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hello and welcome to the sellings creative podcast a podcast exploring creativity's role in sales from
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motivation process ideas people development and success I'm your host
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Brad ether a digital communication sales consultant helping businesses develop digital sales strategies and mentoring
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salespeople in the skill set of social selling today I have the pleasure of
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being joined by James Michael a sales veteran of over 30 years is it 30 years
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uh God now you make me think about it yeah I'm that old
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yeah a massive a massive car Enthusiast and owner of Justified Talent a
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recruitment company specializing in helping small businesses employ their first sales hire with datab backed
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confidence if you're interested in understanding the data backing creativity and sales this episode's for
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you now I'm particularly excited to be talking to James today for a few reasons
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first we're going to be getting into the data and exploring the role creativity plays in the top quartile of B2B
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solution sellers second I'm certain there's going to be some real actionable
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take takeaways that make you reconsider your selling approach third we're
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undoubtedly going to hear some great insights and stories from the 1900s and
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fourth this is this is the first podcast where I'm going to have to issue an official language warning before we go
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any further so with that out of the way James how the [ __ ] are
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we [ __ ] good mate thank you what an intro I'm good mate thank
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you very good happy to be here not sure about the 1900 stuff but anyway we'll get
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there so I I wanted to kick off the conversation by pointing out to people
Agism in the Workplace - The Justified Talent Story.
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that you're very outspoken about agism in the workplace and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about
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your experiences entering the job market at 55 and the spark that triggered
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become that ended up becoming Justified Talent yeah sure so I mean you kind of
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you grabbed a little important piece there right age 55 so that was in 2018 I think I don't know can't do maths
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anymore I'm 62 almost today Al I'll turn 62 on Christmas Day this year um but at
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age 55 I had just come out of a corporate role um and you know highly
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highly qualified like literally academically qualified highly experienced many many years worth of
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experience had been globally recognized by the organization that I've just come out of for the various bits and pieces
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that I had you know achieved with and for the business and I applied for
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coincidentally 55 jobs right um no rhyme rer to that number coinciding with my
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age I think at the 55th that application I just I called it quits um so I applied
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for 55 roles over a period of a couple of months I heard back from three
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recruiters right I still haven't heard back from the other 52 so I'm guessing I probably didn't get the job but yeah you
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know I I sat back and thought okay hang on what's going on here I've you know I'm em eminently qualified I'm Master's
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qualified double degree qualified I've got many many years of experience I've been acknowledged globally for the
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things that I've brought to businesses and I'm not even getting a response oh I know I've just joined a
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minority group I'm part of the old buggers group apparently you know it it
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would seem that even in 2018 that maybe people felt like I was going to need a Nana nap at two in the
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afternoon I probably wouldn't be able to spell it let alone use it um you know
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and so therefore it's time to consign me to the scrap Heap so that was one of two
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fairly significant catalysts for creating Justified talent because I kind of figured you know if that's that's how
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recruiters are treating people then I think there's room for somebody who does things a little bit
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differently um yeah so that that was the kind of starting point yeah great and I want to get into
Creativity as an Adolescent.
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how you're doing it differently in a little bit but um first off I want to go back to the beginning one of the topics
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that we explore on this podcast is what creative Outlet we had as an adolescent
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and I understand that school maybe wasn't the easiest place for you um you'd maybe consider yourself a bit of
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an introvert um so I'd love to hear about what school was like for you and
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what kind of creative activities you were getting involved in at lunch and and how that maybe manifested itself in
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later years yeah sure um you I guess to
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kick off with I would never ever even still to this day describe myself as being creative
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although I think I've got some creativity in me what I tend to do I think is take existing things and either
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bolt them to something else to make it even better so you know the 2 plus two equals five kind of thing um but but
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I've never been somebody who's been uh an ideator and a Creator from Genesis as
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it were um and yeah I was I was introverted at school I was a bit of a a
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dorky kid um you know got a big nose still have it today so you know kids
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love used to love taking the Mickey out of me for looking like Concord um and
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you know kind of Fairly pale skinned kid and skinny you know so I was the perfect
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archetype for somebody to kind of be picked on um I wasn't athletic and I wasn't even academic that like it would
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have been fine had I been a real kind of nerd because I was super academic I wasn't you know I was bleeding average
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um and so one of the ways in which I would escap apape all of that was and
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like lots of introverts do I would go into my mind and that's where the creativity would kind of play um and so
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you know what one of my things and you kind of kicked off by saying this I'm I've got a bit of a passion for nice cars and and driving them as fast as I
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can within the bounds of the law and all that kind of thing and that really kind of kicked off as a kid so I spent a lot
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of my time after school playing with toy cars and and literally the the entire
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Lounge room would become a town or a village or a city and I would be driving various cars all around on on the floor
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and in my imagination I was in this town and I was in several of these cars
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overnight time when I'd go to bed um you know once moment said lights out I'd sneak under the covers and turn the
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torch on and I would have brochures of cars and there's one in particular that
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I've got a really strong memory of uh of the the then Jaguar XJR which was the
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two door Jag and there's a scene where they've taken photographs of it it's on I think it's it's either New South Head
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Road or double Bay Road I don't it's in that kind of double Bay Rose Bay Area
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and and so it's you know it's really glamorous setting this really glamorous car and I I would turn the pages from
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seeing the car in full view from the outside to then turning the page and seeing it from the inside behind the
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steering wheel and I would take that car for drives everywhere that's kind of you know what I would do my imagination at
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school then one of the things that came about and and and this was in some ways
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the beginning of my leadership Journey unbeknownst to me where I I would become the leader of I don't know if we were
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all dos and all nerds but anyway um we would all drive around the playground at lunchtime right we would be in cars
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making car noises we' be doing gear changes and handbrake turns and and
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sirens and all all manner of different bits and pieces but that that was kind of my my form of escape
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from the stuff that I didn't like at school where I was being made to feel unwelcome and I
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wasn't even academically gifted so even the teachers didn't really think that much of me
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either it's interesting that you say that you you weren't um creative in that
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sense because I mean from an artistic point of view collage for example is a
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perfect example of something that is built on another idea and I know that
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later in this conversation we're going to get into what create the datab backs
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creativity of sales um and I think that a lot of that
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creativity does play into to what we're talking about the other thing I'd like to point out is the this thing that was
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going on in your mind about uh cars and almost manifesting your future in a
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way so just want to ask did you get the car um no I didn't get the Jaguar um I
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did get its kind of then later born kind of brother in in that I got a Range
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Rover Vogue a number of years back so it's kind of you know almost of the same
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vein it's from you know their cousins Jaguar Landover um it was as unreliable
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as every other Jaguar is um and cost a fortune to keep running um but no I
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didn't get that car I mean I've had you know plenty of nice cars since and these days I drive a an Audi SQ5 which is
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pretty nice um and yeah uh yeah didn't didn't end up getting the
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Jaguar but that's okay so talking about Justified Talent
What to consider for your first sales hire?
