Resilience and Prospecting with Ralph Fontelar | GrowthPulse The B2B Sales Podcast Ep22

Ever been knocked down by a tough rejection only to get back up, dust yourself off, and close that seemingly impossible sale? Well, that's the spirit of resilience that we unpack on our latest episode, where we navigate the choppy waters of sales prospecting with a spirited discussion around the critical concepts of 'visit,' 'fit,' and 'value.' I'm joined by my co-host, and we dissect the lessons learned from my own career shift into the dynamic realm of IT recruitment, along with the bustling tech innovation happening right in Adelaide. For anyone in sales or considering the leap, this episode is a must-listen, offering a goldmine of strategies honed from the front lines of the industry.

We don't just stop at resilience; we take a deep dive into the mindset and preparation tactics that turn good salespeople into great ones. The episode peels back the curtain on crafting an engaging sales story and the problem-solving approach that can turn each call into a new opportunity. We share firsthand how the right opening pitch can capture a prospect's attention and the immense power of humanizing the sales process. Our conversation swings from the empathetic nuances of executive engagement to the action-packed anecdotes that will shape the way you view your role in the life cycle of a sale.

Closing out, we offer a treasure trove of insights specifically tailored for the up-and-coming sales professionals thirsty for that edge to excel. We dissect the 'Create, Advance, and Close' process, pinpointing the need for proactive pipeline creation and laser-focus on key sales activities. As we wrap up with tales from my SAP tenure, we underline how active listening and the art of learning from mistakes are the quiet heroes in the narrative of sales success. Tune in to carve out your pathway to connecting, engaging, and triumphing in the high-stakes world of sales.

Transcript

Ralph Fontelar: 0:00

Three magical words when you face this resistance during a call and those words are visit, fit and value. And if you can finesse those three words into a call, once you start meeting resistance it'll turn. It'll hopefully turn around that call and get you that meeting. I think you're just literally going through every page picking a number and calling it Almost those automated robocalls. But I think through recruitment, like I alluded to before, it really built that resiliency of getting pushed back and said no to and part of that resiliency and part of that process was going all right. What's my sales story? Welcome to Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast.

Daniel Bartels: 0:36

You might be a salesperson, you could lead a sales team, maybe run a business, or you're a battle-tested entrepreneur. Then we built this podcast for you. Great salespeople are built, not born. We learn so much from the deals we win and we'll learn even more from the deals we lose. In each episode we bring you some of the world's leading salespeople, sales leaders and experts in sales tech to share their best lessons from both their wins and their losses.

Daniel Bartels: 1:06

Before we start, please check out the screen of your phone or laptop and, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you've clicked subscribe and pressed that like button down below. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple, click the plus sign to follow so we can let you know when we publish each new episode. If you liked the episode, drop us a comment with any questions about the show. We love to get to know our audience. Great businesses always feature world-class salespeople and the best salespeople are always learning, so let's jump in. Welcome back to another episode of Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. I'm one of your co-hosts, dan Bartels, here with my ever-trusty. I was going to call you sidekick, but that's not quite fair. That's not interesting, mate. Welcome back. Thanks for being cool for the last couple of days you feeling better.

Simon Peterson: 1:54

Yeah, I'm much better mate. I have these big events. I went to a kickoff and bought Influenza A home, so twice in the space of four weeks Back them up, absolutely.

Daniel Bartels: 2:09

And mate we've got one of your great colleagues, Ralph. Welcome to the show.

Ralph Fontelar: 2:13

Thanks Great to be here All the way from not-so-sunny Adelaide, Adelaide mate.

Daniel Bartels: 2:18

Look, I love Adelaide. I haven't been down there for probably 12, 18 months, but even just the size of the town, it's just, it's nice, you can handle it Absolutely, you can see everything. Great food.

Daniel Bartels: 2:30

Absolutely, Absolutely. In fact, we're doing some recruitment at the moment and all of the I think 80% of the candidates we've got all happened in Adelaide. I've talked to them. I had no idea I'm not part of this particular recruitment, but I just heard that anecdote yesterday. So there is a real wealth of knowledge and technology in particular down in Adelaide.

Simon Peterson: 2:49

So that's, excellent.

Daniel Bartels: 2:52

Mate, look, I want to make sure we jump in, but we've got an exciting topic for everyone today, which we're talking about prospecting, and I want to give you a moment, just give everyone a bit of your background, what you've done.

Ralph Fontelar: 3:05

So, mate, give us kind of the Tencent tour. Yeah, look where do I start. I'm a financial accountant by trade, so you wouldn't have thought by my personality from you've met me for the rest of the time we spent together. But I started off my career as a financial accountant, did that at uni and did the job as that for six months and realized I didn't love it. So I had that crossroad moment in my career where I thought what am I going to do next? And so I was on seek, as you do, and I saw this job that came up called IT candidate manager. I was like all right, great, I'll apply for it. Went to the interview, wore a suit, was on level 23 of our tallest building in Adelaide and I thought, awesome, this is baller. Got the job rocked up and I said, holy crap, I still don't know what this job is, but I'm here and it turns out it was an IT recruitment job.

