and i'm very thrilled to say we are and anybody that's watching us now live on facebook and linkedin hello anybody that's watching this back through the youtube or anywhere we share it hello and also into our podcast um streams which is very exciting and it's absolutely right that we do stream this a lot because what we bring to you in these bit chats are amazing experts and let me tell you a little bit about why we do that so first of all you might be saying what's bip stand for bip stands for business is personal and any client that we work with we always make sure that they have values around that which means they have diversity of skills but the commonality of kindness and they are really passionate about the impact that they have on their clients and their overall values and when we find those people we invite them into something called bit 100 and we're creating quite a phenomenal community so i'm now talking to you in october 21 and we have 74 of these amazing experts and we ask them if we can interview them and give you the audience support in various subjects and the one today is one that none of us can ignore and i can say that without exception we all need to understand sales and we all need to make sure that our business grows through those skills and today we're talking about the future of hybrid sales teams um in what we are doing how long we can say it but this new era that we've gone into so october 21 when you listen to this back a bit further on we've come out now of the um covid lockdown period but our businesses have had to adapt a lot and many many ways the pivots have been exceptionally good now a little bit personally here i am very excited to be talking about sales because that has always been my career in that in 1983 i joined an it firm in telesales worked my way through field sales into sales management and then became sales director of a quite a large it distributor so even to this day i love sales and not because i it is a formula or a process it just helps me to meet amazing people and hopefully attract them towards us with our values so two experts that we have here in front of us tim robertson and steve saunders and i'm going to start off by introducing tim so tim has worked in the corporate world for many many years he's going to fill in all my gaps here and um absolutely works with sales management sales strategy sales teams um around the way that you need to sell basically and business develop and has many qualifications one of which i do want to really dig into around neuroscience um and tim you've um asked steve saunders who's also a bit 100 member which is very exciting to join us can you just introduce stephen and a little bit of your background with steve and and why you invited steve sure absolutely and i'm sure steve in in in a second can fill in the gaps that i've missed out as well steve and i met probably was it 780 years ago when we working in in a large telecommunications firm that we both were involved with um in in the sales arena and although i work really at the ground floor steve works at a lofty positions of strategy which he does a lot these days and we recently re-met actually after all that time we have lots and lots of experiences together working with this large telco company um and and it was recently that we met because of deb and we said my goodness me it's incredible that you're here but steve is an incredible brain very much a strategist and i really want to invite him on to to give a slightly different view to mine which is very much more around the the ground floor level and and the sort of the day-to-day stuff so steve building a little bit of gap would you mind yeah yeah yeah so um beyond that i mean the work that we did together tim was i was i was fortunate enough to be invited in because of many years working in salesforce transformation go to market transformation just the broader picture of how to accelerate ideas into the marketplace and and changing work uh patterns and behaviors you know establishing better ways of working and and helping people and teams thrive in in that sort of environment so that yes that does touch the strategy it touches the organization readiness and it goes down to individual uh capabilities and readiness to thrive in in different uh in different situations so so that was uh and since uh since we worked together i i gambled with my own startup for a while i joined ey and led global pursuits um and uh their large go to market opportunities to accelerate adoption of key ideas in in the global market and for this last year i've been working um in my own uh capacity putting a portfolio together working with clients and it's really it's really interesting so so bip it was it was just awesome to reconnect with tim but also as you said penny the the the great people that you've brought together in this community it's it's wonderful to be here oh thank you very much that's very lovely to hear that so let's start before i sort of really dive into the nitty-gritty what i'd love to understand tim um is we're assuming i'm going to hope that people who are listening in on this are very interested in the sales topic and um can you just give me an idea of when when a client approaches you and says they want to work with you so i know you're working with a large telco at the moment what is sort of a day in the life of working with you what is it you would do for them sure absolutely the first thing to explain that probably a little bit like steve my my focus is on large complex sales so large organizations are trying to sell to other large organizations where the situation is quite complex so i run a lot of uh i facilitate a lot of training programs i also develop a lot of training programs so i'm work predominantly steve and i worked and i've worked predominantly the telco industry but also my background means i'm now working with a with a a company that produces equipment that sequence genomes as well so i'm a toxicologist's