Click through to the good bits.

00:00:00 Introductions.

00:07:06 How are you qualified to talk to us about conversation strategy?

00:08:15 Should we be doing more to prepare the disruptive kids in schools for careers in sales?

00:12:16 The difference between telemarketing and telesales.

00:15:36 If you are sending a sales person sending emails are you just shirking the issue?

00:16:45 Why are sales careers so maligned?

00:18:31 What is sales?

00:19:43 How it feels when you are doing prospecting well.

00:24:20 How not to do prospecting.

00:29:15 The benefit of actually talking to your market, prospects and customers.

00:30:47 Precisely how sales people get it wrong.

00:58:19 Who do you work with and how do you add value to their lives?

01:13:33 What is your recommendation for people who want to get better at having strategic conversations?

01:14:40 What should people read?

01:17:40 Who do you think might enjoy or at least endure to have a strategic conversation like this with me?

Introductions.

Martin Henley: [00:00:17] Hello there. My name is Martin Henley, this is the Effective Marketing content extravaganza and if you’ve spent a second here, you will know that I’m on a mission to give you everything you need to be successful in your business. Providing, of course, that is, that what you need to be successful in your business is to know more about, and be motivated to implement your sales and marketing more effectively, which is, of course, what you need if you’re going to be more successful in your business. So I’m here giving you everything I know about sales and marketing. We are bringing you the marketing news. We are reviewing the very best and the very worst of marketing content on the Internet and whenever I possibly can, I am dragging in anyone I can find with experience to share with you, to make your sales and marketing experience, your sales and marketing experience in your business, more effective, more successful. So you can have a better business, go on nicer holidays, drive a nicer car, have a nicer retirement, all of those good things that you deserve. [00:01:13][56.4]

Martin Henley: [00:01:15] Today is Talk Marketing so we have a guest for you. Today’s guest has business development experience going back to 2004. He has been running his business, the Telephone Assassin Ltd, since 2012. He is author of the book The Telephone Assassin. He is a professional speaker and former president of the Professional Speaking Association in London. What you may not know about him is that he once lost his cat only for it to return, 12 years later. He was introduced to us by the brilliant Nathan Littleton, who tells us that he supports people to use the phone to develop business in the right way. Today’s guest is the telephone assassin. Today’s guest is Anthony Stears. Hello, Mr. Stears. [00:02:02][47.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:02:03] Ello, ello. It’s lovely to be here. Thank you very much. What a lovely introduction. [00:02:06][2.9]

Martin Henley: [00:02:07] You are very welcome. I’m actually starting to take a little bit of pleasure in making those introductions. [00:02:11][4.5]

Anthony Stears: [00:02:14] Where did you get the cat story from? Hardly anybody knows about that. [00:02:16][2.6]

Martin Henley: [00:02:17] Well, because what we have to do is find images for you to break up the content on the pages, put in the thumbnail, etcetera, etcetera, and the 15th image of you is you, and this cat, and I take it your wife. So that’s how I know about it. [00:02:36][19.5]

Anthony Stears: [00:02:37] I was, I’ll be honest with you, I was shocked when one of my friends said you’re in the national newspapers and I’m like brilliant, what’s happened? And it was actually a story that came from my vet’s newsletter and it got to the national papers. [00:02:48][10.8]

Martin Henley: [00:02:49] So, yeah, the thing that struck me about the cat is that it looked like a lot of cats. You know? It looks it looks like most cats. It’s a black cat. It’s just a black cat. So that could have been any black cat and 12 years is long for a cat to live. How old was it when you lost it? [00:03:09][20.1]

Anthony Stears: [00:03:10] So she was about six, I think, and then she went missing for 12 years. So she was 18 when she came back. Oh, it was, it was disbelief when my wife got the phone call to say, come and collect Molly. And Carly was like, Who? They were like, your cat. She said I think you must be mistaken. And yeah, it turns out they done the microchip and she went missing many years ago. We did posters for quite a few years, but there were lots of sightings of black cats, as you pointed out. There’s quite a few of them, but she actually never came back. But yeah, she died after that, she got to see out her remaining time with us, which was lovely. I got back off doing some training and I got back and my wife just went, there’s somebody upstairs waiting for you and I just didn’t really know and it was really weird. You know, one of those things. [00:04:09][58.6]

Martin Henley: [00:04:10] That’s a bit creepy. [00:04:11][0.8]

Anthony Stears: [00:04:12] Yeah. Who’s in the back bedroom and why are they waiting for me? So. Yeah, it was that my wife set up. [00:04:16][4.3]

Martin Henley: [00:04:16] This is freaky, but. Yes. [00:04:18][1.6]

Anthony Stears: [00:04:19] Yeah, I think. I think we are digressing here. [00:04:21][2.0]

Martin Henley: [00:04:21] We are digressing but I think you know, it’s important that we establish some rapport with our audience so that they know that you’re a cat owner, that you lost your cat and your cat came back. I was going to accuse you of replacing the cat with another black cat, but I hadn’t thought about the microchip, so you definitely know. [00:04:42][20.5]

Anthony Stears: [00:04:43] It was definitely her. It was definitely her. [00:04:45][2.3]

Martin Henley: [00:04:46] That is astounding. I didn’t know that cats could live for 18 years, I’ll be very honest with you. [00:04:50][4.1]

Anthony Stears: [00:04:55] We’ve actually got two more cats already. We had another cat at the same time as we had that cat. So, yes, I love animals. More of a dog person, but my wife’s a cat person. They are a little bit easier. [00:05:08][12.7]

Martin Henley: [00:05:09] It’s a shame. With the microchip, you couldn’t have tracked where it had been. That might have been the most interesting thing. I have no idea. [00:05:14][5.5]

Martin Henley: [00:05:16] Surely they’re going to put GPS? Well, we we know that she was found less than a couple of miles from my in-laws house, my my wife’s parents house. They were looking after them when we went off travelling and yes, she was only found a couple of miles up the road near Royal Holloway College University. [00:05:33][17.4]

Martin Henley: [00:05:34] Okay. . [00:05:34][0.6]

Anthony Stears: [00:05:35] The one that looks like Hogwarts. It’s beautiful. [00:05:36][1.2]

Martin Henley: [00:05:37] Yes, yes. Okay, cool. We are digressing but now everyone knows you’re human. Everyone knows you’re a dog lover. Like they might feel like they’re interested in you now, Anthony, that’s why we do this. Because you have to establish rapport, don’t you? You are the conversation strategist. You know that. [00:05:53][15.9]

Anthony Stears: [00:05:55] Yes, absolutely. Rapport certainly helps to lubricate the conversation and get people to open up. [00:06:00][5.9]

Martin Henley: [00:06:01] It absolutely does. Okay, cool. I feel like you are perfectly now open and lubricated. That’s how I’m feeling. Good. Okay. I don’t need that paper anymore. Okay, cool. So let’s bring some order to this. We’re here to talk about sales and marketing type things. Your speciality subject is you are conversation strategist, which I absolutely love. So we’re going to talk about that. [00:06:29][27.7]

Martin Henley: [00:06:29] There are only five questions. Question number one, how are you qualified to talk to us about telephone strategy, telephone conversation strategy? Question number two, who do you work with, how do you add value to their lives? Question number three, what’s your recommendation for people who want to get better at conversation strategy? Question number four, what should people read? Question number five, Who can you throw under the bus who might endure, or maybe actually enjoy, to have a conversation like this with me? [00:06:56][26.6]

Anthony Stears: [00:06:57] Oh. [00:06:57][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:06:58] I can tick all of those off. [00:07:00][2.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:07:01] Excellent. Cool. Okay, good. [00:07:03][1.5]

Martin Henley: [00:07:03] So question number one, how are you qualified?[00:07:05][1.9]

How are you qualified to talk to us about conversation strategy?

