Death of the (Traditional) Salesperson
In this webinar, you'll learn:
✅ Sales tactics to have in your toolkit
🤝 Building rapport and selling to humans
🔄 Recycling traditional methods with a more modern outlook
💪 Best practices for closing deals
Webinar topic detail
Are you tired of the same old, outdated sales tactics? Ready to embrace a new approach to sales that is more effective and efficient
We discuss insights and expertise on the current state of sales and the key changes that are transforming the industry.
From understanding your buyer’s journey to leveraging technology to drive results, this webinar will give you the tools you need to succeed right now.
In this webinar, you’ll learn:
✅ Sales tactics to have in your toolkit
🤝 Building rapport and selling to humans
🔄 Recycling traditional methods with a more modern outlook
💪 Best practices for closing deals
Joe Ducarreaux: Hello and welcome to this B2B Sales Playbook webinar brought to you as ever by Lead Forensics. I am your host, Joe Duccareaux. This episode is the audio taken from a webinar we ran recently called Death of the traditional salesperson. For this I was joined by Benjamin Dennehy who brands himself as the UK’s most hated sales trainer. Benjamin is always worth listening to and offers up some frank opinions and energy to the conversation which you are really going to enjoy. So without further ado here is the Death of the Traditional Salesperson with Benjamin Dennehy.
Joe Ducarreaux: So let’s, let’s jump straight into it then. How has a traditional salesperson’s role evolved in recent years and what factors have contributed to the change?
Benjamin Dennehy: The idea that salespeople have evolved is an interesting one, isn’t it? I mean, have they really evolved? From my experience, they’re probably selling pretty much the same way they always have been. I think the way in which they’ve evolved is they’ve bought into a lot more of the lies about what’s going on around in the world out there about selling. There’s a real push, you’ve got to build relationships. You’ve got to use social media. You’ve got to use all of these things. I think what it’s done is it’s moving away from the core function of what selling is.
The art of being a good salesman is the art of communication. You cannot develop good communication skills by sitting behind a keyboard, where you’ve got time to think, you’ve got time to pause and reflect. When you’re dealing with real people, in the real world on the phone or face-to-face, you don’t have the opportunity to sit back and think about what you’re going to respond or do.
So I think the traditional salesperson has got stupider because they’re too reliant on technology. What you need to be is able to talk to people in the real world, in real time. That’s a communication skill and that’s something that is lacking. I would say. That is probably one of the core things I’ve seen change over the last 20 years that I’ve been in sales. The focus on ‘build a relationship, build a relationship’. This is all an excuse to justify constantly using LinkedIn and email. Just pick up the phone and talk to a human. Oh, no, you can’t just phone someone up and talk to them. It’s rude. It’s an interruption. No, that’s called selling. They’ve changed for the worse, I suppose, if I’m being brutal. There’s probably some good things but I’m focused on the worst.
Joe Ducarreaux: It’s a refreshing take to have Ben because, as you say, a lot of the conversations that we have is around that sort of thing. So hearing the inverse is actually quite interesting. So you’re quite resistant to this whole culture.
Benjamin Dennehy: I am. People try to overcomplicate something that’s relatively straightforward. What is selling? It is a skill of communicating. It’s getting another person to discover that they need what you have and through that process, they start to trust you. Because if you are good at your job, you are able to ask them questions they don’t know the answer to, and when they don’t know the answer to questions about their problem or their situation that makes you the smartest person. They start to think well, you must know because if you’re able to ask me questions that I should know the answer to, but I don’t, there is a deficit to my business or organization.
So ergo, there’s a chance you must have it. But if you can’t do that, then what are you offering? Well, I’m here to make a relationship. I’m a likable guy and that’s why you should give me money. It’s like, no, I will buy in spite of you. I could sit there and think you’re a complete knob, but if you’ve made me realize that what you have is something that I’m lacking and by using it I will increase my value, or I have a better return or be more efficient, or whatever it is….. then I’m going to buy from you regardless of whether or not we’ve got a relationship. I ask this all the time. When was the last time you bought from someone because you had a relationship? I bought a house years ago. I didn’t have a relationship with a realtor. I’ve just bought a car and did it all over the phone. I’ve never met the guy. I don’t know him. In fact, I could have been talking to an AI bot. I couldn’t care.
Joe Ducarreaux: Particularly these days, is getting harder and harder to tell isn’t it.
Benjamin Dennehy: I don’t need a relationship. That’s why I’m big on it. Relationship is an excuse for procrastinating and not doing your job.
