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/
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 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.
by Nancy Calabrese | Mar 7, 2024 | Podcast
About Beate Chelette: Beate Chelette is the Growth Architect and Founder of The Women’s Code and provides visionaries and leaders with proven strategies, blueprints, and growth maps that provide clear steps to improve business systems, strengthen leadership skills and teams so that our clients and audiences can maximize profits and scale their impact. Beate is known as a straight shooter, and she can inspire, empower, and overcome adversity. Her super skill is working with unique personalities and big thinkers and building executable systems. A first-generation immigrant with $135,000 in debt as a single parent, Beate bootstrapped her passion for photography into a global business that licensed content in 79 countries. She exited in a multimillion-dollar deal when she sold the company to Bill Gates. She is listed among the “Top 100 Global Thought Leaders” by PeopleHum and “One of 50 Must Follow Women Entrepreneurs” by HuffPost. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Beate.
In this episode, Nancy and Beate discuss the following:
- Meaning of “Happy Woman, Happy World”
- Three essential elements for becoming an authority in one’s field
- Beate’s insights on strategically growing authority as an expert, seeking recommendations
- Common mistakes hindering leaders from expedited authority growth and how to avoid them
- The role of mindset in achieving success
- Experience selling a business to Bill Gates
Key Takeaways:
- Your strategy must align with your market and your unique expertise.
- Failure isn’t personal; it’s an opportunity to reassess and pivot.
- Your understanding of the problem isn’t always the actual problem.
- Mindset isn’t about wishful thinking; it’s about decisive action.
“When we take care of our women who are the mothers to our children, who are the responsible gender for the preservation of the human race, the nurturers, the first thing a child sees when it’s born, if we take care of women, the world is probably in a much better place.” – BEATE
“A lot of times when people talk about: “I want to be successful. I want to be an authority”. They’re unclear about what authority means or have a strategy to become an authority. Let’s investigate that an authority is not a celebrity or an influencer. An authority is a subject matter expert. Most of us are not celebrities. Most of us are not influencers we might want to be, but most of us are experts in what we do. Authority building is specific to your expertise. People often get wrong about this because they look at what other people are doing and promising, especially in the internet marketing world. Then, they are not sure why their TikTok videos are not going viral because TikTok is often used for a particular audience. So, if you are an authority with a particular audience that might not be on TikTok, then you can do whatever you want on TikTok, but it’ll never take hold as an authority. So, you have to have a strategy in place that is very specific to who you are, what you want to achieve.” – BEATE
“In the actual studies of mindset, the objective is it’s not wishing, and it’s not dreaming. It’s deciding this is what I’m going to do. Then, take action and allow God’s birth, the universe, whatever you want to call it, to put the right things in front of you because the path is never what you think it is. A higher power always determines the path. Otherwise, we all be successful, but most people think they know best. We don’t. We can decide, but we need to let energy spirit guide us in the direction because we have control over our vibration, not how we get there. We keep making the decisions that we believe get us there. And then, as things happen and unfold, my path has never been exactly as I thought it would be. My path has been completely different. And yet I have gotten to places that I never thought I could get.” – BEATE
Connect with Beate Chelette:
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 Beate Chalet, the growth architect and founder of The Woman’s Code, a professional development company specializing in guiding organizations to be an enhanced ROI through balanced leadership. Beate has been named one of the 50 must follow women entrepreneurs by HuffPost. A first-generation immigrant who found herself $135,000 in debt as a single parent, Beate bootstrapped her passion for photography into a highly successful global business and eventually sold it to Bill Gates in a multi-million dollar deal. Beate is the author of the number one international award-winning Amazon bestseller “Happy Woman, Happy World: How to Go from Overwhelmed to Awesome”. You are a true inspiration, Beate. Welcome to the show.
Beate Chelette: Thank you so much for having me, Nancy. I’m excited to be here. [1:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, so happy woman, happy world. What do you mean by that?
Beate Chelette: I think it’s exactly that, is that when we take care of our women who are the mothers to our children, who are the responsible gender for preservation of the human race, the nurturers, the first thing a child sees when it’s born, if we take care of women, the world is probably in a much better place. [1:58]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well, I am all for that. And I’m sure many of the listeners agree with you wholeheartedly, possibly all of them. So, what are three elements to become an authority in your field?
Beate Chelette: Yes. So, the three elements to become an authority are the first thing is strategy. And what I mean by that is you must be very clear where it is that you want to go. A lot of times when people talk about, I want to be successful. I want to be an authority. They’re not clear what the term authority means or have a strategy to become an authority. And let’s investigate that an authority is not a celebrity and not an influencer. An authority is a subject matter expert. Most of us are not celebrities. Most of us are not influencers we might want to be, but most of us are experts in what we do. And authority building is specific to an expertise that you have. [3:12]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Beate Chelette: Now, the second piece people get often wrong about this is that they look at what other people are doing and promising, especially in the internet marketing world. And then they are not sure why they, why their Tik Tok videos are not going viral because Tik Tok is often used for a particular audience. So, if you are an authority, with a particular audience that might not be on TikTok, then you can do whatever you want on TikTok, but it’ll never take hold as an authority. So, you have to have a strategy in place that is very specific to who you are, what you want to achieve. [3:57]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Well, how do you strategically grow your authority as an expert in your industry? What are your recommendations?
Beate Chelette: Well, I mean, you must be very, you must do some research. So, I was just on, I was just talking to somebody who is a realtor. So let me just give you an example, Nancy. And she is in an area of the country in Kansas City where the average home price is $300,000. And a lot of the people that are selling homes right now are baby boomers that are downsizing their homes. And she wants to make a transition to moving to Los Angeles where she’s building up a, you know, a second division, so to speak. And the average sales price in Los Angeles is $4 million. Now, if you want to build your authority in both markets, you must be a different authority on different things, because there’s a difference between a $300,000 property to a $100,000 couple that’s been married for 60 years that are now thinking about downsizing, or somebody who’s buying a $4 million home with an ocean view. You must network in different places. You must dress differently. Your branding must be very different. For a $4 million home, a mom-and-pop branding isn’t going to work. It will have to be a sophisticated, excellent executive. You must wear different things. So, you know, the strategy on becoming an authority depends also on the kind of market that you want to go after. [5:43]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. I think that’s a real interesting point. So, you really need to position yourself to the market that you’re targeting, correct?
