Jeff Standridge:
Hey guys, Jeff Standridge here. Welcome to another episode of the Innovation Junkies Podcast.
Jeff Amerine:
Hey, it’s Jeff Amerine. It’s great to be back. We’re gonna learn something about sales today, Jeff.
Jeff Standridge:
We’re going to learn a lot about sales. We’ve got a great guest. Fred Copestake is the founder of a consultancy called Brindis. He’s the author of the book Selling Through Partnerships and, and Hybrid Selling, two books. He’s worked with thousands, literally thousands of salespeople in 36 countries. And I had the privilege of visiting with him a few weeks ago. Fred, great to have you with us today.
Fred Copestake:
It’s great to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Jeff Standridge:
For sure, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you, maybe a little before Brindis, and then talk a little bit about your work since Brindis.
Fred Copestake:
Yeah, well, I mean, how far back shall I go? First job was in sales.
Jeff Standridge:
Well, you started in a, you started in a small town close to your mother, probably.
Fred Copestake:
Well, not yet. Honestly, I did my first job. I was eight years old in sales. I’ll tell you, the family business was a builder’s merchant, and we sold kitchens, bathrooms, and all this sort of stuff. And on a boxing day, which is the day after Christmas, we had the sale. And when I was eight years old, I was allowed to go along and help. I’m not sure how much help I was. And they put me in this, the tile store, selling these tiles. Bear in mind the premises was an old Victorian mill. So technically, my first job was in a Victorian mill, and I just stood there and I was talking to people and then helping them choose the right tiles and all this sort of stuff. And, of course, that’s selling, but I didn’t know it was. I was just talking to people, helping them. It was awesome. It was great. And, you know, I’ve kind of probably always done something similar commercial and then kind of along those lines ever since. Studied commerce and Spanish at uni. So, I went off and lived in Spain for a year and then worked in a variety of sales, marketing, business development roles. Ever since then I set up my own thing 24 years ago.
Jeff Standridge:
Wow, wow, so tell us about Brindis.
Fred Copestake:
So yeah, so Brindis, Brindis, the word, if you’ve got any Spanish-speaking listeners, they will recognize that as a toast, like a cin cin toast. And I set that up because I had the opportunity to run the Academy for Corona Extra, you know, the Mexican being with alignment, which is selling through distributors all around Europe. And we wanted to train them to get what’s heart of mind as much as actually the sales skills, let’s face it. And, yeah, as we were saying, just before we hit record, somebody had to do this job, and it was me. So, yeah, I flew around Europe doing that, and that opened up the opportunity to start the consultancy. And since then, you know, 24 years ago, I’ve worked all sorts of different organizations all over, spotted these challenges that salespeople have. And that’s what led me to write my first book, Selling Through Partnering Skills, to address these and then quickly after, actually, probably too quickly.
I wrote Hybrid Selling because Collab2Selling came out, or the first book, which I call Collab2Selling now, came out in 2020, the same time as you know what. And, of course, the world got turned upside down, and a lot of the changes we were seeing, which were happening quite fast, happened even faster. And things which were going to happen happened, and other things are coming down the pipe. So I wrote that second book to complement the first, to help people, salespeople stay relevant. I mean, stay up to date and stay relevant because they’re actually adding value to the conversation with customers.
Jeff Standridge:
So we started Innovation Junkie in January of 2020. So, great time to write a book and to start a company, by the way. So I feel you there.
Fred Copestake:
If only we knew
Jeff Amerine:
Another classic exercise in time.
Jeff Standridge:
So you mentioned a few moments ago, Fred, you mentioned a few moments ago that you began to see and observe the problems that salespeople were having that led you to write, selling through partnerships. So tell us about those problems. What were you seeing that led to the premise of that book?
Fred Copestake:
Yeah, I mean, everybody in every industry says their industry is different. Yeah. I mean, you’ll hear that every time. And I wish we got paid when people just told us that, but we can stand back and go, but broadly, these are the things which will be going on. And I kind of put them into three, three kind of buckets, if you like, I call them busy, busy, busy, oldie, worldie, a muddled mindset. And so busy, busy, busy is when you hear people say, well, they actually say, I’m busy, busy, busy running around, doing loads and loads of stuff, getting tired, getting stressed because what they’re doing isn’t effective. Yeah, they’re not doing the things which actually make a difference. Back, problem one. Problem two, oldie-woldie, is the fact that they’re using old-fashioned techniques, stuff that doesn’t work. Yeah, they’re probably using the pushy, maniputive, rubbishy things, which again then creates more busyness because it’s not working. It falls out. Another mindset is when, probably more of an organizational thing, where we’ve got a lack of clarity so that we get this misalignment.