background so we developed a clinical selling skills course um but it's really understanding that that what's successful about complex if you like b2b business to business transactions where there's often a myriad of different people you have to connect with and influence and it's both the strategy of going around that and and showing people there's a common language where you can talk together and work as a team that's one of the key things that i bring to its collaboration so we bring structure and process around collaboration but also the skills so how do you interact with a ceo or cio before you go in there what kind of research do you have to do and what's the best way to start that communication and a lot of sales has changed over the years and if you think about the old days of the pressurized salesperson and you know the abc's always be closing and quite frankly that is a load of rubbish these days in fact i think there was some research done and said the more you close on a complex b2b sale more likely you are to be shoved out the door um and it's much more subtle than that um i know we moved away you know moved up solution selling where you're providing a solution to somebody and they've got a series of problems or challenges and the next step has been around insight selling where you're showing your worth to a company or to an individual about their particular situation or knowledge about that as well so it's it's moved on a lot so um the kind of deals that steve and i were involved in range from i don't know 10 000 the largest one i've dealt with is 850 million um so large corporate deal that we're trying to focus on to to secure and we were really great if we secured it by using different techniques penny you know sales is not about pushing somebody off you know trying to you know through unscrew in somebody into doing something about far too much time far too much time to think about to consider other options they've probably done their research things have changed that kind of stuff so i normally get involved that you know helping them think through the process and also the skills it's interesting that um i remember one takeaway for me was the how difficult it is for a company to differentiate in a defendable way right something that's different about them that is sustainable that is relevant and important and valuable to the customer right and and it takes a long time and sometimes a lot of investment and working with teams i remember the moment of enlightenment where they accepted that their professional sales behavior was actually a differentiator and it's quite defendable as well because you form relationships and the closer you get towards this insight selling which which is is is about having an opinion a point of view that can potentially change or unsettle the the predetermined behavior buying practices and attitudes of the customer and make them think differently about their their problems and how to maximize value from that and and and if we're doing that if you combine that with the hybrid way of working which we're talking about now as well yeah um you know forming that level of confidence and comfort to talk and engage is really important and one of the one of the things we just had a previous comment about was was the fact that when you're working over this link i can have four books open just out of view of the camera um whereas if i was to rustle through my briefcase to find that data in a face-to-face meeting it would make me look as though i'm i'm a monkey yeah that's a really good point sitting online you you can if you if you handle it properly if you are at a human level connecting and you can also have your information so you you're you're you're getting um that you you're deserving of that um opportunity to challenge to um use insights and and to do in a respectful uh and informative way yeah i like that a lot you could have so many post-it notes all around you couldn't you know it just looks as though you're thinking i was sitting in my office i'd turn the camera around you could it's not fine so so that's a really good point you're making there steve so because i'm really curious about how has this new world change selling because and is it for the good so so tim when you chose this title future of hybrid sales teams what was it what was what were you thinking of about that i think over the last 18 months or so and you mentioned the lockdown and getting out of lockdown we've been forced into this situation working from home haven't we because majority of the world has not been allowed to go out and that's been for some people a terrible frustration because they're used to going out and seeing people but my view is actually it's now actually become slightly an opportunity as well to revisit and i'm sure steve will add this the strategy we employ with teams our sales teams there's the sales aspect was a human aspect as well what i've found through working with sales teams over the last year or so coming out of this and hopefully we're moving out of it and you know with vaccination programs were moving out of it is there are lessons to be learned about working from home and using as steve says you know steve brought up a really good point that working virtually means that i'm you know i'm two thousand three thousand miles away from you guys uh and we're serving this conversation we can do the same with customers and steve said we can have um you know prompts all around us about the key needs and key problems and challenges our customers have but i i the reason the real reason is i think that companies and stephen probably supporter have to really think about how they're supporting people internally um and i know steve you would in an earlier conversation talk about bt and the way they prepped you up for homework because there are two things here in my view yes we can ask people to work from home and some some companies have now got home contracts so you no longer go to