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Sticky Learning Lunches #18: Part 2 of The Cunning 4 Stage Sales Plan
The Cunning 4 Stage Sales Plan by Geoff Burch – Part #2. What am I learning about this person, this Company, and this situation? Use your time working from home to become the very best version of yourself.
You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:
Nathan Simmonds:
Good afternoon. Welcome to Sticky Learning Lunches with myself, Nathan Simmons, one behalf of the Comedy Duo from this week of Team GB with Jeff Birch. Um, are we allowed to call it Team GB or is there we gonna be breaching copyright on that one? I’m not sure. Um, okay. We’ll work that one out as we go along. Just gonna give it 30 seconds while the last people are joining the room. Make sure everyone’s set up for success. Drinks available. Good to see you, Gina. Got Tim in as well. Some new faces, some original faces, and previous faces. Good.
Nathan Simmonds:
Let’s make sure, so we’ve got drinks available. Next thing is mobile phones. Let’s make sure all our mobile phones are switched onto airplane mode. Zero out the distractions, a hundred percent focus on you, your time, your investment to this and, and some of the stuff that we’re gonna be covering today on the four parts, the coming four stage sales plan that we’re working through. What else? Notepads. Making sure you’re setting up your note taking as well for maximum success.
Nathan Simmonds:
Let’s maximize that fresh paper piece of paper at the top of that page. You need to be writing keepers for us at MBM making Business matter keepers are the ideas that you want to write down, that you want to keep hold of so that when you read back through your notes, it reinvigorates that thinking the imagination and starts to initiate a new train of thought that’s gonna help you come up with something new and keep the learning embedded and, and sticking, as we like to say at MBM.
Nathan Simmonds:
Quick introductions as people start arriving. My name is Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter, the home of Sticky Learning. And we are the providers of leadership and soft skills for grocery manufacturing industry today and this week I have the pleasure of working with Mr. Jeff Birch. I’m not sure where he is. I’m gonna point that way ’cause that’s the direction on my screen. Got the pleasure of working with Jeff this week. We are dueting on the, the four, the coming four stage sales plan.
Nathan Simmonds:
Jeff comes with a huge amount of experience. Um, he has had multiple businesses. He has authored six bestselling books. He is a B2C presenter and a rip roaring keynote speaker as well. To, to boot, just to add to that plethora of, of, of awesomeness. Today we’re covering the second part of the cunning four stage, um, sales plan. And it’s all about what you learn. Jeff, tell us more. What is this? What is this concept of the stage two about what you learn? Tell us.
Jeff:
Well, let’s just have a quick review at hello everybody, by the way, and let’s have a little review at, at the cunning four stage plan. Um, and, and famously, um, it it’s, it, it is a thing that was given to me by a hard bitten old sales manager. And it, and, and the four steps is one, did I achieve my objective? Well, the fact is most people don’t even have an objective. But the second one is quite interesting because we all think we’re going to go and see customers to flog them something.
Nathan Simmonds:
But the second question is a bit of a strange one is what have I learned that I can make use of in future calls at this account? What have I learned? Well, first, the first thing is you don’t learn anything unless you ask a few questions. Um, and again, the the big, the big who hard at most say salespeople do is they pile in there, they pile in there and start demonstrating or talking about what it is they want to sell or what they wanna do.
Jeff:
And they don’t ask questions. So the key to all selling is asking questions. The famous, uh, you know, the famous old hory chestnut is God. God made us all great salespeople by giving us two ears and one mouth. And this is to remind us that we should listen twice as much. The truth is, if we really had enough ears to tell us to remind us, it would look like one of those old fashioned swimming at, you’d have about 40 ears stuck all over your head. ’cause that’s the real ratio. It isn’t two toe and it’s about 40 to one. You know, you need to ask questions. And one of the things that people do is that they kind of, why do you, come on, come on, Nathan. Why do people ask questions? And, and, and the answer is to, to find things out, to find their information.
