How do you sell well — and ethically — if you are fortunate enough to be a ‘nice person’?!

In this final episode of the Consultancy Business podcast, we are joined by Martin Stellar.

Martin, a former monk, is now a consultant who is passionate about helping nice people sell more.

—-

Advance, the new course from The Consultancy Business, is now available exclusively at TBD+.

Advance is designed to equip independent consultants with skills and tools that complement your own expertise to help you run your business as effectively as possible.

Practical, to-the-point and structured in accordance with best practice in adult learning, each lesson will deepen your knowledge in a different domain, from defining success to pitch-perfect pricing.

About TBD+

Already attracting members from Meta, NASA, Omnicom, startups, SMEs, and a host of others, TBD+ offers a unique space to connect with industry leaders, get new business opportunities, and access exclusive original (and curated) content. 

Whether you’re looking to learn, network, or solve those burning questions, TBD+ has you covered, and it’s available via desktop or the handy app. 

Key benefits of joining TBD+ include:

– Curated summaries and a host a of original content 

– Opportunities to meet industry executives

– Exclusive learning content

– Access to hours of thought leadership material with TBD Conference talks and Mouthwash interviews

For just £24.99 a month, you gain instant access to a global network that’s dedicated to keeping you ahead of the curve. Sign up now and connect with innovators who will help you thrive in today’s fast-changing world.

Sign up here.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Phil Lewis: How do you sell, and how do you sell well and sell ethically? If actually you’re a nice person too. Welcome to The Consultancy Business podcast with me, Phil Lewis. We are here to champion ethics and excellence in independent consultancy. And before we get into this month’s episode, a little bit of news. This will be the last consultancy business podcast for the foreseeable future. Like your favourite boy band, we are going on indefinite hiatus. It’s been an absolute privilege… been over a year and a half’s worth of work, and a real joy to talk to all the guests that I’ve talked to over that time. But ultimately without any revenue to support this podcast, it is more and more difficult in today’s market to keep it going. So we will leave every single episode up there for your future enjoyment and reference, and we hope to pick it back up at some point in the future. In the meantime, do keep your ears peeled. A new podcast format is coming later on this year. We’re in development on it now. For our last episode then, very much last but not least, we welcome a brilliant consultant. A gentleman by the name of Martin Stellar. As Martin will tell you, he’s had quite an interesting career history that took him from being a monk right through to doing what he does now, which is helping nice people sell more. I’ve worked with Martin personally, and as someone who identifies as a nice person, who doesn’t actually like most of the tactics that you get taught in sales training, I’ve been really interested by what he’s had to say. And I’ve learned a huge amount from him over the time that we’ve known each other, as I’m sure you will too. So without further ado, here’s my conversation with Martin Stellar. Martin, welcome to the podcast. Why sales for nice people?

[00:02:02] Martin: Well, because I used to be a monk and what else do you do then become a sales coach after having been a monk?

[00:02:08] Phil Lewis: Obviously, we interview lots of monks turned salespeople on this podcast. It’s a niche series in and of its own, right Martin? But perhaps you could just flatter us anyway by giving us a bit of your story.

[00:02:18] Martin: Right so in my late teens, I became obsessed and fascinated by human nature — why people do things or don’t do things. And obviously also about myself and I really wanted to figure myself out. And so in a very natural way, I got in touch with people who meditate and I became part of the community and automatically ended up living in and becoming a monk. And in those 12 years that I spent there, I worked a lot with volunteers. And a volunteer is a wonderful human being that you cannot tell what to do because you’re not their boss. So every day I had daily practice in trying to get people along with what the community needs. I had to figure out how to sell people on the activities and the participation that we needed without telling them what to do. Without bullying or forcing or pushing. So those years… that’s why I say I learned selling in a monastery. And so when I finally left and started out on my own, it was a very logical, natural transition from first being a tailor. I’d been trained as a tailor there. My tailoring business failed because I didn’t know about business. Then I started copywriting. Then I started teaching marketing, and ultimately coaching, and that then became sales coaching. So looking back, it’s a whole series of connected dots that it’s very normal and logical that I ended up as a coach for ethical selling because I spent so much time practicing how to sell without forcing or pushing or convincing. Well, that’s what sales for nice people is about. It’s a method of communicating with people that makes them want to get what you have instead of you trying to make them buy. You just have a conversation based on questions and serving your buyer so that ultimately they start asking more questions, start asking how it works, start leaning in, start participating in the process and sell themselves on getting your work. That is sales for nice people.

