Mastering Sales: Strategies, Mindset, And Techniques For Success. Guest Mélanie Boucarut

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Michelle J Raymond: Welcome everybody to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and this week we are going to bounce to the other side of the world. Mélanie, welcome to the show.

[00:00:10] Melanie Boucarut: Thank you very much, Michelle. I'm very happy to be with you.

[00:00:13] Michelle J Raymond: I am excited about this one because as always, I get most excited when I get to talk about sales, and it's my favorite topic, but it does send shivers down lots of people's spines.

[00:00:24] Michelle J Raymond: But I love the way that you look at sales, and I am going to ask you some questions, pick your brain and let everybody listen in, because sales doesn't have to make you feel icky, right? It can be fun.

[00:00:37] Melanie Boucarut: Exactly. It doesn't have to make you feel awkward or dirty or anything. It can be something where you connect and you feel generous and you can be yourself and it can be very efficient that way. Actually more efficient than when you feel icky.

[00:00:48] Michelle J Raymond: Really powerful. Before we jump into that, tell me LinkedIn, how did you get started? What has your journey been like?

[00:00:56] Melanie Boucarut: So I've been on LinkedIn for 300 years approximately. No. What? I used to be a corporate employee before I became a coach, so I was on LinkedIn and I don't even remember when I signed up.

[00:01:07] Melanie Boucarut: But I started posting regularly about two and a half years ago when I started my my coaching business. And yeah, in the beginning I was just posting whatever and not understanding anything about the rules of the game or how to structure my content or, yeah, I didn't understand anything. And then by following different people and learning from you and from other people, I enjoy more, I get better. I get more structured and I connect more and it's more fun. Yeah.

[00:01:32] Michelle J Raymond: I was trying to think when I got started the other day because LinkedIn had their 20th birthday and it seemed to be the flavor of all the topics of content that week was when did you join LinkedIn? And I was like, I don't know. I was just working for someone and it was just a way for me to sell to multiple people on a bigger scale and not have to go out and knock on their doors.

[00:01:52] Michelle J Raymond: That was as simple as what it was. There was nothing technical about it. It was just, if I post about my products, then all this magical audience will be out there and they'll all buy from me. Of course I've learned some lessons in that time as well. There's so much to cover and I know you could probably spend an episode on each one of these questions that we've got.

[00:02:10] Michelle J Raymond: I'm going to put your LinkedIn details in the show notes and all of the listeners, I want you to go on. go to Mélanie's profile. I want you to ring the bell so you stay up to date with all of the content so you can dive deeper into these topics.

[00:02:22] Michelle J Raymond: But before we sell, before we even get started, before we even do anything, let's talk about mindset, because I think this is the piece of the puzzle that's getting people all worked up and in a knot.

[00:02:34] Michelle J Raymond: What's the typical mindset versus a real sales mindset in your opinion?

[00:02:40] Melanie Boucarut: Yeah, so that's such a great question and mindset is the absolute most important thing in everything you do and in particular in sales, because the way you think is gonna make you focus on different things. And if you focus on the wrong things, you're not gonna be able to sell efficiently.

[00:02:56] Melanie Boucarut: And if you focus on the right things, you're gonna be able to connect and to be generous and to enjoy the conversation and to make it worth your while. So I'll just give you a quick example. If I believe that my price is too high, so that, that's what I mean by mindset. I believe something about me or about the world.

[00:03:12] Melanie Boucarut: So if I believe that my price is too high, and if my prospective client marks a pause after I just named my price, I'm very likely to conclude that they think my price is too high as well. And so maybe I'll blurt out, but I can give you a reduction. You can get a discount. But maybe what they're doing is that they're just processing what I just told them and they're just thinking, okay, can I afford this money or not?

[00:03:34] Melanie Boucarut: The way I'm thinking about the situation has a huge impact in how I behave, and which is why it's super important to be in the right mindset. So I'm gonna go very quickly, but there's five things I see that are the big difference between the way we spontaneously think about sales and the way we it's more useful to think if you wanna sell in a way that doesn't make you feel dirty, basically.

