You can’t just turn up and throw a bit of lingo about – Talk Marketing 030 – Jamie Bada

1:38:27 What are your reading recommendations?

1:42:30 Who do you recommend I speak to as part of the talk marketing series?

Martin Henley  0:11  

Hello there, my name is Martin Henley, this is the effective marketing YouTube channel and if you spent a second here you will know I am on a mission through this channel to provide you with everything you need to improve your business through sales and marketing. So not only am I here giving you everything I know about sales and marketing I’m also grilling anyone I can find with experience to get their knowledge on sales and marketing for you also. 

Martin Henley  0:36  

Today’s guest has more than 17 years of high ticket sales experience, consistently surpassing targets. He is described in one of his LinkedIn recommendations as one of the most professional and nicest people I have come across in my life. He is currently commercial awareness and b2b coach in his own business, VISTA real. He describes himself as the best, DJ in his own mind, a closet club junkie and a fanatical dad. 

Martin Henley  1:05  

Today’s guest is Jamie Badar. Hello, Jamie.

Jamie Badar  1:13  

Hello, Martin. How you doing?

Martin Henley  1:15  

I am really well. Thank you, man. Thank you so much for agreeing to spend this time with me. We don’t know each other. We’ve been speaking for about five minutes, including the three minutes that when we weren’t recording when we thought we were recording. So thank you. It was Robbie Batty, who recommended that we speak so I’m really excited to have this conversation. I don’t know how you’re feeling about it?

Jamie Badar  1:37  

Yeah, I’m really excited. I’m intrigued, very little kind of run up to it. Not really, just flowing with the, just going with the punches, basically, and just see what you’re gonna throw at me, because I get the impression you’re going to give me a bit of a bit of a grilling, but who knows.

Martin Henley  1:55  

Yeah, I think …. what do I think about that? I think the thing is, quite often, sales and marketing people are quite slick and I think I’m probably guilty of this as well. What I try to do, I’m genuinely interested in what people are saying, so I’ve always got a question, but I also want to get a little bit beyond what might be the veneer. I think it’s very easy for us as sales and marketing professionals to offer up a very slick presentation but behind the presentation is probably where the value is. That’s how I feel.

Jamie Badar  2:28  

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I agree. Yeah, it’s getting rid, I mean, sales. So you got the image of, I think there’s the old cliche, as long as you look good, smell good you’re pretty much halfway there is the is the typical thing, but it’s far, far, far from the truth, there’s a lot more to it. Colleagues in marketing did an amazing, they always do an amazing job when the lead comes through and it’s a really strong lead. There’s a lot of the lifting work and a lot of the heavy works being done up to that point. It’s a marketing qualified lead, but it still needs work, typically the type of sales that I’ve done and majority of my career, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done at that point, that’s just really scratching the surface. 

Jamie Badar  3:21  

So you can’t just turn up and throw a bit of lingo about you need to be able to really understand the context, and the ecosystem which the customers working in, which is why my career has really been founded on commercial awareness. I think as soon as I got past the whole sales patter and techniques, actually and sales methodologies, which kind of get you so far. I think, when you start going up to the bigger stuff, then they don’t really work as well, which is why I am on a bit of a personal mission to work past the traditional kind of sales trainings, that I haven’t got an issue with. Bit like you I think you said you’ve got gripes, you’ve got certain issues with the industry, with the sales industry and how it’s traditionally gone about trying to train its sales people. I do think it’s doing a bit of a disservice which is where the commercial awareness really comes in. I think that supersedes a lot of issues with with traditional sales.

Martin Henley  4:35  

Okay, cool. All right, excellent. So it sounds like we’re in agreement about some of these things. There is an issue, I’ve got I just got issues in my life. I spend too much time thinking about these things is the truth. There is an issue of people not wanting to be in sales, businesses not wanting to invest in sales and marketing, let’s say businesses not wanting to invest in sales and marketing, sales people not really knowing what they’re doing, sales and marketing people not knowing what they’re doing. Like you say marketing might do a great job in producing the lead but for some reason salespeople don’t like marketing generated leads. They prefer their own generated leads. There’s all these issues, but we are running ahead of ourselves. Did I tell you about the four questions already, since we started recording?

Jamie Badar  5:25  

You’re gonna need to tell me again? Yeah. 

Martin Henley  5:28  

Okay. So there’s only five questions. So the first question is, how are you qualified to talk to us about sales? The second question is, who are your customers? What is it that you do for them? How do you add value to their lives? The third question is, what is your recommendation for anyone who wants to get better at sales? The fourth question is, what should people read? And the fifth question is, who can you throw under the bus to have some of these conversations with me? So the first question is, and don’t worry, you don’t have to remember, I am going to remind you, I’ve only got five things to remember. So we’re good. 

Jamie Badar  5:56  

Thank you. Alright.

How are you qualified to talk to us about sales?

Martin Henley  5:59  

 Number one, how are you qualified to talk to us about sales?

Jamie Badar  6:03  

Well, so back in 1992, I was about 15, coming on to 16 years old and I had a friend who was just doing some real, just just making money in the evenings, making appointments for double glazing. I mean, it sounds so seedy and it probably was if I think about it, because we will just holed up literally in this boiler room. I suppose. Okay, so So precursor to that is I just wanted to make more money and I think one of the things I’ve been running away from during my late adolescence into my sort of late 20s, was trying to do the more noble thing and wanting to do something with principles. So I trained as an engineer, but before that, I was actually probably more honest with myself, and I just wanted to make money. So I was, I was doing, I was working for this double glazing company called Anglican windows, I think they were called. We were just holed up in this horrible little boiler room and it was back in the day where you could smoke and work in the same environment. We were just basically working through the phonebook, calling up residents, residential phone numbers, just trying to book appointments for salespeople to attend, and we just got paid per lead. I can’t rememeber how much it was, probably not very much, but I think I was 16 years old and I just wanted to make money. I don’t want to get too much into that. I just had this thing that I just wanted to make money. I was intrigued about, about just wanting to trade some just just to get some money. I think it’s completely normal. I think most people go through that. I think, obviously, it’s why people get jobs. I heard that sales is a good way to do that and it’s like, right, okay, just get on the phone and just see what this is about. I didn’t, I probably didn’t really kind of analyse myself or have too much self self reflection or self awareness at that age. It’s just something I wanted to do and I just did it for the sake of doing it. 

Jamie Badar  8:08  

I went into engineering. I did engineering at university, and wasn’t really enjoying it, I guess but it’s something I could do. I really enjoyed maths, and physics, so I thought engineering was the logical thing to do. I then did a master’s in it for engineering, in some vain hopes to try and pull myself into kind of a direction that I kind of wanted to go into. Then I did something very IT orientated, for the engineering industry and then I started as very, very technical. Then cut a long kind of long story short, I went into training into this particular product, I really enjoyed being in front of people. I thought why don’t I just do more people facing or doing do more people facing job. Someone just recommend, well, maybe this maybe try sales. So I went into trying to sell this product, or a smaller version of it and I really, really, I kind of took to it. I just really enjoyed getting out there and just learning about what businesses did, and getting on the phones. To say I enjoyed it was a bit of a long shot. I didn’t get much training at the time. I was just given a laptop, an Excel spreadsheet with the database and a budget for petrol and I was just went out and while got the phones tried to make meetings for myself and and just try to do what I thought was that was the right thing to do. I didn’t really have any training really in that job. And that time it was selling a product. It was about 5000 It was only about 5000 pounds per licence kind of product. For me that was quite a lot of money at the age of what was it? 25, 24, 25 but then it just grew from there, really. That was the beginning about 17 or 18 years ago. It’s just grown from there. So it’s grown from selling a 5000 5000 pounds licence, and then selling multiple licences, those are orders grew up to 10 and 20,000 pounds. I got approached by a company in Australia to do the same thing I was doing the UK but over in Australia, they said, Look, where’d you want to go, I chose the East Coast, I was in Brisbane, there was a, there was a there that was about I was 27 or 28 years old and there was a massive boom, at the time in the resources industry. And I went from selling products, into the product industry. I was selling into the aerospace, automotive and transportation industry, into the resources, so oil and gas mining so that unfortunately, and this goes against my principles was very much around the coal industry, but also the precious metals industry, and also just the metals industry as well. So iron. 

Jamie Badar  11:12  

That was a huge eye opener, and then just deals just grew and grew and grew. Then once you get into the resource industry, then there’s a bit of a side story, I trained as a life coach when I was over there as well, because I did some life coach training when I was in the UK and that was just fascinating. Part of my route, part of my, the word aptitude comes into it. My success in sales came about when I really got into understanding people and the psychology of how to wean out issues that people have at a personal level, and how they’re interacting with their business. There was a lot of that kind of I did do some sales training at the time, Sandler for what it was worth, but it was really the people skills that really kind of accelerated my success, for want of a better word, my ability in sales really, okay. Then in Australia, I started a small little business doing the life coaching a little bit, I was doing coach. I was coaching business owners, I was coaching franchise owners, I was coaching athletes, and I was really getting to understanding the mindset of these people. I guess one of the things that I was dealing with before I started mind or business was this discrepancy between me being little old salesperson, who am I to go and speak with very successful senior leader in this huge organisation that’s running multiple millions and, hundreds of millions or whatever multinationals or you running a business. I’ve never done anything like that to someone who’s running a business coaching people who have done that, but speaking about regular stuff that they’re dealing with and grappling with in their life and then going back into sales, and having a totally different stance and position and, and disposition within myself and talking at a completely different level because I had done everything to start a business up, doing the marketing and the operations doing the product development, doing the lead generation all by myself, doing it on a bootstrap doing on on a sniff of a rag, you know, just doing it from nothing and I wanted to do it from nothing and having a mortgage to pay at the same time and all those kinds of stresses. Now relating to business people at a personal level rather than coming from an inferior position and so it was just a different connection, I think. Then I went into, I hate this word headhunter, but I was approached by recruitment consultants to much larger positions, and much larger positions and the base salaries increased, and the products that I was selling just got bigger, the dollar value was getting bigger and bigger. So I was selling much bigger ticket, bigger ticket items. I don’t know how to condense that into into a smaller thing. But yeah, that’s okay. Does that make sense at all?