Joe Ducarreaux: Well, with that in mind then. What new skills and strategies do salespeople need to develop in order to remain relevant?
Benjamin Dennehy: All this technology has taken them away from what fundamentally matters, your ability to communicate. That is a skill. Lawyers aren’t hiding behind Twitter and LinkedIn in courtrooms, they’re still going to stand up and do their job. You can’t hide behind social media because the skill is your innate ability to ask questions, your ability to listen, your ability to think on your feet, your ability to challenge, your ability to plant your feet.
All of these are skills which don’t require technology. In fact, they require just a good old fashioned school system when it used to be of any relevance. They were supposed to teach you these things. So I would say from a technological point of view, cold calling has never been easier. People say cold calling’s hard. How can, in a world where everybody’s walking around with a phone, cold calling be harder.
Joe Ducarreaux: So the only way to develop this then is effectively timing in the ring? It’s just experience of just doing it and doing it and doing it?
Benjamin Dennehy: You can’t read yourself thin. You can’t read yourself thin, you’ve got to go to the gym, you’ve got to go out there, you’ve got to do stuff that loses weight. So it’s no point sitting back reading all these books about sales and watching webinars….no!. Pick up the phone. Go knock on doors, talk to real people and develop your communication skills, because that’s all selling is. It’s the art of communication. A lost art, which is being destroyed by technology. Saying, no, you just need a relationship. A couple of nice gifts and some appropriate emails will do it for you. Because that’s one of the other problems, when salespeople do get the chance to communicate they seem to talk about themselves and the product and what they do. They never use the opportunity to do their real job, or if they do ask questions, it’s the usual crappy questions that you would pull off some sort of software company’s website. They do a white paper, 40 questions you should be asking and they’re all terrible questions.
Joe Ducarreaux: What are some good questions then, but what questions would you suggest?
Benjamin Dennehy: Well, the purpose of getting in front of another human being is I need to get them to realize and I can’t make anyone realize everything. So this is the other thing I teach people. I can’t convince anybody of anything. You can momentarily overpower someone’s faculties and convince them, but this is when you have the concept of buyer’s remorse. When they’ve had a chance to think it through, they suddenly realize, hang on, just in the heat of the moment feeling pressure, I just capitulated. Actually, I’m not going to do it. So you can’t convince anyone of anything. So my job is to get prospects to discover that they have a problem, discover that they need to fix a problem, but discover that the problem’s costing them a lot of money. If we can’t get them to discover those things, why would they give me any money? So in order to do that, I can’t go in with a series of stupid topline questions. What keeps you awake at night? What challenges are you currently facing within your team? If you can decide….. oh, it’s just, no! We have to get under the skin of this person. This is a human being. They buy emotionally and they justify intellectually. So I have to really challenge them. So my goal is to get them to convince me they have a problem and they need to fix it. Getting them to do the fighting for it, not me.
Joe Ducarreaux: So, I guess what you’re saying is while you are resistant to the idea of building a relationship, as we’ve discussed, you still are playing on the empathy of the person that you are speaking to on the other end. Is that correct?
Benjamin Dennehy: I want to get to the real emotive reason as to why they’re doing this. So, let’s say you build websites and you get in front of somebody and you ask them so why do you need to do a website? They’ll always come back with an intellectual answer. They’ll say something like, well, I just don’t think our website’s performing to the level that we want it to or something like that. Now it’s an intellectual answer and then what a typical salesman will do, some will ask a few more questions, but a lot will say, okay, well, we’ve helped a lot of companies that have problems and one of the ways we can help them is by doing……. No I want to dig deeper…….when you say, it’s not performing, give me an example. What do you mean it’s not performing? Well, you know, I don’t think we’re getting enough sales. Talk me through that, when you say enough sales, what does enough sales look like to you? How many were you expecting? What were you wanting? Well, we were thinking we were going to make 300 a month. Have you ever sold 300 a month ever? No. So how the hell did you come up with a figure of 300 ? Well it just seemed like an amiable goal. I know, but if it’s not rooted in reality, it’s a stupid goal. I may know the statistics for their industry and tell them the industry average is a hundred sales a month based on this but they don’t know this. And then I say, no, you’re currently doing 85 with a website. If we up it, we could maybe get it to a hundred, maybe 110. Is that worthwhile?
Joe Ducarreaux: So it’s about asking the investigative questions and almost following your nose, being a detective almost?
