Latest / I Used To Be Crap At Sales / The '3 Whys' Framework Top Performers Use To Close More Deals | EP26 | Scott Cowley

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The '3 Whys' Framework Top Performers Use To Close More Deals | EP26 | Scott Cowley · I Used To Be Crap At Sales

• 0:00
  Mark Ackers: Hi everyone. Here's what's coming up in today's
• 0:02
  episode. Now today's guest. Where do I start? He's an
• 0:05
  Australian who studied at the University of Technology in
• 0:07
  Sydney and has gone on to have an amazing sales career along
• 0:10
  the way. He's also worn hats of advisor, fractional VP of sales,
• 0:15
  and of course, he's one of our brilliant coaches here at my
• 0:17
  sales coach. But, and there's always a but it hasn't always
• 0:20
  been smooth sailing. In between those successes, there's also a
• 0:24
  job where I spent nine months for a cyber security firm, and
• 0:28
  he didn't close a single deal. If you haven't guessed it
• 0:30
  already, my guest today is Scott Cowley, did you used to be crap
• 0:34
  at sales?
• 0:34
  Scott Cowley: God Yes. I was a super high performer, as I said.
• 0:37
  Joined this organisation and I was like, ready to make some
• 0:39
  serious cash, and it just never worked. And then the CEO sat me
• 0:43
  down and basically said, This isn't working. Handed me my P 45
• 0:47
  and I was out the door that day. I was very immature every role
• 0:50
  I'd been in. When I left, I didn't have any friends left in
• 0:53
  the organisation. I understood what the product did really
• 0:56
  well. You could monitor a bunch of Twitter accounts. You could
• 0:59
  get a lot of information, but I had no idea why someone would
• 1:02
  pay at the time, two analyst salaries for this product. Some
• 1:06
  businesses, the seasonality is so easy. HR tech, for example,
• 1:10
  the sale will happen in q4 implementation will happen in q1
• 1:14
  Mark Ackers: you've actually gotten a journey where you've
• 1:16
  learned the three whys. You've created your own frameworks. How
• 1:19
  did you go from being let go for non performance to being able to
• 1:23
  sit here today. How did you learn all this?
• 1:25
  Scott Cowley: You have to deeply understand why someone is buying
• 1:29
  your product. And I break it down into this three whys. Why
• 1:32
  buy anything? Why buy now? And the one that people are really
• 1:35
  good at is, Why buy your product? Most people are really
• 1:39
  good at one of them, but it's the last one that they're really
• 1:42
  good at. Why buy anything? A lot of them are bought in. Why buy
• 1:45
  now they got completely wrong. It's probably the one that the
• 1:49
  buyer is going to struggle the most to answer, but it has to be
• 1:52
  in that order, because if you don't have Why buy anything,
• 1:54
  they're not even going to entertain you long enough to get
• 1:56
  to why buy. Now, if you've chosen a path that requires
• 2:00
  sales, you either have to get good at it, or the business
• 2:03
  doesn't exist. The biggest thing I wish I had to learn a lot
• 2:06
  younger is
• 2:13
  Mark Ackers: Hello and welcome to another episode of The I used
• 2:15
  to be crap with sales Podcast. I'm Mark Akers co founder and
• 2:18
  Head of Sales here at my sales coach, and I'm your host, Scott.
• 2:21
  Welcome to the UK, to the myself coach headquarters, and to the
• 2:26
  orange chairs. Is it okay say Good day mate.
• 2:29
  Scott Cowley: Yeah, Good day mate. To you too. How you doing?
• 2:31
  You okay? I'm all right. Yeah, I'm all right. Jet lagged. I've
• 2:34
  been in Europe for like, two weeks, so the jet lag is gone,
• 2:37
  but I'm flying out in two days, so the jet lag will be back.
• 2:40
  Mark Ackers: The opportunity to have you in offices and on the
• 2:42
  podcast was too good to resist. Scott, we always start with a
• 2:46
  yes. No question, did you used to be crap at sales? God, yes.
• 2:49
  And how crap are we talking on a scale of one to 1010, being the
• 2:53
  crappest you could be.
• 2:54
  Scott Cowley: I mean, I did have a sales job for almost a year
• 2:57
  where I didn't sell anything. I'm gonna say a one. So 10 is
• 3:00
  the crappest you can be. Oh, I'm gonna be a 10, a solid 10, like,
• 3:04
  I definitely used to be crap at sales,
• 3:06
  Mark Ackers: I tell you what, Scott, why don't we start there,
• 3:08
  then set the scene for us. This was your job in London, wasn't
• 3:11
  it? The cybersecurity firm, yeah, one of them, yeah. Okay,
• 3:14
  so tell us a little bit about that role and what you were
• 3:17
  doing.
• 3:17
  Scott Cowley: So I did have a role before that where I was
• 3:20
  quite senior. It was the role I started in Australia, moved over
• 3:24
  to the UK. Was a senior sales rep within that organisation.
• 3:27
  Left there. I was trying to find a job with the highest OTA
• 3:31
  possible. I wanted to make 100,000 pounds. And then I
• 3:34
  joined. And I still to this day, have no idea why anyone would
• 3:39
  buy the product. The whole time I was there, I was listening to
• 3:41
  other people's sales calls. I understood what the product did
• 3:45
  really well. I understood how it could you could monitor a bunch
• 3:49
  of Twitter accounts. You could get a lot of information and
• 3:52
  then make that information into a certain format. But I had no
• 3:55
  idea why someone would pay, at the time, two analyst salaries
• 3:59
  for this product. I have looked them up not too long ago, and
• 4:02
  they have grown quite a bit as an organisation. So maybe they
• 4:06
  worked that problem out, but I could never work it out. And
• 4:08
  they have customers, so, like, it's 100% of me problem. That's
• 4:11
  probably my worst experience in sales joining I was a super high
• 4:15
  performer, as I said, join this organisation, and I was like,
• 4:18
  ready to make some serious cash, and it just never worked. Yeah.
• 4:22
  Then the CEO sat me down just before he was going to the US
• 4:25
  for a trip, and basically said, This isn't working. I said, No,
• 4:28
  it isn't. It had to be my P 45 and I was out the door that day.
• 4:31
  Things are slightly different now, but yeah, that
• 4:33
  organisation, I wish them the best. I just I couldn't work
• 4:37
  Mark Ackers: it out. Just for those listening for context,
• 4:39
  what year are we talking about here? When was this I
• 4:41
  Scott Cowley: think it was 2017 Yeah. 17. Yeah, it might have
• 4:44
  been 2018 when I left, but I think I joined in 2017
• 4:47
  Mark Ackers: in a scary way. Doesn't feel like it was
• 4:50
  Scott Cowley: that long ago, but so recent. Yeah, so and you said
• 4:53
  before,
• 4:53
  Mark Ackers: and just picking up in your language, you said you
• 4:55
  were a super high performer. What's your definition of that?
• 4:58
  The
• 4:58
  Scott Cowley: previous company when I was. Australia, I was top
• 5:00
  three in Asia consistently. Never was number one, but I was
• 5:04
  kind of two or three consistently. Then when I moved
• 5:06
  to the UK, I was consistently top five for that. That office
• 5:11
  sold to Latin America, Middle East, Africa and Europe. So
• 5:16
  yeah, that office, I was consistently top five again. I
• 5:18
  was never number one, but I was always kind of there or there
• 5:22
  abouts and that organisation as well. When I first joined, I set
• 5:28
  the target of being number one in something. I ended up being
• 5:32
  number one in outbound sales for two months running, which wasn't
• 5:37
  something they did track, but I tracked it. So like I was good
• 5:40
  at that job, but I think I got good at selling that product,
• 5:44
  not good at sales. And subsequently, I've had to learn
• 5:47
  how to be good at sales itself. But there's definitely that
• 5:50
  imposter syndrome that's like, Am I still crap at sales? Like
• 5:53
  every time a deal that it should have gone a certain direction,
• 5:55
  in my mind, doesn't definitely that imposter syndrome kicks in
• 5:58
  and you're like, maybe I am still crap at this thing. So
• 6:02
  that's yeah, that definitely I have been a super high
• 6:04
  performer. I have been literally fired from jobs or a job in a
• 6:09
  sales capacity.
• 6:10
  Mark Ackers: There's a few phrases that I want to pull out
• 6:11
  there. I just suppose again for context, when you said top
• 6:14
  three, top five out of how many?
• 6:15
  Scott Cowley: In Australia, it would have been 25 okay, in
• 6:19
  Europe, it would have been, let's say, double that 50. And
• 6:22
  then when I was number one, because right at the beginning
• 6:24
  of when I joined in Australia, when I was number one at the
• 6:27
  outbound thing, there would have been 150 reps worldwide.
• 6:30
  Mark Ackers: Okay, so in Australia and London, basically
• 6:32
  what we're saying is in the top 10% Yeah, effectively, okay. And
• 6:36
  then the bit that pleased me, because I thought I'm gonna have
• 6:38
  to go here, and I don't know how you'll take it. Is when you said
• 6:42
  it's a me thing, oh, 100% that was a me thing. And that's what
• 6:44
  I was gonna get to because I was gonna ask, was the company
• 6:47
  successful? Are people buying it? So
• 6:49
  Scott Cowley: that company, when I joined, there were four sales
• 6:54
  reps. One got fired three weeks after I joined for non
• 6:57
  performance. Two of us joined at the same time, so there's four,
• 7:00
  went to six, went to five, then myself and the other guy who I
• 7:04
  joined with Pro also left within the year. I think the other guy
• 7:08
  did close a few deals. I think his was voluntary. So they Yeah,
• 7:12
  at the time, they had three successful sellers. I think
• 7:17
  Mark Ackers: so the interesting thing that, that you said was
• 7:21
  you took it straight to the salaries of two data analysts.
• 7:25
  She was like, why would someone pay the equivalent of two data
• 7:27
  analyst salaries? And then you spoke about imposter syndrome.