Martin Henley  14:38  

It does make sense. It’s interesting how there’s flow through each of these things. So the the talk that got posted this week was with Ben Kench. Ben Kench wrote the book Selling for Dummies. 

Jamie Badar  14:56  

Oh, I’ve got that here.

Martin Henley  14:56  

Oh, there you go. Yeah, so he was here. Now you’ve got something in common with him because he also started, he was he was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness so he started selling Watchtower door to door, he was one of those Jehovah’s Witnesses who knocked on people’s doors. So he’s like, if you want to learn how to handle rejection, that’s how you do it. Then he went into double glazing and timeshare. He did that kind of boiler room, school of hard knocks kind of sales as well. I also did a little bit of double glazing when I was at Sixth Form College. I don’t remember being very good at it. The question I want to ask you, and this happens a lot your words, I wanted to do something more noble so I studied engineering. 

Jamie Badar  15:45  

Yeah. 

Martin Henley  15:46  

Why do we think that, why? You’re also saying, I just wanted to earn money and I heard  sales was a good way to do that. This is really an issue for me, which is why? None of us go to work for any reason other than to earn money. I mean, you could say that you have a calling to do something but the truth is, I’m sure if you didn’t need the money, you’d find something else to do with your time.

Jamie Badar  16:13  

Yeah. 

Why is sales is un-noble?

Martin Henley  16:13  

So if you want to make money, clearly sales is the best way to do that, because there’s no cap ever on how much money you can make but we all have this weird that like to take your words, you’re suggesting that sales is un-noble.

Jamie Badar  16:27  

Yeah, yeah. I just wrote something about this actually. The old phrase caveat emptor, buyer beware.

Martin Henley  16:36  

Yes. 

Jamie Badar  16:37  

Which comes from I mean, it’s a really old phrase that’s from like the 1602 I think it was first used in the legal industry, to protect buyers on salespeople, because literally, the buyer only up to up to really recently, the buyer really only knew about the product once they committed to the transaction. They didn’t really know anything, all the power was in the seller’s hands, because they knew everything about it, and how it was made, the experience of the previous customers, etc, etc. So the seller really had all the cards in their hands and then it was up to the honesty, and the integrity of that salesperson to portray that whatever they’re selling is the truth. Then the customer ends in … so some salespeople are fantastic, but others people, they could take advantage of it for whatever reason, they feel, okay, I’m onto something here. Maybe I can just embellish, or just expand on the truth a little bit and won’t mind or just cover up or make it sound better than it actually is. They won’t know, I’m out of here and I’ve got the money, I’ve gone. So there’s a bad reputation, but that reputation has grown and swollen over the years. I think there’s this, the the perception, the reputation has really hung over the sales industry for centuries and I think that something that is just ingrained now people. Things have changed. Research is just so easy now people can share their experiences on the app trust Trustpilot and TripAdvisor, Amazon, it’s all based on social selling, on the experiences of previous customers. So really now it’s now caveat, Caveat emptor seller beware, but the reputation very much is still hung over from yesteryear. Things have changed very, very quickly in the last 10 years or so. So the nobility, I think factor, is a play on that it. I think that’s very much. I think that’s very much in the background this disdain, or this reputation that salespeople have. I’m definitely on a mission to try and change that. I think it’s very much needed to change the reputation and that’s part of my business. I think that that goes hand in hand with the commercial awareness because there’s a lot of hard graft that goes into understanding a client’s context in which they work it’s no easy task, especially if you want to sell into a complex ecosystem.

Martin Henley  19:27  

Yes. Okay. 

Jamie Badar  19:28  

It got to be respected.

Martin Henley  19:30  

Yes. Okay. So I think it’s deeper than what you’re saying, I don’t think you knew this when you were 16 or 17 but you knew that sales was un-noble. I had a sales career. I was working in sales for 10 years, and I only only decided to position myself as marketing because I’d seen the marketing people loaded up with all of the budget and none of the target for those 10 years, so that was my reasoning. I’ll go into marketing because they get the money. Of course, when you do marketing, you realise it’s not quite like that either. I think that sales, people should learn, like, I was a lairy kid at school and nobody ever took me aside and said, Martin, all of what you’re doing jumping up and down, making friends with everyone getting their attention, blah, blah, blah, you’re going to be a salesperson, when you grow up, you’re probably going to be a good salesperson, because those are the skills that you need to do that job. No one ever said that to me. We were never taught about, like, how to have a conversation with people, just very basic stuff, we’re taught so much at school but those of us that are that lairy kid that were obviously always going to, hopefully end up in sales, we never got that direction, because what percentage of the population actually end up selling? It must be huge, because the point of sales is that if nobody’s bringing the money in, you don’t have a business. It’s probably the most noble of all of the causes going on in a business because nobody gets paid, nobody eats unless the sales people bring in the money. So that’s what I think.

Jamie Badar  21:10  

I totally agree. It’s the lifeblood of any business, the lifeblood of any household. It’s the lifeblood of any society.

Martin Henley  21:17  

Yes. Right. This is what, certainly in the kind of economies that we live in now it has to happen. Where I got to with Ben, Ben Kench was saying that, basically, you want to be the sort of salesperson that is the, the mate of the customer, I’m getting some echo back here on me, I think it might be me.

Jamie Badar  21:40  

Sorry I missed that, to be the type of …

Martin Henley  21:44  

What you really want to be as a salesperson is the specialist in a subject, who sells that stuff to his mates. For example, if I buy photography gear, I want the salesperson in the photography shop to be my specialist mate, who makes sure I get the best deals on the photography gear. That’s what you should want to be. So the sales that you’re talking about which absolutely 100% still goes on all day, every day, isn’t good business by any stretch of the imagination isn’t a sustainable business. So we hope that those people will go out of business and not be rewarded. The kind of sales that I think we’re interested in is the kind of sales that’s good for business. I mean, I don’t know.

Jamie Badar  22:28  

But yeah, so what does that mean? Your mate wants to look out for you, your mate hopefully, has got your best interests at heart. 

Martin Henley  22:35  

Yeah, yes. 

Jamie Badar  22:37  

At the front of their mind, they want to do you they want to do right by you. 

Martin Henley  22:41  

Yes. 

Jamie Badar  22:42  

So they are thinking about you, hopefully, as much or hopefully more than they’re thinking about themselves. You do come across people like that, who just, they come across something good, and they just want to share it with somebody, it’s like, I’ve just seen this great movie, or I’ve just read this great book, I’ve just been to this great restaurant, I’ve got to tell you about it. I’ve just feel compelled to.

Martin Henley  23:04  

So it’s like what you what you really want is, what you really want is to be that person in your customers minds, where if they’re at a barbecue or a dinner party, and someone says, oh, sales training, they’re like, Jamie, you have to talk to Jamie, don’t do anything until you talk to Jamie. You really want to be in a position where your customers don’t shut up about you, the salesperson, because you have done such a brilliant service for them and all of their mates. You want to build that kind of legend and I think those kinds of salespeople do really well. The other kind of sales people have to have to skip from shitty sales job to shitty sales job, because those are the only roles that will will sustain them even for a short term nothing will sustain  them long term.

Why is it important for salespeople to have an intrinsic interest in what they are selling?

Jamie Badar  23:51  

Yeah, yeah. Well, this is this is another part of my training, my programme, my method, whatever. It’s, about understanding your intrinsic interest in whatever you’re doing. If someone is feeling like they have fallen into sales, and it’s not really where they want to be, but somehow they’re here now and they’ve been doing it for five years, they’ve got no transferable skills. It’s like, I feel stuck, which is a lot of salespeople, because how many people actually consciously choose to be in sales, I think it’s quite a small number. I just searched quite a small number anyway. That Well, you’ve got to make the best out of this situation. So you do get the journey salesperson so I don’t really fit here, I don’t really get on I’m kind of not really, just scraping by, shiny object syndrome because let’s face it, lots of sales people are a bit like that, they are like oh, this is the next best thing. I’m gonna go and do that now when they don’t really give themselves enough time in whatever they’re selling to really give it a really good shot, really become an expert in whatever they do. There’s so many things different facets, they could become an expert in whatever they’re selling. They don’t have to be a product expert they could be, they could devote their time to becoming a great, understanding everything and become almost as good as the demo guy or the technical person in the company. They could it’s just a matter of time, or they could become really niche expert in a particular business problem that their product can help them with, do it, whatever, whatever you want to get fascinated in and sell yourself into that. I think that’s, that’s the key thing, sell yourself into it, become a great person at it. Become a great person understanding cameras, if that’s your thing and sell as many freaking cameras as you can, as you want to. By being a great person at talking about lenses or whatever type of thing in the camera industry. 

Who are your customers what do you do for them?

Martin Henley  25:55  

Yeah. So that’s interesting to me. So you are working. So we’re coming towards now who are your customers what do you do for them? Maybe a little bit early, but that’s okay. So you’re working with salespeople who don’t want to be salespeople.

Jamie Badar  26:13  

No it’s not that they don’t want to be salespeople, they’re struggling somehow, because it’s the  Pareto Principle. 20% of the guys or, roughly, give or take, they’re the guys who don’t need any help and they’re the so called eagles, they go out there, they know how to make rain, and yada, yada. Well, not everyone’s like that and  also a company can’t survive on just those 20%, they need to work with the middle 60% and there’s the bottom 20%, who probably shouldn’t be in that role. You get the middle 60%, they’re the journey people, or they could be the people who don’t quite connect with the customers, but they just do enough, maybe they rely on amazing leads, and they’re kind of bit of an order taker, the lead just falls in their lap and they just do enough. They can’t quite retire their quota within the first six to nine months and really start churning out some awesome commission rates, they’ve rarely achieved the accelerator, they never really get on the awards podium or anything like that. I like to work with those guys because it’s very expensive a) it’s very expensive for a business to replace those people, the the onboarding process is huge, hiring agency fees are huge. The cost to the business when that person is unproductive is huge, because all those leads coming through who can handle those leads? These guys, they’re not ready yet, it can take depending on the complexity of the solution they sell, it can take a long time, and then if they don’t work out, well they’re just gonna start start cycle of finding, replacing them all over again. So it’s really really expensive to, to replace, to handle to manage that 60%. Also, these days, managers are so spread thin, that they don’t, that they can’t coach them or manage them effectively. They just don’t have enough time. These salespeople who are in this middle 60% band they want, they need more attention. So I work with those people and I try to turn them around. I’ve got good experience with performance coaching and mindset coaching and, I don’t really like that term, it’s getting their voice, it’s I like to help them fulfil, feel fulfilled, in whatever thing they want to they want to go for. Let’s try and make some money out of that in the product and the industry that they’re selling into.

