How to Succeed When All Sellers Sound the Same

Hello. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Thank you all for joining us. We're going to give folks a few more minutes to join. Not a lot, but another minute or two. I see we still have lots of people coming into the waiting room, so we'll get started in just a minute. Frank Puck, there's a name I haven't seen in a long time. Welcome. Jeff, it's good to have you here.

Hey, Frank. Isn't it great to see so many old friends and colleagues showing up?

I know. Absolutely. Natalie, it's nice to see you.

Mm-hmm.

Rod's here. Oh, my gosh, this is great. This is like old home week. We'll go ahead and get started, and I know people will be joining us as we go. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Noelle Mykolenko. I'm CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates. I'm so pleased to see all of you and be able to share with you about this concept of differentiation in a world where everybody is starting to sound and look alike. Right? And that's really why we're all here today, because with the advent of AI, the prevalence, everybody is starting to sound exactly the same. So how do we, as sellers, stand out? A little bit about the session today. We will keep to 45 minutes. We'll have questions at the end, so feel free as we go along to enter your questions into the chat. We will get to as many of those as we can, and I know a few of us have some time after the webinar ends, so if we're in the middle of a good conversation, I promise you that we will stick around at least for a little bit if this goes long. Everybody who's here will get a copy of the recording as well. So, a little bit about myself. I'm fortunate to be in the position I am. I actually started with Trusted Advisor Associates a very long time ago. We're coming up on 20 years, if you can believe that, Charlie Green. I started as a client, and I was a partner in a consultancy, attended a two-day workshop with Trusted Advisor Associates, along with a few colleagues, and realised through that experience that trust was really what we were missing. And I feel that at the time we were incredibly good at what we did. It was an IT consultancy, and we produced good products, we delivered on our promises, and at the end of the day, our clients didn't particularly enjoy working with us, and that created so much friction. It was a slog to get through contract renewals. It was an uphill battle every time we saw something that they could benefit from to convince them that this was something they actually needed to do. And that friction was getting in the way of our being able to help our clients. So we brought in Trusted Advisor Associates, worked with them to create an internal programme. I spearheaded that programme for three years in the company where I was, and the first phone call I made when I left corporate America was to Trusted Advisor Associates. I said, 'This is what I want to do.' So fast-forward 10 years, here I am sitting at the helm. Charlie Green was kind enough to hand over the reins when he retired during the pandemic, and I'm just really excited to be here with the Sales Coach Network to talk about this really important topic. Les, with that, I'm going to hand it over to you to introduce yourself, and then Charlie Green, and then we'll get into the meat of it.

Fantastic. Thanks, Noelle. And I'll keep this really, really short. So firstly, for those that know me, past clients, past colleagues, really, really great to see you. Super that you're here today. For those that don't know me, I lead the Sales Coach Network. And we focus on helping organisations with the human elements of value-based consultative selling. And what we're seeing more and more, we'll touch on it today, is those human elements, what happens when one seller turns up with a buyer or a prospect, how that engagement makes the difference. I've been in B2B sales for over 35 years, many of those with Accenture, before I moved to working with clients, a whole range of clients, that need to differentiate in today's market. So that's me. I'll be sharing a few things as we go along. Passing the baton, Charles Green, to you.

Okay, very well. I'll try to be short, too. I'm Charlie Green. Hello, everybody. By the way, love to see more of you come on camera. It is very helpful, speaking about personal connections, to be able to actually see your faces. And we don't care if you're in pyjamas drinking coffee. I'm here today. I spent 20 years in management consulting, after which I co-wrote a book called The Trusted Advisor, and that set my second career in place. I founded this company called Trusted Advisor Associates, and a couple other books on the path, and here we are today. I'm delighted that we're talking about the subject of differentiation and how the human capabilities play so much into that. So let me leave it at that and toss it back to you, Les, I think, or Noelle.

Yeah, Noelle, actually. Yeah.

