Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 63. Ethical Selling Wins: Listening, Calibration, and Human Connection with Sue Barrett

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63. Ethical Selling Wins: Listening, Calibration, and Human Connection with Sue Barrett · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

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  What's happening everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful. It's a show where I sit down
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  with your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated
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  or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple
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  Consulting firm, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Today's fun fact, it's an Australia-based
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  one, kangaroos can only hop on land, of course, but in water, they can actually
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  use both legs individually. I just learned that. I had to pick an Australia one
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  and a swimming one because our guest today is my friend Sue Barrett. She's the
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  founder and CEO of Barrett Consulting Group and the Selling Better movement. Long resume. I'm
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  going to try and go through some highlights here. She's one of Australia's most distinctive
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  voices on ethical, human centered sales. Very important in the day of AI that we
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  live in. All things communication, all things system changing. She's trained over 50,000 professionals across
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  five different continents. She is where business, democracy, and systems all meet. So Sue, thank
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  you so much for coming on. We know you're successful today. The question I have
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  for you, do you think you fall more on the sophisticated side or on the
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  scrappy side? Very well said. I like it. One of the first questions I ask
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  is where do you grow up? Any entrepreneurs in the family? I know the answer
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  to this question, but please share with us how you grew up in the timber
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  business.
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  there's three girls and a boy, but in our house gender didn't matter, we were
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  just humans and you needed to learn how to be respectful, you needed to learn
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  how to be business savvy to be fair. So that's what I grew up with
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  and then when I was about 12 I was allowed to come and work there
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  in the school holidays.
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  Yeah love it. A dad in sales was all about the firm handshake. That was
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  like step number one. That was you got to start there. Do you pick up
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  the sales? Like, do you run a lemonade stand? Are you selling candy at school
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  or anything like that?
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  Hi, you know I'm Sue. Just tell me exactly what you're after and I'll find
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  the person who can help you. So eventually they would tell me and if I
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  couldn't help them, I of course would find the person who could, but eventually I
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  learned the business and guess who could help them? was me. And so over the
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  years, when I went there on school holidays, these builders became more more familiar with
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  me and they would actually engage. So it was a really good test of not
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  being intimidated by these sort of graph, you know, possibly sexist blokes who thought a
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  girl couldn't do anything. But I just learned how to handle those situations.
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  It's really cool. And like, we're going to jump throughout the timeline here. So you've
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  obviously turned this into a business that's lasted for whatever days, 30 plus years now,
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  right? Like that's pretty impressive. And it's all about this very human centered sales and
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  connection and stuff like that too. One of the interesting stats when we were talking
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  before, you said most businesses, want to say like 75 % is the number that
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  you said failed to produce content that actually like convince a buyer to choose them.
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  And how do you do that while still being, how do you convince them to
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  buy what you're selling along with being human? Like, how does that play out?
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  If you're not a good listener, you can't sell. If you don't know how to
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  ask good questions and calibrate where someone's coming from first, you can't sell. So I've
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  been going against what traditional sales was about, at least you know, that was sold
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  out there, in terms of, hey, you've got this and you've got to get everyone
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  to say yes, but that's just manipulation. I think it's much better when you actually
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  find common ground together as humans and then work out. depending on the size of
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  client that you're dealing with, there's multiple stakeholders now involved in that decision and they're
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  each individually researching online. So if you're having to deal with the CFO and the
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  operations manager and someone else, they've all got different perspectives they're looking at as well.
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  So they'll be looking for this and someone will be looking for that. So you've
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  got to understand where these people are coming from before you even position what you've
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  got, you've got to get some calibration. do they actually have different kinds of clients
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  personas in that communication so you know if I'm an operations manager or if I'm
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  a CFO whatever it is there's something on your website or LinkedIn or a case
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  study that talks to me as a prospective buyer
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  the
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  information that you convey out there isn't of value. You won't even make the short
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  list anymore. So it's a double gap. If your humans can't have these meaningful value-based
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  conversations in person, and you can't now convey that in principle online, you're going to
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  have trouble winning business or at least getting a seat at the table. So this
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  is what's really interesting now and I suspect that this isn't just an Australian museum
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  thing because I've done a couple of other clients internationally. One of them only has
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  one page of their business on a parent website and nothing else, no LinkedIn nothing.
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  So we have to stage an intervention and fix that problem.
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  A bunch of nuggets from that. A few that I'm taking away. So like one,
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  you have to be consistent, right? If you are talking to somebody, if you have
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  a website, if you are on LinkedIn, all that has to be consistent, which the
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  underlying thing means that you have to know who you are, both as a person
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  and as a brand. And then two, you have to be able to have that...
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  that natural value conversation, right? Where we're having an equal conversation, I think you said,
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  right? That does imply that you know who your ICP, your ideal client profile is,
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  and you're okay saying, no, this isn't the right fit, as opposed to trying to
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  manipulate them, right? So you need some of those core things. And this is any
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  business, this is even just life skills to your point too. How often do you
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  get this of people walk away saying, ooh, I'm gonna use this in my relationship?
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  He he.
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  And when I say stress test, I don't mean negative. I just mean we sometimes
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  have to ask difficult questions or we have to explore areas that maybe we haven't
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  touched yet. And we want to create a space where someone, that both of us
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  feel psychologically safe to do so. And when people are psychologically safe, you can have
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  really great deep conversations. And when you do this with clients, instead of waiting for
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  your turn to speak and showing up and throwing up information in front of them,
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  understand where they're coming from first.
