Speaker 1: Welcome to the Inside Inside Sales podcast with your host, Darryl Praill. Join us every week as we interview industry leaders and experts to uncover the ways they're finding sales success today. Tune in as Darryl brings you actionable strategies and tactics that can immediately increase your sales and success.

Darryl Praill: Good afternoon, everybody. It's Darryl Praill here. You know what we're at? We're at another episode, another week, another time, another place. You and I talking here on the Inside Inside Sales Show. Don't you love it? Does it ever feel to you like there's been too much time apart those seven days in between every single episode? Do you miss me as much as I miss you? Lie to me, tell me you do, make me feel better. I got a story to tell you. The other day, now if you're a regular listener you'll know all this already, the other day I was on a podcast with Larry Long, Jr. So Larry Long, Jr. And I were shooting the breeze in conversations leading up to the recording, and then we're in the green room before the recording, and then we're in the recording, but at multiple steps along the way there, he starts dropping references to the 60s. He's dropping references to Motown and I'm like," Dude, I'm a Motown freak. I grew up on the Canadian side of the U. S. Canada border right outside Detroit." I grew up in an era, I'm a 60s child, but I grew up really in the 70s, and then high school was the 80s, first half of the 80s. So I grew up, where I was, there was really, there was no cable, no cable TV. There was no nothing. Everything was over the air. And all of the radio and the television that I got that influenced me came from Detroit. So I grew up on Marvin Gaye and I grew up on just all these amazing artists. It was crazy. And he's dropping all these references and we're getting each other's vibes and it was amazing, and then he starts dropping 70s and 80s pop culture references, whether it's the Jackson Five, or what you talking about Willis and Different Strokes, and all of his TV shows that nobody today would have a clue what's going on. And after that was done, I had so much fun. I was actually thinking about some advice that I had given my kids earlier. Now my kids they're 24 and 26 right now. Okay? I know. I know you're thinking," How is that possible Darryl? You look so young," and you would be right. I started very, very young. I was an overachiever even when I was 10 years old. And I told them that what you guys need to do, you may not have the best marks in school, you may not be graduating summa cum laud, and you may not go to Harvard because I'm cheap and poor, understanding all that I said," There's a couple of things you need to know." I said," You can be book smart, and then you can be street smart, and often if you're street smart, that makes you more successful than book smarts." I mean, if we're going to go to Harvard, or Princeton, or Yale, or Cambridge, or Oxford, you're going to benefit from the relationships, the network, more than anything. The education is good, but it's that lifelong network, but anywhere else, not near the same. For my American listeners, this may surprise you, but the whole premise of the alumni, which is you can be 75 years old and still cheering on your alma mater, that doesn't really exist outside of the U. S. It definitely doesn't exist here in Canada. It is what it is. So what does all this mean? Well, what it means is I go back to what Larry and I we're talking about, we're making all these pop culture references, and I said to my kids," If you're street smart, then you know how to read a room." But one of the biggest things about any kind of, even if you can read a room, have the personal skills, you have to establish a rapport. Part of about understanding the rapport is understanding pop culture. So my kids were 24 and 26 grew up watching Gilligan's Island. They grew up watching Dragnet and Adam 12. They grew up watching all these shows from the 50s, and 60s, and 70s, and 80s, and of course they would whine and say," Oh, these shows are so slow," because it's a different era. And I said," Just you wait." I said," Pop culture. It's going to be there." And then as they grew up and they got into the university, and they got into the workforce, it was pop culture over and over again that they used. And they were dropping 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s references over and over again. It was every... What they did was they learned from every single decade, a little bit of nuggets and insights that allowed them to be street smart and engaged no matter who they were talking to, whether it's the CEO or the janitor, and they established a common bond. It wasn't on your economic situation. It wasn't on your education. It was going back to something you could all relate to and connect to because it was a shared memory. See, that's the thing about sales. You're feeling like you've got imposter syndrome. You're feeling like you don't have the right to talk to a CEO. You're feeling like you can't relate to their day job because you've never done their day job, right? I'm not an accounting expert, if I were to go and sell to an accounting agency, I would go," What the hell do I talk about?" But at the end of the day, all the skills we use are all relational. They're all pop culture. They're all street smart. The actual education comes in just so you know how to actually write a good business plan and make a good business case. So that's my way of saying sales is the best, most equal deal going and you have all these skills at your fingertips because you're street smart, because you can relate based on your memories and establish an immediate rapport with somebody else that you're not using. So imagine I'm listening to Sam Dunning's podcast and I listen to Fred Copestake come on, he's giving this whole session about all the stuff you can learn over the decades, how sales have changed over the decades, and I'm like," Bam, that's my guy. That's what I'm talking about. He's me!" And Fred and I have been having this conversation for months, and months, and months about how to get him on the show. So I'm like," Damn it. Forget it. Screw it. Fred's coming on the show." Fred, welcome to the show my friend.