Jeff:
But, but it does three things, three really vital things. And, and what’s important is that a lot of people who visit this fabulous, fabulous, free online seminar that they would pay, oh, at least a five or for anywhere else, um, is that some of the people visiting this are not professional salespeople and maybe trying to launch their own business, maybe try to improve their business, maybe they’re trying to get a job. Or maybe it is one of the things is it’s quite good to be important.
Jeff:
The better, higher our status, the more chance we have to success people with high status. Ask more questions, ask more questions than people with low status. So like the policeman that pulled me over on my motorbike the other day, his line was instantly a question. So squadron leader, you failed to achieve takeoff, I think is his cheery line.
Jeff:
But he, he is, he is actually, where do you think you are going? Do you know how fast you are going? This guy is in a situation that, in this situation, I’m the naughty boy and he’s the guy asking the questions. So when we ask questions of our client, it makes us, even if it’s not true, seem intelligent. So that’s a very important thing. So the first thing, of course, it gets us information, it gets us facts about the customer, gets us to find out, oh, here’s a tip, here’s a real tip before we move on.
Jeff:
Because I’ve got a brain, like a firework display. When you want to ask questions about your customer, people listening to this might think, well, it’s intrusive. You know, how tall are you? What colored underpants are you wearing? What sort of, you know, it, it, it’s, it’s, it’s um, it’s gestapo questioning, you know?
Jeff:
And it might put our customers off. So if you want to find out facts about your customer and you don’t want to piss them off, talk about the past. People are unafraid of talking about the past. So if I was flogging holidays, I wouldn’t say, what sort of holiday do you want? Do you think our holidays are the best? Where do, where are you going? How much money do you wanna spend? I’d say, oh, hello holiday. Where did you go last year? Oh, Majorca, we don’t wanna leap in and offer Majorca.
Jeff:
We wanna say, oh, really? And did you enjoy it? Nah, not really. It was too hot for me. So what you say, you like something a bit cooler? Yes. What did you like about I like the all inclusive. So you want all inclusive, but you don’t want the hot weather. He, his talking about the past is leading me into the future. So if you want to make your questioning slightly less exciting, talk and say, oh, well what have you been doing to solve this problem up until now? And how did that work out for you by then? Sorry,
Nathan Simmonds:
I would know because what you’re talking about to me is, is week before we were did the grow coaching model, and this is the section where you’re dealing with the reality. So you wanna find out what that person’s done up until this moment, what problems have they experienced? What have they, um, done to solve it? So you’re not offering the same solution as a sales person that they’ve already put in place. Because if you’re doing that, it’s gonna automatically say no and the conversation closes down. So you are, as you were saying yesterday, looking for the next signal that’s gonna lead you in the direction to actually build that relationship.
Jeff:
Yeah. So the questioning, the questioning technique is something perhaps we can get on. So, so yeah, the first thing it gives you Asia, the second thing, it, it, it gives you status. People of status, judges ask questions, lawyers ask questions. You know, people charged with murder are answer questions. You know, this is the thing, you know, an inferior salesman gets battered with questions, gets battered with questions by a aggressive buyer. What makes you think I want to use these things?
Jeff:
Who have you sold these things before? Do they work? You know, and we need to get back into control and say, can I just stop you there? Can I ask you something? Right? And here’s the next step control. We talked yesterday about being ambushed by our customers who clutter about and take control of us. Where, you know, it’s, it’s an a key in, uh, a sale is an intentional conversation.
Jeff:
It’s a conversation that you should be in control of, not your customer. So a very, a very good thing to, I mean, again, when I was a kid, I was the most appalling child at school. And you’d get this sunny afternoon, you were hot and you were tired, and I’d be looking out the window at the netball team and the ghastly old troll teaching, whatever it was, geography would be droning on. And so the main crop of the pampers is Man York and cattle and beef products. And we were snoring. And then, and you all know this from school, he’d suddenly turn around and say, what’s the, what’s the major crop of the Pampers Birch?
Jeff:
And you go, wow. You know, the old gits asking questions, the minute somebody asks a question, you get their attention straight away. So when you watch your client drifting off as you explain the fabulous, the fabulous, um, processor in this wonderful PC you are trying to flog, and he’s actually rolling a little ball of something, he is hooked out of his nose and is actually looking at his phone. You go, can I ask you something?
