258 Benjamin Dennehy About Being UKs Most Hated Sales Trainer And About Sales | What's On Your Mind?

[00:00:00] Yes, another episode in English this time. This is One Hour Full of Sales. And I'm talking to Benjamin Dennehy. He is UK's Most Hated Sales Trainer. In his post on LinkedIn he is very provocative and very direct and black and white.

[00:00:19] And that's why I invited him for a conversation on the podcast because I wanted to find out who that man is behind all those posts. So one hour full of sales and especially B2B sales.

[00:00:32] I warn you for his very direct and also fun way of communicating the joy Benjamin. Welcome to What's On Your Mind with Peter Smirwart. Every week a guest talks about his or her story and that story can inspire you to change your own. Here's Peter.

[00:00:51] Benjamin, you call yourself the most UK's Hated Sales Trainer. Where did you get that? Is it because you tell it like it is? And you think there's a lot of how they say that in English that people, they don't have the guts to say it.

[00:01:14] How it really is the brutal truth about sales? One English, the English are more reserved than most people. Most people hate me because I hold up the mirror. And I show them why they're failing and most sales people don't want to admit they're not good at sales.

[00:01:32] In fact, most sales people think they're pretty good. You don't meet many sales people that don't think they're good. They mode they don't make enough money but that's got nothing to do with their sales skills.

[00:01:42] That's because of the economy or because of Covid or because of the product or the competition. Yeah, it's always somebody else's for so all of them think they're good. So I come in and say actually I'm going to be blocked.

[00:01:54] You're a loser. Most of you are all detacers. All you do is play the odds, play the numbers. If you get in front of enough people and vomit enough crap over people, someone will eventually buy. That doesn't make your salesmen.

[00:02:07] Getting someone to give you money doesn't make your salesmen. So you'll probably cost 150 quid. You're getting front of someone to say, I want to really what you have. I want to work with you but I budgeted only 130. And you say, oh well we can probably work something out.

[00:02:21] So now you just give it away 20 quid of your profit. And you say, but I'm a salesman. No, a good salesman says well tough. If you can't afford it, you either find the money or I leave but most can't do that.

[00:02:32] So they hate having that told to them. They hate knowing that the total lack of control that they have is the reason why they suck. They suck up to prospects. They try to be like this. So subservient. They don't see this.

[00:02:48] They don't see it. And that's the way they are. And one of the reasons because they are looking for external validation for like a ability of their prospects because their ego needs that kind of like a

[00:03:03] Billy and instead of looking for respect and challenge the customer and they are a afraid of rejection. Is that correct? Yeah, selling is fair to for ugly people. These are people that wanted to be actors because I love building people.

[00:03:17] I love entertaining people. I love being the center of attention, but I'm no good to make it on the stage. So I'll go into sales and they all put on their CVs. I love meeting people. I love solving problems.

[00:03:29] I love helping people because of social worker don't go into sales. Yeah, but they do. And they would rather they would rather leave a meeting having not sold but being said, you know what? We don't need what you have, but that was a great presentation.

[00:03:46] I really like you. You're going to go far. Great. I can't feed my kids, but at least they like me by Godly I'm doing well. And they hate it when you show this to them because they have no control.

[00:04:00] I can go into a company and it takes like five minutes to figure out the whole sales process. They just do what the prospect was. And they're doing it after that. You will win. It's not hard. Yeah. So that's why they hate me.

[00:04:15] Yeah. And in that way, you will win one or two deals but you don't will build a scale of bills to teach a way of selling and be successful all the time. Well, I'll give you an example. I literally read this yesterday.

[00:04:30] Some sales leader, some top LinkedIn voice sales leader. He actually posted yesterday. It was supposed to be an inspirational post to sales people that's struggling. And he actually said, remember that most sales people will lose 80 to 90% of the time. So just get out there. Do it.

[00:04:51] And I said, what sort of profession would be proud of a failure rate of 80 to 90%. No, what that tells me is you suck at selling because what you're doing is you're not to score a fine. Just because you get to 100 final meetings and you lose 90% to the

[00:05:11] Because I hate your good sales. It means you're shit at qualified. You shouldn't have been in front of 100 people. You should have probably only been in front of maybe 15. I don't mind you losing five and 15. But to have a to actually say, don't worry about it.

[00:05:26] You're going to lose 80 to 90% of the time. What a load of what you hire a lawyer who said, I only win every one in 10 trials or a surgeon. One in 10 of my clients don't die, but hey, it's a numbers game. No. Yeah.

[00:05:41] And I think that's the biggest thing that I hear all the time from sales people or entrepreneurs to say, we have a closing problem. And unlike you don't have a closing problem, you have a qualification problem. It's just offer people you make proposals

[00:06:00] who are not asking for a proposal. You're really created a proposal because you think you have to. You are going way too fast and then you have all these meetings and people are like eating popcorn. They're like inspired, but they don't want to buy.

[00:06:15] And you don't ask the right questions to really qualify if that customer is at valuable for your time actually to invest in. Well, those sales people don't know how to qualify because again, they're all taught by crappy managers who follow the same process over and over again.

[00:06:36] And they go on and try and bore people to death with evidence and intellectual questions or try to convince them that they're so knowledgeable. But we know human beings don't buy intellectually.

[00:06:46] They have to justify, but they've never spent any time trying to figure out what's really driving you. Why are you really here? What's in it for you? They don't go down. They may do some top line questioning around that.

[00:06:56] Well, how important is it to you that you fix this? It's very important to me. Okay. And that's it. But that's an intellectual answer to a question it's supposed to be emotive. And so they never dig deep enough.

[00:07:08] So they get a lot of people that intellectually say, well, I like where you have it to interesting. Send me something. And when you leave the prospect things, I don't think they really got us. I don't think they really understood what it was that we need.

