Ben Bennett: You use sales skills to acquire knowledge. You use these skills to better understand the needs of the people you want to be working with to deliver an outcome. You use sales skills to build rapport. You use sales skills to add value. You use sales skills to create long-lasting relationships and build trust.

Ben Bennett: And, it's not just a case of creating an environment that is transactional here. I want; therefore, you must give. Its more of, I understand that you have a need. I might be able to help and let's explore what that situation looks like.

Chris O'Hare: Welcome everybody. I'm Chris O'Hare your quick win CEO. And in this show, we talk to entrepreneurs and industry experts on different ways to improve your business and get their three quick win recommendations. And today we're talking to Ben Bennett, an expert in sales with 23 years’ experience, and he's trained thousands of people in the different components of a sale, such as the strategy, the processes and the tools.

Chris O'Hare: And in a previous role, Ben was also the chief operating officer for a blockchain start-up securing deals of up to 1.2 million and awarded a top 10 start-up in Europe. So, he clearly knows what he's talking about. It's great that we're going to get his opinion on the topic of this podcast, which is 'The Secret to Being a Billionaire is Sales'.

Chris O'Hare: We'd also get his quick win recommendations on how to improve your sales today. So, let's go. Hi, Ben. Firstly, tell me the last thing that you read or watched or did, that left an impression on you and, it could be anything, a Netflix series or a book you read, or even a quote.

Ben Bennett: Probably best. I avoid my Disney-plus adventures.

Ben Bennett: There are two books actually. So, one of them is behind me, there is Green Lights by Matthew McConaughey. So, he really strikes me as a person that embraces change in landscapes, in his life quite frequently, and he really does live in the present. And, the thing that I quite like about it is he seems really controlled, and at the same time entirely reckless and I find that quite an interesting quality in a person. But, you know, I really respect his attitude towards life and he's very much a I can do, I will do, as opposed to, the glass half empty kind of approach. So, you know, probably more of a personal one, but I actually found that both are a really good read, but yeah, just looking at the way that man takes his life and in his attitude towards it is really good fun.

Ben Bennett: And from a business perspective if you've not come across him before there's a guy called Daniel Priestley, and Daniel Priestley has written quite a number of books and is the man behind Dent Global. And basically, this book just talks about, you know, the way he sees the world of sales and business.

Ben Bennett: And it's really clear the way he articulates. It's incredibly easy to understand and, you know, just looking at the basic principles of supply and demand. But when you are looking at, how you apply his ideas into your own business or the way you sell or the way you see the world, is pretty much a must-read in my opinion.

Ben Bennett: So those are the two books that I would bring to the table for this discussion at least.

Chris O'Hare: Well, Matthew McConaughey, I mean, no one can forget his rendition in Wolf of Wall Street. That always comes to mind every time I think of trying to build motivation. I'm like, right. Okay, let's thump the chest, let's get, let's start cracking it out. But yeah, he's phenomenal. And one of my favourite actors actually, so glad you picked that up. And the book recommendation. Do you know what, we get so many book recommendations on this podcast. I got a list as long as my arm. And it's weird because most books are very subjective to the those people's personal experiences of why it hits home for them. Yeah. So, every book has a kind of  an edge to it that for them, it makes sense. And then you speak to someone else, and their edge is slightly different, and that book makes sense for them.

Chris O'Hare: So, what would you say that that edge of that particular book has done for you? What do you think hit home and you thought that's a book I'd recommend.

Ben Bennett: I think it's just easy to read. So, I'm not a massive reader, you know, truth be told I'm, I'm a more, a peruser of pages rather than a completer of books.

Ben Bennett: But, you know, I went covered to cover on that and I just felt that there's just so much that life has to offer. And by sitting there and just accepting the cards that you are dealt, you know, you are only going to either go so far or experience so much, but just the idea of him travelling around the world, going to see different sites on his own being completely fearless.

Ben Bennett: You know, when you, when you see those behaviours and recognize that actually you probably can apply some of those to your own life. It was, I just thought it was really, really great to, to recognize the opportunity that sits out there. And, you know, you can bring all of the business elements into that as well.

