Salescraft Training: Selling for success
Selling for Success is your go-to podcast for leveling up in the world of sales. Each episode delivers actionable tips, insider strategies, and real-life stories from top sales pros who’ve been in the trenches. Whether you’re closing deals, building relationships, or just starting out in sales, we break down the techniques, mindset, and hustle you need to turn every opportunity into success. Tune in, sharpen your skills, and start selling for success—one episode at a time.
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Salescraft Training: Selling for success
The secrets to finding and converting new leads
Welcome to Selling for Success — your go-to sales podcast for strategies, tips, and inspiration to help you close more deals, generate leads, and grow your business.
In this episode, we’ll cover:
• Know your ideal customer avatar and their specific pain points
• Position yourself where prospects "hang out" - networking groups, social platforms, events
• Focus on quality leads rather than trying to qualify everyone 'in'
And more!
Whether you’re in B2B sales, B2C sales, or just starting your sales career, this podcast gives you the tools, tactics, and mindset you need to succeed.
👉 Subscribe for weekly episodes packed with sales tips, sales training, and sales motivation to help you increase revenue and level up your selling skills.
Welcome to the podcast!
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Graham Elliott
You can contact me at graham@salescraft.training
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Selling for Success, and what we're going to do in this episode is look at how you find and convert new leads. So a lot of salespeople don't struggle so much with closing, but actually finding the right people to talk to in the first place. So, whatever you're having difficulty with, if this is one of those areas, then that's what we're going to do in this podcast. So what I'm going to give you by the end of this podcast are a series of practical steps you can take to make sure that you are maximizing your opportunities to both find people and convert them when you spend time with them. So, without further ado, what I'm going to do is dive straight into it. So the very first thing that we need to look at, or you need to be aware of, is knowing who your avatar is. Now, this may or you may know this as something else it might be. Your ideal customer profile is, essentially who is the person that you are selling to, who is the person that you are trying to help? Now, again, remember what we do in sales. We're about helping people and therefore we need to be very, very clear on what their pain point is. And I also forgot to introduce myself. So I'm Graham Elliott, but anyway. So you need to know what the pain point is. And if you're not clear on that, think about the people you've had the most success with, the people who've perhaps bought the most from you. What is the problem you've solved for them? If you don't know that, then if you can have a conversation with them, ask them to tell you how things have improved for them, whether it's business or their personal life, or whatever it is, how things have improved for them since they started using your product or service. That's the very first thing, and this is absolutely vital. If you don't know who your ideal client is, or you think you sell to everybody, you've got it wrong, because nobody sells to everybody. Okay, right.
Speaker 1:Once you've done that, the most important thing then is to hang out. Where they hang out is the easiest way to describe it. So, basically, you want people to find you, and the way they're going to find you is to make sure that you are where they go. You're in the kind of places they go. So and I heard a great analogy of this by somebody I've got bought training from, and basically he talks about you setting up a stall and you're selling things to people who are on a river. I can't remember what it was let's say it's life jackets but what you've done you've set your stall up two, three hundred meters away from the river and they just go past you. Where you need to be is right on the edge of the river, maybe where there's a little place where they'll jump off and have a coffee or whatever it might be. Hopefully, this illustration is giving you some idea of where you need to be. So where are these places? Now, again, I don't know what it is you sell, but it might be somewhere like LinkedIn, or it could be a social platform. Maybe your clients are more active on Instagram, pinterest, facebook, blue Sky, any of these different platforms. So, again, if you don't know, you really do need to find out.
Speaker 1:Another one is networking. So if you are working more in a geographical area so it might be you are very much focused on your community. Who are the people within that community who you would sell to? Who are the people who want to buy what it is you offer and where do they hang out? Where do they find out about businesses like yours? How do they connect with businesses like yours so often.
Speaker 1:There are networking groups. I've used a few, certainly when I was in Sydney. There are some international ones, like BNI, business Networking International. This may or may not be appropriate for what you do, but do have a look around at the different networking groups. They might also be extremely local. So, for example, where I was in Sydney, there was a Northern Beaches networking group and it was for small businesses networking all sorts of things Gyms, massage, HR, cleaning services, all sorts of things. Pretty much anything you can imagine was there.
Speaker 1:The other thing to look at is events. So this might be. These may not be things that happen every week, for example, networking groups generally will meet every week or definitely monthly. But are there events you can go to? Are there exhibitions? Maybe there are industry groups in the industry you belong to. They may not be exactly local to where you are, but hopefully they sit within your region and that makes them useful to you. So it's really good to understand that Webinar's going on, or can you offer a webinar? And this is something I've done in the past, certainly when I was trying to get a business established in a certain industry. I would look at where the key players were located and just set up free webinars there and just set out invitations, also advertise just to get people along.