[00:04:28] Phil Lewis: I think many people listening to this podcast, and certainly I would understand as somebody who is at least… at least has the self-conception of being a nice person just how challenging sales can be. And it’s always felt to me, you know, over the years you get exposed to different sorts of selling approaches and different selling methodologies, if you will. So you think about spin selling, for example, a term I never… I sort of never felt particularly comfortable with actually. Cause I was always like, well, the idea of spin, I suppose, even in that phrasing, it feels like I have to spin you a line, you know, tell you a lie or whatever. And the idea that actually, ultimately, what you need to do is sort of massage somebody through quite an artificial feeling sort of process, never sat particularly well with me. And I guess we’ll talk more later on about the work you and I do together, but I’ve been really struck by even just in your description then, that sense in which you’re there to serve your buyer. What I heard in that was I’m a bit more free to be myself actually and do the kind of work I want to do even in selling than a lot of those more traditional methodologies teach, which I think fundamentally a lot of what they’re teaching is you need to either do this or you need to be somebody who you’re fundamentally not, i.e. the salesperson, which I think really has never felt intuitively doable to me, you know?

[00:05:56] Martin: Uh, no, and how are you going to be somebody that you’re not. Like, do you want to put on a fake persona in order to make somebody do your bidding? Like, what the hell is that about? Just have a conversation with people. Here is somebody who has a problem. They’ve decided to talk to you because maybe they want to solve that problem. And maybe with you. Well, that means that they now have a decision to make and you get to serve them in figuring out what is the best decision. That’s a beautiful thing. It’s easy. It’s nice. It’s friendly. It’s helpful. And it causes people to want to continue engaging with you. No fakery or spinning required.

[00:06:36] Phil Lewis: You talked about ethical selling. Describe ethical selling then. So I suppose an interesting way of describing ethical selling would be to describe what unethical selling is. So give us your take on ethics and how they show up or don’t show up in sales processes.

[00:06:54] Martin: Ethics is not something for me to define. It is just like, you know, a while ago, somebody asked me, well, you know, what makes a nice person? That is not up to me to decide. I don’t decide if you are nice, but you need to self-select as such, if you want. And the same thing with ethics, it is not something that I can have rules about. I will meet certain people sometimes and feel, well, this is not somebody who operates in a way that I would call ethical and then I won’t engage with that person. But it’s not up to me to define what ethics is, other than for myself. And for myself, ethical selling means it is always about the buyer. No matter how much I need the money or how interested I am in that gig or how good it would look on my LinkedIn page, it’s not about me. It’s not about what I want to get. It is about helping the other person get what they want to get. And obviously there are principles of integrity and truthfulness at play. You don’t tell a lie. You don’t hold things back. You don’t spin things so that you get your way. You want to operate from a place of integrity. And you want to stay true to your values. Like everybody considers themselves a good person even people who you see operating ways that are abhorrent to you. Almost everybody operates in life with the idea that I’m a good person trying to do what’s best for everybody.