Benjamin Dennehy: I’m trying to get to the truth. When you start to pull away, the answers, what they tell you starts to fall apart because then you realize actually it’s got nothing to do with the sales. Because when you say to them, look, you don’t need a new website because you’re doing 85, it’s pretty good. The most we can get up to is maybe 100, 110. I get it. But really do you want to go through all the headache of having to create a whole new website and all the crap that goes with it just to make an extra 20 sales a month, particularly at the volume you’re selling. And then they go, well, it’s not just that. Well, what else is it? I don’t like the website. What do you mean you don’t like it? I just want it to look prettier. But it’s working. Would you rather a pretty website that does nothing? No, no, no. I want a pretty website that does something really well. Why have you suddenly turned around and say we need a prettier website when this one’s doing its job? And then you discover, well, one of our competitors….. Ah, now here we go, we’re getting there. Now I know what’s going on. This has got nothing to do with sales, this is vanity, this is ego. Look, I’m willing to satisfy your ego, but now I know why I’m doing it. So let’s not bullshit each other with we’re trying to build a website that’s going to drive sales. Now I know what I’m supposed to do. I need to create something that you are going to get aroused over. Is that about right? Yeah, well that’s easy. Now I know what I’m doing. Yeah. I can do what I’m meant to do.
So this is what I mean. You can do this with anything. Salespeople don’t do that. They just get what they want to hear. Top level intellectual. You need a new website, you need to increase sales. Fine. We can do that. But that’s not why you’re really here and you’ve never figured out why you’re really here. So we’re probably going to end up fighting and arguing or not being happy with each other. You can’t do that on email. You can’t do that on Twitter. You can’t do that through email and you can’t do that from hiding behind these things and then getting in front of a human being and hoping you are able to do that in the moment. You can’t.
Joe Ducarreaux: I feel I probably could anticipate what your answer for our next question is going to be. What do you think is the future of sales and what role would the traditional salesperson play in the future?
Benjamin Dennehy: Well, I think AI will take over telephone prospecting. . Because telephone prospecting is really an algorithm. I follow a set structure every time. Once an algorithm learns a structure and then is able to think on its feet, it learns the ability to react to certain phrases or questions. There’s no reason why an AI bot couldn’t do it, because this is simply a numbers game when it comes to prospecting. If you have something that doesn’t fear rejection, doesn’t get disheartened, doesn’t get angry, doesn’t get annoyed, doesn’t get all the things that humans do, then it can just do this 24/7. Follow an algorithm and I’ve always felt that telephone prospecting will go via that way. It’s probably a few years off. But once they finesse it, I think there’s no reason for a human being to ever have to make a telephone prospecting. again. Now you’re not going to overtake face-to-face sales, particularly with more complex deals. It’s always going to require people. You’ve got top lawyers, there’s going to be an elite of people who specialize in the ability to sell face-to-face once the automated stuff can’t. So I think if you are a bright person, first of all, you want to figure out how to prospect well, because it’s the best place to learn how to engage with people. But then you want to develop your in-person face-to-face skills because if you don’t, if you’re always going to be someone who’s going to be phone based I think you’ll find yourself out of a job in the future. There will be no reason for a human to do telephone prospecting because it’s actually quite straightforward and simple.
Joe Ducarreaux: Let’s assume that what you’re saying is correct, Benjamin. Let’s say that AI is doing the telephone prospecting, but there’s still going to be these higher up elite salespeople. Is that not going to create a vacuum that makes it very difficult to then forge a career into sales, do you think?
Benjamin Dennehy: Well, let’s be blunt, most people aren’t in sales because they want it as their career. You ask the average salesperson, how’d you get into sales? The answer is always I kind of fell into it. You needed a job. Selling is where you go, where you’ve tried everything else and you’ve failed. You meet any lawyer, you meet any surgeon, you meet any accountant. How did you become a lawyer? How’d you become a……? They don’t say, I kind of fell into it. I was gardening one day and I thought sod it, let’s try neuros. Doesn’t happen. This is something they’ve wanted to do and then they went and spent years training and investing in themselves. Maybe they paid for this out of their own pocket, through student loans. Salespeople turn up, they get hired, they get three days of product knowledge training. They’re given a CRM system, a suit in a car, and they told you they are one. Then after a few years they realize they’ve got no transferable skillset. When was the last time you saw a job that said, wanted ex salesperson?
Joe Ducarreaux: I got to be honest, not very frequently that that happens.