[00:07:22] And it's not my job to tell you because I don't know your job is to at least get something out of me. So this is why they fail. They do a weak job of questioning, weak job of uncovering the real reason why you're there.

[00:07:34] Like always keep it intellectually. Well, that's their problem. And how do you help them? Your clients do you give them some kind of lists? So they, so that they can qualify better. Or I mean, I mean, of course you know that's you got.

[00:07:54] I'll say that's you can start with questions, but at the same time you have to be very careful asking a certain question at a certain time. Yeah, because it can be the right question, but if it's a wrong time, it's a wrong question. Yeah. Okay.

[00:08:10] A selling is a actual skill. It's a communication skill. And anyone can ask you question, but asking it the right way at the right time is fundamentally important. You can ask the same question two different ways, and it can be received completely differently.

[00:08:26] And all communications predicated how on its receive, most salespeople are bad at asking questions in a way that makes a prospect comfortable. They tend to make their prospect uncomfortable. They don't listen.

[00:08:37] So what they're doing is is you're going in with a preconceived list of questions to ask types of queer. But what they're not doing is a hold up. If you're at the, I always use the pub example.

[00:08:48] You're at the pub with your mate and you sell legal services, right? And you introduce people to lawyers. Now in sales mode, you're making turns you and say, as I'm thinking about getting a divorce. The salesman says, I'll be after help you.

[00:09:02] Can I just understand a little bit about that? Where is it mate in the pub without his sales hat on? Sit there and as friends says, I'm thinking about getting divorced. Here you go. What? Why? And then his friend would give, well, you know, which is not working.

[00:09:17] Well, what do you mean it's not working? You must have tried to fix it if you try. You'd be so cute. You'd be doing everything you could to convince them. Oh, that lost! And when your friend added in that they're going to get divorced,

[00:09:31] you think, oh, well, you know, it's going to be expensive. It's going to cost a lot. You're going to need a lower. I mean, are you sure you want to go? You'd be doing everything to try and talk them out of changing.

[00:09:41] But if your friend is adamant, it's over. Nothing's going to be done. We're getting an divorce. Then you might say, I might be after help out there. That's what we're supposed to be like in a sales meeting.

[00:09:53] We're supposed to be going in. They're trying to understand why you're doing this and trying to convince them not to do it because if they can't convince you, they need to change or do something different, you're never going to sell to them.

[00:10:04] What do we do though? We go on and say, what we do this. We do this. We do this and you want what I've heard. I know we can fix this. So what do we do?

[00:10:12] The prospects inking, you've not wanted to try to understand me as a person, as a business, anything. That's why I fail. They all say they do this but they don't. No. And is it because they see sales as a transactional thing

[00:10:30] and they're so focused on that transaction, that the customer is actually not a part of the process or trying to fit that customer within a certain process. It's feasible. It's driven by crappy management. So you need targets. I understand why we have targets.

[00:10:53] But most companies measure stupid things. So you're sales targets are 100K. Rather than measure what matters, the how are you going to get to the 100K? What do you need to be doing on a phone call? Not I don't mean making dials.

[00:11:09] When you're actually talking to someone, how should you structure the call? How should we do it if it's not working? How do I help you? But they measure things like dials, fork time. They measure proposals, scent, demo,

[00:11:20] or all of this is activity that doesn't tell me I've got good sales people. You can have a load of chips sending out proposals. Does that make the chimpanzees good sales people if you end up winning a few deals? No, we're doesn't because they did not.

[00:11:38] So they measure stuff that encourages sales people to behave almost like you're on a conveyer So when they get in front of someone, I've got to get this deal. I've got to get this over line. I've got to hit my target.

[00:11:49] I've got to get my metric. So they're so selfish and self-scented and focused on the outcome. And it comes across because prospects realize it. They know the moment you walk into a sales meeting, the first thing they think is they're going to try and sell me something.

[00:12:03] And then you try and sell them something. So you reinforce why they lie to you, why they prepare a cake, why they're ballads, what they ghost, what they use you because you acted away. They're expecting every time.

[00:12:16] And I try and teach people how not to do that. It's incredibly uncomfortable to get out of. But it can be done. So the thing is is like the first rule of the fight club don't talk about the fight club.

[00:12:30] So it's the first thing about being the sales is don't act like stupid sales because then people will play their role, their title. And then everybody talks, yeah you have to get to report or trust.

[00:12:42] I mean there is no trust because you are a salespeople and nobody trusts a person who plays the salespeople. And it's even getting worse. You have nice people who are really good in connecting with people.

[00:12:53] But then in the job they start to having varying some kind of mass salesmask. I'm like, well, where is this monster coming from? Where did you learn this? I thought I should act like a salesperson and I, yeah, who taught you that?

[00:13:10] Well you spend it's fascinating because they never see that this is the other thing with salespeople. They always see their prospect as more important than them. Because they see the person with the money is in control.

[00:13:26] And you've been raised that way because you've been raised when you're out buying, I'm in control. It's my money. Let me tell you something though. You walk into a shop and you have your word of cash.

[00:13:41] And you see the product you want and you go up to the county, yeah can I have that please? And they say no, what suddenly has happened to your money? It's their power. What do you mean no? That's display only.

[00:13:58] Yeah, I don't mind it's display. No, no, I'm not allowed to sell it. I'm willing to pay for price. Sir, I'm not allowed to sell display. We've got a new batch coming in in two weeks. I don't want to wait two weeks.

[00:14:11] I'll pay. I'm honestly, I don't, sorry, sir. I'm not selling it to you. You have no power. Your money is useless.

[00:14:20] Because though retailers designed to take you, but it's fine. So when they go out selling now, they have this mindset that the person on the money is in control. It's not your an expert. You know more about your product or service than your client or prospect ever will.

[00:14:34] Because you live and breathe it. So you're the expert. So when you get in front of people, you're there to say, I'll be out front with you. The purpose here is to figure out whether or not we should and could sell to you.