[00:08:26] Phil Lewis: You know, I think it’s a great point I mean the idea that everybody fundamentally gets out bed in the morning thinking that their view of the world is the right view of the world, I think is absolutely spot on. And we’re, we are masters, as human beings, as justifying our own behavior. And I think about the idea of selling as a service, you know, I’m here in service of you to help you make a good decision for you. And it, and it strikes me that there’s… there’s kind of two ways of doing that. You either do that in a really honest, integrous and truthful way, which is to say a lack of attachment to outcome, genuinely wanting to help somebody make a good choice for them, selling because you want something for them in that sense. Or what you do is you pretend to do that. I’m here in service of you. But actually, really, what you’re trying to do is find a way to manipulate and advance your own agenda. And the thing about the second of those things is that often what will happen is that the individual will justify to themselves: well, I’m actually doing the first. I’m doing what’s in the interest of my buyer here. So I think there’s an interesting challenge in what you’re saying, which is to do what you’re saying in the right kind of a way, I think you have to approach that with a degree of intellectual and emotional honesty, which doesn’t often characterise a lot of approaches to selling, or a lot of people’s experience of either selling or being sold to, you know?

[00:10:03] Martin: Yeah. Um, unfortunately a lot of the time that is because people have the wrong idea about what selling is. They’ve been through the trainings where they say you have to go through the seven steps to overcome objections and a yes letter to get people to saying yes. And then they come away with this idea that they have to operate like a sales development rep. When in reality, it’s just about you relating to another person who is facing a big momentous decision in their life and they need some help. So, go and help this person, ask them questions, help them get clarity, enable them to make a decision. Now you’re doing something. It’s the same thing that you do with a friend, right? If a friend comes to you and I have a problem and what should I do? Well, if you’re going to go and tell your friend what they should be doing, your friend is probably not going to take up the idea. But if you just listen to them and you ask them questions and you enable them to get a bigger zoomed out view on the situation they’re trying to solve for, well, now they get clarity and now they get more ideas on what they can do. And now they end up going, I see what I should do. I’m going to go for this decision. What happens at that point is, and this happens exactly the same in selling as happens in coaching and therapy, as you will know, you enable somebody to make their own decision that makes them the owner of the decision. Which is a lot better than having somebody tell you what’s right for you. Oh, and by the way, when you do traditional selling the way it’s taught in so many trainings and books, you’re basically making the other person wrong. Because listen here, Mr or Mrs Buyer, I have this program and if you just watch my presentation and here are my slides and this is the future and the benefits and now why don’t we move forward and make this happen? Let’s go and ink this. Well, then you apparently seem to know what’s best for this other person. You apparently are in the right, well, then obviously they are in the wrong. You then take away their autonomy because you are now telling them what’s going to be the best choice for them. It’s wrong in so many ways. So my entire philosophy, my way of life, my framework and methodology is about helping somebody get all the clarity and perspective they need, the vision, in order to come to their own decision. That’s ethical selling.

[00:12:37] Phil Lewis: What is interesting about this is, and you started to touch on it there with your parallels into coaching and therapy as well, where I want to go is to talk a little bit about that, but also, through the lens of your work, and actually the work we’ve done together as well, I think is useful to kind of bring in here. So it seems to me anyway, someone listening to this, I don’t know, I mean, I could be wrong, but someone listening to this might say, well, that all sounds fantastically simple. What I need to do is just have a conversation in service of helping my buyer sort through their thinking, or my perspective buyer, about what they really need such that they can make a decision about whether or not I am going to be somebody who could help them with that. Right? And of course, in principle, that sounds very simple. In practice, of course, you’ve got quite a lot of complexity going on and ambiguity going on. Because if somebody has a need, it stands to reason that that predicts they might have a really complex kind of context or challenging context going on for them. They’re also going to have their own experience, and ways of constellating that experience in the conversation, they’re going to be having their own kind of relationship with the problems that they’ve got. You as an individual are in relationship with them when you’re selling. So there’s stuff going on between the two of you and of course you’ve got the stuff that’s going on for you as well as the prospective or putative seller in that situation. You’ve got all your own thinking and you’ve got your own needs that you need to manage, if you’re truly there to be in service of the other and so on. And there are direct parallels there, as you rightly say, between… therefore this kind of selling and the experience that those of us who are coaches have, and those of us who have been through psychotherapy training have, for example, there’s a lot in play. And so I’m interested as to how that informs your work, because certainly my own experience of working with you has been at the level of the principles that underpin this, that the principles can be quite simple. The practice is complex and actually working with you on the practice of that has really helped me both to see that complexity, but also find ways of navigating through it in a way that ultimately allow for better outcomes. So just interested in your reflections on all of that.