So the organization says we’re consultative. Yeah. We’re bio-focused. We’re customer-centric. You’re all those good things they say. And it’s sort of like that till the end of the month when they go, no, not sold anything. Right. Get out there, push this, plug that, discount that. And it’s like, and the sales-person not really sure what they’re supposed to be doing. I’m not consultative, my transactional, my discounting, I’m adding value. I don’t really know. And so we see these three main areas that by adjusting your mindset to think more like a partner, you can then become more collaborative, and you’ll solve most of those underlying issues by becoming more effective, more up to date, and more aligned when you do a better job.
Jeff Standridge:
So we sometimes say the less you sell, the more you sell. And that’s kind of what you’re talking about there.
Fred Copestake:
Yeah, because that first one, that busy, busy, busy, you go into this, this, this vicious circle, you know, and it’s not working. So you do more of what doesn’t work. So then you do more of what doesn’t work, and you get yourself into a real tizz, you know, and it ends up being stressful for people, which we don’t want. Slow down, speed up, think about the framework, the process, the stuff you’re actually trying to do. That will be where you can make a difference. But sometimes, people just won’t step back and take a moment to think about is this the best way I should be doing stuff.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah. And then you said you wrote hybrid selling to kind of compliment that talk a little bit about the premise behind hybrid selling.
Fred Copestake:
Yeah, so a lot of people think it’s about sort of the mixture between working out in the field and working online. Sort of is, but actually there’s way more to it. And that’s the concept that to be effective in sales today, we need to be more accomplished in a whole bunch of different disciplines. And I liken it a little bit to, if you imagine a drummer and they’re sat there with one drumstick and a snare drum and they’re tapping away, it’s not really the greatest performance.
When you’ve got your full drum kit with all the different things that you can play, and you can hit, and you can make a better sound, that’s what we should be. And what we need to be doing is kind of adding pieces to our drum kit, getting that whole set of things that we are able to do to work with the customer and be more effective in that. That’s this hybrid nature of how we need to think with lots of different skills. More strings demo.
Jeff Amerine:
What are some of those skills?
Fred Copestake:
So the model I talk about in that, there’s six elements. It’s the evolve model. So the first is the essential skills. Don’t build a house on sand. You’ve got to have good, solid, basic, fundamental sales skills. Go read the first book. It’s pretty much what I said. Yeah, then what do we need? Virtual. We are going to be in a virtual world from now on. Yeah, we are. We know this. It’s not rocket science. Next thing is opportunity management.
Jeff Amerine:
Right, Mike.
Fred Copestake:
It’s being able to see deals, manage those through by understanding the different elements of that from decision makers into all those parts that are going to make it work. And then we need to be able to sell value. So it’s value selling, which is something that a lot of people think they understand, but what I see is that they don’t really. And the biggest mistake is a lot of people turn up and say, right, Mr. Customer, this is what value is. But it’s the other way around. It’s in the eye of the beholder. It’s like beauty. So you have to understand how to do that. Salespeople need to lead. And that sounds weird, doesn’t it? Lead the customer on the garden path. No, lead them, guide them, sherpa them if you like, in how they’re going to make the decision, help them think. So, that does need a bit of common guidance. And then they need to kind of evolve the whole relationship and know how to keep building stuff around that. And then those are kind of the six parts of that drum kit that we need to be looking at.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, I say a lot that sales and leadership are an overlapping skillset. I mean, you, you have to be able to influence to lead people and you have to be able to influence to, to, to sell people. You have to be able to build strong relationships to sell to people and to lead people. And so there’s a lot of overlap there. Talk a little bit about your, your perspective on that overlap.
Fred Copestake:
Yeah, so it’s a bit I wrote, I kind of went quite strong on in the book is around servant leadership. Yeah, so it’s not the kind of right, do this, force people, lead them, like I say, at the garden path and push them to a point that suits you, but not them. But as a salesperson, yeah, we are there to serve, not be subservient. That’s a different thing, but to help people to make the right decision, to put them in a better place because of what we’ve done and our interactions.
And ideally from the stuff that we end up selling them. And so it’s that element of leadership where we need to move them in the right direction, perhaps by helping them with their vision, helping them know where they need to be going. It’s those kinds of skills that I’m talking about in the salesperson as a leader type, type thinking.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, I think that’s good. My experience is, and I like to use the phrase intent counts more than technique, right? So there are a lot of great techniques that I can have to be a good salesperson and I need to have those essential skills and techniques. but if I come across as inauthentic and, and, and only have a desire to sell them something, those essential sales skills are not going to work very well for me. But if I have, and, by the way, if I have a good authentic desire for their wellbeing, I may choose and will sometimes choose to walk away from a sale because I know that what I’m selling will help them in that moment. And they’ll come back to me down the road, most likely.
