00:00 Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the B2B Rebellion from Leadbeater. Really happy to have on a gentleman today by the name of Naraj Kapoor. Naraj runs his own organization, a sales consultancy business called Everybody Works in Sales. Myself and Naraj came across each other actually on LinkedIn there recently. I really like the message that he's been pushing out, especially around

00:28 mental health and sales and how people should be focused on creating engagement within their deals that they're having rather than just focused on actually closing pipeline. Naraj is also a bestselling author. He's got a book by the same name as the business, Everybody Works in Sales. And one of the best things I like about Naraj is that he's actually done it himself. So you know, you come across a lot of sales trainers that try to sell you the world and tell you how it should be done, although they've never done it themselves.

00:57 So if you look at Narazh's LinkedIn profile, you'll see that he's got an extensive experience in sales, having worked with a number of blue chip clients already in his current business, but also in the past. So his experience as sales director, sales manager, sales rep, you'll see that the list is long. So the guy knows what he's talking about when it comes to sales. So again, I can't reiterate enough, it annoys me nothing more.

01:21 than seeing sales consultants or sales people that claim to be sales leaders that have no experience in sales. So, Niraj, I think I've done you some justice there, but I'll allow you to introduce yourself quickly and also everybody works in sales. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. That was a fantastic intro. All I would add to that was, you know, I started off at the very bottom 25 years ago and I worked my way up. And, you know, along the way, I made a lot of silly mistakes.

01:48 I did a lot of really good things as well and today I'm going to share some of the mistakes I made, some of the good things I've made that you can use in this current climate to help you generate more revenue and do right by your clients. Perfect, perfect. And just then, like we've been talking just prior to this around what we'd speak about today and somewhere where you see a lot of value at the moment is in engagement and opening deals.

02:11 As I said just a couple of minutes ago, everyone's got the chase. We need to close more business. Our H2 is going to be terrible. Therefore, we need to start chasing more prospects down and get them to close on H2, which in my opinion is not going to work. Like the more pressure you put on a prospect to close, the less likely you are to close. So what are your tips or your advice or what are you seeing right now that could be helpful to salespeople out there? Well, it's quite interesting. Up until March this year, until Covid-19 and lockdown,

02:40 You know, so many sales directors and sales managers of large companies approach me saying, look, we've got to close more deals. Can you help us? Not a lot of those companies are in furlough. It's small businesses and it's entrepreneurs and it's sales executives who aren't getting trained properly by the sales manager who were coming to me and saying exactly the same, how do we close more deals? Everybody's asking the same question. Prospecting and how to close more deals are the two most common elements I deal with every single day. And so what I often do is I'll jump onto their calls with them.

03:11 and I'll be a consultant or a colleague, just so I can listen in. Or if they're a bigger company, they'll already have pre-recorded software so I can listen to the phone calls and hear what they're saying. And most people are just rushing through the process. It's a very common problem in sales, Andy. They rush through the process, maybe ask one question and then start trying to sell the product. And they'll try alternative closes, try closes, and then they get nervous when it comes to negotiation. That's not how you do sales. It's not how you do business.

03:40 You have to follow the sales process. So stop closing deals and start opening deals and engaging with clients. That's the first thing I would say to anybody because it's so, so important. Absolutely. So, I mean, that makes perfect sense, but what would you say to, what advice would you give to those sales people, like at the front line, let's call them, that are getting the pressure from above from sales leadership saying you need to start closing, otherwise you're going to be furloughed or otherwise there's going to be problems. Like,

04:08 It's a tough market out there at the moment. People are under a lot of pressure. How do you shift mindset? How do you manage up from the ground? Or how do you instill that within the sales leadership to make them know, hey, this is something, this is more of a long-term strategy rather than just some quick wins we can maybe get over the line. If you go to your boss and you say, look, this isn't how we should be doing things, you're gonna sadly find yourself.

04:35 losing out on a lot of opportunities in the company. That is how corporate life works. I don't think it should work that way. I think bosses should be more open to feedback from staff. And I believe that all bosses shouldn't believe this is the one way how we should do things. Because I see a lot of egos coming into play. And I've been in positions myself, I've said to my boss, why are we making 60 phone calls a day? This is ridiculous. It's meaningless. It's just, the clients are better than this.