[00:03:56] Melanie Boucarut: So the first thing is that, We are in a society that loves buying. But everybody thinks selling is dirty, but selling is not dirty. Selling is just an amplifier of who you are. If you're a good person you'll sell in a good way, or you can figure out a way to sell in a good way. If you're a bad person, you're gonna manipulate and you're gonna do un palatable things.

[00:04:17] Melanie Boucarut: So it's just like money. Money is also just an amplifier. So that's the first big switch is to notice that the way you sell is just the way you are. And you're just showing up in a situation where you're exchanging services with somebody. The second thing is to the mistake that most people make is they focus on the outcome of selling.

[00:04:34] Melanie Boucarut: So they want to hear a yes from the person they're speaking to. And the really important thing is to focus on understanding how this person thinks. You're sales call should be about you understanding how does this person think? And when you hang up from the call, if you can explain to a third party how this person was thinking about their problem, about solving it. What obstacles do they see in solving it? What obstacles do they see or hinders do they see in hiring you, et cetera. You've done the job and it's a beautiful success and you should almost not really remember if they said yes or if they said no, because that's irrelevant. The third thing is to learn how to embrace the discomfort of a call.

[00:05:14] Melanie Boucarut: It's a very big mistake to think that a good sales call is a sales call in which you feel comfortable and happy the whole time. That's not the way, because you're gonna have a conversation in which you are, you're going beyond what is normally polite. So I don't mean that you're gonna be rude to the person, but I'm, I just mean you're gonna be a bit nosy. You're gonna be curious. You're gonna ask questions that we don't normally ask, and that creates an amount of discomfort, at least the first 150 calls I will say, then after it sort of subsides. But, so it's really important to know that, of course, I'm gonna feel a bit awkward, but it's okay. It doesn't mean that it's a bad thing.

[00:05:49] Michelle J Raymond: It absolutely isn't a bad thing. It is a hundred percent normal to not feel comfortable, so I love that you've raised that point.

[00:05:56] Melanie Boucarut: The fourth one. I will borrow an expression from my colleague Debbie Sasan, who says, stay out of your client's wallet.

[00:06:03] Melanie Boucarut: We tend to have a lot of uh, money mindset limiting beliefs. And so we tend to make a decision on the spot based on what the person is saying or what we're assuming about them on whether they are able to afford our services or not. And that is not your decision. That is not your problem. So all you do is that you present to them how much your services cost, how you can help them, and leave it up to them to decide whether they have money or not. You can be on a call with somebody who is apparently a starving artist, but who actually gets money from their parents every month and have plenty of money to, to pay for services. You have no idea what the person's situation is so stay out of their wallet.

[00:06:41] Melanie Boucarut: And then the last point is to think in, in big numbers and not think about one individual call. The mistake we make usually when we start is that we think of this call as a make or break. Am I a good coach? Am I a good salesperson? Is my business going to succeed? And everything hangs on that particular call, but it's really important to think in terms of a hundred calls.

[00:07:04] Melanie Boucarut: And look at the trend on a hundred call and look at how many people tend to say yes to you out of a hundred call. And when you think like this, each individual call is just an opportunity to connect with somebody and it's just a data point, like what happened at the issue of that particular call, and that's it.

[00:07:19] Melanie Boucarut: And then you have a baseline and then you can learn how to improve on it. So I would say these are the five main differences that I see. There's a few others, but. If you can switch your mindset from what we normally think to these five different ways of looking at things already, you're going to go into a sales call much more relaxed and much more able to focus on the other person.

[00:07:38] Melanie Boucarut: And that's the whole point.

[00:07:40] Michelle J Raymond: Getting out of your own head is such a powerful lesson. Easier said than done, and I know now why point number four, just has resonated with me so much. I'm sitting here listening to you. I'm shaking my head when you say get out of their wallets. I can't even tell you the assumptions that I've made about some people that I was wrong with multiple zeros.

[00:08:05] Michelle J Raymond: I was so wrong in what I thought they were earning versus what they were I wasn't even the same ballpark. And here I was thinking oh, I'll bring down my prices so that you can afford it. And it was so the other way around, and I'm shaking my head, they're lessons that we learned. But, money mindset comes into sales.

