0:00:00 Ben Wright: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Friends in Business again.
0:00:03 Jemimah Ashleigh: Again, Ben, excited?
0:00:04 Ben Wright: Yeah. We have your hosts Jemima Ashley and Ben Wright here. We have brought forward our schedule. As we spoke about last week, we’ve had to batch a couple here because we are still waiting on the promised rains. As I look up for some reason at the sky, they’re actually quite blue at the moment.
0:00:20 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. The cyclone Alfred just seems to be chilling out. I meant to be back next week, and we’re not guaranteeing that happening, so we thought, well, if I can’t come back and I can’t leave right now, we just get some extra podcast done. So we’re doing a bit of batching today, which is exciting. I’m actually really enjoying this.
0:00:37 Ben Wright: Yeah. Sometimes when you can get in a zone, when you’re recording information, and for me in particular, I love that we’re able to talk about the sales process kind of in one sweep, waiting a week between what we spoke about last time. I know you’re having to wait a week to hear it, but it doesn’t work for me. So I am super excited to be rock and rolling back into the sales process. So should we just get straight into it?
0:00:56 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, I think so. If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, go and listen to that. Because there’s some really key parts about the sales process making sure that you get that down. And honestly, some absolute cracking tips of how to actually get that. Yes.
0:01:10 Ben Wright: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was episode 31.
0:01:12 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. So recap for me, Ben. What did we go through the last episode?
0:01:14 Ben Wright: So last episode we spoke about a number of businesses that I’m working with, having spent a lot of time around their sales process. I gave a couple of examples of some that have successful succeeded. My favorite is a company that’s in the landscape, services. They are terrific bunch of people. I really like the owner, but, you know, I was struggling when I first started working with them. They had a sales process, but it had lost their sizzle. Right. It had become so elongated in terms of how they’d gone about it. Right. That they weren’t creating customer value. What they’re actually doing was stretching it out to get as close as they could to build date. Right. So that they became that provider that was then rolling straight into the work. Right. And I think they probably will certainly admit that they had all good intentions, but they just weren’t quite nailing it. So we actually sat down and credit to them. Right. The courage they showed to make some changes that I was recommending was significant. Right. I mean, we were talking about combining design stages with quotation stages to just speed up that sales process. We were talking about being prepared to be vulnerable around the questions that you ask customers. Right. To put yourself out to my kind of feedback. And this is one of those ones where they did make some significant changes, but, wow, they’ve just had their biggest year they’ve had and hopefully got some significant results.
0:02:26 Jemimah Ashleigh: Hopefully got some significant results because small changes in that process can have significant results.
0:02:31 Ben Wright: Yeah. Well, I joined them at the end of the first month of the year, three months in, because we still had to make the changes. They were significantly behind Target by the end of the year. They had their best year. Right. The best year they’d had. So, yeah. And I’m really proud of it.
0:02:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: And of the toughest markets at the moment.
0:02:48 Ben Wright: Really tough. And we’re not talking about a $5,000 project either. So I obviously won’t say their name, but if they’re listening to this, they know who they are. And a big congratulations to you guys. So we go through that sales process again. Look, I should say with businesses, the most common thing I do is make one or two small tweaks. Right. And that makes a significant impact to the business. I spoke about a painting business last week. I spoke about a team with a larger call center last week. Right. There’s lots of examples here. But today, sales process, we spoke about five stages. Lead generation, meet and greet, quotation, closing and post sale, account management and onboarding.
0:03:22 Jemimah Ashleigh: Love this.
0:03:24 Ben Wright: We had three areas that we really dived deeply into. Please go back and listen to episode 31. If this is your first episode with us or you’ve missed a few, you need to listen to episode 31. Because we deep dive into lead generation, meet and greet and quotation. And some of the key themes were around creating value early. Right. Giving the customers a job, three Ds, deliverables, deadlines and decision makers.
0:03:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: Sharon can’t sell your product for you.
0:03:48 Ben Wright: Yeah. Don’t let customers sell internally.