[00:14:44] We're not for everybody. You might not be required for us. I'm not here to convince you why to use us. We built a business. This stuff fucking works. The question is, should you be our customer? Unfortunately, as a business, because we choose customers right, we're doing very well.

[00:15:03] So we get to select to be worked with. Most salespeople can't act single behavior like that because he's so desperate. And I can never behave like some of the doesn't need a sale. And so you can learn this, you can learn this but it's hard.

[00:15:17] Yeah, but the thing is if you are trying to push or if a customer buy something that he or she will not see any value of it afterwards as a salesperson and as a company is going to cost you a lot more of money.

[00:15:33] Instead of buying price at a customer paid and this is the rational part, and I didn't even talk about the more emotional impact on the brands and you are self as a salesperson and the long term effect it will have on your own company.

[00:15:48] I mean, you're sold something to somebody who will not see the value of it. And it's supposed to be to have your product or service have an impact on the life or the business or whatever of that customer or people who working at that company.

[00:16:07] Yeah, I think that's I fully agree with you. So it's more like instead of waiting for the know is to convince me that is a yes that you want to work together because otherwise you're actually wasting my time.

[00:16:22] Yeah, exactly. And unfortunately in the world that I operate most people don't want to change how they sell that so ingrained.

[00:16:31] That you show up you throw up in you hope it's features and benefits you convince them with your knowledge and ability that so ingrained and most organisations the idea of doing it differently.

[00:16:41] Scares them because well everybody else sells this way everybody else does free proposals if we start charging for proposals.

[00:16:48] There's a role in life if your competition's doing it stop the whole point of business is to be differentiated if you're all the same acting the same doing the same charging roughly the same. As a prospect of choose it comes down to stupid things.

[00:17:06] Yeah, so no it's and this is a hard thing about my job is finding people that want to change corporate don't want to change individuals do my biggest success is with individuals that approach me and say what I work with you on a one to one.

[00:17:19] Companies team to not unless they're smaller little boutiques or the teams and everyone's working towards a common goal but the bigger the company it gets. They don't care how money comes in the door, they just care that it does and it encourages unethical.

[00:17:34] They're taking drifnic fishing spam call it on everyone numbers and you'll hit a target and they call it selling it's not selling. I had a discussion this morning went with the sales expert and we were talking about the.

[00:17:54] A cow management and I said a cow management and I don't want to offend anybody it's about existing customers for me that's not really selling it's more like or taking and it's.

[00:18:09] For some cases there is a place for it, but most companies today are looking for new business and that's me selling and that is not account management and it needs a different skill sets.

[00:18:22] And it's important to do that once in a while but don't expect any leads from it. I don't know if I'm going to be LinkedIn is slowly getting. worse and worse I mean you go back five years ago five years ago LinkedIn was full of.

[00:18:44] Pretty competent people talking about pretty competent things and it was a good marketplace for ideas it's now like a street market everybody's got to stall everybody selling some sort of cheap plastic.

[00:18:57] TAT you've got nine ten year olds telling you on how to build a business you're 19 what the hell you've had six you know I'm not going to discredit some people but you're all these people tell you what it's like to be an underpinner it's like.

[00:19:10] You've seen up a business online for fuck sake I mean come on so LinkedIn is now you go through your feet and it's just advertising someone's got a graph a photo of someone's kids and it's just so watered down trying to find anything a value in there now.

[00:19:26] And it's just so if there's anyone out there working on a new platform other than LinkedIn where actual grown up business people could go and play let me know.

[00:19:36] But the thing it for me what I find very irritated is that LinkedIn is a means to reach a certain objective okay but there are people on LinkedIn and also with the head of eight of chatchipity they're creating this very smooth silk pictures and smooth pose.

[00:19:56] And I've noticed about these are the five steps to this or that and they I have the feeling that their their objective is to become very popular at LinkedIn so they have like 400,000 people who are liking their posts and like.

[00:20:11] Interesting I don't have does those kind of numbers and I don't care either because I care about saying things yeah maybe that is going to hurt a little bit because because I feel it's my opinion because the other things I tried and it does not bring me to reaching my objectives that I want to.

[00:21:02] Once referred to myself as an expert a leader a professional a guru or anything number one top performer biggest builder all the crap with people who reckoned they got it selling say I realize they fall under the same trap as most average sales people.

[00:21:20] be like the love so they go, look at me. I'm wonderful and I realize no one wants to be hated. That's why I came up with the UK's most hated sales strategist. Because I wanted other people to start tagging me in saying, you Benjamin ZX, but what

[00:21:36] do you think about this Benjamin? That tell you becoming expert in your field as other people call you it. You can't call yourself it. No, and it's also because I really convinced that I'm not for everybody. I have a certain personality and a certain provocativeness about certain things.

[00:21:55] The thing is that because you have hair, you went to the hairdresser, especially for this podcast, which I appreciate it. Yeah, and then I really, that's because you want to like me. And I don't have any hair.

[00:22:08] And the thing is that, yeah, I accept that I'm not for everybody, but I with this kind of communication other rather vibe with the tribe that connects with me and who wants to have a conversation that then, then with everybody.

[00:22:26] So it's kind of a qualification thing also because if I want to be popular, I would rather sell ice cream. Yes, then yeah, yeah, and again, again, LinkedIn, again, like I said, I can only speak for the sales world. Because I'm only in the sales world.

[00:22:44] I don't know what it's like for people that use LinkedIn for non sales because they are knowing thinking about modern social media. It's like with your bloody Netflix, and only if I recommend things you'll like it. So it always lives your scope.

[00:22:57] So I don't want to have my range limited for you. Only recommending things based on I would like to see stuff that the algorithm says I'd hate, but I should at least have the option of being able to choose it or not.