Martin Henley  28:51  

Okay, cool. Right. So that’s really interesting because if I look back at my sales career, I mean, I’ve done some other things, I worked in kitchens for a bit while I was at college, that’s horrible hard job, like properly hard. I dug the roads for a bit between Sixth Form and University, which involves getting into drains and stuff. 

Jamie Badar  29:16  

Yeah. Is that sales?

Martin Henley  29:20  

No, no, no, this was before sales. The thing is, if I compare that to the work I did when I was in sales, they gave me a nice car, they gave me a nice laptop, they gave me a phone and basically I was sent out in the world to make friends with people. I think selling is a great job. I think it’s a really, really great job. When it goes wrong, it’s almost like the worst job. It’s the worst situation because, I don’t know – if you’re an accountant, you can go back and say, well, at least I did the sums. Whereas if you’re a sales person and it’s not working, it doesn’t matter what you did, you didn’t do the thing you needed to do, which was bring in the sales, I suppose. I think sales is either the best job in the world or the worst job in the world.

Jamie Badar  30:13  

Why was it the worst job? Because you just didn’t get the money in? Or was it because you felt lousy?

Martin Henley  30:20  

The thing is, I think salespeople …. I think in sales, it’s all so emotional, because it’s all about you as a person, I think much more than any other job. So not like the accountant, the accountant comes does the sums, the sums are done that is finished. Someone who sits on the production line, they produce the thing – that’s done. If you’re not doing it in a sales role, you’re not doing the very important thing, which is bringing in the money and it’s never anybody else’s fault. We can talk about what goes wrong but it’s never anybody else’s fault apart from your fault. You can’t do what is, I mean, you say somewhere on your materials, that sales is a really hard job and I don’t believe it is. I believe it’s a really good job and I believe it’s a really easy job if certain things are in place. I’m getting carried away, we can talk about things that go wrong. What I’m just saying at the moment is it’s either the best job in the world, you’re flying, you’re a hero, or you’re dogshit because you’re not doing what it is that you are meant to do and you feel that personally because it is about you personally.

Jamie Badar  31:45  

Yeah, I think there’s a few things and what you just said, I think, I think people who stay in sales, what, once people find out they really like sales, they are a people person. I think that there needs to be a balance struck between I want to connect with this person, or the people who aren’t working with in the client organisation and understanding how I can really add value to them as a business as well, which kind of puts the relationship at a backward step. Fair enough we do need to build relationships but I do think that people, buyers, let’s get more specific, really only care about how’s this going to help me. I think salespeople, when they get this, when they feel deflated, or they feel like they’ve done a bad job is they kind of put the relationship maybe before how they can help their client or prospect benefit from the relationship.

How does it go wrong for salespeople?

Martin Henley  32:46  

Okay, does. I kind of think that, I kind of, what do I kind of think? If I look back at my sales career I was selling for about 10 years. I started off selling advertising after I graduated when I was in proper jobs, or selling advertising and then I sold exhibitions for a period of time and then I moved into events, and then into IT, like big scale IT. So that was kind of my trajectory. I think where it goes wrong is if no marketing has happened. I’m not talking about just the generation of leads, I’m talking about identifying the market, and developing the solution for that market. I’ve been in situations, I’ve always done my own lead gen. The companies I work for never did marketing. I was one of those hunter gatherer types but occasionally, I was in situations where the product that I was trying to sell, didn’t have a market. What do you do? What do you do then? That’s not even about saying, I got a lead and the lead was shitty, it’s like literally saying, you guys, you’re selling the wrong thing.

Jamie Badar  34:14  

I think that’s true sales, to be honest. I mean, I think marketing, I think marketing qualified leads is a godsend for salespeople. I think it’s fantastic. I don’t think and I, I know, there’s two schools of thought here, yeah, fair enough you should just work the leads, or actually salespeople to go and generate and do it themselves. I’ve done both. I think, I think it’s really good for a salesperson to be able to shake the tree and to be able to agitate someone to take a good hard look at how they’re currently doing things with a view to saying yeah, well, actually things could be done better here because I’m too comfortable here or I haven’t looked at any I just, I don’t want to look at this bad thing that’s happening in my business at the moment because I’m focusing on here but actually … I liken it to people who are walking with a pebble in their shoe, they get used to walk, you can get used to walking with a pebble in your shoe but actually if I focus on the pebble in shoe it’s actually really uncomfortable. A salesperson should go you’ve got a pebble in your shoe, let’s get the pebble out. Now you can walk and actually start running now, you can actually move in your direction a lot more quickly. That’s what I think a good salesperson can do. They can get them focusing on something that they’re actually choosing, or for whatever reason, not looking at in their business or their life or whatever, we can make things better. So yeah, it’s, I think that’s a skill of a salesperson, I think if they don’t have that experience of confronting a market without agitating it, I don’t think that’s, I don’t know, I prefer telephone and going directly to a market I think every sales person needs to have experienced that. 

Martin Henley  35:58  

Yeah. 

Jamie Badar  36:00  

Going back to your point, about not having the right product. Yeah, that’s really difficult, you found a problem, then you need to go and create a solution for it, that’s creating a business then, right? Unless, yeah, or just move on.

Martin Henley  36:20  

I’m interested to know where you’re at, why you talk about mindset? I don’t think I’d use the word mindset necessarily, but it feels to me like all of these things in sales and marketing are just slightly out of sync with what’s required. That’s kind of my mission is to try and get people just to skew things a little bit and look at it slightly differently and then I think they’ll be happier and more motivated to go and do it. 

So for example, I’ve  presented on sales, I’ve got this presentation called, I’m in the mood for Selling. The idea is, at the end of this, everyone’s up dancing to the Nolan Sisters, it only happened once. In that I define what a salesperson is and for me selling is, or sales is making friends with people, motivating them to do something ever so slightly different, so they’re probably going to buy something like this, I want to motivate them to buy my thing from me.  Then the third thing is making the most of leads. So where you say you had to go and generate your own leads, and you’ve had leads generated for you and, and so you’ve done both. I think salespeople should do both all the time, like making the most of leads, is having the conversation and at the end saying, who else do I need to be speaking to in your organisation, in your friend group, in your whatever, so that the marketing do their bit to get you into one place, and you do your bit to get you into maybe three or four more places, and that’s where it gets, that’s where the exponential, that’s where the ball rolls, and then you’re just flying all day, every day. It goes on too often in businesses where sales, I’m sorry, I’m speaking a lot but I really want to say this. For me, it should be a virtuous cycle, marketing identify a market that’s a group of people with a problem that they’re prepared to resolve by spending money, that’s the market, then marketing, come up with a solution to that problem by listening to the market and then more steps happen, the product gets developed, salespeople get to go and sit face to face or have actual conversations with individuals in that market and then they should feed back into the marketing department. So what happens is your understanding of the market grows, the product that you’re developing, gets tighter, and tighter, and tighter and more efficient and more like what people want to buy and it goes on, and on, and on, and on and it’s a virtuous cycle. 

Martin Henley  38:49  

That doesn’t happen. It hasn’t happened in any sales and marketing team I’ve developed, or I’ve been involved with. What happens is some smartass business owner says, I’ve got a solution to this problem that I’ve generated in my mind. I don’t know if it actually exists in the world. Now I’m going to make the solution that I think fixes the the problem in my imagination, and now you guys have to go out and sell that to people and if you can’t sell that to people, it’s because your shit. Okay?

Jamie Badar  39:17  

No I agree with you there’s not enough of that feedback, that feedback loop is broken, from sales into marketing. I think sales people possibly don’t see it as their responsibility. I think it should happen. I think, I have seen in cases, and it’s under extreme pressure where companies have had to pivot because the market has changed. It happened during the global financial crisis it’s like shit, everything’s changed. We need to come up with something radically different here. Let’s go and speak to our customers, whoa, what a good idea that is and find out what else we could we could provide them and, so they had a summit, we got a we got a big customers in and they’ve created something new. It’s not rocket science right? Why don’t we do this on a more iterative kind of scale rather than a great big big bang scale? Yeah, we might have a more generative, evolving business where we could be much closer to our client base and have low and behold, awesome clients who love us and we have a business, which is agile and innovative and, expansive and progressive. It might might take more legwork on our side, that’s our responsibility and that’s how we can actually make some money here.

Martin Henley  40:45  

Yeah and the adjustment really isn’t so huge is it? Like you’re saying bombshell

Jamie Badar  40:52  

It’s a mindshift, how do I take care of my market in a different way?

Martin Henley  40:57  

Ideally where you want to get to is the situation where if your clients are having issues, they phone you and say, I’ve got a problem, I don’t know if you can help us with this. That is perfect. It’s not my experience of the way the world works and I’m just thinking, maybe you were much luckier than me and you found yourself in sales roles where that was happening because where, that’s not happening it’s really difficult man.

Jamie Badar  41:22  

Yeah, I mean, one company that I worked for a particular job they committed 5% of their revenue before tax into R&D. We had a big consultancy arm, which was basically feeding back into our product all the time so we had this big interface with the market. Ultimately, the Software Group splintered off into its own beast, because it just got, it just had to just create software more efficiently but there was a big interface with our clients. That really led the way and shaped our product. It was it was market driven, it was sort of constantly market driven, constantly market driven and it was very, very successful. Very niche, ended up being obviously very niche product but we also had, our marketing was all about thought leadership is all about predicting where the market needed to be. It was very, very enjoyable to work in that kind of space. 