Ben Bennett: But, but that particular point in time, you know, I've lived a fairly quiet, normal life. Well, some might say not, but, you know, it's, it's one of those, one of those things where you realize that actually there is a, is a world of opportunity out there and sometimes just need someone to demonstrate that it's possible.

Ben Bennett: Yeah, I just, I really, I really felt comfortable. I felt like I knew this guy as I was reading it. And it was, it was really easy to, to you know, get cover to cover on which I, I've not done with the book in a long time.

Chris O'Hare: Mm. Well, that's obviously important. It's funny. Cos some books I can just read. And others, I just really struggle with.

Chris O'Hare: So, but again, again, I think it's that edge, it's that edge. It's that? What hit homes for you and, and what the learning and the lessons that you can take from it. And, and that keeps your hooked, but yeah, really good. Okay. I've got two books there to add to my list. So it's going to be 200 by the time I finish with this podcast, the amount of books I've got, but In terms of the topic today, which I think is quite an exciting topic actually, because it's something you hear a lot about, but you don't quite really understand what, what it means and why people think this.

Chris O'Hare: And so, I kind of want to get into the depth of what, what this topic is, and that's. The Secret to Being a Billionaire is Sales. And just to frame that question I read an article by someone called Jeff Hayden. He basically, he has 20 of the most successful people on earth to, to name one skill that they think had the biggest impact on the, the success.

Chris O'Hare: And mostly all of them said sales and persuasion and, and just kind of go into a bit more detail from that. So, Mark Cuban. One of the things he says is sales come first. And then if you another really famous billionaire Warren Buffet he, he's obviously very famous for his investing style, but he talks about sales.

Chris O'Hare: And if he says if you were going to. Take a course or do one thing in your life. That's the most important. He talks about sales and persuasion. Take a course in sales and persuasion, which again, alludes back to the quote by Jeff Hayden that, you know, that's one of the most important things. Why, why do you think that is the case?

Chris O'Hare: Why do you think all these billionaires are saying the sales is the most important part of their success?

Ben Bennett: I think it's relatively simple. And you know, they don't see sales. Like a lot of people do a lot, you know, the, with general public and, and people who are running small businesses or are new to industry, look at sales as something that's, it's old, it's really aggressive it's border line harassment and, you know, really is a dirty word.

Ben Bennett: But I think when you really understand what sales can mean in a much broader perspective, It's about value, right? So, if you are, if you are selling anything, you need to know a lot. And in order to know a lot, you've got to ask the right questions and, and look at the right places. So, you know, the way I, the way I see sales and, you know, disclaimer, I'm not a billionaire.

Ben Bennett: But it's you know, something that I've been involved with for a long time, and you use the sales skills to acquire knowledge. You use these skills to better understand the needs of the people you want to be working with to deliver an outcome. You use sales skills to build rapport. You use sales skills to add value.

Ben Bennett: You use sales skills to create long lasting relationships and build trust. And, and you know, it's not just a case of. Creating an environment that is transactional. Yeah. I want; therefore, you must give it's more of, I understand that you have a need. I might be able to help and let's explore what that situation looks like.

Ben Bennett: So, I think sales really covers. A plethora of things, not just about generating revenue, although if you want to be successful in business and, and reach that accolade of being a billionaire, then revenue is going to be important. But I think it's the foundations that sit underneath sales that, that are far more important.

Ben Bennett: I mean, you mentioned Buffett there talking about persuasion as well. And I think for me, that's a bit of an interesting one. So, you know, if you look at persuasion, As helping someone make a choice, one choice over another persuasion or the art persuasion can be a good thing. However, using sales tactics using the art of persuasion, using psychology to persuade people, to do things that they don't want to do for me is a no-no.

Ben Bennett: And you know, in a lot of training that I do for businesses, we talk about, you know, understanding the power of sales techniques and it really can be used for good and evil. But you know, if you are, if you are in the right place and using it for the right reasons, it's a very, very powerful and productive.

Ben Bennett: Skill set and, and talk it to have, have in your arsenal. So, I get why they're saying that without sales, you haven't really got. Anything else? Mm

Chris O'Hare: it's interesting though. You said talk here and that's what I was going to say. There isn't sales, a collection of skills under this guise of, you know, the umbrella of sales, right?