• 7:30
  One of the things that I talk about a lot, and I see in sales
• 7:34
  people, are mindset issues around need for approval,
• 7:38
  imposter syndrome and a weakness for money. And the interesting
• 7:42
  thing I remember, early in my career, I used to think no one's
• 7:45
  going to pay the equivalent of my salary for this product. And
• 7:49
  that's because what I thought was expensive actually to
• 7:52
  another business wasn't. I actually had this conversation
• 7:55
  my wife a couple of weeks ago, and it didn't, I didn't deliver
• 7:58
  it in the best way, but she was talking about something being
• 8:00
  very expensive. You know? She's saying, oh, one of our
• 8:02
  customers, they're paying, I can't genuinely come in the
• 8:05
  amount, but it's a lot of money. And I said, is it a lot of
• 8:09
  money, though? Is that a lot of money? Because to you and I, is
• 8:11
  busy, and she, she just didn't want that conversation, like,
• 8:15
  What do you mean? It's like, it was like, millions, right? And
• 8:18
  she's like, of course, a lot of money. I was like, Is it to
• 8:20
  them? And when you start talking about two data analyst salaries,
• 8:24
  we're talking about what's expensive to us, not to the
• 8:27
  business, I'm just wondering there, like when you say it's a
• 8:30
  me, thing, was it weakness for money at the time? Need for
• 8:33
  approval, imposter syndrome holding you back. I
• 8:36
  Scott Cowley: think part of it is I didn't understand that
• 8:40
  product did not contribute directly to the bottom line.
• 8:43
  There was no way to use that product to make more money. I
• 8:46
  fully understand spending, and I I've definitely my opinions of
• 8:50
  how much is too much, how much is expensive, all those sorts of
• 8:53
  things these days completely different. But the reason I
• 8:55
  related it to two analysts is one of the quotes in all of the
• 9:00
  collateral for that company was from a navy customer who
• 9:05
  explicitly said this saves us two analysts. So I was trying to
• 9:08
  relate it to the way that the customers described it, and I
• 9:11
  couldn't understand that product. There was no way it
• 9:14
  impacts the bottom line. So if you think about the reasons
• 9:16
  people buy anything, you've got more money or less costs and
• 9:20
  more revenue hits the bottom line. You've got more time or
• 9:24
  less time spent on certain things, so, like, more
• 9:27
  capability, or you've got, like, a grudge purchase or a
• 9:29
  reputation purchase, or something like that. Like, no
• 9:32
  one buys insurance expecting it to end up on the bottom line.
• 9:36
  That's why you just don't pay as much for insurance as you would
• 9:39
  for something else. Whereas a salesperson, you're hiring them,
• 9:43
  expecting a multiple of their salary as an ROI. So thinking
• 9:47
  about in that context specifically, I was relating it
• 9:51
  to the way that the quote from their buyer related to it, I
• 9:54
  will say I've probably had, I mean, I've definitely had money
• 9:58
  issues and money the. Thoughts over the years, but I do exactly
• 10:02
  what you do of Well, hang on, let's relate that to something.
• 10:06
  Because my my apartment in Australia, is a million dollars,
• 10:11
  like, that's a lot of money to a lot of people. To me, our
• 10:14
  apartments too small and we need to upsize so like relating it
• 10:18
  into the millions is I can I now have that conversation with
• 10:23
  other people exactly around the money worthiness element, and I
• 10:27
  don't think at the time it was a money worthiness thing, because
• 10:31
  I'm very good as well personally, of putting who is
• 10:36
  Scott and what Scott's worth completely to one side, because
• 10:40
  the product I'm selling, or the product that I'm coaching people
• 10:43
  and training people to sell, it's not us, like at the end of
• 10:47
  the day, no one really is buying us. They buy into us, but
• 10:52
  they're buying the outcome the product gives them. One of the
• 10:55
  newsletters I wrote, I kind of remember how long ago was
• 10:58
  talking about how at the end of the day, if your customer or
• 11:01
  your prospect could solve the problem they had without ever
• 11:06
  speaking to you, they'd probably be happier, because they just
• 11:09
  don't have the problem. They don't have to put any resources
• 11:12
  into the problem. Therefore, the only reason they're talking to
• 11:14
  you is because the pain is so great that they have to invest
• 11:17
  in it. They have to put cash into it. And that's that's one
• 11:19
  of the things that I do to get around the money worthiness when
• 11:22
  I'm coaching people. I'm coaching people, because it's
• 11:24
  coming back to your question. No, it wasn't me having issues
• 11:28
  with charging that much money. It was me trying to relate to
• 11:31
  why would someone buy that? And that's why, as much as I can, I
• 11:35
  much prefer products that hit the bottom line so that are
• 11:38
  directly money, not time or even grudge or reputation, because
• 11:41
  money is so much easier to sell and you can charge a hell of a
• 11:45
  lot more for
• 11:46
  Mark Ackers: it. So again, lots of insight there. Here's
• 11:49
  something that went through my mind when you were talking and
• 11:52
  it feels like you're going to agree with me. I hate the
• 11:55
  phrase, people buy from people. People buy people. Yeah, I'm
• 11:58
  with you. Give us your takeaway, because it feels like on the
• 12:00
  same page, but people still say that now, people buy people, buy
• 12:03
  people. And I think it's a load of nonsense.
• 12:05
  Scott Cowley: No, it's 100% a lot of nonsense. As I was
• 12:07
  saying, if someone could solve their problem without ever
• 12:10
  knowing your name or spending any time with you, they would.
• 12:13
  They don't. They don't want you. Even in the context of where it
• 12:17
  really is that they're buying you, in the employee, employer
• 12:21
  context, they still don't want you. They want their problem
• 12:24
  solved at the end of the day. There are so many examples of
• 12:30
  when a sale gets made, but a human is not in the loop. I
• 12:35
  changed my electricity provider. I don't care who that company
• 12:41
  is. I don't I just looked at the deals that came up. I don't care
• 12:44
  this, like Australian owned and they do something with the Snowy
• 12:47
  Hydro scheme. All that says to me is that maybe you're adding
• 12:50
  cost on that I don't need in my life. That's an example of where
• 12:53
  a sale got made and a person was not involved at all. Those sort
• 12:57
  of sales happen every day. And there's also the examples of
• 13:00
  where, like, as a buyer, and this is one thing that I think
• 13:02
  sellers really struggle with, is really properly empathising with
• 13:05
  the buyer and understanding because they've never really
• 13:07
  been a buyer, but like, buyers often don't want to talk to you.
• 13:11
  They just want their problem solved. So there, there are
• 13:13
  definitely circumstances where the human, the seller
• 13:16
  contributes as a net positive. I'd probably say there's more
• 13:19
  examples where the seller is a net negative of the
• 13:22
  conversation, but the buyers already decided they need
• 13:25
  something and they're going to buy anyway. They're going to buy
• 13:27
  from someone. They just, they pick that organisation, and then
• 13:30
  a seller just has to be involved to kind of square the
• 13:32
  Mark Ackers: circle. It's interesting if we start to look
• 13:34
  to the future, take your example about switching electricity
• 13:38
  providers. If we exaggerate that point and go far enough back,
• 13:41
  you'd have had to have gone somewhere to speak to someone.
• 13:44
  Then it become you could speak to someone over the phone. Then
• 13:46
  it become you could speak to an agent. Now you don't need to
• 13:49
  speak to anyone, and you can do it. How do you see this playing
• 13:51
  out in the future of B to B sales, where buyers don't need
• 13:55
  or want to speak to sales people? How's this career and
• 13:57
  this profession and your mind going to change? Oh,
• 13:59
  Scott Cowley: you hate my answer here, because I have this debate
• 14:01
  with different people at different times, and I never,
• 14:05
  I'm very wishy washy on this one, because no one can predict
• 14:08
  the future. Humans are never going away, because, especially
• 14:12
  in most B to B contexts, the buyer doesn't even know they
• 14:16
  really have a problem. When there's cold outreach involved,
• 14:19
  will there be less sales people. There's one angle of I can see a
• 14:23
  decentralisation starting to happen, because we've definitely
• 14:26
  seen, over the last kind of 20 years, 10 years a centralization
• 14:31
  where big businesses just keep getting bigger. But I can
• 14:33
  definitely see a decentralisation happening where
• 14:36
  you then end up with a hell of a lot more sales people, because
• 14:40
  there's just more companies. And if, even if every company only
• 14:43
  has half the number of sales peoples as the really big
• 14:46
  companies, there's still just more jobs available. But I can
• 14:49
  also see the centralization continuing, and you end up with
• 14:53
  like, one seller, three or four assistants, and like, a really
• 14:58
  powerful AI behind them, and. And you end up with less sellers
• 15:02
  because the centralization continues. It's super wishy
• 15:04
  washy answer, because I just don't know. But at the end of
• 15:07
  the day, I think if an individual is watching this and
• 15:10
  they're thinking about their own career in sales, I think there
• 15:14
  will always be a space for sales people, especially in B to B,
• 15:20
  especially in my sweet spot, is what I'd call me. And you always
• 15:23
  have to define that, because mid market means it's different to
• 15:26
  every business. Mid market, to me, is kind of that 10k a year,
• 15:30
  up to about 100k a year, where a seller is needed to help really
• 15:35
  scope and deeply understand if this buyer actually has the
• 15:37
  pain. But it's not a complex sale that involves buying
• 15:40
  committees and multi year sales processes. It's a it's a much
• 15:47
  simpler, what I call a simple sale. You only really need one
• 15:49
  person. You don't need sales engineers, you don't need
• 15:52
  potentially even SDRs, and you don't need a cold call it to
• 15:54
  then hand over to closer. I definitely didn't answer your
• 15:57
  question. I told you that I'm I don't know the answer your
• 15:59
  question, but I gave you two ideas there.