Yeah. That's great. So thank you very much, Charlie and Les. So as you can see, as was just demonstrated, this is not a heavily orchestrated webinar. The intent of this is for us to talk with you about what we're seeing in the environment and understand what you're seeing, and we have some insights that we want to share. So this will be interactive. And with that, I want to start off by getting your perspective on something. So think about this question for, just give yourself five seconds. In the context of selling, what does differentiation mean to you? All right. Now that you have that in your head, pull up the chat, and just in a few words or a phrase, let us know what differentiation means to you. There we go. Some answers coming up. Yeah. So I see a lot of great stuff. It's interesting because we all take the question a little bit differently. Some of you interpret it as how do I differentiate myself? Listening and understanding what the client wants and feels. How to uniquely resolve our clients' needs. Others look at differentiation as a state of being. Right? Noticeable. A way to stand out. A strategic partner. What I am seeing through this... Yeah, Frank, thank you. There are too many possible answers to this, right? What I'm seeing are two real themes here. One is a sense of uniqueness, that I have something that nobody else does, and the other is a sense of partnership, right? Connection with our customers. And so when we think about that, that I need some way to demonstrate that I am different, and yet everybody in here out of the, I've lost track of our numbers now, but out of the roughly 60 or 70 people in here, every single one of us wants to be unique. And so the fact that we recognise we need to be unique is itself very common, and I think that that really sets up the core challenge that we have today. So Les, you and I have talked a lot about this, and you've had some really interesting experiences with clients in these conversations that you've had about differentiation. Why don't you walk us through some of that?

Thanks, Noelle. I think one in particular. I'm using this slide to kind of remind myself and think about the event. I was invited a few years ago now to do a keynote in Singapore for a global IT organisation. They are one of the world's biggest known, or certainly were, for all sorts of things IT, as well as consulting. And in this particular region in Singapore, for a part of their business, win rates were declining. Loss reviews and conversations told us that the teams weren't actually memorable, and I actually participated in some of those. And what was remarkable was just people couldn't distinguish one team from another. They looked the same, they sound the same, they said the same things. So I was invited to conduct this keynote speech at their conference. And I walked into the room with four red apples, because what clients are hoping for is something really, really different and obvious.

Yeah.

I actually walked in with four red apples in one hand, and I got some weird looks as I came on stage. What's this guy doing? What's this all about? And I talked about to the group how hard selling had become. I talked about the challenges I'd heard that they were facing at their conference. And I asked the question, 'Hey, who thinks it might be easier to be a buyer than a seller?' And a few hands went up. Based on those show of hands, I invited four people up to the stage, and I gave them each a red apple and explained that they're all part of a buying committee, and the apple was represented, they were a proxy for the company that they'd met. Their four suppliers. And I left them to it. I just said, 'Right, talk among yourselves. Based on what you've seen, who are you going to invite back?' You can guess what happened. There was a moment of silence, and they all looked at each other, and they said, 'Hey, look, it's all the same.' They all look the same. And of course, we got to that moment. The crowd, there were like 150 or so people, were kind of tracking with this. And I walked behind a lectern, and I pulled out the green apple, and I exchanged it. And I said to one of them, 'Hey, look, what if this were you? Would that make a difference?' And they all said, 'Yes.' And the audience said, 'Yeah.' And then I kind of said, 'I don't think so. What you're looking at here is very superficial.' And my point here was differences only make a difference if they matter to the client. And often, and we'll talk about this in a moment, we try to impose our view of what makes us different onto the client, and that is where it can go wrong. And I think, Noelle, and it's interesting to look at some of the research on this. The challenge has been exacerbated by the growth of AI. And we've seen some data that calls that out.

Yeah, absolutely, Les. And I'll tell you just what I've seen in the last 12 to 18 months. People are starting to recognise that there's something important to this human aspect. That as AI gets more prevalent, the standout has to be the human side of it. They're recognising the importance of relationships, and I don't mean the old school buddy-buddy version of golf and going out to fancy dinners, but really meaningful working relationships. So then we started to look at the research, as you pointed out, and the research says the same thing. The first one from Gartner, buyers need confidence. They want to check AI-generated insights with a human seller. So AI is often right, but as we'll talk about, being right isn't necessarily enough. Secondly, relationships are clearly gaining ground. McKinsey pointed out that relationship-oriented buyers rose from 44% to 53% in just two years. If that's almost a, somebody who's better at math out loud than I am, I think that's almost a 25% increase in just two years in the importance of relationships. And then finally, we see that AI can create capacity, but it's the humans that turn that into advantage. And what Bain came up with is that the top quartile AI-enabled sales teams see twice the revenue growth and productivity gains. So it is that combination. It is not AI on its own. It's the ability to scale and to use that force multiplier aligned with the human connections. When we put all this stuff together, we get one key takeaway, and that is for buyers to choose what you sell, they have to first trust you. And if you call back to what you said in the chat just a few minutes ago about differentiation, a lot of that was around us compared to our competitors. We need to be unique. We need to stand out. We have to have something different. And in that side of the responses, you'll notice that the buyer isn't actually there. It's something that generates from us. The point is that if everybody thinks about differentiation the same way, as standing out from each other, nobody becomes differentiated. So differentiation actually comes from that other side, the other thing that started to show up. It comes from the interaction between the buyer and the seller.