0:03:49 Ben Wright: Right. We had some great stuff in there. For today, we’re going to zero in on the closing process. Okay.
0:03:57 Jemimah Ashleigh: So explain to me briefly. Let’s pretend I don’t know what is closing.
0:04:02 Ben Wright: So closing is essentially getting the yes or the no to a deal. Right. It’s securing business. And we will often talk about the importance of objection, handling and asking for the business and being really sharp when it comes to closing.
0:04:17 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:04:18 Ben Wright: For me, the most successful salespeople I know have a few things going their way, but one of those is they Spend lots of time way back in needs analysis when they get really clear around what the go no go for a project is, what the deliverables are, who’s making the decisions and when they’re making the decisions by.
Okay, now when it comes to the closing stage, we still need to get that decision made. It’s all well and good to say, hey, create plenty of value, Ben, right back at the start, get your customer choosing you early so it’s you, you, you, validate you, you, you. Right. Rather than if he’s at you or Jemimah or Saint Peter, John Paul or some made up fictional name I had last week. Right. We don’t want them comparing.
0:04:59 Jemimah Ashleigh: That was who I remember it being.
0:05:01 Ben Wright: Something along those lines. Very regal for a non religious or a guy that has very little.
0:05:05 Jemimah Ashleigh: I saw French initially and then I was like, oh, we just go religious. Great love.
0:05:09 Ben Wright: Well yeah, religious or very monarchy like none of that actually. Saint is very much religious. I’m talking rubbish. Get back to the point, Ben. They say. So we’re talking about closing out customers. Getting that right, getting the value early is fantastic, but we’ve still got to get the deal done. So for me we’re in that closing stage where this becomes really valuable is that at the end of that last quoting meeting we have set the next time we’re going to talk to each other how it’s going to look, what we’re going to talk about and when we’re going to do it. We’ve given our customer a job, so they’re out there, they’re working out where the product’s going to go, who’s going to be using the service, the times we’re going to be onboarding, how we’re going to work through instruction manuals, who’s the other key people to make decisions. They’ve gone and got them across the line. Where it gets really, really important here is that we are getting ourselves known by decision makers. Yes, this is my big message when it comes to closing is that we are not an unknown to decision makers. It doesn’t mean we’ve had a meeting with them, doesn’t mean we’ve been able to sit down with them, but it does mean we’ve been able to get through to them. And that could be things like sending videos, which I spoke about last week, sending a video with your quotation, running through your quotation and talking about all the key points of it. The big piece is me is finding common links through social media, finding ways to connect with them, get them seeing the Content that you’re creating, you’re talking about here.
0:06:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: You’re talking about here just as simple as following them on LinkedIn.
0:06:26 Ben Wright: Well, that’s the first step, but the piece that really ascends this is that we can get them seeing some of our content and our value.
0:06:33 Jemimah Ashleigh: Right, Got it.
0:06:34 Ben Wright: Because. And I’ll ask you, Jemimah, if you have a. What’s something you’ve bought recently?
0:06:38 Jemimah Ashleigh: I bought. I’m in the market for new car at the moment.
0:06:41 Ben Wright: You haven’t bought it yet. Tell me something that you bought. There’s a reasonable purchase.
0:06:44 Jemimah Ashleigh: Oh, I bought a new fridge.
0:06:46 Ben Wright: Great, great.
0:06:47 Ben Wright: So when you were tossing up between whether you buy a fridge, who did you go and see to buy a fridge?
0:06:52 Jemimah Ashleigh: I went to Harvey Norman and.
0:06:54 Ben Wright: Did you go to anyone else?
0:06:55 Jemimah Ashleigh: I went to JB hi Fi.
0:06:56 Ben Wright: Great.
0:06:56 Ben Wright: You went to Harvey Norman and JB hi Fi.
0:06:58 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:06:58 Ben Wright: Right.
0:06:59 Ben Wright: If you’re preparing proposals from Harvey Norman and JB hi Fi and you don’t know both of those brands, okay. Then you’re going to start making decisions around what you can find about them online and through friends and referrals and so forth. If you’ve gone to see Harvey Norman and you had a terrific experience there with a person, Or JB, you just, you rang them up and they gave you a quote or you got a generic piece of offering or whatever it was.