• 16:02
  Mark Ackers: I mean, both ideas, one will play out, I'm sure, I
• 16:05
  suppose, for what it's worth, how I see this going, I think
• 16:08
  the way in which I see sales leaders and businesses operating
• 16:11
  today, it's about, how can we get our sales reps to do more
• 16:15
  selling by removing all the manual, time consuming elements,
• 16:20
  and you think about like the way the tech landscape has changed
• 16:23
  over the last 15 years, I feel like I sound really old when I
• 16:28
  talk about the first year in sales. I had a company
• 16:32
  directory, book, business cards from the desk that I inherited
• 16:36
  from the person that got let go, and a phone LinkedIn was a CV
• 16:40
  Library. But if you think about all the tech that you now have
• 16:43
  on top so businesses are like, how can we make sellers more
• 16:47
  efficient, more effective, spend more time selling. For me, the
• 16:51
  missing piece is, how do we make the sellers that we have better
• 16:54
  at their craft? And if we make them better at their craft, and
• 16:57
  we remove all the time consuming elements, we naturally need less
• 17:00
  salespeople, but the ones that we have are better and will earn
• 17:03
  more. And I think that's where I agree with you. There will
• 17:06
  always be a space for salespeople. I think the missing
• 17:09
  thing is only the good salespeople. And I think, I
• 17:12
  think that's where I see it going, Yeah,
• 17:14
  Scott Cowley: but like, that's just not human nature. That's
• 17:17
  just not how humans end up responding to these sorts of
• 17:19
  things, like, only the good sales people. Well, what about
• 17:22
  when you need to hire someone like you can either go down the
• 17:25
  path of hire a high performer from somewhere else, but are
• 17:29
  they going to be a high performer for you don't know,
• 17:31
  because at the end of the day, in a lot of the sessions that I
• 17:34
  run, I can show people scripting that's worked for me or that's
• 17:39
  worked for previous companies. And I know it works, but I don't
• 17:42
  know if it's going to work for you. I don't know if it's going
• 17:44
  to work for your industry. I don't know if it's going to work
• 17:47
  for your geography. I can't defend there's no script you can
• 17:49
  write. This is exactly how to sell. So you either go the high
• 17:53
  performer route and hope that they work it out, and you give
• 17:56
  them the tools. And one of the cool things I love about my
• 17:58
  sales coaches, it really is supporting those people as they
• 18:00
  come in, or you go the other angle, and you got to train them
• 18:03
  up from somewhere. And this is where I think it's really nice
• 18:07
  to only have high performers, but if you carve out the middle
• 18:10
  performers, there is no space for those high performers to
• 18:14
  appear from somewhere.
• 18:15
  Mark Ackers: So no, again, we're on the same page. When people
• 18:17
  talk about like the SDR role disappearing, I think where are
• 18:20
  ies coming from? Yeah. And actually, just the strategy of
• 18:24
  hiring high performers, what a wish that would be. Yeah. Here's
• 18:27
  the problem, high performers don't want to leave because
• 18:29
  they're performing. Well, when you've got someone applying for
• 18:32
  a sales role, they're unlikely to be a high performer, because
• 18:36
  that likely be a side step or a cut back in commission. Like
• 18:39
  there's got to be a real reason for them. So, no, no, we're
• 18:41
  saying the same thing. You're going to have to hire people.
• 18:43
  But it can't just be about, well, hire anyone, throw loads
• 18:46
  of tech at them and make more efficient more effective. It's
• 18:48
  got to be, how can we improve them and their craft? That's why
• 18:52
  I see changing.
• 18:53
  Scott Cowley: But is that? Is that any different to if you
• 18:56
  think about kind of the idea of centralization,
• 18:58
  decentralisation, the ebb and flow, like 30 years ago, there
• 19:03
  were a lot less sales people. In 30 years time, will they just be
• 19:06
  roughly the same number as a ratio of the population? Or are
• 19:09
  you, are you saying you think that there will be just a lot
• 19:12
  less in general? Because I think the job of sales has exploded,
• 19:17
  but I think it's exploded without necessarily having them
• 19:20
  backing behind it. So we're almost returning to the norm.
• 19:24
  It's a regression of the mean, as opposed to now is the
• 19:28
  outlier, as opposed to now is the standard that we're going to
• 19:31
  Mark Ackers: stay at. Sales leaders, I guarantee this, the
• 19:33
  forecast you're looking at isn't accurate. Why? Because your reps
• 19:38
  have deals that become stuck in the pipeline, things like
• 19:41
  champion leaving, not being taken to power competitor enters
• 19:46
  the deal at the last minute. They're ghosting. You imagine if
• 19:49
  your reps had access on demand to support where they could get
• 19:53
  one to one deal coaching with one of our expert coaches.
• 19:56
  That's what we provide. Your reps can use it and.
• 20:00
  Proactively. Perhaps they've got a meeting coming up and they
• 20:02
  want to ensure they're putting their best foot forward. They
• 20:05
  can book time with a coach and prepare for that upcoming
• 20:07
  meeting. Or perhaps it's reactively. There's a snag,
• 20:10
  there's a last minute problem. They need help moving an
• 20:13
  opportunity forward. They can book same day coaching with one
• 20:17
  of our expert sales coaches and get help deal coaching gives
• 20:21
  your reps every opportunity to secure the best outcome and keep
• 20:25
  your forecast as accurate as possible. That's fair. I think
• 20:32
  when people talk about there being less sales people, they
• 20:35
  don't. They don't acclimatise the fact that whether to be more
• 20:38
  people. You think last, I'm going to get this wrong now. But
• 20:40
  what maybe last 30 years, the population has gone up by 2
• 20:43
  billion people, something like that. Who knows, right? But I
• 20:45
  remember it being six, it feels like it's eight now. So you will
• 20:48
  have more sales people there, but I think the onus will be on
• 20:51
  removing low performers, mid performers, giving them the
• 20:56
  right tech stack, but focusing on developing them. And doing
• 20:59
  that quickly. You'll have to hire people that aren't top
• 21:01
  performers, but it's how can we improve their craftsmanship?
• 21:04
  Because whilst you can give them loads of tech stack, prospects
• 21:07
  have their own tech stack as well, and it sort of cancel each
• 21:09
  other out, you need to have that craftsmanship. Well, you're
• 21:13
  Scott Cowley: also getting the idea of, are sales people born
• 21:15
  or made? And I'm 100% in anyone can learn to sell. Now, not
• 21:19
  everyone should learn to sell. But anyone can I have a this is
• 21:24
  like a secondhand story, but one of my I know a recruiter who
• 21:29
  just can't read people. He's on the spectrum, and he just does
• 21:33
  not understand facial reactions and those sorts of things. But
• 21:35
  what he did, and he's a super high performer in his space,
• 21:39
  what he did is he learned if I say x, the response will be y.
• 21:42
  If they then say y, and my response of z will move them
• 21:46
  through as we're going. So he was forced to learn how to sell,
• 21:50
  but really he was just forced to learn how people work. And
• 21:53
  that's the example of, like most people think, that sort of
• 21:56
  person who can't read another person, there's no way they're
• 21:59
  going to be able to sell. Because, as you were saying, a
• 22:01
  lot of people think sales is about people being sell from,
• 22:04
  sorry, people buy from people. In that example, he just learned
• 22:07
  a
• 22:07
  Mark Ackers: process. Is that the example that you spoke about
• 22:09
  earlier, where you've learned to sell a product, appreciate
• 22:13
  recruitment would be more of a service, but you can productize
• 22:16
  it in this example, where he's learned the process like you're
• 22:19
  talking about. But actually, if you put him in another
• 22:22
  situation, he wouldn't be a great salesperson. Is that what
• 22:25
  you're saying? Probably
• 22:27
  Scott Cowley: okay. But if you think about your question
• 22:29
  around, are we only are we? Are we going to have high performing
• 22:32
  sales people? If I'm a business leader, I don't really care if
• 22:35
  my team can sell I care that they can sell
• 22:37
  Mark Ackers: my product, agreed and that. Because why would you
• 22:39
  care about how they sell other products and services, but very
• 22:43
  few businesses have a product that just sells itself, right?
• 22:46
  Like very few, most people have the kind of problem that you
• 22:49
  spoke about with the cybersecurity firm. People buy
• 22:51
  it, but you've got to go out there and educate people. You've
• 22:54
  got to make them aware. Not many people live this inbound life
• 22:57
  order taking. And then you could argue, well, they don't need to
• 23:00
  be great at sales, because it's the inbound life and it's
• 23:02
  ordered. It's order taking.
• 23:03
  Scott Cowley: Oh, but I love the outreach guy. He talks about,
• 23:07
  build a product that people just want to buy and build a sales
• 23:11
  team that can sell any product. If you can get both of those,
• 23:14
  you're going to have a unicorn, like no matter what, which is
• 23:18
  really hard to do, by the way, both independently, building a
• 23:21
  product that people just want to buy with a mediocre sales team,
• 23:24
  or building a mediocre product with a great sales team that's
• 23:26
  hard enough to then do both. That
• 23:29
  Mark Ackers: is probably why it's called a unicorn fair.
• 23:32
  Fair. So I want to get to the why, right? Why do people buy
• 23:35
  it? I suppose just before we get there, we kind of needed to
• 23:37
  conclude the start in our tune story when you got let go for
• 23:42
  non performance, when that act did finally fall and you had
• 23:45
  that meeting, it sounds like you were in a place where you
• 23:47
  agreed. You said, Look,
• 23:47
  Scott Cowley: I was already talking to recruiters. I was
• 23:49
  already in the process of leaving. What did you learn
• 23:51
  about
• 23:52
  Mark Ackers: yourself, though, when you look back, because it
• 23:53
  feels like that might have been a real penny drop moment for you
• 23:56
  that you have to figure out that why? What did that period of
• 24:00
  nine months not selling having been in the top 10% elsewhere,
• 24:04
  what did that teach you about yourself?