Martin Henley  42:29  

Yes. Yeah, then you’re the salesperson who turns up, you’re not the salesperson that turns up and everyone’s like, shit, Jamie’s here, pretend we’re out like the insurance salesperson that used to come see my parents in the 80s. Pretend you’re out because the insurance guy is here. It should be great Jamie is on his way let’s hope he stays beyond five and we can have a beer and a chat.

What do good salespeople do?

Jamie Badar  42:54  

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. One point I’d like to make is, I could also be that without having all that specialist knowledge. So one of the things I haven’t mentioned, you might or might not agree with this, but in my experience, and for whatever reason, business owners don’t know what they want, maybe haven’t really taken the time to define what they want. 

Martin Henley  43:22  

Yes.

Jamie Badar  43:23  

My job as a salesperson is to help them gain clarity and through that clarity, it’s this the old adage, I can’t remember, a problem defined is a problem solved, a problem shared is a problem solved.

Martin Henley  43:39  

Halved, a problem shared is a problem halved. 

Jamie Badar  43:42  

Right? In my world it’s like, let’s get clarity over what the what the problem is, is there a problem and, let’s articulate it, let’s, let’s get specific about it. Then all of a sudden, through sharing it and talking about solutions just naturally start putting themselves forward and making themselves obvious. Now, my solution may not be the right solution. I may know someone who does that, but at least I’ve given some power to the person I’m speaking with to move forward and I think that’s a big part of my role as a salesperson, “salesperson” to help them gain clarity. Now, I’ve now put myself in a better light as a salesperson where I think, I would hope that I’ve helped them somehow, I’ve empowered them on how to take some action. Therefore I’ve created in life coaching, speak, it’s anchoring and use anchoring, I’m sure in many different ways and I’ve anchored that good feeling with me and now they’re more likely to come to me. I’m the one, I’ve given them a bit of a beacon of some hope, and they’re going to come back to me to want to discuss more. Now that’s definitely worked out in my favour many, many times. and also I’ve done a chivalrous thing where I haven’t led with my product and in fact, that’s really served me well, where I’ve just been completely fascinated about them and what they do and their business, I’m not going to get into anything personal, but, just want to know more about you, which has created a void for them to draw themselves closer to me. So there’s a lot of psychology in sales, it’s the power balance, right? 

Jamie Badar  45:31  

As soon as I’m asking to sell something, the perception of power is with the client. However, as a salesperson, I’m always wanting to shift that. I want them to ask about me, because then the power is more that’s why marketing qualified leaders. So is gold dust really, for salespeople because the client calls in. I’ve heard about you guys, I want to know more about you, the sales person sits back, they’re drawing they’re drawing the power towards them, they’re doing less of the talking and the prospect is doing more of the talking, I’m just doing more the questioning. Whereas if you need to go out there and make rain happen I’ve got less power, and I’m trying, and the client, the perception is that they’ve got more power and I’m trying to redress that balance towards me somehow, and I’m not going to go into how we do that but that’s part of the skill in sales. That’s why, you’ve got to like me, or build that type of rapport first, whether it’s a it’s a business level rapport, or it’s a personal level rapport and then you want to get the client asking about me and what I do.

Martin Henley  46:49  

Yes.

Jamie Badar  46:50  

Anyway.

Martin Henley  46:53  

The thing you’ve just rolled headlong into, if there is a debate, the debate that is raging in these conversations. So on one hand, we’ve got Barnaby Wynter, who is a dyed in the woods, I don’t know if that’s the phrase, marketeer. He says, basically, nobody shouldn’t be canvassing anymore, you shouldn’t be looking for clients. There are enough people to sustain whatever your businesses, they’re already looking for you you should help those people. Then Ben on the last one that got published so that will be two weeks ago, by the time people are seeing this and he’s saying, No, by the time they are looking for a product or service, they’re dealing with four or five people, they’ve already got their idea of what it is that they want, they’re in a better negotiating position. So you’re always going to generate less money, you should go find your own customers. So that’s interesting. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Jamie Badar  47:51  

I think so too.

Martin Henley  47:53  

But yeah, I mean, the thing is, when you go looking for your customers, you are in a much more powerful position, I want to talk about this, you’re talking about power. I’m interested in that. You’re in a more powerful position, because you’re saying, Okay, you’re the kind of person I like to do business with, you’re the person that I do business with, whereas you don’t have that choice if people are coming to you. So it’s not quite as simple as we were saying. I think it’s somewhere in the middle. I think the ideal is making the most of leads. What you said is marketing, qualified leads, please, please, marketing don’t know how to qualify a lead. Marketing don’t know how to qualify a lead, you can’t qualify a lead until you are in a conversation with the person. This comes back to the other thing that you said before, was about in the old days of salespeople had all the power. 

Jamie Badar  48:48  

Yeah.

Martin Henley  48:49  

In my experience is that customer, because I’ve never been prepared to bully, or connive, or cajole someone into buying something, it’s always the customer that has all the power because they can say no, in a second, and mostly will. Much less commonly they’ll say yes.

Jamie Badar  49:09  

Mm hmm. Power. Power. 

Martin Henley  49:13  

Yes. Go with power because I don’t agree with what you’re saying. I know it goes on but I think there’s real danger of ego in business and in sales.

Jamie Badar  49:28  

Oh, it’s all about that. It’s all about ego. I think ego is all into it. It’s like do I respect this person? Do I respect this guy? 

Martin Henley  49:38  

Yeah. 

Jamie Badar  49:40  

Am I going to spend more time with this guy? Is he talking my language? Do I think he is going to have some value here? Is he interesting? Do I like him,? Is he funny? I don’t know what this guy likes. It depends on what the prospect is going to be like if they’re going to want to spend more time with you. Certainly if you want to grow with decision makers, that they’ve done so much in their career, they’ve achieved so much there is ego gonna to be there? 

Martin Henley  50:08  

Yes. 

Jamie Badar  50:09  

Don’t tell me the senior people don’t have egos of course they have. We all have egos.

Martin Henley  50:14  

Yes. So this is what Robbie said to me. Robbie said to me that his mission is to make his customer the hero in his business unit or in his business, because he has done the thing. That was the right thing in buying from Robbie. Or like you say, you don’t even have to sell to them. We on swearing terms, can I swear? Corsica. Okay, good. So here’s what I say to people. Like, when I unless I’m presenting in the Middle East, I say to people, I’m going to need to swear because I don’t want to slow down to have to think of another word. If I really want to fucking say something. But I want to be on swearing terms with my customers. Because if my problem with my customers got a fucking problem, I need them to be on the fucking phone to me. That’s where I’m at, that’s the conversation that I want to be having. 

I was working in South Africa, we were selling huge financial compliance solutions to the banks and the insurance companies. It was cool. But no marketing person ever looked at it and said, okay, yeah, these people might buy it. But it’s gonna take them five years. Anyway, so that’s what was going on. Part of that business we were like a body shop so we had contractors in the market. I had this one guy, this Afrikaaner guy it was in South Africa, did I say that? This Afrikaaner guy would phone me up at about 17 minutes to six every single day and he’d said to me, Martin, come and take your fucking guys off my sites; because one of them had upset him in some way, shape or form. At least he was having that conversation with me. So yeah, like, okay, let’s think about this. Let’s calm down. What do you need to happen? How do you need it to happen? When do you need it to happen? Do you want to be involved? What is the situation? The alternative is, he was on the phone to my competition, saying, Yeah, I’m going to tell that guy and tell him to get all these fucking guys off my site. That’s why, for me, it’s all, all the selling I’ve ever done in my life has been relationship selling, I have become very good friends with my very best customers. So if they’re even thinking of something I might know something about, they’re on the phone to me.

Jamie Badar  52:31  

I totally agree of you but I think the journey to get to that point can be different for different people, you can get there quickly but for some people, they need more convincing to be able to get to that point. Absolutely. I totally agree with you.

Martin Henley  52:42  

Different customers?

Jamie Badar  52:44  

Different customers, different types of products may be, different types of way of convincing someone that they feel there can be comfortable enough to be able to, to say whatever they need to say. Right?

Martin Henley  52:54  

So that’s the job of a salesperson, like I was saying earlier, is to somehow, I believe it less, so I’m more in Barnaby’s camp than I am in Ben’s camp. I would prefer to deal, like  you’re saying with a marketing qualified lead, where somebody is coming to me and saying, Can you please help me? Because at that point I think they’re a motivated buyer. So what’s the point of that? So that is much easier. That is your job as a salesperson is to get to a point in that relationship, where they will talk to you honestly about what their issues are. The more deeply you can understand that the more deeply you can satisfy those issues, the more successful you’re going to be with that person and with hitting your targets.

How could salespeople be earning the respect of their prospects?

Jamie Badar  53:45  

I totally agree I went about mine probably through using the coaching skills, so they felt comfortable enough to open up with me. I absolutely agree that you do need to get to that point where you’re talking about, well, what does this personally mean for me, at a personal level, whatever that means, like, I’m just pissed off with your guys on my site, just get just get the fuck off, right?

Martin Henley  54:13  

Yes, you can. If we’re going to get demonetised it’s my fault it’s happened already.

Jamie Badar  54:19  

I remember I was dealing with the general manager of a manufacturing site out in the middle of Queensland, this alpha male guy. He saw my proposal and he stood up and  big guy and you just said this is fucking bullshit this proposal. I knew I was in. 

Martin Henley  54:38  

Yeah. 

Jamie Badar  54:38  

Because he could tell me straight up. 

Martin Henley  54:40  

Yes. 

Jamie Badar  54:41  

The transition plan that I put together for him was just fucking bullshit. He didn’t believe it for one second. All right, let’s talk what’s it going to take now then, to give me some give me more realistic numbers, or whatever it was a company. Yes, yes, definitely. But let’s go for more real, real version of this, it’s great.