Ralph Fontelar: 3:46

So I cut my early, very early sales career as an IT recruiter and for those that are listening and those of you that know, recruitment is a cutthroat industry. As a seller, it's not easy and it's something where you probably the next best feeling is those guys on the street that are trying to get you to donate the charity, the amount of times you get said no to and not interested, but it really builds that resiliency. I did that for about six or seven years. By the end of it I was the director of a local recruitment company called Greythorne Shout out to Greythorne, who doesn't exist anymore but a local IT services company I was and the funny story is they actually brought me in to pitch them and I actually left that pitch meeting with pretty much a job offer to come join them.

Ralph Fontelar: 4:27

They were a little cloud startup there was four of them at the time, or five of them, sorry and when we started speaking they were like hey, how about you come work for us? I joined them and I had five very good years with them selling all sorts of IT stuff. It was my real first stint in IT in Abilade in services, hardware and software. And then through that time I sold a lot of Veeam and by the end of that career the guys at Veeam said they were starting up shop in South Australia and it was the right time in my life to join them. And here we are.

Ralph Fontelar: 4:56

Yeah round circle so look, my career in sales has not been a straight line, but I guess I think everyone can agree that sales is not a straight line. I think we all started off growing up saying we wanted to be astronauts or lawyers or accountants. I don't think any one of us said I want to be a salesman growing up. And God, if my son comes to me one day saying he wants to be a salesman, I'll be very concerned. Yeah, that's a bit about my journey.

Daniel Bartels: 5:18

A lot of people in my working career who've started their sales career or their business journey in recruitment and have really learned how to round out their skill set. It's a hard slog. It's high competition. Your differentiation is just based really on whether you've got a detailed structure in your organization. Often the differentiation is yourself. We want to talk about prospecting today which Simon joked before you hit the record button that of all the episodes we've done so far, prospecting is a really critical piece of sales. Right, we haven't talked about it, so it's timely that we do. Absolutely yeah, talk to me about your experience in that recruitment space and how you learned prospecting and I suppose what you think is really important in that.

Ralph Fontelar: 6:04

Yeah, look, absolutely. I think. I mean, in all my stints in recruitment I was working for relatively new teams there was no strategic account list, there was no named account list that we're all so used to and get these days I was literally picking up the phone book and dialing for dollar ride. I think you're just literally going through every page, picking a number and calling it almost as automated robocalls. But I think through recruitment, like I alluded to before it, really built that resiliency of getting pushed back and said no to, and part of that resiliency and part of that process was going all right, what's my sales story, what's my value proposition and what's going to get my prospects listening to me and taking the meeting? Because, at the end of the day, the purpose of a prospecting session it's not to yes. Yes, the long-term goal is to get the opportunity and to eventually qualify, but the purpose of prospecting is to get the meeting. I think that's as simple. It's as simple as that. It's really that simple method of getting that meeting, having a bit of resistance on that call and really, once you get that meeting, that's when you can start to qualify out and that's when you can start to do discovery and get those opportunities as well.

Ralph Fontelar: 7:12

For me, with prospecting, it's a mindset thing You've really got to set yourself up. If I think about nowadays, where I do have a strategic list and a named account list, you've got to change that mindset. You're not calling to bother someone, You're actually calling to help them win and you're calling them to help them succeed and actually add value to their organization. And I think that's probably the critical mindset that you need to have with prospecting. But look, clearly I could go on for hours about this topic, Happy to dive a bit deeper into something specific and go from there.

Daniel Bartels: 7:39

So I think that the question that I've got you mentioned mindset.

Daniel Bartels: 7:43

How do you, what sort of mindset do you bring even now to prospecting?

Daniel Bartels: 7:48

I know what I do, what I look at, which is I've either been given a list or I've targeted a couple of customers that I want to jump into and have a conversation with, and my mindset is always about I know they've got a problem, because that's why I'm in a particular market selling a product or a solution, and the fact that they even made it to my list in the first place means that it's likely that they've got a problem that I need to come up and resolve. If it's recruitment, hey, one of the biggest issues for people, for organizations or leaders, is you're going to have turnover. The first day that you employ someone is the longest period they're ever going to work for your business, or at some point, that person's leaving, or you're expanding, or there's always this need. So they've got a need that I can help solve. And how do I help them to understand potential for it or the issues that they don't understand themselves? That's my story. What's the mindset that you bring to prospecting and how do you cope people on that as well?

Ralph Fontelar: 8:48

Yeah, look, that's a great question, dan. Look, for me it all starts with the mindset, right, it's. Let's face it, no one wants to pick up the phone. Even now, picking up the phone, it's a hard thing to do, going out of your way to bother someone. The day that someone picks up the phone and goes oh my God, ralph, I was so happy you called my thing that you sell just broke. Great, I'd love to see it. That's never going to happen, right, it's just not the reality.