• 24:05
  Scott Cowley: There was a lot of humility that had to come from
• 24:09
  that. I also, up until that point, I was very immature, and
• 24:13
  I kind of every role I'd been in. When I left, I didn't have
• 24:18
  any friends left in that organisation. I burnt bridges
• 24:21
  every single job or client I've subsequently worked with,
• 24:27
  literally from that moment, from when I when I did get fired, I
• 24:30
  have a relatively good relationship with maybe, like
• 24:32
  one or two, like a handful, that there's there's things have gone
• 24:34
  wrong, but even when that happens, I still think I have a
• 24:37
  pretty good relationship with them. So there's a lot of
• 24:39
  growing up that I had to do at that point. And I was in my
• 24:42
  early 20s at this point, so I was still pretty young. But then
• 24:44
  also, it just taught me that you have to deeply understand why
• 24:51
  someone is buying your product. You have to understand I break
• 24:54
  it down into three. There's three Whys most people are
• 24:58
  really good at one of. Them, but it's the last one that they're
• 25:02
  really good at.
• 25:03
  Mark Ackers: So I've been really looking forward to talking to
• 25:05
  you about the three whys. Let's just imagine someone listening
• 25:07
  doesn't know what what you're on about. Bring it to life for us,
• 25:10
  the three whys, what those three are. And then let's dive into
• 25:13
  why people are only good at one of them and
• 25:15
  Scott Cowley: etc. So the three whys, and it's from your buyer's
• 25:19
  perspective, not from a salesperson's perspective. Why
• 25:22
  buy anything? Why do any change at all? Because, as we were
• 25:26
  talking about earlier, if an organisation could have their
• 25:30
  pain solved without ever talking to you, let alone buying from
• 25:33
  you, they would. So why does that organisation have to do
• 25:35
  anything or buy anything? Why buy now? Why not last year? Why
• 25:41
  not next year? Because if you don't have to make a decision,
• 25:44
  it's just human nature that you want you'll naturally delay that
• 25:47
  decision. And the one that people are really good at is,
• 25:50
  Why buy you? Why buy your product? And almost everyone
• 25:54
  that I work with, they can answer that third one super
• 25:57
  easily. Almost anyone should be able to answer that third one,
• 26:00
  because it's really why, once you've already decided you want
• 26:03
  roughly what you're selling, or once your buyers decided roughly
• 26:08
  what you're selling, why you as opposed to competitors, all
• 26:11
  three of those. But it is in order to because, if you just
• 26:15
  have Why buy now, well, they haven't even decided they want
• 26:18
  to buy anything in the first place, and no matter how good
• 26:21
  your product is, no matter how painful The problem is that
• 26:25
  you're solving, you're still only solving maybe one, 1% of
• 26:31
  their pain, because everyone has 1000s of problems. I deal with
• 26:34
  every day, and especially if you're selling into relatively
• 26:38
  senior leadership, if nothing else, they're recruiting all the
• 26:41
  time, and they're worried about their top performers are going
• 26:43
  to leave. You probably don't solve that problem with your
• 26:46
  product, unless you're a recruitment firm. But like,
• 26:48
  you're probably not solving the number one thing on their mind.
• 26:51
  So you have to give them the number one thing for their
• 26:53
  company at the at a minimum. So why buy anything is by far the
• 26:57
  most important. Why do you have to change it all? Then why buy
• 27:01
  now? And the cool thing about this, I worked with a company
• 27:04
  who just got this completely wrong, and it's a good story
• 27:07
  behind it. They were selling to sporting organisations, and they
• 27:13
  were mostly selling to Premier League teams. That was like, who
• 27:16
  they were really going after, and why buy anything? It was
• 27:19
  like this statistics programme around the players and how to
• 27:22
  build a team. Why buy anything? A lot of them were bought in,
• 27:24
  like a lot of the I can't remember the job title, but a
• 27:27
  lot of them were 100% Yep, cool. We like this. We want this. Why?
• 27:30
  By now, they got completely wrong. The person that I was
• 27:33
  working with kept getting the response from their really an
• 27:38
  influencer, not even a buyer. Our budgets get reset on the
• 27:41
  first of, I think first of August. That's the new Premier
• 27:44
  League season, right? Why? By now they were looking like the
• 27:47
  first of August was their thing. It was also, it was budget
• 27:50
  reasons as well. The budgets for that organisation reset on that
• 27:53
  day. But also the transfer window opened up. However, when
• 27:59
  they reached out to every single one of their buyers, and they
• 28:01
  claim to have about four or five teams ready to go. All the teams
• 28:06
  went, Oh no, the budget's already assigned. So they just
• 28:08
  completely messed up the Why buy now. They had Why buy you like
• 28:12
  they're all all of the, let's call it heads of performance. I
• 28:14
  can't remember the exact job title. We're all on board with
• 28:17
  why buy this organization's product. But they messed up the
• 28:20
  Why buy now? And they had to wait an entire year, well, about
• 28:24
  10 months before the budget conversation came up again, and
• 28:27
  they were able to even do this because it was not a cheap
• 28:29
  product. It was not a discretionary product. They
• 28:31
  could have just just purchased, even when you get why buy
• 28:34
  anything? Why buy now is probably the hardest. It's
• 28:38
  probably the one that the buyer is going to struggle the most to
• 28:42
  answer, but it has to be in that order, because if you don't have
• 28:46
  Why buy anything, they're not even going to entertain you long
• 28:48
  enough to get to why buy now. And if they don't entertain that
• 28:50
  long enough, and they have like that conversation, and they've
• 28:53
  got a buying committee, well, what happens when your your
• 28:55
  champion, reaches out to, let's say it's a CRO they then talk to
• 29:00
  the CEO, and they're like, hey, I want to buy this product. They
• 29:03
  go, cool. What are the alternatives? They go, look to
• 29:04
  market, and they find something else. Why buy you is the moment
• 29:07
  you have to drop in there. Maybe they have to do three tenders or
• 29:10
  something like that, so you have to have a good reason at the end
• 29:12
  there. But all three of those are vital, and they're vital in
• 29:15
  that order. And that's kind of one of the biggest things I
• 29:18
  learned from that failed job. I didn't know why they would buy
• 29:22
  anything. I didn't know what the pain was. That was was big
• 29:25
  enough that I never even got to Why buy now
• 29:27
  Mark Ackers: it's a really interesting example you've just
• 29:30
  given. And whilst I don't want to hone in on this football
• 29:34
  example, I think the bigger point that I'm making is not
• 29:38
  understanding your craft, but you said it earlier, not
• 29:42
  understanding how buyers buy in that in their world, and the
• 29:46
  reason the football example, kind of irritates me. So I'm a
• 29:49
  big football fan myself, right? If I was going to sell into that
• 29:51
  market, I would know the transfer window opens at the
• 29:54
  first of August. I would know the financial fair play, or PSR,
• 29:59
  which. Do is about profit and sustainability rules and
• 30:02
  financial fair play, so they have to spend certain amount of
• 30:05
  money each window. I would know that, and I would think to
• 30:08
  myself, well, you're not going to wait and have a recruitment
• 30:11
  meeting on the first of August. You're gonna be planning who
• 30:14
  you're gonna be buying, January, February, March, maybe even two,
• 30:18
  three years out. Like sometimes football clubs track players for
• 30:20
  several years before they buy them. So it feels like a huge
• 30:25
  mistake not knowing how your company clients or in prospects
• 30:29
  buy to get the timeframe wrong. That feels like actually the
• 30:32
  biggest mistake they could be making.
• 30:34
  Scott Cowley: Yeah, and that idea of understanding the
• 30:36
  seasonality of your customer is huge and understanding. And this
• 30:41
  is where, like some businesses, the seasonality is so easy. HR
• 30:46
  tech, for example, they will the sale will happen in q4 the
• 30:51
  implementation will happen in q1 that's just kind of HR tech.
• 30:54
  That's how it gets purchased. When I was selling the yoga
• 30:57
  studio management tool, mind body, if they did not have a big
• 31:02
  January, that business didn't exist at the end of the year. If
• 31:06
  they didn't have a big September, they didn't make any
• 31:08
  profit for that year. So understanding the seasonality of
• 31:12
  how that fits in, but as you said, like they're not buying
• 31:15
  the tool on the first of January. Interestingly enough,
• 31:18
  though, because I sold that product, the mind body online, I
• 31:20
  sold that in Australia, and I sold that in the UK. The
• 31:24
  seasonality is the same, which I thought was super weird, because
• 31:28
  it's actually flipped in Australia, January is summer. In
• 31:31
  the UK, January is winter, and then September, obviously spring
• 31:35
  or autumn, depending on but the January one kind of makes sense.
• 31:39
  It's like, okay, New year, new me, New Year's resolution, gyms
• 31:42
  and yoga studios do really well that time, but September was,
• 31:46
  like, totally unintuitive that it'll be both not 100% why? To
• 31:49
  this day, September was always the time. I've kind of got some
• 31:53
  theories, but understanding that the seasonality of your
• 31:56
  customer, and it might not be intuitive, but you've got to
• 32:00
  then also as a seller, and this is what comes down to honing
• 32:03
  your craft. Understand, if that's the seasonality, when do
• 32:07
  they actually have to make the purchase? When do they actually
• 32:09
  have to start the implementation? Let's say your
• 32:11
  product, just as an example, has a three month pilot, and you
• 32:14
  just that's your sales process. That's what has to happen. So if
• 32:17
  someone needs it ready to go by the first of Jan, at a very
• 32:22
  minimum, they need to go start three months before that. But
• 32:24
  really, they're probably gonna need a month in between the
• 32:27
  pilot and the implementation to do all the paperwork, which
• 32:29
  means you need four months, which we're getting back to,
• 32:32
  what October, September, whatever month it works out to
• 32:34
  be. And then think, like, you probably got to go a month
• 32:36
  earlier for budget approvals and legal red lines. And, like, just
• 32:40
  really working out, okay, someone wants to start on that
• 32:43
  day. When do they actually have to make the decision? It's like,
• 32:47
  six months earlier.
• 32:48
  Mark Ackers: Do you think most sales people know the
• 32:52
  seasonality of their buyers?