[00:23:13] And I get annoying because when I go on to my, you know, it's the same with LinkedIn all I get is the same thing. So I popularize the particular way of telephone prospecting. There are so many copycats now. Everyone's doing it.

[00:23:26] Everyone's doing, I'll be out front Mrs. Ailes School. Do you want to hang up? Well, let me have 30 seconds. Yeah, and they change it. Do you would, would, would, would you knowing this is a sales school or do they make

[00:23:35] you want to chuck your phone out the window or whatever. So everyone's doing it. Every SDR, then post a video of them doing it and working. Then acting as if they've discovered gold. You know, look at this. It's up.

[00:23:47] I know we've been doing this for a long time. Then I get hundreds of likes. Good for you. That's awesome. You're a winner in that feeds into this narcissistic sort of thing. And so it's frustrating. And I'm hoping LinkedIn will change how it operates.

[00:24:05] It'll find a way to make better content. Not this non-stop drivel of, this is my work life balance. And here's me with my kids crap. You know, it's a fuck off. You know? I don't care. I don't care. I don't care about your alcoholism.

[00:24:26] I don't care that you've come off drugs. I don't care. What can you offer me? It's practical in the world of business. Who gives a rat to ask about your life? You don't allow to say this though. This is not popular. This is stuff that people don't like.

[00:24:42] Yeah, stick up a photo of a cat. Oh, isn't it wonderful? Yeah, stick up a photo. I don't know of a hairless pigeon, which is actually more realistic and then it's nothing. So if you're chasing likes, you're a fool because those metrics be nothing.

[00:24:59] If your content doesn't get people to reach out to you and it's useless. And most of the content on their nails is quite crap. I'm not, I'm not gonna lie. Particularly in my channel. I like this, I can't speak for the whole platform.

[00:25:12] I want to be clear on that, like them. I'm saying within the sales sphere, it's turned to a marketplace of cheap plastic tech. By all well, they also think that's a result of course the social media platform but also the fact that like 10 years ago or 15 years ago,

[00:25:30] I mean, the space where I was in was more like the IT infrastructure thing. Right? Compared to day, you even have tools and applications, like sales automation tools and things like that and people there are looking for the overnight success and the silver bullet email template

[00:25:47] that then everybody says yes to and the other comes in but it doesn't work. Yeah, and for me, it doesn't work to be on a show. I see also that again in the sales marketing space with this boom, this explosion of tools

[00:26:05] and automation, there are certain things you can automate but there are also certain things especially in connecting with new people. I mean, I think it's really difficult to automate that and I think also there lies the promises that these vendors are making towards salespeople

[00:26:25] and I assume that they salespeople think up maybe that there's the part of least resistance, maybe they're lies the pot of gold at the end of the lane or whatever. Yeah. No, I mean, again, like with all social media,

[00:26:39] you have to be wary of it because everyone always puts up the best image. Right? And behind the figures, if there is no money, then it's all vanity and it's like I say, measuring the wrong things like you're irrelevant. And the number of views is good

[00:26:57] because it means people have maybe seen it, but it's the level of engagement, the number of people contact interacting with it. That's what you want and a lot of LinkedIn's, yeah, drivel. And if you see a lot of the interaction too,

[00:27:10] you someone's got 300 comments, but then you read them and they're all just good for you. I love it. Great, nice. It's like, well, this is just fluff. This is a real engagement. Yeah, and so yeah. So yeah, anyway, everyone's going to have to change how they behave.

[00:27:32] I'm like, then if they want it to be more worthwhile, I think who knows what LinkedIn's doing in the back of the night. And I really think it's a part about, I mean, it's not about the likes. It's the people who don't like

[00:27:44] and they send you a secret message because they don't want to share their struggles or whatever or challenges, whatever. I mean, they're lies for me, me, the gold and not the comments. I mean, the funny thing I found as a post from a while ago is that,

[00:28:06] and it's a bit, it's two questions in one. It's where did you get your knowledge from? And combined with, I mean, if I look at myself, if I'm being really honest, I learned the most from everything that I failed and I've fucked over to be honest.

[00:28:23] I mean, that's where I mean, to really say, that I mean, that I did not do well instead of being successful because if I look at that, it could be that I was surfing a certain wave or I wasn't a boy by your market

[00:28:38] when my product was being bought because I was at a right time, at right place, et cetera, et cetera, so but there is no really a lesson in there because you cannot reproduce that. So the first question is where do you get your knowledge

[00:28:55] in combination with the fact that you were mentioning in that certain post that you consider yourself as an average salesperson? Yes, so I've had a bit of it of beating some very smart people in my life who had a big influence.

[00:29:13] I mean, the guy called Mark is Kelke. He's a sales coach and trainer. He's been many years ago and he opened my eyes up to a lot of the behaviors and habits that make successful people and he was a very good mentor to me.

[00:29:31] And I decided after meeting him and learnings from him with the going out the real world and starting to implement some of the stuff that he taught me that I really liked it and I wanted to get good at it.

[00:29:43] That's when I realized, when I discovered a taste that when I realized that selling properly was an actual process, that it wasn't just your person. I had fuck all to do with my person. And personality is important, don't get me wrong, you need it.

[00:29:57] But people weren't buying because of me. They're buying in spite of me and a lot of salespeople feel that people buy them. They buy into me, they bought into me, they bought into the way I've delivered the presentation. And so they hold onto clients

[00:30:12] as if they're almost personal friends, that they've developed a reality is prospects by for their reasons. Never the, never the sellers. They could have bought in spite of you and in fact a lot of times they probably have. They've got it, it's gotten on to do with you.

[00:30:27] We needed what you had, you came in. We'd already decided we wanted the solution. You just happened to give the intellectual justification for the decision we kind of already come to the conclusion. So we bought, you could have sent in a chimpanzee

[00:30:44] on the streets reality who would have done the same thing. So one of the things I had to learn very quickly is, selling is getting, it's getting to understand why somebody wants it and they're giving them the intellectual justification for why they should be in satisfied.