Jeff:
And then you shut up, you ask that, and then you don’t say another word. Nathan, can I, can I ask you something? Yes, yes. Here we are. And bang, I’ve got you right back. You were drifting away thinking about what you were gonna have for your lunch. And bang, I’ve got your back. So questions give us control. So that’s very important. So, so this, this whole thing of questions is, is a key to this.
Jeff:
How, what have we learned about the, what have we learned? Now that’s, that is another key of course is, is actually sitting down with the customer and, and learning something about them. We, we ask, we ask the questions about the past, we ask what they’ve been doing, but we also ask questions that can help us when we come back. This is a customer for life. This is a customer for life.
Jeff:
So, so we want to know what their future plans are, who the people in charge. This is another thing from yesterday, we had this thing of what happens if you don’t get the decision maker? Well, at least you can find out who the decision maker is. You can find out his internal line number. You can find out what his hobbies are. There’s no point in sending a box of golf balls to somebody who plays tennis.
Jeff:
You know that these, these things are absolutely vital to us, are these little bits and pieces. So, so, so this is our, this is our investigation stage. I I, I mean one of the old, the old stinky old things that we, uh, that that come from the old days is Ada, you know, this attention, interest, desire and action. It’s an old sales thing. I’m not, I could do an hour on that. But we spent, we can spend an awful lot of time putting forward a product or service or thing that we wanna do in the most attractive and exciting way. I mean, we, we could spend hours telling somebody how delicious our beef burgers are and how sumptuously pink they are in the center and the, the smell of hot beef fat wafting up with the fried onions to find at the time of closing the sale.
Jeff:
They’re vegetarian. You know, which I’ve just completely wasted that. So the, the investigation stage is, is absolutely key. There used to be this, uh, there used to be this thing of the demonstration where people would do a demonstration of their product and I would spend an hour doing it until you find the one thing that the customer hated, and then you’d be hurled back into the street. So that’s key.
Jeff:
And I think a thing, what we discussed on planning this webinar was who, who’s like kind of listening to this, um, and a lot of people who are not professional salespeople, um, people who see their job as anything but sales. Uh, uh, one of the things, um, one of the things that struck me was I spend a lot of time working with people on startups, new businesses. And what they would like to do quite often is either do something entirely different from their previous job, which is a dangerous thing.
Jeff:
Um, uh, pioneers of people you find face down in the dirt with arrows in their back, or they’ve taken their business skill, whether it’s a carpenter, cake maker, accountant, computer programmer, and they’ve tried to take it out and, and make a business of it, but, but then they can’t sell it. And then they say, well, I don’t wanna be a salesman. I wanna be a computer programmer.
Jeff:
I don’t wanna do, I don’t like sales salespeople, a greasy, they worry me. They’re, they’re pushy. They won’t take no for an answer. And so on and so on. And they are not naturally able to do that. And I’ve always said, when you have a job, it’s like being in a little room and there’s a serving hatch in the wall and the hatch opens. You are given your work and the hatch shuts. You do your work.
Jeff:
Because you’re brilliant at it. Programming this computer. When you’ve finished it, you have another little hatch on another side of the wall and you put it out, but you don’t know what’s going on, on both sides of the wall. And one side of the wall is marketing and on the other side of the wall is distribution. And now you’ve gotta do all that yourself. You see that horrible sort of greasy bloke in the flashing flashy suit driving out of your car park in his, in his Mercedes. And he is, and people tell you, well, he is in sales. You go, oh, well I don’t like those. But you are now, you have to be able to promote your own business and being nice, being friendly, being helpful, being efficient. Well priced isn’t enough. Because a lot of things we do in sales are completely counterintuitive.
Jeff:
You know, uh, salespeople have learned a specific skills on how to promote and sell their business. And it is not a natural talent. So when somebody rings up and says, can you fix computers? This nice, hardworking, honest, reasonably priced bloke would be tempted to say, yes I can. And that’s when the phone goes down. Oh, hello, hello. Acme computers, John speaking, how may I help you? ’cause he’s been on our customer care tools.