• 32:53
  Scott Cowley: Most know the good ones? Yeah, even if it's just
• 32:57
  intuitive, I think a lot of kind of top performers, maybe not a
• 33:03
  lot, but like a decent number of top performers, just intuitively
• 33:06
  learn how to sell that product, and therefore intuitively learn
• 33:10
  the seasonality of it. And then often they don't change
• 33:13
  industries. Because if you think about recruitment, like if you
• 33:16
  change from one recruitment provider to the to another, and
• 33:20
  you're still, I got a friend who she recruits financial crime. So
• 33:23
  she deals with banks. Banks are the same regardless of whether
• 33:26
  she's at whichever company it is, so like, there, she doesn't
• 33:30
  have to learn how to sell, and she's actually very good at
• 33:33
  this, but she doesn't have to learn how to sell. She only has
• 33:36
  to learn how bank seasonality works from a recruitment
• 33:39
  perspective. So you don't necessarily, yeah, you don't
• 33:41
  have to go further, but direct answer your question, no, I
• 33:44
  don't think most understand it at a deep enough level that they
• 33:48
  could then apply it to their next
• 33:49
  Mark Ackers: job. I agree with you. That's that's the second
• 33:51
  one. The first one is, Why buy anything? Now here's the
• 33:54
  challenges that I want to see of you, if you see as well, is that
• 33:59
  requires you to almost challenge your prospect, push them away,
• 34:03
  ask tough questions, almost not make the happy years assumption
• 34:06
  that, ah, we're talking you must want to buy. This is the why
• 34:10
  can't you keep doing what you're doing? Why? Why would you you
• 34:13
  surely wouldn't want to rip out and replace what you've
• 34:15
  currently got. Why not wait six months like talk to you about
• 34:19
  the difficulties that sellers have with with that around
• 34:22
  please.
• 34:22
  Scott Cowley: Okay, so I worked with a dude in Switzerland who
• 34:26
  was selling a package that would allow NGOs to train people where
• 34:33
  there was no electricity, like a projector, Speaker bundle, and
• 34:38
  let's just say it's 10,000 euros he could easily get on the phone
• 34:43
  with NGOs, and just like go through a discovery call and
• 34:46
  learn that they deeply had the problem of, let's say Doctors
• 34:50
  Without Borders, or however, the French, the French pronunciation
• 34:53
  is, they drop in a team into, let's just say Egypt, and
• 34:59
  they're going somewhere. Like, right in the desert, and they're
• 35:01
  going to try and train up some some people out there from a
• 35:03
  medical perspective, but there's no electricity, so this thing
• 35:06
  had a portable battery. It had like, a pop up screen, like all
• 35:09
  those sorts of things. The NGOs loved it. They were like, Yes,
• 35:12
  super exciting. He'd then have a demo so discover quickly, then
• 35:15
  have a demo conversation where they'd go through more details
• 35:17
  off the back of that. He then put together a proposal, which
• 35:20
  would take about two hours. And he needed sign off very small
• 35:23
  company. He needed sign off from the founder for pricing that
• 35:26
  whole thing, 30 minute discovery, hour demo, two hours
• 35:31
  of his time, plus a little bit of sign off from the founder
• 35:34
  before they ever had to say, yes, we're interested. So, like,
• 35:37
  instead of thinking about it as does the buy? Like, do you need
• 35:40
  to push the buyer go the other way? Like, why are you wasting
• 35:44
  your time on someone four hours that's half a working day before
• 35:48
  they give you anything? When I showed him that, and we worked
• 35:51
  through that, he was pissed, because he's dealing like, spend
• 35:55
  a lot of time with these tiny NGOs who, as much as they want
• 35:59
  it, they're never going to get the funding allocated, because
• 36:02
  the NGO world, especially the way that, let's not go down
• 36:05
  there, but like, just that's a hard sell to spend any money on
• 36:09
  this product. Even though they wanted it, they had no idea how
• 36:12
  to even get the budget for it. So he ended up, like, we
• 36:14
  basically flipped it around, and he came back, and he's like,
• 36:16
  Yeah, I'm saving two days a week just not talking to the wrong
• 36:19
  people. And also, he looks so much better to his the founding
• 36:23
  team, because he's not pulling them in all the time to, like,
• 36:26
  give approval on stuff that was never going to close. So instead
• 36:28
  of thinking about it from the buyer's perspective, I always
• 36:31
  think about as a seller, is this person worth your time? Have
• 36:35
  they proven that they're worth your time? And yes, challenge
• 36:38
  them, but like, it's your fault if you go and spend a lot of
• 36:41
  time with this person and they were never qualified in the
• 36:44
  first place.
• 36:45
  Mark Ackers: So I agree with everything you said there. I
• 36:46
  think we're talking about different things. What I'm
• 36:48
  saying is, when you speak to let's just say you're speaking
• 36:51
  to the right person. Sales people will struggle, in my
• 36:54
  experience, to understand why they're going to buy versus
• 36:59
  because the easiest thing to do is stick with what you've got,
• 37:02
  right? Everyone's got something in place, whether that's manual,
• 37:06
  whether that's whether that's a competitor, or, yeah, it could
• 37:09
  be something like spreadsheets, right? Whatever, they've got
• 37:12
  something in place, or they don't realise they've got the
• 37:14
  pain. My point is, sales people struggle to go but why would you
• 37:18
  change? Why? Why? Why couldn't you stay the same? And it's
• 37:23
  because we don't want to ask those difficult questions, what
• 37:26
  you're talking about. And again, couldn't agree more is, and I
• 37:29
  learned this too late in my career. But spend your time with
• 37:32
  people that can actually buy and want to buy, I feel unwell when
• 37:37
  I think about early in my career, how many trips to
• 37:40
  London, trips out the office. How many zoom calls I had with
• 37:44
  people that simply could never buy or would never buy, but I
• 37:48
  felt like it was my duty to spend time with them, because
• 37:52
  these are the leads I had, the meetings would be put on for me.
• 37:55
  And what I never really, truly appreciated was, if I fell in
• 37:59
  this role, no one's gonna go. Yeah, but you spent your time
• 38:01
  with the wrong people, so don't worry about it. Yeah, they're
• 38:04
  gonna say you've not hit your number. You've gotten
• 38:07
  Scott Cowley: it's one of the, I mean, even just that last thing,
• 38:10
  it's one of the best things about sales, and the worst
• 38:13
  things about sales as as a career, it's really clear
• 38:17
  whether you're achieving your goal or not, whereas. And then
• 38:21
  the best thing about that is it means it's also really easy to
• 38:24
  get paid a lot, because it's directly attributable. If you
• 38:27
  contribute a million quid, okay, you're easily worth 100 maybe
• 38:31
  200,000 pounds, if not more. And I'm talking cost here, as
• 38:35
  opposed to salary. Whereas you go the other way, and it's like,
• 38:38
  okay, you work in the customer support team. How much value did
• 38:41
  you actually attribute to the bottom line of the business?
• 38:44
  It's really hard to measure. And even if you're the absolute best
• 38:47
  support tech on the planet, are you going to contribute nearly
• 38:50
  as much as a salesperson who put a million quid on the bottom
• 38:53
  line? I mean, maybe, but, like, it's so hard to make that
• 38:56
  argument where if the sales team just goes, yeah, cool, we added
• 38:59
  a million pounds, super easy. But the other side is it's so
• 39:03
  measurable, if you don't sell anything, which I did, once
• 39:06
  you're not giving the ROI to the business, you're going to be
• 39:09
  gone pretty quickly, whether voluntary or involuntary. So
• 39:12
  it's one of the one of the best parts and worst parts about
• 39:15
  sales. Where
• 39:16
  Mark Ackers: did you learn this stuff? Like, obviously you had
• 39:18
  your penny dropping moment when you had to figure out the why.
• 39:21
  Why do people buy but you've obviously got on the journey
• 39:23
  where you've learned the three whys. You've created your own
• 39:26
  frameworks. How did you go from being let go for non
• 39:30
  performance, and I appreciate you were successful before that,
• 39:33
  but from being let go for non performance to being able to sit
• 39:36
  here today and really have such a strong grasp on selling your
• 39:41
  own frameworks, your own approach. How did you learn all
• 39:44
  this? So
• 39:45
  Scott Cowley: the probably the easiest answer, is books and
• 39:48
  then applying it, reading a lot and then trying to apply it as
• 39:52
  well as, like, I'm one of those weird people that always knew I
• 39:56
  was going into sales. Like, I decided at about 15 I was going
• 39:59
  to go into sales. I ended up getting an accounting degree
• 40:01
  because I was following the Tim Ferriss advice of get two skills
• 40:05
  that don't normally go together, and then put them together so I
• 40:09
  can read a balance sheet like anyone's business, and I can
• 40:12
  build a cash flow statement. But then I always wanted to go into
• 40:14
  sales. And the way that I ended up learning that it's both on
• 40:19
  the job, I don't think you can learn sales from a textbook, but
• 40:22
  you do have to. You do have to be open to new ideas and
• 40:26
  understand that your ideas are never going to be as, not
• 40:29
  necessarily as good, but like as varied as if you go and read a
• 40:33
  book from someone else. So read a book, then apply it. I'm
• 40:36
  actually a really big believer, and I try and push a lot of my
• 40:39
  coaches and my clients, to make one change every day, if you
• 40:43
  like it, keep the change at the end of the day, if you don't
• 40:45
  revert back, if you do that every working day, that's 200
• 40:49
  changes you've made your sales process by the end of the sorry,
• 40:52
  200 changes in a year, your sales process is going to be
• 40:56
  completely different every single year, but it's only going
• 41:00
  to get better, because you're only keeping the ones that make
• 41:02
  sense. So I think it's really important, as I say, read the
• 41:06
  books, listen to the podcasts. I've done a number of courses.
• 41:09
  I'm a big fan of Benjamin Dennehy, UK's most hated sales
• 41:13
  trainer, big fan of his. I just finished gap selling by Keenan.
• 41:17
  That was awesome, the number one book, and I've given this book
• 41:21
  away at least a dozen times, if not more. Is Jeffrey Gitomer the
• 41:26
  Ultimate Sales Bible.