And Noelle, just reflecting on that. Charlie, we talked about this last week. I'm just going to invite you for a moment to share your perspective on this research, because I think this took you by surprise. You're on mute.

Sorry about that. Yeah, it did. This is an optimistic message. I believe this message, but I was a little surprised that it's showing up so overtly in real data, in the real market by respected researchers. This is a positive thing.

Super. And what it's telling us is this, right, Noelle?

Yeah, absolutely. It's your people that are your biggest differentiator. And the best sellers don't communicate differentiation. They create differentiation by helping buyers make better decisions. So there are three... Sorry, I'm getting lost in the construct of the slide here. Here's how you do that. Here's how you differentiate. It's all about the human side of the equation. First is earning trust. Building and restoring trust. And we do that through a number of skills. Active listening, responding to the conversation that you hear, not the one you prepared. Being present and handling difficult situations in a way that builds trust. Understanding the client. And by this, I don't mean just doing a whole bunch of research, but when you're engaging with them, it's not about knowing everything about the client. It's about recognising as you're interacting with them, what it is that is important to them. And we do that through things like curiosity. Through getting to know them and what their work is like, and understanding what they're dealing with within that organisation. Third is helping them decide, right? And here's where most of the recent writing about AI and what it means for professional services has really homed in on this part of it. Judgement, constructive challenge, storytelling, qualification. How do we use our problem-solving skills to make the AI more productive and more helpful, right? But that's really only one piece of this equation. And then finally, this idea that we need to keep improving, especially with the rate of change increasing as we go along. We have to maintain self-awareness. We need to be present in every situation, and we need to understand how to use the tools that AI provides us in the most effective way. Right? So the key thing about this, every single thing on this slide, what 20 or 30 years ago, we might have looked at and said, 'That's a really talented consultant, salesperson, advisor.' And it seemed like it was just something they did naturally. Every single thing on this slide can be learnt. And Charlie, I'm going to hand this off to you now because you're the one who has spent decades on how trust actually works.

Well, before...

Why don't you walk us through some of that?

