NLP Sales and business development Podcast - Melanie Martin

Melanie - Good morning!

Michael - Can ask you a first what do you actually understand by business development?

Melanie - Well, essentially what I do is I go out, I work for a design company - I and meet people who could need our services- and I talk to people, offer them some solutions to a problem they have, it might be product branding, or a brochure, or about their sales materials, and I just want to help them, so that’s helping our company because that’s what we do.

Melanie - it’s as simple as that.

Michael - Ok, if I can ask you three questions just to give everybody a bit of background, and I’ll ask you the three questions and then I’ll take one at a time. What actual product or service does your company offer? Who are your target customers? And how do you reach them, or how do you sell to them? So firstly, would you like to describe the products or service that your company offers.

Melanie - yes absolutely. We’re a web design company - design and web design company, so we offer everything from branding, which is your company logos, your stationary and in fact everything you sell with. We can design your invoices, your packaging, we do brochures we do annual reports, we do flyers, we do any form of promotional material, we also do websites because we believe you can’t separate the two anymore. We offer hosting, we offer search engine optimisation, we do e-newsletters, we do the whole range really - so when you come to us we do everything.

Michael - Who would you say your ideal customers are?

Melanie - an ideal customer is always one who needs our services, and can be anything from a small to medium sized company to a large corporation. We work with various companies and we a specialist in the hotel and leisure industry but we’ve also recently done a lot in the entertainment area.

Michael - What’s the channel you use to sell?

Melanie - It’s a combination of four things. Referrals, websites, networking and direct mail to cold-call follow-up.

Michael - Which is the one you find most successful?

Melanie - The ideal situation is you should get a referral from someone, you’ve already done work for, or knows work you’ve already done. So that’s a lot of the sales process. You go to the client or potential client and he already knows you in a way, and you have already earned their trust, and so obviously that the ideal situation. But all four are equally important for us, especially the website, which is becoming more and more of a tool - where people get in touch with you - and it’s quite funny most people tend to get in touch with you at 10pm at night.

Michael - Would you say that your customers have a particular decision-making process in buying what you offer?

Melanie - I think it’s the biggest thing - they know that they want to do something and they know that they need something, but they’re not quite sure yet. You need to get them so they understand that if they do it, it won’t just be something that looks nice, but it will be something that works for them and brings them more customers. And so what the process for the customer usually is - they need to understand how to use the marketing materials.

Michael - Do you yourself have a particular sales model or methodology that you use?

Melanie - I talk to people. I’m not a believer in hard sales. I like to get to know my customers before I get to work with them because I feel like I’m delivering a solution to a problem that the customer has, so I really need to understand what the problem is in order to sell, and to advice them on what route to take. There’s nothing more annoying for a customer than to be sold a brochure that he doesn’t need and see we’re always looking to see what it is a person really needs - if its a website that is more beneficial to our clients business then we will recommend the website. But we can only do that if we talk to them so we take a lot of time in talking to potential customers.

Michael - Some people talk about removing a customers pain, it may or may not be an appropriate word, but I’m just wondering if in thinking about it there’s any particular problems or pains that you’re particularly good at solving for customers.

Melanie - We’re particularly good at helping our clients to get to their clients, their potential client base, and you look at this from every angle - we help them identify who their clients are. It’s quite shocking, often, to go to clients, and they don’t really know what their target market is, we’re helping to clear the mist. And especially in the hotel and leisure industry it is quite interesting to me that so many hotels have not got a very good website in terms of, booking facility, it has no way of getting in touch with the hotel, the phone numbers are almost hidden somewhere, and when you think that the website is a tool for actually getting people into beds in that hotel - then that’s the most crucial factor.

Michael - Right. So looking at it the other way, what are do you think that the biggest benefits that you bring to your customers are?

Melanie - it’s the ability to look from another point of view, when you’re in your business you sometimes get a little bit blind. And also having done it all before it’s also the most important factor really, because we’ve had this before with another client, and I have an example, and the knowledge of how it turns out with other clients, so I can take the situation away from clients where they’d have learn the to hard way. Because we’ve already done it.

Michael - From your experience of the sales and your experience of customers, what do you think makes a good sales person?

Melanie - Someone that doesn’t promise something that they can’t keep, someone who actually listens, and someone who doesn’t just want to sell to a client, but thinks of it as a road you go together - like a partnership, I think that those are the good salespeople.

Michael - Do you think that selling is changing in 2007, and do you think key selling skills have been the same, or have you and noticed anything changing?