Fred Copestake:
Quite right. Yeah. I mean, and that’s, you know, we talk about trust in sales or we should do. We do. And that’s one of the biggest trust builders, isn’t it? It’s being open, it’s being honest, it’s being transparent and it’s having the other person’s best intention or the other person’s best needs at the heart of your intention. And that stuff, people see through that if you’re not. And if you generally do, and it could actually cost you business in the moment, but what will get repaid back? What will pay over? Way more. So yeah, definitely we need to think like that.
Jeff Amerine:
You know related to that whole sentiment several years ago and probably more than 10 years ago now there was a book published by a guy named Jay Baer called Utility, and he gave several examples in that book about start by trying to be helpful first and then if you if you make this habit of being helpful in other words, you know, you’re not necessarily going to get anything from being helpful other than you’re building a relationship and if you genuinely want to be helpful.
They’re going to see that you’re going to develop some brand equity and some mind share with them that you did something that was good and it was valuable that helped them without there being any expectation of reciprocity in that moment. And I always thought that’s pretty good philosophy. And he gives several examples in that book about how large brands do that. You know, he gave a hotel example about how this guy was staying in a Marriott. The Hilton folks, when he posed a question online about where was the best place to eat, went ahead and responded, even though it was clear he was staying in a competitor hotel. And they did that repeatedly during that trip when he would pose questions out there were very quick to respond. And so instantly he’s got this brand perception. Those guys are really good. Maybe next time I’m going to stay there because they went out of their way to be helpful. I think that, I think that speaks to some of what you’re, you’re talking about.
Fred Copestake:
Yeah, it does. I mean, I guess I kind of capture it in the think like a partner. And I say it’s not necessarily you are a partner. Now it could be a formal business alliance, but it might not be. But if we think like that, we act like that, that you give that information, you’re helping people on that journey. That’s what will start to set us apart because often the competitive advantage is going to be the way that you sell. Customers hate this when I say it to them.
It depends on how blunt I am, but it’s like, you know, what you sell is the same as everyone else. I’m like, no, no, no, it’s clever because my whole life. Same. How are you can make the difference? You as a sales person, you, the sales team, what you do, how you do it, the value you add in helping people to make that decision. It’ll just, it’ll naturally come to you because you’ve been with them along that journey. And the fact that everything is the same. It doesn’t matter. It’s not cause you’ve made the difference. And then they start to like me a little bit more.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, I’ve found some success in, in helping people understand that, you know, I even, I even use the, the kind of the analogy I’ll say, stand on the left side of the room and say, when I say the word salesperson, what do you think of? And, and people always, the first answer is used cars. And so I have a picture of this guy dangling some keys here, you know, and say, Hey, let me put you in this slick little baby here. You know, and then I say, what about consultant? And they, you know, they, they say a smart, expensive problem solver, right? And then I show a picture of a person in a suit and tie, usually, you know, in a conference with someone. Then I say, what about trusted advisor? And they say, you know, financial advisor, attorney, CPA, someone that knows the details, the sensitive details about my business. And I have a picture of that. And then I ask folks, how many of you can name the Academy Award winner for best-male actor in a motion picture or Best Female Actress in a motion-picture last year?
Almost no one can ever name them. So then I asked the question, how many of you can name a teacher or a coach who changed your life? And of course everyone raises their hands. And so that’s kind of, you go from salesperson to consultant to trusted advisor to teacher or coach. And, and that’s where you end up transforming people’s lives. And I say, if you know, if you can teach someone, educate them about how to better live their life, conduct their business because of the products and services that you provide, then you’ve added them real lasting value.
Fred Copestake:
I love that. Consider that borrowed. Stolen.
Jeff Standridge:
You want me to send you the slide? I’ll send you the slide.
Fred Copestake:
Please. I’ll leave the credit on the bottom. No, it is. A trusted advisor is a funny one, isn’t it? In that, you know, how many salespeople you met who tell you, I’m a trusted advisor. And it’s like, well, it’s not for you to judge that. The customer bestows that honor. You can do the things to become one, but they’re the decided. They get to tell you if you are or not.
Jeff Standridge:
Was it Margaret Thatcher, I think, who said, if you have to tell someone you’re a lady, you’re not? No, no, no. It’s being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell someone you are, you aren’t.
Fred Copestake:
She might have done. I don’t know. Now you give me some homework. Yeah.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, there you go.
Jeff Amerine:
Fred, related kind of a related topic. I had someone that I respect, experienced salesperson, say a lot of times what salespeople don’t understand is that the customer is buying something way different than what they what you think you’re selling. In other words, their motives, what they’re looking for, what they’re buying, what’s driving them to do something is far different than what you sound. And sometimes it gets down to that whole idea of features versus benefits and how you think about it, but I’d be interested in your thoughts around that whole idea, buying motives versus what you think yourself.