Martin Henley: [00:07:06] Well, let’s start with what on earth is conversation, strategy? And then you can tell us how you are qualified to talk to us about it. [00:07:13][7.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:07:14] Well, at school I was a bit of a smart aleck and always had something funny to say. I remember one of my teachers telling me, that’s all very good, but it’s hard to get a job finding the smart thing to say and actually I’ve managed to prove them wrong. Really, conversational strategist is kind of describes what I do, but it will usually get presented and packaged up as sales training or customer service training. My friends think that the telephone assassin sounds kind of cool and ask me what it is I actually do and I tend to play it down a little bit and say I just teach people good manners and advanced common sense. Just show them how to be polite enough that people want to talk to them, but understand the emotional journey you have to take them through before they’re going to do something as a result of speaking to you basically. [00:08:05][50.5]

Martin Henley: [00:08:06] Good, right? You’ve touched on a couple of my issues already, man. What you are going to come to learn about me that I am just riddled with issues? [00:08:13][6.3]

Should we be doing more to prepare the disruptive kids in schools for careers in sales?

Martin Henley: [00:08:15] I’ve got this thing about … I was the lairy kid at school, and basically what they should have done is taken me aside and said, look Martin, this is going to be useful for you in your sales and marketing career. You’re going to be the person who’s happy to stand up in front of everyone and talk. You’re going to be the one who’s not going to roll over necessarily if people don’t quite agree with you. This is going to be really useful for you. What they actually did is told me I was a dickhead and sent me out the classroom all the time. I feel like there’s a missed opportunity there because, I have Googled it before, a significant percentage of people go into sales careers, or customer service careers, or marketing careers but nobody is intending to do that. You will go through school and they tell you you’re going to work in a factory or something but there is a significant percentage of the working population who are doing customer facing, engagement type jobs. I think it’s a missed opportunity of the education system that they don’t just go, look, 10% of the kids are dickheads, they are disrupting everything but after we’ve done with them, there is going to be a use for them in the wider world. What do you think to that little theory? [00:09:24][69.1]

Anthony Stears: [00:09:26] Absolutely. Absolutely. There’s a guy called Marcus Couch who he gave me a statistic about the number of salespeople who are dyslexic, which I am. So I was extra proud when I wrote my book. I was a slow reader a bit more of a of a class clown. I think education used to be more about passing exams and tests, whereas I actually reached out to my old senior school and since I’ve left, they actually work with some local businesses now. The sixth form students and the year elevens get to do some interview practise. And it was just quite lovely to find out that actually they are teaching them some skills that are useful in helping them take on their next steps in the big bad world, rather than just teaching them the answers to some questions so that they could pass the test. It’s interesting, you don’t you don’t see many kids going, Oh, when I grow up, I want to be a salesperson, you know? And particularly because, although my training works both face to face and on the phone, being the telephone assassin, I do a lot of stuff with people in telesales departments. Telesales used to be seen as a stepping stone into proper sales. You started off making phone calls, trying to set up meetings, and if you were good at it, you’d eventually get taken out on a few of those meetings and then if you enjoyed it, you then started doing those meetings and you would then work your way up to look after accounts and telesales was seen as a kind of starting point of a career. Whereas I know some people who’ve made a very good living out of being on the telephone and technically it would be classed as telesales, but that’s not really the role that they actually would see themselves doing. It’s just sales, remote sales, as opposed to telesales, which seems to have some negative kind of association to it. [00:11:22][116.8]

Martin Henley: [00:11:23] Yes. Okay. Now, you’ve you’ve touched on another one of my issues, but it’s all good. We’ll get through and I am going to start writing stuff down. [00:11:30][7.3]

Anthony Stears: [00:11:32] It’s like a therapy session this, isn’t it. [00:11:33][1.3]

Martin Henley: [00:11:33] You are bang on, that’s exactly right. You’ll have to councel me for the next hour, that’s exactly what’s going on. [00:11:39][6.2]

Martin Henley: [00:11:43] This is twice, I did one of these yesterday as well and she also busted me. [00:11:46][3.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:11:47] Yeah. [00:11:47][0.0]

Martin Henley: [00:11:47] The thing is, you’re teaching people good manners and what was the other thing you said? [00:11:53][6.1]

Anthony Stears: [00:11:55] Advanced common sense. [00:11:56][1.0]

Martin Henley: [00:11:57] Advanced common sense. I love that. [00:11:59][2.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:12:00] Yeah. If you don’t say advanced people get offended. [00:12:02][1.7]

Martin Henley: [00:12:03] You have to be careful about offending people in 2022. [00:12:06][2.8]

Anthony Stears: [00:12:07] You really do. [00:12:08][0.5]

Martin Henley: [00:12:08] Okay, good. So what’s the thing about that? The thing about that is, you know, 100% right. [00:12:14][5.1]

The difference between telemarketing and telesales.

Martin Henley: [00:12:16] I also cut my teeth, almost exactly as you describe on the phone, we weren’t doing telesales. I don’t think anyone’s doing telesales. People are doing telemarketing and then very occasionally the whole thing works and they get a sale. That’s what goes on because that is the least effective, I need to be careful talking to you maybe about it like that. But what I think is, let’s not worry about what I think. Let’s worry about the thing. Because I started on the phone, what I was doing essentially was getting myself in and out of conversations all day. So I was learning those basic manners and that basic common sense, do you know what I mean? So that was useful for me when I was doing email marketing if people didn’t like the emails I knew how to placate them so that he didn’t complain about us and gets fined by the regulators. You know, I mean, I worry that that’s not available to people so much anymore. But it sounds to me like you’re busy. It sounds to me like there is still a significant number of people working on the phone. [00:13:20][63.9]

Anthony Stears: [00:13:21] Absolutely. I think the point you were getting close to before is that with email marketing, you can send a million thousand emails with just a few clicks. [00:13:31][9.4]

Martin Henley: [00:13:32] Yes. [00:13:32][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:13:32] Whereas really, if you are phoning somebody, yes, you can do group calls, but technically you can only phone one person at a time. So from a strike rate, you need a much stronger strike rate during doing that 1 to 1 than you do getting a couple a percentage out of a email campaign. [00:13:50][17.2]

Anthony Stears: [00:13:51] Yes. [00:13:51][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:13:52] So I tend to think that it’s I love working with Nathan. Obviously, you had him on not that long ago and he does a lot of the email stuff that stays in touch with people, but he also does the lead magnet side of things where you get people to go, Oh, that’s interesting, I want your e-book, I’ll give you my details. So they start to kind of engage with you. If you can generate people who enquire or are interested in your services, the best thing you can do is go and have a chat with them. If you send an email, when you send an email, it gets it off your desk, it usually doesn’t complete the task. You’re either trying to transfer some information to somebody or you’re asking them a question because you want some answers. Annoyingly, that’s where a lot of people in sales, they give up with their follow ups. When you say, Oh, how are you getting on with that big one you were chasing the Oh yeah, I’ve emailed them and all you’ve really done is you’ve got it off your off your desk. You haven’t actually completed, you haven’t followed them up because they haven’t responded yet. And I try and get people to think about using email to create a paper trail of the conversations you’ve already had rather than trying to have a conversation through an email. Don’t get me wrong, email marketing really works. You can share messages, you can share success stories, you can share tips, that stuff is really useful. But if I email somebody and ask them three questions, they usually make me wait two days before they respond, and then they only answer two of the three questions. So I still need to phone them and find out the third answer anyway. It just seems to be a very slow way of communicating and if you can have a conversation, you can move something forward. [00:15:32][100.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:15:33] Yes. [00:15:33][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:15:34] That’s the advantage. [00:15:35][1.3]

If you are sending a sales person sending emails are you just shirking the issue?

