which is what you are doing this for, is very important. It’s the essence of a business plan, which is not a 200-page document but a really, really a document about yourself. And knowing thyself better is the old Socrates motto, really applies to self-employed people.” – JEAN
Connect with Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau, bestselling authors and journalists who have been running their own writing business for over three decades. Together and separately, they have published over 10 plus books, including their new book, Going Solo, everything you need to know to start your business and succeed as your own boss. Julie and John Benoit have spoken to audiences across Canada, the US, in Europe, and Japan. Their work has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, the International Herald Tribune, Frances L Express at the Courier International and more. Welcome to the show. I am so excited to have you both. Let’s get started.
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Yes.
Julie Barlow: Thanks. [1:19]
Nancy Calabrese: Thank you. So, you know, starting a business is exciting, but also scary, right? Wouldn’t you agree? Um, yeah, like what prompted you to write this book?
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Oh yeah. Well, I was a, it started a long time ago, I was a young journalist and I wanted to share my experience of realizing that yes, I’m a writer and a creator, but I’m also a business. And being a business, I changed my hard disk and realized that I was the hierarchical equal of my client. My client was not my boss, you know? [2:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: That’s an important realization.
Julie Barlow: It’s a tricky thing. I mean, the book is really for anybody who wants to start a business. But we’re working from experience and maybe addressing a little more people who are in the creative field. Mind you, starting a business is creative, period. And I think one of the issues is probably applies to all entrepreneurs. You know, you want to be, you want to do something, be self-employed and work from your passion. And then you very quickly must come to an understanding that it’s a business. And it’s hard for people to switch from the mindset of being passionate about something to being business-like about something. And so, the book really takes everybody through from the very beginning, writing your business plan all the way through negotiation and operations and management and all the things you need to understand to make your passion make a living for you. [2:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Well, so what are the messages in going solo? What do you want to get across to the audience?
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Well, one of the main ideas is even if you go into, people often go in the business on their own account because they’re passionate about something whether it’s writing or it’s dog grooming or graphic design but at one point you’re not going to earn more if you work more you’re going to earn more if you think things differently it’s something we in an image we use in the book but the person who earns $300,000 a year doesn’t work 10 times more than the person who earns 30,000.
Julie Barlow: It doesn’t have too anyway.
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Yeah, you sort of develop what we call multipliers. In our business for example we don’t sell, or it’s true for all artists, we don’t sell a text, we sell the rights to that text and it’s not the same thing because if you sell rights to a text then you can sell the same rights to someone else. So that’s a multiplier. [4:13]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Huh. You know, we’re all in sales, whether people want to believe it or not in every, in every role in our lives, right? We’re all looking to persuade someone to do something that you’d like to get done. And that includes business owners. And what are some of the psychological hurdles to selling that you’ve found?
Julie Barlow: Well, I think one of the big things that we spend, we spend, we devote two total chapters to negotiation. It’s hard for people to learn to think, people who are selling in our context as entrepreneurs, to think like the boss and go from thinking of clients as the boss to clients, to you being the boss. And so, a lot of the book is directed towards helping people figure out how to think like that in practice. And that means we have these chapters on negotiation. For starters, it means learning to understand how you can win your negotiations, not necessarily always by getting the best price. That’s a big theme through the book. [5:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. So, you give me an example.
Julie Barlow: So, for instance, there are a lot of things that you can put on the table that will make a sale ultimately productive for everybody. I mean, the idea is that you want to give your client a solution and that means that it might be, there may be other things such as the conditions you’re working in, how quickly they’re going to pay, the location, whether you must move for it to do the work or not, extra work, ownership, with John just mentioned, you know, whether I keep the rights to my creativity or whether I give some kind of exclusivity. All these things enter into what you’re trying to achieve with your client. And that’s a big part of learning how to negotiate and not come out feeling like you’ve lost your negotiation because you didn’t get the highest price. [6:14]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. How do you recommend creating a sales message to your audience, to your clients?