Ralph Fontelar: 9:14

So for me, I think you've got to have exactly, look, you've got to have that mindset and you've got to think about your why, right, no-transcript?

Ralph Fontelar: 9:49

I think we all get so distracted by oh, my mindset is oh, I'm behind number, or I have no pipeline, or you know, and that we all know you can sniff that type of salesperson from a mile away when they call. And I think when you do come across that genuine mindset of I'm here to help you, I know I can help you and I believe I can, that creates a lot more different type of tone in your voice, as simple as that, but also just the intention that you bring to that. Call the people we speak to. Let's face it. The people we speak to are executives for the most part. Certainly. For me, I've always tried to focus on the executive, because they're the ones with the decision-making authority, but also the power of their wallet. They're human beings as well, and I think if you tell yourself that they're a human being and they've got things that keep them up at night, really it almost makes that conversation a lot easier, absolutely.

Simon Peterson: 10:38

Hey, ralph, as you went through your career and you obviously done software hardware services sales you sold people. Obviously you don't just pick up the phone and randomly start a conversation with a prospect. Tell me a little bit about how you prepared for a call. You've got a prospect you're going to make a cold call in or you've got some information you want to talk to the executive. How do you go about preparing for that conversation?

Ralph Fontelar: 11:09

Yeah, look, that's an excellent question and I think for me I'm not loathe, but the term cold calling for me, especially for us and the type of sales we do, it should never be a cold call. To your point, simon, there should always be a level of preparation for that call, because once you've, realistically, you've got that real first 30 seconds of that call to capture that prospect's attention right, you really need to be able to bring almost that 30-second elevator pitch to the call very early, because that's what will get them attention. Because what's our knee-jerk reaction when we get that call from that random person that's tried to call us? It's oh my God, I'm going to hang up on you, get lost, type thing. I think we all know those times where we've got that really good phone call from someone and we go, oh my God, I'm actually going to listen to this person on the other side of the line.

Ralph Fontelar: 11:47

But I think, from a preparation perspective to bring it back to that point, simon it's really about looking into one what that business does, any news, any tidbits, any sort of articles on that business it's really almost stalking them and understanding very clearly what value and what your product or service is going to do for that customer or prospect right. So it's LinkedIn, it's the interwebs, it's speaking to LinkedIn. I think a very underused feature on LinkedIn is looking at mutual connections, speaking to the mutual connection of that prospect and going hey, tell me about this guy, what do you know about them? Or in our space, alliance Technologies hey, you've sold a whole bunch of servers or networking into there. What do you know about them? And then, really, it's really set you up for success with that call Exactly. And they go great, ralph, they're really going to be like great, you actually done your research and I'm more likely to talk to you. And secondly, take that meeting.

Daniel Bartels: 12:44

I think, ralph, one of the things as you were talking through that, that I was thinking back through my prospecting experiences and also some of the feedback that I've had from others. In fact it's funny, I was talking to my dad about this the other day. He's a solicitor, right, so they don't think about prospecting at all. It's a necessary part of the business, right? Often think about prospecting as I'm going to get a list and I'm just going to call from start to finish and I just churn through those and I allocate one hour and then I pull the bandaid off and it's finished. But you made the comment there about you had those calls where all of a sudden this particular unexpected phone call or engagement kind of penetrates your own shield and your reaction as an individual is quite different to the rest of the calls you get. I mean, you all get random calls. I get called from the RSPCA once a week probably. Sometimes they get me good news and sometimes they don't. But it's that call where all of a sudden someone is phoning you. You actually straightaway feel like this person is phoning me with a purpose. I'm not part of a list. It's because, hey, it's a mutual connection, referred us to each other, that they know about my business and they think that they should phone me because this is important and I should understand about it.

Daniel Bartels: 13:55

I had a great one many years ago from a company that Simon and I ended up using, an art and analytics company called HG Insights, and they were using the, so they pull a whole bunch of information about contacts and who works for who, and data around what software products you use, which is really relevant for us, and I would get an email once every other day from a company offering similar services. Yet they use their product and they filtered right through all the noise and came through and said hey, dan, we know this is the business that you're in, we know these are the problems you probably got and this is how we think we can help you. That was in the first 45 seconds and they said look, this is a cold call, but we'd like to have a conversation with you. Can we set up minutes? And I was like actually, yeah, look, they're all the problems that I genuinely have and you know about me and you've given me a little bit of insight in the first 35 seconds and you've been really clear about what your ask was, which is we just want to have a phone call, and if that's not okay, it's not all right, I'm out. Great, move on.

Daniel Bartels: 14:58

But I think that's the piece you mentioned before, which is it's that. How do you penetrate that shield and make it a personal conversation, not just a rope? I'm just going to keep smiling and dialing until someone says oh my God, you found me at the exact right moment when I needed to press purchase on your particular product. Yeah, how do you build and I think for all three of us, how do we build that skill for ourselves, but for our teams?

