Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
D32 is a premium business growth network where business leaders and experts in Perth and across Australia form meaningful relationships so they can leverage the time, contacts and activities of a vast network. D32 supports the little guys (and gals) and the 7-8-figure businesses. We’re a community that has each others’ backs. This podcast is about all things business, entrepreneurship and connectiom.
D32_Part4_Paul Claessen
[00:00:00] Welcome back to the fourth part of this series with Paul Klassen, uh, from Paul Klassen Consulting on basically step-by-step, a university course in a few minutes on how to run your small business with all the steps in place. If you've missed out on the first three. I would really encourage you to go back and listen to them.
'cause they really are the foundation, uh, of putting everything in place for what we're talking about today, which is actually the growth of your business, which we all want. Uh, but definitely have a listen to those, take some notes, put it together, start working it through. Uh, Paul's generously given his time to be able to do this for us today.
Uh, so Paul, thank you and I'm looking forward to hearing all about this whole growth phase of the small business. Growth is another word for sales mate. And I think everybody thinks sales is a dirty word and you've gotta be, um, [00:01:00] you know, using all of these, uh, sales tactics that Zig Ziglar and, um, all of those sorts of people promoted.
Now, to be abundantly clear, I think some of those things are brilliant. Notwithstanding all of that, sales is an extraordinarily important part of a business. And if you can turn the sales process away from an art and into a system, it's a lot easier for you to be able to unpack, you know, what to continue doing, or what to really lean on because it's going really well and where there's some opportunities for improvement.
You can get very specific around what do you need to do in order to improve. To the extent that you're getting the, the numbers that you need. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So when you talk about putting it into a system, can you explain what that is? 'cause a lot of people go out and they'll try and sell something.
I. Or they'll have a sales not know so [00:02:00] much a process, but there's no real system that's followed. There's nothing that someone else can come on board and go, this is how we do things. Mm-hmm. Uh, it seems very ad hoc where they'll just grab some salespeople, okay, you gotta go out and sell this widget or sell this airtime or sell whatever it is.
Yeah. How do you put together a system? Well, let's start with a couple of baseline philosophies. You can't sell anyone anything ever. Well, I think it's very important to understand that you can't sell anyone anything ever. You can help people buy, and that is the best way to sell. And, and the best proxy, the best salespeople on the planet are general practitioners.
I'm talking in the medical community because what they do in order to help people buy and all they're, all they're trying to sell 'em is a course of treatment. It might be some rehabilitation in through a physio. It might be a, a certain prescribed medication that, you know, there'll be, there'll be an infinite array of certain treatments.
That's what they're trying to sell you as a [00:03:00] patient. Now, what does the doctor do in every instance? First diagnose, then prescribe. Mm-hmm. And if you as a salesperson, invert that and prescribe, in other words, go and try and. Sell on features and benefits without really understanding the problem that you're solving.
It would be akin to you walking into a doctor's surgery and the doctor going, look, I've got these great drugs, mate, as, as an opening sort of part of the sales mate or part of the doctor's consult. And you'd be like, sorry, what? I've got these fantastic drugs. It's for knee pain. And you'd be like, I don't actually have any knee pain.
I came here for elbow pain. I'll tell you what, I'll give you two for the price of one. If that was in a doctor's setting, you would stand up and quietly sprint at the door and never go back to that doctor again. And unfortunately, in sales, we've got this whole thing about selling on features and benefits and doing this and doing that, and all of these sorts of things.
And we never stop and understand the problems that the client is [00:04:00] having. So there are five steps to selling. You should always follow these five steps. It doesn't really matter now, you can break it up into five separate meetings, or you can, you can do it in one. It depends on how your, you know, the types of clients you're dealing with and the, the way your system works.
But stage one is qualified can you, it's not qualifying the customer. Everyone thinks it's about qualifying the customer. It's not like the customer doesn't prove anything to you. It's, you need to prove to yourself that your service or product adds value to that customer. If it solves a problem, if it doesn't solve a problem, you're morally bound to not sell to them.
So that's the first thing. Qualification. The next thing is discovery like, which is the diagnosis stage. Your job is to actually understand the client's challenges or customer's challenges in pretty fine detail, like it's very important to actually do that. Stage three is all about [00:05:00] actually providing some recommendations.