Fred Copestake: Brilliant. Thank you Darryl. Thank you for asking me, it's a real pleasure.

Darryl Praill: Oh, look, he's so subdued and polite. Okay, let's just get the whole promotional stuff out of the way. Fred is a rock star author, sales coach, sales trainer. You can catch him on his website at brindis, B- R- I- N- D- I- S,. co. uk. You may tell by the accent, he's not Canadian, but hey, we're all part of the same commonwealth so we don't exclude him. It's all good. His book Selling Through Partnering Skills, you can get it on Amazon. Dynamite book, you need to read it. But with that said today, when I was talking to Fred and we're sharing stories, he like,"Darryl, it's just about mastering foundations." And then he goes," And that's what the decades do for us. Every decade had a different foundation and we need to learn." So Fred let's you and I have some fun today and waltz through the decades, which decade would you like to start in and what can it teach us?

Fred Copestake: Let's start at the very beginning, as they say. The famous crosstalk.

Darryl Praill: In the beginning.

Fred Copestake: Well, not right at the very beginning, we've only got half an hour or so. God created, no, no, that's a bit too far back, but let's go post- war. There we are, I think we can just about fit that. If we start 50s, there we go that'll do, because... Well, actually we could go back further in sales, but I don't think it will help us because what I want to do as we take this little stroll through the evolution of sales is pick some of the best bits that are going to be useful to us in the here and now. And if we go too far back, we go into that whole snake oil sales, late 1800s, Chinese came, building railroads in America, brought snake oil salespersons, and thought," Oh yeah, we can sell that to people because it solves everything." And all the scamming horrible type stuff and manipulative tactics were invented, and we still get tarred with that brush today, even though it is so long ago and there are just better things for us to be doing. So let's start in the 50s and the interesting... I'm a bit of a geek around this sort of stuff, but the interesting thing for me about that is the sales best practice, the sales techniques, the stuff that was trained reflects what was happening in the era at the time anyway. So if you look at the 50s, 50s was very much about process, big process orientation, and it's about doing the right things time and time again, production and how all that worked was a biggie, and that was the same in sales. It was like, what can we do time and time again to make sure we're successful. Let's try to model it and keep doing that. And if anybody argued with me that, that's not relevant today, well, good luck with that one. I don't think you'll last long in sales anyway. So good process, whether we're talking the overall sales process or just the structure of a call, that's still a process in itself. It's having a backbone, it's doing stuff we can do time and time again. That's what I'd want us to pick from that decade about sales.

Darryl Praill: It's funny you mention that because on the same episode with Larry we talked about that, and the question I posited to the audience was if I were to ask you write down on a piece of paper, or to the modern kids, use your phone and start sending me a text message that documents your daily routine that you do every single day, can you do it or is every day different? In which case, if every day is different then you don't have a process. Or if you were to do a call, how do you approach a call? Before you start the call, when does your process start? What are you doing? In other words, is there researching, whatever it might be before you go to the call. And as I was saying with Larry, we spend so much time working on some of our skills in objection handling, discovery, asking the right questions, blah, blah, blah, that we forget about the basics, which is just what's the rinse and repeat process that we need to follow because we do that enough it becomes just natural and we just do it. And that way we make sure we're not missing any of the steps we need to take in a normal sales process to make sure we anticipate any of the objections, we set the stage for establishing value and price, we identify need, all that just happens without even thinking about it. And when that happens, all of a sudden we become much more confident salespeople because we're not so obsessed with, did I miss something? That's just my point of view.

