The Shift Perspectives Podcast: Recent Episodes
Andrew Nisbet
Competition, commoditisation and disruptive technologies are pressuring businesses into a downward spiral on price, disrupting the connection between their brand purpose, promise and how they sell. Businesses become stuck rolling-out the same initiatives, reduce prices, hope to sell higher volumes, but expect different results. Albert Einstein once referred to this as being the definition of insanity.At Shift, we help senior executives and business leaders rebuild their sales strategies. We reconnect your people with the value the business offers and their understanding of what the customer wants.We open your eyes to a new ball-game, a sustainable plan for growth and clarity in the businesses next steps.
So often companies provide an incredible customer experience throughout the sales process but fail to keep the momentum going post-sale.
We only need to look at our customer feedback and reviews to see that most of them stem from a post-sale touch-point.
In our latest podcast, Andrew discusses the idea of the Last Hurrah, which refers to that point of the customers' journey which is often deemed the customers' after-sale experience.
It’s our chance to further reinforce what our brand stands for, our commitment to the customer and our own sales culture.
Finding a true differentiator as a salesperson can be tricky.
Especially if we focus our key differentiator around or product or service.
In this podcast, I discuss how we can craft an untouchable differentiator that sticks in the mind of your prospects.
When we assume we know what is best for our customers without
understanding them, we give them the impression that they are not worthy
and don’t exist.
When our sales team is challenged, it’s common to focus on imposing more output - double down on the phones and follow-up harder than before!
However, in almost every case, what’s required is a change in the team’s beliefs and behaviours in their approach to selling.
Forcing compliance rarely drives competency. But when we create enrolment towards building competency, compliance takes care of itself.
Sharing a different way of doing something gives someone nothing more than an idea.
But getting them to actually take that different way for themselves will change their beliefs.
More on how we train our sales teams in our latest article.
The way a salesperson creates and shares their agenda isn’t just organisation - it’s a key point of differentiation in the eyes of their customer.
It’s also a tool to make sure the right questions get asked, a true connection is built, and a follow-up meeting is secured.
More on this in the podcast below. How do you make your agenda stand out?
Do you believe in what you do? If so, why?
**Do you believe in the products and services you are selling and the company you work for?
Why is belief important?**
More on this in my latest podcast.
In sales, it can sometimes feel like the customer can’t grasp the value we are offering and that the best option is to move on to the next lead.
But is this a wise move?
In this article I discuss the important difference between walking away from the sale, and walking away from the customer.
Stories allow us to make sense of the world around us, and when a brand shares a story we’re already telling ourselves, we’re likely to make a meaningful engagement.
But without a cohesive brand story, shared consistently over time, our marketing messages will fall flat, caught up in the sea of online noise.
To be heard, you need to understand your story. And your brand's story lies between why you do what you do, and the personal challenge your customer is already struggling with.
More on finding your brand's story in my latest article.
Is sales a function of your business and nothing more? Or is selling embraced as a company-wide opportunity to deliver more value?
In my latest article, I discuss the opportunities that we can create in business when we foster a customer-first selling culture, that’s embodied right across our organisations.
Everyone in any given organisation has the chance to add value to your customer.
Our customers’ attention is scarce, especially online.
Yet all too often, salespeople bombard their audience with intrusive, impersonal messages.
In this article, I highlight the common mistakes salespeople are making with their online prospecting.
The last twelve months has forced us all into new and unique circumstances - both personally and professionally.
Everyone has navigated these circumstances differently, with varying results.
The people who found a way to stay afloat - and even thrive - in this time will generally share a trait that’s a principle of life.
It’s their ability to maintain an internal locus of control. What does this look like? Why does it matter to salespeople?
Like most aspects of business, sales is seen as a numbers game.
We aim for more calls because it’s assumed that if we make more contacts, the numbers will eventually fall our way.
When we focus on quantity, we sacrifice quality. And in sales, quality involves solving problems, building healthy long-term relationships and facilitating win/win outcomes.
In this article, I discuss the importance of steering away from quantity in sales and focusing on quality.
What’s quality in sales look like for you?
In this Podcast, I suggest that we redefine our view of sales success, focusing on the amount of value we provide our customers and not only the common metrics of customers won or money made.