05:02 And I've actually worked in companies where I've not made 60 phone calls a day, but I made 20 factors, 30 really good quality. You know, I've actually made proper conversations with clients and set up meetings. But if you go to a boss saying, I'm going to change things, bosses don't like that. They don't appreciate it. And sadly it'll give you a hard time in most cases. So what you got to do is lead by example. So what I recommend is if you've got to make the 60 phone calls a day, believe it or not, if your boss sees you booking more meetings,

05:32 If the bosses see you having a bigger pipeline and they eventually see you generating more revenue, they don't really care if you make 60 phone calls, 50 phone calls, they really don't care. All they really care about is you hitting your target because that's what protects their job. And ultimately, sadly, most sales directors just care about their job, their bonuses, there's ego at play, there's management opportunities for them in the future, and they know they hit their targets, they're gonna get that.

06:01 So really you have to lead by example, arguing with management and challenging them, sadly, in most cases, is not gonna work. Absolutely, I mean, look, I think that just goes across the board rather you're in sales or any other role. Put the head down, get the job done. Don't make too big of a fuss out of it and try to reach your numbers. I think that's the message there, but nothing's gonna be done without hard work really.

06:27 Like one of the things that I've come across recently, and I spoke about this, we did another episode yesterday of this same show. And I was speaking with a guy called Aurelian Matier who runs a company called Operatics. And basically they create demand for companies, for software companies. Right. And one of the things that he's found good about this particular time is that he's been having more time to actually upscale sales reps. And we got into a conversation about how

06:55 bad some sales reps actually are. And I've noticed it recently myself in that the outreach people are getting desperate. So actually in the past couple of weeks, I've gotten a lot of outreach and out of a lot of outreach, probably one or two have been somewhat decent, but the vast majority I'm just like, where did you learn this? This is just terrible. How do people upskill themselves? Like where would you, how would you advise people to upskill?

07:24 Okay, I would say to every single sales person out there, whether you're a sales executive, and especially if you've worked 20 years in the business and think you don't know everything, I mean a lot of those people as well, they won awards five years ago and still think they're good, or they hit target 10 years ago and still talk about it. Okay, look, you gotta treat sales like any profession, okay? So my mother is a physiotherapist, she spent years training. My brother is a tennis coach, he spent years training and still goes to tennis matches and still trains all the time.

07:52 My father is a doctor and even though he spent seven years being a doctor, even in his 60s, he was still going to conferences twice a year. He was still reading books at the weekends. He was still learning. The sales professionals who really succeed in life, they're not the ones who get lucky. They're not the ones with a gift of the gab. They're the ones who every day are reading sales books, who are watching sales videos, who are listening to sales podcasts. That is how you get better. I would also recommend you find successful people.

08:22 in your business or on LinkedIn and reach out to them and ask for advice and learn from them. You know, take them out for lunches or coffees when you get to know them. Ask why did every company, when I finally got a coach in 2011, he said, look, find the most successful people in this business and buy them lunch or dinner. And I did. And I had breakfasts and lunches. They didn't really have time for dinners because they had families. I would ask them questions. How are you doing this? How did you hit your target? And what did you do? And in most cases,

08:51 They were very generous with their time. And they were all quite similar. Actually, I was quite surprised, Andy. The most successful people were humble. They weren't braggers. They were massive learners. And all they wanted to do was help the customer. They weren't focused on closing deals. They were focused on engaging with the customer, asking great questions, giving value, and then they close the deal. And that's really the way it should be.

09:20 I mean, that's really good advice. Find a mentor of sorts or a coach. Like again, I also have mentors and also people that I see as a coach and myself as well. Like you can't know everything. It's not possible. I think even the best business leaders have coaches. They have people that they lean on to ask questions. They need advice. They need to throw ideas off of, what do you think about this? What would you do if I was in this situation, et cetera, et cetera? It's sort of a role play type of thing, but it also helps you.

