How to Sell Podcast: Learn to Master B2B Sales and Lead Generation

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:00]:
This episode, you're gonna learn how to use the Grow coaching model to get more information out of your buyers, and you will learn why it's important to work on your business versus in your business. Welcome to another episode of the How to Sell podcast. I'm your host, Luigi Prestinenzi engine. As always, I'm pumped and excited that you have joined us. And if you're a longtime listener, I just wanna say thank you very much for showing up each and every week at supporting our community. We value your engagement and your support. And if you're a first time listener, welcome. We hope you take away some actionable insights that'll help you sell more.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:36]:
And don't forget to subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast or watching this podcast. But this week, We've got a podcast that's all about thinking. And as I'm thinking about that, and and we'll introduce the guest in a moment, I've gotta help Dave think about the fact that he follows a football club called Chelsea and Chelsea are not very good. And, folks, if you're if you're listening or watching, I'm putting up my top, the top that Dave needs. Because we got a competition here in the podcast that you've you've heard about before, which the one that sells the most has to it's the other person that doesn't sell as much has to wear the top. The Guernsey of the opposition. Dave, once again in a popular tourist.

David Fastuca [00:01:18]:
The 2nd time you brought this up, and that was a very aggressive intro as well that you did there. Yeah. Lloyd almost

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:01:25]:
I'll tell you why I'll tell you why I'm so aggressive today, Dave. I'm aggressive because I just can't keep holding this company up and doing all the sales, like, you gotta sell at some point. And that's why this week's episode, Lloyd is gonna teach you how to think for yourself. So, Lloyd, welcome to the how to teach Dave how to teach how to how to teach Dave how to think for himself podcast.

David Fastuca [00:01:48]:
I think your mom needed this one here for for you, Lloyd, growth up, but let's not go down there. Lloyd, welcome to the show, mate. Thanks for having me.

Lloyd Thompson [00:01:56]:
Wow. What an intro.

David Fastuca [00:01:58]:
Oh, yes. It's a bit of fun. Yeah.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:02:01]:
Well, Lloyd, before we jump into this incredible topic on how to teach Dave how to think for himself, just share with us why this topic? Why are you known for teaching people how to think?

Lloyd Thompson [00:02:13]:
Yeah. So I've just got business owner. Let's just go back a little bit first. Right? I I run a business, which provides director of operations on a remote fractional basis. So particularly online business owners, with teams of 10 to 30 staff, e commerce, performance marketers, and so forth. And so one of the things or one of the, questions that comes to me quite often from business owners is like, why Why do I have to make all the decisions? You know, I'm stuck I'm stuck here. I'm making all the decisions. People come to me.

Lloyd Thompson [00:02:49]:
Why can't they think for themselves? And it's a common complaint. And then the problem with this is that they get stuck in the daily operations. They're not working on their business like, you know, thinking a strategy or or selling. They're, like, stuck in the weeds of it, so then their business doesn't can't grow if they're not out there striking deals. They can't work on the strategy, and they can't sell their business if it's them. So it's a real problem. But the problem quite often is actually the business owner. And I tell them, they're like, you know, if someone comes to you with a problem, There's no finger pointing or allocation going on there, Luigi.

Lloyd Thompson [00:03:32]:
Come on, man.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:03:34]:
Sorry. For for for the for Forum the ones that can't see this episode, if you're if you're if you're listening to this, Lloyd was pointing at Dave.

David Fastuca [00:03:45]:
This is why I need to go to therapy. It's because of you, boy. But back to Lloyd, how I'm interested. How do business owners react when you say that to them.

Lloyd Thompson [00:03:55]:
Joe, I think on some level, they already know that, but it's just the and the course of action's not that easy to follow. What I'm gonna tell you sounds easy, but it isn't. So when someone comes to you with a problem, What you've gotta do is not give them not just straightaway give them the solution or give them the answer. Because if you do that, you're indulging them. You're You're training them that, oh, if I come with a problem, then they'll give me the solution. And it's quite it's easy for them to do that. And you've gotta switch instead to coaching, and it does take quite a bit of work. So when someone comes to your question, you know, so, hey.