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obviously um we you're you got a quite very very nce Service First sales hire
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for small businesses what what needs to be
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considered in that first sales high like from a traditional recruitment
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agent what's the differentiator there what what are you telling people that needs to be
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considered um so so let me kick off answering that
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by sharing some insights that came out of a really really deep meta study uh
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which was then subsequently published in the Harvard Business review and and the the distillation of that is that what
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what most people consider to be the Holy Grail of Recruitment and selection particularly um is is this kind of
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fivepoint exercise where you call for a cover letter you review a resume you conduct an interview maybe you do some
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personality assessments and then you do reference checking right so they're the they're the five kind of key elements of
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every recruitment um exercise transpires the predictive
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reliability of those five things so how often does it get it right um and I'll
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use some psycho Babble terms here so it's got a predictive reliability coefficient of
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0.26 where the ideal number is one so what does that really mean it gets it right 26% of the time in late terms
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that's not exactly what it means but you know for anybody else to kind of understand what is he really saying there it gets it right 26% of the time
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like you literally could do a toin cost and get a better result than you know
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the the long and esteemed long held esteemed um recruitment
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process right so the differentiator for us is um and
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again let me perhaps com this from another angle right so most people will probably be aware with the with the the
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fact that as we sit here today the average tenure of a B2B sales person is
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sitting somewhere between 16 and 18 months right I'm GNA suggest that very few people jump out of their job at the
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18 month Mark at the peak of their career at the Zenith of their performance right not in sales it takes
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a good three years for you to really be hitting your Peak and we tend to find that the people who are high performers
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tend to hang around for that three to five year period right but the average tenure is 18 months at the moment what
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we also know is that and you know I kind of almost get sick of seeing this number because I've seen it now every year for
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the last decade 56% of reps missed Target last Financial year and the year
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before and the year before and the year before and it's like this you know 50 to 55 to 56 is that fairly common number so
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there's all these people who who you know leave fairly early in their career and all these people who are um you know not
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really they're not not hitting Target and if if you look inside an organization let's say there's an
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organization that might have five sales people just for the point of the conversation they're all selling the same product or
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service into the same Marketplace and same economy same ICP with the same
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problems etc etc hopefully they're all using the same Playbook and they're getting the same kind of sales
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leadership and yet half of them will be failing and you know the average of them
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will be leaving at the 18 months mark it begs the question why what's missing right and so for us it's about the hard
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wide makeup of the individual right it's it's about what's in here and and yes to some degree
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intellectually but you know from a behavioral uh nature perspective to what
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degree does my nature lend itself to success or not in selling right and as
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it transpires what we've been able to discern and it's backed up by lots and lots of other kind of research but over
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the last six or so years what we've been able to discern is across the general
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population there's probably only about 40% of the population who have got the natural hard iring that will lend itself
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to success in selling yeah and it's probably worthwhile mentioning at this point that
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you've got a psychology background as well so a lot of a lot of a lot of what's been informed by the data that
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you're analyzing and then interpreting is through that lens yeah 100% And so
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for us then the differentiator I'll just finish that piece off the differentiator for us is that what we promise to our
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clients is that we will give them ision data which is 300% more predictively
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reliable so we take that number from .26 to 87 right we haven't been able to
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achieve a one yet I of doubt that we ever will because humans aren't machines you they're not code um but yeah we we
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were able to take that number from 0. 26 to 087 so increasing the reliability of
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the decision they're making yeah and I if there's any small
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business owners out there listening I'm sure you know the pain of the the risk involved monetarily with taking on a
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first sales hire if there's any sales people out there that are looking to get into small business I think um there's
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going to be quite insightful next couple of uh half hour or so of
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conversation um what I wanted to ask is obviously all
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everything that's just been discussed there is based on data analytics how what's your process
The data of hiring a sales person.