09:50 you know, get things off your chest, but also help structure things a little bit in your head. And I find it helpful myself as well. So I fully relate to what you, what you mean there. There was a couple of things you mentioned there around process and just to focus on process from the company side. So we've spoken about now like what people can do from their individual side, right? So as an individual, so as an individual, I can go find a mentor, for example, I can read books, I can try my best to upscale based on different areas of interest. Like from a company's perspective, how can they

10:19 set a process in place that's facilitating sales to be successful? Well, in an ideal world, sales managers and sales directors should be training their staff and help them get better. And in a 2011, I got a coach, my coach said to me, it's really important you have one-to-ones every Monday with your team. And if you do that, you'll see what the problems are, you'll see where the skills gaps are, and you've got to help them.

10:47 And then through finding who the most successful salesperson was in the company, she advised me, look, you've got to have call coaching sessions once a week with your team as well. So I did those two really simple things. Now bear in mind, 2011, I've been working in sales 15 years, I had never been a manager before. Because as far as I was concerned, managers spent all their time doing boring paperwork and they were in meetings all day. They had nice salaries, but apart from that, it was boring. All I wanted to do was sell. But when I became a manager, I had one-to-ones every Monday with my team. I took up my entire morning.

11:16 45 minutes to one hour each. And on Wednesdays we had call coaching sessions. I was the only manager that did this. And two things happened. First of all, I became manager of the year after 12 months. But second of all, whenever redundancies took place and restructuring takes place, which happens a lot in big companies, I kept my job and the more better known and experienced managers lost their jobs because they couldn't get their staff to sell. So you've got to spend time one to ones every Monday.

11:46 with your staff the first five minutes talking about them, their weekends, their families, whatever it is they're doing, and then asking what challenges they're having. If you talk about KPIs, especially young people, Andy, they don't care. No young person goes to work thinking, what about KPIs? They don't care. What young people care about is their holidays, their music festivals, getting pissed at the weekend, going on nice holidays and buying nice clothes. That's not meant to be a cliche generalization, but it's more of a fact.

12:14 But if you talk about, look, if you can make X number of meetings and get X number of deals, you're going to have the commission to go on a really nice holiday. If you bring an X number of revenue or you learn X amount, that's going to help you go away to gigs more often. You relate their personal goals to the company's goals. That's how you coach people. And coaching is such an important part, but it has to be consistent. It has to be every week. And you will always go further coaching a team.

12:43 then you will do it yourself and say to your team, just follow me, do what I do. That's not management, it's not leadership and that's what bosses should be doing. Now in some companies, bosses don't do that but either way, you work in sales, you've got to be reading books. I mean this bookshelf, I've been through these books at least twice. These are books I've studied, read, underlined, made notes on. You've got to be studying. If you go to ever there's a recommended reading list.

13:11 at the bottom of the homepage, just look at those books, buy those books, you know, and just study them. And you'll be amazed after a few months, you will learn so much more and you'll do so much more in your job, I promise you that. Like what would your advice be to, first of all to SDRs, let's say, that want to get to the next level, because typically my experience with SDRs, nobody wants to be an SDR.

13:34 They all want to be an account executive. You know, it's the one role where nobody, where everybody's working, doesn't want to be doing that job, you know? First of all, what would be your advice to those guys? And then to leadership and how to manage them? Because I typically refer to them as the kindergarten of any organization. A kindergarten that has massive weight on their shoulders to get meetings into the calendars of their account executives, typically.

14:00 So without them, actually, you're not getting meetings booked. Without meetings getting booked, you're not getting opportunities into the pipeline. Without opportunities in the pipeline, you're not getting around, et cetera, et cetera. So they're actually the lifeblood of an organization, but not really taking that seriously. And they're very young and they don't want to be in that job. How do you, first of all, how do you advise people in that job to stick at it? Keep the head down. You will get to the next level. You just need to be patient because as you said, they don't give a shit about KPIs.

14:29 They care about going out, getting pissed at the weekends, they care about going to music festivals, things like that, because they're young. Probably late teens, early twenties. What advice do you give to them to keep the head down and keep pushing forward? No, great question. By the way, there's nothing wrong with that. That's what young people do. When I was that age, I was different. I became a father in my early twenties. I got married in my early... I did everything the wrong way around in my life, I think in my personal life. But, you know, so I had different responsibilities.