Jeff:
How may I help you? Yeah, can you fix Apple computers? Yes. Oh, we have stacks of apples. Brilliant. Thank you. Like it was that, you know, and, and of course the other thing, the other thing is the, um, it, it devalues what we do. We’ve got to make it look, look difficult. , I know this sounds weird, but to my shame and misery, I brought my kids up to be rock stars.
Jeff:
We bought them electric guitars, let them grow their hair long, you know, encourage them, you know, to do all that stuff. And my son looking at this guitar said, what’s this for dad? And I said, well, how are you gonna be a rockstar without a guitar? I said, I don’t wanna be a rockstar. I said, what do you wanna be? What’s gonna happen? He said, I wanna be a solicitor. What? Anyway, you have to go along with your kids. You know, they, they, they both became lawyers.
Jeff:
And I went to the graduation of one of my sons and he, and, and the law school was like Hogwarts. There was a stained glass windows and this, and they, they wheeled the head of law out and he was in this sort of creaking basket work wheelchair. And every time he sneezed, there was a cloud of dust and cobwebs. And finally they parked him in the ray of sunlight and he said to the graduate lawyers, you have a solemn duty for the profession. That is, you should never let the client see how easy it’s.
Nathan Simmonds:
I wanna, but I wanna add to this, Jeff, is I think with the amount of time that you’ve had in sales in business, there are elements of that because of the time that you’ve had, you do make it look easy. And I think it’s the same for me in certain sense with the leadership and the coaching side of things. I’ve got this, you know, this armory of the right question at the right time to apply the appropriate pressure. And it almost looks natural, but it is taken 23 years of making mistakes, falling over, skinning my knees to get to this point, to make it look easy almost.
Jeff:
And absolutely there are very high level sales. And, and what I want, anyone who’s listening to this to take away some really simple stuff, really simple, i I, I did this stuff for garden centers and there were these basically neander tools. They, they had a shed where they had their tea. And on the bottom of the door it said, please mind your knuckles, right? And these guys used to answer the phone and we got them polite, you know, a little. But in the end they would go, thank you for rigging api, day guard fed Jonathan. Oh, can I help you today?
Jeff:
And people would say, two, you had a special offer on patio sets. Have you got any, uh, yeah, we’ve got stacks. Thank you. Yeah. Then you, then a book. Somebody rang when you was out. Who was, it? Never said, where do they ring from? Never said, what did they want? They never said, is there any clue at all? Yes. They was bloody furious that they . So so we just got them. Simple, simple, simple. And everybody listening to this could do this. Hello.
Jeff:
Thank you Reme computers. I’m Brian, how can I help you? Yeah, thank you for the, the garden center. This, this case. Have you got any of those patio sets left? Oh, I’m not sure that we have. Can I, can I just take a name there please? Can I have a name? Yeah, Johnson. Oh, okay, Mr. Johnson. Okay, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll go and have a look for you, see if we’ve got any, can I have a phone number?
Jeff:
I’ll call you back. Back. Yeah, it’s set. Okay. Now did you want the brown or the white? The the white. Oh, now they’re the ones that are selling fastest. If I’ve got one, would you like me to put it to one side for you? My darna? Well, yes please. Certainly. When can, when will you come in and pick it up? Now I’ll make sure I put one aside. They’ve just sold a whole patio set. It’s not a genius.
Jeff:
These, these kids were neanderthal, you know, a simple thing we did, we said to them, when somebody comes in and says, do cell geraniums, you don’t just point and go, you go off and fetch a geranium and the customer is then under an obligation to buy it. And I said, even better come back with two geraniums, you know, and they’ll buy and you know, it’s a percentage game.
Jeff:
This 30% of the customers buy both geraniums. That’s a massive upsell. That, that, that’s a massive upsell. , funny story I’ll share with you actually, before everybody, we, we said yes. So too, I said sell too. So too, ah, they’re all mutual grooming and there’s a little drool sell to and we hammered this into them, always fetch to, and this guy came in and said, do you sell onion seeds? Sell onion seeds. And before he was just about to point no go fetch annoyance. They sell 24 varieties of onion. He came back with 48 packets of bloody seeds. And I’m thinking, oh my god. And this guy said, oh, oh, pickling onions red. And oh, and he was, so he said, oh, and he took all 48 and this thing went .