Benjamin Dennehy: Exactly. So for their career, most people are in sales in the hope to get out. So the ones that want a career are the ones that get really good and they’re the ones that invest in themselves, and they spend time trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t and then building on it. That’s what I did. Now I wanted to teach people because it worked. Then everything I do, I teach and everything I teach, I do. So when I do it, people say, I love the way you’ve, I don’t know what it is you’ve done, but I want to be able to do what you’ve just done with me. All I’ve done is master the art of communicating. So, for a career, if you want a career in sales, you’ve got to figure out why am I there? And money is not enough. It’s not, I want to make a lot of money. If you did, why are most salespeople so average? Every salesperson you meet wants to make more money. So my question is, well, why aren’t you? You know, it’s really simple. Why aren’t you? If you want to make more money! You’re making just as much as you’re entitled to because your skill sets only get you this far.
So figure it out. My advice would be, if you want a career in sales, you need to invest in figuring out how to communicate, because that’s all this is. This is a great communication skill. It’s fortunate. It’s what I teach, so that’s good.
Joe Ducarreaux: Well, it is the bottom line isn’t it, communication, I suppose. So then what are some of the biggest challenges faced by salespeople today other than, as you’ve mentioned, your disdain for LinkedIn and those sorts of bits and pieces. What else is there that’s challenging for them?
Benjamin Dennehy: The biggest challenges? That’s a good one. I think it can vary. If you work in the SAAS sector for instance, there seems to be a sector culture where it’s volume, demo and volume, and it’s a spray and pray approach. That can be quite soul destroying. Particularly if you’re coming in at the bottom level and you’re literally just on the phone nonstop, prospecting. To put someone in front of someone else who then does a demo of a product and then you go to a proposal stage and then…..this poor little SDR is working his guts out……then you’re reliant on all the other people up the chain. What if the guy doing the demos is an idiot or a loser? So you could have got them in front of somebody that could have been perfect, but it’s ruined by other people.
So I think one of the challenges is when you’re at the bottom is you have no control over what people above you are doing. You could be doing a really good job, but you’re being let down by others in the chain. Then what do they do? The people getting the meetings blame the people that book the meetings. The meetings aren’t good enough, there’s not enough meetings! The people booking the meetings are saying, what the hell are you talking about? We’ve got you in front of the companies we were told to get you in front of. You are the ones not selling. There’s this constant tension. I’m of the opinion that you should prospect and sell. If you can’t prospect…….so many people want to get out of prospecting because they just want to do the selling, they want to do the glorying. Well you know what, if you are really good at prospecting, the odds are you’ll be good at face-to-face meetings. I want to be in control of the whole process as a salesperson. I don’t want to jump in and out, personally. So I think for a lot of people that’s a challenge because in corporate structures, they have these rigid little silos. You do this and this and this and this. It’s just a production line and it’s all volume. You do a hundred of these pointless exercises, but we only need five to pay off. So 95% of the time is just non-productive, pointless behaviour. I find that frustrating, but they go well, that’s the way it is. Because they’re making money…..remember, a lot of these companies are owned by venture capitalists. Venture capitalists have no interest in long-term longevity. It’s just high turnover, high sales, projected…..we’ve got 32 demos currently going on every day. Each one of those, if they sell, is worth X. So this company’s now worth hundreds of millions of quid, when really in reality, it’s a few bob..
Joe Ducarreaux: Let’s stick with the blame culture aspect of it. How could a salesperson overcome that challenge ? As you say, they’ve done the best job they possibly can, they’ve booked a really good meeting, but then it failed somewhere down the chain. What can be done about that?
Benjamin Dennehy: Find a better job.
Joe Ducarreaux: There you go. Plain and simple. .
Benjamin Dennehy: Well, it is that simple. You can’t sit at a job and moan about it. What you do is you, you say, I’m good at salesperson. If you’re a good salesperson, you’re self-employed. That’s the whole point of being a good salesperson. A salesperson doesn’t need an employer. If you can generate money, then you’re a salesperson. So if you are able to sit at a desk and create meetings on behalf of other people who then go and screw it. Then you can quit and you can go do the same thing for yourself. I’ve inspired many people to go out, leave their jobs, still do prospecting, but then sell them prospecting services. If someone’s paying me to prospect for them, I don’t care if you win or lose. You’re not paying me for that. You are paying me to get you in front of them. You can be the worst sellers in the world, but I’m going to charge a handsome fee to put you in front of them. So I say take control. If you’re in a job that you don’t like, quit! Don’t moan about it. If you’re I can’t, I need the money. Then shut up.