0:07:22 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’ll tell you what happened. I went to the JB hi Fi that’s closest to my house. I went in there. There was people everywhere. It was extremely chaotic and I couldn’t find anyone to talk to about this specific.
0:07:32 Ben Wright: Okay, great.
0:07:33 Jemimah Ashleigh: I went. Okay. Took some photos. I couldn’t find any delivery information online. I couldn’t find anyone to talk to about it. And the fridge guy wasn’t there.
0:07:41 Ben Wright: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great. So let’s hypothetically expect that those prices came back about the same. Right. Maybe JB is even a little bit cheaper. Right. Because you couldn’t get the service. So their service isn’t there, but they got slightly cheaper prices because they don’t have to buy that. Right. Who are you generally? Within reason. Right. Let’s say slightly cheap is fine or the same. Are you generally going to lean towards the person that’s behind the brand and choose them or you’re going to lean to that one that’s perhaps that little bit cheaper or the, you know that, that you’ve had another price from?
0:08:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: Depending on the product and depending on the price if it is the exact same thing. But I’ve had a medium Experience, but it’s going to make no difference whatsoever. Then I’m probably going to go the cheaper one in this situation. I need a delivery. And so I needed to have that conversation and I needed to find out what that looked like. Could you accommodate? I’m quite busy. I’ve got a bit of travel on. I have an elevator that goes into my apartment. Like, I needed to make sure this was all going to work.
0:08:33 Ben Wright: Yep, yep, yep. And I find.
0:08:34 Jemimah Ashleigh: Any new here, so this was a lot.
0:08:36 Ben Wright: Great.
0:08:36 Ben Wright: So you’ve been able to ask the questions of Harvey Norman in this instance and they’ve won your business. Right. If you’re not getting two decision makers when it comes to. And look, this isn’t the cookie cutter type of example where I can just go, yeah, you’ve had a great experience. It’s easy to choose them. Right. There’s a bit of complexity behind this. But JB hi Fi never got the chance to answer any of these questions.
0:08:54 Ben Wright: No, never. Despite me trying to get the answers.
0:08:57 Ben Wright: Yeah. And that’s because they didn’t get in front of the decision maker.
0:09:00 Ben Wright: Right.
0:09:01 Ben Wright: When you’re dealing with any decision makers, when you have a known quantity in front of you versus an unknown or a lesser known, generally, you’re going to lean towards that known quantity.
0:09:09 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely.
0:09:10 Ben Wright: Right.
0:09:10 Ben Wright: When you’re dealing with one person, you have a terrific relationship with them in that business, that’s fantastic. But if to the rest of the business you’re unknown, you’ve lost control, you’ve left the door open that someone you’re competing against might be dealing with that decision maker and they’re creating value for them. Or the decision maker doesn’t know your brand, but they know the other brand.
0:09:30 Jemimah Ashleigh: Well, more importantly, they could also. If Joe’s recommending you and you haven’t been in front of the other decision makers, do they trust Joe?
0:09:37 Ben Wright: Yeah. You’re relying on Joe’s capability. Has Joe made good decisions before? You’re relying on Joe presenting you well enough.
0:09:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:09:44 Ben Wright: Right.
0:09:44 Ben Wright: And the other product might have gone through someone else in the business. Right. As so often happens.
0:09:48 Jemimah Ashleigh: Really passing in this situation for you, passing different information, like how much of that is being translated correctly.
0:09:55 Ben Wright: It’s the Chinese whispers piece. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, what’s really important is that we’re getting known to the decision makers. That’s the key around closing.
Second piece here is that we’re continually checking back to all of our key needs analysis questions that we had at the start. Right. What’s the problem to solve? What’s the opportunity? And we’re going through very methodically again, right? Here are the things we needed to tick off. This is when we’re talking to our customers, this is when we’re via video, when we’re meeting them again, post our quote meeting because we’ve set that next meeting up, right. We are consistently going through what are the key things that are important to you? Have we ticked them off? What’s stopping this project moving forward? Because when you can go through each of those key questions, right, it allows you to find the gaps.