Before we move off this slide, let me just note, Noelle and Les have listed 10 factors here. We could probably expand it to 15. The first one is build and restore trust, and I would argue that trust actually infects at least half of the things on here. So let me use a couple of slides to talk about how that works and how trust permeates all these things. That's a picture of a piece of sandpaper, if you can't tell, and it's there because I'm remembering my first sales call ever. I was in a management consulting firm, and after a couple of years, I was entrusted with a sales call. Although my boss insisted on coming along with me, to my annoyance, to observe or backstop or whatever. What are you going to do? So here we go. Well, the client was an abrasives company, which means grinding wheels and sandpaper, and the meeting was with the VP of marketing for sandpaper. And we get there, and as usual, pour a cup of coffee, exchange the business cards, and then the guy leans into me on the table, and he says, 'Tell me, Mr Green, what experience do you guys have doing marketing studies for industrial consumables?' And he threw me for a second with that industrial consumables crap, and then I thought, 'Okay, sandpaper. I get it,' right? And I know that we hadn't done any sandpaper marketing studies. That's fine, but the question is how do you spin it and demonstrate all our capabilities across other kinds of marketing, other industries, et cetera. And I'm sort of contemplating, I don't know why I hadn't thought of this before. I guess they let anybody into consulting back in the day. But before I could say anything, my boss leaned in to answer that question and cut me off. And remember, the question was, 'What experience do you have doing marketing studies for industrial consumables?' And he said, 'None that I can think of. What else might be useful to talk about?' Well, I thought, 'That's ridic... You just ruined my first sales call. That's not what you say, for God's sakes. Thank you very much.' But of course, I was wrong because the client leaned back in his chair, threw his arms up, and he said, 'Shoot, hardly anybody's done sandpaper marketing studies. What else have you got that we might talk about?' And then everything went smoothly. We had a good conversation, and we did end up getting the job, and I got a little bit of sales credit. And the point of that little story, it demonstrates a number of things about trust and about differentiation. I'll just focus on one of them. My boss told the truth. The truth is we had not done any sandpaper marketing studies. That was a direct answer to a direct question, and it changed the dialogue from challenge and pushback to a, 'You got a question, I got an answer. We don't have any.' Is that a deal killer or not? And it wasn't. It often isn't. It's just a challenge. So the reason that we don't respond in sales situations, why I didn't in that case, was mainly fear. We were afraid of admitting the truth because it might make us look unprofessional, ignorant, incapable, incompetent, you name it. And therefore, what do we do? Nothing. We try and talk around it, and the person who stands out is the one who says, 'Tell us the truth.' It turns out, paradoxically, one of the most trust-creating things you can say is, 'I don't know.' Who's going to doubt you when you say that? And when everybody else is saying all what they do know, the one who stands out and says, 'I don't know,' really stands out. They differentiate. So let me go 30,000-foot level and talk on this next slide about how trust kind of works. The resulting trust, the word noun at the bottom of that little three lines there, is a result of an interaction between two parties. One does the trusting, and one is or is not trustworthy. In fact, we can label them in the second column coming up here. There's a trustor and a trustee, and the role of the trustor is to do the trusting, and the role of the trustee is to be trustworthy or not. And when you have a trustor who is sufficiently willing to take on a certain kind of risk, has an appetite for risk, and a trustee who is sufficiently trustworthy, then you get trust. If either one of those two is missing, if you have a trustor who's insufficiently willing to take a risk, and/or you have a trustee who is insufficiently trustworthy, then it doesn't work. And we're going to talk mostly in this last slide coming up, don't do it yet, about trustworthiness, but I want to make a big point about the first line in this chart. There are two big things that we notice over time in B2B sales, professional service sales, whatever. Two big errors. The first error is made by the role of trustor. When we're in that role, we get afraid of taking risks, and therefore we shut down, and we do nothing. Well, the risk of doing nothing perpetually over and over is you end up doing nothing, and you get nothing. And that's one of the two biggest errors I find in B2B selling. And I won't say any more about that because we're going to go to the trustworthiness, and that's the second big error. Here it is. This is called the Trust Equation. Really, I suppose it should be called the trustworthiness equation, and this is the second biggest error. First of all, let me explain quickly. We've arrayed the notion of trustworthiness in the form of an arithmetic equation, very familiar to all of us. Three factors in the numerator, one in the denominator, which means the positive attributes are on top, and the negative one is in the bottom. Credibility, we all understand. It's probably the first thing we think of. Credentials, capability, expertise, smarts, et cetera. Great résumé, that kind of thing. Reliability is probably second place in our consciousness. Dependable, reliable, does what they said they would do, got a track record, et cetera. Those we're pretty familiar with, and those first come to mind for most of us in the Western world of business of sales. The third factor in the numerator is very different. It's intimacy, which is an unusual word in the business context. Get your minds out of the gutter, people. Come on. What we mean by this is really kind of emotional safety. If I talk to this person, are they going to laugh at me? Are they going to make fun of me? Are they going to belittle me? Are they going to pass what I said along to others without my permission? Or do I feel safe having a conversation with this person? So those three positive attributes in the numerator. The denominator goes the other way. Self-orientation. This comes in two flavours. Selfishness, we all recognise. If somebody's selfish, it bleeds through pretty quickly. The more common sin that we all commit is not selfishness, it's self-obsession. Worrying all the time, how am I doing? How am I doing on time? Do they like me? Do they not like me? How do I look? How's it going? Everything's about us. It's the human condition. In a way, we all suffer from that. But the more you know when you have a conversation with somebody and they're not paying attention, they're running through a list of prepared questions, checking the boxes, they're not paying attention to you. And we don't articulate that consciously, but it's no less real. We know in our bones they're not paying attention to us. They're dissing us, and it's a turn-off. It really is. So we turned this equation, we didn't literally mean it as a quantitative thing, although it turns out we created a self-assessment tool called the TQ, like Trust Quotient, like IQ or EQ. And over the years, we've had, what, 300,000 or 400,000, Noelle? When we hit 70,000, we did some analysis on the data. So I actually have a little bit of data to share with you. The biggest single finding, and this is the second biggest problem in trust conversations, is that we all think that the C and the R are the most important variables, and they're not. If you turn each of these variables to give them equal weights and you run a regression analysis on it, it turns out that the single biggest factor is intimacy, and the second biggest factor is self-orientation. And then far behind come credibility and reliability. So I'm making a gross generalisation here. Most salespeople think the critical stuff is all that rational stuff that we can collect data around and manage and do statistics, and it's not. It's what we unfortunately tend to call the soft skills. They're not soft at all. They're hard. They're the things that make it happen. And that's the second biggest error that we find in salespeople. They underestimate the role of the I and the S. If we go back to those human capabilities that Noelle and Les were talking about, everybody on this call is infinitely differentiated already on a thousand different dimensions. Each of us is terminally unique in our ability to let that bleed through and be genuinely, authentically who we are. That's what we mean when we say differentiation is through the human interactions. If we can be authentically ourselves, including things like acknowledging we don't know what we don't know, paying attention to people when we talk to them, as opposed to executing a checklist. Those are the kinds of things that we're talking about when we talk about human capabilities as being the ultimate differentiator. Let me stop there and toss it back to you guys.