[00:31:00] The problem is as prospects don't want you to know the real why. Because if you know the real why, the real why could be we're not gonna buy. The only reason you're here as we're using you because we already have an idea on how to fix this ourselves

[00:31:16] but you're the experts and we just want to run things by you. We want to pick your brain. The other one is, we already have a supply for this particular product or service. We haven't told you that. We're gonna use your data to go back to them

[00:31:32] to get a better deal. That's what we're doing. We're using you. The other thing is, we just intellectual curious. We haven't made a decision one way or the other. We're not even sure we need to change, however. It's just something we're curious and your a salesman

[00:31:51] you got nothing better to do than come of e-dustrange or talk about how to fix it problem. So we've got you in. Or we really need what you have. But we can't tell you how about Twitter because if you knew how fucked up the situation was,

[00:32:11] you would be walking out of here or to recumb let you know that. So those are normally the four reasons why you're in front of someone and they won't tell you that. So your job as a salesman is to get to figure out

[00:32:27] what is actually going on and that takes good questioning. It takes cunning questioning. It takes questions to track them into giving you the truth. It forces you to dig deeper which is what most salespeople don't do because they're of the opinion

[00:32:42] of someone who said I'm interested in what you have, they're really interested in what we have. No, no. And so a salesman's job is to figure out why am I here? Why am I here and if you can't do that you'll always have long sales cycles

[00:33:01] proposed and squakes hopes that go nowhere because they only ask for that to get rid of you. That's how you get rid of a salesman. What about a buyer for them? Look, can you send me something? Very interested, really keen to move this forward. Just send us something.

[00:33:15] Then now you're gone and we got a document. Thank you. Now we go to our supplier and we say look, we've been with these guys. We like what they do. Can you do this? Otherwise we're off. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

[00:33:26] week week and no, don't you worry about that yet cause yeah. So it's a game that's being played and prospects are playing a very good game and they outs my most salespeople and most salespeople go along with it. And you know why they go along with it

[00:33:40] because they get fair because they put themselves in the shoes of their prospect and say, I would do exactly what he was doing if I was in his shoes. So they're throwing a little bit to me. No, you're a salesman.

[00:33:54] You're not a prospect when you're in front of a prospect. You are a salesman. They don't get it. So I had to figure out how to act and behave to eliminate to be acting like a prospect and once you eliminate acting like a prospect, you're now a salesman.

[00:34:10] My job is to get to the truth. That's it. And you mentioned one's mentor, were there other influences globally? People that you admire, I mean, that you think, I mean, I don't know the Jordan Belferts or whatever. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:34:30] David Ma, I mean again. No, I learned from. I don't admire. I haven't learnt much from him. I've learned how not to sell. I think one of the issues say failure is best. I've been around a lot of people that thought they were good at selling

[00:34:50] it were bloody awful and they taught me how not to sell. And I think that's one of those powerful things is being around people that think they're good, but actually you're bad and you watch them and you realize if I behave like that idiot,

[00:35:03] I'm gonna be like that idiot. So learning how to do the opposite. So you look at people that think they're good. A lot of things I teach my clients when you're trying to recruit your new sales person, is I say don't read any CVs

[00:35:15] because all CVs are Bollocks. Sit them a task. Have it get a burn of phone. You know, I burn a mobile phone, that disposable phone. And you just have every candidate. Phone this phone and leave a voice message that would make me wanna call you back.

[00:35:35] First of all, most people won't phone. You'll get a hundred CVs, but you ask them to call about 90% won't even call. And then you left with 10-lit phone. And now what I'm doing is, I wanna listen to what they sound like because there are two types of people

[00:35:51] that leave voice messages and it gives you an insight into their personality to what they'll be like when they're selling because this is a sales call for them. The brief of they are the better they're gonna be. Hey Benjamin, I saw that you're advertising

[00:36:05] for a sales training apprentice interested in the job. If you could give me a call, I'd appreciate it. It's someone said, what he hasn't even tried. A sell-up stuff, no. What he's demonstrated is fucking good at communicating. He's direct, he's to the point.

[00:36:21] And then you hit the other high-peachment, and I'm really interested in the job that I've been in sales for last 10 years. I've really enjoyed it, but I just now feel like now being a good experience. I've been following online for ages. I really think I would,

[00:36:34] and it's like, oh my God, you're gonna be like that on Bhoiro. That's what you're gonna be like in front of. But no, no, no, I don't want you. I want the first guy. It's the first guy is gonna qualify hard

[00:36:45] and he's gonna be directed to the point and he's gonna make me compelled to want to spend more time with him. You are gonna piss me off because you're just like me. So it's a good way of the limiter day before you even meet anyone.

[00:36:58] You can eliminate most candidates just from how they sound of a voicemail. So this means also Benjamin that if I was a sales manager or I am a sales manager, that it would be better to hire young people who you can coach, then rather old, old people.

[00:37:22] Sorry, senior people who call themselves experts who are actually cutting corners and are so stubborn to learn anything. There's actually a little bit to watch about you because I fully agree with you, eh? Yes, no, no, no, no people, yeah, you do have to teach people.

[00:37:39] And the other thing is they have to want to do it. Now I've said this so many times. 90% of people who are in sales don't actually want to be there. This isn't what they had planned for their life. They had dreams. They had goals.

[00:37:56] They had aspiration for whatever reason. That's not happened yet. So what do you do if you have no training? You've got no skillset. You could have gone to the University and studied French literature or daily art or gender studies or even a bachelor and economics.