Chris O'Hare: So, you are negotiating and all communication and persuasion. That's, that's a whole topic that we could talk about in terms of persuasion, but would you say that's, that's the case that sales is almost just an umbrella term for lots of different soft skills that, that you kind of bring to the table.

Chris O'Hare: The whole package together to, to kind of convince someone to buy something from you, would you say that's the case? I think

Ben Bennett: that's an absolutely fair statement. You know, so the role of the salesperson now has changed from when I started 20 plus years ago. And it's, you know, back when I started, it was dial as many phone numbers as you can get us through to as many people, as you can convince as many people as you can.

Ben Bennett: And what it actually looks like now is far more of a, you know, let's truly understand our customer's problems. Can we fix them? Can we address them? Can we demonstrate value? Can we demonstrate value beyond our competitors? Can we build those relationships? Rapport? Can we overcome internal buying problems, stakeholder issues?

Ben Bennett: Can we manage multichannel outreach campaigns? You know, it is hugely complex. And I think to, to think of sales, as in, like I said, at the beginning, I want you pay. It, it just is not that anymore. And you know, I I've talked quite openly about the desire to change its name. You know, I'm not, I'm never going to be on a one-man crusade to help do that, but it's got such negative connotations around the word sales.

Ben Bennett: And the word incidentally is it comes from a, a Scandi word which actually means to serve. So, you know, the, its people misunderstand what it is, but you're right. Sales. Or sales skills are a toolkit of many different things. So yes, objection handling relationship management, you know, all of these things are going to be fundamental to taking a person from entirely unaware of you through to being a user and a massive advocate of your product or service.

Ben Bennett: But that is a long journey from building awareness through to advocacy. That takes a lot, and that's not just a single job of a salesperson either. So as an organization, you’ve got marketing on the front end of that. You've got sales and customer onboarding client success, you know, and then, then you've got the whole piece of enabling customers to be advocates and champions of your brand they're there.

Ben Bennett: So, it needs a rebrand, but yeah, there's just so many moving parts on underneath that, that, that really can feed up into that overall sales description.

Chris O'Hare: Now you are the sale, the sales expert, I would say in terms of the way you you're coming across you, you you're saying the right things in terms of, you know, there's all these different elements to sales, but if you, if you talk to probably other entrepreneurs, they don't have that.

Chris O'Hare: Collection of skills and, and they don't understand the kind of the, the lines between each of those skills and saying, you know, so there's a bit over here that we need to work on. It's a bit over here. They just see it as this, this general term. And for me, that, that general term is if you don't have any sales, you don't have a business because you've got nothing to sell to, to someone.

Chris O'Hare: And actually, when I first started. I realized quite early on that if there was no one to sell to there's no service to provide or, or there's nothing to do. And actually. First and foremost, I just need, to start talking to people and trying to convince people that I was the worthy person for that, that job, that service or whatever that is that they wanted to do.

Chris O'Hare: So, for me, boiling it down, like that was all, it was, it was just convincing people that I could provide something. And then, and then I could actually do that thing. Because before that I couldn't do that. So, I needed to have that, that, that element of a, of a sale and. And kind of going further than that.

Chris O'Hare: I think psychologically the way I look at sales, this is my opinion, obviously. I see it as being brave, right? To, to go actually go out and talk to someone and say, would you buy this thing? Would you give me your money for me to do something for you? I think for me, Fundamentally, if you can't do that and you can't ask someone to, to pay for something, how the hell can you be an entrepreneur?

Chris O'Hare: You know? And so, I, and I saw a nice little formula product. Plus, sales equals entrepreneur. I was like, that's really interesting, but I would've said sales plus product equals entrepreneur. Because if you've got nothing to sell, then if you've got no one to sell too, then. But what would you say to that?

Chris O'Hare: I mean, obviously I'm, I'm a bit more of a re reductionist in comparison to you, but would you say that where I was coming from, would you say that that's what most entrepreneurs come from when it, when they think about sales and then, and then how, how do you then convert their mindset into the way you talk about it?

Chris O'Hare: Which is a collection of tools in a toolkit.

Ben Bennett: So, I've, I've been working with businesses of various sizes. Some have got large sales teams; some are just starting out. And typically, most founders most are not from a sales background. They're either technical domain experts at what they do, which is why they typically go out on their own because they don't want that.