Lloyd Thompson [00:04:31]:
Look. Actually, you know, what I really want is Come up. You provide me with the options and tell me which option that you would go for. And it's a bit different to just rather than a consultant who's gonna give you You want the one that they're gonna pick. And after a while, you can zoom out and build up trust and have them, you know, give them more trust to make those decisions for you. But then if you do that, you've also gotta make it safe for them to fail and there will be failure. So you wanna mindset start small, give them decisions that they can make for themselves. And it's

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:05:05]:
Yeah. I

Lloyd Thompson [00:05:06]:
think Luigi or David was gonna interject with something there. No. No.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:05:12]:
No. I'm I'm absolutely I'm I'm completely on board with this, Lloyd. But I think, you know, I just I'm just trying to put myself into the shoes of when we're in that customer well that engagement with a buyer, often, they're sharing something, a problem, and we are so keen to sorta share our perspective and give them a solution, give them a sales. We're sometimes killing the opportunity to help them see things a bit differently. And I think asking questions, for me, is one of the best ways to help somebody problem solve something. Right? Because if we are purely just there to provide, like they say, this is my problem and we're like, Growth, because we've all been taught in sales. Find the problem. Find the problem.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:05:55]:
Find the pain and then, you know, give them all the information so they can see that you've got a solve to their pain. You're just providing information they could probably, you know, gather online.

David Fastuca [00:06:06]:
But it's important. Yeah. People want to help, so they go straight to trying a solution. You know, even if your kids come to coaching, like you said, It's a bit of an art. I'm really curious. Do you have a framework around this? Like, how do you, you know, best say this is the way you should approach it?

Lloyd Thompson [00:06:23]:
There's a there's a couple of things to say about this. I mean, the first thing is, like, when you've got someone comes to you with a problem, and you might have a solution in your mind. Mhmm. But instead of giving them that, you're gonna ask them questions that you might have gone through to get to that answer, and they might end up somewhere else. And that's okay because they might end up with a better solution than you. And if it's not the same as yours and it's if if the impact of the decision is low, but you've got them starting to think and make decisions. Let them have their decision. Yeah.

Lloyd Thompson [00:06:54]:
But then there's cultural things as well. Like, in a lot of my experience, both in my business now and in my past in corporate world. I had large teams in the Philippines, and they're a very service based culture, And they don't really wanna disagree with their perceived, view of the boss. So I had a very yes culture. And when I inherited this team, I had to kinda break that yes culture. Like, I actually want them to disagree with me, especially if I'm gonna do something stupid. So I'd play a game with the team, and I'd be like, you know, sometimes I'm gonna come up with something, and I want you to challenge me or disagree with me. And so to try and get this to be more of, like, an initiative Forum, and the other question that you asked is, Is there any kind of framework for this? And there is a framework and the framework I use is called Grow And this is great because it also works with team and team coaching.

Lloyd Thompson [00:07:51]:
So what I do here let's just take an example like the team coaching, like, we've got a group of people together. Let's just say there's been an incident, like, you run a you run a campaign and It smashed your server. Something's gone wrong. Right? Like, there's been some kind of meltdown. There's been some kind of incident, and you go load the people together to fix this. So the framework I use here, grow, is the first thing you're gonna do is talk about the goal. So this is a a coaching framework. You're gonna say, right.

Lloyd Thompson [00:08:22]:
What's the goal here? The goal is, how are we gonna get this server back online, and how are we gonna Paint the reality. So here, we're going to talk about, like, what what's my perception of what's happened? So I kind of say, oh, You know, this happened. We ran this campaign. We received all this traffic. Our server couldn't handle it. It went offline. This is what I think happened. But you kinda don't wanna do too much driving.

Lloyd Thompson [00:08:54]:
As soon as you're drawing out the picture, you wanna Suck the other people into this and get them in. Right? Especially techies. Right? As soon as you start drawing something that's wrong, they can't stand that. So you kind of paint the picture of what's happening. And as soon as someone starts to go, oh, hang on a minute. This this is how I see it. That's when you wanna give them the pen. Or if you're doing this remotely, that's where you're gonna share your screen and get them to drive.

Lloyd Thompson [00:09:19]:
And then you switch to asking questions. So as Luigi was talking about, a lot of it's about questioning. Right? Yeah. So asking questions, flipping it to now asking them. Oh, right. Okay. Is that reality? Is that is that what it looks like? Uh-huh. Okay.