• 41:27
  Mark Ackers: I think it's just called the sales Bible. Sales
• 41:29
  Bible, black book. Yeah, yeah, no,
• 41:31
  Scott Cowley: it's blue. This one, the latest 120, 15, is
• 41:34
  blue. He's got a bunch of them. I'm a big fan of that. So what I
• 41:38
  and what I did with that one? This is when I I first learned
• 41:41
  to sell I would read one chapter of his, because the way he
• 41:43
  builds his books, he writes a column, and then he basically
• 41:47
  takes 50 columns and rewrites them a little bit and puts it
• 41:50
  into a book. So he writes a column every week for a
• 41:52
  newspaper. So it's very, very digestible, maybe two pages
• 41:57
  worth of content, maybe four at most, read it and try and
• 42:01
  implement it that day. That's that's how I think that's the
• 42:04
  only way to learn sales, because it's not academic, or it's not
• 42:07
  something you can learn without actually applying. So you've got
• 42:09
  it, you've got to actually be selling as well. I don't know if
• 42:12
  I answered
• 42:12
  Mark Ackers: your question there. No, you definitely
• 42:13
  answered the question in the sense of, you've taken it into
• 42:16
  your own hands, right? You've gone out there and you've looked
• 42:20
  for content in a way in which you can digest it and understand
• 42:24
  it. The penny for me that I'm a few years older than you, just
• 42:29
  the fact that I read that sales Bible by Jeffrey Germer a number
• 42:33
  of years before.
• 42:34
  Scott Cowley: Yeah, I had the original because I got it before
• 42:37
  2015 and then since then, it's always been the 2015 one. But I
• 42:41
  love that
• 42:42
  Mark Ackers: book. No, I it was what think, I think it was the
• 42:45
  first sales book I ever read. And I remember reading on
• 42:47
  holiday and someone took the piss army, like, just someone in
• 42:50
  the pool, because, yeah, the sales Bible and they and I
• 42:53
  remember like, just looking at him, thinking, well, this book's
• 42:56
  amazing. Like, you know what you're about, but it was just
• 42:58
  some old blown took the piss out of me for it. But anyway, my
• 43:00
  point being, you go out, you found content, you digest it.
• 43:04
  Here's the here's the bit that people don't do, though, and
• 43:06
  anyone listen to this podcast will be able to relate to this.
• 43:09
  How many times do you hear something, read something? Think
• 43:13
  that's a great idea? Yeah, maybe even on this podcast. And I
• 43:16
  suppose that's the one dynamic. People listen to this are doing
• 43:18
  that already, because they're already because they're already
• 43:21
  listening to the podcast. How many times you hear a good idea
• 43:23
  and think that's a good idea, I'm going to do something, and
• 43:26
  then you never, ever do it. And that's the bit that you're
• 43:28
  talking about, the most important bit, putting it into
• 43:30
  practice. And that's where I found coaching is the most
• 43:34
  effective way. So talk about your experience. Obviously,
• 43:37
  you're a coach with my sales coach, and you've done that for
• 43:39
  a long time, but what about being coached yourself to be
• 43:42
  held accountable and put things into practice. Coaching
• 43:45
  Scott Cowley: and the accountability element, some
• 43:47
  people need different things out of coaching. Me. Personally, I
• 43:50
  have my own coach, and he's not actually a sales guy, but he
• 43:55
  very much holds me accountable to every session. Okay, what are
• 43:59
  you actually going to do after this, what's your one thing? And
• 44:03
  even I was the coach to one of the my sales coach team just
• 44:08
  before recording this, and we talked about a lot of things.
• 44:10
  And I said, okay, cool. Now you've you've got a sales call
• 44:13
  in nine minutes. Which one are you going to apply, and how are
• 44:15
  you going to apply it? And she said, we're going to do this.
• 44:18
  And I said, Cool, then let's do it right now, and you roleplay
• 44:22
  it together. But then I think the hardest part about coaching,
• 44:27
  from a coachees perspective, is it can be anything like my coach
• 44:33
  is a is more of a life coach, even though I kind of hate that
• 44:36
  term, but he's, he's more of a life coach than anything else.
• 44:39
  We kind of just have a conversation and it ends with,
• 44:42
  so what are you actually going to do from here? As long as you
• 44:45
  actually have that conversation, it triggers something, and
• 44:49
  you're typically more likely to take action, especially if you
• 44:52
  then commit to it. It's like, how are you going to apply that?
• 44:54
  Well, I'm going to get this to you by this day at this time,
• 44:57
  and then if you don't, well, there's a huge. When you're
• 45:00
  talking to that's responsible to say, Hey, Scott, you said you
• 45:04
  were going to do this. You have my number on WhatsApp. Why
• 45:07
  didn't you do it?
• 45:07
  Mark Ackers: Give me some ideas when you've given people that
• 45:11
  change. One thing change. What are some of the changes that you
• 45:13
  see people make to kind of inspire people listening to this
• 45:16
  Scott Cowley: podcast? Yeah, a big one is what I call the
• 45:19
  Sunday night test. And this is like, I'm almost certain I came
• 45:23
  up with this, but let's be honest, Nothing is new under the
• 45:26
  sun. Most people that I work with in the sales world, they
• 45:29
  don't actually talk to their customers in language their
• 45:32
  customer needs to hear. So I'll make that real for you. Do you
• 45:35
  know what a widget is? I would think so it's if you crack a can
• 45:39
  of Guinness. Oh no, oh, thing, oh sorry, yes, busy. That's what
• 45:43
  a widget is, right? I thought, you know, like a widget on a
• 45:45
  dashboard? No, that's my point. The it's not the original, but
• 45:48
  like that, that physical thing is actually called a widget in
• 45:51
  the Guinness. Can in the Guinness, or any, any soft drink
• 45:53
  that adds
• 45:54
  Mark Ackers: Guinness, can't taste nice in Australia. No,
• 45:58
  Scott Cowley: it's different. It's different. But then again,
• 46:00
  it's not as good in the UK, Scotland. No, go to Dublin, and
• 46:04
  it's
• 46:04
  Mark Ackers: just going there next month. I can't wait. Yeah,
• 46:07
  it's amazing. Anyway, sorry, totally off track. So that's
• 46:11
  Scott Cowley: what a widget is, actually, that thing inside a
• 46:13
  Guinness can but could you take a synonym for that is a gadget.
• 46:17
  Now, if you walk into the Guinness factory and you start
• 46:19
  talking about gadgets, kind of the same thing. Gadget,
• 46:22
  etymologically, comes from widget. It's the same root for
• 46:26
  that word. But if you're talking at cross purposes, they're not
• 46:30
  hearing you, and every time you say gadget, they're like, What
• 46:33
  is he talking about? And you're talking about the widget. So the
• 46:35
  Sunday night test, the first and most important thing to remember
• 46:39
  about it is you've got to talk to your customers in their
• 46:41
  language, the way they need to hear it. It's not about being
• 46:44
  accurate with information from your perspective. It's about
• 46:47
  being for them hearing you specifically. Now, what actually
• 46:50
  is it? It's Imagine your customer is lying awake on a
• 46:55
  Sunday night at 2am in a cold sweat, and they are dealing with
• 46:58
  the pains that you solve. How are they describing that pain to
• 47:02
  themselves, and exactly what language are they using? And I
• 47:06
  mean, I can probably give you an example. I don't imagine that my
• 47:10
  sales coach prospects are actually thinking, we need
• 47:14
  coaching. They're probably thinking, maybe one angle is,
• 47:17
  why is my team underperforming? Maybe another angle is, how do I
• 47:20
  support my absolute top performers to get even better?
• 47:24
  They're not thinking, I need my team to get some coaching. So
• 47:27
  the Sunday night test then leads into when you're cold calling
• 47:31
  someone. Hey, we sell coaching. Oh, cool. I don't need coaching.
• 47:34
  Hang up. Hey, we help top performers get even better. Oh,
• 47:39
  I'm intrigued. Let's keep talking. So if there's one thing
• 47:42
  you can change, it's really deeply. Get into the Sunday
• 47:47
  night test on the pitch that you have. Does it pass? Does your
• 47:50
  audience actually think about the problem that you solve and
• 47:54
  use the language that you're already using with them? Because
• 47:57
  again, if you walk into the Guinness factory and start
• 47:59
  trying to sell them a better way of doing that little thing, and
• 48:03
  you keep saying the gadget inside your cans, even if they
• 48:06
  like cognitively understand it, they've got to think about it,
• 48:09
  because it's actually called a widget.
• 48:11
  Mark Ackers: You've signed your team up to another E Learning
• 48:13
  course. You've hired a trainer to come in and run a workshop.
• 48:16
  But guess what? Six months later, pipeline and performance
• 48:19
  is still lumpy, my sales coach turns learning into doing. We
• 48:23
  evaluate everyone on your team, we identify with real data the
• 48:27
  critical gaps that are holding them back, and then we remedy
• 48:31
  it. We match each person to their dream coach and provide
• 48:35
  consistent one to one coaching to help them fulfil their
• 48:39
  potential and hit the number less one size fits all,
• 48:41
  training, more personalised support, which results in the
• 48:44
  growth of your team. That's predictable sales execution.
• 48:48
  That's my sales coach. I love the Sunday night test. I have a
• 48:56
  similar version of that, where it's your prospect comes home
• 48:59
  for dinner and they've had a bad day. How do they moan to their
• 49:02
  partner? Yeah, here's the problem that sales reps have
• 49:05
  with this. It's twofold. One, most sellers have never done the
• 49:11
  job of the person they're selling to, yep, so they can't
• 49:14
  truly understand their world. But secondly, when you think
• 49:17
  about how lots of organisations onboard sales reps come and
• 49:21
  spend time with the tech team. So the tech team do what
• 49:23
  technical people do, and they tell the sales person all the
• 49:27
  technical knowledge, how to build reports, how to customise,
• 49:30
  how to log in, password resets, dashboards, data, widgets,
• 49:33
  gadgets, etc, glance up with the marketing team. Well, the
• 49:37
  marketing team will give you all the marketing buzzwords of the
• 49:39
  product and how it works, and awards they've won, and why
• 49:42
  they're so great, how they stack up to the competition. You'll
• 49:45
  then spend time with other people across the business, and
• 49:49
  they will continue to speak to you in their language, in their
• 49:51
  world, which is very much organisation language, right?