Speaker 1:Another thing are tools and databases. So LinkedIn, for example, have Sales Navigator. There's also Apollo and Crunchbase. I'm not really familiar with them, to be honest. I was just doing a little bit of research before jumping on and recording this podcast. But have a look. What's the industry you're in? What are the tools? What are the databases that are relevant to you? What are the databases that are relevant to you?
Speaker 1:The really important thing here is to be very focused on quality over than quantity. Now, I do believe in doing a bit of quantity, because you might find people in the quantity who are not prime clients, but they can be useful, they'll buy from time to time. But where your primary focus has to be is on the quality people, the people who fit your ideal customer profile. Okay, so that's making initial contact in terms of getting yourself out there, getting known, getting people to be aware of you. Obviously, there are things like advertising you can do in groups, again on social media platforms. Youtube is one that I've used quite a lot, and this may be where you found this podcast. So have a think about where people are. Now, once you've got leads because I want to talk about how you convert them it's really important that you get the initial contact strategy correct.
Speaker 1:So if you are doing face-to-face selling, it's really important that you use your own personality. If you are using templates sales templates now, they can be useful to give you a general outline, but what people want to get is you. People buy from people in that situation. So you need to come across authentically. If you are just reading a script, that comes across straight away, and if you don't believe me, just try it. Get someone to sell to you by reading off script and find someone who can sell to you by just being themselves, and the difference is is palpable. It's very easy, and another example of that is if you get a friend to sell a movie to you maybe something they've seen recently that they really like, think that you'll enjoy. How do they present that to you? Because part of that let's call it a sales process is you pick up on their enthusiasm. You believe that they are genuinely interested in giving you something that you will get enjoyment from, you'll get value from. These are the kind of things you need to be putting across when you're talking to people and you don't do that with a template.
Speaker 1:The other really important thing and I've seen people do this wrong so many times is they will tend to talk about themselves and that's not what you want to be doing. You want to be talking about their problem so you can talk, and a way to do this, and it's good to have a 30-second pitch, something like that, just so you can fall back on. But you want to talk about the kind of problems you solve. So in the case of this podcast, I've already introduced it as a podcast that is there to help people, particularly if you're struggling with finding good leads and then working with them. Probably didn't say exactly that, but I hope you get the idea. So what you're doing is you're talking about their problem and in the sales course so consultative selling I talk about red and green lights in the conversation and very simply as a broad based indicator for that.
Speaker 1:So these are traffic lights. You'll get a green light when you're talking about them. People will be interested, they'll be listening. As soon as you start talking about yourself, you'll get a red light and people will turn off. And again, think about your own experience with salespeople, your own experience networking. If you have tried networking and all you do is talk about yourself, do you see people starting to switch off? They start to look around, their mind's clearly wandering. They're not listening to you, whereas if you talk about their problem specifically or that area, they will start asking you questions. They'll engage with you. So this is really important. Now.
Speaker 1:The next thing is to build trust. So you need to be providing value before asking for a sale, and this could be in different ways. It could be a freebie that you give away, it could be a case study that's relevant whatever it is, and I talk about how this will work psychologically in the sales course. I'm not going to do that here, but it is. But and I talk about how this will work psychologically in the sales course I'm not going to do that here, um, but it is really important that you build trust. You want people to feel that not only do you understand their problem, but that you are genuinely interested in solving it for them. Do you want people to feel that they want to feel that you are generally wanting to help them to be successful in whatever it is they're doing? So social proof is another good one testimonials, results, any stories relating to that In terms of testimonials with the sales process.
Speaker 1:I tend to talk about results because they're very measurable, they're very specific and hopefully that's enough to get people to want to know a little bit more. What you're doing is you're taking them down the funnel, and what we're talking about here with finding new leads is putting leads into the very top of the sales funnel and then working them through. But what you want to be doing, you want leads going into the funnel that are worth following up, and one of the things I talk about with qualification is it's just as important to qualify people out as it is to qualify people in, and this is another trap that a lot of salespeople fall into. They try and qualify everybody in, so they've got lots and lots of people in the sales funnel, but the truth is that most of them and it could be as much as 90, 95% are complete time wasters from the perspective of where you want to spend your time.
Speaker 1:And then, if you do get objections when you are having these initial conversations with people, first of all, you really want to listen actively. You want to be focused on what they're saying, one of the things a lot of people will do is a prospect, will say something about a problem that they have, and we've probably all done it. I've certainly done it. I think, ah, I know what that is, I've got this, this and this. They can solve that. Oh yeah, and with this first option, I can add this in, and then that's absolutely going to nail it. So while we're doing that in our heads, we just missed a whole lot of conversation that could actually be a lot more important than the initial comment. So it is really important that you listen to what's being said.
Speaker 1:By all means, make notes. I used to love writing things down. I would even say that when I'm talking to someone, and if it's at a networking event, something like that, make sure you've got something that you can quickly make notes on, whether that's on paper or on your phone or something else and just say look, do you mind if I just make some notes here, because I really want to make sure I've got everything. I really understand exactly what your problem is and, if it okay with you, I'll make some notes. So to do that, ask clarifying questions, get really, really clear on what the problem is, and the way you get clear is you get very, very specific. You want to really we call this chunking down in coaching circles but you get as specific as you can. So what's an example of that?