[00:08:25] Michelle J Raymond: So many layers come into sales. And a friend of mine, Niraj, he was on the show a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about sales and everything for him changed when he went from that hunter and gatherer, let's try and connect with as many people as possible. Let's go out and get them to that, that traditional selling method to all of a sudden I'm here to serve people.

[00:08:47] Michelle J Raymond: And when his mindset switched around that, then all of a sudden the world opened up. And so this is why I really wanted to have this conversation about mindset with you, because for me, I've always loved sales, Mélanie. And when people roll their eyes that I'm in sales, I'm like, It's the best job in the world, and they're looking at me with these, crazy eyes going, what's wrong with you, Michelle?

[00:09:09] Michelle J Raymond: For me, my context has always been it's problem solving and helping people. The more I do of both, the more I sell, the numbers take care of themselves. And so why wouldn't I wanna help more people and why wouldn't I? Wanna solve more problems. And so that's what's really a powerful context for me to take into it.

[00:09:25] Michelle J Raymond: But yeah, staying out of other people's wallets, I'm gonna take that down and put it on my note board. Do not forget that one Michelle Raymond. And I think the thing is like this year's coming into, some people around the world, there's been different financial outlooks. Some of them are quite tough.

[00:09:41] Michelle J Raymond: But what are the three simple rules you think people can follow to increase sales?

[00:09:47] Melanie Boucarut: So this is basically how I got good at selling in the first place. And this is how my clients succeed. The first rule of sales is that you need to make offers. So the first step is you need to contact as many people as possible and offer them your services.

[00:10:03] Melanie Boucarut: And the thing is, You making an offer is not saying, hi, I am there. Why don't you read my post? That's not an offer. That's please read my post. An offer is why don't you book a, a call with me and we can see if I'm the right person for you? Or here is my services. Here is the price. Are you interested? Yes or no? So an offer is really like a clear offer to hire you. And you need to make offers to as many people as possible. So the way you figure out and you identify who you could make an offer to there's 1 million ways, and this is the topic for an entire podcast.

[00:10:34] Melanie Boucarut: But the first step is to make offers, and that's the part where everybody feels icky. Nobody wants to do it. But if you use the mindset switch that I told, I spoke just about that will help you a lot, but that's really the first step you need to make offers. And then the second thing, the second step is to test stuff scientifically.

[00:10:53] Melanie Boucarut: When people say they test things, they tend to say, okay, I tried it once. It didn't work, and so I tested it. So it doesn't work. That's not a test that's just doing it the first time. A test is you're gonna replicate something over a certain number of times and you're gonna do it as similarly as possible so that you can see a trend. So for example, you're gonna do, I don't know, 10 sales calls or 50 sales calls following a certain type of steps. And then you're gonna see, okay, when I follow those steps, I tend to have 5% or 16%, or 82% of the people who sign me up in the end.

[00:11:29] Melanie Boucarut: And this allows you to draw conclusions, and then you can tweak only one thing and you test that again on 10 sales calls or 50 sales calls or whatever. And by doing that, so it takes a while, but it does get you good. It's absolutely a sure fire way of getting the results that you're after. And when you're focusing on only trying something once and drawing a conclusion that doesn't work.

[00:11:51] Melanie Boucarut: Maybe it works, but maybe it worked for other reasons than what you thought you were testing. The third very important thing is to make sure that you pack your sales call. So the free discovery call, or whatever you wanna call it that people book with you to figure out if you are the right person for them to hire, to solve their problem, you need to pack that call with insight. You need to make that call super valuable for your client so that whatever they decide, whether they decide to hire you or not, they need to come out of that call thinking. Was the most valuable conversation I've had in I don't know how many years and the way to pack insights into your call it's actually quite simple.

[00:12:35] Melanie Boucarut: If you know your client, if you know your ideal client, if you know your niche, you know what they tend to not see, you know what? They tend to not really dare to ask, but actually think in their, inner most mind. So you just need to voice those in the call.