Melanie - It’s actually funny that you mention that. I bought in a car boot sale something printed in the fifties about how to approach your customers, and I read it and to be honest with you, after reading it I realised that it’s exactly the same advice you’d get given today. I don’t think it’s that it’s selling that’s changing, I think it’s peoples attitudes that are changing. It’s consider a bit of hard work and also, you might think that the ‘selling’ industry suffers with a bit of a bad reputation - with is more so here than in the US, where salespeople are more appreciated, sort of like hard workers, you know, high achievers. But I think a lot of the time the sales process changing, is used as an excuse by sales-people in order to not have to do the work, because it is work and you have to work at it.

Michael - Let’s actually look at you in selling. You said that often get calls after ten o’clock at night, or after ten o’clock at night, but generally when do you do your sales work?

Melanie - I don’t think you can - I always look, I’ll remember saying to my husband sometimes, that I’ll always look. There’ll be someone that I have to contact, or they don’t look very good, or when we’re out at weekends, I’ll say ’oh I have to work with them.’ or ‘I’ll have to work today‘. So I think that’s part of the sales process for me identifying who I could work with, so I think I always do some work at some time of the day, but the main work is obviously done in office hours because that’s when my clients work.

Michael - (laughter) Ok

Michael - Within the sales cycle, what do you think is the most important part? Is it making contact? Is it going to actual meetings? Is it following up? What do you think is the most important part of the sales cycles?

Melanie - I actually think that the most important aspect of the sales cycle is consistency throughout, and that is from the first point that you start the journey, and that’s when you first make contact, it might be in a letter or an introduction from someone you know. You phone up when you say you’ll phone up, send a code when you say you’ll send a code - Be on times for your meetings, follow up your meetings. It’s consistency. People want to know that you do what you do before they work with you.

Michael - Ok, and if you have a newbie salesperson to teach, what bits of advice would you give them?

Melanie - I would definitely say be yourself, and be consistent. Read a lot, learn a lot. I’m a big fan of people like Jim Roan and Sid Friedman’s who’ve written loads and loads of books over the years, and all kind of seminars, and I constantly look for where I can pick up new tips. And I think that’s very important - to go out and listen to things, and broaden your horizons, learn to chat with people - I think that’s very important advice, that I would give everyone because communication is key in the industry that we’re in.

Michael - And looking back how did you learn to be good at this? What happened to you to enable you to do this well?

Melanie - Well when I was little. I was very, very shy - and when I went to secondary school all the other kids seemed very confident. And my grandmother said, ‘you can do two things, you can either hide, or you can go out of your comfort zone and do something about it.’ and I chose to go out of my comfort zone. And I learned how to speak up in class and how to approach people, a very uncomfortable thing for me to do, but I learned ‘Oh there might be some people who reject me, but overall most people seem to like me.’ and when you learn that there’s a balance, then you don’t really fear rejection and I think that’s what most sales-people do, is fear rejection - and as far as I see, I really don’t care.

Michael - I find that interesting - your answer about almost being comfortable to move out of your comfort zone.

Melanie - Absolutely, I find it very important. As soon as you start thinking that a ‘no’ doesn’t matter, because a ‘no’ brings me one step closer to a ‘yes’, and once you really start to believe that, you just don’t care anymore because you just kind of take it on the chin. You just say ‘Ok, I’ve done everything that I could have done’ and you don’t think ‘Oh no, oh no, the person said No.’ and you wallow in your own pity and pain and you forget that you have to work for the rest of the day. And I think that’s just something - and I was lucky because I learned it from very early on, but I think it’s a crucial thing, but that’s where a lot of salespeople go wrong - because they make it personal, when its never meant to be personal.

Michael - Ok, moving on from that - what do you believe about yourself when you’re selling?

Melanie - I believe that I can offer a service, and I believe that I can make a difference to the clients company. And that’s what I believe in because the client that I work with can get a sense that I well and truly believe that what I do more than anything in the world - they can sense insecurity and when you’re not sure.

Michael - Ok. So imagine you haven’t met a client yet, do you have any innate beliefs about the people that you’re about to meet?

Melanie - No, I try to see the potential customer as a potential friend. So I’ll go in there, I’ll get to know the person, I’ll get to know the company, and that’s all I want to do, I just want to come out of there after having a good half hour, having a good conversation, and identify what I could really do. And I also often find that if I’m not the right person to help, then I won’t hesitate to say that. And I will refer them onto someone else I know, and trust. I’ll say ‘In this point in time you won’t need me, you might need someone else.’ So it’s what you would do with any of your friends really - you listen to the problem and think of a solution, or an answer to their question- and that’s all I’ll do really to new client.