Fred Copestake:
Yeah, but that’s what really starts to set apart with salespeople because they’re going into the conversation. They’re going to that relationship, trying to work out what are the outcomes this person’s looking for? Not what features, advantages, benefits have I got that I can talk about. Yeah. Maybe what problems I’ve solved in the past, but actually what is this person trying to achieve? Because that’s what’s going to be important to them. So that’s that whole kind of value is a mystery that another of my colleagues says. So what would you do with that Mike? He’s like, well, we don’t know what value is. Yeah, the customer defines it. We’ve got to work with them to understand what is going to be important. That’s the results that they’re looking for. That’s the outcomes that they require. Maybe that’s helping them with the jobs to be done that they’re struggling with and we can come in and deal with that. That’s what they’re buying. And it just happens that some of our stuff will help them with it. And the big mistake I see salespeople make, and I think it’s a real big one that it shouldn’t be happening now, but does. Is that salespeople spend tons of time talking about product. And it’s the problem that they should be talking about, but we seem to get away with it because the customer is smart enough to work it out. That actually that stuff that you’re telling me I’ve now done the mental gymnastics to be able to work out will help with my problem. The salesperson goes away thinking they’re brilliant salesperson. No, they’re not. They’re lucky. They’re lucky. They’ve got a smart customer. The good salesperson straight to the problem, maybe in predicting them, getting people to think about that, making sense of it. by the way, I’ve got some stuff that deals with it.
Jeff Amerine:
We find affliction with entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs love their own ideas, they love their own product, they love their solution. They oftentimes, oftentimes fail to take an empathetic view of what are the real problems or unmet needs. Nobody really cares about the product. They’re looking for some kind of benefit that solves a problem they have.
Fred Copestake:
Yeah. And so you guys as the innovation junkies, you’ve got to call that baby ugly. Yeah.
Jeff Standridge:
I worked for a technology company and we had seven acres of raised floor space with servers and computers. And the CEO said to me one time, our clients don’t care about all of that. They care about the problems we solve. And if we could solve them on a legal pad with a calculator, they would be pleased, right? As long as we solve the problems that they’re experiencing or we produce the outcomes, as you said, that they’re looking for. They don’t care how we produce them.
Fred Copestake:
Yeah. And, and, and I don’t think we, I’m being a bit down on our salespeople here. I don’t want to be, because I think it’s probably goes above them and that organizations aren’t helpful here. They keep fitting people’s heads with product knowledge. We dragged them into the head office for some product training because we’re so proud of our new thing and we feed them with all this PR. That’s the wrong thing that we should be helping them with. Now, of course, Fred, the sales trader says that, you might argue, but it’s unhelpful if that’s what they know and that’s what they’re coming to talk about, guess what’s going to happen. So really thinking about the customer side, the problem we’re solving, the issues they might be having and the techniques we can use to get to that point. Better use of time for me.
Jeff Standridge:
We’re talking with Fred Copestake, who’s the founder of consultancy called Brindis and the author of Selling Through Partnership Skills and Hybrid Selling. Fred, it’s been great talking to you today. What I’d like you to do is maybe leave us with your best nugget that you can leave our listeners with today.
Fred Copestake:
Well, I’ve already said problem, not product. So I am going to go for, I should pick the catch for it. Well, no, it’s about, it’s about training really. And it’s something I talk about quite a lot. It’s that it’s all about implementation, not information. So often on training, often trying to get better at doing something. People go away, they’ll read books, they’ll watch podcasts, no, all that kind of stuff. But what are you going to do with it? How can you take that? And how do you apply it? How do you implement it? And how do you make a plan to actually use the damn stuff? Focus on that rather than just, look, I’ve read 50 books this year. Not read one, get all the good stuff out of it, and use it to make a difference in real life.
Jeff Standridge:
Implementation, not just information. Very, very good. Jeff, anything else you have to ask?
Jeff Amerine:
No, I love that. I love that execution implementation. You’re going to learn so much more by going ahead and trying to apply the things you’ve studied, the things you’ve learned, because it all changes when you actually face the customer, right? If you’re not actually trying to do it, to figure it out, you’re not going to get very good at it. That’s a fantastic nugget. Well said, Fred.
Jeff Standridge:
Fred, thank you for being with us today. We appreciate it very much.
Fred Copestake:
My pleasure.
Fred Copestake:
It’s my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me on. Good to see you again.
Jeff Standridge:
All right. Good to see you as well. This has been another episode of the Innovation Junkies Podcast. Thank you for joining.
Jeff Amerine:
See you next time.