[00:15:22] Martin: Well, let me ask you a question. What have you found the most enabling outcome or effect of our work together?

[00:15:32] Phil Lewis: Martin’s annoying questions, by the way, needs to be a podcast in and of its own right. Just so we’re clear on that. The most valuable thing has been to be able to zoom out and get a perspective, a different perspective about what might be going on in those interactions, and then to pick a path through those interactions, and to do it in a way that ultimately helps me improve my practice of selling. Because I’m learning more about what these principles actually require of me in the moment. I think it’s something like that, you know.

[00:16:11] Martin: Okay. Yeah. What happens there is that you are working with a notion of sonder. You know, the word sonder? That realisation that everybody in the world is an entire world unto themselves. Your buyer is not just somebody with a problem and a budget and an urgency and stakeholders when he comes off the call. It is a person with a family and a history and concerns and worries and dreams and a pension and a car and a mortgage. And it’s a whole world, this person, just like you are. And where selling becomes so difficult is we mistake the map for the territory. So we see this person show up, and they tell us things and they ask us questions, and that goes onto our map. This is our representation of what the deal looks like and what this buyer needs to know and needs to decide. Yeah, but that is your mental representation of a infinitesimally small fraction of this entire world that you’re talking to. Now, Alfred Korzybski said the map is not the territory. Our heuristics are very good for surviving through evolution, but they suck for properly understanding people. So what you do, when you make selling about the other person, is you zoom out, as you say, to get a better view on everything that goes on in the world of that person. You ask questions that help them express more of their concerns and their fears and the things that they didn’t think were relevant, but are actually a really foundational component of the conversation and getting the deal over the line internally in the company. There’s so much going on that… you are not that person. The only thing you know about that person is what you can observe. And then you translate that into your own understanding. And then you have to talk to that map that you have constructed yourself. And it’s a very low resolution map and it’s incomplete. When you start asking better questions and you zoom out to get a better, deeper understanding of what really is at play for this individual, now you are collaborating with them in the sales process. Now you’re not doing sales to them, you’re doing sales with them.

[00:18:37] Phil Lewis: I’m also interested in the… well, not only do I think that makes a huge amount of sense just in terms of the psychology of the whole thing, I think it also makes sense in terms of the trajectory of a relationship. Because the other thing that I have observed much more often I’d have wanted over the years is that you have a sales process, a sale gets done… often despite the best endeavors of people like me to get it wrong along the way, I should say a sale gets done. And then, of course, you’re kind of day one with the work and day one with the work. You’re kind of looking at the individual or individuals across the table thinking, I don’t know you at all. And therefore now we need to get to know each other in the context of the work we’re going to do together. And what I think is really lovely about what you’re just describing, and I have seen this bear out already in some of the work you and I have done is the fact that the sales process itself becomes a conduit for a really good quality relationship to be developed. You’re then able to set the relationship up for success at the level of the learning curve is less. And the trust is higher at the beginning of the relationship than it otherwise would be. And that feels like a real benefit over and above actually, if you get to know somebody properly and you’re helping them make the decision that’s right for them, if they make the decision to work with you, well, ultimately they’re properly invested. That’s a really good predictor of the relationship’s success. The relational benefits I think are also considerable. You said something earlier on though, that I wanted just to go back to, you talked about questions. And I made a joke about Martin’s annoying questions, which, you know, I’m not the only person that has worked with you who thinks that way. I think we can say that. But the thing I love about working with you is actually the perceptiveness of the questions that you ask and the way that those questions unlock all sorts of interesting thinking and opportunities. I would love, and I’m sure our listeners would love, to hear from you about questions and the kind of questions that you believe do resonate really well in a sales process. And just any pointers or insights you’ve got about good questioning in the context of selling.