Jeff:
Yeah. So again, never make it look easy. Never make it look simple. Do you fix apple computer? Oh, now they can be tricky apples. What’s it doing? Well, I’ve, I’ve got this blue screen that Oh, oh, okay. Right. Well I think it’s best if you wait a minute, lemme just take your name Smith, Mr. Smith. And when did it start doing it? Okay Mr. Smith. And how soon do you need it fixed? Oh golly. You know, and here’s another thing. We talk about solution selling. Okay? Don’t we solution, we sell solutions, not products.
Jeff:
The solution has to be worth spending the money on the problem has to be worth. So it’s something I’ve got a lump on my knee, I wouldn’t worry about it. It’ll go, it’s not as good as that. I’ve seen lumps like that and three days later the bloke was dead. You know, that, that is worth solving. So if you make it look easy, you’ve just devalued the problem. If you say apple can be difficult, blue screen. Oh my God, when do you need it? I run my whole business through my Apple computer.
Jeff:
Whoa. So you need it pretty soon. ’cause we do have an express service. Ain’t cheap, but we do have an express service. If you want it fixed quick, drop it down to me in the next half hour and we’ll get started. You know, you’ve just won yourself a job. You’ve not said, oh yeah, blue screen on Apple, that’s typical. It takes about 10 minutes to fix that. Do that standing on me head. How much do you charge? 50 quid. Oh, well the bloke down the road, the chap down the road says you’d do it for 25 and then all of a sudden you’re working for nothing again.
Nathan Simmonds:
And for me, I mean it’s, it’s that perceived value, you know? And if you are doing something that, and you are finding out that urgency for the client, you’re finding out how important it is and you’re asking questions, you’re creating that raising status, you’ve got control of the conversation. And also you are, you are creating a dialogue. You’re building the relationship as you go along. And this is relevant whether you are selling the product or you know, going for an interview because technically an interview is a sales pitch.
Nathan Simmonds:
Because you are selling them your service so that they give you money for what the value you’re gonna add to their business. Um, question for everyone here. I’m conscious of time ’cause you know, Jeff’s got stories, he’s got insight, he’s got experience to go with those. One thing I wanna ask everyone, what question can you ask a prospective client, internal, external, a prospective employer, what’s one question that you could ask someone, ask them in order to create, um, or strengthen that dialogue and create that, uh, that, that two-way stream of information to get you in control of the conversation.
Nathan Simmonds:
Let’s see what comes up with what questions you can ask those people while we’re also doing this. Again, crikey, the time has flown. What other questions have you got for Jeff right now? What is the financial impact to solving this? That’s a great question to be asking. If you are selling a service or selling it, no. What is the financial impact of solving this? And also on the other side of that is, you know, what’s the financial impact of not solving this? Yeah, you want create a balancing point.
Jeff:
You, you need to grow the problem to make it worth solving. I I, I mean, you know, I and I, I know a a a client of mine when I had a proper day job said, uh, you know, I don’t know, we, we, we need, we, we need to make our, um, whatever it is quicker. And I said, um, really? And before I told him how much it was, I, I said, so, um, how many hours a day do you think you are losing on that? He said, oh, I dunno, I suppose we are losing an hour a day. Yeah. So what’s your turnover then? Oh, we turn over 80 million. Well, hold on.