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in actually acquiring those insights that you're talking about so when people apply for a role
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with us uh in addition to us obviously asking them about their career history I mean we don't ask for their regimine we
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don't ask for a cover letter we do get them in our portal to tell us what their career history is and we ask them for their LinkedIn URL and then eventually
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we'll ask them to do what we call a cover video um but as as they go through
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the usual kind of giving us their name rank and serial number kind of stuff um one of the very first things that we'll
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do immediately after that is we'll ask them to answer a series of screening questions typically somewhere between 30
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and 50 screening questions which which tend to be focused on the technical aspect of what it is that they're going
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to be selling or the market they're going to be selling into and their technical understanding of that so their domain expertise if you like and then
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from there they undertake what we call a temperament assessment right the temperament assessment is um a
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proprietary instrument that we have um and it takes people about 10 minutes to
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complete the assessment and what we're using for specifically is to get get an
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understanding of what their reaction to stress is going to be right so the instruments specifically designed uh it
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it represents you know kind of radar plot or a spider graph effect and what we see is um a blob of green growing or
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or not growing as as levels of stress come on we we kind of see them heading
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in different directions um and and grabbing a hold of what we kind of you
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we'll describe um as the tools in their toolbag right and so what we're looking
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for is are they grabbing the tools that are likely to be most effective at at
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managing the stress of sales that still gets the right result um assuming they go through that
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if they if they get through that the system gives them then um a star rating
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if they get a three four or five star rating uh we'll then move them on to you know the next steps and so so through
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the course of their screening with us they're actually going to work their way through uh five different
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assessments um Each of which look at them from slightly different angles different perspectives so we're getting
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a very holistic picture of of who they are and how they function uh and what
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their natural hard wide state is and when then comparing that with benchmarks um so it sounds like it's a
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long and honorous process um and perhaps for some people it is but um you know we
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we we're fairly comfortable with the fact that we've had 11 over 11,000 people apply for jobs with us in the
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last six almost now seven years um and we've got a 4.3 star rating of of them
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enjoying the application process yeah so it's really interesting
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to hear that um rather than experience you're really focusing on
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individual as a as a person and maybe not not necessarily um looking at their
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career experience but actually looking at their default State what they're going to do in those moments of stress
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how they're going to grab like you said grab that grab the
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bit of them that they need to in that particular moment to handle a challenge
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or overcome a challenge yeah which is obviously very very different approach
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um what's you've got a guarantee as well right it sounds like I'm selling selling
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it but like you but uh I just wanted to say that essentially what you've created
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you're standing you're backing you've got a guarantee uh in the back ends of
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your process so corre guar the new higher for six months
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so if if for whatever reason they're failing to deliver and failing to achieve their kpis or objectives at any
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stage during that six month period um then we'll go back to Market and find a replacement um I will also kind of
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scratch my head and try and work out how the hell did that happen because we've got this highly predictably reliable you
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know Suite of of Assessments and all all of the results have said yes yes yes so um but yeah we've got that replacement
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gurantee excuse me so we've been through all the data this
The data supporting creativity in sellers.
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is how we've collected the data and what comes out of it is what I want to talk about because some of those insights
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that you've discovered speak directly to creativity's importance in the sales
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profession and I mean tell me it may be skewed towards
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this first sales hire or you believe that this is this is
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overarching sales Behavior yeah it's overarching sales Behavior because the fact of the matter is of the
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11,000 people that have applied every single one of them has been profiled right they would have come from all
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manner of different backgrounds so they won't have come exclusively from small you know the SMB sector many of them
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have come from Enterprise and what we consistently see is the people who are successful top quar all B2B solution
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sellers tend to form there's a there's a pattern in their behavior that is now predictable
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right and so when we see people falling outside of that pattern and if and if they fall too far outside of the pattern
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on on too many of the things that we're measuring you know we we can clearly predict that they're going to struggle
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you know in in the role obviously we we we do have to add in some different stuff um which we don't really
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scientifically measure for but we've we've got to be able to kind of get ahead around will this person actually
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work out in an SMB versus where they've been in Enterprise right and I was having this
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conversation with a business owner only yesterday where he he was suggesting that we go hunt some people from
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Enterprise for him you know and one of the things that I kind of pointed out to him was that the challenge with that not
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always but sometimes the challenge with that is that you know the person's used to sending a document to the print room
21:51
right and they wander down the hallway to the print room and they have a look at one of the six $30,000 color copies
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to try and work out where did the document go to in small business the print room is called office works right
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you need to head down the road and get that document printed and so that whole kind of roll your sleeves up and no you
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don't have an EA and no you don't have a color printer you know all all those silly little things but all of which
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kind of add art and and some people really don't cope all that well in that
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environment where you know they don't have the infrastructure in the ecosystem around them that they're used to
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the support and I presume culture comes is a massive part to play in small business as well right yeah 100% 100%
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you know when you come from Enterprise you're used to having the annual sales kickoff for example right and you've got
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a dedicated professional sales manager who although this rarely happens but you
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know ideally is coaching you and mentoring you and all that kind of thing when you come to a small business you're
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kind of hoping the founder is going to do that but they're probably not because founder ultimately more more often than
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not is a technician in the thing that it is that they sell right not a professional career sales manager or
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sales coach so yeah those cult impacts so I I think now's probably a
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good time I'm going to put up the slides if if you're listening along and um
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you're on Spotify you can click on the video or if you're on YouTube you're in the right place um but we're going to go
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through some graph at the second to sort of paint a picture on what these
1 - Optimism & Resilience.
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benchmarks that we've talked about um extrapolate into in terms of
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creativity yeah so I believe this is the first