[00:12:51] Melanie Boucarut: So it can be super simple. It can be like a few preconceived ideas that people tend to have about the problem you solve or about the way you solve it. And, it's not true. So you can share that. I'll just give you like a super super simple example, but maybe you're gonna drop some better ways of thinking about the problem.

[00:13:08] Melanie Boucarut: For example, if you're working with procrastination, like if you're a coach on procrastination, maybe you're just gonna drip at some point you're gonna say, people think that motivation is something that happens to them, but in fact, motivation is created or destroyed by the way you describe the task to yourself.

[00:13:23] Melanie Boucarut: So for you, this is bread and butter. For you, this is obvious, there's like zero value in it because you know it so well. But for them you know those moments, you can pick them from your previous sales calls because you noticed that you said something and for the next two minutes the person is not listening to you anymore because they're still processing what you have said.

[00:13:40] Melanie Boucarut: Or maybe they'll ask you a question or maybe they'll just say what? What did you say? And those things are what you wanna pack your next sales calls with. So if you follow those three steps, you make as many offers as possible to as many people as possible. You test stuff scientifically and you pack your sales call with value, with insight which makes made feel very simple and obvious to you, but which are very valuable to somebody who is not an expert as you are. Your sales game is gonna get very good very quickly, basically.

[00:14:10] Michelle J Raymond: Amen to all of that. I was reading a book on the weekend and it was about sales and I always like to see how other people approach sales and the whole thing in that was probably some things similar to what you are saying here.

[00:14:23] Michelle J Raymond: The thing that really resonated for me that aligned with what you've just said was having those products or services packaged up front. And I remember there was a time where I started in my business, went out in one direction, doing company page management, and then I realized that wasn't quite what I wanted to do, it was paying the bills in the beginning so then I decided, okay, I don't wanna do that anymore. But I didn't have anything else to replace it, except I just released a book. Mélanie, you can laugh at me. Here's what I was doing, putting all of my efforts into basically having these great calls with people, and then at the end just going. Do you wanna buy my book?

[00:14:59] Michelle J Raymond: It's a $10 $20 book. Not a great use of my time. So having those packages up front that for me is just something that, I'm laughing now. I can. But it took me like six months to sort that out. That was not something that I, had sorted out overnight. I think I might get Angela on the show who's our packaging expert and, have a conversation here to expand on that one.

[00:15:21] Michelle J Raymond: But, say, we've got like these amazing products or services that we've started to pull together and we love them. Like when I put my products together, I thought they were the most amazing training products in the world, which they are for the record. But at the same time, it's difficult to not get into conversations with people, discovery calls, and then start telling them about everything that I put into building this product out.

[00:15:47] Michelle J Raymond: But tell me, a powerful sales call should talk about benefits over features, but you are so great at, sharing analogies on how this actually works out. So I'd love to hear how you can help people with this particular part.

[00:16:01] Melanie Boucarut: Yeah, sure. First thing, I just wanna react to what you were saying before.

[00:16:04] Melanie Boucarut: I'm never going to laugh at somebody who is trying to sell. Because that's where we all started. You should listen to my first few calls, you laugh. The our first few calls, they're always like, we are we're stiff, we're scared. And so I think it's we only deserve congratulations for being on a sales call.

[00:16:22] Melanie Boucarut: It's difficult to do in the beginning. So kudos to you for trying to sell that book, even if it was not the most efficient way in the beginning, that you learned that way. And that's the most important things.

[00:16:31] Melanie Boucarut: So regarding the benefits and the features. So the main mistake we make, so at some point in the sales call, you're gonna want, and that's also something that people are, All, all up in their heads about, but you're gonna want to very clearly share how you can help them.

[00:16:48] Melanie Boucarut: And just a little tip for our listeners, but there's a very good way to do that, which is to give them first your expert opinion on what the problem is, because that's a beautiful segue into explaining how you can help them to solve the problem. So don't miss that. Especially in the beginning when you're not super confident in your expert skill.

[00:17:07] Melanie Boucarut: But for, you don't need to be the most advanced expert to bring value to somebody who is, who doesn't know anything about your field. So start by sharing your diagnosis or your expert opinion on what's going on, and then that helps you present how you're going to, how you can help, and then when you present how you can help.