Jeff:
So this delays costing you 10 million pounds with a lost business? Well, yeah, I suppose if you put it like that, it is 10 million. Seriously? Yeah. Yeah, I suppose so. So when I asked him for 70 grand to fix it, it didn’t seem so bad. But if I said, well, you know, our service is 70 grand. And he’d say, well Christ, that just to save a few minutes a day, you gotta be joking. But to save 10 million quid, yeah,
Nathan Simmonds:
They can’t see the value at this point. They can’t, they have, they have no tangible aspect to see what it’s actually worth. Got some other suggestions coming in, in, how have you been dealing with the problem, problem previously? Great question from Tim to be using. Um, you can use that again in interview or in a sales. Um, what else have you got from something from Roger here? How do you blend questioning with showing value? So question for you, uh, Jeff, how do you blend questioning with showing value? Because Roger,
Jeff:
Well, because you were always talking questions, that’s all you do. So if you wanna put a, if you want a value comment, somebody said to me, um, Jeff, why do you answer every question with a question? And I said, do I ? So even, even fact, if I wanted to demonstrate, if I wanted to demonstrate a product and it, and show the value and the benefits, the, the ghastly American thing is they call it tie down. Do you remember this thing about open and closed questions?
Jeff:
And we should ask open questions. The Americans use a lot of closed questions and they call them slick and greasy, that they are, they call them tie downs. So this, this car accelerates from order of 60 miles an hour. Would that be good for you Mr. Smith? You know, and if he goes, well, not really. So what features do you like? You know, you, you, you allow the questions to steer the customer to the values that mean something to him. But if he goes, oh yeah, acceleration’s the most important thing, it’s a yes or no, but it’s guiding you.
Jeff:
So you, you make a point and open questions, investigate and get information, close questions. Tie the customer down to where they actually are. You know? So, you know, would would that be, you know, is this what you are looking for? Is this the type of thing? Is this what you had in we we we all through our presentation of our quality and value, we could be not talking about what the customer wants. So those little tie downs are like little landmines just to show us that we’re going the right way. Isn’t that right?
Nathan Simmonds:
Yes.
Jeff:
See.
Nathan Simmonds:
And leading on from what Roger was saying, he was saying, I worry about plowing into loads of questions when the meeting was set up to show them something of value. And I think for me personally, it came back to, you know, you’re talking about that, that Gestapo West questioning. If you are gonna go in and you’ve got the mentality of going in and interrogating someone, they’re going to feel interrogated. Yeah. If you are going in there with, okay, how can I add value to this customer? How can I find out what, what they truly need?
Nathan Simmonds:
And I’m gonna do it from a place of curiosity, uh, and find out the best way. And the other, the extension of that is you might in this learning phase and find out that you are actually not the right person or your product isn’t the right per product, but I know someone else that can provide that product and I’m gonna refer you to them. So you know, it, it’s, you’ve got that scaling of objective that we talked about yesterday. Maybe I don’t get the sale, but I know someone else that will benefit and we, we start to have kind of a, a, a joint venture or um, kind of reciprocity going on. Yes.
Nathan Simmonds:
I’m conscious it’s half past. I’ve had a lot of fun again with this conversation. Jeff has got a lot of stuff just to share with people, what has been useful from today. Que open question to everyone that’s here. What has been useful from today that is helping you to secure a sale, whether it’s internal, external, share an idea, get promoted, get recruited, what’s been useful from what we’ve seen and heard today?
Nathan Simmonds:
For me, I have to say, Jeff talking to you earlier, and here again, it is just this ray for me, it’s raising the status. Yeah, that for me, I mean, I’m aware of the questions that I ask and I’ve never thought about it in this way. What’s come through, um, never make, uh, what you do seem easy. Absolutely. Asking more questions. Completely. My question to everyone here who has signed up for tomorrow’s webinar, yes or no, can’t, let’s a show of hands who has signed up to tomorrow’s webinar? Got a LP already come through. If you have not, now is the time to go and do that.
Nathan Simmonds:
Do you have access to the internet so that you can get signed up for tomorrow? A trick question. I know the answer’s yes. I’m doing my best to take on what Jeff has just taught me and use that directly with all of you. Now let’s make sure the link is in the chat box. Please sign up for tomorrow’s webinar. We’re gonna go into stage three of this four stage coming sales plan with Jeff and take what we’ve learned and help to reapply that and keep us moving forward to close the outcome of the conversation that we are looking to get with our people, internal, external customers.
Nathan Simmonds:
Thank you very much for the day. Thank you very much Jeff. Very appreciated. And everyone have a lovely rest of your day. We’ll see you at one o’clock British summertime tomorrow.
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