Beate Chelette: Yes, because the question is what do you want to be the authority in? So, she can have an office in Kansas city where she is the authority in that particular genre. She can have an office in Los Angeles where she is the authority in something different, if from the branding perspective, she would need two different websites. Otherwise, people go like, why is she selling $300,000 homes in Kansas City? And then she’s she thinks she can sell $4 million homes in Los Angeles with a very sophisticated clientele. That’s not going to work. But you must decide. And that’s why I always talk about strategy. What is your business model? Who are you going after? And then we get to the second part of the second element of growing your authority. And that’s mindset. And that piece then simply means once you have that strategy clearly identified, you are deciding. That’s the decision then to implement that strategy and become that. [6:57]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, so what is the best strategy for business owners?
Beate Chelette: It depends on what business it is because there is not anyone, one way to do things. There are a million ways to be successful. What will work for you depends on your personality type. It depends on your age, your gender. It depends on where in the country you are. It depends on how much you want to work. It depends on what you want for work life balance. My strategy for somebody who is 28 and who is leaving their corporate job to set up their own business. And as a young man, it’s going to be very different than a mother of two who is 45 and is going to be an empty nest the next year and needs to now turn up the volume for the next couple of years. It’s going to be very different. So, the strategy is driven by what you want to achieve, but we must first determine what that is. [8:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh. And what would you say is the best and fastest way to grow your authority?
Beate Chelette: Well, as I said, you need to decide where you want to go. And then once you know where you want to go, then we reverse engineer that strategy into action items. Because then that determines on how are we building the authority? Are you then speaking? Are you writing a book? Are you going on the podcast circuit as a guest? Are you going to start your own podcast as a host? Are you inviting people to the show for a particular purpose? How are you, are you going to networking event? What conferences are you going to? Building your authority is entirely driven by what the business model is, because we need to first figure out what are you going to be the authority in? [[8:54]
Nancy Calabrese: Right, wow. So, I’m guessing that many leaders, if not most, make mistakes that prohibit them from growing their authority faster. What are some of the mistakes and how do you avoid them?
Beate Chelette: The mistakes always are the same. The mistake is to kind of not know what you don’t know. And what I mean by that is I give you an example to put this into full perspective. So, we created a quiz, a growth blocker quiz. And if anybody’s interested in checking it out, you can go to growthblockerquiz.com. And the idea of this quiz was that we asked people, if you’re stuck in your business or it’s not growing, or you want to really accelerate the growth, why don’t we remove what’s blocking your growth? Find your number one business growth blocker. And so, a woman took the quiz and the answer was that she was lacking strategy. And she was so upset by that, that she reached out to me, and she says, I don’t need a strategy, I need more clients. [10:06]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, you must have a strategy to get more clients, wouldn’t you agree?
Beate Chelette: That’s exactly the point. But what it illustrates, Nancy, to your point, what do a lot of people get wrong, is that they insist that their understanding of the problem is the actual problem. Most of the time it’s not. And I’m sure you see this all the time in your work, in sales, that people insist that it’s one of a bad lead. And you’re like, no, honey, it’s not the lead, it’s you. It’s the way you talk, it’s the way you sell, it’s the way what you do. So the answer to it is you need to find a subject matter expert who you pay and hire to take a look at what you do and then trust that they are the subject matter expert, the authority in helping you to become your own authority so you can remove these blocks that are in your way because we can never see them. I mean, I bet you have coaches, I have coaches. We work with the people that help us to see what we can see. But that’s, I think the number one thing is insisting that your understanding of the problem is the understanding of the problem. Your understanding of the problem is not the understanding, otherwise you wouldn’t have it. [11:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Right? So, when you work with clients, how quick are they to grasp their strategy? How long does it take for an owner to really get the light bulb going off in their head?
Beate Chelette: We do this often in a day. My, yeah, yeah. It depends on, it depends on the program. We have three different programs that we work with, that we provide. So, if you look at a client transformation journey, Nancy, and you take a bread and you cut it into three pieces. So, the client transformation that we provide has three different pieces. The first one is How do you turn your talent into a business? And that’s all about where do we go? What do we do? How are we different? Why do we do what we do? Why are we the right ones to do this? Who are our clients? And why would they buy from us? What’s different about our solution? And what is it that we’re solving? So that’s the basis where you get really clear what it is that you do. The second piece is then for people that have been doing this for some time and say, well, I now have a pretty good size experience and expertise. And I now need to, I don’t want to niche down, I want to, I want to become an authority in something. So that’s when we then come and build an umbrella over it, like I’m the growth architect. So, I’m I don’t, you know, I don’t specialize in sales, and I don’t specialize in entry level, but I, my specialty is growth architecture, so I can do a much broader range of as support services for business owners. And then the third piece is the strategy, the growth strategy that’s for people that then have, that are humming along, and they now really want to scale the business and then in their plan to do that. So that’s what you wanna look at is, when you clear where on the scale you fall, it is relatively easy to figure out what the next thing is that you need to do. And when you do that, I mean, we have people that are in our programs that while they’re in the program, they start finding clients. [13:45]
Nancy Calabrese: Interesting. Are your industry agnostic? Okay.
Beate Chelette: Yes, yes, we, we do, we do, we do probably, I want to say 75% service industries, but we do have clients and other industries. We have had people in fashion. I’ve worked with a lot of creators, photographers, um, you know, ultimately, they’re in the service industry as well. But yes, pretty much. I mean, the one thing I don’t do is restaurants and foods around, uh, around that type of stuff, but I do help people to figure out why they are different and what the strategies for them to build their business. [14:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Mm-hmm. Well, so you say this could happen in, say, a day, which is interesting. But shouldn’t there be some ongoing work so that they remain focused? Or do your people just stay a day and then they go?
Beate Chelette: It really depends on, on the client. So, we have to your point. Because we’ve seen the market shift more into the ongoing implementation. So, we ask our clients, we ask them on, so there’s a core piece of the work that we do. So, for example, and turn your talent into a business as a, there’s a core curriculum that has six modules. And then we have another six modules that are specific for the implementation. Because to your point I think people are really overloaded right now. They don’t just want the information, but they want to know how to implement it. So, we’ve been adding implementation on all of our programs. [15:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. You know, you mentioned mindset earlier, and I think that’s so important in life in general, you know, certainly in sales. But how does mindset play into being successful in your opinion?