Anthony Stears: [00:15:36] Okay. 100% and I would go stronger than that. I would go to where it felt to me like you went to in one of the presentations that I watched where you’re basically saying that email is shirking the issue. Did you not say that? I’m saying that 100%. [00:15:54][18.1]

Anthony Stears: [00:15:55] Well, it just feels like a really easy get out of jail free card for us. The manager says what’s happened with those follow ups? Yeah, I’ve emailed them all this morning. Well, okay. So nothing’s happened then basically? [00:16:05][10.3]

Anthony Stears: [00:16:07] 100%. [00:16:07][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:16:08] You’ve done a token bit of effort that creates a paper trail to prove you’ve made some effort, but nothing’s actually happened. [00:16:14][5.7]

Anthony Stears: [00:16:14] Good. [00:16:14][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:16:15] So, yeah. So basically, that’s what I would say if I was a sales manager. I was a terrible sales manager, really. That would be my next question is okay, so what have you learnt now? What more do you know now than you knew the last time we spoke? And the answer is absolutely nothing. [00:16:32][17.1]

Anthony Stears: [00:16:33] Okay, good. The issues are coming really thick and fast today. The issues are strong with you. [00:16:37][4.4]

Anthony Stears: [00:16:38] Okay, good. Which way do we want to go? Let’s go in the order that you said two things. [00:16:44][6.0]

Why are sales careers so maligned?

[00:16:45] Sales career. I think sales is a maligned career. Nobody, I’ve never met anybody who said I want a career in sales. I don’t know if that’s changed, but my sales career was amazing. At one point in my life, I was based in South Africa, I was a salesperson. It was my job to take my clients out for, so I was on the golf course once a week. I had a client who liked to play squash, so I was going and playing squash in the National Bank, they had a squash court in the basement. [00:17:18][33.3]

Anthony Stears: [00:17:20] Yeah. [00:17:20][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:17:20] I took them to a World Cup finals, a cricket World Cup finals. You know, I would take them out for nights. We went on a for weekends on fishing trips with their teams. [00:17:31][10.6]

Anthony Stears: [00:17:33] Yeah. [00:17:33][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:17:33] Sales is probably. I mean, before I did that, I spent some time cleaning drains so there’s much worse jobs. When I’m sitting at the Cricket World Cup and I’m smashed, and my clients smashed and thinks I’m great. I’m thinking I could be in a drain now. Do you know what I mean? [00:17:54][21.3]

Anthony Stears: [00:17:54] So it seems to me that sales is so badly maligned. So unnecessarily maligned. Do you know what I mean? I don’t. I mean. [00:18:04][9.5]

Anthony Stears: [00:18:05] I think that the hospitality and the entertainment side of sales isn’t as strong as it used to be. Back in the day, there was a lot more of the going to get drunk with your clients and taking them to do stuff. Technically all you are really trying to do is maintain a good relationship with them so that they didn’t get anywhere else and that they talked to you about things that you might be able to help them with in the future. [00:18:30][25.1]

What is sales?

Anthony Stears: [00:18:31] 100%. Right. See, this goes to my definition of sales. Sales is making friends with people, whatever level of sales you’re doing. You want to make friends with people. You want to make it easy for them to buy. You want to make sure they get the right thing. You want to make sure they come back to you like there’s nothing unpleasant about sales. The most unpleasant part is if you’re cold calling, but for me that’s not even unpleasant because I’m still making friends. My mission was if I speak to somebody on the phone and they say I don’t fancy it thanks, Martin, that’s cool, I would tell them you’re going to hear from me again in three months because there’s only so many people I can call you. My mission was to make sure that when they answered the phone to me, they recognised me from my voice and were like Martin how you doing? That was my mission is. [00:19:18][47.1]

Anthony Stears: [00:19:19] Yes. [00:19:19][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:19:20] The way I saw it was I’m just rattling cages and seeing what falls out, in the most gentle, friendly, polite way. [00:19:26][6.1]

Anthony Stears: [00:19:27] If you do it in a really polite way, what you end up doing is cultivating relationships. [00:19:31][3.1]

Anthony Stears: [00:19:32] Yes. [00:19:32][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:19:33] I take a bit of time to build and you rely on on the timing of it but it’s just a lovely way of staying on somebody’s radar. [00:19:41][8.5]

How it feels when you are doing prospecting well.

Anthony Stears: [00:19:43] The analogy often give when prospecting is it should feel like you’re dropping off a pizza menu. A lot of us get takeaway menus put through our letterboxes. I know they’ve got the apps and stuff, but they still come to the letterbox. When I’m on stage, I often say to people do you get these menus come through? It’s usually yes, and I go, okay, and who’s ever had them knock on your door and try and take the order? And then there’s usually a bit of a bit of a ripple of laughter because that would be rude. It’s absolutely right because it is rude and intrusive. Could you imagine if if you got a knock at the door and they just went, oh, hi there, Domino’s Pizza can I take your order? You’d be like no sod off, right? [00:20:24][41.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:20:25] Yeah. [00:20:25][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:20:25] It’s rude. What they really do is they just remind you that they’re still there because they know that their competitors, the other restaurants, are likely doing the same. Quite a lot of them will have a few special deals and promotions as well, usually on that same menu that has an expiry date and that’s supposed to create urgency, basically. Or they try and get smart, I’m sorry to use Domino’s as the example here, but Tuesday was the quietest day of their week so they invented two for Tuesday. [00:20:56][30.7]

Anthony Stears: [00:20:57] Yeah. [00:20:57][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:20:58] So they need to tell people about that. So I always say to people, when you’re prospecting, it should feel like you’re dropping off a pizza menu. What I mean by that is it shouldn’t be you dropping off a list of your services and your prices is it should be you creating awareness of what it is you do. [00:21:15][16.9]

Anthony Stears: [00:21:17] The example I always give is the way I would do it if I was introducing myself to another podcast host, for example, if you introduced me, said, I know this other guy who does it really good, you should talk to him as well. I would kind of reach out and say, Hey, my name’s Anthony Stears. I’m a professional speaker, I’m an author and I’ve featured on lots of different podcasts. I wanted to introduce myself, but I’m assuming you’re probably not looking at booking guests right now, so basically introduce myself, but lead with the most common objection, which is bad timing. That’s what always happens in prospecting, if you assume now is a bad time, then quite often they’ll confirm that you’re correct and then they’ll justify it. So most people kind of go, Oh, well, actually, yeah, you’re right I’m not looking for guests at the moment. I tend to book them every six months and I’m okay till the end of the year. Or they might do a, Oh, no, we’re not looking for a speaker at the moment because we’re not planning the event until such and such a point. If I’m trying to pitch training, I’ll say, look, I want a very specialist type of training that starts people from hiding behind their emails but I’m assuming you’re not looking for training right now. Most people will go, You’re right, Anthony, we’re not looking at training right now because we have a training programme that’s running until the end of the year. We don’t get a budget until a certain point. So by leading with the most common objection, which is usually bad timing, you put that on the table, which makes it safe to talk about and it means you don’t have to do objection handling, which is technically arguing. [00:22:43][85.3]