Fred Copestake: I agree. We will agree on that one. I'm sure we probably won't agree all the way through, but hey, that'll be fun. But no, for me, the way I talk about it to people is actually that the call... Let's talk about the call. Let's talk about that bit. It begins at the end. And everyone's like,"What are you talking about, Fred?" Well, what do you want to happen as a result of it? So what's the objective?

Darryl Praill: Yes.

Fred Copestake: And I'll say to people, what's the objective of your call? And they go," Oh, I don't know." Well, don't even bother picking the phone up then. Don't connect on Zoom. Don't do whatever you're going to do because it's going to be an utter waste of time. And you don't want to waste your time, you certainly do not want to be wasting your customer's time because you'll burn that bridge. So what's the objective? What do you really want from it? Primary objective. What happens if you don't achieve that? What would be a fallback? So that actually that time you've invested having that conversation, it's still good. Then we work backwards from it. It's like a golfer. They sort of... They don't hit the ball as far as they can, see where it lands, and then go on to the next shot. They go," Right, I want to end up in the hole so I'll putt off the green because it's easier. So then I'll do that shot to arrive there, or that shot," and then they work backwards and we do the same. So then we can structure the call, having worked backwards, forwards. Attention, you've got to grab somebody's attention, use your elevator pitch, your benefit statement, your value prop. I don't really care what you call it, but use something that gets them focused in on this is why we're having it. Show interest in people, ask questions, prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. You know, we've heard that one, do that. Then you can move into the right, build some desire, so get them to think about what it is that you want to say to them. And then we finish with some kind of action, some kind of advancement, AIDA, attention, interest desire, action that works elegantly, invented in the 50s, I use that everyday still.

Darryl Praill: Okay. So...

Fred Copestake: There you go.

Darryl Praill: What we learned from the 50s was process, what did we learn from the 60s my friend?

Fred Copestake: All about the mind, all about the brain, the psychedelia. Think of the 60s as a decade...

Darryl Praill: Oh, yeah.

Fred Copestake: All these substances we were taking to alter how we think, but I'm not suggesting that. Please do not edit that in a way that makes me look like some kind of drug pusher. The end of a beautiful career. No, what I'm talking about with the 60s, what we saw reflected in business was this whole kind of psychology of stuff. So how were people thinking? What were their preferences and thought patterns? So salespeople, this is where it's that whole focus on, can I read their personality style? Can I work out how they like information, how they work, and then change myself, the what I say and do, you don't change personality but you change your behaviors so they're more comfortable, that's what we're trying to do with that. So you pick up on the clues. And if somebody is quite friendly, you are going to have to do some small talk and some people find that hard, but it's important for those people. There are people who like data, facts, figures, and you have to give them loads and loads of information and answer lots of questions. Are they people that are really to the point bang, bang, bang, that's what I want, don't tell me, sort it. And you think," Oh, they're a bit rude." No, it's just how they think. Or are they people who like to talk a lot about themselves, and get all excited, and elevated, and tell stories? That sort of person that we don't know anybody like that.

Darryl Praill: That would be me. That would be me, just so we're clear on that. crosstalk.

Fred Copestake: There's two on this, if either get a word in edgewise, we'd stop talking over each other all the time.

Darryl Praill: What I love about what you're saying here, I actually had this conversation on LinkedIn the other day and it was a lengthy commentary in this person's post, it was an interesting post. It was young woman and she made the declaration, she goes," If you're guilty of saying any of the following expressions," bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And then one of them being do you understand, does that make sense? Whatever, she had a dozen of them, right? Stop it. Those are old school. Those don't make sense. That's rude, whatever don't... Instead do this, this, and this, so the actual substance of her post was, and her intent was very good, it was please don't do this and do this. She offered you alternatives and everyone was like," Oh, this is great. Thank you so much." And I was, of course me and I said," I disagree like a thousand percent with this." And part of the reason I disagree is yeah, I say some of those things, but like I said to her, and you just said it here was, was I said," You're projecting your own biases on how you like to engage, and you're declaring that nobody should engage this way because you don't like it." I said," There's a reason we have DiSC, or Myers Brigg, or enneagrams, whatever, so you can pick up on how the individual you're prospecting wants to engage with you and that's how you need to reciprocate." And that's exactly what I... You literally said, personality style, pick up on the clues. I said," People talk about mirroring. Now you can agree with it or not agree with it, I know people don't like it these days, but there's a reason mirroring works, and if you're a loud talker, I'm going to be a loud talker. That's how it works."