Yeah. Thank you. Charles, that's really good. The one thing just occurs to me as I think about self-orientation, selfishness, and obsession with ourselves, I see it also show up in sellers with, I call it having a we we. Pardon my language, right? We do this, we do that. We have this many clients. We have this many sellers. We, we, we, we, we.

Right.

And then...

And none of it you, you, you.

Yeah. Absolutely. I got to move on because this is so important to me because as I mentioned, most of the work we do is helping organisations improve consultative value-based conversations. And I remember having a conversation with the sales enablement leader, one of the Big Four in London. And I just said, 'How do your people talk about value?' And the answer was, 'Yeah, we do it all the time.' No. The question was, 'How do your people talk about value?' And it was the first time I'd heard him speechless. And what I'd like to do is spend the next 10 minutes or so making a connection between value, which is the only thing that drives and compels people to do anything, and how do we uncover that value. So I think there's a couple of key areas here, and I'd just love, again, just to demonstrate and understand the way you see things. What is client value? Perhaps just put your thoughts into chat, and then we'll just have a look at what does the group think. So when we talk about value, what is client value? What does that mean? Feel free to hit send. Let's share your thinking. I'd love to, and I'm sure Noelle would love to hear what's on your mind. Yeah. Noelle, that's something that's important and they'll pay for. Anything that's important. Sam Richardson, fabulous, right? Only the client knows that, certainly to start with. I know that you've been on a programme, Sam. And yeah, look, this is fabulous. The client decides what the value is, not us. And this is so, so important. So what I'm going to do, I want to share a couple of frameworks. I want to start with this idea that if you ask five clients, and we ask many clients, to define what they mean by value, you're going to get multiple different answers. Now, why is this important? Well, firstly, as I mentioned, you've got to uncover it. As a few people mentioned in the chat, we've got to surface what they need and what they value. However, our experience is BD professionals, sellers, call them what you like, men, women, old, young, doesn't really matter, they talk too much. It's a common theme. Sellers talk too much. They focus on that self-orientation, their company, their solution, their product themselves, and they often miss the opportunity to really go deep and wide on what that prospect or client wants. They try to impose their view rather than build a compelling reason to act with the client. And so what we're going to share for everyone that's registered is a simple workbook with a few models and some exercises you can apply to a real opportunity. And so the first is this idea of a Client Value Framework, and we're going to explore with you the four pillars, or four lenses, through which we encourage people to discuss value. The first one's fairly straightforward, and people are good at this. It's well-versed. It's the value that you bring, excuse me, as a provider. And if you can really do well in identifying what they value when they have a choice, you can start to validate more about the value they're seeking, and you can start to think about how you might differentiate. The second pillar is this idea of solution value. So these are the elements of what you're selling. And I think people do a pretty good job of identifying what's important in a solution. All that does, though, is shows that you're a capable supplier. What we'd like to do is share with you an extension of the thinking focused on the four pillars that don't get as much attention. One, back to intimacy, Charlie, is that individual value. Factors that the people you're engaging with might value from a personal point of view. And if we pay attention enough here, we create champions, we create supporters and advocates. The thing here is also if we can explore business value, that's a business outcome. We can start to understand at a higher level, probably a greater level of value. And what that does is helps us to create either a return on investment or the cost of inaction. And all I want to leave you with is if you can focus on these top two and think about the outcome, that's the area where you build trust. We'll share a few more graphics here, but Noelle, you wanted to jump in there.