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slide it optimism and resilience yeah so so the tool that you
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can see that the the Pentagon there is an Australian assessment it's called the Q2 it's administered by Aussie company
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up in Brisbane called Team Management Systems they actually operate globally and they're well regarded all around the
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world um the Q2 tool um and and so if I focus for a
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moment on Q2 the name of it what it's measuring is uh the degree to which you
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have a quotient of focus on opportunities versus obstacles it's quotient O2 is opportunities obstacles
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right that's what it measures the way that it does that is by get is by doing an assessment of those five pieces
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around that Pentagon right and what
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multi-pathways can you see my um Arrow no right so it's multi-pathways time
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Focus fault finding optimism and moving towards goals yeah right and what it's
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looking at is various aspects of of that and and it's measuring mindset and so
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one of the things I'm often pained to point out about this particular assessment is unlike every other
25:00
assessment that we look at or that we use that that measures um trait um this
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is actually measuring state right and there's a difference between hard wide traits and state so this tool
25:13
particularly looks at the state of your mind at the time that we take this snapshot right and where the creativity
25:20
piece comes out um is in the multi-pathways right so what what that's
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particularly looking at is the degree degree to which you have a mindset that says when you come up against
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obstacles to what degree are you going to be inclined to be looking for ways
25:37
around under over how are you going to deal with those setbacks um or if you've
25:44
got a low multipathway score will that in fact cause you to kind of curl up in a ball and suck your thumb and cry for
25:51
mummy right so the multi-pathways piece is one of the first areas in this tool
25:57
where of sitting behind it is that notion of creativity uh oh this has just
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happened how am I going to deal with that that's that that's the kernel of a
26:08
creative thinking question right now sometimes what we can do is we can go to precedent we can say okay well how how
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has this been dealt with in the past so I'll use that right but sometimes what
26:20
you're facing is perhaps something relatively new and you've not experienced it before there isn't any
26:25
precedent for you to call upon particularly if you're in a solo sales environment in in a small business um
26:32
and so yeah you know that that's measuring the inherent degree of creative thinking you have within you
26:40
specifically for the purposes of overcoming challenges and setbacks and uh things of that nature so almost
26:47
talking about the lateral thinking in situations of challenges yeah yeah yeah
26:55
the other one that's got creativity in place and as well is the one down the bottom there fault finding right which
27:02
kind of sounds weird like what why do we want somebody who's going to be finding fault so and this is a line that I learned and
27:10
maybe this is one of your references to you know the last century which was the 20th century now not the 19th um said I
27:17
said I said the 19 1900s 1900s yeah so something you know a little saying that
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I heard way back in the 1900s was the amateur salesperson is the one who beli
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beles that they have got this sale for sure in the bag right up to the moment
27:33
they lose it right and they're blindsided by that right so people who have a reasonable
27:39
fault finding score who are in sales are the people who won't accept that face value what it is that the prospect is
27:46
saying right they will be asking themselves constantly where could this go wrong who have I not spoken to who
27:54
else somewhere else needs to do something else in order for this deal to kind of progress through the pipeline
28:00
right and so obviously you don't want a fault finding score that's too high in a salesperson because that's just going to
28:06
be you know Negative Nancy who's constantly focused on nothing but Doom and Gloom and misery um and that're kind
28:12
of hard work to be around but by the same token what you don't want is somebody who's naive Nancy you don't
28:18
want the rose-colored glasses individual who just thinks everything la la la um
28:24
because they're gonna get taken by surprise right um and so in that fault
28:30
finding piece again what we're looking for is a degree of creative thinking but it's creative thinking about where could
28:37
this go wrong which I know sounds odd putting the two of those together right but that's exactly what's going on
28:43
they're they're going into their imagination and saying what have I missed where could this go off the rails
28:49
what have I not covered yet do I believe what she's telling me here all that kind of stuff right so that that's tapping
28:55
into imagination which of course is is where create creativity
29:03
lives um the next one so this is actually
2 - Capacity for learning.
29:08
probably capacity for learning but when we were talking about the Benchmark this this shows you what the
29:16
Ben Benchmark is so all those 11,000 entries that have come in have come into uh a graph that
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essentially Falls am I right in saying that six seven and eight for a capacity of
29:30
learning is where the ideal uh sort of Benchmark lies for for
29:35
this yeah so this this is a tool called Prof the profile sales assessment
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there's an engine that sits behind it which is called the profile XT it's administered by an American company
29:46
called profiles International which is now owned by Wy um but what you're seeing here is one of 18 factors or
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stems as they're referred to in Psych um that have shaped up to form part of
30:01
the Benchmark right so there there are 18 graphs that we look at and there are 18 aspects that we measure with this
30:07
instrument um but this is one of them and I think in this presentation we talk about five that have really stood out as
30:14
being particularly important to get right in in the sales higher right and so the idea here is that uh it
30:22
subscribes to bell curve Theory the way the way it reports so you've got that one to 10 scale um typically 68% of
30:31
Australians would land on either four five six or seven right on every one of the scales that we measure right and so
30:38
what we're seeing here is of those people who have been and continue to be
30:43
top quartile B2B solution sellers today their capacity for learning is slightly
30:50
above the average they're not Road Scholars right so they're not 89 10 they're 678 right that's where they land
30:56
when we put them through the assessment right but the people who are top quti performers have a capacity for learning
31:03
which is slightly above the norm in the population right and that's become
31:09
increasingly more important we're finding today for a whole raft of reasons right we find ourselves in a
31:18
world today where if you haven't got a capacity for thinking if you haven't got
31:24
a capacity particularly for critical analysis if you haven't got a cap capacity to soak up new excuse me new
31:31
technology then you're going to be challenged right right now we're all being confronted by the large language
31:36
models and by Ai and and all the things that it can do you know the the the term
31:42
the sales Tech stack you know it's that's a term I haven't heard of 10 15
31:47
years ago but today you know I'm I'm told that most sales people certainly in
31:53
Enterprise are probably operating somewhere between 6 and 11 different platforms that require them to
32:00
understand how to how to use them right so there's a whole bunch of stuff like that the other piece that comes with it
32:06
as well is we're no longer in the day and age where it's the brochure drop the features and benefits sell right if you
32:13
don't have the capacity to help your prospects make sense of the world right
32:19
so we talk about this sense making capacity in sales people today if you don't have the mental capacity to help
32:25
make sense for your customers uh if we think about the Challenger selling model as well right to be a good quality
32:32
Challenger selling that's not about being obnoxious and you know just being rude to people it's about stopping and
32:38
making them really think and the only way you're going to do that is if you yourself can think right and articulate
32:44
good profound questions that cause people to stop in their tracks and think wow yeah you know what I'd never thought
32:50
of that before so we're finding you know that capacity for learning is is is a
32:56
vital part of success in selling today and sitting within capacity for learning is creative thinking right it's about
33:03
ideation um and it may not be Creation in its purest sense um but yeah it you
33:12
know you You' you've got to be able to kind of tap into that part of the brain that looks at things a little bit
33:18
differently than is necessarily presented on the surface does that make sense yeah I I I've come back to I'm
33:26
thinking gone back to that collage idea where you your capacity for learning you're
33:32
continually going out there picking little bits and pieces and then say for example yourself you know i' you've got
33:40
a psychology degree I've got a digital communications degree but every time you learn
33:46
something new you sort of cherry pick it put it back into your lens your framework and that becomes something new
33:54
this idea of collaging you know that's where your um your unique take on and understanding
34:02
of a particular problem sort of comes to the for yeah yeah absolutely and and so
34:10
one of the other pieces that that's attached to capacity for learning is thirst for learning right and again
34:17
thirst for learning is where creativity there's there's a kernel of creativity in there it's Genesis is creativity that
34:23
desire to know more learn more understand more make sense of um all requires a kernel of creativity in
34:31
there and it's funny like thinking about um Enterprise a lot of Enterprise
34:36
sellers are probably used to professional development days and things like that but in the SMB space people
34:42
are more likely to have to go out and further their education by themselves
34:49
yeah so that thir for learning's obviously a real uh strategic Advantage
34:55
if you've got a seller in that situation that's pushing the envelope y
35:03
100% so sociability this is probably something that uh a lot of this is the
3 - Sociability.