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: It depends to whom you sell. Sometimes the market that you have is very small. In effect, when we’re magazine writers, like us, for example, we sell to about five or six publications, really. These publications are published to a lot of people. But the person we must convince, the gatekeeper, is the editor-in-chief. And so, in that case, convincing them is putting together what we call the ingredients of a good idea, what’s in it for them, what’s so special about it. Sometimes we have clients that are completely unknown in the business. There are people who want us to write a book on them. And so, in that case, a lot of the selling is just teaching the person how our business works because they have no clue. And if we do a good job there, we will have a client that will understand better where they will evolve. [7:42]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: And at the same time, we run the risk of losing the business because they might say, oh, this is not for me, but maybe it’s a good thing because who wants a client that it was going to be dissatisfied and reluctant in the end. [7:57]
Julie Barlow: One of the other big things in the book is communication, and in particular, understanding your client’s expectations as well as their needs. So, for instance, do they know, as John mentioned, do they understand the business? We have people who want writing projects, who don’t really understand what involved the time and the work and what is involved in putting together some kind of writing. So, part of our job is finding out how much they understand. And yeah, and so, you know, it’s important to do that work sort of upstream from signing a contract with somebody and because it’s all going to figure into how much you charge for it. [8:40]
Nancy Calabrese: So how do you create the buzz though about what you’re doing? You’re going solo. What do you want to do to create that interest and get the word out there?
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Well, it depends on a lot if your market is a well-established market or a completely new market. Well, for example, nowadays being a website designer is a pretty established market. So, you, you have to present things a lot differently from when you, people, what you wanted to be a web designer 20 – 25 years ago, when the thing was completely new. If you are in an established market, your resume, who you are makes a difference, the quality of your ideas. And if you are involved trying to start something that’s quite new, you must do a lot more teaching to people and that means establishing a presence and writing blogs and all that just to establish even the market. [9:49]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Huh, you know, again, there’s so many different components that go into running a business, right? Should you incorporate? What are the expenses you can deduct? Do you need a website? These are things that I guess we all need help with, especially when first launching a business, is your recommendation when you do go solo to pick an industry that is not highly saturated?
Julie Barlow: I think that the important thing that you do when you want to go solo is to understand your purpose and to really love what you want to do. So, I would never recommend that somebody choose a business, choose an industry in function of how many people are working in it. The fact of the matter is it’s a bit like I sometimes think of places where you go shopping and there’ll be a, in a city there’ll be a street with a whole bunch of stores that sell the same thing. [10:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Julie Barlow: And the fact of the matter is that they all work together, and they attract a certain clientele. And in writing, I mean, there’s a lot of writing out there. I would never tell somebody not to start a writing career. There’s a lot of need for writers. The important thing is doing your market research and understanding who and how you can reach the people that you want to reach. And then I guess in our business, a lot of the way that we, you know, to answer, come back to your previous question, a lot of the way we reach those clients is by crafting pitches carefully that are geared towards whatever it is that they want to do in terms of negotiation or other aspects. [11:36]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, you know, again, you start your business, you’re going to be in a position to negotiate contracts. What are some tips that you have for those of us that are just starting out? Well, negotiation is one.
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Yeah, well negotiating you really have to be able to understand that you negotiate on six levels at the same time. You negotiate the job, you negotiate conditions, negotiate the price obviously, ownership, you negotiate expenses and terms. You know, a $50,000 or a $5,000 contract, let’s say if you’re starting, $5,000 contract is a big deal. You know if you’re paid three months later, it’s no good, you know? What you want is to be paid a little bit at signature, a quarter or a third, and then a little bit in the middle of the job and on acceptance, you know? That is a lot better than three months later for the same money. So, those are the kinds of things that you must, to look at, conditions. I mean, do you, do you, a typical problem that, uh, self-employed people have is that they deal with the client. And 12 people have a say in what they’re doing. [13:13]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: So you don’t want to handle the opinion of 12 persons. So, an important condition to negotiate is that the client delegates one representative that will handle all the comments internally and arbitrate them so that you will get a solid opinion without contradictions. That increases the quality of the work and the time for execution by sometimes a factor of 10 because you, and this has, and you, so in effect, you’re earning, if you do that, you’re earning more per hour per day, even if actually you have not managed to move them on, to budge them on the price, but you’re going to execute it with a lot more ease. So, all these aspects are, all these aspects matter. Ownership, you know, you have a lot of your listeners that deal with intellectual property. You know, whenever you write something that’s definite and is not a list, you immediately have intellectual property. So, the earnings are not going to be the same if you, if you sell it for good without possibility of reusing it, or if the client just gets a right on first use, which is not the same thing. We, Julie and I recycle our contents all the time. And why we can do that is because we manage to retain minimally the right to use our own stuff. [14:57]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Huh.