Beate Chelette: You make a decision. That’s how I mean in the, in the actual studies of mindset, the objective is it’s not wishing and it’s not dreaming. It’s deciding this is what I’m going to do. And then taking the actions and allowing God’s birth, the universe, whatever you want to call it to put the right things in front of you because the path is never what you think the path it is. The path is always determined by a higher power. Otherwise, we all be successful, but most people think they themselves know best. We don’t. We can make the decision, but we need to let energy spirit guide us into the direction because we have only control over our vibration, not about how we get there. We just keep making the decisions that we believe get us there. And then as things happen and unfold, I mean, my path has never been exactly like I thought it would be. My path has been completely different. And yet I have gotten to places that I never thought I could get. [16:51]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, it’s because you set your mind to do it. So, what was it like for you? No, I said, so you set your mind to do it. You said your path was, it didn’t turn out the way you thought it was going to turn. And I said, well, yeah, but you set your mind to do great things. Yeah.
Beate Chelette: I’m part, pardon me, can you repeat? That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. I and I wasn’t going to give up. I was going to keep going and going and going and going until I found the way to get me there and I did.
Nancy Calabrese: Awesome. Bravo. What was it like when you sold your business to Bill Gates?
Beate Chelette: It’s an interesting feeling because you struggle for so long. And I was in 13 years of just brutal, brutal adversity and night, my God, Nancy, I can’t even tell you how many times I thought I wasn’t going to make it. And then the day comes, and you sit there, and you see this number in your brokerage account and you go, Holy smoking macro. I, I can’t believe I did that. And it’s an indescribable feeling. [18:02]
Nancy Calabrese: Ha! Wow, amazing. You know, we’re about up with time. What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Beate Chelette: I probably would say, you know, obviously I’m a business strategist, so make sure you’ve got a strategy in place, and you sit down, and you map that out because otherwise you just keep repeating the same thing repeatedly. And the second thing would be, don’t take failure personal. It’s not. I think about when I went to talk about failure, Nancy, I always think about the example of if you have a GPS in your car and the software has been telling you to update and update and you just don’t do it because you’re too busy and you’re always running errands and you got to be somewhere and you’re always whatever in a rush. And then one day the road that you usually take under the freeway is closed, they’re building something else there. So, you’re going to stop, you’re going to get out of the car, you’re going to throw yourself on the ground in front of the construction crew. You’re going to say things like. That is, it. I’ll never drive another car in my entire life. I’m the worst driver in the world This is never going to happen for me does no one ever You just sit in your car you tap your head, and you go. Ah should have updated the GPS Why because you know your destination is still There, so you wave at the guy with the hard hat and the neon stripe, and you find another way. [19:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Bravo. How can my people find you?
Beate Chelette: You can find me as the Growth Architect literally everywhere and all social media. You can also visit my show. I have a podcast called the Business Growth Architect Show and I’d love for you to check us out there. And if you are interested in finding out what your talent is worth, we actually just launched a brand-new quiz and it’s called the Profit Formula, What’s Your Talent Worth? And you can find it at What’s Your Talent Worth dot com. And if you heard something, I must speak to Beate, please mention this show and go to uncoveresession.com and schedule your complimentary 15-minute uncovering session. And then we’ll give you priority treatment. And while we’re at it, finally, wherever you pick up the show, please go there now and give Nancy a five-star review and write a little comment. And that’s our way to thanking Nancy for doing this labor of love. [20:33]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, my goodness, you are delightful, Beate, and we could go on and on. Folks, take advantage of this wonderful expert and take advantage of those quizzes. I’m going to do it too, so I want to find out more about myself. Beate, I hope that this is the beginning of future conversations. You’re a wonderful guest, and for everyone out there, make it an awesome strategic, day out there. Happy selling! [21:05]
by Nancy Calabrese | Mar 6, 2024 | Podcast
About April Adams Pertuis: April Adams Pertuis is the visionary Founder and CEO of LIGHTbeamers, helping mission-driven leaders and entrepreneurs discover their inherent ability to reach people by teaching them how to share their stories so they can create deeper connections and build strategic relationships. When April speaks, audiences discover the power of their own story to create more cohesive communities, build stronger relationships, and attract ideal outcomes. The key message is always “everybody has a story,” which is a powerful beacon used to shine a light on others. April is also a #1 Bestselling Author of 3 compilation books: Elevate Your Voice, Step Into Your Brave, and Shine Your Light, and a host of the top-rated (top 2 %) Podcast, The Inside Story with April Adams Pertuis in 4th year of weekly production. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about April.
In this episode, Nancy and April discuss the following:
- April’s expertise in storytelling across various platforms
- LightBeamers: the origin of her company name
- Methodology behind crafting a compelling story
- Significance of storytelling in business and its impact on audience engagement
- Challenges people face in sharing their stories
- “Little” stories vs. “Big” traumatic stories
Key Takeaways:
- We learn by listening to other people’s stories and how they navigated their choppy waters.
- There is a natural, magical way to share that story in a way that will be light. There are light beamers.
- You’re human, and nobody wants to do business with robots.
- In the digital age of AI, we will do a lot of business with robots in the future.