an office you actually work from home does that alter your mental state do you actually are you better off working this way you know are you are you giving everybody your best as opposed to going out and see them the second aspect is that people by nature you and i you know the three of us met the other evening as in in one of your victories wonderful they are as well penny we got together it was just amazing to get together so we've got now a situation where we've got to have this hybrid whereas before we as you were a field salesperson originally weren't you so the thought of coming and sitting down here and looking at a screen and talking to people no no no no i don't want to do that what we've learned though is it's much more efficient to do it this way yeah and do you feel the relationship can still be because we all met online we became you've trusted and joined bit 100 both of you by not meeting us there was a it's beautiful when you get the chance to meet do you feel that people need different skills to be able to build trust and relationships online than they did when they were able to sit in an office shake hands have a coffee do you feel it's a different way of building trust i'll pass over to steve in a minute before you don't mind me steve answering this one first before i pass over to you i think you do i think you have to be very much more aware of the nuances of the behavior and what you're seeing in front of you because i do this day in day out in the middle of the you know i've got nine people online waiting for me now actually after we finish this session you have to look at the behavior and you have to specifically realize that this is a two-dimensional thing and you've got three-dimensional people so the way you build rapport and relationship with people has to adapt to the situation now i've known companies and i'm working or have been working the company that only works and sells major major deals through this media they've never met anybody until they've contracted with them and then we're talking of five six million 20 million deals they're working on and in fact steve you said that when you were working with hp and set up a division for them it started straight away hybrid back in what was the date 1999 yeah i'd say i mean hybrid for me all the way through literally i'm i worked for german uh and italian managers and uh we both worked for swiss and german partners we worked with clients all around the world and so it wasn't inherently uh hybrid what i would say is the certain um human characteristics that have been ever present that it's a truism to say that some people are better or worse at connecting and forming and showing genuine interest in others what happens with this change is that it becomes amplified so if you'll care less about it if you're careless about it it becomes very obvious to people that you're you're not ready um so so if i if i did or didn't attend the office in one of my companies it might have been occasionally visible um and i had to be careful to make sure i had to be interested enough to make sure that i i made a connection that i respected the people that i was uh working with and and and and showed an interest really um being in the office uh doesn't excuse you from that but it does it kind of puts you in a cocoon and creates the impression that because you're in the same room as somebody that you're that you're somehow connecting with them and that isn't always the case so i think what what is happening here is um this pressure cooker of covered has made certain uh long-term patterns much more visible they've amplified them and and so people do need to tune in to the gaps in their capabilities that self-awareness how they communicate with people how they connect with people uh rather than just thinking well i'm we're going to go sit in that office over there and shout each other down for 30 minutes and and we'll have a good old meeting well no it was never a good old meeting it was you know 80 percent of the people in that room never had a voice for instance you know uh and and therefore you know you you do have a as i said a lot of amplification going on of these these tendencies i'd also go back to what was mentioned about large businesses since leaving ey most of my work has been with startups because in this new way of working it's a huge leveling opportunity um because they are expected to behave with the professionalism and the global reach and the structure and methodologies that they're the big boys and girls are playing with and um and if they don't know how to they got to learn because you know the opportunity is there to participate in very advanced ecosystems and very large pieces of business but you could lose out on that if you don't emulate some of their professionalism so now is a leveling opportunity that that exists for those small businesses and i'm finding that some of the future leaders in their markets are are embracing that and taking that opportunity wow that's very good that is really that is interesting and and so in terms of the demands and requests made of you um if i start with tim since we've when we went into lockdown in in march 20 and people started to lift their head and communicate and say how are we going to deal with this what was a typical sort of pivot or need that a business was needing to go through i i think and as you've probably gathered i run a lot of sort of workshops and both process workshops and skills workshops around sales excuse me i think the key thing is that everybody was thrown into this environment 2020 march 2020 didn't know what to expect so there's a lot of status quo static work because thinking how do we work through this what's going to happen um there's uncertainty this volatility um you know there's confusion there's ambiguity all those vuca things they keep on talking about um and it took six months before people really then began to say well everybody's at home well it looks like people