Yeah, I was just going to say, Les, what you should be seeing in this, and what strikes me every time I look at this framework, is that the individual value and the business value are virtually closed off to us until we have that relationship. Because we cannot articulate, as all of you said, value to the client is what's important to them. We can say what's important to a whole bunch of people who look like this client, but until we've earned the right for them to share with us what they care about and what their priorities are, we can't possibly know what the value is to them.

Well done. And thank you. And well said. And where that leads me is if you need to really go deeper, broader than your competitors, understand the needs and true wants and what they value as a group of buyers, because it's very often multiple stakeholders in a complex environment. You won't get the free flow of information that allows you to know what you need to know until you build that trust. So your last point is really, really well made. And again, we'll be sharing a bit more on this. We call it the BD Trust Quadrant, and it monitors the relationship between our ability to build trust and our ability to unlock client value. And so obviously, in the top right-hand corner, we'd love to have this idea where we've built a lot of trust, we're getting a free flow of information, we can identify the client value, and that's the highest probability of us doing business. On the other hand, if trust is high but there's little value, we're still going to struggle to make a business case. The real danger of the area that we need to look at, and we explain this more in the workbook, is what happens when trust is low. If you have no trust, you're not even going to get the information you need. You're not going to get that uninhibited level of dialogue with the buyers. And if there's no trust, one, you might not uncover it, and two, game over. Right. We just need to be thoughtful about this. I don't want to be too prescriptive, but I share this again in the workbook. And then the third area that I just want to touch on and share, again, more in the workbook, is this idea of validation. And we've touched on it already. If you want your differentiation to stand out and really land, it needs to be valid. So it needs to be different enough and valuable enough for them. So this model helps ensure, it's a bit of a checklist really, that our differences are seen, valued, and remembered. So validation in the first step needs checking with the client before we present our final solution or proposal. Did we understand you correctly? Does our solution seem to fit? Does it seem to fit with everybody? Because if we can't validate it and the differentiation, it just becomes noise. Okay? So then how do we articulate it? It's hard enough for sellers to articulate value at times, but what we've got to think about are the decisions that are taken when we're not in the room. So if we can't have our clients and prospects articulate value themselves on our behalf internally, then again, we're going to struggle. We need to make it legitimate. There's got to be evidence. We've actually got some credentials here. We've got some testimonials, we've got some client references, something that proves our credibility. Yeah? This isn't our first rodeo. This isn't just talk. And then finally, it's got to have a business impact, an outcome or benefit. And when you take it all into account, it's got to be distinct. Remember, people buy differences, not similarities. So we'll share more on this in the workbook, but the idea here is being deliberate about what you're bringing of value and how it differentiates is absolutely critical.

Yeah. Les, if we go through this VALID framework and we are able to validate that what we do brings value to the customer, this is the point where we move them from they are able to do that work to we want to work with them because they understand us, they get us. And if you think about it, these frameworks, the BISP framework, the VALID framework, these are both part of the workshop that we've put together. Right? They're a core piece of what we've built together. The workshop is called The Differentiation Advantage. So, sorry for my...

And there she is.

No... jumping in here. Yes, they do love being part of all of our webinars. We've collaborated on this programme, and I'm just going to start here by saying, Les, that when we were first introduced to each other, I think it was clear in about 10 minutes that the synergy between what you have built in your sales training and coaching organisation and what we have built to bring The Trusted Advisor and Charlie Green's Trust-Based Selling content to life are so completely aligned. And why don't you just share a little bit with the folks before we get to the questions about what they can expect from us.

By the way, if I can jump... Sorry for interrupting, guys.

Yeah. No, go ahead.

What you two just said, let me make a meta comment about that one. Noelle said we knew in the first 10 minutes. That's how sales calls work. Trust is logically precedent prior to articulated decision-making. We start with a feeling, and then we articulate what it is that we feel. So we sometimes confuse the ability to articulate concretely. Here's the difference. The truth is, we all start with saying, 'You know what? I kind of trust these guys. I think we can work together.' And I think your rendition, Noelle, of how you two can hit it off that way is a great example of it.