“It’s innate in who we are and how we’re designed as human beings that storytelling resonates. We tend to learn through storytelling. This is why storytelling has been around since the beginning of time. We can date it back to the caveman days, and that’s how they communicated. They documented their existence by painting in the caves and telling a story. And so, stories do just that, right? They help document our existence. We’ve come a long way since the caveman days, and storytelling is very sophisticated. There are many ways we can utilize storytelling in our communication. We have unlimited ways to do that now in the digital age that we live in. But at the end of the day, it’s still just about connecting with another human being and using storytelling to show that we are all kind of alike.” – APRIL
“The number one soft skill that most business owners overlook or disregard altogether. And it’s what it is really like. I call it a secret weapon in business. This relates to sales, building an audience, and connecting with future and potential clients and existing clients storytelling; we can go so much further with our businesses if we incorporate more storytelling. What performs well on social media is when people, businesses, and the humans behind the business show up and tell real stories. It’s not the marketing, it’s not the sales pages, it’s not even the beautifully crafted testimonials, although testimonials are a form of storytelling. It’s just the human being a human. And so, I always say storytelling is going to be the thing that humanizes your business and will allow you to be seen differently than all the other fish in the water because it will make you unique. This is especially important right now in the world that we’re entering with AI because AI cannot reproduce your story. So we’re going to be bombarded, we are already being bombarded, and I think there’s a place for AI; I’m not poo-pooing it, but we need to be careful not just to use AI, we need to use AI and use storytelling, and when you use storytelling, you’re going to be able to infuse your personality, your own set of values kind of what you stand for, your flavor, you know, your personality. And that will help create conversions in your sales and your conversations; it’s going to bring more people to you and into your audience. It’s going to increase your engagement. All those things that we’re all looking for as business owners.” – APRIL
“I’m a big fan of video because you’re hearing my voice right now on the podcast. You don’t broadcast anywhere on video. So you won’t find me on video listening to this episode. But even just the voice, you can hear my voice and the intonation and the way I have inflection. But if you were to see me on video right now, number one, you would see my face. You will see what I look like. You would see my hand gestures because I’m quite animated when I talk, and I use my hands a lot. And I smile, right? I smile, or if I’m feeling something emotional, I might show a little more emotion in my face. And that allows, as human beings, it allows a visual clue as to who we are as people.” – APRIL
Connect with April Adams Pertuis:
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 April Adams Pertuis, a storytelling specialist helping business leaders expertly tell their story, on stage, in books, on podcasts for social media and engaging an audience in general. April uses all her skills from her 25-plus year career in journalism, video marketing and digital storytelling to teach other people how to craft and deliver their message and find their story. She also teaches other people how to get more comfortable being on camera for video and live streaming on social media. And this includes getting over the fear, learning critical techniques for mastery, and incorporating key storytelling prompts to give you endless ways to show up for your audience and share your message in a way that will connect. Well, everyone loves a good story. So welcome to the show, April. Let’s get started.
April Adams Pertuis: All right, Nancy, thank you so much for having me today. [1:32]
Nancy Calabrese: I am really excited. Why does everybody love a good story?
April Adams Pertuis: Well, you know, it’s innate in who we are and how we’re designed as human beings that storytelling just really resonates. We tend to learn through storytelling. This is why storytelling literally has been around since the beginning of time. I mean, you know, we can date it back to the caveman days and that’s how they communicated. That’s how they documented their existence was by painting on the caves and telling a story. And so, stories really do just that, right? They help document our existence. And today we’ve come a long way since the caveman days and storytelling is very sophisticated now. There’s a lot of ways that we can utilize storytelling and into our communication. We have unlimited ways to do that now with the digital age that we live in. But at the end of the day, it’s still just about connecting with another human being and using storytelling to show that we are all kind of alike. We think as humans, especially in the world we live in today, that we’re all really different and we’re so diverse and in a lot of ways we’re very dissected, if you will. We come in these glumps of people. You’re either Democrat or Republican, right? But really, honestly, we are all so much more alike than we are different and storytelling really highlights that. [3:10]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. Your company name is LightBeamers. Did that, how did that get created that way? How did you choose it?
April Adams Pertuis: Yes, LightBeamers. Well, that’s a story in itself. That was a time when I was kind of really searching and seeking and asking for guidance from God, really. Just like, you know, I’ve been working in storytelling for a long time. It’s really the only work I’ve ever done. I was a journalist and a video producer and digital storyteller for a very long time in my career. And I loved storytelling, but it got to be… I got to be a spot in my career where I just kind of felt like at the same time I was doing it just for a paycheck and that didn’t feel good to me. I really looked at what I thought. I just kind of asked myself a few key questions. Okay, April, what do you really believe and know to be true about storytelling since you’ve been working in it for over 20, 25 years, now 30? And I just thought, you know, really just what I said earlier, you know, storytelling connects us. It helps us know that we are more alike than we are different. And when you share your story, you innately shine a light for other people. You shine a light to illuminate a way. You know, when we share our experiences and our ups and downs and our journey, we showcase what’s possible for other people. And that’s how others learn. We learn by listening to other people’s stories and how they navigated their own choppy waters. And that whole idea that when we share our story with Shana Light, that was where light beamers came from. It was this idea that I want to go teach more people how to do that. I want to go show them how to share their story in a way that will illuminate the way for other people. Not, a lot of people are dragging around old stories and letting their stories have power over them. And they tend to think that they’re super negative and that there’s no way that story could ever be shared. But that’s actually just not true. There is a real magical way to share that story in a way that will be a light. And so there you go. There’s light beamers. [5:23]
Nancy Calabrese: I love it, I love it. So what is the methodology? I mean, how do you craft a good story?
April Adams Pertuis: Honestly, it’s pretty simple, but it’s not always easy for people because when you’re in your own story, it’s kind of like being in the forest and you can’t see the trees because as humans, we have lots of stories inside of us. And so, you know, a lot of people always ask me, well, how do I know which story to tell, you know? And really the nugget that I would share here is you need to think about what you need to think about your audience. I always say the number one rule of storytelling is to know who your audience is. So in whatever case that you’re wanting to use storytelling, you need to first identify who are you talking to? Who are you trying to reach? And when you know who that audience is or who that group of people are, you can identify, okay, well, what did they need to hear from you? What are they struggling with? And what story could you tell that would connect you to them in a really cohesive way. And that’s when you can step back and open up your forest, if you will, and find the tree that you need to, the story, right, that you need to tell that’s gonna be really connected to that audience. [6:46]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. What? Well, how does story relate to business?