Fred Copestake: I've never heard that people don't like that these days.

Darryl Praill: Yes.

Fred Copestake: Well, you don't like the way the human brain has been formed over millions of years.

Darryl Praill: I know.

Fred Copestake: No, it's different now, we've changed it in the last two. Okay. Bye.

Darryl Praill: Well, a lot of it is politics and cancel culture, right? That's a lot of it and it's like, no, you can politics and cancel culture all you want to, but people still buy the way they buy at the end of the day.

Fred Copestake: Okay, well, if I wrap it up in a way, behave in a way that is going to make somebody else comfortable, is that okay? Is that acceptable? Can we work like that?

Darryl Praill: That is acceptable. That's politically correct. crosstalk.

Fred Copestake: Good.

Darryl Praill: So let's go to the 70s.

Fred Copestake: crosstalk Well, that's okay. We're allowed to say that.

Darryl Praill: That's good.

Fred Copestake: We're allowed to have comfortable customers and do stuff to let them work in the way they want.

Darryl Praill: Work in the... What a crazy thought. Now in the 70s, I'm thinking disco, and I'm thinking John Travolta, and pantsuits, and wide bottom, bell bottom jeans, and so talk to me. What did we learn in that decade?

Fred Copestake: Fab. I mean, officially fab, like Thunderbirds Are Go, probably lost reference on a lot of listeners. Yeah, fab, certainly where I am in the UK, fab means fabulous, great, super. We don't use it now. It's very old fashioned. Well, you do, you do if you're in sales, because it means features, advantages, and benefits and we have to understand that. That is a building block of successful selling. That's the first thing I train on anything before we even get into all the funky stuff. It's guys, you've got understand this, your products, your services, your organization, it's a bunch of features and if you talk about that to people, you will soon turn them off. You'll soon bore them. You've got to translate them into the advantages and say well, what does that mean? But the benefits, what does that mean for them? And if it doesn't mean something for them, it's not a benefit and it's pointless in talking about it. So don't worry that it's in your brochure. Don't worry that's what you've heard on training, if it doesn't mean something to somebody it's irrelevant, don't use it. Focus on them, talk about the benefit to them. If you can say so what to it, it's probably not a benefit. So the little test, you can use yourself, so I'm going to say this, can that person say so what, because if they can you need to work harder to turn it into something that's useful for them. That's what we take so the 70s is a pretty big decade in selling, if that's given us that focus.

Darryl Praill: Well, it's so amazing because I know one of the big things that are really relevant in the last year or so, and Samantha McKenna has almost made this her trademark of Sam Sales, and she'll say what's in it for me. Right? And she'll use the expression if they say so what, then you've not conveyed what's in it for them. And here we are in the 20s and you're going back roughly, at least almost 50 years, and you're saying fab, features, advantages and benefits. With the benefits focus on them, what's in it for me. This is proof. This is why I brought Copestake here because he's still relevant. All right? Did you get that? Anyway, I'm rattling.

Fred Copestake: No, WIIFM, that's how I present that. What's in it for me, WIIFM, and I use a flip chart because I am old school and you write that up and everyone goes," Oh, it's that world war... No, is that a radio station?" I go," It does look like a radio station. We FM, and that you've got to tune in to the buyer." That's what we're saying. You tune in, like you tune a radio station, in the old days anyway, yeah?

Darryl Praill: Yeah.

Fred Copestake: To be talking about the stuff that they need to hear, they want to hear because it's relevant to them. So that's our take from the 70s crosstalk.

Darryl Praill: So the 80s, fab, right? Or as Sam would say in the 20s, show me, you know me, right? Show me, you know me. I love it. What's in it for me? All right. In the 80s. All right, this is where I came of age. I went to high school. Well, I went to university. I met my wife in the 80s. Talk to me, bring it back.