Thanks, Charlie.

Hey, listen. Thanks, Noelle. So I just want to call out Jason, do you want to just say hello or something? Just put your face on the screen. I'll just do it. Jason Smith, Jason on our team. Now, Jason will be at the other end of this QR code, if that's a thing. I don't know if you can actually do that. But the point is this, we've developed a programme. It may or may not be for you. It may not be relevant at all, and that's fine. What we've done is we've looked at the key elements of The Trusted Advisor content throughout the years, and we're starting to look at the human elements and building human connectivity and trustworthiness. And what we've done is to combine that with our sales acceleration framework. What you get in the two-day programme are a focus on human capabilities, conversational skills, and all of the trip-ups, all of the trip wires. So challenging conversations. What do you do when the buyer right out the box says, 'Look, I've done the research. How much is it?' Wow, that just floors people, right? So what I want to do, I want to leave the QR code up for a moment. If you scan the QR code, if there's a level of interest in finding out more, then please do go ahead and pop that over to us, and we'll arrange for a conversation. We can share more detail. Obviously, that's easy. I'm just going to pass over just the three takeaways, Noelle, which is how we summarise it. I hope others do the same.

Absolutely. Over the 45 minutes we've been together, I think that there are three clear things that come out in the state of sales today. One is that everything is becoming more commoditised, not less, with the advent of AI. And the biggest differentiators, therefore, are not the technology that you're using or the products that you're selling. It is the people that are interacting with your customers. And the way to get that differentiation, it is the combination of your people working with your clients when you build trust and you lean into these human skills. Now, for those of you who didn't have a chance to scan that QR code, or you don't necessarily want to do it on your phone while we're here, I want to point out to you that we will follow up with everybody. You'll get an email that gives you the worksheets from the frameworks that Les walked us through. You will have access to reach out to Jason. And Jason, take just a second. I want you to say hello again, so we make sure people get your face.

Sure, and thanks, Noelle. Yes, great to be with you all. Happy to have a conversation, and purely that's what it will be. It'll be a conversation, and if it's useful, then brilliant, and happy to be here and help support that.

All right. And you will all absolutely love talking with Jason. He's fantastic at thinking through the big picture of things. I also want to let you know that as our gift to you, no strings attached whatsoever, I'm going to send everybody a link to take our Trust Quotient self-assessment. That's what Charlie referred to when he was talking about the Trust Equation. It's typically about $45 if you go to our website and purchase it. I'll give this to you for free so you can have a conversation with us. If you try to reach me, go ahead and connect through Jason. We're working this as a team. And I look forward to having more conversations with each of you. Now, we're at time, but I do want to open it up if anybody has questions for any of the three of us. And if you'd like, you can enter them into the chat, or you can raise your hand and come off mute.

Not all at once, please. A very concerned bunch of individuals, but whatever it might be, however small, feel free to shout. Bill.

Hello. Hello, everybody.

Hi, Bill.

I really enjoyed that. Thank you all for that. That was seriously great. Just a quick question about the VALID framework that was put up on screen. One thing I felt may have been slightly missing was the human connection in that. People buy off people, and that was very much focused around sort of a more solution value. And there wasn't necessarily the intimacy which the Trust Equation it brings in. Just wanted to put that as a brief reflection and maybe there could be more of that in there to create the better sell, as it were. Yeah. Because To Sell Is Human, to use Daniel Pink's...

Love it...

...wonderful book.

Yeah, love it. Thank you. And thank you so much. And I think the pace at which we went through that may have caused a little disconnect. The key for me is that intimacy piece.

Mm-hmm.

People buy from people. That gets explored in the Client Value Framework around individual value. And I think what I've found when I've been in workshops is I've seen people admit they're really, really good at talking about their solution, talking about their company. They are weak on this whole level of intimacy, understanding what matters to people as individuals. So they're connected. The VALID framework is there as a checklist, and it kind of tests whether or not you did all that other stuff on the way.

Sorry, I didn't mean to cut in.

No, great.

Thank you, guys.

No, no problem.

I've got a question.

Yeah, please, Jeff, go.