Ben Bennett: You know, they don't want to be employed anymore. Grab your time back, do whatever it is that you need to do. And. The problem that you find is that you go out into market with, I am this person and I do this thing, let me sell as much of it as possible. And the difficulty you've got there is you don't know how to identify the people that will buy it from you.

Ben Bennett: It also might be a crowded place. So really what I, you, this is from building products to offering service is you've got to try and understand who that idle customer is first. And then understand what's keeping them awake at night and then understand if you can actually solve that problem. So, if you look at that that product plus entre for plus sales equals entrepreneur, it's probably not that it's probably problem plus ability plus sales equals entrepreneur.

Chris O'Hare: I like that one, that's good.

Ben Bennett: So, if you've got, if you can match up a problem and know that you can fix it, you can find people with that problem. And that way, you know, that you're going in to. Rather than this is what I do. Can you buy it from me? And so, they're two different mindsets. One of them is helping.

Ben Bennett: One of them is perceived to be taking. So, if you can just get in your own mind, right. That you are solving a specific solution, a specific problem, sorry, for an individual or a business you are coming to help. And if you are helping, there is no reason why people won't pay you for that service.

Ben Bennett: That is sales. The reason it becomes icky when you're an entrepreneur or a new business owner, is there. That is that bravery, that confidence piece is you don't want to put yourself on a pedestal, put yourself out there and be everybody look at me. I've actually now got to pretend to be extroverted and I've got to pretend to be the greatest in the world.

Ben Bennett: And I I've got to put a price tag on it that I'm not quite sure is appropriate. Will you buy, keep your fingers crossed? And it, it just creates this really awful environment. You will see that people generate revenue through friends, family, immediate networks, former colleagues, and that gives a little boost.

Ben Bennett: But what happens is they, they win that revenue. They win that client; they deliver the work and then they've got start game. And what we're seeing then is peaks and troughs. So when you started out in your business to have your life back more time, consistent revenue, it doesn't happen because you're literally going pillar to post delivering work, looking for new opportunities, trying to sell to them, which I hate delivering, looking for opportunities, trying to sell, and it becomes this really vicious cycle.

Ben Bennett: So being able to break out of that and put in consistent frameworks that allow you to add value and help without being on the take. Most of its mind over matter. So, nothing's actually changed. It's just how you position yourself and, and go to market

Chris O'Hare: that's. Well, you've said it like without those frameworks, it's very difficult.

Chris O'Hare: So, let's talk about those frameworks. I want to know you've peaked my interest. Tell me so, so

Ben Bennett: it's, it's quite a simple process. First of all, you've got to understand who it is that you are solving the problem for and identify what that problem is. And then identify why you are uniquely placed to be able to solve it.

Ben Bennett: When you are in that position, you can then go through and perhaps size that audience and make sure that that audience is big enough for you to go and sell to, but break down, what's called an ideal customer profile. So, who are they? Are they a buyer or are they a user of your product or service? And if you've then got an understanding of that that person, what's their role, what are they accountable for?

Ben Bennett: What are they like, how do they learn? What are their skill sets when you understand a good a good profile of this individual, you understand how to talk to them. But one of the main things you want to know is what's keeping them awake at night. So, if you are running a small business or running any business or even a department, you've probably had times where you woke up in the middle of the night, cold sweats, wondering what the hell's going on.

Ben Bennett: Where's my next deal coming from. Whereas how am I going to go and solve the problem that I've got in my business? I don’t know to contact, you know, these are the, what I call the 2:00 AM problems. When you just wake up in the middle of the night. And it, you know, this happens to me. I'm not, I'm not immune to this, but when you know what those problems are, you can directly communicate the value that you bring to solve that problem.

Ben Bennett: So instead of saying, my name is Ben, I'm a sales trainer. You are a sales manager. Will you buy my services? What I'm looking for is an understanding of businesses that have got either decreasing revenue performance. Aren't able to hire the right people. Aren't able to onboard staff correctly. So, when I speak to people, it's like, I am Ben, I'm a sales trainer.