Anthony Stears: [00:22:44] Technically arguing and hiding behind the emails, I think that’s what’s going on. So we don’t have to say that people are shirking, they’re hiding behind their emails. That’s what they’re doing. Okay, cool. Now, the only thing I would say is that the most successful pizza store marketing company would employ someone with the cajones, I don’t know why I am saying that in Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish. [00:23:09][24.4]

Anthony Stears: [00:23:10] The testicles, knock on the door. [00:23:13][2.5]

Anthony Stears: [00:23:13] And say, look, I am sure you get a lot of these through your door but we’re on a mission to make the best pizzas in town, and we’ve got this fantastic offer on, and people are raving about it, so I didn’t want it to get lost in all the stuff. I’m still just dropping off the menu, but I’m just doing a better job of of landing that awareness. What I’m not doing is what you’re saying is saying and you have to order a pizza right now or you’re a knob. [00:23:35][21.5]

Anthony Stears: [00:23:35] Which is what they say. [00:23:36][0.7]

Anthony Stears: [00:23:37] Yeah. It’s trying to do the assumptive close type of thing. [00:23:40][3.1]

Anthony Stears: [00:23:40] Yeah. Or just expecting ….. [00:23:41][1.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:23:42] But on the other side of the coin, pre-COVID, if you went out on a Friday and Saturday night and did knock on doors on houses blaring music, i.e. people having a bit of a party, you’d actually sell pizzas. [00:23:56][13.6]

Anthony Stears: [00:23:57] I bet you actually would. Yeah, I bet you would. [00:23:58][1.5]

Anthony Stears: [00:23:59] If a Domino’s van pulled up and went I can hear the music, I’ve just dropped a pizza up there, but they are having a party there. Let me just go and knock and say, hey, I’ve just delivered pizzas to you or one of your neighbours, if you want to place an order, let me know. I’ll get them back to the kitchen and I’ll see you back in half an hour. [00:24:12][12.9]

Anthony Stears: [00:24:13] Yes, I’ll bet you would be. [00:24:17][3.9]

Anthony Stears: [00:24:19] The issue is finding people willing to do it. [00:24:19][0.3]

How not to do prospecting.

Anthony Stears: [00:24:20] Yes and there’s not many of those people because they’ve all been told that sales is awful and they’ve all been told it’s rude, and all of that other stuff. What was the point I wanted to make? The point I wanted to make was it’s impersonal. So can I tell you about an interaction I’ve had in the last half an hour? [00:24:43][22.8]

Anthony Stears: [00:24:44] Yeah. [00:24:44][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:24:45] Like, so email link, LinkedIn, chat, all of it is impersonal. It’s like you’re not dealing with a person. So then what happens is that the manners fall because you don’t know if you’re talking to a bot or not. Certainly when I’m when I’m forced to respond to a chapel because my bank don’t want me to have my money, and now I have to go to a chat bot and wait for 2 hours for them to come back: I’m rude, I’ll admit it. I’m rude. [00:25:16][31.2]

Anthony Stears: [00:25:17] So here’s what happens when you get to my age, I don’t know how they even know, they can probably see from my profile picture. I come from a long line of fat faced Irish farmers. What happens is personal trainers target you. What they do is they send you a connection request on LinkedIn and then the next thing is, I work with guys like you, it’s always guys and then the next thing is I’ve got a free thing, do you want the free thing? So this went on today. The guy requested a connection a couple of days ago. I’m an idiot because I know this is the deal, but I still accepted and then I got the next thing. The next thing. And then today I’ll get the next message and it’s, do you want this free thing? I’m like, No, thanks, and please don’t start spamming me. He came back and he said, It’s not spam. I’m delivering messages to my target market. Well, actually, what spam is, is if it’s unsolicited and the person is telling you they don’t like it, it’s spam. Like spam is in the eye of the beholder. [00:26:12][55.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:26:14] Then went to my profile headline which says Expert Motivating, Educating and Motivating Business Owners and managers and he copied that and he’s like, Oh, you really motivated me. And it’s like, What are you doing? You know, I mean, it’s like, I didn’t say, don’t spam me you arsehole I said, please don’t spam me. [00:26:35][21.1]

Anthony Stears: [00:26:37] The irony is, is I was trying to do that and you’ve totally ignored it. Your ignorance and your system, yeah. [00:26:46][8.7]

Anthony Stears: [00:26:47] So then I said, okay, then I’ve cancelled the connexion and he’s like, Oh, you beat me to it. [00:26:51][3.8]

Anthony Stears: [00:26:53] He’s probably a nice guy, he’s probably an alright guy, but he’s doing it in such an impersonal way and now I’m talking to you about him behaving like a dick. I don’t think he’s a dick. He’s behaving like a dick. Don’t do it like that. Like, don’t assume that you’re going to get a sale when you haven’t really done your marketing, your marketing is about finding people who want to buy it. [00:27:12][18.3]

Anthony Stears: [00:27:14] Absolutely. And I think it’s part of the reason why people say, oh, cold calling is dead and they’re trying to say something slightly different. But the reason why doing cold calling really badly is such a risky thing is if you upset somebody, like you, who has a big following online, and now I formed this really negative association with my company, or what I do, or me personall, you could go and post about this, and basically you’re going to end up naming and shaming me. It turns out for other companies that do telemarketing really badly and they use rude people is that their marketing department, then have to start creating content that buries the bad reviews, and comments, and posts about them and they end up in defence strategy trying to create loads of content to swamp the bad stuff that’s being picked up. If you upset the wrong person along the way, they could make your life absolute hell and turn opinion on your brand totally on its head. So it’s a really risky strategy and and when people do it, particularly through chat messages, where it’s feels even less personal, it baffles me that people think that that’s okay. [00:28:27][73.5]

Anthony Stears: [00:28:27] I can kind of get the strategy that they’re trying to do, I often talk about you need to get people to serve like you by being nice, and then you get the to respect you by using some case studies, but then you create urgency by offering a test drive. That’s the freebie that they’re trying to warm you up with. They just need to learn that if you didn’t enjoy the test drive, or you did enjoy the test drive, but I’m never going to buy the car. They might then go, Oh, okay, we won’t bother you anymore. Or like you said to that person a while back, okay, we might touch base in three months to see if you’ve changed your mind, but otherwise, crack on with your life. [00:29:05][37.7]

Anthony Stears: [00:29:06] Yeah. The thing is, I don’t want to get too much into this, it’s the impersonality of it. So this brings me to the third thing, and there’s four things. [00:29:14][8.5]

The benefit of actually talking to your market, prospects and customers.