April Adams Pertuis: Oh my gosh, there’s so many ways. I mean, I think this is the number one, the number one soft skill that most business owners overlook or just disregard altogether. And it’s the thing that is really like, I call it a secret weapon, you know, in business. This relates to sales, this relates to building an audience, it relates to connecting with future and potential clients and existing clients is storytelling we can really go so much further with our businesses if we would incorporate more storytelling. If you look at how we perform, if you will, on social media these days in the digital age, like I said, storytelling has come a long way. But what performs well on social media is when people, businesses, real humans behind the business are just showing up and telling, real stories. It’s not the marketing, it’s not the sales pages, it’s not even the beautifully crafted testimonials, although testimonials are a form of storytelling. It’s just the human being a human. And so, I always say storytelling is going to be the thing that humanizes your business and it will allow you to be seen differently than all the other fish in the water because it’s going to be what makes you unique. And this is especially important right now. [8:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
April Adams Pertuis: In the world that we’re entering now with AI, because AI cannot reproduce your story. So we’re going to be bombarded, we are already being bombarded, and I think there’s a place for AI, I’m not poo-pooing it, but we need to be careful to not just use AI, we need to use AI and use storytelling, and when you use storytelling, you’re going to be able to infuse your own personality, your own set of values kind of what you stand for, your flavor, you know, your personality. And that is going to help create conversions in your sales, in your conversations, it’s going to bring more people to you, into your audience. It’s going to increase your engagement. All those things that we’re all looking for as business owners. [9:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well, I think, you know, storytelling is a way of actually, you know, making you vulnerable in many ways, right? You’re sharing who you are. Um, and, and I work. Oh, really?
April Adams Pertuis: Well, that’s exactly it which is why most people don’t want to do it, which is why people struggle with it, because we want to, you know, we want to pretend that we have it all figured out and that we’re perfect, and especially as business leaders, right? Like it feels a little counterintuitive to show up as the expert in our field while also showing up as, you know, the hot mess express that we might be on any given day. And really, it’s when you start to marry the two, when you show that you can be the expert in your field and you can also be a real human being who stumbles and falls down every once in a while, man, that’s the magic bullet that everyone should be going for. [10:03]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. You’re human.
April Adams Pertuis: You’re human and nobody wants to do business with robots. And like I said, in the digital age of AI, we’re gonna be doing a lot of business in the future with robots. And I’m telling you storytelling is more important now than it’s ever been. [10:22]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. And so, you said there are three stages of storytelling. Can you describe what they are to the audience?
April Adams Pertuis: Yeah, yes. Again, I try to make it simple and simplify the process. When I really looked at my own methodology, when, like I said, I’ve spent a lot of time in my career interviewing other people, that’s what I did as a journalist and a video producer and a storyteller. And, you know, every time I went and did an interview, and even today, you know, on my own podcast, I’m always looking and listening for these three things. And I’ll say what they are and then I give them certain labels and then I’m going to describe them. But they are really the before, the transformation, and then the other side. Those are the three storytelling elements that if you look for them in your own story, you will tell a great transformational story, which you need to be focused on transformational storytelling instead of just storytelling that goes from A to Z. A lot of people tell stories in chronological order, and you don’t want to do that. That’s a boring way to tell a story. You’re going to lose your audience. And it’s just more like ticking off checks on your timeline or kind of reading your story like a resume and you don’t want to do that. So instead, if you focus on the transformations that you have experienced in your life and in your business, and these can be big and small, you’re going to dramatically improve your storytelling. So, the before, remember earlier when I said know who your audience is, you need to identify in your own story, in your before, which is your historical context. Where did you come from? What’s the historical context of when were you once just like your audience? When were you once struggling or dealing with something that they are dealing with? That allows you to connect deeper with your audience. Typically, this is going to be where a lot of vulnerability lives. [12:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
April Adams Pertuis: Because you do have to show that you didn’t always have it figured out. There might’ve been some failure in your past and those types of things. And then the transformation is when did you, what changed in your life or business? What was the, uh, kind of big moment or series of events or season of life that you started to see things differently and transmute that problem? How did you change? What did you learn? You know, what was that experience like? So that’s that transformational piece. And again, the reason why that’s so important is you want to give clues in your own storytelling as to what your audience needs to be looking for. Remember, the storytelling is the light. It’s illuminating the way. So, you’re giving the path for the audience who is in that seat of struggle bus, right? They’re struggling. And the other side is in your own experience, what did you learn through that experience? What lessons did you take away? What wisdom do you now have? What do you now know to be true? As business owners, this is often where our key message lives, right? This is where you have something to say now, so go say it. And that’s really the message you want your audience to hear, which allows you to really live in that expert space, right? Like this allows you to showcase yourself as the expert, someone they can trust, someone that they may want to come alongside with you know, whatever it is in your work, right? So, in terms of business, this is why storytelling can be so effective. So again, the before, where were you once, just like your audience, the transformation, how did you transform through that experience and get the knowledge that you now have and the wisdom? And then what is that overall message that is on your other side of that story? [14:16]
Nancy Calabrese: I think that’s great. You know, and I also read somewhere that, what do you do? And I was surprised to read this about if people don’t have a big tragic loss or trauma story, why is that important in storytelling?
April Adams Pertuis: Oh, well, there’s a lot of people. I’m one of them. The storytelling person over here, I struggled with my own storytelling for a long time because, you know, as the career that I had spent in interviewing people, typically I was being sent to interview people who had very giant stories, right? They had something really big going on that they had overcome or challenges or whatever. And so I fell into a big comparison trap. [15:08]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
April Adams Pertuis: You know, like, oh, well, I don’t have one of those stories. You know, I’ve never overcome battling cancer. I’ve never overcome the loss of a child. I’ve never had catastrophic financial failure in my business or in my life. You know, like some of these big things that a lot of people are navigating. And so that leaves about half of the population thinking they don’t have a story. And that’s just not true. And the real truth of the matter is our stories can be small, but when we share our small stories, they allow other people who also have small stories to realize that their story isn’t so small, right? So again, just as I said in the beginning, it allows you to just showcase who you are, some of the maybe smaller trials that you’ve been through, but that you still have have a message to share and it can showcase that to other people who are just like you or similar to you. And so those people are looking for a light as well, just as much as the people that have giant stories. And I think this happens a lot in business. We really, really need to examine this side of things in terms of our business. [16:24]
Nancy Calabrese: Now obviously we’re doing this audio, but you believe that video plays an important role in storytelling. Can you expand on that?