[00:17:25] Melanie Boucarut: I'm gonna imagine that I'm selling you a vacation in Bali, so I have two ways of doing it. Either I tell you for five minutes about how you're gonna sit in the plane and the fact that you need to make a changeover in Singapore and then a changeover and I don't know where. And that this is gonna be like this at the customs.

[00:17:46] Melanie Boucarut: You are already drowsing out when I'm talking, right? It's so boring. Or I can talk to you about how the beaches are going to be, how the rice paddies look how the people are, the kind of food you're gonna eat, right? The evening on the beach, holding hands with somebody near to you, et cetera.

[00:18:01] Melanie Boucarut: This is what makes you dream and this is what you want. And of course you're gonna need to travel to the destination. And so maybe if you're sold on the vacation in Bali, maybe you're gonna ask me, oh, by the way, how many hours of plane and where are the changeovers? But you're not interested in that information until you're sold on the vacation.

[00:18:18] Melanie Boucarut: So when you present your offer, when you explain how you can help somebody, you need to focus on the after. Not the effort to get there. It's not to hide the effort, but it's just, this is not the most interesting part. You wanna tell them what does their life look like once they have implemented your solution in it.

[00:18:37] Melanie Boucarut: So for example, I work with coaches so that the typical way for a coach to present their way to help is to say alright, so if you choose to work with me, we're gonna work, it's gonna be six sessions or 45 minutes each, and there's gonna be videos to watch in between. And I can support you by email.

[00:18:52] Melanie Boucarut: All of this is true. And then all of this is wonderful, but this is not what they're buying. Nobody is buying to watch videos. Nobody's buying to get an email from a coach. So what you can say is, you can say, okay. You're not gonna procrastinate anymore. You're gonna find it easy to find motivation.

[00:19:07] Melanie Boucarut: You're gonna know exactly how to get yourself to do what you've decided, and as a result, you're gonna be able to finish your work in time and be home for just in time for dinner with your family, and spend time with them. Some version of that, right? I'm obviously not selling that specific offer.

[00:19:22] Melanie Boucarut: Some version of that. Which grabs their imagination and if they are interested in that, then they're going to ask you all the questions. So just a little caveat, it doesn't mean that you don't name the features because one of the important features is your price, and you wanna name that.

[00:19:37] Melanie Boucarut: But you're not gonna say it for five minutes. You're gonna naming how many sessions or how long it takes, or your price or all that. It's gonna be two sentences in the whole thing. You say not more than that. And if they're interested to buy, then they will ask you all the questions and then you can solve it.

[00:19:55] Michelle J Raymond: Oh, look, there is so much in there that I am just sitting here nodding at both bits. I'm nodding to fall asleep when I can hear myself going, here's how many different sections there are in my training program. Or it will take this long, and then I'll follow up and then we'll do this. And when really what they want is confidence and clarity on, to be able to take actions on LinkedIn to grow their business and know I remember in one other of your presentations and I have this picture, like you said, of they're standing on one side of the chasm and they're standing trying to get to the other side. And you are the bridge in between the two. And that has stuck with me since you shared that, probably a month ago now, wherever it was.

[00:20:34] Michelle J Raymond: But it's really stuck with me that that's my role in sales, to be the facilitator, to get from where they are to where they want to be. And they trust me that I've got those things sorted and I know how to do it. And if they don't, we have more conversations, but, one of the things that I've never done, so confession time, I have never used a sales script in my life, and I can see you shaking your head for the listeners that'll be listening in on the podcast, what is the power of a sales script? Sell me the idea and why should I pay attention to this?

[00:21:07] Melanie Boucarut: So first of all, the name is very off-putting. What we call a sales script. It's not like a manuscript that you are, as an actress, you're gonna learn by heart and then be a robot and say exactly the same sentences.

[00:21:20] Melanie Boucarut: It's just a checklist of different steps that you would like to take this prospective client through. The reason you wanna have this checklist, so I'll just give you an example so that it's clear for everybody. So for example, you might wanna start the call by some sort of icebreaker, like some little chit chat to break the ice.