Fred Copestake: What a decade. What a decade.

Darryl Praill: It was a good decade. crosstalk.

Fred Copestake: It was great music. You were doing your music spiel earlier and I was like," Yeah."

Darryl Praill: I was.

Fred Copestake: That's Duran Duran, that's crosstalk.

Darryl Praill: Duran Duran, yes!

Fred Copestake: All the New Romantics stuff, I'm getting totally lost, and some good rock.

Darryl Praill: Yes.

Fred Copestake: Let's just talk about that because I'm not sure how much value it brings to us in modern day sadly, the 80s. It does. It does, but it's the decade I lean least on because I feel in the 80s, we look at a lot of sales training, it's all about objection handling. And then the focus on it was to get to the end of the sale as fast as possible, and then overcome objections, batter hurdles out the way. Yeah? Wrestle with your customer into a compliance state that they're then going to say, yes. Use these 101 techniques, which is basically asking the question to kind of manipulate them and mind game them into buying something from you. I'm probably over egging it a little bit there. But that's [ crosstalk 00:20: 37 ].

Darryl Praill: Well, you're not because the 80s if I recall was the whole Wolf of Wall Street, if I recall, that's when that movie came out and that was the exact same thing.

Fred Copestake: Greed is good.

Darryl Praill: Greed is good.

Fred Copestake: And that was how people were acting and that was what reflected in the training. And so there's a little bit out of it, so part of the objection handling techniques that we can take is to take them and dilute. And that what he was saying is that rather than just completely argue with somebody, you sort of cushion your response a little bit. But I would now turn that, in modern day selling, into treat concerns with concern, but don't call it an objection. It's a stupid, stupid word. If somebody's objecting, it's actually their concern, they're missing a bit information. They don't get something. So take that seriously, treat it with concern. Don't yes but them, that's an argument, but then just say," Well, I appreciate what you're saying. I understand it." And take it on your shoulders that you've not done a very good sales job. You've not given them enough information and then supply what they need. That's what I take from 80s. I'd say be a little bit careful with some of the old fashioned sales technique- y type stuff that gave us and get yourself into the 90s fast, because the 90s gives us a lot of good stuff.

Darryl Praill: But it is interesting how it changes, right? So objection handling is something we need to all be good at. To your point, one of the things maybe the 80s was known for was challenging your prospect, challenge them hard, maybe too hard because you're trying to go for the hard close, which is why you're challenging them. But the premise of challenging assumptions is valid in the sense of how many times do they say, why do you need this? Well, I need it because of this reason. And the reality is if you were to drill down a little more and do some good discovery in the constant, why, why, why, why, why? Tell me more. Explain that to me. Describe this situation. You start to realize, in fact, what the reason they gave you was why they're motivated. It's not the real reason. There's actually a reason behind the reason and that's the real stuff. So you do have to challenge sometimes, but objection handling is part of every cycle. It's a skill you've got to have and many of us... I know for a fact, this is where most sales reps crumble, because they don't feel confident or they don't like conflict. This is a hard one for them.

Fred Copestake: Yeah, but what I would say there is, well a challenge, I'll push back.

Darryl Praill: Challenge me!

Fred Copestake: You handling objections crosstalk.

Darryl Praill: Treat my concern with concern.

Fred Copestake: No, I can't. Not in this case, it doesn't need it. You don't need it. I'm adapting to the customer in front of me. You're an expressive driver. I'm just going to go straight and crosstalk.

Darryl Praill: He's mirroring me. Do you ese what he's doing here folks?

Fred Copestake: I'm matching the style because it's the same, it's easy. I don't even have to think about it. No, what I would say, if you're getting too wrapped up in handling objections, it could well be that you're not doing the stuff early in the sale well enough.

Darryl Praill: Yes.

Fred Copestake: You're dashing in, to get in, to try to close something, to sort of push something on somebody, and you've probably not asked those questions. You've not understood them. You've not used tell me, explain to me, describe to me. TED, I love TED questions they're great because their directions actually, they're not even a question.

Darryl Praill: Yeah.