Anthony Stears: [00:29:15] The third thing is the benefit of actually talking to people, which is that you learn something when you actually talk to people. So I started working selling advertising for a company called Miller Freeman. So this was like one of these big media sales operations. It was business to business, they had 60 or 70 titles. I started off selling a printing title and, you know what, after three or four months of speaking to people in the printing industry, I became quite expert at printing type stuff. Then what happened is, oh, this was a joy, I got promoted to work on Farming News and this was exactly the time of the BSE crisis. So basically it wasn’t so much telemarketing or telesales as it was counselling farmers who were killing their cows every day. It was awful. [00:30:10][55.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:30:11] Then, thankfully, I got promoted to an engineering title and then I spent six, eight months talking to people in engineering recruitment and I became quite expert at that. So that the point of marketing, I think, not just telemarketing, but telemarketing is probably most effective way. The point of marketing is to learn about your market, and what it is that they want to buy, so you can produce the right thing, develop the right message and land the right message on the right people. This is what I think. [00:30:40][28.8]

[00:30:41] I don’t know what the question was? [00:30:42][0.9]

Anthony Stears: [00:30:43] Well, on that point, you’ve said you’re absolutely right. [00:30:46][3.9]

Precisely how sales people get it wrong and how to fix it.

Anthony Stears: [00:30:47] If you talk to, or talk with, somebody, you will learn something. The problem that you tend to find in sales is they’re talking at somebody. They’re not really interested in what you’ve got to say. They just need to get their pitch off their chest in the hope that you might say yes and if you do, they can ring the bell and they’ve hit their target for the day. [00:31:08][21.7]

Anthony Stears: [00:31:09] Yes and this is where the whole thing for me is mis-aligned, because everyone I’ve ever worked with in sales is just desperate to get hold of someone and desperate to sell them something. My approach was entirely different. I had a brilliant sales manager. My first sales manager was amazing. I went to him after three days when I obviously can’t do this and he said, just phone people and make friends, it’s not hard. After two weeks, it’s like, well, I am making lots of friends friends I can’t get them to buy anything. He’s like, well, see if you can sell them a media pack because they’re free. It’s was like that. It’s like do the marketing type stuff. People don’t understand because they call them telesales, they don’t understand what they’re actually doing is marketing. Actually what they’re doing is finding people who actually have an interest in, and will benefit from buying the thing, because then what you’ve got is a happy customer. When you’ve got a happy customer, they’ll introduce you to other people who also have an interest in and might buy the thing because their mate is telling them they should. That’s the way it works. It feels to me, and this is the danger of your assassin thing, because this leans into this horribly, but it feels to me like people are desperate, I’ve got to get someone on the phone, and when I get get them on the phone, I’ve got to sell to them, and that’s stupid. [00:32:32][82.3]

Anthony Stears: [00:32:33] You know, there’s definitely a mentality. There’s a panic of getting people on the phone, which got made even harder during lockdown if people are working from home. When you’re desperate and behind target, when somebody does finally answer the phone, you don’t want to let them go. So you then tend to come across a little bit strong and overbearing, and then you try and troubleshoot any objections. If they push back,and they are not very interested in this they are like no let me tell you a little bit more about it. They’re trying to kind of keep it going rather than taking the approach of cultivating a relationship. [00:33:09][35.3]

[00:33:10] That’s where if you’re prospecting, I often get people to map the journey that you would take a prospect through before they become a client. Quite often it takes a few different, at least a couple of conversations before you can convince somebody to actually do something otherwise, you’re a complete stranger. Most people have had a really bad experience with somebody selling down the phone to them and then buying something that they didn’t want, or being conned, or something along those lines. That’s where I think a lot of salespeople are just impatient. When you can get them to slow down and on that first call, I want you to make friends with them and as part of making friends and getting then to like you, I’d like you to start seeing if you can get them to trust us a little bit. Not to do anything yet, you just want them to trust us. So what I would then set you as a bit of a goal to do based on what I do is say what is what is having a bit of a chat with them can you drop off a case study of a company in their industry that we’ve worked with who thinks we’re amazing just so that they can see what our customers say about us. If they ask any more questions, brilliant, but if not, all we want to do is let them know that if they are looking for this service in the future, people in their industry use us for a very particular reason and hear it from the horse’s mouth. [00:34:31][80.9]

Anthony Stears: [00:34:32] Yeah. Yes. [00:34:32][0.7]

Anthony Stears: [00:34:33] All of a sudden I’ve turned what felt like a stressful sales role, where there’s the pressure to get some sales to you got to drop off some pizza menus. Can you go and give out them free media packs? [00:34:43][9.6]

Anthony Stears: [00:34:44] Yes. Yeah, 100%. [00:34:45][1.2]

Anthony Stears: [00:34:46] Because you give out ten media packs and the harder you work, the luckier you seem to get. The 10th one goes, actually, we’re looking at this at the moment or we’re going to be looking at this next month. Maybe we should have another chat. Everybody else is being cultivated so that when you’re ready to talk, we want to be the person that you talk to. [00:35:03][16.5]

Anthony Stears: [00:35:03] Yes. [00:35:03][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [00:35:04] Salespeople are like. Yeah, but it’s really important and I want you to talk about it now. They don’t understand that you butted into somebody’s day and what you want to talk about is not on the top of their priority list. So you have to respect that. [00:35:14][10.4]

Anthony Stears: [00:35:16] 100%. [00:35:16][0.0]

Who do you work with and how do you add value to their lives?

Anthony Stears: [00:58:19] So question number two, you’ve kind of given us plenty of sense. We’ve got 21 minutes remaining. Okay. But question number two, who do you work with? How do you add value to their lives? [00:58:28][8.9]

Anthony Stears: [00:58:31] So from the companies I work with, it’s a real mixture, which isn’t that helpful. But I’ll give you some examples. Financial services. Recently I’ve worked with a British bank. Financial more sort of investment effect type of businesses, accountants, foreign currency. And typically with those guys, they are very knowledgeable. Their product, their services and products are sometimes quite complex. All I really do with those is help them to manage the flow of the conversation. Yes. Helping them to potentially break the ice with people at the beginning. If it’s a new relationship, how to do a pre frame at the beginning of a call so that you can recap on everything that’s happened so far. So everybody’s up to speed that you check. They have enough time in the diary. So obviously if you do because Zoom or a meeting with somebody online at the very beginning, you should always be saying that. Thanks ever so much for jumping online. I did block out a full hour. Are you okay for that or how long have you got? Because if you’ve blocked out 30 minutes and I blocked out an hour, I might be doing far too much small talk than I needed to be if if to get everything done in the time that we need it. Yeah. I help people build their confidence by building these credibility libraries. So quite often if you do have products, this can be really useful to get that real sense of pride around the product when you start showing testimonials. So printing companies, packaging companies, courier services, there’s a variety of different companies. I’ve worked with lots of associations as well, membership associations. I’m just trying to think of some others medical. There’s a few I’ve worked with in that space. So medical devices as well as the pharmaceutical side, which is very complex because there’s certain things you can and can’t say when it comes to pharmacy products and who you can talk to. So that becomes a whole new, interesting ball game. But if you work with construction companies as well, it massively varies. But quite often really what I try and give people is the confidence to guide the conversation to an outcome that they’re that the person they’re talking to is happy with, but hopefully also achieves their goal as well. Okay. And that is sometimes in retaining clients, people will hear the telephone assassin and think, oh, it’s all cold calling. Once, probably about ten or 15% of what I do. A lot of it’s actually dealing with account managers who need to up serve their existing customers, make sure that they they renew their contracts at the end of the year, that we squeeze every project out of them that we can, that we’re getting referrals out of them, but we’re getting testimonials out of those clients too. And I just try and help people to. Think about a conversation before they have it so that they’re prepared for the bad things that might happen or they’re the worst case scenario, and that they could move the conversation on in a positive way. Yeah, in sales, the most common thing that hit sales is bad timing. So you kind of learn and you get a bit of a thick skin that when you call somebody, the likelihood of them needing what you want right now and thinking about it right now is really, really slim. But if you make a good impression and then you send them a little case study within three or four months, they’re not cold anymore. As you mentioned before, when you then do the follow up, they then start to like the sound of your voice and it makes a really big difference. So I’ll be honest with you, I have to pinch myself. I’ve got a job that basically just teaches people how to be nice in a conversation. Yeah, it’s nice, but I. But I also blame all of the technology platforms that we now have that give us other methods of communication. And as you mentioned earlier on, if it’s a chat bot or it’s more of a text, you tend to do a bit of shorthand. You tend to lose some of the etiquette and the manners that people appreciate. And that makes people realise that you are a gentleman. [01:02:37][246.5]