35:09
thing that made me when I when you told me about this this one took me in my tracks because as a seller you quite
35:17
often think um you're extroverted you're going out there you're being social
35:23
that's half of your job but this suggests something slightly different y sure does so you know the the the myth
35:32
of the successful salesperson is that they're out there socializing eating and
35:37
drinking for the country and have the capacity to talk underwater with a mouth full of marbles right that's the the the
35:43
classic ageold description of the the salesperson the Raging extrovert what we're finding again you
35:51
it's based on the benchmarking um when when we get the people who are the top quartile beat to be solution sellers to
35:59
undertake the assessment they all land on four five or six right so that makes
36:05
them what we describe as ambiverts right so on the left is introvert on the right is extrovert um and you know what we're
36:12
finding with the successful top quel sellers is that they're they're more ambiverted right and so which is a
36:20
combination of both right yeah absolutely yeah so they they yeah they're not they're not overly
36:26
extroverted they're not overly introverted it's almost like a bit of a you know golden luck bowl of porridge
36:31
kind of thing but to kind of give it some more sense you can see the numbers there 31% of the population will be more
36:38
extroverted than these people right so where where most folks and you know for
36:44
Founders who are looking to recruit their salesperson and that if they're you know writing a job ad and they may
36:50
not put these you know explicit words in there but they're probably thinking they need to find somebody who's extroverted
36:56
that's what they believe to be the power of a good salesperson this willingness to get out there and have
37:02
conversations um what's transpired is that's not the case and so again
37:07
creativity lies in here because what an an what an ambivert is going to do is by
37:14
all means yes have the conversation Express points of view share insights
37:21
socialize the idea of the service or the product or the offer but then what they're going to do is step back not
37:28
withdraw not go hide in a cave so don't go down to one two Zone but they'll step back and they'll adopt the the Curious
37:36
mode and we'll talk more about Curiosity on one of the other scals in a moment but you know what they're going to be doing now is posing questions more and
37:44
more questions and it's about drawing the prospect into the conversation and
37:49
again you know we've all heard the the the phrase and it's a somewhat hatney phrase and that is try to be more
37:54
interesting sorry interested than interesting right and so we find that
38:00
with the top Court our house performers is they they have a genuine desire to be interested so it's not about dumping
38:06
everything they know out there which is what an extrovert trait is it's more about having that backwards and forwards
38:12
conversation and being interested and you tell me more about that help me understand that and and so again whilst
38:19
it's not creativity in that great big sense again there's a kernel of
38:26
creativity in inquiry and in curiosity and in a willingness to listen not just
38:33
talk yeah and I mean something that um a conversation happens a lot in sales
38:39
circles is the active listening yeah and
38:44
that fits in exactly into this because without active listening without
38:50
thinking about the questions that you're actually asking and improving that piece of the process yeah
38:58
you you don't get the insights and it's the insights that actually provide a
39:03
solution at the end of the day walk you sell buy through the process absolutely
39:09
and then you know extend a little bit further when you hear the response from the prospect or from the
39:14
buyer you know a lot of a lot of the kind of less experienced and all the less capable salese feel the need to
39:22
fill the void with some kind of sound some kind of noise right and and extroverts Absolut Ely uncomfortable
39:28
with silence whereas the ambivert will take what's just been said literally
39:34
kind of reflect on that for a moment and they'll then start to be tapping into
39:40
the creative piece and their intellectual capacity to understand what's just been said and then possibly
39:47
to ask another question to get deeper Insight or deeper understanding or they they they may then you know pose a
39:53
response that's appropriate um but that moment of silence is them going into their brain and it's them tapping their
40:01
intellectual capacity and that little bit of creativity that's needed right here right now just make sure I've understood what was just said and to
40:08
then go forward right yeah I I don't know what the answer this is but something that just
40:15
sprung to mind is when I was working in retail you go to um at the end of the conversation you know I was selling um
40:23
TVs those kind of things for sort of Harvey Norman Style company in the in
40:28
the UK but at the end you had to pitch you know the insurance policy and the
40:36
uh brackets or whatever it was the additional things but I was very good at that um and purely because I would make
40:46
the pitch and sit in silence and let them make their decision and not b in
40:53
again is that is that a similar is that similar to what we talking about here
40:58
yeah absolutely it is because an extrovert will have difficulty doing that extroverts and and you know as you
41:05
get up in the nines and tens AB abhor a vacuum right and and silence is a vacuum
41:12
and so you'll often see it with a lot of salespeople where they'll ask what I call the triple barrel question you know
41:18
they they'll ask the question and and then state it again slightly differently and then slight it state it again slightly differently and in some cases
41:25
they even begin to pose the possible answer right
41:30
um the person who has who's more Amber verted is going to have a comfort with
41:36
posing the question and leaving it out there and letting the other person
41:41
respond so yeah definitely in there yeah so the next one we've got is
4 - Manageability (creativity).