[00:21:12] Martin: Yeah, well, we always tend to make snap judgments and then consider our interpretation of somebody’s behaviour as the definition of what happened. Right. So somebody might snap at you and then you go, well, that’s just a really unpleasant person that is impossible to work with. That might be so. It might also be somebody who was just, just lost a parent the day before. And yeah, they’re going to snap at people because there is so much that goes on in people’s worlds that we are not privy to, and there are so many reasons why people do the things or don’t do the things that they do. And then we show up and we have the temerity and the arrogance to interpret something and then decide that that is what they meant because that is what they said. You’ve seen this yourself in relationships where people bicker and fight because ‘You said this.’ ‘Yeah. But that’s not what I meant to say.’ Well, yeah, but you said it and therefore, and now you’re stuck and you’re not getting anywhere. We have no idea why people do the things they do, but we’re always prone and at risk to fall into confirmation bias and perception bias, and all kinds of biases, because it suits our needs to reconfirm our interpretation of things. It doesn’t help us, but it’s just a mechanism that human beings fall into over and over again. So the questions that I use and that you are, what should I say, a victim or beneficiary of? Both. The questions are…

[00:22:56] Phil Lewis: Beneficiary Martin, come on!

[00:22:58] Martin: The kind of questions that you should ask yourself, and this is not just in selling, it’s in any relationship is really about what is going on for that other person. Why would they behave like that? What benefit, you know, this is the evolutionary mechanism. The subconscious tries to move you away from pain and towards pleasure. Okay. So when somebody does something that is dysfunctional or unhelpful or unpleasant or rude or whatever it is that isn’t what you were hoping for… instead of judging it and calling it something and then running with that opinion, which is just your opinion, it has nothing to do with what that person actually wanted to say or meant to say, or do. Instead of running with that, stop and ask yourself why, what are they trying to protect themselves from? What is the wellbeing that, even dysfunctionally, they’re trying to move towards by asking this thing, by saying that thing, by behaving in such a way? Once you start asking yourself questions with a profound fascination for better understanding people, you will automatically open your perspective, widen your view on things, and you will start to understand people better. That then helps the other person feel seen, it will make them realise that here is somebody who’s not judging me like everybody else does. And here’s somebody who’s trying to understand me and now they’re going to give you even more information. They’re going to share even more about their concerns and their fears and their wants and aspirations because you are now asking them the questions, and you’re asking yourself the questions about them and their behaviour, that bring you closer together, that strengthen the relationship, that deepen the conversation. And you bet your buyer is going to take part in that and contribute to that and add in their two bits in order for you to even better understand what they’re up against and what they’re trying to achieve. Questions are the answer to everything.

[00:24:57] Phil Lewis: It’s so interesting. That point about helping your buyer feel heard and feel seen. I mean, I’ve thought for years… and I haven’t really thought it in the context of selling until relatively recently, but certainly in the context of my work, I’ve thought for years it’s entirely possible for people to go through their working world for weeks, months, and indeed, sometimes years at a time without ever feeling heard or feeling seen by the people that they work with. And just how awful that is for people, you know, and so many of us walk through the world with this kind of core need. And I think it’s a very core human need, which is the need to relate actually, and also the need to feel as though others see who we are and hear what’s going on for us and understand us and hopefully have some sense of connection to us and an empathy for that, ideally, or whatever else. Right? So there’s this really big need in all of us to feel seen, to feel heard, and we will actually actively enrol ourselves in any process in which that is promised, you know, or that is on offer. And yet we miss that. Don’t we? So often in selling because we’re so busy in our own world, trying to get our own needs met. We’re not actually paying attention to the needs of the other. And I think that’s, and that need to feel seen and feel heard is in one sense, the easiest one to satisfy because all we have to do is show up and be curious. And, that is… and then evaluate what’s coming out as I suppose. So yeah, I, I’m really just struck by that. And the sort of simplicity of it, but the extent to which we overlook that in classic sales thinking.