April Adams Pertuis: Yeah, I think video, I’m a big fan of video, I’ve worked my entire career in video. I’m a big fan of video because, yes, like right now on the podcast, you’re hearing my voice. You don’t broadcast anywhere on video. So you’re not going to find me on video listening to this episode. But even just the voice, you can hear my voice and you can hear the intonation and the way I have inflection. But if you were to see me on video right now, number one, you would see my face. You would see what I look like. You would see the hand gestures that I make because I’m quite animated when I talk, and I use my hands a lot. And I smile, right? I smile or maybe if I’m feeling something emotional, I might show a little bit more emotion in my face. And that allows, as human beings, it allows a visual clue as to who we are as people. [17:37]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
April Adams Pertuis: And if we will get comfortable getting ourselves on video, number one, in today’s digital age, it’s just pretty much non-negotiable. And I know people don’t want to hear that, but I’m here to just say it’s non-negotiable anymore. You really do need to be on video if you really want to make an impact and if you really want to grow your business. People need to see you. They need to feel like they can know you, that they can trust you. And some people need to work on that because sometimes being on video scares you to death, right? And so, you might show up being very rigid and kind of stoic and unless that’s your personality. But if it’s not really your personality, you need to get comfortable on video so that you get your more of your personality really does shine so that people can feel your authentic self and we can communicate that so much easier if we are on video. [18:35]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, interesting. Well, I’m going to keep that in mind as my podcast continues to move along. I mean, I’ve debated doing it on video. One of the reasons I do audio is because that’s the nature of our business, right? We prospect over the phone. And so, we sell over the phone basically, but video is probably going to come out in 2024. So, when I need advice, I know who to call.
April Adams Pertuis: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know what? It’s perfectly okay to just take one thing at a time. To be honest with you, when I first started podcasting, even though I have all this video experience, I did not produce on video either. And even now we produce our podcast on videos so that we can do a lot of the video promotions, right? So, we’ve just taken things one thing at a time. And I just encourage you to do that too. Just one thing at a time, but even if it’s not for your podcast, maybe it’s for your social media, using live streaming tools and things like that are available to you. [19:44]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, yeah, I do video in other projects, but just not in my podcast, but wait and see everyone next year, you might see me go live. I can’t believe we’re up with time and we could go on and on. How can my people find you?
April Adams Pertuis: Okay, that’ll give us something to look forward to. I love to connect on social. So, I encourage anyone who would like to connect with me just to reach out on social. I really do love meeting new people. I welcome conversations and the DMs, and I hang out on LinkedIn. That’s where you and I connected, Nancy, was on LinkedIn. And I am on Instagram and Facebook. And if you just search for Light Beamers, that’s probably an easier way to search me than my last name. I have one of those hard last names, but if you search for Light Beamers, L-I-G-H-T-B-E-A-M-E-R-S, you will find me on all three of those channels. You can also go to my website, lightbeamers.com, and find me there. You can email me, connect with me on social, check out my website, any of those things. I have a podcast too called the Inside Story Podcast, so you can come check us out on your podcast channels. [20:57]
Nancy Calabrese: Awesome. Love it. Love it. April, you’re a lot of fun to speak with. And I know that we’re going to continue talking over the coming months, especially when I go live with the video. Everyone, I will do it. So, everyone reaches out to this fine lady. She’s an expert in what she does. You have an interesting career too. I think you were a journalist at CBS.
April Adams Pertuis: Yes, yes, do it Nancy. Yes, I was a journalist for a long time at CBS and then I transitioned into producing content for HGTV, DIY, Food Network and some other pretty big private industry brands. It taught me a lot. I had a great career and it led to the creation of Lightbeamers. So, I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to spend 30 years doing something that I love. [21:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Is that true? Yeah. Yep, it’s so important to do things that you love. So, people reach out to April, have her share her expertise to bring your story to life. And April, thank you so much for being on the show. Appreciate it and make it an excellent, let’s say story day out there, okay? Till next time. [22:19]
by Nancy Calabrese | Feb 29, 2024 | Podcast
About Craig Lowder: Craig Lowder is a Founder and President of the Main Spring Sales Group, a specialized client acquisition consultancy focused on creating significant, predictable, and sustainable sales growth for successful Financial Advisors, Consultants, and Business Leaders, making a 6-7 Figure Income seeking a strategic senior-level sales executive on a part-time, contract basis to develop and execute sales strategy, including sales process development, performance management systems, and ensure sales execution. With a unique blend of foundational sales science & real-world experience, Craig partners with businesses and advisors to transform their sales trajectory, ensuring consistent, measurable growth in every endeavor. Craig has worked with over 50 companies in various industries, from retail to manufacturing, financial services to business services. He has increased first-year annual sales by 22 to 142 percent for every client. Craig is the author of two highly-rated books, Smooth Selling Forever and Trusted Advisor Confidential℠. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Craig.
In this episode, Nancy and Craig discuss the following:
- The secret of growing a company to 142%
- Shift to virtual Selling and digital self-serve
- Challenges in virtual Selling: Adapting to new technology, maximizing efficiency, and reducing the cost of sales
- From cold calls to warm introductions: Increasing touchpoints with prospects
- Overcoming challenges such as wrong people in wrong seats, lack of clearly defined sales metrics, and absence of sales processes
- Keys to building an effective sales team
- Importance of ongoing learning, open communication, mentoring, and recognition and reward systems
Key Takeaways:
- We are in a virtual selling and a digital self-serve world; the old days of in-person meetings have gone.
- The virtual meetings that are being held are shorter and more on point.
- The definition of cold calling nowadays is getting a list of names and numbers and just banging the phone and calling people.
- Too many salespeople give up after two or three times, and studies show it may take six or seven outreaches.