[00:21:37] Melanie Boucarut: Doesn't need to be long, it can be one minute, but like something. And then maybe you're gonna ask them about what brings them to the call. What's their problem? What's the issue? How do they describe it? When do they experience it, the worst, et cetera. And then maybe as a next step, you want to ask them what is the desired outcome that they have.

[00:21:54] Melanie Boucarut: Then maybe you wanna fit in the your expert opinion, as I mentioned earlier. Then you're gonna present your offer, and then you're gonna ask them if they have any reasons not to buy. And then you're gonna wrap up the call, right? So this is a sales script. It's like just a number of steps that you would like to take them through when you have this in front of you, and it doesn't need to be written. It, in the beginning it helps to be written. And then after a while you, you have it in your mind. So you don't you don't need to see it anymore, but you are actually still following it. What it enables you to do is that, regardless of what kind of a day you're having, you're always going to deliver a minimum amount of quality, which is gonna be very high to anybody you speak to.

[00:22:32] Melanie Boucarut: And that for me is super important. There are days when there are days with and days without. On a day with, I'm gonna be like, full of energy and everything. And it doesn't really matter whether I have a script or not. I'm gonna just, bring it on and deliver a lot of value for the person I'm speaking to.

[00:22:46] Melanie Boucarut: There are also days when I'm down or there's days when I've had five calls in a row or 10 calls in a row, and you just, even if you got a few yeses, but you're, it's just draining, right? If you were just winging it, you're not like on the last call, you're not gonna deliver the same high quality as the first one.

[00:23:01] Melanie Boucarut: But if you're following a list of steps, you're not gonna fo forget anything and you're gonna deliver the same high quality. The second reason why it's super important, in my opinion, to have a sales script is that it makes it so much easier for you to notice what might be the reason a series of call are not converting.

[00:23:22] Melanie Boucarut: Because you have assumptions you can test. For example, a, a typical thing that happens in the beginning, let's say that you have a 30 minute sales call. You explore the problem for 20 minutes, which means that it leaves only 10 minutes for all the rest. So if you notice that, like if you have a sales script, it's very easy to notice that you spend 20 minutes on the first part. And so you, it gives you a very clear idea of where the problem probably is. So it might not be. What you do or how you behave on the call, it might just be that you're not spending enough time on the other bits that, that are actually important. And so the third reason why it's really great to have a sales script is that it also makes it much easier to.

[00:24:00] Melanie Boucarut: Make assumptions about what you could do differently, because for example, if I notice that okay the beginning of my call is 20 minutes and I rush the rest and I don't have time, then I can challenge myself to find ways to make the 20 minutes shorter. For example, if I notice that I tend to let people speak a lot and I don't really dare to interrupt them even though they're repeating themselves or they're going in a tangent direction I can identify this as one of the main root cause for me spending 20 minutes in the first part of the call and I can challenge myself to find five ways to interrupt somebody and refocus them, that feel okay to me, and it might be a little bit of a stretch for my personality to do that. But if I try to do it on the call, it's never gonna work because it's a stretch.

[00:24:44] Melanie Boucarut: But if I'm doing it in a relaxed moment outside of sales call and I'm thinking and I'm brainstorming and may, maybe I'm asking my friends how they do it, then I can have some ideas. I can practice that and. Yes, my heart will beat a little bit faster the next time when I implement that in the call.

[00:24:59] Melanie Boucarut: But it, it will make a difference. And then usually quite shortly after only a few calls, I'm able to contain the first part of the call to maybe the five minutes or 10 minutes it should be, and to spend more time in the rest. And the first reason you wanna have a script is the consequence of what I've just explained, which is that you noticeably improve from call to call.

[00:25:19] Melanie Boucarut: And that is wonderful for your confidence with and confidence is amazing for sales. So it's just this virtuous effect. So I don't recommend to wing it. I really recommend that you follow a set of of steps, but then I don't recommend either that you should learn things by heart and be a robot.