Julie Barlow: In a different form. So, we take a book and make a magazine or take a magazine and make a book or a radio show. And we’ve recently been working on TV series.
Nancy Calabrese: Why is it important for business owners to say no and no one to say no?
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Oh, it’s because it’s the most important term in any negotiation. And no is not a refusal necessarily. It just means that what’s being said to you is not quite acceptable. You know, there’s that old motto that the client is always right. Well, no. At the time of negotiation, the client is often wrong. [15:45]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. I agree.
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: There are polite ways of saying no. You can say it’s too long, it’s too short.
Julie Barlow: I don’t understand the order.
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Yeah, it’s not clear.
Julie Barlow: The order is not realistic. Deadline, yeah, deadline, job doesn’t, you can say the job doesn’t pay enough.
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Yeah, you’re not interested in the form it is. As you know someone else who would be doing, you don’t have the time, the deadline is too short. Those are all ways of saying no that are constructive because they are explanatory and if the client really wants you to do it, is often capable of modifying their criteria naturally. [16:31]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Do you have any best practices for promoting what we do on the web?
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Oh, I would say that the most important thing is not overdoing it. Nowadays, we can do a lot with…
Julie Barlow: Social media, Julie. Yes, but I guess one of the more supports, I mean, it’s very hard now, one of the lessons of the book is it’s very hard for people to decide where to start, where to stop, how to limit what they’re doing. I mean, it just sounds, it’s enormous. You can get into social media and start working on many platforms at the same time. Our advice with experience over the years. [17:14]
Nancy Calabrese: What’s the formula though? What do you recommend? How many posts are, you know, a good number to post each week?
Julie Barlow: You know, I think it depends on a little bit on what you’re promoting. Right now, for instance, for this book I promote on LinkedIn, and I post probably four times a week, sometimes five days a week, sometimes just one. I mean, you must have something interesting to say online. You can’t be sort of online on a forum you know, singing your own praises every time you go online. So, it’s good to join a conversation. It’s good to share information with your readers related to the book, sometimes not related to the book, just to help people because again, what people are looking for are solutions to the problems in their everyday life. Obviously, I want them to come back and buy the book, but you know, I want to be helpful. I want them to know that I’m a source that can help them with what they’re doing. [18:13]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well, I can’t believe we’re up in time. What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Jean-Benoît Nadeau: I would say that once you have your business going, you’re going to be busy soon, quickly. A very important thing is figuring out your purpose. Julie alluded to that. But you know, if you start a school for social dancing, you’re not going to take all the hundreds of little decisions whether if your purpose is to start a franchise of school dancing or have your clients win the Olympics of social dancing or create a shoe for social dancing. You will not choose your clients in the same way, your venue, you’re not going to publicize in the same way. So, the idea of having a purpose, what are you doing this for, is very, very important. It’s the essence of a business plan, which is not a 200-page document, but is a really, really a document about yourself, really. And knowing thyself better is the old Socrates motto, really applies to self-employed people. [19:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, so how can my people find you?