are going to be staying at home so we need to put something in place so my work was put on hold basically for six months until people began to realize that you can actually do stuff online so i did some online and now virtually some of the companies i'm talking to will only do online yeah and of course we've had to adapt you know as facilitators of these workshops and as consultants we're now working a lot more like this and quite honestly for me it's a lot easier because there's less travel and what i'm hearing is that from the people i'm engaging with one lady i was talking to today based in madrid um no sorry mumbai she spends three and a half hours in the morning three and a half hours in the evening commuting oh so now she's at home she's going yes i've got seven hours back amazing so that's the positive side people got more time but also the negative side i think around around that is you've got children i mean in the lockdown you had children away from school work and look up for kids as well and hopefully that's going to sort itself out yeah but i think we do need a bit of variety in our lives as well to just get up sit at a desk and go back to bed we do need a bit of variety and and see what it's something um that really intrigues me is um the brand representation aspect of this because you know god i remember when i was in the i.t industry remember remember the ibm at the time in the early 90s you know it was even controlled you down to the suit entirely you know the brand representation out there and now you know some people are have not got homes ready for this how are companies coping with that well then the answer to that is i don't i don't think necessarily it's being done consistently which is maybe an opportunity for again differentiation what we're talking about there is holistic impact of new ways of working i mean it is there's various things that i'm paying attention to because what happened initially and there's this this sort of disaster mindset or instinct that kicks in when something because we don't think ahead for disaster scenarios yeah we don't actually know what's going to happen when a disaster lands so so what actually happened in my work environment was that people turned their attention to the instinctive reaction their customers would have which was to run for the woods and protect the cash flow so there was a lot of effort required to keep the customers doing what they were doing already and keep the cash coming into the business the cost focus for the customers reducing costs different forms of value and then suddenly they realize hey i'm a lot more available and my people are more available my customers are more available so actually we can we can do a lot more talking and and it was true to say that people that would often be on jets flying to buenos aires or or india or somewhere were now stuck at home stuck at home but i could get a call with them at 24 hours notice it was it was fantastic for me you know and so we were a lot more agile and actually a lot better off they realized and then we get to this point of holistic impact where that sort of two hours commute through the london tube system to get to the office and two hours to get home by which time you're supposed to be refreshed and happy for your children to have half an hour to read a story before they go to bed and bath them and then that's it it now translates into an extra four hours at home and what are you doing with that what do you what is the company helping you to do with that and are they paying attention properly to the holistic impact of this new opportunity which includes helping people to understand their visual impact on the company's brand because the company is responsible for that you know if their people are having customer calls from the kitchen with with uh fried eggs cooking in the background or or do they have an environment like like tins set up albeit that it's just within camera range which helps to professionalize the impression that's created for the car mentally and physically how do your people feel right how are they feeling after 10 weeks in this situation right and can you maybe think of ways of helping to prop up their mental well-being and their physical well-being while they would have been on an underground train and so is this a bad thing that they've now not you know they're not putting that time in at the office or is it an opportunity to deal with the holistic impact of the business and one of the businesses that i'm involved with is is codifying the ideal way of working in different sales situations and delivery situations they're codifying that into into easy-to-use systems so that anybody who's involved in a given use case for the for the company they know exactly what they should be doing now isn't that obvious right it's it's like a playbook or a cookbook that says actually in this situation this is what we'd like you to be sharing with the customer and we'd like you to follow this wow customer journey but that wasn't done before you know but now that we're in this situation they feel they recognize the obligation that exists for companies to think about the holistic impact yeah that people should be having on on the customers yeah yeah that's that's very interesting and all that whole psychological safety element as well so so we've talked a little bit around obviously well some of it's the same and some of it's changed company responsibility our own personal responsibility if i get into some of the skills aspects of this um and i like the fact steve you've mentioned you know small businesses as well um there's a commonality that we all use and that is linkedin right whether we're a small business or a big salesman sales lady at a corporate tell me tim about that sort of relationship you feel people are having with linkedin pre and post but i imagine it's now i i think um people realize that this this aspect of digital sales including linkedin around much more