41:49
manageability and I like this one because there's two sides to the coin
41:55
when it comes to um manageability uh there's the environment in which a
42:02
manager is managing someone and then there's the individual in terms
42:08
of what their character traits are uh and what they're more likely to respond
42:13
to is that correct yeah it is and it this is not my tool so I don't get to
42:20
change the label but if I was going to change the label on this one you'd love this one because this one's would be
42:25
called creativity right this one is absolutely un utterly about the inherent creativity that's
42:32
hardwired hard baked into the individual right so on the right hand side in that
42:38
kind of six to Z 10 Zone those people are and as you go further and further
42:43
right they are strict adherence to the policies the procedures the Precedence the guidelines the rules the way we do
42:50
things around here somebody who's at a tan for manageability will ask permission to ask permission
42:58
right go to the left hand side ones and twos we describe as rule Breakers threes and fours we describe as rule
43:05
Benders right and so um what we're finding with the top quality all performers is they land on three four or
43:13
five so they will have a level of respect and regard for the way we do
43:20
things around here and you know what the Playbook says we're meant to do yet at the same time inherently Within
43:27
themselves they've got a natural ability to be creative in the moment and so what
43:32
you kind of see with 3 four FS is adaptability right because the rule
43:37
breaker rule Bender thing can sound a little bit kind of disconcerting a little bit negative um so I tend to
43:43
describe it more as adaptable creative in the moment a capacity to look at
43:48
things differently um and in particular in a sales situation to kind of quickly
43:54
work out whether or not something can be in some ways redirected or newly crafted
44:02
that's going to help the cell start to move ahead right um yeah and so you know
44:10
when you think about it from a job ad perspective I you can't for one moment imagine anybody writing a job ad that
44:15
goes up on SE that says I'm looking for somebody who's unruly who keeps challenging me um and you know who is
44:22
not naturally inclined to use our Playbook I mean you're never going to write that but the truth of the matter is that's actually what you need to be
44:28
looking for right and and this one kind of blows people away a little bit we find um yeah so yeah but it's it's about
44:37
being creative and again in today's environment where it's much much less
44:43
paint by numbers um where you're not turning up with a
44:49
preconceived solution to something you know almost everything has to be in some
44:54
ways tailored or customized to meet the icp's situation then this is the piece
45:01
that helps out with that at this point in time I'd love to
45:06
get a little bit deeper on this so that people can sort of have a
45:13
um metaphor to understand this manageability thing
45:19
and there's a story that you tell about the rules of the road that I think ties in really well to to this idea I'd love
45:26
to hear from you now sure so you know the
45:31
fact of the matter is at the end of today you know assuming you or I and anybody listening to this or watching
45:38
this hops into a car and and you know heads somewhere presumably home um
45:45
notwithstanding there are some variations from one state to another but the fact of the matter is we're all subject to pretty much the same rules of
45:51
the road right we we all know we've got to drive on the leftand side of the road before we're in Australia we all know
45:57
that um you know a solid line in the middle means you can't overtake we all know that that that number that's
46:03
surrounded by a circle is the maximum speed you're allowed to drive out on that road and yet I guarantee pounds to
46:10
peanuts every single one of us has probably got a different driving style right and
46:15
so with the manageability piece on the one hand yes you if you bring someone on
46:21
who's a 345 on occasions they're going to appear to be a little little bit kind of
46:27
resistant to how you want things done they're not going to be doing it your way and you know my my advice to you is
46:35
share with them what the rules of the road are you know have them be very very clear about you know what side of the
46:41
road they drive on what does it what does a double solid line in the middle mean etc etc but then appreciate that
46:48
you know they need to be allowed to use their Style with within those kind of
46:53
guard rails as it were um you know people who were 3 four five like I say
46:58
they are appreciative of the rules they do understand why rules exist but on occasion they're actually going to come
47:05
up with a really good idea that you haven't thought of before that's actually going to be the difference
47:11
between winning or losing this sale and and you probably need to allow some variation for
47:16
that yeah love it love it um the last the last one bonus
5 - Customer Centricity.
47:25
customer centricity yeah and look for the people watching
47:30
this obviously you been seeing weird numbers because this is not a numerical order so these were five slides that I
47:37
grabbed for Brad to have a look at of a a bigger presentation that I did a while back but yeah so the customer centricity
47:45
piece what what is actually measured here um so I've put a different label on
47:50
here than is on the tool on the tool is called accommodation right so it's the degree to which we are naturally in
47:56
inclined to bend to the will of others and to accommodate their needs etc etc
48:02
right and so you know people who are in customer success Customer Service Customer Support typically will be over
48:09
around 789 um and uh people who are at 9 and 10
48:15
often is not will be um outside of the kind of works space But as a general
48:21
generalization that they will be obsessed with not pissing people off right come across though to the top qule
48:29
bunch and they're all sitting on 345 which again will means that yeah
48:36
okay I've I've I've heard what you've said Mr and Mrs Prospect I understand what your needs are I understand why it
48:42
is that you're requesting that however we're probably not going to be
48:48
able to do it exactly as you're asking for and again so right here right now is where the moment of creativity has to
48:54
kick in and that is what I can offer instead is what we are prepared to do
49:00
instead is now some of that might already be uh prescribed it might
49:06
already be in their you know operating guidelines as as to what they can and can't do you know we know that reps
49:14
certainly um that are selling um products say in manufacturing organizations often not are given some
49:22
scope as to Discount that they can give um but what what happens here is the
49:28
natural inclination of this group of people is to not just automatically give
49:36
right but is to come up with something that is um you know and it's it's again the haing phrase It's about creating the
49:43
winwin but notice that preface word creating the win-win so the creativity piece is definitely in here as well
49:50
right um and I think I shared with you when we were speaking about this the other day that uh you know I'm reminded
49:56
of often hear of the Henry Ford um saying is attributed to saying that you
50:02
can have your Model T Ford in other in any color you like so long as you like black right so these guys probably
50:08
aren't quite as rigid as that that's probably more a one two3 yeah but the
50:14
three four FS are uh the folks who will again you know none none of this
50:21
operates in in isolation it's all colliding together it's having you know system d DCS effect going on here so
50:27
it's all kind of going off at the same time um but but they're using this piece
50:33
of their nature to be comfortable to say ah let me think about that you know what
50:39
I I don't think we're going to be able to do that so it gives them the Comfort to be able to do that right because it's
50:45
it's in their hard wide nature whilst at the same time what they're then going to do instead is is go into the creative
50:51
recesses and say so what could we do that that's going to please you that's going to you know move this forward is
50:57
going to get get this across the line because in a way as we've gone through this and explored creativity
51:04
we've almost gone through the sales cycle and this has landed directly firmly in the
51:11
negotiation phase of of of the sales cycle yeah 100% um so applying that um
51:18
lateral thinking again uh sitting with space sitting in silence and considering
51:26
what actual solution is that's going to create that win-win in the negotiation phase is um
51:33
part of it as well yep so I'm just gonna close this off and
51:39
then bring us back up thanks for taking us through that I hope I hope uh that was nice and clear for
Introverted vs Extroverted sales approach & where LinkedIn fits in.