Julie Barlow: The book is available on Amazon. We have two versions. We’re based in Montreal, so we have a Canadian edition with a little Canadian flag in the corner and the US edition with them. All bookstores have it. Our website, Nadeau Barlow, people can reach us there, N-A-D-E-A-U-B-A-R-L-O-W.com. And people can find us there. Or of course, we’re on LinkedIn. Easy to find. [20:12]
Nancy Calabrese: You know, everyone out there, this couple is fascinating. And for all of you thinking about starting your business or maybe just having started the business, I think the book is a great read with great recommendations. And even if you have an established business, you know, there might be some points in there that you’re not considering. So, until we speak again, first, I want to thank you both for being on the show and sharing your expertise and people take advantage of their wisdom. They’re a fascinating couple. And I know they’d be happy to help you buy that book too. And until we speak again, make it an awesome sales day. [20:59]
by Nancy Calabrese | Mar 12, 2024 | Podcast
About Hilary Swan: Hilary Swan is the Founder and Principal Consultant at Rebel Scout Consulting, which supports founders and CEOs without a sales leader during growth or transition as a fractional VP of sales/sales leader. Hilary has spent 14 years working for global sales organizations and has carried the bag, launched new products, led sales teams, and knows what good looks like and how to get you there. The wildly competitive culture of sales is where Hilary thrived, and this proved to be accurate as she hustled her way through the ranks and reached sales leadership, where she most recently led a $18M business over three divisions in one of the country’s most competitive industries and markets. Hilary has had a burning desire to feed her entrepreneurial spirit and coveted passion for developing people to win every step of the way. Still, she didn’t quite know how to share her wealth of knowledge and expertise until now. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Hilary.
In this episode, Nancy and Hilary discuss the following:
- Hilary’s background and motivation for starting Rebel Scout Consulting
- The concept of fractional sales leadership and how it supports startups and small businesses
- Supporting startups and small businesses in the absence of sales teams
- The importance of embracing sales as a positive force
- The positive nature of sales
Key Takeaways:
- I do not engage with any company for under three months, ideally six months.
- In the majority of startups and small businesses, all the sales are typically made by the founder or, in small business cases, the president or CEO of the company.
- I had always wanted to do something on my own.
- It’s interesting how you can be fueled by the sales piece and the environment in which you sell.
“I was in inside and outside sales, selling many different things. I was in sales leadership. I’d always wanted to do something on my own. I’m not surrounded by a ton of entrepreneurs or people who own their own businesses per se, but I was always so intrigued by it. So, I had been approached about a head of sales role with a startup, which was not right for me then. But it really got me researching what this all looks like in the startup world and where these people get the money. Do they make money? How many of these ideas are good? The failure rates are high. So, I had a, you know, cautionary risk. I researched, but I felt like I hit a crossroads. So, the company that I was working for at the time had been acquired, and I should have been very appreciative because I was going to be moving into a new leadership role, which was a bit of a promotion on paper. I was so not inspired by it. I just, the thought of having to continue to do this or do something in this role was just not, you know, lighting the fire. And so, I felt like this was the time. This is a clean cut to jump two feet in. For those who dabble in starting something while they have a full-time role, it doesn’t work for me personally. And so, I felt it was very clear that you have this job opportunity in front of you, and you should be so excited. It’s more money, more responsibility, a bigger role, and I couldn’t be less excited. I felt like that was my sign just to rip the bandaid off and do it. And so, I did it. And thankfully, it is working out very well. But yeah, it takes a lot to do that step.” – HILARY
“The fractional model is, I don’t want to say it’s not new, but it’s on the newer side and exactly what it sounds like. It’s a fraction, so you’re getting a fraction of the time of an executive or a leadership. So, what it really should feel like is for startups and small businesses, they’re getting what they need. So, this is across many different specialties. You’ll see operations HR. You’ll see the Chief of Staff. And so, what it is that you’re getting that team member for, to be honest, is also a fraction of the cost likely. And you need their expertise and their membership on your executive team. But having most of these roles filled costs a lot of money. So, what is not better than to tap somebody at a fractional? Engagement where you don’t have to bring them on as a W-2 or with the health benefits or 401k. It really is, and I know consulting is in the name of my business, but it’s not the consultant in the traditional sense of projects; they do all the stuff and then leave. You really, really should feel like you have a team member on your team with this fractional leader.” – HILARY
“We’re all in sales, and that is okay. That’s a great thing. So, the faster you can embrace that and feel comfortable with how to interact with people so that you can get across to them how you can help and serve them with whatever you’re selling or doing, the better it will be. So lean into it. It’s a positive thing.” – HILARY
Connect with Hilary Swan:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
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Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with a human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Hilary Swan, the founder of Rebel Scout Consulting, a provider of fractional sales leadership services to startups and small businesses. From founder-led sales support, sales team buildouts, growth strategy, and fractional head, Rebel Scout Consulting customizes every engagement to meet the founder and CEO where they are in their growth journey. The wildly competitive culture of sales is where Hillary thrives, and this proved to be true as she hustled her way through the ranks and reach sales leadership where she most recently led an $18 million business with over three divisions in one of the most competitive industries and markets in the country. Awesome job. Welcome to the show, Hillary. I love anything that has to do with sales.