important um and i think people are going to realize the the social selling aspect of things and we'll come back to that word selling uh linkedin is an amazing platform for research for getting contacts all that kind of thing but if i'm really honest the majority of people don't know how to use it well yeah and they try and pitch far far too early you know they'll connect with you often sending out a a blank connection to you and then as soon as you accept it they'll send a pitch message to you now are you interested in doubling your revenue or something like that which is not what we do in a networking event if you think about what we'd actually do because it's a networking site yep yep and it's a brilliant networking site in a networking site we wouldn't pitch we wouldn't walk into a room and say hey my name's tim and i do this and i'm brilliant at that people just turn around and look at you and avoid you and that's what happens on linkedin sometimes so it's about building that relationship and it's it's no different to when you you know introducing yourself and getting to know people or picking up you know i might turn around to steve and this is this australian state my goodness dude that's a beautiful background is that a virtual background you know that kind of thing you can do on linkedin as well i noticed this about your profile you know to build that relationship um both on linkedin and also we're talking virtually here and some of the skills element of it is still about the human nature of things the people have lost a lot of the art of conversation haven't they and you know i remember thomas saying and anybody that's watching this wondering why how i've kicked thomas out of here he's had to go to a very last minute appointment so it's usually thomas and penny on the sofa but you know thomas is i said i think about 20 years ago conversations lead to transactions but the thing is so many people are just really put into this broadcast and automated way of being haven't they they have absolutely they think um and it goes down to whether it's quantity equality again and the the people are really good at it are good conversationalism pick up nuances of things quite naturally so they'll look at things and they'll say oh that's an interesting topic but they'll do it genuinely yeah yeah yeah i mean you get a linkedin message to say tim look uh hi hi hi tim look at your profile looks like you're doing great things is that personal no no i know and every time i say that i laugh yeah that's really been so it's got to be personalized and i think stevie you probably agree with this every new interaction has to be highly personalized if we learn anything about that it's got to really connect with that person and really understand how you can have a conversation back to what thomas was saying with that individual about something that they care about or they're interested in yeah and i think we're all just impatient aren't we and it's just throw away just throw away connections just to get to the one that finally comes in just having just having a a connection with another human being is a very special moment if somebody opens your message or engages in a dialogue with you that's actually really nice so doesn't it doesn't it make sense that you should be a bit curious about them and show that you're interested yeah and an actual fact i had this tom conversation with thomas earlier on about the fact that we become increasingly isolated in our thinking you know we will often sit at home and we'll think and think and think over a subject so by the time we have a conversation about it we end up throwing our opinion at somebody else and then going quiet until they throw their opinion at us and then we'll throw another opinion back at them but the thing i love about tim for instance and it's it's in its nature actually uh and when actually when i what i what i really wanted to ask you anyone we switched on the cameras earlier on is to tell me about the photographs behind you because i'm curious that would probably tell me something about you and your favorite you see them i've just yeah but actually honestly that's maybe time for but we can carry on with it i remember as a young salesperson i had the chance to go into the chief finance office's room to help repair a printer and i ended up talking to his pa and looking in the guy's office and seeing these photographs around and picking up on what he was interested in and by the time i got a chance to talk to the chap i was actually really interested in his life right and and it only took five minutes to make that connection but it told me things about how to work with that person from that point on and and it's an it's human curiosity i think is what i always try to tell people absolutely absolutely i agree if we look at penny right now if you notice one second on one of her hands she's got hearts she's got hearts around her neck so you know picking up those small visual cues that that the heart is really central to you and that comes up really around your personality as well that love and that affection that you've shown that's the reason why we joined the joint bit because we feel like you're part we're all part of this big family and that is a real skill oh well that's very kind of you to say i think what that gets to is the core of what really drives each one of us no matter what we're selling there is a core set of values that drive us and and that's what we connect with as individuals isn't it and you know what you've shared there steve i mean my core value is to connect hearts and i connect hearts in business and that's what i want to achieve um and so whatever you're selling i mean if i was selling photocopiers if they still exist i would still be connecting hearts but i'm just happen to be selling this but my values as i walk into a room with someone would still be exactly the same and i suppose that's what you're saying here um steve about when you get to know