51:46
everyone uh at home but something that I really like
51:54
about um what we went through the idea of the introvert and the
52:00
extrovert and the ambt I'd love to have a quick chat about
52:06
um what that means in terms of a selling style the extrovert the guy that goes
52:12
out gets on the phones walks the street constant constant constant the ambt
52:18
might be a little bit more selective about the sales approaches maybe a little bit more quality versus quantity
52:25
approach um I know that you are a big fan of
52:31
LinkedIn you would consider yourself an ambivert as well
52:36
um and one of the things that you talked about in the prep interview and I resonated with it as well was the idea
52:44
of having a comfort zone that you sit in that you can communicate through for
52:50
yourself for myself I I like being able to communicate with with a whole bunch
52:57
of people and then jumping out of that comfort zone into a more extroverted
53:04
State whether that be doing something like a podcast or uh jumping on the
53:11
phone for that little bit um I'd love for you to talk about your experience
53:17
selling as an ambivert through a platform like LinkedIn and and how you
53:23
manage how you manage that yeah the first thing I'll throw in is I'm
53:29
actually not an ambivert I'm an introvert um and it's worthwhile mentioning that because I know a lot of
53:35
people get uncomfortable with assessments like these because they feel as though it's putting me in a box right
53:43
and so one of the things that I'll share with you first of all is as I mentioned we measure 18 things and as you saw the
53:49
Benchmark covers you know generally a run of three right so if you land in any
53:55
one of those three then you're right on the money we're also comfortable with with people Landing one left or one
54:01
right right and they can do that on all of the 18 things that we measure and so what that actually results in is there's
54:09
over 8.8 million different styles of person that will show up who will still
54:16
fit in The Benchmark right so you know any variation within there and as I say
54:22
one left and one right still says yet you're probably going to be okay to do the job and so you know what what we
54:28
tend to look for is anybody ideally who scores at least a 64% or greater match
54:35
right so we're not looking for Perfection right so I want want people to feel comfortable about that the other the bit that I'll add in there and
54:41
coming coming Circle back to what you've just asked is that so I'm an introvert right I'm actually quite deeply
54:47
introverted and and you know that was part of my challenge in my high school days I just wasn't good I was socially
54:53
awkward right um but what I've learned in my adult years and particularly as I've got into you know my own businesses
55:00
and into sales roles is I sure as hell can't be an introvert and have any level of success in selling whether I like it
55:07
or not I'm going to need to have some kind of communication with people right and so what is also true of a lot of people
55:13
is that we will push ourselves on any one of those 18 things if we're
55:19
intellectually smart enough and emotionally smart enough so that's where the EQ piece comes in we we will push
55:25
ourselves outside of of that comfort zone for a period of time the thing to understand though is that you're if
55:30
you're wanting to do that for a sustained period of time that's hard to maintain if you're needing to do it on
55:38
more than three of the 18 aspects that's really hard to maintain because all of a
55:43
sudden I'm starting to behave in a manner contrary to who I actually am right so that causes burnout um but so
55:49
for me as an introvert LinkedIn LinkedIn was was a gift right I've got lots of
55:55
things to say got lots of opinions and you know you can tell that just from now I've jibit on this morning I've got lots
56:00
and lots and lots of stuff to share with the world and and and I do so not with an intention of bombarding them and
56:07
overwhelming them or being a smartass or showing off I genuinely want to share this stuff with people in in the hopes
56:14
that it helps them in one way or another right my capacity to do that via
56:20
conversation is limited like if I don't talk to another person at all today after just done this one
56:27
you Brad that would be just fine by me right but I've got this capacity which I
56:34
take advantage of three days a week every week week in week out to share my
56:39
opinion and My Views via the keyboard on link you know because I know that not
56:45
everybody's got time or is not interested in reading the written stuff occasionally I'll do some video stuff as
56:51
well you know so I've learned to kind of use the platform in the manner that I know it works and Suits the audience um
56:59
but yeah LinkedIn for me has been an absolute godsend like you know when I think I think I shared this with you the
57:05
other day but you know when I first got into selling your um Tam was discovered
57:12
in the Yellow Pages right you had no clue really about
57:18
who the hell was who in there you'd have to do the the whole cold calling thing etc etc you know LinkedIn today and
57:24
particularly with sales Navigator you really can absolutely quickly Define who
57:30
your audience is and then yeah it just gives you that capacity to share your knowledge with them share insights
57:38
perhaps even share thought-provoking moments you know which I I do have a tendency to do um and so to get your
57:45
stuff out there and socialized in the world but without you having to actually be sociable I love it honestly I love it
57:54
and I shared with you like I I can't remember when I joined LinkedIn it was in its early days and so I joined
58:00
up because I thought it was just you know a clever resume um it wasn't really until 2018 that I cottoned onto the fact
58:07
that it's essentially kind of like my Coca-Cola billboard at the top of William Street right yeah and so I've
58:15
gone nuts with it since then and yeah um you know it's it's resulted
58:22
in the fact that up until recently you know between 2019 and through to probably only a
58:29
couple of months ago I've never done an outbound sales call not once ever right it's it's all been in inbound
58:37
inquiry and these days you know referral and and repeat business um but yeah you
58:43
know it's so for me the introverted salesperson link LinkedIn was an
58:49
absolute Game Changer and Lifesaver and I I want to tie it back
Creativity summary.