• 49:54
  It's their own internal vocabulary that they've created
• 49:57
  over a period of time. What rarely happens is someone sits
• 49:59
  down. Of a salesperson goes, let me tell you all about the person
• 50:03
  you selling to, their world, their language, and that's why
• 50:07
  so many pitches when you go out to the three Whys why us? I know
• 50:11
  you're right. When you say out of those three things, people
• 50:14
  get that one right. The most people still mess that one up,
• 50:18
  because they, of course, all they do is talk about
• 50:20
  themselves. And that's why so many pictures aren't using the
• 50:23
  language of the prospect. They're using technical
• 50:26
  language, marketing language jargon, and it confuses people.
• 50:30
  I had a cold call today, and if you think this should be just
• 50:33
  something that's easy to say yes to, for me, it's someone that's
• 50:36
  based in this city, in Newcastle, I still they've
• 50:40
  called me twice now I still don't know the name of their
• 50:42
  business, and both phone calls, I've said from where, sorry,
• 50:45
  I've still not clarified, Phil's. I don't want to feel
• 50:48
  stupid and ask for a third time on each call, because prospects
• 50:51
  don't do that. But all I could get out of this individual was
• 50:55
  that it's something to do with data, something to do with
• 50:58
  making it streamlined so we can use AI on it, right? I haven't
• 51:04
  got a bloody clue what that does. It makes no sense to me.
• 51:07
  Whereas, if they would have said, look, and spoke in my
• 51:09
  language about a problem that would resonate me and led with,
• 51:12
  I'm just around the corner. Do you fancy meeting for a coffee?
• 51:15
  That's really hard to say no to. It's a local business. He's the
• 51:19
  co founder of the business. Feels like someone that would be
• 51:21
  good to meet, but the phone call that I had a couple of weeks ago
• 51:25
  than the one I had chasing up today, which isn't all about
• 51:27
  like data and infrastructure, it just doesn't speak in my
• 51:31
  language, and that's where it goes wrong. So that kind of ties
• 51:35
  to your point. We are seeing so many reps fail at what you'd
• 51:38
  call the Sunday night test. We're not enabling them in the
• 51:42
  right
• 51:42
  Scott Cowley: way. You're right. And if you think from a business
• 51:46
  perspective, you can do the enablement, but from an
• 51:49
  individual perspective, my answer would be, that's nice,
• 51:54
  and it's not your fault. That's the way the training is, but the
• 51:57
  numbers still your responsibility. Go talk to some
• 51:59
  customers, like, how hard can it be find your auntie's best mate
• 52:05
  who happens to be in the industry, and just spend an hour
• 52:09
  with them? Just like, hey, how do you think about this? Have
• 52:12
  you ever heard of this company? But
• 52:14
  Mark Ackers: this is a difference, isn't it, Scott,
• 52:15
  this is the people that see sows as something they've fallen
• 52:18
  into. They see sales as a thing that they do, and they don't
• 52:22
  have accountability. They don't take responsibility for their
• 52:26
  results. They lack the motivation desire, they lack the
• 52:29
  commitment. And again, people listening to podcasts don't fall
• 52:32
  into that bracket, right? Because they're already doing
• 52:34
  something about it. But you're right. It's about Turton
• 52:37
  Academy, but I think it comes back down to that mindset of
• 52:40
  imposter syndrome, need for approval, reaching out, having
• 52:43
  those conversations, almost admitting I need help, I don't
• 52:47
  know. I'm trying to learn, and that's very difficult for people
• 52:51
  Scott Cowley: to do. It's also really difficult when you're in
• 52:54
  the company like and you've been there for a year or two or
• 52:58
  three, to go to actually admit that to yourself, let alone
• 53:00
  admit that to the organisation. Because could you imagine
• 53:03
  someone and some leaders would be more receptive to this? I
• 53:07
  imagine you'd be more receptive because this is still a small
• 53:10
  business. It's on its way up, but it's still pretty small. But
• 53:13
  could you imagine working for a fortune 500 as a sales rep and
• 53:16
  going to your leadership and going, I don't really understand
• 53:19
  what we do. I don't fully get it. Can I go talk to some
• 53:22
  customers? I can't see anyone ever doing that. So there's,
• 53:25
  there's almost a like, you have to do it by stealth, and you
• 53:28
  have to decide that sales is a career as well as a profession,
• 53:31
  as opposed to it's a job. Did
• 53:33
  Mark Ackers: you do any of that in those nine months when you
• 53:35
  weren't selling? No, and is it for reasons you've said,
• 53:39
  Scott Cowley: I had a lot of growing up to do before that
• 53:41
  role. So, yeah, it's a really good point. I didn't do that. I
• 53:44
  do it now. I definitely do it now if I need to, but I'm also
• 53:49
  my audience. I just love talking to them. I just have friends in
• 53:52
  this space. It's kind of just what I do. So I can also
• 53:55
  empathise with someone who's like, Man, I sell tables. I
• 53:58
  don't like the people that buy my product. I don't really want
• 54:01
  to go and spend time with them. I can kind of kind of empathise
• 54:03
  with that. And table is just a random example. But like so many
• 54:06
  sales jobs, I get it like it's not an interesting thing. It's
• 54:09
  not a sexy thing to be selling. But at the same time, I just
• 54:12
  come back to do you want to be good at your job? And if you do,
• 54:16
  then you got to put the effort in. It's a profession. So one of
• 54:20
  my clients right now is a an E Learning product for
• 54:25
  accountants, and specifically all accountants, that is an
• 54:29
  actual profession. You have to be to call yourself an
• 54:32
  accountant, you have to have a qualification, and you have to
• 54:35
  keep doing continuous professional CDP, CPD, whatever
• 54:38
  the acronym is. She then sells a product that makes doing those
• 54:42
  hours easy, but ultimately, like everyone who treats their
• 54:47
  business as a profession has to put the time in. I know also one
• 54:51
  of the other coaches here who I have a lot of time for, Neil,
• 54:54
  when he was either an SDR or an SDR manager, he used to put time
• 54:58
  aside during the nine to five and. To go and do his own
• 55:01
  research into the industry, into sales techniques, a couple hours
• 55:04
  a week. It wasn't a lot, but it was still enough time. So you
• 55:07
  can do this in a nine to five but you have to decide that it's
• 55:10
  a profession, it's not a job. Because if you think about it,
• 55:13
  if you're if you're a barista. Now, some people treat that as a
• 55:16
  profession, I'd say 90 to 95% if not higher, treated as a job.
• 55:21
  You don't really need new training. If you're a barista,
• 55:23
  if you know how to use the machine, you know how to you
• 55:25
  don't have to go and do it, and you can do your job really,
• 55:28
  really well. That's just not true in sales. If you want to be
• 55:31
  really good at this job, it is always changing, but also you
• 55:36
  need to always be growing, because if you're not, someone
• 55:39
  else is going to be growing, and they're going to beat you to it,
• 55:41
  and especially if you always want to stay as an individual
• 55:44
  contributor, which I think most people want to stay there. Like,
• 55:46
  my first management job did not end well, and it kind of burned
• 55:51
  me. I never really wanted to manage people again.
• 55:53
  Subsequently, like, I got forced back into it, because that's
• 55:56
  kind of the direction my career is going. And it took a lot of
• 55:59
  soul searching, and I read a few books, and I, like, I had to do
• 56:02
  a lot of work on myself to go, okay, I can actually be a good
• 56:05
  manager. And then I added in as a question to all of my team,
• 56:09
  like, start, stop, continue. What am I doing that? What am I
• 56:13
  not doing? You want me to start doing? What am I doing that you
• 56:15
  want me to stop doing? Like, you're like, hey, this, I hate
• 56:17
  this. What do you want me to continue doing? Because I don't,
• 56:21
  I don't know everything, and every person is different, and
• 56:23
  that's obviously in the sales world of like, being a leader
• 56:26
  within sales, but that's true with your prospects as well.
• 56:30
  Like, there's things that you need to learn, that you're doing
• 56:32
  that you need to stop doing. There's things you need to learn
• 56:35
  that you that you need to start doing, and there's things you're
• 56:37
  pretty good at that you want to continue doing, but they never,
• 56:39
  as you said, they're never going to give you that feedback
• 56:42
  directly. So you have to experiment. That's where the one
• 56:44
  experiment a day comes in the market will tell you, if you do
• 56:48
  enough reps that you're going in the right direction. And if you
• 56:52
  exactly like that guy who's cold calling, like, let's also take a
• 56:55
  second, he's actually doing the dials, and he's following up, so
• 56:59
  he's doing the initial work, which is the bit that a lot of
• 57:03
  people don't do to begin with. Then he needs to hone it. He
• 57:05
  needs to experiment. Change his pitch a little bit, see what
• 57:08
  happens. As you said, if he had have said it in one certain way,
• 57:12
  that'll work for you. You got to remember, though you're only one
• 57:15
  prospect, he might be killing it with the rest of his audience
• 57:18
  the way he's reaching out to them. He probably isn't. But
• 57:21
  like most organisations, if you if you look at most pipelines,
• 57:26
  odds are any one person that the sell seller talks to will not
• 57:30
  close. Let's say you got a 30% close rate. That's one in three
• 57:33
  people who even make it to an opportunity will buy from you.
• 57:36
  So two out of three won't. So no matter what you do, you got to
• 57:39
  remember you're starting from a baseline of this probably won't
• 57:42
  work, but if you don't try it, it definitely won't work. That
• 57:46
  whole idea of the enemy of the great is good. That was
• 57:50
  Mark Ackers: interesting when you spoke about raising your
• 57:53
  hand internally, saying, Look, I don't understand. I need help.