Fred Copestake: Or open questions to understand where somebody is now, where do they want to be? And that for me, that if you look at the 90s, that's what came then. Sales went through a sea change in the 90s, off the back of the Neil Rackham research where they saw that the best sales guys weren't doing what they were trained actually. Rather than push for the close, they were actually just asking more questions, they were understanding customer. They were saying the customer's here now, they want to be there, but by understanding the impact of that, the consequence it has to them, the effect on their business, how that's important to them, they were taking time to understand it. And not just for themselves as a sales person, it's so the customer could go," Whoa. I hadn't thought of that. Oh, actually that's quite a big deal. Isn't it?"" Yeah."" Right. I need to do something about that then." And that broadly is what consultative selling brought to us and I know that's maybe a bit oversimplified, but by asking questions to get somebody else to reflect and think about where they are now is not really where they want to be. And then they say," Well, can you help me with that?"" Yes, I can." You almost don't need to handle objections. You instead present to them and say," Well, okay, here's what we could do about that."" Oh, that's brilliant." Now there might be some detail that needs clarifying, but having that prescription before or after diagnosis piece, it just makes so much more sense. It was a really big decade that, the 90s, and that's an area that all the training we do now, we'll definitely spend some time thinking about that because that's where we need to go as we moved through noughties, 10s, and 20s.

Darryl Praill: So it's crazy, because I obviously, I really came of age in the 90s because that's when I was really in the workforce, truly, truly. I think I entered'89. So this whole consultative selling thing, it's truly a 90s phenom. That's what everybody did. And I even remember back then how coming off of the 80s, that was just so mind boggling to so many people who had gotten into that 80s groove, because it was very much you went from being very aggressive to being very much... I don't know, do you want say co- operative, aligned because you were truly consulting with them. I love your point, prescription after diagnosis, a lot of times it's putting the upfront on the diagnosis and many of you today will push back, get frustrated, or upset when you get stuck in a deal on price. And you're trying to close the deal and price has become an issue. And we'll often say," Well, that's because you should have dealt with price upfront," which is going back to exactly what Fred's talking about, asking those hard questions up front. And so the other party is really getting it by asking questions and helping them understand the impact of change, then that already sets you up for wealth. That's the impact, well, then if this price is... Yeah, the price is a lot, but the impact is a lot, it's like 3X, 5X, 10X, so therefore the price is irrelevant. In other words, you're getting over those obstacles. I love the consultative selling. Is consultative selling still alive in your opinion?

Fred Copestake: A form of it. Its absolute foundation. Its absolute foundations, and it... This is how I see it, and this is my opinion on stuff. It got a bit of a revival in the 10s with challenger sale. So when we talk about challenger, there's actually a very specific form of selling called challenger, that the CEB and now the Gartner guys developed, because they looked at what people were doing, had a fantastic piece of research, and found that actually the most successful salespeople are the ones that will push back, that won't think," Oh, I can't say out to the customer because then they don't like me anymore and they won't be my friend, and it will ruin the relationship, it will fall apart." So no, the relationship will fall apart if you see they're about to make a mistake, or if you let them do something that isn't best for them and don't highlight that, and don't kind of call them out on it. Now you don't have to do it in a nasty way, but you do have to do that. And I know a lot of sales people do find that quite tricky, but it is very much the right thing to do. That is where I think it takes... It's consultative, plus, plus, plus if you like, because you need those fundamental skills and you need to bring in... We've kind of jumped a decade there, but you need to bring in the stuff of the noughties, which for me was value based selling, to have that insight, and to have that understanding, to be able to push on them. I'm not totally stupid, I know I probably look it, but if I'm going to challenge you, if I'm going to push back on you, Darryl, I'm going to have a pretty good basis to do that on because otherwise you'll just tear me apart. But if I say," Well, no, I'll tell you why I'm saying this, and this is where it's coming from, and here's my research, and this is how I'm seeing it, and this is the backup." Then you'll think," Oh, okay, now that is useful, I actually haven't thought that. Oh, no thank you. I appreciate that and how does that work? Oh, we need to work on this together don't we, because you seem to have got some understanding here that I don't have." So that for me is where value selling, noughties, comes in is it's generating those insights and that stuff that's going to be useful for customers.

Darryl Praill: So again, just done two decades back to back, he skipped one to see if you were paying attention. So if the 90s was about asking questions, consultative selling crosstalk.