[00:38:16] What are you going to do with that? You need a job, you're educated, you don't dribble, you can string a sentence together, but no actual skill. You end up in sales. That's the only place for you, right? And so most people that are there,

[00:38:34] big down don't want to be there. So if you've deep down doing something that you don't really want to do, are you going to invest the time and money, the blood sweat and tears to get really good at it?

[00:38:46] Some will, some will say, you know what, I'm at it. I like this and I think if I make a go of this, I'll do really well. So I'm going to use my own time and my own money and I'm going to figure out how to get better.

[00:38:58] And I'm going to rely on my boss to improve me. Yeah, I'm going to do this. Yeah. And so you can eat self-motivators, self-starters, people that are willing to invest in themselves. But you don't get that with most salespeople. Because like, yeah, yeah.

[00:39:15] That's, I fully agree with it. I was, as actually quite frustrated because I find that, and I've been there to myself. I mean, when I was younger, I felt that the company should invest in me and train myself. When I'm right now,

[00:39:33] I, the, the books, the podcast because the fact that I'm asking you on the podcast is because I'm actually doing it for me. Because I want to become better, but learning stuff, but I'm not waiting until my employer or my,

[00:39:48] the, the, the person or the company who's going to pay me, it's going to give me a training, which is normally going to be quite general. And in order to, to improve myself and I find that a lot of people

[00:40:01] and it's younger, older, they don't have the grintet to really invest in themselves and they're like, Peter, but should I do this within the working hours? Or I mean, you, you are doing this outside to working hours, but I, I, I cannot watch Netflix anymore.

[00:40:19] I'm like, no, I don't watch it. And I don't watch television. I rather do this because I'm so hungry about the knowledge, to learn and to improve. And yeah, I mean, it's a very important parameter. How much? How hard do you want it?

[00:40:36] Exactly. I'm, I'm a qualified lawyer. I, a lot of people don't know. There's a qualified lawyer. I'm a barrister. I qualified. But now, I had to go to university. No one forced me. I had to choose to go to university.

[00:40:52] I had to choose to go to lectures because they weren't compulsory. You didn't have to go. I had to borrow money to pay, to voluntarily go. I had to voluntarily study. No one forced me to start. I didn't have to study. You're at university.

[00:41:08] You can spend it drunk and stone your whole time. You don't have to do anything. No one forces you to do anything. And then I had to sit in the exams. And then I had to go to all the training to be a barrister.

[00:41:21] I had to do that off my own bed. I had to motivate myself. And so these are why lawyers and doctors and accountants are professions. Because these are people that said, I want to be a lawyer.

[00:41:33] So I'm going to put it in the effort to become a lawyer. But when it comes to sales, it's a need of job. Fall into sales. Company will tell me what the product is. And then I just go out and I regurgitate involvement.

[00:41:46] And if nothing works, where it's not my fault, will I have you done anything to figure out what makes a good no? It's a company store. They're supposed to. And this is the mindset and the culture. And it's just, I frustrate me.

[00:42:03] I mean, I can't wait in my way to get out of sales trading because you spend your life working with people that it just don't want to be. They just don't care. And it can be frustrating. That's why I hate the corporate stuff.

[00:42:16] Yeah, I really push hard. I find it hard to work with corporate. They have to really convince me that I should come and work with their sales team. Because I know most of them don't think they need help. Most of them don't care that they're only earning 50k.

[00:42:30] They say they want more, but they're not going to do anything to make more. So all you're doing is wasting your money. So if you want to work with me as a business with the sales team,

[00:42:38] and make you prove to me that this is going to be worth my work. Because otherwise, I can't be asked. And yeah, do do do do do do do you see a difference between cultures, between countries that they have a different approach? Or it's all the same?

[00:42:56] I think it's fundamentally all the same. I think there's different, I think, but how you've really were all the same? So I'm from New Zealand. Well, you were Germany. I don't know. I'm just making a assumption about Belgium. Belgium. Belgium. Belgium. Right. You've been raised.

[00:43:14] I guarantee you were raised to say what I was raised. I bet you were told it's never talked to strangers. weren't you taught that? As a kid, were you taught it's rude to interrupt? Yes. Were you taught that if you were asked a question by anyone

[00:43:29] older and authority as a kid that you didn't have the choice of answering, you had to answer? Did your mother dad see before you make a decision, sleep on it, get several options? Yes. Look at this. Belgium, New Zealand. Couldn't be further away.

[00:43:44] We are all programmed the same way. American Australian, India, I've done China. The New England, they teach it. We all teach the same rules. These are all the things that affect us when we grow up to be good at selling.

[00:43:58] So no, I think culturally as behaviorally, I think we're all the same. I think we have different views on, so I think the Americans far more appreciate selling because they're a capitalist society. They've been built on capitalism. They're a pioneering can-do spirit.

[00:44:16] It's your fault if you get sick. The state aren't going to give you healthcare. You go out and make it. That's ingrained into their DNA. Whereas Europe, we're all socialists. The government will always buy all your out. The government will give you a house.

[00:44:30] The government will give you healthcare. You don't have to do anything because the states got attacked. Everybody who does do something and give the money to you. So we're very different in how we view things. Hades America, wealthiest, most powerful country on the earth.

[00:44:47] Because the attitude is you go to make it yourself. The American way is anyone can do it. But you've got to do it. Whereas in Europe, it's... Well, given it going, but if it doesn't work, we're still here to touch it. I think that's a different difference.

[00:45:05] That's indeed, especially... First of all, cold calling. I have lots of discussions with salespeople, but also with... It's not a pernuch. Peter Cold calling. We're not going to cold call. I'm like, why not? What's wrong with the cold call? Yeah, but it's interrupting people. I'm like, yeah.

[00:45:28] And we have like a diamonds. I mean, maybe there are people who have a problem where we can solve this with our product. I mean, it would be a disservice to the world if we don't call them. Yeah, but isn't that a little bit hard?