“There are a lot of opportunities for enhancement or growth in the company. A lot of it gets down to having a detailed sales growth plan that everyone is following, making sure that there are defined sales processes that everyone follows, which shorten sales cycles, improve conversion rates, making sure that there are sales success standards present, that are activity as well as results-based, and that there are targets which generally increases the level of activity that’s taking place, making sure that organizations have an ideal client profile, understanding the difference between a crow and a pheasant. So, they invest their time in marketing, lead generation, and lead conversion on those opportunities that are the best fit for them. And then finally, and most importantly, ensuring that they have the right people in their sales organization in the right seats.” – CRAIG
“The reality is, and I believe I said it in the article, there is absolutely no justification for a cold call. With all the technology available today, whether it’s LinkedIn, the focus of prospecting should be on getting introduced to the individual in the organization we’re targeting to warm up the call. So, there’s a likelihood that an individual will either return your call or respond to an email. I would say it continues because of the amount of, and I hate to say it, noise that’s out there digitally. If you remember back when you and I were doing this several decades ago, the studies were showing it took, you know, six to seven interactions for you to begin to develop a level of trust. Today, because of all that noise out there, it’s taking twice that number of touches before somebody’s willing to trust you. So, I think that the trend is that we need to be in more frequent touch with our prospects. The conversations, the emails need to be shorter with a very defined agenda and take a waypoint for the listener, the reader.” – CRAIG
“In my book, Smooth Selling Forever, I outline 12 reasons why significant predictable and sustainable sales growth will not happen unless you overcome 12 challenges. The top four include the wrong people in the wrong seats. We know that in a virtual selling environment, the role definitions, the makeup of the sales team’s skill sets, and experience have changed. Third was not having clearly defined sales metrics, activities, and results. The focus is typically on the results, but we must understand that results are lagging success indicators. We really need to determine the leading indicators of success, which are activities, their calls, their opportunities discovered, proposals or quotes that go out the door, and how healthy our sales funnel is, just at a very basic level. The second of the top four are no defined sales processes. I’m a firm advocate that you need to have clearly defined sales processes, which are technically the documentation of best practices of those responsible for the Selling. And there are at least three, if not more. One, new customer, new project. Two, existing customers, new project. And it could be upsold, cross-sell. The third is renewals or, re-business or reorder business. And they all have different paths that require different steps and may involve different people. But the bottom line in building sales processes is that the sales process needs to be congruent with your target audience’s buying process.” – CRAIG
Connect with Craig Lowder:
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 a human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Craig Lowder, author of Smooth Selling Forever, a sales effectiveness expert with a 40-year track record of helping owners of small and mid-sized businesses achieve their sales goals. He’s also the founder and president of MainSpring Sales Group, which assists companies in need of a strategic sales leader on a part-time contract or project basis to develop and execute a sales strategy, develop sales process and performance management teams, and ensure sales execution. Craig has worked with over 60 companies and increased first year annual sales from 21 to 142%. Welcome to the show, Craig.
Craig Lowder: Well, thank you, Nancy. It’s an honor to be online with you here and have the opportunity to speak to your audience. [1:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Okay. So how do you grow a company to 142%? I mean, that number is just, you know, unheard of.
Craig Lowder: Well, there are a lot of opportunities for enhancement or growth in the company. And a lot of it gets down to having a detailed sales growth plan that everyone is following, making sure that they are defined sales processes that everyone follows, which shorten sales cycles, improves conversion rates making sure that there are sales success standards present, that are activity as well as results based, and that there are targets which generally increases the level of activity that’s taking place, making sure that organizations have an ideal client profile, understanding the difference between a crow and a pheasant. So, they invest their time in both marketing, lead generation, lead conversion on those opportunities that are the best fit for them. And then finally, and most importantly, ensuring that they have the right people in their sales organization in the right seats. And since COVID, that has changed dramatically. [2:53]
Nancy Calabrese: How so?
Craig Lowder: We are in a virtual selling and a digital self-serve world. The old days of in-person meetings has gone by the wayside, not entirely, but on-site meetings are less frequent than they used to be. Those meetings have been converted to virtual meetings. [3:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep.
Craig Lowder: like we’re doing right now, Zoom, Google Meets, Teams, etc. And many of the past telephone conversations are being converted into virtual meetings. And the interesting dynamic here, Nancy, is the buyers are driving this, not the sellers. I was privileged to be interviewed by Forbes a couple of years ago. And it was right before a McKinsey report came out and what was happening in the world. And the contributing editor of Forbes goes, oh, you’re pretty good. Forbes said the same thing that you are. Excuse me. Yes, Forbes said the same thing that you did. And I said, no, I said the same thing they did. I’m happy that I’m in line with them. And what they were saying, Nancy, is buyers do not want to meet with their sellers in person, they would prefer to meet virtually. You say, well, why is that? The net of it is they’re able to make better informed decisions. How so? Well, they’re now able to engage more individuals, more stakeholders in the qualification process. The meetings that are being held are shorter. and more on point. And in fact, a McKinsey study showed that in today’s world, a good portion of the buyers are willing to make million dollars plus decisions without ever having met in person with their seller. [5:06]
Nancy Calabrese: You know, it’s funny you bring that up because when COVID hit, all I heard, well, not all, but for many people, they complained they couldn’t sell over the phone, or they couldn’t sell virtually. And I, you know, I’ve been doing this virtually for decades. So, I know a sale can be done, you know, the way in which we’re speaking right now. And I think it was a cop out for many sales reps. You know, you have to kind of go with the flow. What do you think about that?
Craig Lowder: I agree with you 100% Nancy. You know, we all get comfortable in the status quo in what we’ve been doing for years. And you combine that with new technology that people haven’t been trained on how to use. They don’t have the right camera. They don’t have the right lighting. They don’t have the right audio. They’re not sure how to use virtual backgrounders. They’re not sure how to share screens etc. So yes, it becomes a cop-out. And the reality is, and I found in my own business, I was able to have more sales meetings in a day, basically back-to-back to back-to-back, with five to ten minutes in between meetings. And my cost of business, my cost of sales, went down dramatically. [6:29]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, the bottom line is you can achieve more doing virtual selling than if you had to hit a car and go, you know, to a site. And even, you know, virtual networking becomes more and more efficient that way. So, I’m in your corner for sure. So, years ago, I was on your website, you wrote a blog that caught my attention, the science and art of prospecting, and that’s music to my ears, because it’s all we do. You wrote that in 21. Has anything changed since then?
Craig Lowder: I don’t think dramatically, Nancy. The reality is, and I believe I said it in the article, there is absolutely no justification for a cold call. With all the technology that’s available today, whether it’s LinkedIn, the focus of prospecting should be on getting introduced to the individual in the organization that we’re targeting to warm up the call. So, there’s a likelihood that individual will either return your call or respond to an email. I would say it continues because of the amount of, and I hate to say it, noise that’s out there digitally. If you remember back when you and I were doing this several decades ago, the studies were showing it took, you know, six to seven interactions for you to begin to develop a level of trust. Today, because all that noise out there, it’s taking twice that number of touches before somebody’s willing to trust you. So, I think that what the trend is, we need to be in more frequent touch with our prospects. The conversations, the emails need to be shorter with a very defined agenda and take a waypoint for the listener, the reader. [8:40]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Well, I mean, I want to be mindful. Cold calling still works. It’s just another marketing channel that should be mixed in with every other channel that you’re doing to reach out. Because if you’re not picking up the phone, somebody else is, and you’re probably leaving money on the table. What are your thoughts on that?