Ralph Fontelar: 15:26

Simon, maybe you want to go as the manager Funny, Look it you want to go as the manager.

Simon Peterson: 15:29

Funny, look, it's an interesting one. I think you know, first and foremost, you've got to be genuinely curious about who you're calling. If you're just calling and it comes across as talking to you, today is part of my job and I've got to tick a few boxes, it's bleedingly obvious, right? So I think that genuine curiosity and empathy something interesting you said, dan I think persistence is also key. I think you're not necessarily going to have the the cut through, call the film, the first communication. So it's, it's really important. Um, if it's not a good time or you it's just not resonating, don't give up.

Simon Peterson: 16:05

I think if you, if you're genuinely curious about solving a problem for prospects, and you do believe it, I think the second and third communication typically in my experience, people go all right, they're being persistent. It wasn't just the linch ticking a box, maybe they do have something I should probably listen to and I'll give them the time of day. And I guess the other interesting piece and you mentioned it before, dan is the first 30 seconds. It is so important because if we're all busy typically have a spreadsheet open and my email's open call comes in and I've got one eye on the spreadsheet or the email and the other one sort of semi-listening to the call, and if that sort of first 30 seconds actually resonates with me and it's about me or a problem that I probably have, I'm curious and that's what you want to try and elicit. But I know, ralph, what do you think mate?

Ralph Fontelar: 17:00

Yeah, look, I think, yeah, absolutely. I think we've spoken about that opening. But I think another really important thing is you are going to face resistance. I think you've got to expect that punch to land where they say not interested. I did a lot of my prospecting, my best prospecting, during COVID, when people were like I can't meet you, it's COVID, we don't have money, we don't have projects. You have to have that level of resistance.

Ralph Fontelar: 17:25

And I think to add to that and if I give a shout out to my old boss, my former boss, he taught us a lot of principles around from a gentleman named Mike Weinberg and I recommend any upcoming or any existing seller to look up a gentleman called Mike Weinberg and for him he talks about three magical words when you face this resistance during a call and those words are visit, fit and value. And if you can finesse those three words into a call, once you start meeting resistance, it'll turn. It'll hopefully turn around that call and get you that meeting. The word visit we visit our parents, we visit our friends in hospital, we visit our friends on the weekend it's a, it's not a, it's a non-threatening word. But then when you use words like fit and value, it's using it as an example, going hey, mr Cuthbert, I know you're busy, I know it's COVID, if I give 20 or 30 minutes of your time, we can see if we're a fit for each other. And I think that's also really important to say fit for each other, not if we're a fit for you, because that customer may not necessarily be a fit for you as an organization. Right, I think we've had to qualify our customers who aren't right for us or a match for what we do as a business.

Ralph Fontelar: 18:27

So, talking about, hey, I'd love that meeting to see if we're a fit for each other, and then great, look, if it doesn't lead to anything, if there's no next steps, I guarantee you'll get at least some value out of that meeting from the insights we'll talk about and that usually they go. All right, cool, they go. Wow, you've been persistent. I liked your opening. You clearly think I'm important. You've picked up the phone to me and I think if you finesse those three words or something similar to what I think, you'll get the meeting. And if I go back to what I was saying at the start, the purpose of a prospecting call or a cold call is to get the meeting right. It's as simple as that, because you qualify them out If the discovery goes wrong. Great, but at least you've got that meeting and you can stop focusing on them if they're not for you then and there that's a good model.

Daniel Bartels: 19:10

And I think that sort of talks to a lot of the things that I've experienced in my career and I've got some great individual stories of when I excelled in prospecting and others were pretty ordinary. And I think back to a couple of things as well. So there's a great guy called Mark McInnes who's written a book and it's for the Australian market versus the international markets and understanding that it's and you mentioned before, simon, it's not unlikely to be the first engagement you've had with someone or the first time they've seen you where instantaneously, you're a great fit and we're off to the races and it might take stalking them for a bit on LinkedIn. When I say stalking, it's liking their posts, commenting. You might have reached out, tried to connect to them. So now when they get a phone call from you and it may not be in the same week, it may be over a period of time there's now some sort of name recognition. Oh, hold on, I know, ralph, hey, yeah, ralph, what's this about? So that's building up this sort of baseline.

Daniel Bartels: 20:08

But then there is like this clear piece which is I'm making this concept of an unreasonable request, and it's unreasonable because they can't justify the value they get from this investment of time on day one. It's unlikely they're going to get true value back from meeting. You're making the promise of it and there's no way that they can know ahead of time whether or not. So I've got a request. I want a meeting. People tend to actually like to offer to honor requests. People like to grant them. You want Absolutely.

Daniel Bartels: 20:42

But you think someone says can I have some of your time in your team? You want to give, but just be really clear what you're asking for. And your time in your team. You want to give, but just be really clear what you're asking for. And I'll say yes. Well, I say no. They say no, that's okay, no problem, let's move on.