[00:25:38] Melanie Boucarut: You should absolutely be flexible and you should adapt to the person in front of you and see how you're gonna get that particular person through the different steps that you had in mind for the call.

[00:25:49] Michelle J Raymond: I love it. I think anybody that's listening into this, if you haven't taken notes, you're gonna go back, rewind this, and start writing down exactly what Mélanie has shared here, because I can see the powerful benefits of that continuous improvement.

[00:26:03] Michelle J Raymond: And you're right. When you're on a high from lots of yeses, that feeling is the best. And when you go into the next call with that confidence, you are like high fiving yourself, and so for me, that's such a cool thing. I because of my career in sales, I'm okay with nos. But what I found was when I was a business owner and it became way more personal for me.

[00:26:24] Michelle J Raymond: I made it about me and that, that's a conversation for another day, which I won't go down that rabbit hole, but I'm sure people can relate. But you are, you're putting lots of effort into these sales calls and they're quite productive and I can see the benefits of covering all these areas in the scripts, but, How can I actually take that information that I'm learning in these calls to improve like the marketing side of our business, whether that's content or LinkedIn or just marketing in general.

[00:26:49] Michelle J Raymond: How do you bring it back for all of the marketers that are listening into this?

[00:26:53] Melanie Boucarut: That's such a great question, Michelle. So I love this question because it's exactly the right mindset of how to go into a sales call, which is, again, your job is not to try to get that person to sign you up. Your job is to try to figure out how that person is thinking.

[00:27:08] Melanie Boucarut: And the reason it's important is that you if you hang up from the call and you can clearly describe how this person is thinking. You can completely reuse all of that information in your marketing and then in your sales and in, in many other ways. For example the first direct way you can you can use a sales call afterwards is it can make a great topic for content for a post you're gonna do or podcast, you're gonna, you're gonna record.

[00:27:33] Melanie Boucarut: For example, if somebody tells you you just in a sales call you just told them how you can help and they tell you, oh, it's not the right time for me to spend this money. So you're gonna have a conversation. You're not gonna hang up at that point. You're gonna have a conversation, but maybe you can write down what they just said and then you can post on the next day or incoming weeks, you can post on why it's never the right time.

[00:27:54] Melanie Boucarut: And you can manage that objection in a post. It doesn't mean that you're never gonna have it on a sales call e ever, but it helps you clarify your thoughts around it, and it most importantly, can educate your audience as to why they're never gonna feel like it's the right time to hire you.

[00:28:09] Melanie Boucarut: And the right time is, like we say the best time was 20 years ago and the next best time is now. So you can, it gives you great material for your content.

[00:28:17] Michelle J Raymond: For all of the marketers that are listening in, this is where when we bring sales and marketing together, or if you're a business owner and you are having these conversations, this is so much gold to be able to take this and go, "I've learned it's like getting an inside somebody's head. Like they've told you the objection and the chances are somebody else is gonna have the same objections.

[00:28:37] Melanie Boucarut: Exactly. It's exactly that, right? Or another example, if they tell you on the call that they've already invested a lot of money in other solutions and those solutions didn't work, so that's why they're a little bit reluctant to buy yours.

[00:28:49] Melanie Boucarut: Then you can post on, or maybe you can write a newsletter about why your solution is different or maybe why some programs don't work for you. And you might have a specific take and it's an op great op opportunity to express your opinion and your personality on how do you see this? The other amazing thing that you get from from a sales call is verbatim.

[00:29:09] Melanie Boucarut: So you can improve your wording in your copy or in your sales page or in, in anything you do basically to speak more like them so they can recognize themselves. So for example, if I take again my example of the coach working on procrastination, nobody's ever going to say to you or to recognize themselves if you say, do you experience resistance?

[00:29:28] Melanie Boucarut: Nobody ever says that, right? Technically this is what it is, but nobody actually expressed themselves like this. So on a sales call, you might hear the person might say to you, it's so hard to take the action, and or I don't feel ready to do this. And so that's what you wanna have on your page.