Lloyd Thompson [00:09:32]:
Cool. And then you're gonna go around the room and start asking them about the options of how we solve. So all of this, whether you're dealing with 1 person or whether you're dealing with a team. It's all about flipping to asking questions instead of giving answers. So that's how we went from the goal to the reality and now the options by asking people what they're you know, going around, getting them to make the decisions so we get buy in, And then finally to wrap up. So once we've got through through the options, we worked out with the team what one we should go forward with. That's when we say, okay. I think this is the option based on what you're saying.

Lloyd Thompson [00:10:10]:
Let's go forward with that. That's the wrap up. That's the next steps, and done. So that's a typical framework that I would use for coaching.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:10:17]:
Yeah. So if you're we've got a lot of salespeople, individual contributors, and we do have business owners and entrepreneurs, that are listening to this show, and you're hearing the GROW framework and said, okay. I'm I'm I'm in a environment where I'm not getting a lot of coaching. How can I apply this framework to myself in my growth? Because you you've mentioned some things. I can see it applied in a in a customer interaction of how you can use Growth in the sales process. But if we if we wanna help people sort of think for themselves, how can we apply this concept from a self evaluation perspective and allow us to capture the elements of growth to improve our capability.

Lloyd Thompson [00:11:01]:
Yeah. If you're back on yourself. Like, if you're if you're the person in the team, doing the work, then you really wanna be thinking about When I'm coming to someone if when I'm coming to someone with something, how can I help them solve their problem rather than coming with the question? But from the point of view of the entrepreneur who has the team, who has the business, it's really resisting and it's hard to do. It's really that need or instant gratification Yeah. To just send them away with a solution. And it's not easy, And it takes time, and it takes patience. And if you find that you're doing all those things, in that you are You are coaching them in that direction of getting them to come up with a problem and a solution and and and come with an answer, and you are making it safe to fail, Then and you are doing those things correctly, then, dare I say, there might be a problem with the person. Right? Like, If after a while you still are coaching and coaching and coaching, and you really have made it a safe place to file and they're still not driving it, maybe they're not the right person in the right to your business.

Lloyd Thompson [00:12:15]:
And that is

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:12:17]:
Yeah. But let me can can I maybe I wanna flip this if this is okay. Right? So listening and thinking, yep, I get it. I wanna be able to enable my team and help them build capability because, obviously, I can't work on my business if I'm working in my business. Right? So that's

David Fastuca [00:12:35]:
the

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:12:35]:
premise behind this. But what if I'm in the position where I've got cash flow demands. Okay? And this is not necessarily an individual sales. I'm talking to that business owner that you were talking I've got cash flow demands. I've got a campaign. I'm allocating some scarce resource, which is money, to this campaign. I need it to succeed. And I can't allow people to fail because if it fails, it could be quite detrimental to my business moving forward.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:13:10]:
How would you approach that situation with the grow mentality?

Lloyd Thompson [00:13:14]:
You've gotta maybe start smaller.

David Fastuca [00:13:16]:
Like

Lloyd Thompson [00:13:16]:
Yep. You still wanna get them into that. You still wanna make sure that every time they come to you, that you're gonna want them to come with a solution, a problem and a solution, And which one they're gonna choose. And you build up incremental trust, and you build up, incremental decision making. So, for example, you might do it budget You might say after a while, you've trusted someone with their own budget of $1,000. You can increase it or maybe started smaller than that. So that's how you can start. The other thing you can do I mean, you've talked about really scarce resource.

Lloyd Thompson [00:13:50]:
If you get to a point where you've got enough resource to bring in an like 1 person who can run your team. Like, it doesn't have to be a full blown general manager, but, like, someone who can sit between you and the whole team. If you're a very busy entrepreneur, then that's a really good way to go. Like, the minute you've got a team of 5 to 10. You're kind of in the amber zone of needing an an operator. Once you're in 10 plus, you need an operator if you're a busy business owner, like someone who can Make sure that your vision is being implemented, who can talk to the team and get everything executed. And then that pain comes away from you from being the person who has to coach everybody if that if that's not what they're used to.