Hilary Swan: Thank you for having me, Nancy. [1:23]
Nancy Calabrese: So, I’m always interested in where people come from, what got you into sales and what made you start your own company.
Hilary Swan: Yeah, good question. So, I had a job, all my internships in college happened to be in the entertainment industry. So, I came out of college with a job with MTV Viacom, which would be most college grads dream jobs. And it was, I thought. But in approaching graduation, I was realizing that this is a job, not a career and I was going to have to live at home and a lot of things didn’t feel right about it. So, I figured I had a little bit of time. This was the March before graduation. I’m going to look for a job. And if not, I have one, great. So, there was a job there at my university and a little company that some may know called Medtronic, which happens to be a global medical device company, had just acquired a small a company out in California that sold diabetes insulin pumps and they were building at an inside sales division. So, I met with the head of sales, interviewed, fast forward, I accepted my first job out of school with an inside sales team out in California. So, from there, that’s where I got my start and worked my way up in sales. [2:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. And what motivated you to start your own company?
Hilary Swan: So yeah, it’s a big jump into it. So I was in inside sales, outside sales, sold a ton of different things. I was in sales leadership. I’d always wanted to do something on my own. I’m not surrounded by a ton of entrepreneurs or people who own their own businesses per se, but I was always so intrigued by it. And so, I had been approached about a head of sales role with a startup, which at the time was not right for me. But it really got me doing some research into what this all looks like in the startup world and where do these people get the money? Do they make money? How many of these ideas are good? The failure rates are high. So, I had a, you know, cautionary risk, did some research, but I really felt like I hit a crossroad. So, the company that I was working for at the time had been acquired and really, I should have been very appreciative because I was going to be moving into a new leadership role, which really on paper was a bit of a promotion. I was so not inspired by it. I just, the thought of having to continue to do this or do something in this role was just not, you know, lighting the fire. [4:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Hilary Swan: And so, I felt like, you know, this is the time. This is a clean cut to jump two feet in. Those who dabble in starting something while they have a full-time role, you know, it doesn’t, personally, it didn’t work for me. And so, I felt like it was a very clear, you have this job opportunity in front of you, you should be so excited. It’s more money, it’s more responsibility, it’s a bigger role, and I couldn’t be less excited. [4:52]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Hilary Swan: So, I felt like that was my sign to just rip the bandaid off and do it. And so, I did it. And thankfully it is working out very well. But yeah, it takes a lot to do that step.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Bravo! Well, you know, as I said before we started, it takes a lot of courage to go out on your own, right? And the early days when I started my own business, I had a tick on my face because, you know, it was all up to me to make business happen. Yeah. So, what is fractional sales leadership?
Hilary Swan: So, the model of fractional is really, I don’t want to say it’s not new, but it’s on the newer side, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s a fraction, so you’re getting a fraction of the time of an executive or a leadership. So, what it really should feel like is for startups and small businesses, they’re getting what they need. So, this is across many different specialties. You’ll see operations, HR. You’ll see Chief of Staff. And so, what it is that you’re getting that team member for, to be honest, also a fraction of the cost likely. And you need their expertise, and you need their membership on your executive team. But it costs a lot of money to have most of these roles filled. So, what not better than to tap somebody at a fractional? engagement where you don’t have to bring them on as a W-2 or with the health benefits or 401k. It really is and I know consulting is in the name of my business, but it’s not the consultant in the traditional sense of projects and they do all the stuff and then they leave. You really, really should feel like you have a team member on your team with this fractional leader. [6:54]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Right. So how many companies can you work with at one time?