Joe Ducarreaux: Let’s look through the telescope the other way then. Let’s assume a sales organization is experiencing difficulty with that sort of thing. To implement those changes and help their salespeople thrive in exactly the way you’ve described then. What changes can they make to help?
Benjamin Dennehy: I’d have to sack most of their sales managers probably to start with. I still don’t know what sales managers do and I’ve been in this for years. They don’t seem to do a lot of coaching and training. There’s not a lot of managing. One of the biggest challenges companies have is they never want to have someone solely dedicated to helping the salespeople get better. So they hybrid the role. Now the problem is, if you give the person whose responsibility is to encourage and help people grow, but you also tell them, oh, by the way, you still have a sales target! What’s the one thing they’re going to focus on? The one thing that the company really only cares about, and that’s their sales target. So they’re under pressure to hit a target. So then they don’t have time to give their best to the people. So what you need to do, and then it’s an expense, but you need to have someone whose whole job is to make the best out of the people. So their whole day is literally listening to people make phone calls, tweaking it with them, making calls in front of them, demonstrating how they do it and just giving them that without a sales target hanging around their neck. His sales target is the team’s target. My job is to get the team to this level, but if you give me my own sales target, then I’m going to focus on the one thing that matters the most. Because that’s the one thing you’re going to pull me up on. You didn’t hit your target, Benjamin. Well, I’ve been training the guys. Well you need to manage your time better Benjamin. It’s stupid, stupid managerial decisions because they’re always trying to squeeze as much as they can out of the stone. No, get someone whose job is to get the best out of the people. Don’t set them a target. Let them manage, let them coach, let them train. Don’t make them salespeople. That’s a different skill set in some ways. So you can lose good salespeople to management and often that happens. You lose a good salesman and get a crap manager because they’re different skills. So I’m always suspicious of anyone that wants to get out of sales and go into management. Why? Unless you’re driven by……because I want to spend my time teaching people how to be just as good as I was. That I get! But if it was, ah, you know, I feel like a change. I want to do something different or I want to get off the phones. It’s like you should be the last person leading people on the phones then
Joe Ducarreaux: It would be an investment to hire someone like that, I imagine it would pay off in the long run.
Benjamin Dennehy: But companies are too short-sighted. No, no.We’re paying this guy £60K a year and all he does is look after the other people. If he was doing his job well, that whole team would be performing so much better. That’s why he’s there or she’s there, I should say.
Joe Ducarreaux: What advice would you give for salespeople who are looking to stay ahead of the curve and succeed in today’s changing market?
Benjamin Dennehy: Well you have to invest in yourself. I think sales is one of the only professions where people feel that it’s everyone else’s responsibility to educate them. It’s not. Because like I said, no one trains to be a salesperson. Remember, you fall into it. You don’t spend five years at law school. You don’t spend seven years at medical school. You don’t spend three years at accountancy school. Then when you start your career, you’re a junior, you’re right at the bottom. You’re just fed little things to deal with because that study was great, but you now need to know the real world life experience and there’s no way you can just go straight in to do what you want. So you have to work your way up. So it’s a progression. Sales, like I say, you, you get through the interview, you get a week’s product knowledge training. You can give it a CRM system and a car and now you are a sales professional and then they’re left to their own devices. Most don’t invest in themselves because they say, well, I don’t really want to be here anyway. Why the hell would I spend all this time and money trying to get good at something that deep down I don’t want to do?
So this is why we have such a problem and culture in sales, as being average and mediocre because deep down we don’t want to be there, most of us. So why would I spend a lot of money and of my time trying to get really good at something, when deep down I’m playing the lottery hoping, dear God, this Saturday’s the day I get to walk in and grab my boss by his cheesy yellow tie and tell him to stick his job up his……! Now, I know I’m being brutally blunt, but people listening to this know it’s true because you just have to meet salespeople and ask them, well, why are you here? I needed a job.
Joe Ducarreaux: The culture needs a shift, is that what you’re saying?
Benjamin Dennehy: Yes, it needs to be seen as a profession. It’s loosely labeled a profession. I have a presence on LinkedIn where a lot of people meet me. This is why I came up with the title of UK’s Most Hated Sales Trainer, because I sat back looking at salespeople and Leaders……. I hate the phrase sales leader. I’ve never called myself a sales leader. I hate all of this because all of this falls into the usual pathology of salespeople who want to be liked and loved. And I looked at this and I saw everyone on LinkedIn and they’re a guru, they’re an expert, they’re a leader, they’re a number one, they’re a top performer. I said, no one wants to be hated. I don’t want people to like me. I want people to buy from me. And you don’t have to like someone to buy from them. You just have to trust that they can help you. I point this out, do you have to like your lawyer to trust they’ll do a good job? No! Do you have to like your surgeon? No! So you don’t need to like people or be liked.