58:55
into what we've discussed today because I'm sure if you identify as a creative
59:00
person we've gone through a lot of elements today um the the optimism and
59:06
resilience peace capacity for Learning sociability manageability and customer
59:12
centricity if you identify as a creative person or you identify as an introvert
59:18
and ambivert I'm sure throughout those different graphs something's
59:24
resonated and in today's Modern Age as a seller there are so many different ways
59:30
so many different communication styles that you can adopt to get your message across and I think that this idea of
59:37
creativity and what we've been through today really lends itself to that outof the Box lateral thinking how am I going
59:44
to get the attention of a customer how am I then going to progress the deal how am I then going
59:50
to get to the negotiation phase and uh
59:56
make it that win-win situation um so I just wanted to bring that in there at the end because I think that LinkedIn
1:00:03
specifically um selling through Linkedin ties in really nicely with these five
1:00:11
core elements of creativity that we've discussed today yeah
1:00:18
um yeah yeah I I wholeheartedly agree obviously right um I've put a post up
1:00:24
this morning uh which then promotes a long form post that I've done it's the first long form
1:00:29
post I've done in quite a long time but but I'm in there I'm talking about the difference between pull and push
1:00:35
marketing and selling right and and how the pull piece works so well on LinkedIn
1:00:43
because you you get to you know show your expertise etc etc add into that now
1:00:49
the fact that the platform really is actually encouraging us to be creative in how we present our our m material in
1:00:56
our in our content and and I saw a fantastic post this morning uh and I'll recommend everybody go go look Leanne up
1:01:03
so lean Hughes um who's here in Australia um put up uh I think it was a
1:01:10
three minute video which is um her speakers show real right so she's a
1:01:15
she's a uh a speaker a keynote speaker of note
1:01:21
um and she's just created her 2025 um Show reel and it's quite different it's quite different to what you normally see
1:01:28
from uh from keynote speakers but what it kind of what really hit me was the
1:01:34
brightness of it the vibrancy of it and the creativity of it um yeah you know
1:01:41
and so the platform really does encourage you know everybody who's
1:01:46
creative to have a crack and stand out yeah I like that idea of pushpull if
1:01:53
anyone's listening and haven't listened to the previous podcast we spoke spoke about the more magnet
1:01:58
principle which is exactly that the idea of attracting customers rather than uh
1:02:04
actively going out and and getting them so if you want to get into that I would go back and listen to the previous
1:02:10
podcast that we've just done cool um last couple of things uh James what
1:02:17
wisdom would you impart on a young person that's entering the workforce
1:02:23
today uh wow yeah I mean at the end of the
Wisdom for a young person.
1:02:29
day and I I hate this phrase right there's a phrase out there that is your network is your net
1:02:36
worth I hate the language in that but the fact of the matter is connections count today you know who
1:02:45
who it is that you're speaking with taking advice from
1:02:51
sharing ideas with using as as wise counsel
1:02:56
uh as a sounding board creating safe space with you know makes all the difference in the world um and
1:03:04
so yeah you know I think the more you can be
1:03:11
thoughtfully putting together you know your network uh and you know and and I mean
1:03:17
that you know importantly thoughtfully not just willingly kind of connecting
1:03:23
with people because they exist um yeah I I think that's followers deep
1:03:28
connections yeah absolutely and I think that's vitally important you know for a whole host of reasons yeah sure some of
1:03:34
it's going to open doors but also you know life life life can deal up [ __ ]
1:03:40
from time to time and having people that you can have a conversation with in one
1:03:45
form or another um outside of you know the kind of the closed environment you
1:03:52
might find yourself in when it's not nice and it's not comfortable it makes all the difference in the
1:03:58
world yeah it's a tough one it's a it's an interesting landscape that young
1:04:05
people find themselves in now like you're in your 60s now the
1:04:12
hindsight you know growing up without the internet actually had to force yourself out there to network in in the
1:04:20
real world and now we're in a position where we're almost stuck behind our
1:04:26
computer screens and networking is almost like a chore there are limited opportunities to get out there and meet
1:04:33
with people face to face and I think that what that idea of uh creating
1:04:40
relationships really gets down to in the Crux of is forcing yourself out of your comfort zone to seek relationships with
1:04:49
people in the real world whether you meet them digitally or not James and I have met on LinkedIn um
1:04:56
but really forcing yourself out there the network uh for the purpose of creating real relationships rather than
1:05:04
follow account yeah and and probably to wrap that up and I don't know if this
1:05:10
will connect perfectly or not but Abraham Lincoln once said I don't like
1:05:15
that person I should get to know him
1:05:20
better yeah no I think that does I I think I mean personally for me I've
1:05:27
traveled around the world and I've had a great little existence as a up until
1:05:32
this point and I've met all sorts of people from different cultures different backgrounds selling has allowed me to
1:05:38
continue doing that daily um even though I'm not traveling
1:05:45
do you know what I mean but you never know who you're going to meet you never know what kind of slight
1:05:52
Insight that you're going to get from someone that could potten po change
1:05:57
everything yeah could change the direction of how you see the world could change the direction of your selling
1:06:03
approach um yeah you never know um the last the last one the final
1:06:13
question that we close with every time what is your definition of creativity
What is your definition of Creativity?
1:06:21
James for me creativity
1:06:28
is a state of being curious of being open to
1:06:37
exploration uh with a view to
1:06:43
then building something bringing something doing
1:06:49
something that doesn't necessarily have to be uh life altering different it could
1:06:57
just be an iteration right but it's it's about for me getting
1:07:03
into that state of curiousness you know one of the things that I Love About Us human beings and
1:07:10
it's one of the things that absolutely distinguishes us from almost every other
1:07:15
living creature on the planet and that is this thing called our imagination right when when you look out
1:07:23
right now literally you know wherever you are as you listen to this or you're watching this as you look out around you
1:07:29
right now pretty much everything that falls into your eyesight into your
1:07:34
vision at some stage was an idea in somebody's mind right this platform that we're on
1:07:41
right now this conversation that we're able to have right now the capacity to do this number of years ago was just an
1:07:48
idea in somebody's mind right and curiosity kind of triggered that
1:07:56
so yeah sounds a bit waffly not sure I've really answered it but that's my St
1:08:02
yeah yeah it's a it's a difficult question I love the answer love the answer
1:08:08
James um where's the best place to find you if anybody listening to this podcast wants
1:08:13
to reach out LinkedIn linkedin's where I hang out you know the most um in terms
1:08:20
of them being readily accessible um you know if people go there you'll find all
1:08:26
my contact details on there I don't hide my phone number I don't hide my email address I'm happy to get as much spam as
1:08:33
anybody wants to send me I'm always hungry um but yeah LinkedIn is the best place to to find
1:08:39
me great great look it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you thanks for sharing all your insights today I
1:08:46
hope you enjoyed it I did and uh yeah we'll we'll uh look
1:08:53
forward to speaking to you again mate likewise good on you thank you Brad