14:58 But I totally get young people, I get why they do that. And I don't hold out against them, by the way. Good for you, that's how you spend your weekends. But look, I don't know anybody who's really gotten to sales thinking this is something I've dreamed of my whole life. Most SDRs get into sales as a kind of something they're doing along the way to find their dream. It's not their dream to work in sales. It's not a dream for most people to work in sales. And they're looking at it as a quick fix to get what they want in the real world.

15:26 and it doesn't quite work like that. And my advice to any SDR is look at sales as a profession. Don't try to say, I'll be in this job for six months to two years, get my commission and leave. You won't succeed that way. You've got to look at it as a profession. So first of all, you've got to study it by reading books, listen to audibles. If you're young, a lot of young people don't read books, but at least listen to podcasts. They're free, there's no excuse. There's so many great podcasts out there. Watch YouTube videos. Everybody works in sales on YouTube.

15:55 There's 50 videos, three minute each. Watch Victor Antonio's videos. There's so many amazing podcasts on YouTube as videos. It's all free. So there's no excuse not to be learning. And don't tell me you're too busy to learn because that's just an excuse. Everybody has half an hour a day. They can spend less liking posts on Facebook and actually learning, okay? And second of all, it's very important to understand sales is a multi-platform business. So a lot of SDRs are obsessed with sending out emails.

16:23 And when they get on the phone, they're very nervous. And guess what? Sales is not sending out emails. Sales is picking up the phone. Sales is learning how to leverage LinkedIn effectively. Sales is writing fantastic content on LinkedIn. Sales is going to networking events or nowadays virtual networking events. This is what sales is about. Sales is actually about seeing your client's content on LinkedIn.

16:53 liking it, commenting on it, sharing it, and then saying to the client, just to let you know I've liked, shared, and commented on your content, I thought it was brilliant. That is something I can guarantee you most SDRs aren't doing. They're clicking like, which by the way is pretty meaningless, but you've got to comment, you've got to share. There's so many things. If you imagine the circle, it's emails, it's phones, it's marketing from your marketing team, it's LinkedIn. There's so many things you should be doing.

17:22 and you have to learn all these skills as an SDR. Now, if you're a manager managing a young team, saying to them, get on the phone doesn't work because they hit the phone, they don't use the phone, they don't call their friends like my generation does, they text their friends or WhatsApp their friends. And if you say to them, get on the phone, it's not gonna work. And if you say to them, get on the phone and you're fired, it's not gonna work. I've worked in these offices, I've trained these people.

17:49 And so what I do is I have a training session for half an hour with SDRs. And I'm like, okay, tell me why you hit the phone. And they all tell me we don't want to bother people. We don't want to disturb. I'm just a dip chart whiteboard training session. That's it. And they tell me all the things they hear about the phone because you have to acknowledge the fear. You can't ignore it. And after they've done that, Andy, then I say, okay, why is the phone important? And they give me a list. And they struggle with the second list, but they give me a list. And I say, okay,

18:18 So you don't want picking up the phone. You don't want to bother people. And let's look at the reason why the phone's important. It saves you time. People buy people. You can judge tone quicker. You can get deals faster. Now looking at these two, what do you think is better for you? And in most cases, they will go picking up the phone. I said, great, okay. So let's have a few call sessions here. So you then train them on calling people.

18:45 But then after that, you have to have role plays with them in a safe environment. So I'll be the front of the stage, I'll be the client, and each rep comes up individually and has to sell to me in front of their peers. But you have to create a safe environment where they can make mistakes and feel comfortable making mistakes. And they all do it. And the first few are kind of awkward, and after a while it's quite fun. But afterwards, they're all pumped up and they're exhilarated, okay? And then once they do that, you've got to make sure they're kept accountable.

19:14 Because 50% of what you learn in sales training, you forget the next day. 95% you forget the week. So I work with management to make sure that every week, the boss is sitting down with the staff saying, okay, what did you learn? What are you making improvements on? What are you getting better at? The management, believe it or not, are just as responsible as the SDRs in keeping them accountable. Because that accountability, which is gonna make them go further. Sorry, that was a long explanation, but I thought it was really, really important.