Now there’s a difference though and I caveat this because people always get this confused. There’s a difference between being liked and going out of your way to be liked. And salespeople go out of their way to be. I have a lot of people like me, but it’s not because I’ve gone out of my way to get them to like me. It’s just as they go through the process, it’s actually this guy isn’t quite as horrible as I thought he was. He’s actually quite a nice guy. So people learn to like me, but they’ve already bought from me. So you don’t need to be liked to sell. I’m not saying you’ve got to go to behave like a complete knob. Again, that’s stupid. My job is to get them to realize that they need help and they don’t have to like me to realize that.
Joe Ducarreaux: So then Benjamin, just to start to wrap up our conversation here, which has been one of the more entertaining webinars I think we’ve done and certainly informative. I’ve certainly enjoyed myself. If I could ask you for one key takeaway for people listening to our conversation today. What is the most important thing you would like them to take away from us having a chat today?
Benjamin Dennehy: If you are struggling with sales, you need to look in the mirror and then you’re looking at the problem. It’s not Brexit, it’s not covid, it’s not the strikes, it’s not the competitors, it’s not the pricing….. It’s you. You don’t have the skills to get people to see that they need what you have and it doesn’t matter. I made a lot of money in Covid. I was like so many other people, my diary dried up overnight literally, because I’m an in-house in-person trainer. My entire income…. Gone!
I could have sat there and said, whoa is me. What I did do is I sat there and I thought, okay, what do I do now? How do I take this situation and make it work for me? And I’d never done any training online. I didn’t even think anyone would pay me online. So I thought, well, I have nothing to lose. Then I thought, well, what if I advertise a training bootcamp online and no one buys…… and I’m supposed to be a sales expert. I’ve never called myself a sales expert, but people accuse me of being a sales expert. Well look, the sales expert didn’t make it work. What a loser. So my fear was, what happens if this doesn’t work? Then of course, my reality kicks in and says, I don’t give a rats ass what people on LinkedIn think of me? Why would I care? So I went ahead. It turned out to be a success. I did over 80 boot camps, over a 1000 people during the lockdown, went through my boot camps and that was on a roll of the dice. So I looked in the mirror and thought, well, what do I have to do to change? I have to change. I can’t sit here and blame the government or Covid or my Clients for dumping me because I couldn’t come in or not pay their invoices. So what do I have to do? I had to change. I had to look in the mirror and say, well, what do you have to do to make this work? You are the master of your own destiny. I know we live in a culture where actually you are not and you are just the victim. No, you’re not a victim. In fact, there’s never been a better time to be alive, particularly if you live in the West. You have to go out of your way to find reasons to be angry and upset. So for goodness sake, look in the mirror and improve yourself. That would be my advice.
Benjamin Dennehy, thank you so much for joining us for this B2B Sales Playbook webinar.
Benjamin Dennehy: Thank you.
Joe Ducarreaux: Well there you go, that was The Death of the Traditional Salesperson with Benjamin Dennehy. Here are our key takeaways:-
- Salespeople are more reliant on technology and social media these days but good communication skills cannot be developed behind a keyboard. Salespeople need to be able to communicate well in real time.
- Ask questions, listen and build trust to remain relevant. Benjamin emphasizes the importance of investigative questioning, not making assumptions and having realistic goals for salespeople.
- Benjamin suspects that AI will take over telephone prospecting but human salespeople are still necessary for building relationships and understanding Clients’ emotions and motivations.
- Sales organizations can help salespeople thrive by having a dedicated person whose sole job is to help them get better at it without a sales target hanging around their neck.
Thanks again to Benjamin for joining me and thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe to the B2B Sales Playbook podcasts wherever you get your pods and give us a 5 star rating where possible.
We will be back again next week for another excellent B2B Sales Playbook podcast.
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LinkedIn Strategies for B2B Website Visitors: How to Target, Engage, and Convert
Join us for an exclusive webinar featuring Tom Happe, CEO of Trueleads, and discover how to unlock the potential of LinkedIn to target, engage, and convert your B2B website ...
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How iThink 365 Drives Lead-Gen Success With Limited Resources
Join us for this exclusive webinar as Yvonne Cookson from iThink 365 shares how she transformed their lead generation strategy, navigated growth challenges, and used cutting-edge technology to boost productivity and ...
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