David Fastuca [00:14:34]:
It's really interesting here, Louis, because you you you see the differences in in what can be applied there. Right? You know, what what what were you doing this situationally?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:44]:
Well, we have this situation all the time, Lloyd, because

David Fastuca [00:14:49]:
I I set myself up for that one, didn't I?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:53]:
I'm constantly, you know, with Dave. You know, he's making so many errors, Lloyd, and and I'm constantly trying to use that growth framework. But I think you're right. I think I'm in that position where, you know, I think I've got the wrong person in the team. So We

David Fastuca [00:15:08]:
we try to throw confidence into our audience, kind of, work with this leader. I've been training

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:12]:
a to reply. I even put a prompt in chat gpt that said, you know what? I'm trying to train David, and, you know, what do I do? And it actually responded, it said Oh, yeah.

David Fastuca [00:15:22]:
I saw that response. You know what it said? It was, like, yeah. It was it was a Stop training me because he's not trainable. Nah. I said, look in the mirror. It's you're you're the problem. Lloyd's caught in the middle here of of a Cool.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:15:36]:
To seriously answer your question, Dave, and And Lloyd, I I find myself because I'm a driver, like, if you look at my personality profile, I'm I'm an I and a d. And in the sales process, I'm very much relaxed. I'm very much consultative, asking questions. I hold back the response skill. But when it comes to projects that I'm driving, I'm the complete opposite. I I'm a problem sales. So if I see a problem, People talk to me. I'm like, let's just get to the outcome as soon as I possibly can.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:16:07]:
And Mhmm. As much as I love the GROW framework and I love the coaching aspect of communication. Sometimes, the timing, the pressure, I don't have time to sort of help people arrive, And I'm actually also one that gets frustrated quite easily if the people that I'm working with aren't keeping up at the same pace as I am. Right? Which ultimately, you know, one would say makes me a horrible manager. Yeah?

Lloyd Thompson [00:16:33]:
No. It's it's a difficult It's a difficult situation. It's a catch 22 because you're under the time pressure, but you won't be able to let go of the reins unless you start giving your team that autonomy, and you have to allow failure to do it. It's like you can't have one without the other. So, you have to choose, pick your battle, you know, and Find out where you can allow some kind of autonomy there.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:16:57]:
And and that's a healthy balance because I've also been on the other end managing sales teams across various channels where I would allow them that safe space to fail, knowing that depending on where they're at in their journey as a seller, if they're new or if they're more mature, but knowing when to sort of kicking a gear to support them and lift them up if if the deal is starting to go south, right?

David Fastuca [00:17:22]:
Mhmm.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:17:23]:
But I also learned early in my career I first started leading because I was quite young, in my twenties, I thought the answer was go and save the result, And I was actually not enabling my team at all because I thought being a good leader is becoming a savior of the sales process. And in fact, it was kind of, it was counterintuitive. So therefore, you know, then I started down a path of really using that coaching framework to help enabling. But I it's a very different pressure working under a salary than running your own business when it's your own money that's being burned. And I think that's a 2 different levels of emotions that that people have to contend with when it comes to coaching, enabling, and helping people think. You know? And that's just my perspective having been in, you know, running a business Forum company.

Lloyd Thompson [00:18:12]:
Completely agree. You're, you're no one's in in as in invested in the result as the business owner. So, they can't expect the team to be motivated in the same way. And it's hard. I will say this, that You can't easily just apply coaching to everything. It's a bit of a dial. So it's like, if you've got an intern come into your business, You don't just say, well, hey, buddy, there's the outcome. Off you go.

Lloyd Thompson [00:18:40]:
Good luck. Fix the fix the system or whatever. You can't do that. In the beginning, when someone comes in, you're gonna give them high direction, you know, really, like, operational procedures. Do this, do this, do this, do this. And they need that. But after a while, you're going to see when they've started to learn, and then you step back and you're going to start Switching into more of that coaching role. Yeah.

Lloyd Thompson [00:19:03]:
And then once they get confident with what they're doing, then you need to change the dial again to just back off. Like, if you're There's like the 2 the 2 measures is like how much direction you give them in terms of how to do their job and how much coaching you give them. And then there becomes a point where they they're already all over it. You can just let them run. You've given them enough support. You've given them enough coaching to keep them interesting interested. You probably just need to give them another challenge after that.