Anthony Stears: [01:02:38] Yes. [01:02:38][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:02:39] 100%. Okay. So that. [01:02:41][2.3]

Anthony Stears: [01:02:42] I. [01:02:42][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:02:42] Don’t actually feel like I answered your questionnaire. But there was there’s quite a few industries that I kind of work with and I suppose confidence to deliver bad news or get people to take action is really what I help people to do. [01:02:53][11.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:02:54] Yes. [01:02:54][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:02:55] Okay. No, I think you asked I think you’ve been answering that question really since we stopped talking about your cat. [01:03:00][5.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:03:02] Yeah. Was the. [01:03:06][4.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:03:06] Thing. The thing is, that’s what people need is the confidence. You know what? That’s all people need. I think mostly what they need. I mean, they need to steer on a few things, like guiding conversations is like just a sense that, you know what, you’re finding people, they don’t even know you exist and you want to get them to the point where they trust you enough to to buy something from you. You know, that’s that’s the journey and how you go on that journey, guiding those conversations. But I think 100% the main thing that salespeople need is the confidence to actually put themselves in the game. Do you know I mean, to actually be telling people, this is what I’m doing, I think he’ll be really valuable for you. I don’t know if it will or not. I don’t know how you feel about these things, but let’s have a chat. I mean, and immediately you work out, you don’t need it. Just let me know. I’ll go bother someone else. You know, it’s like, yeah. [01:03:56][49.8]

Anthony Stears: [01:03:56] You could say that is like the. [01:03:58][1.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:03:58] Way I would extricate myself from cause quite often is. [01:04:00][2.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:04:01] Like. People lie. They’re like. Like, with. [01:04:06][5.3]

Anthony Stears: [01:04:06] Reception is like when we were cold calling. I mean, this is something I want to ask you, but when we were cold, calling people would lie and they would say, like, and when I did my telemarketing training, I would say to people, it’s like gatekeepers, the most powerful people on the planet. I’ve only got three questions, but they decide whether you live or die. You know, I mean, with those three questions, I can’t remember what three questions were, but one of them invariably, like, if you get to this, this is the third question. Is this a cold call? [01:04:33][27.1]

Anthony Stears: [01:04:35] You’re dead because you’re dead. [01:04:37][2.5]

Anthony Stears: [01:04:38] So what was the point in that people will lie? Are you trying to sell something? No. [01:04:42][4.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:04:44] Mm hmm. Right. That’s a lie. [01:04:46][2.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:04:47] I mean, so when you go. [01:04:48][1.2]

Anthony Stears: [01:04:48] Through. [01:04:48][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:04:49] And he comes out and he says, the secretary, I told you I didn’t want any sales cause today. And she’s like, Well, he told me he wasn’t going to sell something. I mean, I said, okay, you’re a liar. You’ve been busted. [01:04:58][8.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:04:58] As a liar. [01:04:58][0.2]

Anthony Stears: [01:04:59] You ask people, Do you know what I mean? So it’s as simple as that. So I used to love it. Like secretaries would say, Oh, the second question is our first question is, does he know you? Second question is, are they expecting your call? Third question is, is this a cold call or is this a sales call? So does he know me? No, I’ve never spoken to him before in my life. That’s true. Is he expecting your call? No. It’s going to come as a complete surprise. She’s laughing. I’m going through. I don’t even get. She doesn’t even get to ask me if it’s a sales calls, you know? I mean, it’s it really is as simple as that. I think it’s. [01:05:32][33.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:05:33] It’s so honest. It’s disarming. [01:05:34][1.1]

Anthony Stears: [01:05:35] Disarming and funny. And it’s like. And she know or they know that I’m not going to upset the person because I’m a funny kind of disarming, kind of unassuming, kind of a, you know, I mean, I’m not a threat to anyone where somebody finds out and says, you need to put me through to your boss or, you know, put me through. I need to make a complaint. I need to speak to your manager. It’s like, are you stupid? [01:05:54][18.8]

Anthony Stears: [01:05:55] Yeah. What was the point? So. [01:05:58][2.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:05:59] Yes. So this comes to the next question I have, which is the one you suggested earlier. Surely in 2022, I mean, you’ve just listed all of the industries that actually rely on telesales, telemarketing work in the phone. But surely in 2022, with the voicemails and the mobile phones and the attitudes and the. Not call lists. What was that called like? Poor call barring. And then the TPS is still called. [01:06:28][29.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:06:28] The telephone preference. [01:06:29][0.9]

Anthony Stears: [01:06:29] Service. Is that still existing? Surely, given that this was issued for us in when I stopped working on the phone in the UK in 1999, all these things were given us issues already. Surely in the 23 years since then it must have died cold calling telemarketers. [01:06:43][13.3]

Anthony Stears: [01:06:45] So cold calling in the traditional sense of what it used to be, which was finding somebody you didn’t know to try and sell them something they probably didn’t don’t want it. So I think cold calling is dead in the fact that you no longer have an excuse to phone somebody up and not know some stuff about them. [01:07:05][20.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:07:06] Okay. [01:07:06][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:07:09] Because we live in a digital world where you can check people’s websites, you can see what it is they actually do. And most sales people, although we’re not the sharpest tools in the box, we’re smart enough to know the more information we have before we start start to try and attack, the easier it is to adapt what we’re going to do and say based on some of that information. Yes. So you I personally don’t think having to phone you up and be trying to sell you something and then be asking you about your business. I get really annoyed. I do that. They kind of go, oh, hi there. I see. I see you are the director of the telephone assassin then said, I want to talk to you about this new CRM system. Okay. And why do you think I need a new CRM system? Right. Oh, well, this is perfect for coaches, does it? I go, yeah, but I don’t really do much coaching. Most of my stuff is training and speaking. If you’d bothered to look at my website and you saw my feed, you’d probably have figured that out. And you could have changed tack slightly. [01:08:10][60.9]

Anthony Stears: [01:08:11] Yeah. God help anyone who cold calls us like they are in trouble. [01:08:14][3.2]

Anthony Stears: [01:08:16] I’m. I’m easy to sell to. All you have to do is be polite. Be polite and listen to me. If you listen to me, I’ll give you all the clues of what it is I need and why. Yes. And if you show that, you pay attention. And if you’ve got a sense of humour and can make me laugh along the way, then I’ll enjoy the process. And if I need something, you may be able to help me to buy it and maybe to educate me into learning something I didn’t know was out there that I didn’t realise I’d need. But you also have to respect my time, and that’s that’s the bit that I think most people struggle with. So, you know, you talked about like those I mentioned. So getting permission to speak at the beginning, of course. So some people might go with you free to chat or you okay to talk or some people just blow a script. Right? I’m assuming you’ve received a cold call where somebody blurted a pitch down the phone at you. [01:09:03][47.8]