Daniel Bartels: 20:52

And if it's no, let's just double check Is that day? Is this just a bad time for you? Is this quarter? Is there a better way to do it? And then not walk through, hey, are you not the right person to? I think that will be the same case as well. But then also be really clear as to them what they're going to get from that. Hey, look out of our time. I want to make sure that. And you said look, are we a fit? Is there something we should explore here? But I'm clear that at the session you'll walk away with these types of insights about your organization Correct. The other thing that makes it I think people miss as well, is nobody actually wants to know about your product Everybody. Too often salespeople think what a customer is intrigued about is your product and what you're going to sell to them Brainwave. They don't care.

Ralph Fontelar: 21:44

It's not yeah.

Daniel Bartels: 21:45

It is Right. Yeah, they want to know about themselves. So I'll use the example, and I hope you're going to listen to this. I'll use the example of my dad's legal practice. Right, they want to know about. Hey, you're in this particular type of business and these are the type of legal problems or issues that we're seeing that people like you are having. Right, these are some really interesting changes that have happened in the marketplace that might impact you are having run. These are some really interesting changes that have happened in the marketplace that might impact you. Next, and what you're doing is or, if we're talking about security software, if we're talking about FX, it's hey, look, this is what we've seen happen, that this is the evolution of technology. These are what people in your chair are looking at right now. And if they walk away with those things, all of a sudden you're a trusted advisor.

Daniel Bartels: 22:33

All of a sudden you're giving them value and you've got to promise those things before they give you, otherwise, while they're taking the session, I've got stuff to do. But I think a lot of that comes from a lot of that knowledge. I've been selling for what am I now 43. I've been selling since I was 18. What's that? 25 months, right? A lot of that's come from learning this the hard way. How do we teach it to others? How do we teach to the people in our teams or junior salespeople who haven't had 25 years or more experience like how do we break it down for them so they can really start to tackle this problem?

Ralph Fontelar: 23:02

look for me again, just going back to just principles I've learned over my career. It's very simple. You just got to it down. I use these three letters to really help down what our job as a salesperson is right. So the three letters are C, a, c, and those stand for create, which is prospecting. Advance, the deal, which is obviously watering the deal, moving it along, creating deal velocity, as my former manager taught me. And then C is for closing. It's really if you can really master those three things and really your whole week during the nine to five that you just work should revolve around those three things. If you're not doing those three things, you're wasting time. So I think, in terms of going back to your question, dan, about how do we teach juniors, it's about going.

Ralph Fontelar: 23:45

At the end of the day, as a salesperson, we own the tip of the funnel right. It all comes back to us. You can't hide from the fact that our job is to make money right. It's to make revenue and make profit for the respectable businesses that we work for. So prospecting is the own prospecting and creating pipeline. It's the only way we can survive in this job.

Ralph Fontelar: 24:05

So it's really and I would just go to a lot of the juniors and this is by no offense to some of the modern salesperson or the junior salespeople but in a tough time, what are you going to do? Are you going to put more LinkedIn posts up? Are you going to put more tweets out? I'm curious to know what you're going to do If that's your model of selling. Is that what you're going to do if you're struggling, if you've got no pipeline? What you're going to do if you're struggling, if you've got no pipeline? But really encouraging, that looked great, and this is by no means saying that picking up the phone is the only way to be successful. It's using everything at your discretion, right. It's using LinkedIn. It's using email. Hell, use Twitter. I recruited someone off Twitter once. It's. One of my favorite stories is I found someone on Twitter. Thankfully, they were a real person. That worked out. But I think really it's about foundations. I think prospecting is really, and I think Ralph thinking through.

Simon Peterson: 24:56

You also need to know that not every prospecting call is going to be successful, and I've seen a lot of junior salespeople be persistent, which you love be curious, which I love. However, the flip side is they're not willing to let it go half a day or days on end trying to get to a particular company and that company's just not interested and they just don't know when to let it go and move on to the next one. So I think you've also got to be very pragmatic and a little bit brutal sometimes about your time, because not every company you think you've got the best solution for is, a going to be ready for it, b going to listen to you, and you also need to know when to move on, and that's a key part of it as well.

Ralph Fontelar: 25:44

But the point of using your time effectively. That's really what it's all about. I see a lot of newer sellers. They spend hours and hours doing what we spoke about before, guys, was preparation. They spend so much time researching a prospect and obsessing over them and then keep pushing the call out, and why it burns so much time preparing for the prospect, and I think part of what I would teach upcoming salespeople is value your time.

Ralph Fontelar: 26:09

I used to always call it the platinum hours, like that nine to five. When you're at work, those are the platinum hours. That's when you should be doing the key sales activities that I was speaking about before. All that preparation we were just talking about. That should be done in your own time if you can, because when you're in those golden hours, or platinum hours, that's when you should be doing the prospecting activities and the advancing and closing of deals. Great point, simon. There's so many distracting things in this job and often we will opt to do the easier thing. We'll go check that email. We'll go put that fire out. We'll go do that quote. It's often easier to do the easy thing in this job. So I think you've really got to make that time, whether it's blocking an hour out or blocking time out every day in your calendar to do it, and you just got to commit to it. It's an appointment for yourself, like any appointment you would have with a customer or the prospect you've got to honor that meeting.