[00:45:44] Are we not going to disturb them? And I'm like, yeah. And... But it's a problem with that. I mean, if somebody is good, go to something. Go back to that programming. Because what they've just said there is what your mother taught you.

[00:45:55] Your mother said it's rude to interrupt a never-talked astrainders. That is the very concept of prospecting. You have to interrupt a busy stranger. And every bit of you freak out because you're about to go against something your whole life you'll told you can't do.

[00:46:11] Now, some people could do it because they're quite... They have a rebellious kid. I never, I always thought my mother did. We're talking about like, anyway. So some people could do it to say natural. But most people... I'm going to say that scripting unless they force themselves.

[00:46:26] Oh, yeah. It's fascinating. We are a product of our programming. Like say Belgium, New Zealand, totally different sides of the world. Same programming. Yeah, that's true. And yeah. But at the same time, I mean... If you are an entrepreneur or salesperson, your pipe is dry.

[00:46:48] I mean, there is no silver bullet and that's for sure. Every wherein in the planet. So there's a big difference between this rock tring stranger and acting like a complete asshole. And acting like a salesperson who has played a kind of commute in the Wolf of Wall Street.

[00:47:09] I did say, act like that. There is also another way of doing it. Like acting like a human being and connecting there. And also, yeah, qualifying. Now, I mean, you just mentioned a little bit. But within 10 years, are you still doing what you're doing, Benjamin?

[00:47:27] Will I be doing this in 10 years? Yeah. Yes. I'm going to say, I don't think I will be. No. I'm pretty sure I'll be doing something different. I'm... I'm someone who likes to achieve things and then once I've done it, I move on to something else.

[00:47:44] So I wanted to become a lawyer. So I became a lawyer. And then realising I didn't want to be a lawyer. I wanted to get really good at selling and making a lot of money. So they didn't have to do selling.

[00:47:52] I said, a lot of people don't realise that's a whole point you get a good at selling is so you don't have to sell. That's the whole point of it. You want to build a business where you don't have to be. I've seen, I don't mind prospecting.

[00:48:05] But I couldn't wait not to have to do it. Because if I have to keep prospecting, then I failed at building a business. Because I said, now if the business gets bigger, great, I then employ people to prospect and say, look, your job isn't to prospect that effort.

[00:48:21] You've just got to build up enough business for you to be making money and then you can move up the chain and do so. Or you'll go off and create your effort. So the purpose, I get people say, well, if you don't prospect for yourself,

[00:48:32] then why should you teach it? Well, while I'm good at it, I still do it just for bits and giggles. But I don't need to. But I don't want to be doing it every day. I don't want no.

[00:48:42] But I want to get to a point where people realise, this guy's good at what he does. I want to learn from him. I don't need him to call me to selling, call and call and training.

[00:48:50] I'm going to go to heaven and say, Benjamin, can you teach me? So I want to be an order to take it. I'm consciously going out of it. So you learn to sell to become an order tiger.

[00:49:00] Most people go into selling them and just become order tigers and think these are the styles. And they win the shit hits the fan. They don't know how to sell. And then that's a great one. That's a great one.

[00:49:12] You sell in order to become an order to take. Yes, I haven't thought about that. That's a great one. That's what? Yeah. That's the whole point to business. I want to get so good at selling. I don't have to sell. I want to be an order tiger.

[00:49:29] I want people just buying my stuff without me having to do anything. And if you don't want to do that, you want to spend your life prospecting. Good. But if you can do that, but that's not the motivation. That's not what you want to do.

[00:49:43] You don't build a business by prospecting your whole life. Something's going wrong. And do you think, uh, with the whole digital blah, blah, blah in the world? Do the transformation and all that AI stuff. Do you think salespeople will say or do? Yeah.

[00:50:00] I believe that telephone prospecting in particular will almost go the way of the coal vine. I believe it's still a ways off. But AI is getting so sophisticated to being after imitating a human being. Now, what I teach is basically an algorithm.

[00:50:22] I teach a structure and a process. And I've always said, if I could replace you with a robot to do this, did I house successful they'd be because they have no feelings? And so when it didn't work,

[00:50:33] they go back and slightly retweet the peaches and try it again. Or they change how they speak. Or they take off the pains wrong. Or they'd accept that well, it didn't fail because I did it badly. This person wasn't right. So they'll start to figure out wrong prospect.

[00:50:45] I said a robot could do that all this is. And people that get good at what I do, when you see the people on LinkedIn that are doing what I teach, I listen to them. They will sound like me.

[00:50:55] They're like, they're like, they're doing it's the same thing. Over and over and over and over and over again. So I believe AI will take that. I don't think you're going to need teams of people sitting on the phone's

[00:51:08] bashing it out because AI is going to get so good that people aren't going to know if it's a human or not. And whether or not legally you'll have to tell people, it's AI, I don't know, or if they're real.

[00:51:21] I don't know, but I do think that AI will not maybe eliminate it 100%, but I think 80% of STR roles and stuff like that could probably disappear and be automated. It won't take over face to face selling until they create really cool robots

[00:51:41] that look like humans and can do that. But I think on the phone, I've listened to it. It can start muttering. It's over to go, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, okay, no, make sense.

[00:51:50] Really, that must be to it's going to do all it's going to get better and better and better and better. And yes, you won't need a person. Why would you have someone with all their head trash and all their baggage and the sickness and the...

[00:52:02] When I got an out, when I got a robot here in AI, they'll do it 24, seven, never-mode, never-complane. Never go off-script fixes it script, when it has to modify as an adapt sort of has to. That's why you're a bit of a human.

[00:52:16] And so, is it a bad thing? Probably not. So the first thing that you're saying is going to replace the SDR BDR, so it's getting that first meeting, real meeting? Yeah, that's part is going to be first to replace the I believe so.