Ben Bennett: This is how I do it. And most people stop there, but you need to carry on with a benefit statement, which answers their issue of keeping them awake at night, which is, which means you don't have to worry about onboarding new staff, which means you don't have to worry about. Reducing revenues, which means you don't have to worry about upskilling your existing sales team so that you can generate more revenue and you need to directly answer people's pain points.

Ben Bennett: So, who am I serving? And what is the problem? Who specifically am I serving in terms of an ideal customer profile and then building out value-based statements that allow you to demonstrate value rather than just tell people what you do. So, you may have come across the acronym with him or seen it for me.

Ben Bennett: And you always want to be thinking like that. Why are you going to be interested in hearing what I can do? You're not going to be interested in how I do things. You're going to be interested in the results I deliver. And that's all about positioning and that's how you communicate value. So that's more of a, like a, a communications piece, but you know, if we want to go into the, the day to day tactics of how to sell and the activity you need to do again, we, we could be here forever, but spend half an hour every day, prospecting, you know, making sure you are reaching out to people, sending messages, connecting on LinkedIn, engaging with content.

Ben Bennett: You know, there's a list. As long as my arm that I could give you. Just be consistent and deliberate around specific activities in your outreach and make, make sure people know that you are there.

Chris O'Hare: So, you talked about customer profile. I, I get this a lot, so, and it's something we even struggle with in terms of understanding who are the people we're trying to solve and what what's their pain.

Chris O'Hare: And you can. You can't grasp the, the actual pain that they have until they kind of really talk about it, but it's very difficult to identify that. Well, we're finding it quite difficult to identify that without, you know, going to a lot of people and, and talking to them. And, and then there's the, the thing on top of that, which is you should be niching even further.

Chris O'Hare: So, you find that and then go even further. Into it. And we find that really tricky. Do you, do you one, do you agree you know, that finding that customer profile or that your target audience difficult and two, how niche should you go? Do you go super, super granular or do you just stay relatively you know, quite general,

Ben Bennett: two, two really interesting questions.

Ben Bennett: So, the first one is around, you know Do you find it hard to get your ideal customer profile? I find it nearly impossible to do it for myself and a lot of businesses that I speak to are either branding companies or do these kind of workshops and they can't do it for themselves. So just recognizing that, just because you can't do it doesn't mean you can't work with someone else to help you get.

Ben Bennett: And you know, I, I teach this stuff. So, for me not to still be able to apply that to my own business and have these limiting beliefs is quite normal. My view on is that yes, you should be doing it where you can and not be scared of it. And the, and the, really the difference is somebody arrives on my website, and it says I'm a sales trainer, or somebody arrives on my website.

Ben Bennett: And it says, I am a sales trainer for media companies with this amount of people. What that's going to mean is that those people that don't fit that criteria can discount themselves disqualify themselves and move on. And those people that see themselves in that profile can approach me. And that way I'm only ever working within my expertise within my skillset and being really specific with the messages that land for that particular niche.

Ben Bennett: I use a, a really basic analogy around niching down. Like if you look up at the sky, the night sky and you see stars. There are millions of them. Now, if you put a telescope onto that and focus on one area of the sky, you are still going to see through that lens millions of stars. And if you were to go and get a very hyper powerful telescope that goes beyond your own budgets and your back garden you will be able to look very deeply into space and into the sky and still see millions of stars.

Ben Bennett: So, as you are slow, making this pool of view smaller or smaller or smaller. There is still a huge opportunity for people for you to reach out, to and communicate with, to demonstrate value. And I think it just comes down to making sure that you are selling into an audience base that is big enough and still growing.

Ben Bennett: And hasn't overcome the problems that you fix. So, it's not to say you must niche. I believe it makes life easier when communicating to prospects. When you.

Chris O'Hare: Yeah, because obviously if you are a person that is in those particular industry that you are targeting, so, you know media when someone from the media industry.

Chris O'Hare: Comes across your website and they have that particular need. Then obviously they're way more likely, I don't know where the stats are, but they're way more likely to engage with you because they feel like you can talk their language and you understand their particular pains. Yeah. And it, so it comes back to the pains, then it's their particular pains.