[00:26:47] Martin: Yeah. And this is again, where so much selling goes wrong and where things in relationships go wrong, uh, aside from selling. We have this idea. We want to convey or transmit something because, listen to me, I have this idea and it’s going to be so useful. Hang on, let me explain. Right? So you try to project your vision on what’s going to be helpful for them. And you might be right, but you’re there trying to project your vision onto them, for them to see what you have in mind, what you see for them. The first problem is that you’re making the other person wrong. Second problem is that what you see has nothing to do with their world. They have their own view on the world. They have their own perspective and their challenges. So when you then try to transmit your vision, you’re always going to struggle. Your counterpart is not going to feel heard. They’re going to dig in their heels. You trigger psychological reactions. Whereas if you turn it around and you ask yourself, what does the world look like to them? Or you even ask your buyer or your spouse or coworker or employee or boss, what is this problem? What does the situation look like to you? Tell me what you see, help me understand. Now everything is flipped around. Now they’re going to share their view on the world. That then invites you to share your perspectives and together you build up a shared vision. And now instead of trying to ram something down somebody’s throat because you have this great idea and you make them feel not seen, you’re now participating in building a shared vision. So the other person buys into the vision because they are putting the building blocks in place with you as you go along. You know, in the end, useful and helpful human communication is so simple. It’s just that we never stopped to really pay attention to the other person. We’re always making it about ourselves; my idea, my product, my service, my features, my awards, my agency, my… who gives a damn. People are interested in themselves, their own problems and them getting ahead in life. Find out what that looks like for them and automatically they will start sharing all the information and they will start inviting you to participate in completing the vision. There’s one part of the equation that we still haven’t figured out yet. What would you do? Now there’s your invitation. Now you get to share your vision because you first made them feel. We’ll see.

[00:29:33] Phil Lewis: So. I’m trying to imagine being a listener to this conversation and I’m trying to imagine myself being a cynical listener to this conversation. I’m thinking to myself, well, it’s all sounds great Martin and Phil, right. But at some point my needs do need to get met. I need to get paid to do this work, for example. And I need these people to be writing me, you know, a reasonably large cheque. So it all sounds really good that they feel seen and feel heard. But how does that ultimately manifest itself in not only a sale, but a decent quality sale from a revenue standpoint for me, for example. Because this is all sounding lovely and very human, but lovely and human doesn’t necessarily pay the bills.

