About Benjamin Brown: Benjamin Brown is the CEO of 360 Sales Consulting, a company specializing in helping businesses and entrepreneurs excel in sales and dramatically increase their bottom line. Their proprietary sales system has come to be recognized as a “game-changer” and is in demand by companies of all sizes throughout the United States. Ben’s sales career of more than twenty years began with selling health club memberships and quickly worked his way into sales manager and sales director positions. Having held both inside and outside sales positions, his diverse experience includes selling autos, computer products and services, voice recognition software, staffing, and transportation services. Ben is a former United States Marine with six years of service and a Veteran of the Gulf War. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Benjamin.
In this episode, Nancy and Benjamin discuss the following:
- The importance of confidence in sales
- The effectiveness of mentoring and coaching in learning sales
- A 10-step sales process based on Benjamin’s proven sales system
- Customizing sales processes based on specific products or services
- The impact of AI on sales and the enduring importance of human interaction
- Benjamin’s journey into sales and teaching
Key Takeaways:
- 80% of sales is confidence.
- Children are good salespeople because they close for no reason.
- Anytime you’re in a conversation about working with an individual, there’s always a sale.
- Sales is the essential part of a business that brings in the money.
- One of the things that I teach is that you have to like it, love it, or leave it.
“ The best way to learn sales that I found is making sure that you have a proper mentor to work with or coach, especially if you haven’t done it before or if you have done it not to the point where you’ve been satisfied. Sales is a skill, so it’s better done in an apprentice-type situation where somebody is grading your performance as you do it. Theory, reading a book, watching videos and doing it and performing it doesn’t work well because there’s no way for you to get the direct feedback that you need to adjust.” – BENJAMIN
“We live in a Western civilization where we’re trained that your worth and things you want must be earned through your work. You don’t negotiate. If you make enough money to negotiate in America, the only thing you know in life is a house and a car. But if you go overseas and go to third-world countries or other places less, their actual mentality or culture is that if you go to a market, an open market in a second or third-world country, there are no prices. Everything is a negotiation. Right? Everything’s in the good in some cultures. If you don’t negotiate, they will see it as negative. So, I love it when I go overseas, and I go to these places, and at the end of the tour, you’ll see the native, the local people selling their arts and crafts at the end, and they’re coming at you with the, you know, the pressure for you to buy. You can look and see the Americans because they start to cringe. They’re not used to that aggression. But this is how people get things done in their country. We live in an economy where we don’t have to deal with that. But we get more inundation through our phones and television, driving down the road. We get hit just like they do. It’s just not verbally in our face.” – BENJAMIN
“There’s no need to fear sales if you understand that sales is a language. It’s just like sign language or anything else, and if you can understand that, your life becomes a whole lot easier because you’ll know when people are selling you and when you need to buy. And that comes through your personal life as well as your business. By doing that, your confidence level will increase because you now will understand that you need to listen more in a conversation because good salespeople are great listeners. And it is key. So, there are three things I say you need to do when you’re a good salesperson: First, you need to know where you’re going, which means a good sales process. Number two is that you need to be confident. You have to be able to take rejection. Number three is that you must listen. And you must do all three of those at the same time. Hence the skill of sales. So, some people could do one or two, but you need to do all three. And if you could do all three very well, you could become a great salesperson.” – BENJAMIN
Connect with Benjamin Brown:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/360sales/
- 360 Sales Consulting: https://www.360salesconsulting.com/
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:
- Twitter:https://twitter.com/oneofakindsales
- Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/One-Of-A-Kind-Sales-304978633264832/
- Website:https://oneofakindsales.com
- Phone: 908-879-2911
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ncalabrese/
- Email: leads@oneofakindsales.com
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 Benjamin Brown, the owner of 360 Sales Consulting, a company that specializes in boosting sales for businesses of any size and industry. As a sales coach, author, and speaker, he has over 23 years of experience in selling anything from stocks to cars to medical devices. His 10 -step sales process, which he reveals in his book, Master the Art of Closing the Sale, is based on finding and solving the customer’s pain points, building rapport and trust, and asking for the sale with confidence. Benjamin’s mission is to help salespeople and business owners achieve financial freedom by closing more sales. Well, as you know, Benjamin, I’m all about sales, so welcome to the show. Let’s get going.