Fred Copestake: I didn't skip it, you do. Sorry to interrupt you but crosstalk.

Darryl Praill: Oh, see I had to push back on you. I have to push back. The noughties were value- based selling, generating insights. I love it. And the 10s were challenger selling, so calling prospects out when necessary, but being consultative plus, plus, plus. You see, I'm busy writing notes down here and he messed me up because I had to go and jump a line and then go back to the other decade.

Fred Copestake: Leave two spaces.

Darryl Praill: So there we go.

Fred Copestake: Leave big spaces.

Darryl Praill: Big space. All right. So bring us home. It's the 20s. What now?

Fred Copestake: The other thing I would say that happened in noughties and 10s really was at the same time as this stuff going on, so being very grounded and having good sales skills, understanding how to ask questions, understanding how to help people understand value. And as one of my colleagues said, he's got a brilliant inaudible, I've got to share this. I wish I'd come up with it, but he talks about, well, he'll say, " What's value?" The answer is, well, it's a mystery. I don't know. You don't know. Marketing doesn't know. Customer knows or the customer might not know actually, we've got to work with them to understand what value is for them. That's the key. That's the sort of takeaway tip I would say if you're value selling is, you can't dictate to me what you think value is. You've got to work with me to understand what it is. Yeah. There's a sort of difference there," Oh it says here on my value prop," I don't care. It's what's in here and what I might not know, that's what you need to work out. So crosstalk with how we're using insight to generate that and to get that understanding, that's when you're really cooking with gas to be talking about proper customer value, so pain that they might have that's kind of consulted, gain that they can get that's what... In very simple terms, that'd be how I define value selling and what those decades bring to us. And that's why they do sit nicely together, they do make sense now when we can look back.

Darryl Praill: They do.

Fred Copestake: To apply those things, but at the same time-

Darryl Praill: I'm just thinking back. Now, this may not be a UK reference, but in North America, I'm thinking you said, defining value, what is it? Well, it's a mystery. Only the customer knows. So using some pop culture references here, especially if you're a 90s child or noughts, you've got to be Steve from Blue's Clues with your little detective book, figuring it all out, and taking down notes, or you want to go back another decade or two, you got to be the gang from Scooby- Doo in the mystery van, figuring it all out. So there we go.

Fred Copestake: All right, you've seen my training slides, which of course is lost on a load of people, but I don't care. crosstalk Not as much as personality styles and I talk about Star Trek, that completely loses people.

Darryl Praill: See we have a question. Are you a Trekkie or a Trekker? But that's a whole different episode, so there we go. Just last night I was watching repeats of Star Trek Deep Space Nine and the night before that Next Gen, so I'm guilty.

Fred Copestake: crosstalk.

Darryl Praill: 20s-

Fred Copestake: I know it's... Just before we go to the 20s, just before I lose it, do you want to know the expression, which will pretty much wide up every geek out there?

Darryl Praill: What?

Fred Copestake: "Use the force Harry," said Gandalf. There you go, if people don't take anything else from the words of the podcast, take that. It's brilliant. Put it crosstalk.

Darryl Praill: That is going to mess them up.

Fred Copestake: It will upset so many people. It's superb.

Darryl Praill: I love it. All right, 20s.

Fred Copestake: And 20s, collaboration. Yeah? Stop, listen, collaborate, apologies to Vanilla Ice. I know we inaudible with obscure pop references, Vanilla Ice, Stop, Collaborate, and Listen, it's actually stop, listen and collaborate because that's what sales people need to do. We need to just slow down a little bit sometimes, listen to what people are saying, and then really apply our minds to this, how can we collaborate? How can we work together? And how can I facilitate the customer? How can I help them? So again, you can see how it's tapping into all that stuff we said. Good call structure, understanding the person we're working with, working out what the benefits are, thinking what value they can get, how to ask questions in a certain way. So that now we can properly really collaborate on stuff, work together, co- create to move things together because that's how you are going to add value now. And you've got to be the individual that can do that, that's the point. You've got to demonstrate that you're the go- to person. So that's kind of using other elements of social media and these kinds of things where you can build your platform. And I know you're a big fan of this stuff. So I'm going to hand it over back to you, that you are the go-to person, because that's how you operate. You've got this knowledge, you've got the insights, and you've clearly indicated to me, that's the way you work, because that's who I want to speak to. I don't want somebody who's going to come and read a brochure to me because I can look up a brochure, I can do that. I need someone who's going to help me think and work together to almost create something out of nothing potentially. That's for me where the 20s is, inaudible becoming more and more complex, but that's what we need to get our heads around how to do this.