Martin Henley  55:02  

Right. So this is where it goes bad for salespeople because to be good salespeople, you have to have the ear of your customers. You have to have them respecting you, and relying on you to the point where they want to have conversations with you.

Jamie Badar  55:23  

Yeah, sorry, please. Sorry.

Martin Henley  55:26  

Yes. Okay. If you’re a shitty salesperson, nobody will talk to you do, I mean, then you’re dead and that’s when sales is the worst job in the world, when no one will talk to you.

Jamie Badar  55:37  

My mindset when this first clicked for me was a difference between a customer and a client. A customer is transactional, a client is someone who I protect. Like the legal term, you protect your client. 

Martin Henley  55:49  

Yeah. 

Jamie Badar  55:50  

That’s how I saw, I saw myself as the voice of my customers, the voice of my client, internally, with the company I was working for. It’s like, no, this needs to be done this way and I’d fight for that, it has to be done this way. Once my client knew that I was doing that for them, that I was going to work till midnight,  I have to have this conference call at one o’clock in the morning with the guy on the other side of the world, because we just got to get this done for this guy. You’ve just got to do whatever it takes kind of stuff. 

Martin Henley  56:18  

Yes. 

Jamie Badar  56:19  

Whatever that might look like but I was just doing whatever it took.

Martin Henley  56:22  

Yeah. 

Jamie Badar  56:24  

To gain their trust.

Martin Henley  56:25  

Yeah. We’ve moved on so it’s okay. I think if there is a power struggle. 

Jamie Badar  56:30  

Hmm. 

Martin Henley  56:31  

I don’t think that’s good or healthy or useful in a sales client relationship personally. 

Jamie Badar  56:37  

Yeah.

Martin Henley  56:37  

I don’t know. I mean, I can see how it would come about. Like you say, very often, you’re dealing with these alpha males, because they have clawed their way to their position in their company and they are responsible for dozens of people and millions of pounds of budget and, and, and. What I wanted to say, Sorry, what did you say? What was the last thing you said?

Jamie Badar  57:00  

It was about trust, fighting for your client.

Martin Henley  57:03  

Yes. This is what I think is that, that salespeople in your business should be advocates for the client. 

Jamie Badar  57:14  

Yeah. 

Martin Henley  57:15  

If, and I 100% believe this, your customers are the most important people because they feed you. If they are representing your customers in your business, then they should be the most respected people in your business but that’s not what I see. In most businesses, sales and marketing people are the least respected and I’m saying this a lot recently. They’re like the two smallest kids in the playground, they end up picking on each other. What nobody takes the cognisance to realise is that they’re actually feeding everyone. So that’s another shift that has to happen. Like this is the way the money flows into the business. 

Jamie Badar  57:54  

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That wass certainly the case when I was working for that. consultancy company. I think sales definitely wasn’t really respected in that sense. I think a lot of software, pure software companies I was working for, I think sales was definitely the leader. I think definitely the senior leadership within the software companies I worked for in the past came through the sales route or a marketing route. Yeah. I worked with very strong marketing leaders as well, that worked very closely with the business leads, I was impressed from that point of view. I do hear you. I definitely do hear you. 

Jamie Badar  58:37  

I think, sales and marketing should be working more closely together. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I don’t feel on that I’m that political kind of guy and I don’t feel like a particularly gregarious kind of guy. I think there’s two different types of salespeople. I think there’s that, more like you who’s very much gregarious, I love going out and meeting people. I do love meeting people but possibly, I’m not that, really, outgoing life of the meeting type of person. I’m definitely not that type of person. I work my sales in a different way. That’s for sure.

Martin Henley  59:23  

Okay. You’ve never had somebody phoned you up every day and swear at you? Okay, it’s interesting, because I did, I saw that you’ve done some personal development type stuff, clearly and I did some personal development type stuff. I was at a talk one day, it was in Brighton in the UK and I used to do quite a lot of presenting so I’d stand up at the breakfast meetings for the County Chamber of Commerce. I was doing a lot, like three or four times a week I was probably standing up. Basically, we were given the task of going round and telling everyone if we thought they were an extrovert, or an introvert. The room when it came to me was a 5050 split. Everyone had seen me speak said I was an extrovert, everyone who hadn’t said I was an introvert. So I think that’s kind of interesting that you say that and I just wanted to relay that story. There’s no point to that necessarily. 

Jamie Badar  1:00:26  

That’s cool. 

Martin Henley  1:00:27  

I think it depends on what you’re selling. Clearly, if you’re selling technical things, then they you might need to be a more technical salesperson, then probably you’re going to be less outgoing, less personable is going to be less about being an extrovert.

Jamie Badar  1:00:40  

I think you’re absolutely right. I used to be a manager, I took a gap year and I was a manager in Athleisure, which was a an offshoot of JD Sport, I used to run my own little shop. I used to love interacting, I used to love retail, I used to love retail. Yeah, I used to love interating with people. Probably I think you’re right, I think context, I started selling engineering stuff. And then I had to deal with very, very technical people who wanted the detail, the detail was so critical. I guess I was bent into that type of frame of mind. Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. I think I think whatever you’re selling is really, really important. 

Martin Henley  1:01:21  

So I think you can say, almost universally, like if you’re looking for you’re looking to be a salesperson, have a career in sales, you want to be that specialist that helps people out with that particular thing. So that people think I’ve got this problem now, I should be on the phone to Jamie, like, I’ve got 60% of my salespeople aren’t doing what they could be doing, I need to speak to Jamie. It doesn’t matter how geeky it is what you’re selling, how geeky you are as a salesperson, because it kind of will always fit, I will have more gregarious customers may be, you might have more geeky customers.

Jamie Badar  1:02:03  

Absolutely. I think you hit on something there. I had to do whatever it took to make sure that my client got the right information in the right way, and the in the way that they needed to receive it. Because of that, I had to do all this extra preparation work before I met them. That took a lot of research and homework so that I was ready for that conversation. My environment shaped and dictated what I needed to do to be prepared for that particular engagement. I think you’re absolutely right. I think you’re absolutely right. That completely covered my approach

Martin Henley  1:02:44  

I’ve never researched anything in my life.

Jamie Badar  1:02:47  

Yeah, exactly. So and I had to I had to I had to understand. I won’t go into it. I to deal with chemical engineers, to deal with, all with very dangerous substances I had to deal with, refineries and things like that. You can’t just rock up, you can’t just rock up to places like this and start using your personality to get through you have to know what you’re talking about.

Martin Henley  1:03:17  

Yes. Okay. Thank the Lord I never found myself in those situations. Okay, good. So here’s a challenging question, are you ready for a challenging question?

Jamie Badar  1:03:27  

Yeah, go for it. 

Martin Henley  1:03:30  

Don’t worry, it’s gonna be fine. 

Martin Henley  1:03:33  

My mouth’s just got dry.

Jamie Badar  1:03:34  

Okay, you can have a swig of some something.

Martin Henley  1:03:41  

Given that we’ve established that so much of what can go wrong for a salesperson isn’t necessarily their fault, wrong market, wrong product, ineffective marketing, no lead generation, etc. Then also given, we haven’t said this yet, but we might as well say this also now some salespeople are complete assholes. 

Jamie Badar  1:04:16  

Yeah. 

Martin Henley  1:04:17  

How do you … they aren’t they?

Jamie Badar  1:04:22  

Well they’re driven. I think I think there are some extremely driven salespeople, which can hurt other people. Have you really worked with arseholes?

Martin Henley  1:04:30  

I have actually and I think there’s probably levels to this, but I think if you’ve got a problem child salesperson, they are much more difficult than a problem child Accountant or a problem child Secretary. Maybe because they are such effective people.

Jamie Badar  1:04:54  

They’re also loads of fun as well.

Martin Henley  1:04:56  

Yeah, I’m talking about, I’m talking about the bad apples so I’m not saying salespeople are bad. I’m saying that occasionally, if you get an asshole salesperson, they will be the biggest asshole. I probably have done that once or twice in my life. So I’m including me in it. I’m being very inclusive. I’m not blaming anyone. Given that is the situation, given that there are five things that could go wrong, that aren’t possibly the salespersons fault, given that the thing that would be entirely the salespersons fault is that they are a complete asshole; what I’m trying to establish is at both ends of the the cake or the shelf for whatever, could be the business’s problem, it could be the salespersons problem, you’ve only got so much in the middle to work with, if you are a sales trainer, where 100% the business is right. Maybe it doesn’t need to be 100% right. Maybe 80% of businesses is right, 80% this is the right person for the job. How do you go to work?

Jamie Badar  1:06:02  

I don’t boil the ocean. I’m not I mean, this is this is called a C grade opportunity for me. I mean, I’m not going to sorry, I don’t know how to completely crush that. That would be so hard. That would be so hard. I think what I’d probably do with that salesperson is …. I’m always inclined to look for the positive, I guess, for me, maybe incredibly naive but, if I’m going to deal with someone and it feels like they are real problem child, or, it’s like, well, what, what’s going on here? And I might be inclined to go, Well, how is this an issue for you and understand where they feel that this is a problem, I’m just looking at also working with companies to help structure their sales process, so that they can get more consistency in their sales system. If the salesperson doesn’t follow that necessarily, or doesn’t achieve the seven points or  doesn’t extract the right information along the way in the sales process, then their manager would have, this sounds terrible, but have probably more substantiated reason to edge them out of the company. 

Martin Henley  1:07:27  

Right.

Jamie Badar  1:07:28  

It’s probably a diplomatic way of saying it right? If they’re not the right fit then maybe they shouldn’t be there. That’s probably what I try and do with the salesperson. Well, if you’re not really enjoying your career, what is it you probably prefer to do and maybe edge them away from that sales career.

Martin Henley  1:07:45  

Okay, so I think

Jamie Badar  1:07:46  

That may not be what they want to hear and that may not be what their employer wants to hear but if no one’s really having the best experience of their life here, at the end of the day, you’ve only got so many hours left in your life right and we’re all going to die here what would you rather be doing?

