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.

Improve working from home with The Cunning 4 Stage Sales Plan

 

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,