• 57:56
  I'll tell you where that really plays out. One when you just
• 57:59
  hired someone. Yeah, you can easily do it then, well, you say
• 58:02
  that, it can be difficult. To say, Look, you know the job, he
• 58:04
  was hired before. I don't know if I'm any good at it, right? It
• 58:07
  can be, can I go and speak to customers, but to say I'm
• 58:10
  struggling or don't quite get it can be different. But the one
• 58:13
  where I see it the most is and this, this is what always seems
• 58:16
  to happen, is top performers get promoted into a manager role.
• 58:19
  Yeah, yep. Now, here's the thing, it's totally different
• 58:22
  job. Yeah, they're not, they're not the same skill set at all,
• 58:24
  and that's where it's difficult to go. You just promoted me to a
• 58:27
  manager role. I don't know how to do it, and you obviously
• 58:29
  alluded to it there. Your first manager role didn't end. Well,
• 58:32
  what? What happened there?
• 58:34
  Scott Cowley: I was a top performer. It was, yeah, top
• 58:37
  performer. I moved to the UK to become a sales manager at mind
• 58:40
  body. That was the reason didn't stay in Australia. I Australia.
• 58:43
  Also, the Rugby World Cup was on, and I always wanted to go to
• 58:46
  a World Cup, 2003 Rugby World Cup 15. Oh, okay, yeah, where
• 58:49
  Australia made the final? This is where I show my age again,
• 58:51
  because that's when England beat Australia in the 2003 final.
• 58:54
  See, I'm thinking of the one where Australia knocked out
• 58:57
  England in the pool. Yeah, I forgot about that one. But no, I
• 59:00
  came over for that and also to there was no manager role in
• 59:03
  Australia, but I knew that was the next step, a little bit
• 59:06
  though. I I pushed too hard, too young. I was a good seller of
• 59:11
  mind body. I was not a good salesperson. I was also very
• 59:14
  young, so I got into that role, and I kind of didn't understand
• 59:17
  what management actually was. And the guy who was mentoring me
• 59:21
  on the way in the UK, some things happened in his life, and
• 59:25
  he actually left the country pretty soon after I was promoted
• 59:29
  there wasn't really good now, I have to give them credit,
• 59:33
  though, there was an in house trainer, and I spent every week
• 59:37
  I spent an hour one on one with him. So like, they really tried.
• 59:41
  They actually did the opposite of what most organisations do.
• 59:43
  They had training just for us managers. They also had, I had
• 59:47
  one on one support. That guy also had written a book on this
• 59:50
  and was doing a PhD in coaching and training. So like mind body,
• 59:54
  really, I had all the tools. I still as a manager. I failed. I
• 59:58
  wasn't very good at the management thing. And. Um, these
• 1:00:00
  days, I've had to learn skills, and I've had to I've also read a
• 1:00:03
  lot of books. I also the first management role where I think I
• 1:00:07
  succeeded. I found a great leader. I was working for an
• 1:00:10
  organisation where the CEO, when I was head of sales, he just
• 1:00:13
  knew what he was doing when it came to managing people. So I
• 1:00:16
  think that one of the lessons to take away from this is, go find
• 1:00:19
  mentors. Go find people who are one or two steps ahead of you,
• 1:00:24
  ideally, and work with them. And other people have already been
• 1:00:28
  on this journey. Like, let's be honest, there's not that much
• 1:00:32
  new going on. Most things are they've been solved before. They
• 1:00:36
  just haven't been solved by you in the exact way. So like, There
• 1:00:40
  are mentors out there who can help, or coaches out there who
• 1:00:43
  can directly help with the problem you've got.
• 1:00:44
  Mark Ackers: Here's the interesting you don't even need
• 1:00:46
  to go and find a mentor or coach anymore, because there is a
• 1:00:49
  company out there that will match you to your perfect sales
• 1:00:53
  coach and mentor in my sales coach, and you could be one of
• 1:00:55
  their coaches that they get matched to. And that probably
• 1:00:59
  brings us to a nice sort of concluding chapter. You spend
• 1:01:02
  your time working with many people, but one of your key
• 1:01:06
  areas is working with founders that aren't natural sales people
• 1:01:11
  or consider themselves sales people, and that's really your
• 1:01:14
  passion. What's the fastest mindset shift that founders that
• 1:01:19
  aren't sales people need to make when they start working with
• 1:01:22
  Scott Cowley: you, the first shift is that anyone can be a
• 1:01:25
  salesperson. Do you truly believe that anyone, anyone can,
• 1:01:28
  not everyone should, but anyone can. And if you, if you are a
• 1:01:33
  founder of a business that requires sales and you want the
• 1:01:36
  business to succeed, you
• 1:01:38
  Mark Ackers: have to learn to sell. Is it easier, though?
• 1:01:40
  Founder led selling? No,
• 1:01:42
  Scott Cowley: it's not easier. It's different. As a founder,
• 1:01:45
  when you've been doing it for a few years, you are a true
• 1:01:48
  industry expert. You're not really a salesperson. Now, the
• 1:01:51
  bit that is easier is when you get in the room and you have the
• 1:01:55
  title of founder or CEO, people listen when you get in the room
• 1:01:58
  and you have the title of SDR or sales person, you have to earn
• 1:02:02
  the right so it is very different, but you got to
• 1:02:04
  remember, founders, sales is only one of their jobs. It's the
• 1:02:07
  most important one, because a business without revenue is just
• 1:02:11
  a hobby, but it's still only one of their jobs. So I wouldn't
• 1:02:16
  necessarily say it's easier, because they don't get nearly as
• 1:02:19
  many reps to try new stuff, but directly, the number one thing
• 1:02:22
  that they have to change to begin with is anyone can learn
• 1:02:26
  to sell, and you've put yourself in a position where you either
• 1:02:29
  learn or your business doesn't survive. That's that's the long
• 1:02:33
  and the
• 1:02:33
  Mark Ackers: short of it. And what's the difference? Then, if
• 1:02:35
  you believe anyone can sell, but doesn't mean they should, what's
• 1:02:39
  the difference between those that shouldn't, shouldn't. It's
• 1:02:41
  a
• 1:02:41
  Scott Cowley: life choice. So in this context, especially if
• 1:02:45
  you've chosen a path that requires sales, you either have
• 1:02:51
  to get good at it, or the business doesn't exist. That's
• 1:02:55
  kind of burning the boats. That's the whole idea of you've
• 1:02:57
  backed yourself into a corner. That person has to learn how to
• 1:03:00
  sell. And if you've chosen a sales job and you actually want
• 1:03:04
  this thing to work. Because the cool thing about sales is every
• 1:03:08
  sale is slightly different, especially when you get into
• 1:03:11
  decent sized kind of the 10k plus deals, as opposed to
• 1:03:15
  selling something on the street, where it's just a repeat that's
• 1:03:18
  the same thing time and time again. There is a skill set
• 1:03:21
  there. But every sale to a in a B to B context is an edge case,
• 1:03:25
  because otherwise they wouldn't need you as a salesperson. They
• 1:03:27
  just solve it themselves. And that's the example. If we go
• 1:03:30
  back right to the beginning, I change electricity providers
• 1:03:32
  without talking to anyone, because I don't need any
• 1:03:34
  information. I don't need anything from them. I'm
• 1:03:36
  literally just switching something over. So if you're
• 1:03:38
  actually going to require sales people every single sales a
• 1:03:42
  slight edge case. So you're always learning to answer your
• 1:03:44
  question really directly if you choose to do it, and I
• 1:03:48
  appreciate that this is a very high agency answer, but if you
• 1:03:51
  choose to do it, then do it. But you don't have to choose to do
• 1:03:54
  it. Just like, let's be honest, you don't have to learn how to
• 1:03:56
  swim. If you're in Australia, don't go to the beach if you
• 1:03:59
  don't know how to swim, but you don't have to go to the beach,
• 1:04:01
  so you don't have to learn to swim, but everyone can learn how
• 1:04:04
  to swim. Yeah, I'm happy with that answer.
• 1:04:06
  Mark Ackers: Great. What is, and we'll wrap with this, Scott,
• 1:04:08
  what is the one thing that you wished you'd learned earlier in
• 1:04:12
  your sales career?
• 1:04:13
  Scott Cowley: Oh, there's too many. The one thing would be,
• 1:04:17
  buyers. Buy. Sales people influence. So another way of
• 1:04:21
  phrasing that a sales person doesn't decide when a sale
• 1:04:25
  happens, only the buyer does. In fact, that's a positive. If the
• 1:04:30
  sales person could decide, every salesperson will say, Well, I
• 1:04:33
  don't want to talk to them. I just want them to buy and credit
• 1:04:36
  it to my name, which means the profession doesn't need to
• 1:04:38
  exist. So the biggest thing that I I wish I had to learn a lot
• 1:04:42
  younger, is that it's not about me as the seller. The seller is
• 1:04:47
  merely an influencer who's supporting a buyer, but the
• 1:04:50
  buyer actually decides to buy or not. The seller doesn't decide
• 1:04:55
  for them. And once you learn that, it kind of opens up. It's
• 1:04:59
  never about. You at the end of the day, it's about them, and
• 1:05:03
  therefore, be the guide, be the influence that they need. But if
• 1:05:08
  you push them at the wrong time, they're just going to say no,
• 1:05:11
  and that's okay. So like really understanding that ultimately
• 1:05:15
  the buyer is the one who makes the decision. The seller just
• 1:05:18
  helps. And
• 1:05:19
  Mark Ackers: this is where it comes back to understanding
• 1:05:21
  seasonality, understanding why buy anything at all, why now it
• 1:05:26
  all ties really nicely. Scott, I've loved this chat that we've
• 1:05:30
  had. I think we've covered a lot of ground, again, probably only
• 1:05:34
  a fraction of the things that I wanted to cover with you, but
• 1:05:38
  it's been great to have you here. Thanks. You're definitely
• 1:05:41
  going to stand long in the test of time of travelled service to
• 1:05:45
  be on the podcast. I know he's a record that will live a long
• 1:05:48
  time with you, but yeah, thanks for coming on, and I'm looking
• 1:05:51
  forward to we're heading out tonight, right? Been a pleasure.
• 1:05:53
  You.