Speaker 1:Well, if someone's looking to buy a car um, what's a good example? What sort of drive do they need? Do they need rear wheel drive, front wheel drive, all wheel drive, four wheel drive? And how do you know that? You ask about how they're going to use the car, what sort of environment, what sort of load, how many people, all these kind of questions. But you go from I would like a car down to. I would need a car that will do four seats, have a reasonable luggage capacity, probably four wheel drive, because I'm using off-road a lot and I need to get out to deliver goods to my clients and a lot of them are on unmade roads. I might have to give people lists from time to time.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of making this up as I talk, but this is where you understand their situation. You need to understand the context that they are working in and that will, and then chunk down to every specific area of that context. Chunk down when you've got down to that kind of drive they need. Ok, how many people do you need to carry. So this is the kind of process, this is the conversation, and also, when you're handling objections, you need to be really clear about their goals. This will come in the early conversation, and if they object to something, usually it's because they have misunderstood. So take that objection and reframe it around their goals, so in other words, reword it so that it talks specifically to one of their goals. So it could be a return on investment of 20% in six months, let's say. So you would simply reframe the objection to round under, if I've understood that correctly, by adding this option into the solution that is going to help you to achieve that goal of 20 return on investment in six months. I hope you're getting the idea on this.
Speaker 1:Again, this is covered a lot more detail in the course, so so how do you move from a lead to a customer? Well, it's really important that you go through the steps I've described. Now you might have a framework you're familiar with. There are lots of them out there. Bant is one B-A-N-T, which stands for Budget, authority, need and Timeline, and I kind of like that one. Actually, it's not one I've used particularly myself, but it does some of the key things.
Speaker 1:So do they have the budget to move ahead? You've really got to understand that. And if not, when Are they the authority? Can they make the buying decision, or is that somebody else? And if so, you need to know who that is, or who they are, and make sure you're speaking to them. You don't want to. What you don't want to happen is to talk to somebody who's not the authority, do the sale on them and then leave them to make the sale to the people, personal people who are the authority, because they will not sell it in the way you do Now. They might be enthusiastic and it's really good to maybe have them with you when you're talking to the actual authority, but you need to be doing the selling, not somebody else. So that's budget. Authority need is another one.
Speaker 1:So again, again, get really clear on what the need is. What are they trying to achieve? What's their pain point? What can you solve? And then timeline. So when do they need to buy? Can you meet their timeline? Does their timeline work for you or are they looking a little way out? So what do you do to nurture that prospect and keep them alive? Or maybe you can encourage them to bring their purchase forward, buy a special offer or let them know that a price rise is likely to happen but make sure it's a real one, all these kinds of things and have a call to action. Get them to agree to something. It could be a further meeting, it could be a demonstration, it could be a trial, it could be an audit where you sit down and go through where they're at I'm thinking of a gym, actually at this point, so it could be doing a food diary, something like that and then make sure you follow up.
Speaker 1:So you need to be persistent. That's really important in sales that you keep coming back. You need to mix it up with emails, calls, personal messaging, direct messaging, whatever it might be. Do it with their agreement, though, but always leave the door open for you to come back. So if you have achieved something for example, a demonstration and you're not able to close them at that point there might be some objections. Create a reason to come back in a week or a month whatever hopefully not a month actually, if you got that far but have a real reason to come back to them. But always make sure you have a reason to come back to them and always get back to them when you say you will, even if you are waiting on information it hasn't come through yet. Always do it and the point is really to keep momentum, it's to keep the deal warm. You're continuing to move them down the funnel and you're adding value at every stage, or you're building that value proposal for them. Every contact you have at every stage you're adding on to that value stack that you're building up so that every time they, in theory and I hopefully are feeling more convinced that this is the way to go.
Speaker 1:So that's pretty much it In terms of just what we've covered. It's about understanding who your ideal client is. It's understanding what their problems are, looking at where they hang out. When you meet with people, make it about them, not about you, and start working them down the funnel to create reasons call to actions, but reasons for you to have a further contact with them each time, but reasons for you to have a further contact with them each time, and make sure you are identifying the really specific aspects of their need and where they are in the process.
Speaker 1:Okay, so my challenge for you this week is to just test out one new lead source, try one new outreach method, even a small change. Just doing something you haven't done before could lead to really big opportunities. So, of the things I've suggested, pick one of them and give it a go, see what difference it makes, but make sure you do your research, make sure that where you're spending time is relevant to the business you have. So I hope you found this useful. If you have, please remember to like, subscribe, share all those other things, and you can always contact me directly on my email. Please go to the website. All the contact details are there, or you can leave a comment on this podcast. That's it for me. I'll speak to you next time. Bye for now.