Benjamin Brown: Glad to do it. Glad to be here, Nancy. [1:26]
Nancy Calabrese: I’m excited. So, you know, especially when I speak with other people that are totally into sales, and yet many salespeople struggle with asking for the sale. Why is that?
Benjamin Brown: 80 % of sales Nancy is confidence. So, when I work with individuals, the first thing I have to do is rate their confidence level, find out why it’s not as high as it should be. And most of the time that would help me reprogram them in understanding what sales actually is and what it’s all about and how fun it can actually be if you understand what it’s all about and you have a good actual sales process that you’re comfortable with. So, most of the time that’s them being uncomfortable or not confident enough. [2:22]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, why don’t we start with the basic? What is a sale?
Benjamin Brown: A sale is, I ask this for many people and they kind of don’t understand it because I say sales is simple but it’s not easy. So, I simplified it by the purpose of a sale is to get someone to move. So, it doesn’t have to do with money. It doesn’t have to do with denominations and currency. When your child asks you to pick them up, that is a close. They know how to close. Children are good salespeople because they close for no reason. Right? So, if you understand the concept of a sale is to get somebody to move, which means that we happen all the time. Click on this, give me your email address. Let me ask you this question. The billboard, call this number, fill this out. These are all baby steps in sales processes. Even dating is sales. Can I take you out? Can I get your ID? Can I get your phone number? Can you give me your name? All of these are baby steps in a process in sales. So, sales, when I teach the concept, making people relative to life is everywhere in life that you see it. You just haven’t paid attention to it. [3:35]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well why is learning sales so important?
Benjamin Brown: Well, if you’re anytime you’re an entrepreneur, Mark Cuban says the first thing you need to know how to do is sell. I work with beginning entrepreneurs and the first thing they want to focus on is a website and a business card. Now understand you must sell the product first to make sure it’s relevant. Right. Also, anytime you’re in a conversation of working with an individual, there’s always a sale going on. So, if you don’t know sales, that means that you’re always buying. [4:12]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. You know, I read somewhere that you state that many businesses don’t think sales training is important until it starts to affect their revenue. Why is that?
Benjamin Brown: They fail to invest in it because most or some companies are more geared towards marketing and don’t understand sales aspect of it. They don’t come from sales backgrounds. It’s just like hiring a coach and he comes from a decent defensive mindset, and you hire him as a head coach. He’s going to focus more on defense than he would on offense because that’s his mindset. So, business owners come from a more marketing mindset than the sales mindset. And so, some companies can run purely on sales without marketing. Hence, network marketing is not really about sales. It’s about referrals, right? Which is a sale, not really the marketing aspect of it. [5:12]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, well even asking for a referral is a form of selling, don’t you think?
Benjamin Brown: Yes, it is, but they gear their sales process mainly on that and benefiting the people that get involved to sell the seller, like insurance companies, all about referrals. Some companies are, but as far as face -to -face, cold calling, that’s another type of form, or would you say cold calling on the phone or things of that nature is a contact sport. So, you have to have a game plan for what that’s going to look like because it has to be replicated over and over and over again until it’s defined. And then you give that to someone new as a guide. And most companies don’t have a guide. I said most salespeople are not successful in the company because the company didn’t provide them enough tools to work. [6:08]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, over and over again. Okay, so what kind of tool should a company make available to salespeople?
Benjamin Brown: A solid sales process. Solid. Something that’s been proven, something that they do, something that has worked. Most people will come in and that, you know, IBM had a good sound set. You know, insurance companies have a different way of the training, you know, two to six months, sometimes training just purely just to get them to understand how they do things here. So, when I work with business owners and I say, when you hire salespeople, you need to have an SOP when you bring in a salesperson and say, this is how we do things here. And that is the mark that you want everyone to make. And if they can’t make that, then that’s your standing ground. It’s not because you don’t think they have a good personality. It’s just they’re not following proper instructions. [7:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, huh. What is the best way to learn sales?