I didn't say proposal. I said recommendations You should recommend to somebody how they solve the problem. Of course, you say, well, if we were to help you implement these recommendations, here is our proposal to do so, which is just your sales proposal, but it's the, it's the recommendation. Stage four and stage five, the last phase of any sale is managing risk, and it's not you.
As the provider managing risk, it's you helping the potential customer manage the risk. And the biggest risk you are facing when you're selling something to someone is that they'll feel like a fool for buying it. So you have to help someone get over the idea that if it all goes wrong, they'll feel like a fool.
So that is a basic sales system that should be followed by anyone selling a professional or an industrial service because it's like. There is no other way of doing it that I'm aware of it. It's, and, and I love what [00:06:00] you've just said because most people go out, I've got this thing. I need to find as many people as I can and sell it to them.
Whereas you are not actually trying to just find as many people and sell it to 'em. You are trying to find. What have you got? Can I help you? No, I can't. Not a problem. Can I help you? I think I can. Is this something that could help you? Bang, and it's a completely different way of going about it than what most people actually out there do and are taught to do as well.
Y you just think of yourself as a doctor or a lawyer, or an accountant. The first thing any of those people do professionals. The first thing any of them do is diagnose. Yep. Yet we as salespeople get taught constantly to show up and throw up. Sit down. Hi Kingsley, how are you? Have I got a deal for you?
And people are so fatigued of it, but counterintuitively, what people love is somebody helping them buy. And ultimately you need to like resolve yourself to the idea that maybe they're not gonna buy what you are offering them, but because you've helped them, they'll [00:07:00] talk positively about you until the cows come home.
Yeah, yeah. No, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. It's a very easy, like the rest of it, very easy system to follow. Uh, absolutely love that. Um, and obviously with sales comes growth, it just does. Can you run through the four pillars again just as we finish off in this series? Uh, the Four Pillars of Pathfinder and the best way for people to operate their business.
Okay. The four core pillars of any, and for me, my dream is to help anyone. Turn their business into a world-class business. That, that, to me, that's the impact I can have. So if you want to run a world-class business, you need a team of superstars because no organization, sports, whatever has ever succeeded without a team of superstars.
The second thing is you need to know how to predict the performance. That's financial, operational, execution, performance. Third, you need a path to win. You just need a path to win. So strategy is how you win, and [00:08:00] finally is you need to know how to grow. If you, if you've got those four things in place, you are a long way towards running a world class business and it's a damn site easier than rolling up to work and hoping, because hope is a very, very cruel master.
A really cruel master more often than not hope lets you down. So, I mean, I'm sort of sound like I'm talking, like running a business is, is kind of, you know, walking into the devil's playground and, and, and, you know, being, um, beaten and bashed every day. And in some parts it's like that. Typically what you'll find with business owners, small business owners, they live in one of two states.
Absolute euphoria or absolute terror. Mm-hmm. Pathfinder is something that helps you sit between those two, because that's really where you need to sit. Somewhere between euphoria and terror. And that's pretty much where a lot of you do sit in business every day really, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, [00:09:00] you wake up and go, you know, oh, what the hell's gonna kill me today?
Which is the absolute terror. Or you wake up and go, damn, I'm on top of the world. I could, I could literally be the next Mark Zuckerberg. Neither of those are particularly healthy for your own internal levels of stress. If you can find a way of just dropping the amplitude, no, it's never as bad as you think it is.
It's never as good as you think it is. Pathfinders a good way to do that because you look around and you go have, I've got a team of superstars. Is my business performance predictable? Can I win comfortably? Am I growing? If you can answer those things with a, you know, more than 60% confidence rating, you've got a pretty damn good business.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Paul, thank you so much for coming on and doing this series of podcasts. Uh, just one more time as we close up, how can people find you, find out more about what you're doing, and if they want to get in touch with you? The best way is a direct email. I'll always answer them. I can't answer an immediate, I can't guarantee an immediate response, but I can guarantee a response.[00:10:00]
It's Paul at Paul Klassen. Is P-A-U-L-C-L-A-E-S-S-E n.com au. Fantastic. Paul, once again, thank you so much for dropping, just so much absolute gold and simplicity in how to run a business, and thanks for joining us on the District 32 podcast and I look forward to catching up with you again next week.
Thank you. Thanks, Kingsley.