Craig Lowder: I Yeah, when you talk about cold calling, and I think it gets down to definition, cold calling, I get a list of names and numbers and I just start banging the phone and calling people. The reality is it’s no longer a cold call if you’ve done your research on that organization or that individual and can specifically state some observations that you’ve had by reading the publicly available information. I don’t consider that to be a cold call or a blind call. And the old studies are showing cold calling is two to 3% conversion rate. I’m finding in the business that I do, if I do my research, I’m getting probably close to three out of four people that are responding to a call and or an email. And we do have to be more persistent. Too many salespeople give up after two or three times of someone not. [10:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. That is true.
Craig Lowder: not responding and studies show it to may take six or seven outreaches to them with different value propositions before that individual will finally return your call respond to your email. [10:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, I agree with you completely. So why do business owners struggle in creating significant, predictable, and sustainable sales growth in the business?
Craig Lowder: That’s a great question, Nancy. I’ll give you a little detail around, but the high level is, because we are comfortable in our status quo, in building our future growth, we’re always looking in the rear-view mirror, in trying to leverage what has worked in the past. And when it’s not working, we kind of scratch our heads and say, geez, what’s going on here? This has worked for decades. So, in my book, Smooth Selling Forever, I outline 12 reasons why significant predictable and sustainable sales growth is not going to happen unless you overcome 12 challenges. The top four include wrong people, wrong seats. We know in a virtual selling environment the role definitions the makeup of the sales team skillsets, experience have changed. Third was not having clearly defined sales metrics, activities as well as results. The focus typically is on the results but must understand results are lagging indicators of success. We really need to determine what are the leading indicators of success, which are activities their calls, their opportunities discovered, there’s proposals or quotes that go out the door, and how healthy is our sales funnel, just at a very basic level. The second of the top four are no defined sales processes. I’m a firm advocate that you need to have clearly defined sales processes, which are technically the documentation of best practices of those individuals that are responsible for doing the selling. And there are at least three, if not more. One, new customer, new project. Two, existing customer, new project. And it could be upsold, cross-sell. And third is renewals or re-business or reorder business. And they all have different paths that require different steps and may involve different people. But the bottom line in building sales processes is that the sales process needs to be congruent with your target audience’s buying process. So, you need to start by putting your buyer’s cap on and understand how they go about making an informed buying decision and then build your sales process to how they buy. And first and foremost, most companies, in fact, I haven’t run into one in five years now that have had a detailed, documented sales plan for growth because they’re viewing their business highly transactionally. [13:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well, how long does it take to develop a plan like that?
Craig Lowder: Well, by putting all the elements together, because if you’re looking, Nancy, at what we need to do, is number one, we need to develop the plan. We need to surround that plan with the sales enablement systems that support the plan, and we need to make sure that we’ve got the right people in the right seats. And when I talk to small and mid-size business owners, I say, this will typically take 60 to 90 days envision that there’s probably going to be another two to three months break in period before you see the proverbial hockey stick in terms of increased sales. And typically, I get the question back, well can you do it faster than that? And my response is, I can, but you can’t because this is interactive, and you’ve got a business to run and time and time again it takes 60 to 90 days although they say we want to get this done in four weeks. [14:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. So, what are the keys to building an effective sales team? What’s important?
Craig Lowder: Well, I have my top 10. Number one is you have to start by organizing correctly. Right people, right seats. You need to, two, is define the roles for each position in the sales department. What are the responsibilities of that role? What are they going to be held accountable for? What authority are you going to give them? And once you define what an A player looks like, you can then say, okay, what experience, what skills, and what personality traits am I looking for? So, it’s really building a roadmap to vet sales prospects as they come into the door. Third is creating a hiring system. Most companies do not have a sales hiring system. The larger companies who have an HR department may have a hiring system or process in place, but sales are different. And I’m working with two clients right now where that’s the case. The steps are different, the people involved that are different, etc. Fourth is having a documented onboarding plan. No company that I know of has a documented onboarding plan more than, let me pat you on the rump. We’ve hired you because of your experience. Go kill them tiger or they have a one-day, two-day, three-day orientation period. And having a documented onboarding plan, there’s typically a 30, 60, 90-day objectives to ensure that is done effectively. Bottom line, why do we do this? We want to find out right away if we’ve hired the right people, and we want to bring them up to competency as quickly as they can. Five is establish sales processes and sales success standards, which I just mentioned a while ago. [16:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Craig Lowder: Most companies don’t have that. I always, six, as I ask the question, does your sales incentive compensation plan drive the desired behavior? And the answer is one of two. Gee, that’s a great question. I’ve never thought about that. I think so, I hope so, but the reality, it’s not, because compensation plans need to be reviewed annually based on the sales growth objectives of the organization Seven, you need to have ongoing open communication up and down the line. We need to function as a team. Regular mentoring and monitoring are very important to ensuring that each member of the sales team meets their stated objectives. 10th, and I’ve alluded, or 9th, I’ve alluded to this, you need to create a team environment focused on winning. Too many companies are totally focused on the individual, and you find that individuals are in competition with other individuals. The best practices that are being developed are coming from ongoing learning in the marketplace, because as we know, the marketplace is dynamic. And 10th is to have a recognition and reward system. As much as we like to think that sales are always the primary driver, in many cases, it’s not. It’s about being recognized. It’s about being promoted. It’s about being given the opportunity to train some of our peers. It’s about giving a presentation outside the company, et cetera, et cetera. [18:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. You know, Craig, you clearly love selling, so do I. I’m afraid our time is up. We could go on forever. How come my people find you?
Craig Lowder: Well, thank you for asking, Nancy. The best way to reach me is via my email, which is Craig, C-R-A-I-G, at smooth, S-M-O-O-T-H, selling, S-E-L-L-I-N-G, forever. Smoothsellingforever.com. Or you can call me directly at 630-649-4943.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. I love the phone call. Pick up the phone people. Craig, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And you know, we could have spent a heck of a lot more time. I hope you’ll come back in the future. We can kind of dive into some other sales topics. And for everyone out there, take advantage of Craig’s expertise. Don’t be afraid to pick up that phone folks and make it a great sales day. [19:28]