Benjamin Brown: The best way to learn sales that I found is making sure that you have a proper mentor to work with or coach, especially if you haven’t done it before or if you have done it not to the point where you’ve been satisfied. Sales is a skill, so it’s better done in an apprentice type situation where you have somebody grading your performance as you do it. Theory, reading a book, watching videos and actually doing it and performing it doesn’t work well because there’s no way for you to get the direct feedback that you need to adjust. [7:42]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think about, again, myself, I’m speaking personally that I love sales, but many people absolutely hate it. They hear the word sales and, you know, they get goosebumps. They want to run away. Why is that?
Benjamin Brown: I’m glad you asked that. We live in a Western civilization where we’re trained that your worth and things that you want must be earned through the work that you do. You don’t negotiate. The only thing you know in life that you in America if you make enough money to negotiate is a house and a car. But if you go overseas and you go to third world countries or other places less, their actual mentality or their culture is if you go to a market, an open market in a second or third world country, there’s no prices. Everything is negotiation. Right? Everything’s in the good in some cultures. If you don’t negotiate, they seem it as a negative. Right? So, I love when I go overseas and I go to these places and at the end of the tour, you’ll see the native, the local people selling their arts and crafts at the end and they’re coming at you with the, you know, the pressure for you to buy. You can look and see the Americans because they start to cringe. They’re not used to that aggression, right? But this is how people get things done in their country. We just live in an economy where we don’t have to deal with that. But we do get more inundation through our phone, our television, driving down the road. We get hit just like they do. It’s just not verbally in our face. [9:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, let’s talk about your book Master the Art of Closing the Sale. What motivated you to write it? Maybe you can share a little bit about your 10 -step sales process.
Benjamin Brown: Mm -hmm. Well, I can prize that over the years of working with various companies and various sales system to formulate a simple 10 step program that can be retaught and made simplified. Like I say, sales is simple, but it’s not easy. Each one of these steps could take, if you had to do a semester in high school, it could take an entire semester to break down each step to make sure people understand what it is. Right. But by using these steps is front based, where you’re not having to worry about anxiety of closing because a lot of the steps that essentially needs to be done in the sales is done upfront and it’s done for the purpose of making the sales process a little bit easier. Also, making it more enjoyable. Also, the key is to make sure that the result is that you get a testimonial referral. So, if your sales process is smooth and can be done in a easy way asking to sale is just an aphor thought. I would prefer to get a referral and a testimonial and that way you can continue in your sales of driving leads as you increase your sales performance. Does that make sense? [10:53]
Nancy Calabrese: Sure. It does. It does. Another question just popped into my head. Do you believe in scripting?
Benjamin Brown: Some people do, like I said, every sale has 10 steps in it from my book, but not every product needs all 10. For example, there’s 10 steps in every sales process. When I was in the gem business, there’s five steps, need, use, affordability, spouse, and guest pass. That is the sales process for the gem. But there’s 10 steps in there. So, what I do when I work with individuals, I customize based on the 10 steps, the specific ones on your product or service, that way you can build a customized sales process that’s replicated and can be retaught. [11:41]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, wow. You know, I guess sales has changed like everything else over the years. How do you feel it’s changed?
Benjamin Brown: It hasn’t really changed in my opinion. It’s just the tools that we use are different. Back in the 50s, you had nothing but door -to -door salespeople doing anything from vacuums, just talking to housewives. Then at the advent of the radio came with the radio commercial, then the TV, and then the telephone. So as of the last 20 years, we have been inundated with other tools, fax machines. The huge one is the computer and now the cell phone. So, people get too caught up into the tools and not focus on the performance of sales. And that’s why the process slows down in most businesses because they’re worried about how many likes they got on Instagram rather than picking up the phone and dialing. [12:43]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, what do you think about sales and AI? How is AI going to impact sales?
Benjamin Brown: Well, there’s gonna be a, you know, it’s gonna be a wave that’s gonna come along, but I actually see down the line, because I’m a little bit older, the fight for people to start coming back to reality. I mean, it’s gonna have its time, but man versus machine, it’s kinda like now when you get a robo call, right? People thought that wasn’t gonna work. People nowadays will not even take a robo call. They won’t take anything until they know it’s a real person. So, we have a sense of AI and what that’s going to look like, but it’s going to replicate to a certain extent, but it won’t replace humans totally. [13:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. I agree. Nothing replaces the human conversation. Don’t you agree? I mean, there’s…
Benjamin Brown: And the human contact is what we crave for, especially after COVID, us being locked down, things of that nature. We can’t survive without each other. Depression sets in. And so being to be able to sell at a distance with all of these tools is great if you’re making money. But most of the consumers prefer to have somebody live. [14:03]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, I totally agree. So why does every company need a sales process?