Martin Henley  1:08:02  

That sounds like a very dire conversation. You don’t actually say you are going to die why are you wasting your time?

Jamie Badar  1:08:09  

No, no I put it more diplomatically it’s like well, let’s face facts we’ve only got finite amount of time in this world. 

Jamie Badar  1:08:16  

Let’s enjoy ourselves here. What would you rather be doing, we want to go to Bali, and  retire your marketing responsibilities, and go do something wildly more enjoyable with your time on this planet, right? 

Martin Henley  1:08:31  

Yeah.

Jamie Badar  1:08:31  

My priorities is my daughter, being a dad, being the best most outstanding Dad can be gives me a huge amount of joy. Music gives me a huge amount of joy. 

Martin Henley  1:08:34  

Yeah.

Jamie Badar  1:08:35  

I like to make money so that I can go racing go karts, and spending money on music, and going travelling. That’s why I want to become a better salesperson. I do enjoy interacting with people, but I like making money and I like spending my money on things that make me happy.

How do you resolve the issue if salespeople are busy blaming the marketing department or business?

Martin Henley  1:08:59  

Yes, I’m 100% with you. I think what I’m alluding to, and maybe this is rarer than I’m thinking and I hope it is. When it’s kind of like a trope that salespeople blame the marketing for the product not being right, for the market not being right, for the leads not coming through blah, blah and given the marketing will always blame the salespeople because they’re lazy, or they’re stupid, or they don’t know whatever it is. Now, when you step into that situation as an external, I suppose what I’m asking you is, is maybe how, if if these are the issues, because actually my experience of being invited in as a sales trainer is I get to deal with the sales team. The expectation is always that what marketing doing is is great and the issue is here with these people. You’re working with these people. Yeah, I don’t know if there’s a question?

Jamie Badar  1:09:57  

The challenges is there, that marketing is blaming sales, so sales blame marketing. Marketing may not have done the best job in terms of marrying up the needs of the market with what they’ve got to offer and sales people aren’t are wasting too much time on the wrong opportunities.

Martin Henley  1:10:20  

Yes. 100%, I really agree with that. One of the most effective sales trainings I ever had, was where I managed to convince a team in a day, that their job was actually to start saying no to their customers or their prospects, because they were wasting too much. They were serving everyone, everyone was getting 100% but clearly, they were only converting 25% of those deals so 75% of their time was wasted.

Jamie Badar  1:10:49  

I think salespeople find it very difficult to get rejected, I take it very personally, I don’t want to hear a no. They see there’s an opportunity to every single lead and that’s not the case. It’s just not the case. They need to go and see if there is an opportunity, they need to fail quickly. The worst possible scenario is if they find out at the end of hell of a long sales process and sunk so much money into getting people into meetings, and spending so much time with the client and various people within their prospect organisation only to find out that this sale is actually really weak, the opportunities got so many holes in it and they were just not willing to go to that place where they’re going to actually admit no, this isn’t right for us, and we’re not a good fit.

Jamie Badar  1:11:47  

Or I haven’t done a good enough sales job to agitate the customer so that they’re willing to open up and tell me what the hell is going on here and actually, I’m just quote fodder here, because they really want to go ahead with Company B, or company A and  we’re actually in column B. Yeah. 

Martin Henley  1:12:06  

With their mate. I also did a presentation called the most powerful clothes in the world, which was at the end, amid much fanfare, it was the word no. Too many salespeople try and stop their prospects from saying no o they stay in their pipeline and I think that’s really dangerous. One or two things happens when you say no to a prospect, either they buck up, you say no, this isn’t working the way it needs to, I don’t believe you’re going to get value from this, I don’t want to sell it to you, whatever the reason is. What happens then is if they actually had an interest, then they will buck up and they will get what needs to be done done and if they never had an interest in, they’ll just go away, and you’re much better off.

Martin Henley  1:12:53  

I totally agree. I’m not sure I’m not sure if this really worked for you, I really don’t know. It might work for you but, let’s have a conversation surface that to see what’s there for you.

Martin Henley  1:13:06  

Yeah, I know what Jamie, I hear what you’re saying that you’d like this but what I need to happen isn’t happening so if at some point in the future, you really see the benefit in this, you’ve got my telephone number and I’ll see you then or else I’ll never see you again. That really gets people thinking, did I want this or not? And it’s cool. If they didn’t, they’re gone. They’re not taking up your time and energy and if they did, then they’ll start doing things differently. 

Jamie Badar  1:13:35  

Yeah I like that.

Jamie Badar  1:13:36  

Yeah, we sold. Oh, my God. At one point in my life, I sold what they called summits. So  they would invite supposedly, the hundred  top buyers of a solution to Sun City it was at the time in South Africa, and then my team would go out to the market and we’d say, like, you can have your choice of meetings with up to 60 of these people and it’s only gonna cost you whatever it was 30,000 pounds or something. The key then was basically to phone these people up like Country Managers, and these kinds of people, and basically tell them, Look, this is what’s going on, our market have suggested that you might get value, they might value having these meetings with you and your team. To be honest, we don’t fancy it, we don’t think you’re gonna be able to make the most of these meetings. Then they be like, Well, why not? We’re Price Waterhouse Coopers and it’s like, well, because we had some of your people in Chicago, and the feedback wasn’t that great and they didn’t feel like you had the solutions, or you were committed to delivering the solutions and they’re like, well of course, we’re committed we are Price Waterhouse Coopers. Before they know it, they’ve spent 30 grand with us, or whatever it was. That was the only way to sell it because if you find them and say look, we can give you meetings with 60 of the leading buyers of this thing in Sub Saharan Africa they’d be like, oh, yeah, well, let me think about it, send me over a proposal, blah, blah, blah, and it would never get sold. That was my favourite and my least favourite sales job.

Martin Henley  1:15:07  

Oh, yeah, no, I can see how that would work. I mean, that’s taking that’s taking extreme power back. That’s awesome, I love it.

Martin Henley  1:15:16  

The best thing about that was that I had Tony from Soweto, like Tony from Soweto, Bessie from Zambia they’re all phoning up these like leading brand household name business decision makers, and just slapping them about all day. So when you got to the point where you said, Okay, I’m going to send you the contract, I need it back in 20 minutes they are like I can’t possibly get it past legal. Then you were like, I told you this from the beginning. I told you you weren’t capable of getting this done. Stop wasting my time, and they’d be like no send it, send it, send it I’ll get it done. It was beautiful. It was absolutely beautiful and  they had a good time when they got there. I suppose. So it was beautiful. Yeah. But that the parent no, is really strong, I think.

Martin Henley  1:16:00  

I like that. Yeah. Good. 

Martin Henley  1:16:02  

I liked it. That was my best job. Yeah, yeah. That was my best job.

Martin Henley  1:16:08  

I wish I would like to have done that training to be honest. I’ve never done that. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard anything like that and I would like to have given that a go. That’s that sounds like fun.

Martin Henley  1:16:20  

I mean, they have to have balls of steel because if you waiver for a second, they smell it and you’re done but then also you don’t because you’ve still got another 100 people to call. 

Martin Henley  1:16:32  

Yeah, yeah.

Martin Henley  1:16:33  

I bet the first time doing that would be quite nerve wracking first time you’ve done that. 

Martin Henley  1:16:41  

I learned this by accident because I had to go back to London for something and I ended up working for like three months with the, with the team in London. There was an Australian guy, I’m going to reach out to him and see if they’ll have a conversation with me. His phrase was, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. So literally, we’d be on the phone with a prospect and it will be coming close to the sale and they’d be like, I want to speak to the manager because I’ve got this issue, that issue, some other issue. He would come on the phone and be like, Yeah, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. We can’t get the money. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. I can’t get the contract. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. It doesn’t matter what they said. He was literally saying the same thing to us all day. Well, this guy really wants to do but he can’t he’s either couldn’t give a rat’s ass. Like, show me the contract, basically. I mean, it was a lot of fun. It was a long time ago. Yes. Good. So I think we might have got to the end. We’ve been talking for like an hour and nearly an hour and a half. 

Martin Henley  1:17:37  

That’s amazing. 

Jamie Badar  1:17:40  

All right, cool. Okay, no books? No, like,

Martin Henley  1:17:45  

You don’t have to rush away I’ve taken all the time you’ve committed to that’s all I’m telling you.

Jamie Badar  1:17:53  

 I’ve just got something on this afternoon. That’s all. 

Martin Henley  1:17:55  

Okay,good. So one thing I want to ask you is?

Jamie Badar  1:17:59  

No, that’s fine. I’ve got something on, I’ve got a call stateside they don’t come on line for ages.

What is your issue with traditional sales training techniques?

Martin Henley  1:18:06  

Okay, good. So when we were talking earlier, maybe before we hit the record button, you were saying you’ve got a thing against traditional selling, like your mission is to convey something other than his traditional selling? 

Jamie Badar  1:18:20  

So yeah, I think it gets in the way. I think people get tripped themselves up on it, because they feel like they got to say the right thing in the right way at the right time, because that’s how they got taught. Right. I think it’s criminal because they suppressing their style. They’re just not saying what they feel like they want to say or how they want to say it, because they feel like they have to, because they got taught a certain way so they’re trying to do it that way. Now, the biggest crime about that is, is they’re not really with the person they’re speaking with, because they’re just not in the conversation. they’re in their head, thinking, am I doing the right? have I  asked the right thing at the right time. The person on the other end of the Zoom call knows it, they feel it. They’re not with me. That’s the thing that I hate about traditional sales training because people trip themselves up, and they’re just totally out of the conversation, the head is somewhere else, rather than where it needs to be which is with the person they’re speaking with, they’re not being authentic.

Martin Henley  1:19:22  

So it’s not about using scripts or learning scripts, or is that what you’re talking about?