Simon Peterson: 26:57

Absolutely. And I think hey, I'm curious, dan, as well. You just mentioned time, ralph, and the platinum hours. When is a terrible time to prospect? When should you be?

Ralph Fontelar: 27:08

prioritizing other things. Definitely, friday afternoon is not a good time to prospect.

Daniel Bartels: 27:13

I think that's a thing we can all agree on Well that's a thing we can all agree on. Well, that's a mistake. I think there's a people try and find, like the optimum time, and there isn't one.

Daniel Bartels: 27:24

That's true and the point of me saying there isn't one is, if my week, if my Friday's chock-a-block, I don't know, maybe I've got an all-day session with a client, it's the wrong day, but maybe that's on Monday, maybe it's on Tuesday, maybe my schedule is I'm in the car between eight and ten, but that's mine. Hey, simon, you ride a motorbike, so don't exactly. Yep, so I I don't think there's a right or a wrong time. Can you work out for your particular market? Do people behave in a certain way? Yeah, yeah, possibly. Again, if you're selling to a legal fraternity and you're selling to barristers, well, court starts at 10 and goes to three, so don't try between 10 and three. They're probably in court, right? If you're in the selling to doctors, normally a doctor's surgery will have dedicated. Look, these are the hours that the doctor doesn't take patients and they'll take calls then. So you have to. Every practice is different. So I think there's a piece that I understand it. But I also think and you mentioned earlier looking at the distant side of when we're selling to a prospective client or we have to get into a door.

Daniel Bartels: 28:35

I think one of the pieces that we see so often in not just junior salespeople in general, is when they've fallen back on. I'm now trying to sell you my product and the customer says I'm not interested in your product because I know about it. Care about it. It's not a problem right now. I've never had a customer or a prospect that doesn't want to talk about themselves. It just never happened. It might be the person you're trying to get a hold of right now is I've got a billion things on, but this is I don't have time, sorry. It doesn't mean that there isn't someone that works for them. Someone works alongside them, isn't the right contact for you to have a conversation? So I just want to understand about your business. Can I come and buy your coffee? Part of my job is to sell to you. You're in my target list.

Daniel Bartels: 29:20

Okay, cool, I want to just learn more about your company. You might not fit. There is somebody in that I don't care if it's a receptionist, who will take the call or will take the meeting and will give you 20 minutes to tell you all because they're excited that someone wanted to talk to me about this business that I spent all my time and my effort in. Of course I want to tell you about our business. I love our company. I go to parties with these people. People will talk about their business all the time.

Simon Peterson: 29:47

Yep 100%.

Daniel Bartels: 29:48

If you try to fix your product, I don't care, I'm not interested.

Simon Peterson: 29:50

Interesting one, Dan. I think Ralph and I were in a prospecting meeting a few months ago and it was with the CIO of a government agency. And we sat down and he knew why we were there. He'd taken the call and Ralph had obviously done a great job of getting the guy interested enough to sit down and have a coffee with us. And it wasn't a phone call, it was a face-to-face. But he sat down and said so guys, really happy to meet with you, I just got no budget for what you're selling. So he referenced our product and said I have no budget to buy what you're selling.

Simon Peterson: 30:26

Within the first two and a half seconds, literally as we sat down, we then interestingly to your point, Dan didn't talk about us. We didn't go oh, but you don't really understand. My widget is, it's got gold-plated XYZs on it and it's going to solve every problem you've ever had. We actually turned the conversation around and said so tell me about what's going on with you, when are you spending your time? And this person was the CIO what's going on in the IT world for you? And very quickly, there are three or four key pain points that he'd never associated with what we wanted to talk about, but we probably spent 45 minutes talking to him and about 10 seconds talking about our product.

Simon Peterson: 31:10

Our goal out of that was to empathize with his problem, understand the scale of the problem and what it would mean to him to solve that problem, both in monetary terms, reputational terms within his organization. And what we were able to do after that is set up a follow-up meeting to explain how we might be able to solve a particular major, embarrassing issue that organization was suffering, major embarrassing issue. That organization was suffering and what became abundantly clear was don't talk about your product, Talk about the problem you're going to solve. Talk about something that matters to your audience. And it doesn't matter how many times in your career that happens to you, but when it is that obvious and it hits you in the face, you just keep getting reminded don't talk about your product, Talk about the problem you're going to solve.

Daniel Bartels: 31:59

Always.

Simon Peterson: 32:00

Yeah, I'm just consistently reminded.

Daniel Bartels: 32:03

Customers don't buy your product. They buy a solution to their problem, and if you haven't been able to work out what their problem is, that's why they haven't bought your product yet or your service. It's amazing the number of people who will come back to me after years and say you're in this space right now. Their experience of business that we've done in the past is they brought a problem to me and we solved the problem. Hey look, I think you might be in this area with the job you're doing right now. This is the problem that I've got. Do you guys fix that issue? Yeah, we don't Talk to these guys.