Chris O'Hare: And actually, people don't like taking a risk on people that don't know their business and they think. Rightly or wrongly that that person in that industry is, is going to be able to, to almost do their job for them, or they know more than they, they, than they think they might know. So, it's a perception, isn't it it's perspective on that person, but whether that's true or not, it probably is true, but that's what people do. You don't, hire a carpenter to do plumbing, right? You'll go to a plumber to do the plumbing, even though the carpenter could probably do the plumbing just fine, because he's probably done some training in it, but you don't, you just don't feel comfortable in approaching that person. So, I'm assuming it's very similar to that.

Ben Bennett: It's absolutely true. And if you're working in a B2B environment, this is probably quite an interesting statistic is around 80%. Of your buyers of your potential customers are already aware that they have a problem and will have done their research on a potential number of providers already. Mm that's huge.

Ben Bennett: Take it. Take me back 20 years when I started outselling, you didn't have your, you know, easy access to information. It was a case of, you know, yeah. The pages or, you know, probably was some SEARCHs that weren't particularly good, but it, the, the information available to. Wasn’t prevalent. So how your website speaks, how you're communicating value to a specific audience and problem, Chris you've hit the name of the head.

Ben Bennett: That's exactly what it needs to do. Always go back to the problem because no one cares what you do. I'm sorry to say. They care that you can take that problem away, but I don't care what you do.

Chris O'Hare: Mm it's quite powerful. I, I still find it tricky. Just trying to find that niche. So, what would you say someone should do if they had to look into their target demographic?

Chris O'Hare: Do they go to an existing customer? Do they, do they just start talking to people? Do how what's the first step for that? How, how do they find that? Well, I

Ben Bennett: don't, I don't think you need to draw a line in the sand forever. I think that's the first thing to remember. Also consider what you've done with previous clients, you know, who do you like working.

Ben Bennett: what is their genetic makeup? You know, what are the characteristics who are the ones that pay on time, who are the ones that are easy to get decisions from, who are the ones that are working locally? You know, what are their interests? So, so understanding their sectors, their geography, their what are called firmographics.

Ben Bennett: So that are what demographics are. It's photographics. So, it's of businesses. What demographics are to people. So how can you then go and identify. Companies with 2 million turnover. And more than five staff based in the Southeast, working in the cleaning products industry, when you know that you can use databases and tools to go and size the market and identify exactly who everyone is.

Ben Bennett: Without that information is really hard to do. So, I would look inwards. What do you like, what have you enjoyed? What are you good at? And then look at building that out and being very deliberate, who you go after if it's changing intact, and you want to go after something very specific, because perhaps you're going through a period of growth.

Ben Bennett: Then it's about, you know, identifying where the opportunity. And it might be beyond what you've done previously, but you still need to recognize what their, what their needs and wants are. But also, to be able to go and identify them on a database. That's probably one of the easiest triggers to do is go and have a look at a tool like Apollo IO, as an example, and just go through all of their search criteria and say, do I know what this criteria is for my ideal customer?

Ben Bennett: And if you don't make it up. Make it up until you've got an audience big enough, make it up until you've got a database large enough that you've interviewed and validated theory before you even make a commitment to go forward. It's because, you know when they say assumption makes an asset or you and me, so try and validate everything before you go and do it, speak to your existing customers, speak to prospects, do your research, and just find out if what you are doing is actually wanted and needed in that arena.

Chris O'Hare: I like what you said though right at the beginning where you. Just fun. Just think about the customers you work with, that you enjoyed working with. And I just, well, yeah, that's an obvious one. When you think about it, because you know that those their psychographics are clearly going to be down your, your street.

Chris O'Hare: And when it comes to the, the demographic maybes a little bit trickier for me I think, I think for me, it's the industry it's trying to. Niche down to an industry rather than a type or a type of business or a, you know, the typical demographics and all the rest of it. So that that's the bit I find the trickiest, the industry.

Chris O'Hare: But. I think, like you said, it's trial and error, work it out and then, and then keep going, keep moving forwards. And that's, that's essentially what we're doing now. We're trialing things, seeing, seeing how it feels seeing how our products fit, how our services fit with that and keep moving forwards.

Chris O'Hare: But that's really interesting. Okay. So, in terms of your three quick wins that you would recommend to people. When it comes to improving their sales today. So, so something that, you know, they've, they've listened to the podcast, and they think, you know what, I, I need to improve my sales. This is something we need to do.