David Fastuca [00:19:33]:
Have you ever wondered how fast growing Companies 2, 3, and even 10 x their annual revenue. They have something more than just a sales plan. They have a sales operating system that is the engine that drives the revenue function for their business. If you need more qualified leads, if you're struggling to nurture deals, If you need to close more deals faster or even if you need to hire a plus salespeople, click the link in this podcast episode or visit Growth Forum to have a chat with Luigi and myself to see how we can help you. Now back to the show.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:20:13]:
And, look, I think this is this has been a great episode, Lloyd, because we've we've crossed a number of different roles, from business owner to individual contributor to entrepreneur, etcetera. But I think, like anything, when it comes to this sort of content, there is there is absolutely key takeaways depending on how what perspective you're looking at this. And I'm sure our audience will want to engage and find out a bit more. And where is the best place for them to find you and engage with them?

Lloyd Thompson [00:20:43]:
Sure. Just head to my website. That's virtuald0.com. And if you'd like to, have a look, I've also got a book there which I give away for free, which is on Amazon, so you can get the PDF for free, virtualdo.com/book.

David Fastuca [00:20:59]:
Well, Louis, that was a very insightful episode again. You look confused during the past, which not surprise. A lot of things go over your head. But how would you apply this? How would you tackle it from a coaching a sales team point of view Yeah. And then the reverse. Yeah? If a sales team member's coming to you, how how would you instruct them to present this to their to their manager, to their boss to bring up.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:21:22]:
Alright. So first the first part is, okay, if I am coaching a sales team, okay, so, obviously, as I mentioned during the episode, one of the one of the challenges that I found early in my career managing sell sellers was I will try to go in and rescue, right, but that would not allow the people that I was working with, the team that I was managing the opportunity to build that capability. And now the subtle shift that I made was, when they were encountering problems, was to just ask questions. And like anything like the sales process that we manage and we execute ourselves. The heart of the sales process is the questions that we ask. Right? Because the questions that we ask help the other person see things differently. Yeah? And so when I made the shift managing people and I asked specific question about, you know, and open questions and think about some thoughtful questions. They've they've gotta be considered questions.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:22:21]:
You will find that the other person that you're engaging with will stop and think. And, again, like anything, it's important when they start to have that process of thought and they start to think and there's silence, don't fill the gap of silence with another question. Allow them time to think and consider their position. And then ask follow-up questions. Now, Lloyd did talk about the growth framework, but I'm gonna talk about the effective feedback framework for for a very quick minute. So the effective feedback framework that I use allows you to grow confidence and grow skill. And how do we do that? It's broken into 4 quadrants. The Fastuca quadrant is whenever you're giving feedback, is ask the question.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:23:01]:
Right? What did you do well in that conversation? Okay? And not focus on negative. It's what did you do well? Most people will talk about what they didn't do well, and that's where you have to say, no. No. No. What did you do well? Then you say, well, this is what I heard you do well. So you're building confidence. Next thing, the next quadrant, which is the skill development, is what would you do do differently next time? And you allow them to talk. And then you say, this is what I want you to focus on, which is, again, skill growth.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:23:30]:
Now notice in that conversation framework the there is no negative feedback. So you're not killing their their their energy or their enthusiasm. And that's something that I've applied for for a a number of years, and it is the most effective way that I've used, from a coaching perspective the conversation. So that's the answer to that 1st question. Now the 2nd question was what was the 2nd question you asked? You asked the 2nd question was around

David Fastuca [00:23:55]:
The 2nd question was, How would you approach it if you're a salesperson going to talk to your to your manager about this? Right?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:24:03]:
Yeah. So instead of bringing the problem to the table, is give consideration before bringing the problem. Ask some of the questions about the problem to try to see if you can find a solution yourself. Because like Lloyd said, sometimes the best way to get a solve on a problem is come up with some options and then get guidance on those options. Right? And it's funny because something that I used to do with my daughter a lot, as she was growing up, she'd ask me some random questions and I'd say, did you Google it? Now you might laugh when you hear that, but Google is actually a skill. To go and find information, you you might find something first and go, that's not even a 100% accurate. I'll go find something next. What's happening.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:24:45]:
There's a learning there. There's a learning of research. So that's something that I would advocate strongly as an individual contributor instead of always going to look for some look have somebody give you the answer, try to do the solve yourself. Ask some questions about the problem that you're tackling and see if you can uncover some options first. And then take those options and sales, this is the research that I've done on how best to tackle a, b, and c. What are your thoughts?