Ralph Fontelar: 32:42

Great, not a problem.

Daniel Bartels: 32:44

Have us do some business or we don't, or they get referred to somebody else. But key piece is they'll come back, not because they like the color of widget that I'm selling or the people that I've got in the team that do the service. It's hey, listen, I've got this problem. How do I solve this problem? 100%.

Simon Peterson: 33:03

And pricing right.

Simon Peterson: 33:04

The bane of every salesperson's existence. If you go and sell a widget, they're going to ask you how much the widget is, and too early in a sales cycle you talk about the price of the widget. You're basically well behind in terms of where you need to be and I think I love your quote, dan, that I've heard many times. My product's going to cost $100 million. That sounds really expensive, but if I've got a $150, $200 million problem and I'm focused on a $200 million problem, price of my product is irrelevant. So it's irrelevant, yeah.

Daniel Bartels: 33:36

Yeah, yeah, I'll think of of this way if I'm gonna make you a million dollars.

Simon Peterson: 33:42

Do you care if you pay me a million? No, no, I couldn't care less.

Daniel Bartels: 33:44

Exactly if I'm gonna make you five dollars and it costs a million, not gonna buy. No, unless there's a critical problem, you have to fix this. The roof's gonna fall on my head and I have to pay the million bucks. But even then, the million dollar problem is I'm gonna die if this roof falls on my head. So what's the problem behind?

Daniel Bartels: 34:00

This Price is never the reason someone doesn't do it. It's always and this goes back to prospecting as well the reason someone doesn't take the meeting with you. It's a sale, but what they're spending is their time. For the next thing. They're not spending cash yet. So they're going to spend time, effort or money with you and it could be money, it might be, if their time's billable.

Daniel Bartels: 34:25

I've got to equate the fact that if I spend time with you, I'm not earning money over here. Okay, maybe it could just be the fact that I've got to travel to you. It could be the fact that I've got to mentally eject myself from whatever I'm doing next to spend time with you. It could be the effort of actually bringing people into my office. I'm on the 17th floor and I've got to walk downstairs. I've got book time. If all that's too difficult. We'll just do a video call. Great, no problems. Can I talk to your PA? Can I talk to the reception girl and remove all that risk from you? So this is really simple and easy. But they're going to make a purchase to spend that time with. It's a small investment, but just understand that. And what's the hurdle? They're going to have to jump to spend time and effort with you. So that's my opinion. Anyway, ralph, you're the expert mate. You approach the evolution from recruitment into selling tech and selling security stuff. How have you evolved your prospecting approach?

Ralph Fontelar: 35:28

Yeah, look, I think going all the way, like you said, to name, to counter or focus, and having that foundation of dialing through the phone book or just calling randoms, going from that to a highly focused approach, really naturally helped me sharpen that sword as well. But to your guy's point before, obviously the prospecting piece, but then the meeting piece. I remember when I was a young'un or a rookie spending that meeting and you spoke 90% of the time and the customer spoke 5% to 10% of the time and those never ended up in them transacting with me. It always ended up in a great thanks for your time, probably never speak to you again type thing. But when you actually sit back and listen, one you will learn something about the customer and the person that you're meeting with.

Ralph Fontelar: 36:12

But if you don't listen, you run the risk of missing out on a particular problem that you might be able to solve or an issue that they're having that you can fix. Or even at least, if your product or service can't fix it, you can at least refer them to something that can. And I think as salespeople, best sellers are also the advisors, because you can if you like. You said, simon, if you're leading with cost or price, that seller gets commoditized very easily, right, because that prospect would just go to the next cheapest product or service that someone else is offering. But if you're an advisor, if you're adding value, if you're adding insights and genuinely caring and helping that business, that's much harder to replace than someone that's led with a price-driven strategy. Absolutely, yeah, for sure.

Simon Peterson: 36:58

Yeah, for sure yeah for sure.

Daniel Bartels: 37:00

So we're getting to the top of the hour. I know, simon, you've got a hard stop in a few minutes. If we think about the top recommendations for either hardened salespeople trying their prospecting or someone stepping into prospecting for the first time, what are the two or three things that we all recommend that they focus on? So I'm going to finish up with Ralph. What are the two or three things that we all recommend that they focus on? So I'm gonna? I'll finish up with ralph, mate. What are the two or three things that you focus on for a new starter?

Simon Peterson: 37:23

uh, look, I think, start with preparation. Know a little bit about the person you're calling into and be genuinely curious to listen and hear what ralph was saying before. Don't do all the speaking, do a little listening. The other interesting trick I've learned over the years is make a mistake, be vulnerable. And it sounds interesting. Why would I do that?