Anthony Stears: [01:09:04] Yeah, I was. [01:09:05][1.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:09:06] Actually. [01:09:06][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:09:06] Yeah, yeah. [01:09:07][0.3]

Anthony Stears: [01:09:07] Well, it’s it’s what I joke about it. I call it premature elaboration. It’s an overexcited salesperson blurting a pitch over anybody who answers the phone. And it just sets off alarm bells that say it’s a sales call. So the way I get permission to speak when I phoned somebody up is to basically combat the biggest issue that you have, which is they haven’t got time or don’t want to talk about it. As I would if I was phoning you for the very first time, I’d go to a high market when I’m down to these states. I was just hoping to chat to you for a couple of minutes, but I understand you’re quite busy and now’s probably not a good time. Is there a better time to call you back? Right. And because I’m making it so easy for you to get out of this conversation, most people will come to one of two conclusions, which is, I can’t possibly be in sales because nobody in sales would make it that easy to get out of this. Or if you are in sales, you’re rubbish at it and not to be feared. Okay, so it’s actually a really disarming thing and what most people do is they kind of go, hang on a second, I don’t think this passes in sales. They only really want 2 minutes and they’re right there. I am a busy guy, but there’s never really a good time to speak to me. But go on, you seem polite. I’ll give you 2 minutes now because that’s all you’ve asked for, right? Yes. And actually, by giving them a really easy out, which probably goes against everything you would have heard from sales trainers about at the beginning of a phone call. The last thing you want to do is is let them get out easily. Right. That’s just what most sales think. Once you get them on the phone, the desperation is to move. Don’t let them off the phone. Yes. And my view on on using telemarketing is is sales will always be a numbers game, but it is not about convincing people to buy and overcoming objections. It’s about capitalising on the conversations people are ready to have. If they’re not ready to have an invitation, then you’re not going to be able to get them to open up and talk about it. And you’re not going to steer that conversation. They’re not ready to chat. You’re better off finding out now rather than barking up the wrong tree and upsetting somebody or wasting a lead or being persistent with somebody who’s just had the whole computer system crash. I’ve got more important things I need to fix right now rather than talking to you about your product. Yeah. So sometimes you need to give people that opportunity. And on an unlucky day, when you do that, my version of the permission to speak, maybe two out of three will say, Actually, Anthony, you’re right, now isn’t a good time, but could you give me a call on Friday? Would you might give me a call tomorrow and and I’ll do the same thing again, because I don’t care if you put me off full time to make me wait a month as long as in a month’s time. When you do give me permission to speak, you’ll probably be like, Oh, thanks for bearing with me, Anthony. I know you can try me a couple of times when we had that issue before, but go on, you’ve got my undivided attention. What did you want to talk about? Yeah, right. You’re then ready to engage. If you’re ready to engage, I can help steer the conversation and help you understand what it is I do. Whereas if you’re not in the mindset of wanting to find out about this, I’m barking up the wrong tree and I’m wasting your time and mine. I’m not a bit lazy as a salesperson. I don’t really do database marketing. I want to do wishlist marketing. [01:12:16][188.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:12:17] Yes. [01:12:17][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:12:18] I want dream clients that are worth my time and attention. If I only get one or two of them makes a big quarter rather than going after anybody and everybody 100%. [01:12:28][9.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:12:28] That’s what I think. And the thing is, this is what I tell people about marketing. You do marketing so you can pick and choose who your customers are. If you’re not doing marketing, you have to take any rubbish that turns up on your door, do you know what I mean? [01:12:39][10.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:12:39] And yeah, that’s. [01:12:41][1.5]

Anthony Stears: [01:12:41] Why you do marketing. [01:12:41][0.5]

Anthony Stears: [01:12:42] And if your marketing is good, you don’t have to do outbound telemarketing stuff because you have enough enquiries that you get to qualify and disqualify and you deal with the people who’ve walked into your shop rather than walking the street with a banner trying to find people who haven’t found your shop yet. [01:12:57][14.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:12:58] Yes. So you’re saying that the basically the hard core, what people would imagine was cold calling that’s kind of moved away. And now you have to be investing more in the relationship early rather than. [01:13:11][13.3]

Anthony Stears: [01:13:12] Yes, yeah, yeah. [01:13:13][1.2]

Anthony Stears: [01:13:14] For sure. [01:13:14][0.1]

What is your recommendation for people who want to get better at having strategic conversations?

Anthony Stears: [01:13:15] Super cool. Question number three, we’ve still got three questions to go. Can you believe it? [01:13:19][4.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:13:20] I’m a toddler with not much time. [01:13:22][1.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:13:22] Not 6 minutes. We might overrun by a couple of minutes. Are we cool? [01:13:24][2.3]

Anthony Stears: [01:13:26] Yeah. I’ll try and keep it short and sweet. Apologies, my friend. [01:13:28][2.5]

Anthony Stears: [01:13:29] Can I have your undivided attention? [01:13:30][1.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:13:31] Focus. I’m focussed. [01:13:32][0.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:13:33] Okay. So this one needs to be succinct. You’ve probably answered this question again already, but we want to chop this and put it on TikTok. So what is your recommendation for people who want to get better at having strategic conversations? [01:13:47][13.8]

Anthony Stears: [01:13:50] Do some planning before you pick up the phone. Okay. Think about what it is you’re going to do in that conversation and take it one step at a time. If you want to improve your results for prospecting, concentrate on getting people to like and trust you rather than trying to get people to take action. People will take action once they trust you, and that’s why you need to use your credibility library in order to win people over and earn their trust. To take a test drive which gives you a chance to show off and win them over through delivering some value for them. [01:14:25][34.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:14:26] So it’s a great recommendation. [01:14:27][0.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:14:29] How will that work? I don’t know how well that work on TikTok, but yeah, that’s why I. [01:14:33][3.7]

Anthony Stears: [01:14:33] Haven’t done it yet. Will see everyone on the dogs on TikTok. That’s why we’ve got to start getting the goods. Okay, cool. [01:14:40][6.9]

What should people read?

[01:14:40] So question number four, then we are rattling off the questions now. What should people. [01:14:45][5.1]

Anthony Stears: [01:14:45] Read? Oh, um. [01:14:48][3.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:14:49] I’ve mentioned him earlier on as a guy called Phil Jones. He’s got a book called Magic Words. And it’s simple words that make a massive difference in a conversation that’s certainly worth reading. And they’re just such simple things that will give you a confidence in guiding a conversation forwards. So yeah, Magic Words by Phil Jones is an awesome one. Plus all linked in bound by Sam rattling on my desk. There we go. In fact, you’ve had Sam on, right? [01:15:23][34.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:15:24] Yeah. Just last week, I spoke to Sam, and she’s up already. [01:15:27][2.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:15:28] Oh, if yeah. If you can improve your index with with LinkedIn using her book it’s brilliant. Absolutely filled with gems. [01:15:38][9.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:15:38] Okay. Do you know anyone who’s written anything about kind of guiding telesales, customer service type conversations, anything like that? [01:15:46][7.8]

Anthony Stears: [01:15:47] Um. [01:15:47][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:15:49] If I’m honest with you, I do, I suppose, shamefully stick away from those. [01:15:54][5.1]

Anthony Stears: [01:15:56] I’m talking about you. [01:15:56][0.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:15:58] About me? Oh, obviously. Yeah. [01:15:59][1.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:16:00] We go. [01:16:00][0.1]