Jamie Badar  1:19:27  

Yeah, all that kind of stuff and  taking steps and asking the right question, the right type of question at the right time. If you are yourself, and you’re using your own style, personality, and you generally know where you need to get to in the conversation I think the the person you speak with has a lot of tolerance for you, will give you a lot of time. There is such thing as a wrong question, you can obviously be very offensive or whatever. Well, maybe not in your case. I don’t know, sounds like you’ve been very confrontational, but yeah, so I’m going to take that back. I’ve had a lot of tolerance from my customers where I feel like I’ve maybe I’ve asked the wrong question but just because I was being completely myself, we still move forward together, they preferred it. So yeah, I hate that around sales trainings, because it kind of masks over the person that the sales person’s true way of being.

Martin Henley  1:20:28  

Yeah. We had this conversation with Robbie and about AI and how AI is going to eventually be in sales. I don’t see that because it has to be a person on a person. Unless you’re talking about something that’s totally data driven sale, like a completely commoditized sale, at which point, you’re gonna have a computerised procurement team, and a computer AI sales team, it’s not gonna make any difference. All the time sales is required, it has to be a person. What’s interesting about that is whenever I’ve been involved with sales training, they’ve told me, these people can’t close these people are terrible closers. In my experience is not that necessarily, it’s that they don’t know how to open a sale, or they don’t know how to open up an opportunity.

Jamie Badar  1:21:18  

Absolutely. I told you’ve taken the words right out of my mouth. The close, if there is such a thing as a close, it means that you haven’t done something right further upstream. If it becomes like a very unnatural step. I think a close is always a natural in my experience is always a natural step. It’s just how do we move forward here? Obviously, there needs to be payment of money, that money conversation should have happened ages ago, there should be no surprises around money, when you need to move forward, that should be established really upfront. In terms of the values in terms of okay, well, what ballpark figure is there? Are we even on the same page at the moment in terms of what it’s going to cost versus value and yada yada yada? I don’t like this whole concept of closing techniques. I think it’s crap.

Martin Henley  1:22:11  

Yeah. So I think even more than that, I think

Jamie Badar  1:22:15  

People like to negotiate, people like to feel they got a deal. Yeah, that’s fine. You’re that into your price?

Martin Henley  1:22:21  

Yes. Okay, good. I was just gonna say that, like objection handling or negotiation. The idea that you can teach somebody how to do these things, or you can give them the words and the steps to get them through that thing. I feel like you, I feel quite differently about those things. Basically, if someone’s objecting, if they really don’t want it, I don’t want to sell it to them, if they really don’t want it, I don’t want to sell it to them. If you say that to someone, and they’ll just say, yeah, I really don’t want it It’s like, Oh, good let’s go and get a beer. We don’t have to argue about this, like, just don’t buy it. The same with negotiation. I think an objection, I’ve got this other thing, I used to do a lot of presentations, I’ve got this objection handling presentation, which is basically it’s like a tug of war. So I have one set of people on one side throwing in, like a buying signal, and then somebody else on the other side responds, and I build up these two teams, and then I get them yanking each other around and then I say to them, actually, there’s a better way of doing this. The response to every objection you ever hear should be What do you mean by that? And they’ll say, Oh, well, I don’t have the budget and you’re like okay, well, what do you mean by that? Well the budget is not available till March. It’s like, okay, what what do you mean by that? It’s like, well, if I’m going to do this, I’ll do it in March, like, hey ho, I’ll see you in March. There is never, for me, any meaningful negotiation, or objections. You’re saying scripts don’t work, this traditional approach. It’s just not what’s required. Except I do wonder if it’s what’s required to get some of your 60% closer to the space where they could be behaving more naturally.

Jamie Badar  1:24:14  

Yeah, yeah. Look in my trainings. I want people to feel very natural when it comes to a closing conversation or objection handling. I like yours. I definitely teach in a very similar way. It’s getting a specific – what’s behind that? What’s behind that? What’s behind that?

Martin Henley  1:24:37  

At the end they will answer it.

Jamie Badar  1:24:39  

I didn’t like the way you walked into the room that one time, I just didn’t like it. You know, I think I just didn’t like the way you looked at me.

Martin Henley  1:24:50  

Or here’s the best – Sandra, the secretary says you were a complete asshole the first time you phoned in.

Jamie Badar  1:24:55  

Yeah, I didn’t like your post on whatever. 

Martin Henley  1:24:58  

Yes. 

Jamie Badar  1:24:59  

Oh, has nothing to do with timing then right? You’re just being antagonistic because you just didn’t like the way I called you. 

Jamie Badar  1:25:08  

Yes.

Martin Henley  1:25:11  

There’s the price. Objection. It’s like someone says, Oh, it’s too expensive. Like, there’s 20 things they could be saying, yeah, salesperson will be like, Oh, well, our product is shit, the market is shit, it’s too expensive, they go back to the business and say it is too expensive.

Jamie Badar  1:25:26  

Most of the time, they don’t trust themselves that they can actually extract the value out of it. It’s like, yeah, we spent this money before we suddenly become shelfware. So all right, so you don’t really think that, you don’t doubt that it will work you just don’t think you can actually use it well, or use it. So that becomes like a training situation or an implementation situation. Well let’s have a look at that.

Martin Henley  1:25:51  

There’s an opportunity to buy more from us. Do you want it implemented? We can do that for you do you want to training? We can do that for you.

Jamie Badar  1:25:57  

We can put a junior into your team make we can second you a guy for six months to help you implement this thing, how does that sound? Amazing. Oh, how about one of your guys comes and sits with us? We’ve never done this before but I’m just throwing it out there. We’re never done this but what do you think about this idea, one of your guys can come and sit in our office for three weeks and just learn from our guys. Obviously, there needs to be a price here, would that really help? You guys could get inside our offices and get firsthand experience and training with our support team and then you can go back and he can become the internal champion and you won’t need to rely on us forever in a day, or the relationship becomes so tight, that your guys can get to know our guys so well. We got nothing to hide. I’m just making it up. I mean, we have had that conversation, I’ve had conversations like that many times when come objections, they just don’t trust themselves that it would actually work for them potentially.

Martin Henley  1:27:02  

They know that,

Martin Henley  1:27:04  

Yeah. So that’s what I think is, I think every objection is an opportunity to negotiate. This is the issue I have with your power thing. This is the point about the tug of war, nobody wants to lose. I’ll say this to them, when they’ve pulled one team over, I’ll be like, Hey, you won how do you feel? They’ll be like, for a second, I’m really happy, but actually I could really have done with that thing as well.

Jamie Badar  1:27:41  

The power changes, it’s always shifting throughout the sales engagement. When I was taught, I mean, so you were you your use of power in terms of your opening in terms of, I don’t believe you, I’m not going to tolerate this. That is massive power on your side.

Martin Henley  1:28:01  

Yeah, but the thing is, nobody’s happy at the end of that. I was happy, I was in my 20s, I was living in South Africa, I was making a decent amount of money. I was managing Africans to do this to these oppressive white people, I was happy in that sense. That business wasn’t sustainable. Those people might have gone and had a good time but for me, that was boiler room sales. You’re going to sell to this person once and they’re never going to do it again, unless they have an amazing time at the event, in which case they’ll rebook and doesn’t matter what anyone says. For me isn’t sustainable. If I was selling IBM into … if I was selling mainframes into banks, I couldn’t go in there and speak to their Chief IT Officer, CIO, and go you’re an idiot, I’m not going to talk to you, I don’t trust you, my mate said he had an issue blah, blah, because the guy’s just gonna tell me where to go, so it’s a very specific situation.

Jamie Badar  1:29:05  

I guess. A lot of people who I work with as clients, they give away too much power and I just want to, I just need to illustrate the power tension and the play of that and how it reduces their their ability and their results and their satisfaction in their career, yada yada yada. There is that power thing and they give away too much and I guess I have to bring them back, I need to bring that equilibrium to them.

Martin Henley  1:29:37  

Yes. So okay, so I’m with you, as long as it’s not a power contest, you don’t need to be more powerful than them, but you do need to be respected. You can’t be running after them at 1000 miles an hour at their beck and call. They need to know that you need to be respected as a resource. Okay, then we agree about absolutely everything now,

Jamie Badar  1:29:58  

It’s just balance, people won’t buy from someone if they feel superior or inferior, and I think some sales people especially, I’ve got feedback from a lot of buyers, bringing in people from large corporates, that salespeople can have a huge superiority complex, they’ve got this arrogance. However big the supplier is, national, multinational, great big, we’re the best in the market; kick them out the door and kick them out the process because they are been so horrible to deal with. We don’t want to deal with you. I don’t care.

Martin Henley  1:30:38  

People won’t buy from people, especially if they’re buying anything meaningful they want to respect people. If I’m buying a tennis racket, I go into the tennis shop, and I want to have a conversation, that guy will say how do you hit? What do you do? When do you do? Why do you do? What are you trying to get to? That’s the conversation I want to have. That’s the conversation anyone who’s buying something really wants to have I think. Okay, cool We agree about everything. It’s good. Is there anything that you feel you should have said that you haven’t said?

Jamie Badar  1:31:08  

No, I think probably no, no, there’s nothing. There’s nothing out there, nothing comes to mind.

Martin Henley  1:31:14  

Okay, is there anything that you said that you shouldn’t have said? 

Jamie Badar  1:31:17  

Oh, I love that. When did you learn to ask that question? Well,

Martin Henley  1:31:21  

I asked by accident when I was asking is there anything else you should have said and that’s that’s my new question.

Jamie Badar  1:31:26  

It’s awesome. That’s an awesome question. So anything, I should have said that I didn’t? Anything, I said that I shouldn’t have, anything I didn’t say that I should have done, that’s brilliant.

What is it that prevents corporate buyers from actually buying?