Michael - So that’s about beliefs. That might sound an odd question, but do you have a personal mission in mind when - do you have a mission or vision? Who are you when you sell? Who is Melanie when you‘re doing this job?

Melanie - I don’t real have a mission, because that’s just too harsh. I constantly change my approach and constantly develop my approach, so I don’t really have a mission. I want to have a good time when I do what I do, and that comes through really. If I don’t enjoy what I’m doing, then I won’t do it. So that’s my key thing, I want to enjoy what I’m doing.

Michael - Ok, excellent. Just two more questions. What do you think is the biggest issue that effects salespeople today?

Melanie - I think a lot of time it’s just bad reputation. People get cold calls when their at home, and junk email. So people will always make a connection with your call and some horrible call from the night before. And you need to overcome that objection and that’s not always easy. If someone doesn’t want to talk to you, then they don’t want to talk to you, there’s not that much that you could do about it. I think it’s just bad reputation. But sometime you have to say ‘I know we all have doubts we all have those phone calls, we all have had promises from someone that they didn’t keep. Let’s all move on from that and give it a positive angle.

Michael - Ok, correct me if I’m wrong, but are you saying that what’s getting harder is getting through to people, because people are bombarded with so many other things?

Melanie - I think so. When I first get into the office in the mornings I have about fifty emails. And that’s leaving the ones from the night before. They’re emails that are a lot of spam, that are totally irrelevant to me, but I have to shift through it. It’s very easy if you’re at the receiving end to just think ‘oh I’ll just delete the lot.’ And also with phone calls - as a design agency you get hundreds of phone calls from recruiters, people who want us to give sub-contract work to them, from printers, from stationary people. We must get thirty calls of that nature a day. And then you go home and immediately your phone rings, with people about insurance and - I just think there’s that connotation to it now, because there’s so much of it.

Michael - This might sound an odd way of putting it, what advice do you take yourself - what advice do you give another sales person - in how you deal with this? From a salespersons point of view.

Melanie - I would make friends with the person that you’re going to phone. Get to know the gatekeeper. Ask questions, and don’t just get disheartened when they don’t let you through. Just say ‘Is it ok to give you our information?’ and keep at it. You’ll never get through to 100% of the people, so just move on if you feel like you’ve done absolutely everything you can. But don’t be disheartened because a client isn’t there, or is in a meeting - just think of what other ways you could reach them. I’m a true believer in the twenty contacts method, that it takes twenty times per person to actually get to the point where you can close. So if you’ve got twenty times and you haven’t got anywhere, move on.

Michael - (Laughter) Ok. If you had to describe sales, or the relationship between sales and the customers business as a sort of fairy tale, fantasy character, or animal - how would you describe the client-sales relationship?

Melanie - Rapunzel, I don’t know if you know Rapunzel, but she has very long hair - she’s kept in a tower, locked up. And she’s waiting for a prince to rescue her, and a lot of princes tried but they’ve never managed to - they’ve tried everything. And then the one prince comes along and says ‘Well your hairs so long, through it down and I’ll climb up it and I‘ll rescue you!’ and I think it’s a little bit like that, because you have to help your clients get out of their tower, and you think to think about your proposition. You need courage and strength, and persistence I think, to do that.

Michael - Before I ask for your contact details, in case there is anyone that would like to contact you, is there anything important that we haven’t discussed that you would like to mention?

Melanie - Well the only thing that I would like to mention is about networking. People get so carried away because they’re a member of an electronic networking group, and it’s fantastic, I’m a member of every single one going. And you can easily hide yourself and think ‘I’m active, I’m a member of an online networking group!’ But at the end of the day you have to question yourself - how much you’re spending on one area of networking, and how much result do you get out of it in a certain length of time. And I think that it’s not just electronic networking, I think that you actually have to go out and meet people, and wherever you go, if you just chat to people you might just get a referral on the go. Like I did once in a coffee shop in London, and it turned out that he was the managing director of a marketing company. So always think business wherever you go.

Michael - Ok. Excellent, and what are your contact details?

Melanie - My name is Melanie Martin and the company’s called Essence Design. I can also be joined on Ecademy by linking to Blackstar.

Michael - Thank you very much for your help with this.

Melanie - No worries, thank you very much.