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  There's a business model that I've seen come up more lately than six years ago,
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  even when I started my business. And it is vendor neutral, zero cost. And so
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  it's basically, dear Mr. Mrs. Client, what are you looking for? And they have their
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  own specialties, right? One's in IT, one does HR stuff that I can think of
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  that are just local to me. And it's... What are you looking for? Okay, cool.
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  Let us match you up with the best vendor. We're going to do the best
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  that we can so that you're happy. And if you're happy, then that client is
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  going to pay us like it has to be a business, right? So the affiliate
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  income that comes from behind that, but it starts off with this. Hey, we are
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  here to make you reach your goals and be as happy as possible. So we're
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  going to be this vendor neutral, zero cost, and everybody's going to win. I wish
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  that existed more. across industries and across everything. Cause there's still a lot of used
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  car salesmen out there that are just messaging on LinkedIn and all over the place.
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  And it's just, it's, it's such a, it's not scrappy, right? It's, it's, it's scrappy
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  can be very positive. It's a very negative connotation to be LinkedIn DMing nonstop. I
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  go for it.
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  reason I could do that is I have a level of sophistication and knowledge and
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  understanding of my day. knew what I was looking for and I knew what I
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  had to pull together and I wanted to test my hypothesis and I wanted to
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  test my blind spots because I knew my system and I knew it works and
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  so when I threw it in and I stress tested it and then I did
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  all the statistical analysis on it and stuff I mean I used AI to teach
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  me statistical analysis I did it at uni but I hated it, I really went
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  crazy but you know, came back again but I used it to help me do
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  the statistical analysis this amazing idea that you have to get traction and can you
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  sell? Because if you don't have either, it's just an expensive hobby. And this is
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  where, I've got an idea, it's going to be great. Do your homework first.
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  Yep. You How do you start with this? So take me back to the beginning.
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  January 9th, 1995, January 9th, 1995, you're saying, all right, I'm gonna go start off
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  on my own. I'm do my own thing. I've had this awesome dad who's taught
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  me all this really good stuff and I feel like I can sell. How do
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  you actually get your first client? Like what is the start? Like you don't have
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  all the sophistication built yet. So where does the scrappiness start and start transitioning to
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  sophistication? Okay.
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  and they actually said, would you like to work here? So I ended up working
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  in recruitment for about...
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  You gotta dream big.
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  Yeah, and work out what good selling actually is. So I call it my unofficial
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  PhD and I decided that that's what I'm going to do. Now, I had the
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  learning very well in the recruitment industry how to run a desk and you were
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  absolutely scrutinized so not you being a sports person I'm used to being performance oriented
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  so I learned how to run a desk so I'm very grateful for that because
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  I was a consistently good performer in that and because I like a bit of
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  routine and structure I call it rigid flexibility you can't have you can't be rigid
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  but you've got to have structure but you're gonna be able to move kind of
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  in that structure so I have you mind paying me upfront because I've got to
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  start to pull some things together and get some resources for you as well and
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  that's okay if you can't. This is how ancient it is. He brought out his
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  checkbook and he wrote me a check
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  it
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  for $10,000. So I got my first sale and I got paid in the first
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  week and the thing is that if you never ask the answer is always no.
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  So I always ask. Anyway I managed to make it to the bank before it
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  closed and I deposited $10,000 into my
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  Nice.
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  go to market sales and marketing strategies. I help people look at what that is
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  and work all that out, segmentation, all sorts of stuff. do, we do, my team
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  and do a lot of work around mapping, selling, buying processes, which is the human
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  systems of all of that, the tasks, the activities, the behaviors. We now integrate AI
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  and CRM in all of that. So it's a wheelhouse because selling has been very
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  personality driven. You be like Jack, he's amazing. He goes, yeah, I know what he's
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  going to do. I don't know how to model that.
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  That's awesome. It's, it is really cool. And I'm gonna get back to one of
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  the first things. So your first sale, one of the questions I ask a lot
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  of people is have you, have you ever had the, been in the position where
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  you say, oh yeah, we've done that a hundred times, but you've never actually done
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  it and you're able to sell it. And that was your first sale. Cause I'm
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  assuming you hadn't put together a conference before that, had you? Whoa. You
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  sensitive person and about one in five of us is highly sensitive, okay? And that's
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  one of the reasons why I had this kind of reaction to this issue, stage
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  fright. But being a science nerdy creature and understanding more about neurobiology and psychology and
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  how if something's learned you can unlearn it. So in that time before I got
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  that I got to that person in my first sale in that first week of
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  my company, I had a lot of experience running workshops and putting together programs. So
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  I knew when you wanted to do a sales conference that I had the capabilities.
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  All I had to do was just arrange it. So I wasn't making it up,
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  if that makes sense. I already had a really good base of experience that I
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  had elevated and kept moving up.
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  There you go. Yep. Back to the home to bringing it back to kind of
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  close out the episode. We'll go real quick here. I know we got to get
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  you out of here. give, give us, it was one tip. So I'm a small
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  business owner, right? Bunch of small business owners are listening consultants to, one tip that
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  makes selling, I won't say easier, but selling more effective for them. is one thing
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  that people can take away from this? There we go. Beautiful note to end on.
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  Sue, thank you so much for coming. We're gonna have all your social links in
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  here, but what do want the folks out there to know? Anything that you wanna
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  promote?
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  Well, they can go to sellingbetter.com, which gives some really good ethical frameworks and principles
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  and practices. If you can adopt that.
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  I love it. Scrappy beginnings, full sophistication today. say foot, foot and foot in both
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  worlds for sure. But, a lot of sophistication. So I learned a lot from this.
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  I appreciate it. I, every time that we chat, I feel like I walk away,
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  standing a little straighter and being like, okay, the world's not that bad. So I
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  appreciate it. Thanks so much, Sue.