Insurance isn’t something we typically get excited about, but that doesn’t mean the chance to make a connection with the customer isn’t there.
I recently cancelled my salary continuance insurance after a sharp, tone-deaf premium increase.
However, this article isn’t about me, it’s about the missed opportunity of the interaction.
If we see our customer as a $ figure, we give up the opportunity to build a real, lasting connection.
On the last sale you lost, you may have asked why. “Why didn’t you give me the sale?”
But what about the last sale you won. Did you ask why they gave you the sale then?
Asking your customer why followed with a positive opens up the door to far more insightful information than when we ask why followed with a negative.
Knowing why you do what you do and why the customer buys from you has never been more important.
More on this in my podcast below.
A great sales team is the magic that sits between what our brand promises and how our customer feels.
However, this seems to have been forgotten as more and more businesses prioritise their TikTok campaigns over their face to face interactions.
Here I talk about the important role a modern sales team has in a brands success.
Hunters and Farmers are the two stereotypical categories we place salespeople in.
Hunters see green (money) and Farmers see people.
However, we need sales and we need relationships. The middle-ground lies in the lesser-known category of relationship salespeople.
The real test of a business and their understanding of the value they bring to their customers comes to bear when the market drops off and when economic conditions take a negative turn.
At this point, the choice is to either drop their price or grow their value.
Here’s why the latter is a road less travelled.
This episode is a riff on empathy inspired by an interaction I had with a caring store owner and my mother.
Showing empathy is fundamental in any relationship we have. In selling, it’s about looking to genuinely solve someone else’s problem rather than alleviate our own.
Is empathy something you practice?
Knowing wholeheartedly the value of what you do, and how exactly it helps your customer has never been more important.
In the book ‘The Art Of War, Sun Tzu provides insight around how this has stood the test of time - over 2,500 years.
Here’s how this ancient insight applies to you, and the impact you make.
Alignment is the glue that holds a business together.
When alignment fails, very quickly, any curiosity, belief, trust or positive emotion customers have for the brand or the business goes straight in the bin.
Here I talk about the fundamentals of achieving alignment across every touch-point of your customer's journey and why it’s important to a business's sales success.
What was the last blockbuster you saw? Did the hype catch you before you even sat down with an overpriced bucket of popcorn?
We can learn a lot about how we sell from blockbusters.
Here I talk about the importance of preparation, groundwork and anticipation.
Most often it's our salespeople that commoditise a product or service, not the customer.
Here's a short story on the importance of your sales culture and knowing exactly why your customer buys.
We change our beliefs by changing what we do first, not the other way around.
Here's a story about what change really means in business, and how to overcome change’s biggest hurdle – ourselves.
‘People will always believe what they tell themselves.’
In this article, I discuss what I have labelled as the salesperson’s creed. It’s about selling based on what the customer truly wants, and not on what you need as a salesperson.
It’s a theory based on a famous quote by Seth Godin, which you will see front and centre in the article. I’d love to hear your feedback on this one.
It'a long-held belief that in order for us to win, someone has to lose.
Here I talk about win/lose outcomes, why they're so prevalent in business and how we can reframe our mindset and actions to produce win/win outcomes for both business and the customer.
A riff on the barriers giving our customers a label creates, why we do it, and how we can move forward.
Follow the customer, not the sale.
A story about taking a sales hungry team of individuals and driving them towards becoming a customer-first unit.
The result; a win/win/win situation.
Understand first, then sell.
As a customer, interacting with a salesperson that’s in tune with your needs is always a great experience. The opposite is a salesperson with their own trust-killing agenda.
The way we interact, and in particular, the questions we ask, determine our sales outcomes.
Here I discuss what understanding and selling questions look like, and discuss the impact these questions have on the salesperson/customer relationship.
Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback.
The importance of understanding the gap between what your brand promises and what your brand delivers.
Objections and rejections may sound the same, but get it wrong and you end up a long way from where you and the customer really want to be.
Co-creation. Win/win sales strategies on the next level!
A good friend told me about how Amazon used co-creation to create a win/win/win outcome. It’s interesting to hear of such a personal gesture from a behemoth brand. In the end, a manufacturer, Amazon and importantly the customer walked away happy.
How could you use co-creation?