I did a survey at the end of last year on senior buyers on people who’ve spent a lot of money out there to get feedback on bad and good approaches, but really bad approaches, just to, I suppose to agitate the market just to highlight to sales managers that their teams are doing some things wrong. That was very enlightening, basically. Okay. Yeah, really enlightening. I’ve got the list pulled up the list here, and I’ll just read them out to you if in need. So condensed down to these, basically, there’s a lot of assumptions being made and salespeople shooting in the dark, lacking an understanding of what they do as a business, this is b2b, by the way, yeah. There is little appreciation of their role and their challenges, and they basically completely miss the crux of the issue, like completely miss the crux of it, but they think they’re on it. They think they hit the nail on the head, but they’ve completely missed it. Very little preparation, like completely untargeted approach, but they’re persistent with the same irrelevant message, which kind of connects to the previous point. Being long winded and lacking succinctness, not really, what it comes down to is respecting the time of the people who they’re talking with, and not be able to get to the business value quickly. getting to the business quickly, shows that they know what they’re talking about. Not knowing the subject matter well enough, using scripts and the lack of natural flow to the conversation. Pitching too soon. Being over familiar, before the relationship has been formed. Over selling or mis selling the value. Lacking humility, humility, and substituting confidence with arrogance. This is just a point to carry on. This occurred only with salespeople from large corporates, or people who had come from a large corporate sales culture. So those are the things that were highlighted. Now I call this a survey. This was basically from my network of people who are formed over a period of time. People who had bought big ticket stuff, we are talking the range minimum 250,000, usually in the 1 million 20 million 60 million kind of things that they’ve authorised to purchase and that was a feedback, which I thought was brilliant. Really.

Martin Henley  1:34:20  

Yes and not altogether surprising. Brilliant. I think if what we’re saying is the same thing is. I haven’t worked in a sales role for for 20 years, my approach, in the end, having gone through all of these different things, was just to be genuinely interested and to keep asking as good questions as I could engineer to the point where they would say … I’ll give you a for instance, we were selling this compliance solution to the big insurance companies and the big banks in South Africa. Out of the box, there were 37 businesses I could sell this to, that was it. I would get on the phone and I would grill the product guys, what does it do? How does it do it? Why does it do it? Bla bla bla and I would literally write down 3 A4 pages of questions. Then I would look at it. And I would think, okay, when I do sales training, I teach people like a staircase of needs, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this. At the beginning, you want to build some rapport. So you ask them very gentle questions that they can answer really easily, build some rapport. In the middle, you want to do some kind of qualification. So how much of this are you doing? When are you doing it? What are the challenges? At the end, what you want to do is have some closing questions? Like, when is this coming up for you guys? Or how might you want to proceed? Or what would be the next step for you? These kinds of questions. So I had there’s three pages of A4. The mission was to get these compliance board level compliance officers in these huge businesses on the phone and start asking these questions. Not rigidly, if they say something, I’m naturally nosy. 33 out of the 37, this is from cold call, got to the point where they said, Martin, it’s really interesting what you’re saying here, I hadn’t said anything, I’d ask these 20 or 30 questions, that it was 45 or 50 minutes in, it’s really interesting what you’re saying here, I think we could really benefit from you coming in and talking to the team. 33 out of 37. 

Martin Henley  1:36:40  

The point for me is you’re never, this is why I objected to you saying that the salesperson was in full control, unless you’re absolutely thoroughly bullying someone into buying something, you’ve got zero control. The best you can do is motivate them to do the thing that you want them to do. For me, I don’t think I’ve pitched, I was selling for five years, 10 years, I don’t think I pitched in the second five years because I would always be digging, digging, digging, digging, digging, and getting them to the point where, you said this earlier, they realise, you know what, we have got an issue with this, we do need to be thinking about this. Or even better, I never even imagined we might be able to resolve this issue, we need to get Martin in and have this conversation. 

Martin Henley  1:37:27  

Nothing on that list surprises me. The only excuse might be is if they are smashing their  targets by so much that it doesn’t matter that they’ve got completely the wrong approach. I suspect it’s not that. I suspect that they’re probably not as successful as they need to be because that approach is entirely wrong. 

Martin Henley  1:37:51  

It needs to be about the customer. 100% it’s about the customer and that’s what makes the job so difficult. Maybe, because actually you’re not in any control of any of this really. All you’re doing is influencing all the way through. It depends on how, your success depends on how good you are at influencing. I’m talking too much again. Somebody sneezing downstairs. Yeah, we’ve got cold in this house. Okay, good. So the next question is reading recommendations. What do you recommend that people read?

What are your reading recommendations?

Jamie Badar  1:38:27  

What I’ve read recently that I really enjoyed I’ve reread Daniel Pink’s book called Drive. Daniel Pink has this psychologist, he relates everything to sales. He also wrote another book called To Sell Is Human. Yes. And it’s all a lot about psychology and sales. And I really like that is like contextual stuff. Yeah. Um I have what else what else? What else I like, I like the psychology stuff. I like Dan Ariely, prediction predictably irrational, which is all about behavioural economics. And again, understanding why people buy. Yeah, I think that’s really, really interesting. Yeah, what else? I like reading about successful people, as well. Not that I’ve read about successful piece of people recently. I’ve just bought Nelson Mandela’s book, just to tie it back to South Africa. Long Walk to Freedom.

Martin Henley  1:39:31  

Yes. That was a long walk, wasn’t it?

Jamie Badar  1:39:34  

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He’s an inspiring guy. The classics such as, Like a Virgin by Branson. That’s a great book.

Martin Henley  1:39:48  

You know what, I could have met Nelson Mandela and I bottled it. We were in a shopping mall, and they were in the car park underneath and we were coming out. This convoy pulls in, so it’s like three armoured cars, not armour, armour plated cars and my mates like step back, like get away. So we did get away. Then from like 40 metres we saw Nelson Mandela get out of this car. So if I just stood my ground where I was, maybe I’d have got shot. That’s a stupid thing. Okay, here.

Jamie Badar  1:40:27  

What books would you recommend?

Martin Henley  1:40:28  

And my recommendation for you, if you like reading about successful people is … do you know Malcolm Gladwell? It’s called Outliers is what it’s called. Have you read it? Read that immediately. It’s such a good book. The reason I like Malcolm Gladwell is because he does what I’m trying to do with sales and marketing but he does it with the world. It’s like you imagine, it’s like this, but actually, it’s ever so slightly different and if it’s ever so slightly different then maybe its better. For him it doesn’t matter if it’s better or worse but that’s kind of my approach. So I would read that and I’m also reading Donut Economics. Somebody on these talks recommended that to me recently. I thought it was going to be about somebody making money from selling donuts. It’s not about that.

Jamie Badar  1:41:32  

That sounds good.

Martin Henley  1:41:33  

Yeah, that is good. But definitely read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell that is a gem, an absolute gem. 

Okay, well, one

Jamie Badar  1:41:40  

Okay, well, one  person. I listen to a lot of podcasts and things like that, one that I’ve been more into. Okay. So there’s a couple of guys, there’s one called Benjamin Dennehy. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Benjamin Dennehy? No, he’s pretty good and I think you would really resonate with his message as well. Okay. It’s a lot of stuff on YouTube. And Josh Braun, he’s got a nice short, but to the point, podcast, fantastic and LinkedIn presence as well. But he’s much more about for the SDRs of the world rather than maybe also, you know, b2b, but he’s really good at the lead generation stuff.

Who do you recommend I speak to as part of the talk marketing series?

Martin Henley  1:42:30  

Okay, cool. Excellent. So recommendations for who I should talk to, or people you can introduce me to

Jamie Badar  1:42:38  

What type of person are you looking for?

Martin Henley  1:42:41  

For either salespeople, marketing people, or business owners, because for me, everything in business is sales and marketing. That’s what I feel. So successful business owners who understand the value of marketing and sales, or very good salespeople, or business, or marketing people. People who might be out on their own running marketing agencies or sales agencies, those kinds of people I’m interested in.

Jamie Badar  1:43:08  

Okay, I’ve got a couple of people comes to mind, one who I think is an amazing sales person. His name is, gosh, forgot his surname Simon, can I drop them over to you in a message?

Martin Henley  1:43:24  

You can if you could set up like Robbie did, an intro? Yeah, LinkedIn. That thing that’s working really well? I think so. People,

Jamie Badar  1:43:31  

okay, there’s a guy in Australia called Peter Row, he’s based in on the Sunshine Coast now, the Gold Coast, I think he is excellent. There’s a guy in Wales called Neil Franklin. He is a very successful entrepreneur, now business mentor, coach. Okay, I can introduce you to all these people, by the way. And our watch Simon. I forgot his surname, but I will definitely make an introduction to Simon for you as well. So that’s three.

Martin Henley  1:44:08  

Perfect. Yes, absolutely. Perfect. Yes. Thank you so much. I thoroughly enjoyed this. I don’t know how you feel about it.

Jamie Badar  1:44:16  

I enjoyed meeting and having this conversation with with you as well. Definitely.

Martin Henley  1:44:21  

Yeah. Is it what you were expecting?

Jamie Badar  1:44:24  

I didn’t know what to expect to be honest with you. Okay. No, it was good, though. I enjoyed it. Excellent. I hope you enjoyed it. You enjoyed it right?

Martin Henley  1:44:34  

Thoroughly enjoyed iy. Yeah. I hope so. Yeah. The thing is, this is I mean, it’s interesting, because like I say, I’m interested in the subjects and I’m interested to dig a little bit beyond veneer because the veneer because I think that’s where the value is. Very often salespeople develop a pitch, and you get the pitch and I’m probably the same I’ve got my pitch. So if I were to be interviewed, you’d get my pitch, and you’d have to push me a little bit to get beyond that. Yeah. So that’s hopefully what I’m doing in these conversations. I hope so. Somebody is going to find this, it’s going to be a treasure trove of like I say, there’s already 30 of these. If you think about the first one was Ed. Ed was working in advertising agencies in London in the early 70s. He’s got 50 years experience. I’m hoping when people discover this, when the algorithm sheds some light on this brings it out the shade or whatever, then people are gonna find it really useful. That’s what I’m hoping.

Jamie Badar  1:45:38  

Good, man.

Martin Henley  1:45:40  

Cool, good. Good. All right. So what we’ll do is we’ll do the pretend goodbye now and then I’ll stop recording and we’ll say goodbye like normal human beings. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Jamie Badar  1:45:54  

Yeah, likewise, pleasures been on all yours.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?