[00:29:45] Melanie Boucarut: You wanna say is it so hard to take the action? Does it feel so hard to take the action? Or just to, when it's so hard to take the action, like you're just gonna use exactly the verbatim and those moments, they're a little bit intense. The sales calls or, yeah not super intense, but there, there's a little bit of of intensity that goes in it, which means that people speak very spontaneously.

[00:30:03] Melanie Boucarut: Which is why it's an amazing opportunity to gather verbatims. And then obviously you're gonna get better at selling because you can learn. You're learning from your interaction. So for example, if they said I need to talk to my husband or to my boss first before I take the decision, and maybe spontaneously you answered why do you need to speak to him?

[00:30:22] Melanie Boucarut: And they got very defensive. Okay, so you hang up, take a big breath, and then you ask yourself, okay. What are five ways I could answer this that are not, why do you need to speak to him? What made them get defensive and what could I ask that will not make them defensive?

[00:30:38] Melanie Boucarut: Or maybe yeah, like you can really reuse what you're learning in the call, in your next sales calls. And then the last thing you can do also is what you learn in a sales call ,is it's a fantastic opportunity for self-coaching and self-development. So for example, you might notice as it happens to most of us in the beginning, that when you're getting near the moment where it's gonna be time for you to state your price, Maybe on the outside you're like a duck. Like on the outside you're gliding, but under the surface it's pedaling very hard, right? So inside you're feeling the panic. Explore why you're panicking, you can notice, okay, what happened in that moment that made me panic? What you're associating with naming your price or, and then you can ask yourself better questions like, why is it a great thing for them?

[00:31:20] Melanie Boucarut: That they get to pay for your services and then you can find answers to those questions. So there's so many benefits from what you learned on a sales call. And again, my philosophy that when you hang up, you should be a little bit like, wait, did they say yes? Or did they say no because that was not the focus.

[00:31:37] Melanie Boucarut: And if you can do that, you can bring that to your marketing.

[00:31:41] Michelle J Raymond: That has taken so much pressure off. I've lost count of the number of tips that you've delivered in this podcast. There has just been so many. But every week when I want to wrap things up, Mélanie, I ask these expert guests, give me one actionable tip.

[00:31:55] Michelle J Raymond: If I've been listening into this and I'm really inspired and I wanna up my sales game, not in the icky way, in the good way. What is one actionable tip that people can take away today?

[00:32:08] Melanie Boucarut: So I would say since most people have a misconception or some prejudice about what it means to, to be selling and this is why nobody wants to go sell, because we think if I start to sell, I'm gonna be a bad person.

[00:32:19] Melanie Boucarut: I'm gonna, put my door in my foot, in the door of old ladies and try to steal their savings, or something like that. It feels really icky. So what I would recommend is actually a tip I got from my friend Cal Haney who's a, an amazing fundraiser. And the what you can do is you can list all the interactions you've had with salespeople where you were the buyer or the potential buyer that have left a mark on you, and then you can re-explore them and ask yourself, how would I have liked to be handled?

[00:32:51] Melanie Boucarut: And how can I bring that to my sales call? So it's really like a free exercise. It looks like it's dis-correlated from the actual sales call, but this is gonna change your mindset so powerfully that it's gonna help you be willing to go into sales calls because you're no longer going to associate selling with being bad.

[00:33:10] Melanie Boucarut: You're gonna associate a certain type of selling with a certain type of people that you don't want to be, but there's so many other ways to sell. Many of which are amazing because you're actually helping people, as you were saying earlier. And you can absolutely be on the good side of the force.

[00:33:25] Michelle J Raymond: I say use the good force. Mélanie, thank you so much for everything that you have shared today. It is just been brilliant. I was excited to share this with other people, but for me it's refreshed me and put me back on the right path to get some processes back in place in my business as a business owner and you know, the person that's also responsible for sales and there's things that we can always improve there's things that we can learn and thank you for sharing the non icky way of selling with the audience today. I'm out to change that on LinkedIn. I want people to do more of this. No more automations, no more try out to get hunter and gatherers. It doesn't have to be that way. And if you would like more help, you know where to find Mélanie.

[00:34:07] Michelle J Raymond: So thank you for everybody that's listened in it's been amazing and until next week, Cheers.