[00:52:32] I could be wrong, but I don't want to be one of those dinosaurs. It says, this AI stuff is just a fashion that pain. I don't think it is, it's only going to look at, look at mobile phones.

[00:52:46] And all of this stuff, they've just got smaller and smaller and faster and faster and faster. Do you want to see, think AI? Is it, you listen to it now and it's pretty impressive. So it's only going to get better and it is going to, yeah.

[00:53:01] So I think if you're an SDR, I'd invest heavily in learning how to sell because, yeah, the days and numbers, the days are numbered. Hmm, interesting. I mean, if you lost question, if you would run into the Benjamin who is 18 years young

[00:53:17] and is going to start his university a year, what kind of advice sales advice life advice would you give him? I tell you what I would have done. It's the benefit of hindsight because everyone I've been to university

[00:53:36] will have said so if we don't all be smarter with money. You see, when you're into university, the government gave you a lot of cash and what did you do? Most of us spent it on alcohol and cigarettes and party.

[00:53:52] Had we all come together and bought a house instead of renting? Had we all put that, so my advice if I could and it's only with the benefit of a hindsight. So it's a false in the video ways because the real advice would be

[00:54:08] don't do anything different because where you are today is a product. Yeah, okay, I know I know. If I could do it, one thing would be, don't be a dick beach, but club together with your mates, buy a house,

[00:54:20] pay the mortgage off, then you've got an asset 20 years later. Yeah, yeah, that student loan rather than had been a debt would have been a great asset. That's one thing. I wish I had the brains at the time to have done bought a property 30 years ago

[00:54:38] with the student loan, that would have been smart. Yeah, okay. You have children now? I have a daughter just one, yes. Okay, sorry, one daughter, how young is she? She's 10. Then okay, I mean, imagine she's she's becoming 20, she wants to become an entrepreneur, like her dad.

[00:55:01] And she says, that teach me how to sell. Where would you start? Well, I started when she was born. So I, you know all the programming that we were just talking about, I haven't given it to her. I've changed the script.

[00:55:23] So obviously never talked to a stranger as great advice for a child. It's stupid for an adult. So every rule I've given to her whenever we discuss anything, I constantly say, until you're adult, I say, these rules do not apply when you're an adult.

[00:55:40] When you're an adult, I want you to talk to anyone and everyone. When we talk about money, she knows exactly how much everything costs. She knows how much we bought our house for. She knows how much I earn. She knows how much I talk to.

[00:55:51] I talk to a freely about, I say, I don't want you having shitty money concepts. You are someone when you see them. How much was your new bike? Now they can say, I don't want to answer, but I don't want you to be scared to talk about money.

[00:56:03] So you talk about it. Don't answer a question. I tell her that you do not have to answer a question. I want you to ask a question back. So if I asked my daughter, how is your dad's school? So you guys, how do you think it was?

[00:56:16] She's 10 years old and she can do this. So I asked, and so she's, so I've said to her, you don't know, every answer a question. I've told her, if the police, I said, I don't care if the police ever come up to you

[00:56:28] and say we need to talk to you. You're first thing you say, I need to talk to my mum or my lawyer. I'm not answering any of your questions. And I've drung into her. You can talk to strangers. It's okay when you're an adult.

[00:56:41] You are an adult and you're dropped. You are an adult and you're dropped. You're an adult and you're dropped. I will out of tell you, I busy, I have that right, but interrupt. Talk to anyone. Ask any question. Talk about money.

[00:56:54] So I'm ingraining into her all the stuff that held us back and that help me better than I had to overcome as an adult. So she should hopefully be ready for this. So when some young teenage boys trying to get in her pants, she's got a grilling.

[00:57:09] Well, why do you love me? So when you asked me what advice, I've been working on the programming of my kids that she was born. And I've told her, and I've also been realistic. I said, look, who cares about school?

[00:57:27] I said most of the brightest people I know didn't go to university. What they did was they figured out how to sell something and make money. I said, so go to school, have fun. I'm not really fussed about grades or results.

[00:57:40] And this is something about it that says, maybe there's an issue with you. I said, other than that, enjoy school, study whatever you want at university. And that don't go. Would be my first bet. It's got to there if they're absolutely useless now, it is anyway.

[00:57:54] So unless you want to be a doctor, there's no reason to go to university anymore. They just pointless. Yeah, but it's not going to give you the skills you need to become. No, it's not going to give you the skills.

[00:58:05] It's going to give you the skills to become a corporate slave. Yeah. And so I'm very relaxed with her. And I say, look, you're going to find your passion and then you're going to figure out how to monetize your passion. And that's it.

[00:58:18] That's what you're going to do. And then you're never going to work a Daniel life. So I'm programming here to do that. But she could choose whatever life she wants for herself, but as long as I've given her this, I'll be happy. Thanks a lot.

[00:58:32] Benjamin for this wonderful of girls. I really appreciate it. You know what? And I'm not going to ask you if you like the conversation. So no, no, no. So just for your viewers, if you want to get a hold of me, my YouTube channel,

[00:58:44] you can use most hate itself, trainer or my platform where I sell. I've got hundreds of hours of training and videos. It's called salesmaetricscourses.com. So if you want sales matrix, sales matrix, sales matrix, sales matrix, courses. Yes. Okay. So metrics is like metrics on the full moon.

[00:59:07] As in the full moon, yes, the matrix. Cause sales people are stuck in a matrix and they don't realize it. I mean, once they see it, they can free themselves from behaving the way they're behaving. So I'm sure you're in the blue pill. I am the blue pill.

[00:59:22] Exactly. We're the red hat, red hat. This is the red. But if you take this, you are going to fundamentally realize how much your life is going to change. And you're either going to accept it and want to keep out of the matrix.

[00:59:34] All you're going to say, I want to go back in. Cause I can't hand it out here. Hmm. Okay, cool. So Kenorif's, thanks a lot for the great conversation. I wish you all the best.