Hilary Swan: Great question. So, it does vary. And I say that because every engagement is different. So, there are some startups that I’m currently supporting and simply an advisory role. So, we meet once or twice a week for an hour or two, and we just stay laser focused on pipeline review, deal flow, upcoming meetings, objectives that they’re really running into. And that’s, you know, a little bit of a light version. You know, we don’t. They either can’t afford or don’t need somebody, but equally they need somebody to bounce off from a sales and growth perspective. Am I doing something wrong? Is this right? Can I be doing more? All the way up to there are startups that I support where the sales team reports to me and I report to the CEO. So, it does vary. I tell people it’s anywhere from three to eight clients at a time. And I know that does sound like a range, but you can see how based on the engagement and support that it can vary. [8:00]
Nancy Calabrese: And how long are most of the assignments for?
Hilary Swan: So, I do not engage with any company for less than three months, ideally six months. But what tends to happen is we do that six months and then we re-engage for another six months. So, on average, it’s six to 12 months. And then truly as the company grows, which is the goal, you do need somebody full, full time. And that’s where we take that final step and I help the CEO or founder to really hire the right head of sales to be, you know, 150%. [8:40]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. I mean, do you target certain industries?
Hilary Swan: So the only industry I currently do not support is B2C. So given my background, I do have the ability to support a lot of different industries and you know, SaaS, tech, FinTech, MedTech. So that’s really the only area, the B2C piece, where I say, you know what, I’m not your gal. You know, I’m not, it’s not my area of expertise. And to be honest, and Nancy, probably know this, you know, that B2C really is typically very marketing heavy. And so, it’s just not the, not what I support. [9:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, I mean, we play in the B2B space. Very rarely will we do B2C. And in a case like that, the client has to provide us with the leads because then you’ve got to play around with the do not call lists and get them scrubbed. Yeah. So, talk a little bit about what you do and how it supports startups and small businesses.
Hilary Swan: Yeah, so the majority of startups and small businesses, all the sales typically is being done by the founder or the, in small businesses case, president or CEO of the company. They don’t have sales teams and maybe they tap somebody like you, Nancy, to help with that, but they really are taking the top of funnel opportunities and working them through. And the very fact of the matter is, statistically, they do not have any sales experience. So how do you possibly grow something if you have no tactical, strategical sales experience? And then on top of it, they don’t have, again, statistically, there’s an exception to every rule, but really that growth strategy. It sounds good in theory. You’ve obviously felt compelled enough to jump two feet in to start your own startup as you, you know, we had talked about before. So, you really feel passionate about what you’re doing, but guess what? Not everybody’s going to feel passionate about it. So how do you truly sell? So that’s where I hop in because so many of these founders, despite their idea of being good or bad, are just really throwing spaghetti at the wall. There’s not a lot of strategy. They don’t understand the sales process. Um, so what I do is again, starting. [11:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Hilary Swan: You know, given that I’m engaged early on, helping that founder. What is the discovery question? Why does it matter? What should we be asking? That whole stakeholder management piece, who should I be talking to? Who should I be targeting? Why? What are the problems that we solve by stakeholder? So really getting into the weeds, and the reason that this is also important is because often. They are on to something. They have a good idea. They’ve sold it likely to investors because even if you’re pre-seed, somebody’s giving you a little bit of money. So how do we help scale this? Because you’re on to something. So let me kind of reverse engineer and get everything pen to paper. Because in time, if we’re hiring out salespeople and I’m helping them to build a true process, I must understand how their brain works. So, it’s really hopping in and kind of being their wing person and getting them where they can truly sell and handle objections. So like when somebody, you know, you think you have it and then we talk and they go, yeah, and they’re not getting back to me. Well, how did you leave it? So, all the way up to like I shared, you know, there’s a sales team or a few salespeople and their coaching and helping them grow and build their pipeline and move those opportunities through and close. So, it’s a range, but you can see where those plug in. [12:50]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, your company name jumps out to me. How did you come up with the company name?