Darryl Praill: As I look through the decades, 50s process, 60s was all about the mind, the brain, pick up their preferences and their sentiments, personality styles. 70s was fab, features, advantages, benefits, what's in it for me. 80s was objection handling, 90s was ask questions, understand consultative selling, understand the impact of change. The noughts was value based selling, generating insight, help them understand value, remember, it's a mystery that only the customer knows. The 10s was challenger selling, calling prospects out when necessary, but being consultative plus, plus, plus, and the 20s is collaboration. There's a real corollary between Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Zs and our own personality styles there along the way, yet ironically, all of these skills are still necessary today because not only are they necessary to the sales process, you don't know if the buyer is a Gen X, or a Millennial, or Gen Z. So there you go there, there you have it my friends. My friends out there in Inside Inside Sales land. This, this is the one, the only Fred Copestake. Check him out on LinkedIn. Follow him. He's dynamite. He's on Twitter @ FredCopestake. It's really complex that way, so if you can do that, that'd be great. Brindis. co. uk. Fred, any final thoughts? Any way that you can be got ahold of? I mean, you're an author. You're a sales training rockstar. It's all on the website, brindis. co. uk. How else, what else do they need to know about you?

Fred Copestake: One little thing that I'll get people to do, and this is brand new. I don't think I've ever talked about this on podcast yet, so I saved it specially.

Darryl Praill: Saved it spec- Yes.

Fred Copestake: I'd like people to go and look at an app called rocky. ai. Okay, so this is a AI driven coaching, conversational bot. And the reason it's kind of on my agenda now is that Rocky's read all my stuff and now knows how to sell. And Rocky can coach you because just, I would love to be in everyone's pocket to be able to coach them right then when they need it, can't be that practically. Rocky can. So all the stuff that's in book, you know inaudible book now, Rocky's got it. And rather than just read the book, Rocky will give you it at the right time sequentially, and you can take the course within the app, or you can just do the morning and afternoon reflections and you can pick up on the stuff that I cover. A lot of the things we've been talking about or didn't inaudible. And actually to be honest, even if you just turn off the selling stuff, don't look at that, I would recommend you do this because Rocky can also take you through wellness. He can take you through mindset stuff. So help with clarity, purpose. It's a really cool inaudible kit, which if you just get in the habit of a little conversation with this little robot guy who uses AI to pull back the conversation. So it will never be the same for anybody ever that will make you better as a sales person. So even if you take the sales stuff out, just getting your own mind clear that'll help big time.

Darryl Praill: It's like a bonus round, rocky. ai. I'm looking at it right now. Growth, mindset, and daily reflection app for strategic thinking, courage and focus. Answer five minute accountability and self reflection questions with your AI coaching bot. And it's supported by Curated Soft Skill Tutorials and comments from like minded people. You can get it on the app store for Android or Apple. There's also a web app too. So rocky. ai and yes, you heard it here first from the one, the only Fred Copestake. Fred, I've had a lot of fun today walking through the decades with you. Thank you so much for spending time with us here.

Fred Copestake: It's been an absolute pleasure. I hope you're not too misty eyed remembering all those decades.

Darryl Praill: I'm feeling old is what it is because I understand every one of those decades almost. Okay, guys we're doing it again. Next week, there'll be another episode coming at you loud and proud. In the meantime from Fred and I, we wish you much success. Take care. We'll talk to you soon. Bye- bye.

Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another episode of the Inside Inside Sales podcast with your host, Darryl Praill. We hope you enjoyed the show and if you did, we would greatly appreciate you taking a moment to leave us a review on the platform you're listening to the show from today. Also, please feel free to share this program with your friends and colleagues. Thank you. Darryl will be back again next week.