19:43 to explain the process I have of getting success for people. So I have those moments where, you know, she only communicates to me by WhatsApp. She never picks up the phone ever and calls me, drives me mad, but that's okay. That's their generation. And if I say to her, I will only speak to you by phone, I tried that once, she never called me. So you have to understand, you have to understand the generation of people you're coaching, that is so, so important. Understand their personalities.

20:12 understand the best way to motivate people as well. Some people like quiet, gentle praise, whereas other people like to be praised in front of all their colleagues. Yeah, you have to understand people. But I don't see managers spending much time with their staff. And that's why they hire me, because most of them are too busy to spend time with their staff and they want to know what they're doing wrong. And I can look at things very objectively and say, okay, here's what the problems are, here's how we're gonna fix them. Perfect, perfect. I mean, look.

20:40 We're coming to the end of things now, but I just want to ask you, is there any closing words of advice that you'd like to offer salespeople at the moment? I'm a big fan as a sales trainer of not just teaching, but saying, okay, here are your takeaways. So I think it's really important people leave this session with takeaways in place. So please stop focusing on trial closing, alternative closing. Try to focus on opening deals, following sales process, asking great questions.

21:10 Helping your clients that's really vital. The second thing is every day learn for at least half an hour Whether it's through a podcast audible YouTube video Book reading is still pretty or Kindle reading but learn for half an hour a day at least I've been in sales 25 years I spend one hour a day learning and I have a sales coach who works with me once a month to keep me accountable After 25 years, I'm doing this

21:36 That's why I've got to where I am. That's why I have a career in sales. And that's so important. The more you learn, the more you earn. One thing you brought up, which I think we should mention, which is very important as a marketeer, is knowing your numbers. Most salespeople don't know their numbers. When I ask salespeople in training sessions, what's your target and how far are you to target? They get their laptops up, they can't tell me. Every great salesperson knows exactly what they have to hit, what they have to do, how many calls they have to make.

22:05 So as a salesperson, it's so important to know your numbers. You can't hit your targets otherwise. You should not have to look up your computer and say, I wonder where I am. No, know where you are every single day. That's how you know where you have to get to. And in an ideal world, your boss should be training you, but if not, train yourself, okay? There's so many free resources out there. There's no excuse to be bad at sales in 2020. Absolutely not.

22:35 I fully agree. And on that last bit there that you mentioned about knowing your number, that also goes back to the accountability piece. And sometimes you learn it. So I learned that. So as I mentioned before, I'm a marketer driven by numbers, but I learned knowing my number by getting quizzed by a CEO of a company I worked with in the past. The company was so the entire leadership team were Israeli, very brash, very in your face. And I go for a coffee.

23:02 And the CEO, a great guy by the way, a guy by the name of Ohad Hecht would come to me and say, okay, Andy, how many demo requests have we got today? How many people have visited the website in the past week? How many leads have we got in the past two hours? How many MQLs? And I'd be standing there the first couple of times, and I didn't want to have that situation again. So I wanted to be able to say to him, okay, we've gotten 12 in the past hour, this is how many we've gotten in the past week, this is how many MQLs we're on, this is where we are against Target, this is how many opportunities have been touched by a marketing source. And you know,

23:32 for me, that was like, because I also come from a sales background, I was like, okay, I'm selling to him now. And this is also going to help me progress my career at some point by me being able to know that stuff and showing him that I'm able to know it. So it was a certain accountability factor there to me as well. So, um, no, I've just been really, really great advice, mate. I much appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Where can people find you? That's quite interesting. I always say to people, the best way to contact me is ever And no matter how many times I say that,

24:02 people go to LinkedIn and buy me and connect with me there. Just buy me on LinkedIn. It's Neeraj, it's N-I-R-A-J, surname is K-A-P-U-R and the name of the book, everybody works in sales, was my best selling book two years ago. And my new book is the easy guide to sales for business owners. Perfect. Okay Neeraj, thank you so much yet again and it's been a real pleasure. I really appreciate having you. Great to finally speak to you.