Benjamin Brown: Well, it’s essential that you ask the same company, keep it simple. Why do they need a marketing process? Why do they need an accounting process? Sales is a part of a business. It’s the essential part that brings in the money. Marketing brings exposure and brand, accounting, accounts for the money, accounts payable and the money that comes in. Every part has a function in the organization. Most people don’t put it on sales until those other ones, become so faulty that they must look back on sales. [14:44]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. Yeah. Tell me something that’s true in sales that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Benjamin Brown: Haha, ooh, I get everybody to agree most of my stuff. One of the things that I teach is that you have to like it, love it, or leave it. That’s how law there I am. If you don’t like or love what you’re selling, leave it. It comes through in your performance, your passion, your voice, your tone, which all of these play a part in your performance as a salesperson when you’re presenting. And people will know if you don’t like or love the product, if you don’t, they’re going to be like, why would I? And why would I pay money for it? [15:30]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. So, what motivated you to get into this business? I mean, you have an interesting background. You were in the military and of course selling along the way, but what is it about sales that attracts you?
Benjamin Brown: Yeah. Um, I started it by being recruited. It’s just like the acting bug. Once you get into it, you start and in Florida, you know, you make more money because this is a right to work state. A lot of the people here, and we based it on tourism to make significant money. One of the ways to do that is through sales. There’s a lot of sales companies here for the last 30 years. And so, by getting into that, there was a lot more opportunity to broaden or make it, you know, a significant amount of money through that and then suddenly, once I was taught properly how to do it over a period of time, it became enjoyable with my personality and what I can actually do. And then years later, I jumped at chance and thought about, I wanted to teach something, because most of my family’s preachers are teachers. And I sat down for six months to figure out what I wanted to teach. And it was always right in front of my face, teach what you know. And so, I tested the theory for about a year on people and individuals and looking at the results that was driven from that, proven and took that and built the company around that premises and been doing well so far. [17:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. You know, I can’t believe we’re almost up with time. What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Benjamin Brown: There’s no need to fear sales if you understand Sales is a language. It’s just like sign language or anything else and if you can understand that your life becomes a whole lot more easier because you’ll be able to know when people are selling you and you’ll know when you need to buy and that comes through your personal life as well as your business and By doing that your confidence level will gain because you now will be able to understand that you need to listen more in a conversation because good salespeople are great listeners. And it is key. And so, the three things I say you need to do when you’re a good salesperson, you need to first know where you’re going, which means a good sales process. Number two is that you need to be confident. You have to be able to take rejection. And then number three is that you must listen. And you must do all three of those at the same time. Hence the skill of sales. So, some people could do one, some people could do two, but you need to do all three. And if you could do all three very well, you could become a great salesperson. [18:19]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. I love it. I love it. Benjamin, how can my people find you?
Benjamin Brown: Number one is they want to reach out on one of the personable ones. They can go to meetwithbenjamin .com and schedule a call to assess where they’re at in their mindset or sales to figure out, because I would do mindset training as well. 360salesconsulting .com is the website they can go to, but they can go meetwithbenjamin .com and schedule. And then my book is Master the Art of Closing the Sale by Benjamin Brown on Amazon and on my website. [18:51]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. Love it. Love it, love it, love it. I told you this was gonna go by fast, didn’t I?
Benjamin Brown: When you enjoy it, it goes by quick.
Nancy Calabrese: It does. So, folks, take advantage of this gentleman’s expertise, you know, and I keep going back to what you said earlier, children are natural salespeople. It’s interesting how, you know, when you look at it, they get what they want, usually, right? And they ask for it with confidence. So maybe we should. Take the tips from young children and definitely Benjamin. Thanks so much for being on the show, Benjamin. You were great fun. And for everyone else out there, make it an awesome sales day. [19:40]