somebody you connect at a much more important level can i come on to something that really does intrigue me um i know you've done qualifications in neuroscience tim can you help me understand how that's applied in a sales environment sure sure um and i'll invite steve because i'm sure you've got a view on this and as well so neuroscience is the study of the workings of if you like the urology of the brain and what we know much more about by looking at functional mri images in other words what's happening with all the chemicals by the cameras you know what an mri is it looks at the brain that a functional one shows the actual workings of the brain is actually there are two things in sales firstly people are motivated by fear more than they are than gain that's a really interesting thing from a sales angle sometimes that's quite difficult to figure out well how do i can't frighten do you remember the old ibm adage i don't really remember that but uncertainty doubt was one of their sort of things create fear uncertainty a doubt well you have to do that really subtly and what neuroscience says is that basically the center of us right in the center of the brain is the amygdala which is part of the part of the central limbic system uh which is right in the center of the brain and that reacts very very quickly to emergencies so risk is a bigger driver to people than actual gain and what do we do as sales we tell them how wonderful things will be what we forget about is actually the thing that actually the brain wants to do is stay as it is so if you're talking to somebody if i was selling to you penny yeah my first thing is to actually make you do something to change what you're doing right now every sale is about change so if i was you were using i don't know perhaps you had a certain brand of clothing you liked and and so and i was selling another brand of clothing i might say you know go around that aspect of making you change your mind about that clothing or wearing certain types of clothes or something like that we do this in corporate sales a lot the biggest motivator the biggest sorry the biggest competition for any sale is not competition it's status quo the brain's saying stay as i am stay as i am stay as i am well what we've got to do is stop that in the process by trying to get people say actually it's not safe to stay as i am yeah yeah particularly where steve and i both work a lot in in you know this big thing that's happening in digital transformation where if you're not doing or trying to transfer your company or applying digital techniques you're going to be left behind think about all the banks think about the way the banks have evolved over the last five years 10 years i applied for a bank account about i think it was about five years ago and if they said well we need this we'll need this we'll take about a month or two months to do and eventually i got one it was fine now you can get one with five minutes yeah yeah because the new technologies and so therefore the transformation has happened in there so back to that neuroscience if you think it's comfortable to stay as you are as a bank boom forget it yeah you've got to have that transformation so that's where the neuroscience so it's the danger bit of this but some of these things we know about already about the rapport yeah one of the sentimental things that that sales teacher says that when we don't know somebody for instance it's the first time that steve and i had connected together steve might be saying to himself who is this guy do i trust him is he you know is he all right the danger and what as you get to know something that's really important for for salespeople they know it instinctively you know penny you do steve is that could that judgment lowers as you get to know to somebody and said no he he or she is okay they're all right and that's the brain relaxing that central limbic system going you know trying to vary in people because i'm a um i assume everybody's wonderful until they're not some people assume everybody's an is that is that a psychometric is there a tool for that that because i you know i think we're all very different i and i am naturally a growth mindset person i'm naturally progressive um you know i know things in my life will be different again next year hopefully not my working life but you know might be in a different house or life changes life change so i imagine in you're almost trying to get to that progressive person always really aren't you when you're or that progressive element of someone yeah i think there are two things as well this other the old nature nurture debate as well that we inherently firstly have got our own genetic and epigenetic mechanisms around ourselves but we're a product also of our parents and our environments and everything else that makes us either a growth mindset or not i'm very very lucky my confidence is borne out by my parents being very supportive of me whatever i've done throughout my life you know even when i failed at things yes it enabled you to take risk yeah i've taken bigger risks as an entrepreneur than you know that my parents did or other people or my brother did or my sister did uh i'm very lucky but i think you know it's back to the old debate are people made or that you know are they staying their way i think by and large there are people who have a natural tendency to be cautious yeah yeah absolutely and and steve you've obviously got you've got a life story of working in corporates and supporting corporates but you've now um also are supporting business leaders of their own companies business owners do you see a difference in in that respect when people are you know if i was selling into a corporate as opposed to selling to an entrepreneur is that do you feel there's a different i think there's a there's an overriding human uh pattern here uh uh a couple of patterns and just to add to what uh tim was describing that i think uh but there's one one thing i've observed