In this episode of #NutsAboutSales, we speak to Ben Bronsther, Sales Director at Bonjour.io.
Ben covers some key topics about the sales industry. Watch this interview to hear:
- His most actionable sales tip you can start doing right now
- What he loves about his job
- And why he was thrilled to hear a customer refer to their talks with him as therapy.
Watch it now or read the transcripts below:
What’s your name and where do you work?
My name is Ben and I work at Bonjour.
What’s the funniest thing a client told you?
A client once told me that she viewed her sales conversations with me as therapy sessions.
Which, on some level, I feel like is an example of practicing the craft of sales well, which is all about asking good questions and doing discovery, which is similar to therapy.
What’s your biggest challenge when demoing?
I tend to want to show the entire product because I find it genuinely exciting.
But I think we all know as salespeople that it’s not the right approach. Instead, you should be doing discovery and tying a very specific demo to it.
What phase of the sales process do you hate the most?
RFPs and responding to RFPs is far from my favorite part of a sales process.
What do you love the most about sales?
The conversations.
A lot of people are working on a lot of cool things and in a sales role you get to be exposed to that and you get to be involved in that and I love it.
What’s your best sales tip?
The one thing that salespeople can start doing today to help them close more business is: Always book the next meeting or always book the next conversation.
With a disclaimer or caveat where don’t do that if it’s a poor fit.
But otherwise, you’re going to be left spending a lot of time chasing people for updates and not knowing what’s going on. Even if you book the next meeting and it doesn’t happen, usually that’s a good opportunity or the right moment for a prospect to provide you with an update.
What’s the biggest mistake to avoid in sales?
Some people refer to it as “Happy Ears.”
If you’re pursuing a deal and you get positive feedback from maybe one stakeholder out of an entire buying group, don’t immediately assume you’re going to win the deal. Between hearing yes for the first time and actually closing a deal, there’s a lot of things that can happen to cause it to go sideways.
Sell me a walnut!
Before I sell you a walnut, I would likely ask a question like: “What can you tell me about walnuts?” I might then ask somebody: “Why might you want a walnut?” And just build upon that and then eventually hit them with a question along the lines of “How much is a walnut worth to you?”
And then sell them the walnut.
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