Chris O'Hare: A lot of times people will feel like they, they want to get results. They want to, they want to get results. Cos they, they, they feel disheartened if they don't get those results. So, what, what are those things? What those quick wins that are going to give them, that feeling of you. I can do this.

Ben Bennett: So there, there are.

Ben Bennett: So, the ones that I would launch with are probably first and foremost, is speak to your customers and prospects and validate what it is that you are offering. Okay. So, you know, we want to remove assumption. We want to get clarity and we want to be really deliberate, so speak to more people. Okay. They might be peers.

Ben Bennett: They might be family. They might be customers. They might be prospects. Just speak to people, validate what it is that you are doing and who you're doing it for. You might not want to hear some of the answers, but it's important that you do. So, they're the first, that's the first thing I do. The second thing is ask for help.

Ben Bennett: And a lot of people see this as a sign of weakness, but ultimately if you are, if you've got someone who can review phone calls, proofread proposals If you're asking for introductions to other businesses, if you if I can share ideas with you about how to speak to this next person, you know, just ask for help.

Ben Bennett: You don't have to do this on your own. You might have a manager; you might be running your own business. You, you might be just about to start out on your own. There are people that have done it that have, you know, worn every single element of scarring through the industry, you, of, you know, of done it all and walked that path before.

Ben Bennett: So, ask these people, you know, I include myself there, reach out to me on LinkedIn, ask for help. I'm more than happy to do so as I'm many other people in your network. So that's the second one, the third and final one. It's not even the final one. I could go on forever with these, but the third one is you need to be prospecting all of the time.

Ben Bennett: Looking for new opportunities all of the time. Not just when you are quiet, not just when it suits you, not just when you've, you know, I've got a spare hour on a Friday afternoon, go prospecting every single day, doing your research, understanding their needs, validating that that is to be true. Building a relationship with these people and connecting on LinkedIn, engaging with their content and being visible.

Ben Bennett: Don't sell a. Just be visible, be helpful, be there but be prospecting all of the time. And one really simple metric here is if you just go and find five potential new people every day, that's not a lot. That's 25 in a working week and that's 100 new prospects every single month. And if you've got 1200 new prospects in a year, and you're talking to 10% of them, right?

Ben Bennett: Well, that's 120 conversations and if you can close a third of those, then you know, you're looking at 40 new clients. So, when you start to look at numbers like that, it becomes far more manageable rather than which direction do I go in and, and what do I need to do? Just be consistent and deliberate around what it is that you are doing.

Ben Bennett: I'm going to add another one. If I can, Chris, it's just, it's a bonus one. Go on bonus. Measure everything that you do. Measure everything. So, if it moves measure it, how much am I doing through what stages of my pipeline have they gone through? Where are people dropping off? How long are the conversations I'm having?

Ben Bennett: Who's replying to what emails, you know, you want to be testing and measuring, and then also let data inform what you do as well. And that, that will be my, my bonus fourth. quick wins for you, but hopefully they're useful. And you can apply those into businesses today.

Chris O'Hare: Yeah. I think the prospecting one is incredible because.

Chris O'Hare: For me, it's, it's creating a. It's creating a habit to do it. So, and you have a pipeline of potential people that are warmed up ready to, to buy off you so that when, if you do have a bit extra time to kind of really convert them, then you can, because we're already warm and they're already ready to go.

Chris O'Hare: So that's the one I'd recommend. That's the one that I've noticed a massive difference for me. So yeah, really appreciate that. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for your time. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. And how can people get a hold of.

Ben Bennett: You can find me at secondvoice.co.uk. Or you can go on LinkedIn and search for Ben Bennett, second voice, and I'll appear there as well.

Ben Bennett: I don't think there are too many Ben Bennetts, but if not, you are there, you should be able to find me quite easily.

Chris O'Hare: Amazing. Cheers, Ben. Thank you.

Ben Bennett: Thank you very much.

Chris O'Hare: Thank you everybody. I hope you enjoyed that. If you want another episode to understand the mindset of a billionaire, listen to inside the mind of Donald Kelleher and you can find that by Googling quick win CEO until next time I'm Chris O’Hare your quick win CEO signing out.

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