is the tendency to overuse fear or threat without juxtaposing it with a really believable uh best practice solution because if you just do that it takes about five to ten minutes for the person to readjust back to their comfort zone and then they'll never listen to your danger threat signal again you know so so you have to really have it thought through so you have to be um thoughtful and not thoughtless about how you throw these pieces of information around i'll go back to the linkedin message saying surely you must be recruiting loads of uh programming staff in your job as independent management uh consultant and i'm sitting here thinking that was just you know okay go go away please um but the so the other underlying trait that i find that is common everywhere is the fact that whenever i've gone to uh suggest to somebody that they should change from the way that they're doing things right now actually what that is interpreted as is a critique it is a it's almost like a criticism of the way that they're doing it now and people become defensive of that all right so so you what what what i was taught very early days very good line management training at ibm and hp um was that you have to earn the right to offer criticism and people have to ask you for it actually part of that process is that they say so what do you think of my thesis could you help me pull it to pieces and then they're receptive to taking on that suggestion right and this all boils down to as a salesperson or as a human being you know you have to spend a little bit of time and you gain much more by asking questions than you do by going into tell mode yeah yeah and i i have always declined product training courses as much as i possibly could because i always explain to people my main value is that i'm obsessed with customers i'm actually i'm so curious about what's going on in their world and in their lives i don't want to go in leading with the latest feature of whatever product it is or the promise point whatever i don't also want to go in with pre-cooked sales pictures that say you know in your industry this is happening and if you don't do something about please you know it's a very deeply personal business is personal right conversation that you're having you know that what you're doing about your disaster recovery at the moment risks losing shareholder value in the next six to nine months if you don't do something differently about it is a criticism of that person's disaster recovery you better make damn sure that you've established trust with that person before you do that right yeah well there's nothing more annoying than unsolicited advice is there and i know tim you know you come a very human-centric very hard thought process as well and i love the way steve's put that across um what are your thoughts on that as well coming here i think i agree with um the americans have this phrase don't call the baby ugly [Laughter] which is exactly what steve's describing there you could be really careful that it's not implied as criticism because people will get defensive you know i've had people look at my website and said oh by the way you've got this problem this problem this problem this problem and steve and i both know people who've gone into clients have done that and the client said go there's the door use it but what we have been finding out is using stories of other customers very useful way to show a hidden danger of a particular approach so not directing the person in front of you so that what we've heard from other customers is they've tried this this and this this is what they found so it's third party it's nothing to do with i'm saying about you absolutely what you're trying to bring is the two together so somebody like a parable can see that they're involved with it say oh right yeah that's very similar to me but you're not directly criticizing you're just saying this is what they found create something that's relatable i remember when i was bravely learning to do public speaking we had i don't know four or five hundred people in the room with the academy in london every month i'd never been a public speaker thomas used to be the front and then he went off with an asia trip for five weeks and i did and i got off and i think i did all right you know i was i think i was quite humble and everything and the first person approached me was i'm a speaker trainer would you like me to teach you how to speak and it was like i don't ever ever want to see you in my life again yeah absolutely about picking the right moment am i that crap so yeah pick the right moment but that's you know that's down to our emotional intelligence and ultimately i feel that a lot of what we have talked about today is yeah we're living in a digital world yeah we can automate everything yeah we can be hands off all these things but we have to remember it's about people and the best way is to improve our emotional intelligence and and really plug into that um there's been an amazing talk today before i sort of finish off is there anything sort of left undone either of you that you feel that we should have got a got across to help our audience no just stay online afterwards and tell me about those photographs no don't thanks for the opportunity penny it's really great to be here oh it's wonderful thank you thank you for inviting me somebody said to me a brilliant man who was on academy called ronald will paris and he was in poland and he said to thomas back in thomas knight back in 2003 is the greatest thing that we're all going to be facing is an attention war and the hardest thing is to get someone's attention and i have had both retention for 45 minutes and anybody that's listened to us today has given us their attention and so thank you very much because to me that's the greatest privilege and um i really appreciate it and i think there's huge value in what you share thank you very much gentlemen i absolutely loved it thanks benny thank you goodbye
2021-10-11