Hi. So Noelle, I see you smiling. So, fantastic information, great impactful content. And for me, where my mind always goes is how do we translate knowledge, especially new knowledge, into action, right? What do we do with it? And so, I guess the most simplistic way to look at that in this situation is based on all of your experiences, what advice or what suggestions would you give a sales professional to do differently? What would be one thing that could bring a lot of this to life based on, not the mistakes that you see people make, but just again, based on your experience, what do you think would be the one takeaway that someone could go on my next sales call or my next interaction with a client, what could I do differently to start bringing this to life? Is that a fair question?

Can I take a shot at that?

Yeah.

If I had to give a one-word answer, Jeff, I would say listening.

There we go.

Any approach out there you're going to get better at. The ultimate objective of listening, as I think of it, is to make the other person feel heard, feel appreciated...

Mm...

...feel understood. And there are many approaches to listening. They're all decent. They'll all help. But if I had to pick a one-word answer, that amounts to paying attention. That's getting rid of self-orientation, that is being curious. It just delivered so much on so many dimensions. That's a one-word answer.

Awesome. Thank you.

Jeff, I'm going to build before I come to Angela. I see Angela got your hand up. But Jeff, I would say, before you go into any client or prospect meeting, orient yourself to the buying process, not the selling process.

Mindset. Yeah.

And think about what would be helpful for that prospect or client in terms of making a good decision.

Mm-hmm.

My sense is that rather than push, push, push on the sales side of things, we help people buy better...

Yeah...

...is how I talk about what we do.

Yep. Mindset, I like it.

Yeah. Angela, long time no speak.

Hey. Yes, great to see you again.

Yeah, great stuff.

And thank you, Charlie, Noelle, too. I'm curious, when you have people in your team or you've observed people that are under stress or pressure because of quotas or sales, in my sort of reflections, that's where the self-orientation can swing back again. But any reflections and advice for... Because I've certainly felt that at points in my career in terms of there's the big, hairy, audacious goal and you're trying to build that trust. What's your reflections and what's your advice for individuals when they're...

Yeah...

...with this?

Yeah, Angela, the short-term pressure is, I think, one of the most insidious dangers to effective sales, right? Because it causes us to react from a place of fear and concern. And the fix for it, to use Jeff's word, it's another mindset shift, which is entirely within our control, but certainly not easy to do. Letting go of the focus on the short term to keep focused on the long term. And everybody says, 'But I can't do that. I have to make my numbers this quarter. I have to make my numbers this month.' The way I think about it, it's a one-time systemic shift.

Mm-hmm.

If I can pause my short-term thinking long enough to get refocused on what the right thing to do is over the long run...

Do the right thing is where I get there. That's my mantra. Do the right thing by your client.

Exactly. And then I may end up with a very short gap where I'm not chasing the near-term thing, but I'm creating a much richer pipeline of long-term results.

Mm-hmm.

And so I give up a little bit today for a lot more, much more sustainably in the future.

Okay.

But it has to be a mindset shift.

Yeah. Absolutely.

And a lot of people aren't willing to take the risk against how their compensation is set up.

Yeah, the reward mechanism is, yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

It's fascinating, and it's hard, but Angela, I remember what I was taught when we were both back at Accenture. If you're worried about your numbers, don't worry about your numbers. Worry about their numbers.

Client first. Client centricity.

Client first, right? If you focus on their numbers, your numbers will come.

Yeah. It's fascinating. I've had the privilege of pivoting through organisations and clients and I can, and seeing how they're incentivised and the cycles and sometimes the misalignment between the client's cycles and your cycles.

Totally.

Yeah. Good.

And also the time gap is not all that big. We all think, 'Oh, I have to defer my gratification for a year or two.' No. Depending on the business, I'll make a gross generalisation. It takes six months for that equation to kick into place.

Mm-hmm.

If you start acting in the long term...

Yeah...

...then short-term results start showing up way quicker than we think.

Well, and those clients pop up in other organisations has been my experience. They may not be a buyer in their current role, but they can be a buyer, but they'll set sure as anything remember the interaction with you and whether it was one that was self-orientated or not.

Right. Super.

Thank you.

Angela, thank you. We are coming up to the top of the hour. If there's anybody else who has a pressing question. If not, you know where we are.

Exactly.

You know where we live. Can I be the first to say thank you to Charlie Green, to Noelle, and to every one of you for investing a bit of time. Love to catch up at a later stage, but firstly, thank you, thank you.