Anthony Stears: [01:16:01] The book is the book. Yeah, it’s written a few years ago, but it’s got all of my the core principles about what it is I do, how the structure kind of works. And it’s, it’s, it’s more of a reference guide. So if people do get a chance, you can buy on Amazon depending on where you are in the world. And if you, if you appreciate excellent packaging and branding, you can buy on my website if you wish, but it’s slightly more expensive. [01:16:28][27.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:16:29] Fantastic. Okay, cool. Excellent. That will also go. I’m going to start marketing this as the International League of Marvellous Marketeers. What do you think? [01:16:37][7.8]

Anthony Stears: [01:16:39] Love it to be to be considered as part of that under that umbrella. I think it’s an awesome title and a privilege to be part of. [01:16:46][7.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:16:46] You are where you are part of it. I’m in your life now. I’ll be stalking you, liking your stuff and sharing on LinkedIn and stuff like that. [01:16:51][5.2]

Anthony Stears: [01:16:51] So I think I’m going to be coming to visit you at some point soon as well. [01:16:54][2.9]

Anthony Stears: [01:16:55] So that would be really good to see you, man. Okay, cool. Right. So I just need to check in and see how you feel about this experience. How are you feeling about this experience? [01:17:05][10.2]

Anthony Stears: [01:17:06] I’ve really enjoyed it. I have to be honest with you. It’s probably the most flowing natural conversation I think I’ve had as a as done as a podcast before. So that was quite nice. I like the way certain responses triggered some reactions out of you as well. But yeah, I really enjoyed it. It’s actually not felt like work, which is always nice. [01:17:27][20.5]

Anthony Stears: [01:17:27] Fantastic, excellent. But if two conversation strategists like you and I are chatting is going to be an amazing conversation, I’d go be. [01:17:34][7.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:17:35] Absolutely. I’m looking forward to watching it back. [01:17:37][2.2]

Anthony Stears: [01:17:38] Okay, cool. [01:17:39][0.4]

Who do you think might enjoy or at least endure to have a strategic conversation like this with me?

Anthony Stears: [01:17:40] Excellent. All right, then. So the reason I ask that question is to see how easy it’s going to be for you to throw a couple of people under the bus. [01:17:46][6.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:17:48] So who do. [01:17:49][0.9]

Anthony Stears: [01:17:49] You think might enjoy or at least endure to have a strategic conversation like this with me? [01:17:56][6.7]

Anthony Stears: [01:17:57] I will soon. As I mentioned him a couple of times, I think Phil Phil Jones, I will certainly connect you with. I think he would go down really well. But there’s a guy called Simon Heseltine who I’ve known for many years through the Professional Speaking Association. He does he talks about neuro selling. So some of the neuroscience behind negotiation and he’s written about a dozen books about bare knuckle negotiations was one of them that I particularly remember. But he he’s a he he talks a little bit more around the psychology of sales and selling. And I quote him all the time. So if we can get Simon on would be a brilliant guest and I think you would get on with him rather well. [01:18:42][45.1]

Anthony Stears: [01:18:43] So fantastic. Excellent. Super cool. You’re a legend. And is it Phil Jones who said good salespeople, our mind maker operas? [01:18:52][8.9]

Anthony Stears: [01:18:53] Yeah. He said he talks about the main mind maker operas and he says the best salespeople earn a right to make a recommendation call. [01:18:59][6.7]

Anthony Stears: [01:19:00] So I won’t make that the title then of this conversation, because I wrote down when you said that out of in jest you said that on. 2006 my time 1536 minutes into the conversation. I won’t make that the headline of this one. I’ll find something else that’s interesting that you said, Man, you’re an absolute legend. I also thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Yep. [01:19:24][23.7]

Anthony Stears: [01:19:24] I felt like I waffled off on a few, so I apologise if I did. But yeah, mate, I wish we could do this all the time. [01:19:32][7.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:19:33] Well, we could. [01:19:34][1.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:19:37] I’m doing this all the time. You know I’m doing this all the time. But you’re welcome back. I mean, we did say in the conversation that we have before that we might talk more about customer retention and customer service rather than sales, but it went to sales. But if you’ve got as much to say about that, we could do that in the future. I put that there, so I put that there. [01:19:54][17.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:19:55] And we could do. [01:19:56][1.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:19:56] That in the future. [01:19:57][0.2]

Anthony Stears: [01:19:58] I would love to. And if I’m honest with you, I kind of forgotten about that was more where we were supposed to be going with this. So. But yeah, hopefully that’s worked out well then. That’s me. Weaselling my way back in to do our part to at some point. [01:20:09][11.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:20:09] Yes. And if you just fancy doing something occasionally, if you’ve got time on your hands, I do like reaction stuff. I’ve got a bit of an issue with Gary Vaynerchuk every time I. So like we react to the very best and the very worst of stuff on the Internet. So if you do fancy being more involved, you know, you could do one of those sometime. That’d be cool. Maybe we’ll find somebody talking about well, maybe we’ll find a complete idiot talking about sales and we will just sit here and rag on him. We could do that. [01:20:38][28.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:20:41] That sounds like great fun. [01:20:43][1.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:20:43] It does sound. [01:20:43][0.4]

Anthony Stears: [01:20:44] Like fun, doesn’t it? [01:20:44][0.7]

Anthony Stears: [01:20:45] Reaction stuff. I’m happy to do stuff that would would kind of help him, particularly if it’s just easy video. So yes, in between stuff, I might need to see some examples of the sorts of things you mean. But we will be we’ll be chatting more. It’s interesting since we spoke of my I don’t see my wife in and obviously we’ve been to Bali and stuff like that and she’s all we really need to go and even to the point where when we were talking about shifting my business model, looking more using speaking but coaching rather than training because I can do that from anywhere. And I was using you as the example of, well, if you’ve got a good enough, decent enough Internet connexion and you can keep your marketing going, you can be working and busy from anywhere, right? [01:21:28][43.2]

Anthony Stears: [01:21:29] You really can. Yeah. Hundred percent. It would be lovely to see you here, man. [01:21:32][2.8]

Anthony Stears: [01:21:33] Okay, cool. [01:21:33][0.3]

Anthony Stears: [01:21:34] Right. So we got to the end. So what we’ll do now is we’ll say goodbye for the purposes of anyone who’s still listening. So, man, I’ve thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this. And then what we’ll do is I’ll stop recording. We’ll say goodbye like normal human beings. [01:21:45][10.6]

Anthony Stears: [01:21:46] But. [01:21:46][0.0]

Anthony Stears: [01:21:47] Brother, I have thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I’m trying to find bad people and I can’t find them anywhere, you know? I can’t find them anywhere. But this has been a brilliant conversation. It’s really good to know that you are out there doing this, I think really useful and important work. [01:22:03][16.7]

Anthony Stears: [01:22:05] Thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure. I love what I do, which obviously you’ve you’ve probably worked out and we are so similar in the views. And it’s interesting when you see sales and marketing next to each other how much they should fit and ironically usually butt heads in most businesses. But yeah, I’ve loved chatting with you. If I can think of anybody terrible that we can rag on, as you put it, I will certainly be sending you those names as well. But it’s been an absolute pleasure for anyone listening. Keep tuning in. I’ve listened to a few of yours now, my friend. And yet you you make me laugh. Plus teaching me stuff as we go. So thank you. [01:22:43][38.1]

Anthony Stears: [01:22:44] Cool. Thank you. [01:22:44][0.0]

WHAT DO YOU THINK?