0:10:36 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, I love that.
0:10:37 Ben Wright: And the gaps are what’s getting in the way of the deal going ahead.
0:10:40 Ben Wright: Right.
0:10:41 Ben Wright: If you’ve spent your time in needs analysis, you can ask those questions. So for me, the closing pieces is all around making sure you’re creating value, continually creating value. You’re getting in front of decision makers and you’re methodically working through what the deliverables are.
0:10:54 Ben Wright: Right.
0:10:54 Ben Wright: The go no go for me, I’m huge with salespeople around, setting deadlines. These are the reverse deadlines to say, hey, we’ve said this is the time we want to get it done. Are we cool with this? Are we on track? And we work with the customer towards that. Again, we can’t control a customer making a decision, but what we can do is, is control how we build our pipeline around that. Too often I’ll see people drive really hard to close a deal when they don’t just recognise they’ve made a mistake around the qualification for this customer. It needs to go from short burn into long burn bucket and they handle it effectively and then they bring in more shorter term deals. That is an art for me around closing is recognizing when you need to be spending more of your time on other proposals that are going to close now versus moving this into that longer term. Right. I am not a big believer of torching deals. I’m a huge believer of a fast yes or a fast no. Right. But if it’s not going to be a yes, right. We try and get a no, not now. Right. There’s an asterisk to that. Right. I would always, always recommend to salespeople if it’s going to be a no, get a no, not now. Right. And allow you to fight again down the track. But you need to know as fast as you possibly can if this is a proposal or an opportunity that’s going to move forward now. Right. Or if it’s not going to work.
0:12:12 Jemimah Ashleigh: One of the comments you said to me very early on in our friendship was you said to Me that you saw a lot of people not even trying to get the no. Like they were not really fighting for the yes and they weren’t really fighting for the no because it was like you’re like not getting yes as a no. And it’s just letting it sit out there.
0:12:31 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:12:32 Jemimah Ashleigh: And it was one thing, it was like pink people just don’t do follow up. And it was a really off the cuff conversation that you had with me. Because often we send quotes out, we have that initial conversation. They’re like, can you send us through what you’re thinking? We send them a timeline, this is what it’s going to look like. And then we get radio silence. Now here’s the thing, that’s not a no, that’s just nothing.
0:12:51 Ben Wright: It’s inertia.
0:12:52 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. And so one of the conversations that we had with our team was now you need to follow up at week one and then three days later say, hey, listen, all good, not a problem, just want to see any movement. This understand things are busy. And then it’s just, we put them, we just keep contacting them sporadically, just saying, hope you’re well. How safe? Because some people don’t want to give you the no.
0:13:12 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We absolutely want to avoid, but don’t burn them the friend zone, the inertia zone.
0:13:19 Ben Wright: Right.
0:13:19 Ben Wright: So and for me, what that comes down to is getting a fast yes or a fast no, not now. Okay, sure. We’re going to get some no’s and people are going to go elsewhere. Right. And really important. I said I don’t necessarily agree with the fast. No. But what I spoke about is for me, it’s a fast no, not now. Right. So it’s not the right time.
When it comes down to closing. Structured follow up is the most important next piece of advice I can provide. And that’s within your business being really clear around how when you follow up, you’ve spoken about, it’s a week and then a few days. For me, that would generally be with businesses, a timeframe that I’d try and bring forward. Right. You send your quote, it’s the next day, what’s missing, what did you like, what do we need to change about it? Right. And really making sure that we are structured in that follow up and working through methodically with our customers. Because when everyone’s doing the same thing around follow up, we find out what’s working, we find out what’s not working. Right. So getting really structured, having permission with your customer to do that. Right. That’s when Closing becomes an art that you can really nail. Right.