[00:30:24] Martin: Well, you first ask about their problems and you ask more about their problems and you keep asking about their problems right up until the moment that they ask you about your solution. That’s where everything starts. Then you want to do the opposite of what most selling does. You don’t want to go and try to move the deal forward and manipulate people into saying yes to things, because then you end up looking needy. And then the chance that you’re going to get the deal, well, it goes down, the more needy you look, and needy is creepy. So when you are there trying to advance your own agenda, the most likely outcome is that you’re going to get objections and/or ghosted. Well, that doesn’t look like a paycheck to me. But if you make it about the other person and really understanding their problems to such a point that you can explain their problem and their challenge better than they could, because you’ve done your diagnosis so well, with all the ins and outs and all the hidden aspects and components that they hadn’t even thought about mentioning, you can now explain their problem better than they could. They automatically credit you with having the solution and they are going to ask you; well, what would you do? How would this work? And because you’ve taken so much time in diagnosing the problem, you’ve now positioned yourself as an expert, and an expert gets paid really well. That’s also why we spend so much time in these conversations in order to make sure that we really know what needs to be solved here and how. And at that point, then you have positioned yourself as the prize because you are not seeking to get the contract. You’re not chasing the deal or the money, so you’re holding yourself out as somebody who is unattached to the outcome other than the outcome being the best decision for you, Mr or Mrs Buyer. That positions you as the prize. Which you are, because there are thousands of buyers out there, but there’s only one you. So you are the prize, even if you don’t believe it yet. And when you are the prize, you get to state the price that has to be on the work. And yeah, that should be high. And if people aren’t willing to pay a high price, then that is not your buyer. Because if somebody’s problem is big enough and important enough to spend good money on, then it is up to you as the seller to message and communicate with your buyer that; I’m sorry, I don’t work for good money. I work for very good money because I insist that my buyers only buy if they really, really, really, really, really want the solution from me. And that is why the price is so high. So that this becomes a very, very high quality, high importance, high impact decision for you. And it’s also because I’m one of the best in the world at what I do, obviously. But that is not the only component in my pricing structure. I put up a high price as a barrier for people who would otherwise buy a commodity. With me as a consultant or as a coach, you don’t buy a commodity. You buy an extreme level of expertise, experience, and dedication, and yes, at a very high price. If that is a problem, I can point you at some other resources. But I want you to challenge yourself on whether or not this problem that you have and that you say you want to solve is important enough to solve.

[00:34:04] Phil Lewis: So everything that we’ve been talking about feels like it pushes in a very different direction to a lot of traditional sales skills. And exactly good. Um, well, certainly good from my point of view, Martin, because I spent a lot of time trying to learn those traditional sales skills and I wasn’t very good at them. So to the extent that I have been able to sell things over the years. And I have, you know, so I’m still here 10 years down the line, before you and I started working together. It’s been because I think… because it wasn’t any good at anything else. I have actually managed to do some of this stuff that we’ve been talking about, albeit not to a particularly high level of fidelity relative to what you’ve been saying. But I’m curious about, and I’m sure our listeners will be curious, to hear from you about how they best learn this stuff. Because as I say, at the level of the principle, it’s easy at the level of the practice, if you’re going to take the idea of sonder, for example, my world is different to your world, but we inhabit different realities and we have to learn to master being able to get curious about other people’s reality and navigate through that in the context of a complex and ambiguous, not only sales process, but probably the complex and ambiguous set of business issues for the people that are talking to you… how that’s best done. So you talk about sales coaching, and I think it’d be interesting for people to hear about how you actually help consultants to embrace these… I almost want to call them techniques, but I would say behaviours is a far better word. Embrace these kind of behaviours in their work. As I said earlier on, they sound simple in principle, but they are quite counterintuitive to how most of us have been taught selling and for all sorts of reasons they’re not that easy to embrace in practice. So how is it you help people to embrace these behaviours in practice in terms of your own work?