Hilary Swan: So I’m glad it jumps out at you. That was my hope. So, as I’m sure you get sometimes with sales, it can be super cringy. People hear, nobody wants to be sold to, and they hear sales, and it’s just, they come a little guarded. But guess what? The fact of the matter is anybody who owns a business must be focused on sales and growth. It’s just what it is. So, I wanted something that was approachable. I wanted them to truly feel like engaging with a business that would be fractional head of sales that, you know, I’m a guide or as my sales team growth, as my leadership team grows out in sales, we are guides and that it’s, um, it’s not a cringy, you know, used car salesman type piece that so the rebel piece is the point of, you know, it takes a lot to do this. You know, you got to break the rules and a lot of people doing their own thing or doing a startup or have a small business, they’re swimming upstream. It’s the majority of us that are doing this. And the Scout piece really, really leaning into, I’ve done it, I continue to do it and continue to grow and learn and let me guide you through this. So, I was hoping that it would resonate for people when it came to that. [14:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. Well, it definitely, the rebel, you know, when I saw rebel, I mean, you don’t seem like a rebel, but I guess you are, Hillary. Ha ha ha!
Hilary Swan: Yeah. I think for the good and the bad, I think yeah. I think I have, and equally it is kind of a hat tip to my CEO and founders that I work with.
Nancy Calabrese: I think that’s really great. Is there a story that the audience would find interesting?
Hilary Swan: Specifically, about myself or about the company?
Nancy Calabrese: Anything. Sales, yourself.
Hilary Swan: Hmm, that’s a good question. Let’s see. I will say a couple of things that are a little bit unique that I think bring maybe the rebel a little bit full circle. So, I grew up in New Jersey and I went to school in Ohio, and I moved to California as I shared after adulthood. I love to travel. I love new things. I love interacting with people. I mean that it feeds me. So that’s where I really think that the sales piece has just continued to be the right journey for myself. From a career perspective with the sales, I mean it’s so interesting the types of places that I’ve sold into. I’ve sold into a lot of my background is specifically in healthcare. [15:49]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Hilary Swan: And it’s just wild, the types of people and the things that you experience. I mean, one of the hospitals that I supported, and my team has previously supported is LA County, which is the busiest ED in the entire country. I mean, there’s documentaries about it. So, I just, it’s, it’s interesting how you can be fueled, not only in the sales piece, but the environment in which you sell into. And so, some people, as you asked about, how did you get here? I think you had shared before, but I think that’s being flexible and genuinely enjoying the interacting with all different types of people and that sales piece, figuring out how you plug in to help them. It’s really my favorite part of it all. [16:40]
Nancy Calabrese: Listen, sales is my drug. I can’t get enough of it. Right. I can’t get enough of it. Um, we, uh, we believe in ongoing training here. Everyone in my company is involved. I believe everybody is in sales, whether they like to admit it or not. Right. Yep. Totally. Um, I, you know, we’re almost up with time. What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Hilary Swan: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Well, you know what, Nancy, you just kind of said it and I love it. We’re all in sales and that is okay. That’s a great thing. So, the faster that you can embrace that and feel comfortable with how to interact with people so that you can get across to them how you can help and serve them with whatever you’re selling or doing, it’s just going to be better. So just lean into it. It’s a positive thing. [17:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. It’s a positive. You hear that? It’s not only coming from me, but also from Hillary. It is. How can my people find you, Hillary?
Hilary Swan: Yeah, it is a positive, it truly is. So, you can visit my website at www.RebelScout.co. You can also find me on LinkedIn at Hillarywith1L and my last name is Swan, like the bird. [18:02]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. Love it. Love it. Folks, this is an amazing lady. And if nothing else, my takeaway in listening to Hillary is she’s the person to go to. She’s got passion about selling. She’s got experience about selling. If you could, you know, you led that $18 million business, one of the most competitive industries markets in the country, you know what you’re doing. So, folks reach out to Hillary. And Hillary, I hope this is the beginning of future conversations for sure. And, uh, I hope you’ll come back.
Hilary Swan: Yes, thank you so much for having me, Nancy.
Nancy Calabrese: Thank you for sharing your expertise and everyone make it a great sales day.