So we’re going through that closing phase. We’re constantly checking back around the three Ds. Have we hit deliverables? Have we got the decision makers right? Are we on top of the due dates? Right.
Next thing we’re then starting to do is again, we’re booking those meetings every time. We’re closing, we’re booking the next steps, we’re giving customers jobs. What needs to happen between now and that next job? How do we make things happen? And in the end, we’re getting to our decision. A yay or a nay? Yes. There’s lots of tools we can use around closing, but for now, I think that’s the key piece is we’re creating value. We’re reconfirming on our three Ds. We’re working heavily around our needs analysis, which is our problems to solve or our opportunities to capitalise on. We’re structured in our follow up and then we get into a yes or a no, not now. Right. What I will say is at the end of that, where we do get a no, not now, Our nurturing program is critical. Another topic for another day. Right. But we’re through that. So that’s the closing piece.
0:15:11 Jemimah Ashleigh: Amazing.
0:15:12 Ben Wright: All right, so any questions from you so far? We end out at the end of our fourth stage.
0:15:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: Okay. Four stages done. We’ve got the close, we’ve got the yes or the no. We’ll the assume yes.
0:15:21 Ben Wright: Yes.
0:15:22 Jemimah Ashleigh: And because we follow Ben’s process, it’s yes. This part that you’re going to talk about, the onboarding part, I cannot stress enough how much. I think this is where a lot of businesses get it really wrong. I think it’s a lot. Yeah. Let’s talk about the onboarding because often people think, well, I got the yes, we’re good in someone else’s problem. That’s not necessarily true.
0:15:39 Ben Wright: Yeah. Look, when we talk about creating revenue, there’s three ways for me that are common. New customer, existing customer that spends more, or existing customer that returns to your business. This is the onboarding piece influences part two and part three, there existing customers that spend more during that current purchase or existing customers that return at a later date. Right. This is all about, number one, making sure that the onboarding piece is effective. Right. Number two is making sure they get what they ask for. And then number three is at the end of that process, checking in that they’re happy.
0:16:11 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:16:12 Ben Wright: Right. : Yes. With different sales teams, they will have different requirements around how much you stay in touch during the sales process. But for deals, again, unless they’re small transactional sales, every single sales team I work with, for me, we’re building in that the salespeople are following up post deal. Because after that, if you B2C, they’ve got potentially other services they’re going to need at the same property. They’ve got other properties. Right. They’ve got new properties that they buy down the track. They’ve got this kid, they got another kid, they’ve got themselves, they’ve got their wife, they’ve got family members. Right. You could go on and on and on about all the different ways you.
0:16:42 Jemimah Ashleigh: Know someone out there saying your name. You have actively talked about how you have built your business on word of mouth, on referrals. Doing the right thing by one person can add zeros to your bank account.
0:16:55 Ben Wright: Absolutely. And then when you talk B2B, it’s even bigger. Right. Checking that they’re happy because you got this service. Do they need to upsize the service? Do they have other departments? Do they need it again down the track? Do they have sister businesses? Do they have other states? Right.
0:17:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: The referral partners that they’ve got.
0:17:08 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. There’s all types of things. So by checking that through, you’re making sure that your customer’s happy.
0:17:12 Ben Wright: Right.
0:17:13 Ben Wright: You’re making sure that they’re comfortable with everything you’ve gone through, but you’re also staying engaged for future business. And you’ve gotta be prepared to ask for the business right now. Interesting. We didn’t talk much about asking for the business back in closing. Right. It’s one that as we’re going through all those deliverables, we should be leading to it, but certainly we should be asking, we should be asking for referrals as well.
0:17:32 Jemimah Ashleigh: Bring a friend.
0:17:33 Ben Wright: Okay. So we wanna be making sure that we’re not just asking for referrals to external parties, but asking to referrals for internal parts of their business or their home. Right. But also asking them what else they need. And when we’re checking in, we’re ascending our customers to the next program. When we’re providing services and we’re finishing the first field of operation. Right. Whatever that project is, we’re talking then about monthly revenue from there. We’re talking about the next stage of revenue. Right. We’re talking about what they need to do next year. Right. By staying in touch with our customers, they are the single best source for us to get more from them. Right. Or to get them returning again.