Simon Peterson: 37:44

I'm a seller. I want to prove that I know everything. I'll never forget a deal I did when I was back at SAP. I presented a solution to a client and they said this is the value chain of what I'm going to do for you. Here are the problems I'm solving. Here's my understanding of your business, end to end.

Simon Peterson: 38:03

And the CIO leaned in and said look, you've got a good handle on it. You've missed an entire chunk of my business. Now I knew it wasn't there and in hindsight I'll pretend I knew that I'd made a mistake on purpose. But what was interesting is I left something out that was clearly really important, but I didn't talk over the top, I didn't push my agenda. Basically, I shut up and listen and the nuggets that prospect was giving me about what I didn't understand about their business turned to be the actual kernel of the deal I ended up selling. So don't be afraid to make mistakes is probably the other piece. And be humble and admit to them. And look, you're never going to know your prospect's business as well as they do. And, as you said, dan, most people love talking about their job, their life and their business and if you shut up and listen, you're going to learn an enormous amount in terms of how you run your sales cycle.

Daniel Bartels: 38:57

Yeah, Before I ask you, Ralph, my two point. I think that point, Simon. When you prospect, don't be afraid of it. If you are in business, you are always prospecting because it's about people we meet, the connections we make dealt with them before or it's a connection of. We are never that far removed from somebody. So that's the first piece, but the second piece is talk to people. Just be really conscious that you are not one business selling to another business. You are always one person selling to another person. It doesn't matter what role or title they've got. It doesn't matter whether it's your first day on the job. They're the CEO of Qantas. They're just a person. They're not better, they're not worse than you.

Ralph Fontelar: 39:42

It's just a person you were talking to on the other end, and the more you make those connections, the better your results will be. So, Ralph, what are your two recommendations? Oh God, I'm going to struggle to narrow it down to two, but I'll start with. What I spoke about at the start of this at the potty was mindset. It really is about mindset. It's about understanding that your product or service is going and telling yourself and convincing yourself that your product or service is going to help the prospects that you're trying to get in front of. It's not, oh, I'm going to bother them, or I don't want to bother them. It's no, you're helping them win and succeed. I love looking at the businesses that I've done business with per se and seeing that I've had a genuine effect on their operation, whether building efficiencies or reducing their risk or just making them run a lot better as a business. It's really telling yourself that I have the means to help you as a business. So that's what I start off with is mindset. I think that's really important, because if you just think about, oh, it's all about the money and I'm here to make money, and you're going to buy off me and I'm going to make money Again, like I said before, you can really sniff those sales people from a mile away. So it really is about being genuine and having the right mindset going into that call, because that will come across in in everything you do, whether it's the meetings, the phone calls, the emails as well.

Ralph Fontelar: 40:47

The second piece is the resistance piece. It's don't just give up the minute the prospect says no, I'm not interested. Your mindset should be like almost like a child when a child hears no, they go cool, I'm gonna do it anyway, type. So I think really just having that hardened resistance to you of going cool, it doesn't mean no now or it doesn't mean no forever, it just means no for now. So really just have that dog with a bone mentality when you're either in that prospecting call or meeting or when you're trying to get in front of that prospect. And then again the purpose is getting the meeting. It's not to qualify or get the opportunity to get the deal, it's get the meeting and then focus on that other stuff later and then you can either drop that prospect or focus another time and then finally it's pick up the phone.

Ralph Fontelar: 41:28

That's really what I want to hone in on is yes, we call it the omnichannel. Right Again, there's LinkedIn sending a carrier pigeon. Obviously say that facetiously. But email, Twitter, but picking up the phone, is still the fastest method to get the attention and the meeting with a prospect. It's still the most effective and fastest way. Right and to your point I think it was Dan or Simon or both. It puts a human behind the sales effort, right.

Ralph Fontelar: 41:55

I think it's very hard to come across as a genuine, normal human being over email or over a LinkedIn message, but when you talk to someone on the phone it comes across very clearly. So I think for me, phone is people say it's old school or whatever and it's people. The phone is dead, but it's really not. And I think a lot of sadly, I see a lot of up and coming sellers still think that the foreign is dead and that LinkedIn is the best. But if I go back to my point before, what are you going to do when times are tough? Are you just going to do a hundred LinkedIn posts a day? Probably not. But what I can tell you is going to be effective is picking up the foreign and getting in front of those customers that way. So I could go on for days, but those would be, my key for you.

Ralph Fontelar: 42:33

Yeah, my key for you, yeah for sure, ralph.

Daniel Bartels: 42:35

Mate. That's been amazing. I think it's been a good wrap-up of prospecting and I hope everyone gets some value from it. So for everyone who's listening to the podcast, thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Great Calls to B2B Sales Podcast. We've got some amazing guests coming over the next couple of weeks. So please subscribed. You've followed us. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple, click the plus sign. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure you subscribe and like button down below. Thanks for an awesome podcast. Thanks, guys. I really enjoyed that.

Simon Peterson: 43:06

Thanks, ralf, have a great one.

Ralph Fontelar: 43:08

Awesome. See you guys, thank you.