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Today’s interview is with Will Barron, host of the very popular Salesman Podcast at Salesman.org. But, for a change, this is Will interviewing me for his podcast. I thought we spoke about a lot of good stuff, it was fun and Will is great interviewer. So, as a result, I thought it was worth republishing the interview here as part of my own interview series. Do check it out as Will and I talk about customer service and customer experience, how it applies particularly to B2B sales people, what sales people should be doing to develop their relationships with their customers (actual and potential) and how that will help them win more business.
This interview follows on from my recent interview – A new model of business and leadership is needed: Lessons from one of the UK’s best companies to work for – Interview with Jason Stockwood – and is number 279 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.
Here’s the highlights of my interview with Will:
- 60 percent of your customers will have already made up their mind who they want to buy from before they pick up the phone to call you, arrange a meeting or send you an e-mail.
- Sales people often ignore this fact. And, in doing so, ignore a huge opportunity.
- Face to face, telephone and digital first impressions count.
- Understand where your customers apps are at when you start to engage with them. To assume that they know nothing and that you need to ‘educate’ them is a complete mistake, can waste their time and make yourself look foolish.
- Service and experience is not one massive thing, it’s made up of a thousand little things.
- Forget about the sale and focus on the relationship.
- Be careful how you define ‘value’. Ask yourself: Value for who?
- Psychology and empathy will help you understand and engage with your customer or potential customer.
- We have to be conscious that we are developing trust at a distance even when we are getting pummeled by short term targets.
- What do you want to be known for?
- Read StrengthsFinder 2.0.
- Don’t be like anybody else. Be the best version of yourself and then figure out how you can turn that up to 11.
- If you want improve your service or experience you should focus on 100 or 1000 small things that you can improve.
The Salesman Podcast is the worlds largest B2B sales show with over 650,000 downloads each month. In it, Will interviews the world’s leading sales and business experts to bring sales people the resources that they need to thrive in B2B sales.