0:18:08 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:18:09 Ben Wright: So for me, absolutely critical that we’re making sure they get what they want. We’re staying in touch, they’re onboarded. Well. Right. And then we’re following up in a very descriptive manner where you have a process and a structure as to how often we’re following up customers. We’re doing that through our salespeople and we’re also doing that through our nurturing campaigns.
0:18:25 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, great. So how much do you think that the sales people are responsible for for that nurturing campaign?
0:18:32 Ben Wright: So I think the salespeople should be following up. For me, in the majority of cases you should be following up with your customer and then depending on the type of service you have structured follow up points after that. When it comes to nurturing campaigns, for me, they are absolutely a business task, often a marketing task. You should be doing both. It’s not one or the other.
0:18:48 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, CRMs are really customer relationship management. Email systems are great because I do occasionally get oh it’s really nice to hear from you emails and you’re like I didn’t email you. And then I found it’s got a trigger of 180 days since we’ve last received an email and suddenly Susan’s stoked that we’ve reached out.
0:19:06 Ben Wright: Yeah, absolutely.
0:19:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: I just hear you. How are you doing? You’re like, hi Susan.
0:19:11 Ben Wright: And these really are the basics to be setting up. Now of course most CRMs can do that. Okay, so that’s our five processes. Right.
0:19:18 Ben Wright: And those five processes are all underlined by some good systems. Some CRM management handling objections. Right. Some consistently asking for the business across all of those. But we’ve got lead generation, meet and greet, quotation closing and then post sale onboarding and key account management.
0:19:34 Jemimah Ashleigh: Ben, I’ve been thinking about this whole time what my biggest nugget is going to be. And it’s that you took too long to explain a very simple. I’m kidding. Not at all. My biggest nugget for today. Honestly, there’s so many things I could talk about. One, I don’t like cyclones. Two, I don’t. Somehow the sun’s back out. I think the biggest thing for me on this is that this comes down to structure. I loved so much about the last two episodes but the thing that you kept coming back to was it’s prescriptive. This is what we’re doing. This, we do it. Then that is what that looks like. The follow up. Make it shorter. That is exactly. It is like an actual process. Because I think what I see businesses have a hail and a Prayer and throw the Hail Mary and just hope for the best.
0:20:23 Ben Wright: Yeah. They rely too much on individual behavior.
0:20:25 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. And so dangerous when the behavior isn’t in alignment with what the business is trying to do.
0:20:31 Ben Wright: Yeah. There’s no doubt growth comes from structure. Spoke earlier about pieces of advice around how do you clean out yourself for smaller businesses out there, you simply need to be having good processes to grow your teams. And for leaders out there who have teams. Right. Your teams are not going to grow unless you can get most of the people doing most of the same thing the majority of the time.
0:20:49 Jemimah Ashleigh: And you know, we talk about for the smaller businesses that are out there, it doesn’t have to be super difficult or a 400 page guide. It can just be, this is the two page operations that we will do and this is the timeline we’re going to do it. And looking at industry best practice.
0:21:05 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:21:06 Jemimah Ashleigh: Thank you, Ben. Very helpful. I assume some of this we might be able to find on your website.
0:21:10 Ben Wright: Absolutely. Strongersalesteam.com/resources There’s a piece in there around sales process. Thank you. We try hard not to talk too much about our businesses, but yeah, absolutely. It’s a difficult piece to do. Most businesses need help with this because finding the gaps which we’re going to talk through next. Right. Finding the gaps is really difficult to do, but when you do find them and you get it right. Wow. It’s impactful.
0:21:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: And just the zeros right on the back of the back of your paychecks.
0:21:35 Ben Wright: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Processes drive revenue. Yeah, no doubt. And happy customers. All right, excellent. Thank you very much. We’ve been your friends in business, everyone. We’ll see you next week.
0:21:44 Jemimah Ashleigh: Thanks, guys. See you next week.