[00:36:12] Martin: Well query my clients and my partners on what is going on with each of the deals and the people involved in those deals. So somebody will call me and say, all right, I’ve just had a meeting with this buyer. Person A said these things, person B said those things, what do I do? And instead of then coming up with a, well, send them an email saying this, send some follow up, send the proposal. We have a conversation where I try to get your intel to come out. Because we subconsciously pick up on a lot of signals and information in conversation with people. And because we are so myopic on the deal and the challenge at hand, and we don’t see enough. So the way I help is by asking my clients and my partners questions about what’s going on. So I make you, I make a client think about what has been said, why it has been said, what that might mean, what the buyer might be looking for, so that my client then develops a better understanding of what their buyer is facing and what they need to hear. So that my client figures out; all right, so the challenge here is not that there is a sales problem. It might be something related to identity. It’s not so much that the client is trying to solve a technical problem with productivity in the company. The real purchase motivator for this client is they want to finally have the status and the identity of having brought the company to productivity. So buying productivity is only a vehicle for a personal aspiration. Now, when my client realises that, changes their dynamic and interaction with buyer based on that insight, starts asking questions about personal gains, what do you stand to win? Now suddenly the final buyer feels more seen, realises that there’s somebody here who properly gets them and understands them. And that then moves the deal forward. So it is really about a deeper psychological understanding of what people’s goals and motivations are. And I help my clients develop that understanding by asking questions and it is so much fun Phil. You… somebody calls you and; What do I do now? They said this or I’ve not heard back from them. And we start analysing the situation And then we come up with a theory about maybe if you ask them this, something would get unstuck. And then I come back and it’s like; Oh, fantastic. I have a meeting booked in for next week. Yes, I like my work! Because everything comes down to better relating to people and better understanding people. And that’s what I help with. This might sound a little bit abstract, but for listeners who want to have something tangible, there’s a couple of fundamental questions that you always need to ask yourself. When dealing with a buyer, what is the wellbeing that they are moving towards and what is the risk, threat or danger they want to avoid? So these are two fundamental psychological questions. The sub subconscious wants to move you towards wellbeing and away from danger. Then what are your buyers three biggest fears, and what single frustration do they add up to. Next, what are the three biggest wants, the three things they most want, in considering this deal, and what aspiration do those three ones add up to? And then finally, the identity question, if and when they decide to buy, in what way does that change the way they see themselves in the world? What changes in their identity? You know, Steve Jobs said; people don’t buy products, they buy a new version of themselves. Very intelligent. What is the identity change that your buyer seeks to achieve by buying from you? Answer those questions for yourself every time before you go into a sales meeting, you’ll find some really useful insights that you can bring into the conversation.

[00:40:36] Phil Lewis: I don’t think that was… what you described before, by the way, was abstract at all. I mean, there is no time spent trying to think through with a partner, you know, or a coach support like yourself or indeed just sometimes on your own, what’s going on for the other person from a kind of psychological and emotional standpoint. I mean, that’s what you’re really pointing us in the direction of doing. And again, it’s quite a different orientation. It’s a 180 degree different orientation to most selling methodologies, which would say — what you need to do is work out what that individual’s objections are, what the political landscape of that individual is, and then work out a way of kind of, you know, effectively by force overcoming them. Whereas actually you’re saying just basically seek to understand what’s going on for someone else, and in that understanding, it will become clear (or it may become clear) what a different unlock might actually be for that individual. Yeah. Martin, if anybody wants to learn more about your work and get in touch with you, we will put some links in the show notes, but maybe you could just tell us a little bit more about how people can get in touch and what is a good next step in a conversation with Martin Stellar.

[00:41:52] Martin: Well, if anybody has deals that they want to work on and move forward, then I’m always happy to have a conversation, no commitment. Interested in meeting new people and showing off my stuff because I just like my work. But if anybody wants to have a conversation, then send me an email — hello@martinstellar. com. There’s a YouTube channel called Sales for Nice People with bunches of videos. There a there’s dozens, hundreds of articles at salesflowcoach. app. You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m easy to find. You can Google my name.

[00:42:27] Phil Lewis: You’re very easy to find. And I would say also those daily emails are a strong recommend from us here at The Consultancy Business as well. They are absolutely always worth a read and can be quite surprising sometimes what they put you in the direction of, even with conversations you’ve got going on your pipeline that day. Martin, it’s been a real pleasure talking with you. Thanks for coming on.

[00:42:47] Martin: Thank you.

[00:42:50] Phil Lewis: A huge thanks to Martin, some brilliant insights there, wherever you are in your consultancy journey. From my perspective also, as someone who’s been trying to sell what I do for a very, very long time now, a lot of what Martin shared feels almost timeless in its application. Insights that I can come back to time and time again and still continue to learn something from. So as we wrap The Consultancy Business podcast, don’t forget that all of these episodes will remain up on your favourite podcast player, a back catalogue that we hope will continue to be useful to you as the months and years go by. It’s been an absolute pleasure having the opportunity to do this podcast and we wish you all the best for your consultancy journey.

Explore more