Sam Penny (00:00)
Welcome back to Built to Sell, Built to Buy. I'm your host, Sam Penny. Today's guest sits right at the heart of something every business depends on, but very few actually understand properly. It's sales performance. Now, Ben Wright, he's the founder of Stronger Sales Teams, where he works with organizations to transform how sales teams think, how they behave, and ultimately perform. But this isn't about scripts or pipelines. It's about what actually drives behavior.
inside a sales team, why most teams underperform, and what separates a sales function that scales from one that silently caps the value of a business. Because if your sales team doesn't perform, your business doesn't scale. And if it doesn't scale, it's not built to sell. Ben, great to have you on.
Ben Wright (00:46)
Fantastic Sam, thanks for having me. It's funny you talk about scripts as you were introducing me my microphone had a little malfunction and I'm I'm nervously looking at it now to make sure it's working again, but anyone watching on video will see the first 10 seconds with my head darting around nervously. So yeah, you're right. The scripts is certainly not what it's all about. But you're very, very grateful to be here. Thank you.
Sam Penny (01:06)
Yeah, looking forward to this conversation, Ben. And interestingly, every single guest that I've had on the show for about the last nine months has either been US, Europe. Turns out not only are you here in Australia, you're in the same part, beautiful part of Australia, the Sunshine Coast. Absolutely random. And I didn't know that until about half an hour ago. So there you go. Now, Ben.
Ben Wright (01:26)
It's a funny world and
I would say you're only a kilometer or two from my mom as well, sorry to jump in on you there. So yeah, it's very small world.
Sam Penny (01:34)
It sure is. Now, Ben, before we really jump into the meat of what we're going to talk about today, before you had Stronger Sales teams, what was it that you're actually trying to figure out about sales?
Ben Wright (01:49)
It's a really good question. I'm, 43 now. I'm pretty open with my age. In fact, I'm open with most things around my life. And, and I'd say at 43, I've lived a lot of professional lives and I always struggled to understand, I think what drove me. I had a corporate career. I finished school. I went into university pretty, pretty early. Did well at university. Got through that. Mucked around as a lot of us do during university. Went straight into a corporate job.
had five or six businesses along the journey. Some of them, or one in particular was really successful. Got to the end of that at, oh gee, 37, I think I was. And I was, I remember we relocated from Melbourne up here to Noosa Heads. If you're not listening, or if you're listening and you're outside of Australia, Noosa Heads is just, it's a dreamboat place. People come from all over the country to spend time here, but very few international people know about it. And we're up here, and I remember I was in the kitchen with my wife and I was complaining. I didn't really have a lot to complain about, because life's...
pretty good for us in where we are and what business has been able to do for us. And she looked at me and said, Ben, go and get a job. And I just had this sinking feeling and I think this look of horror on my face that said, no, I'm not going, there's nothing wrong with working people. I think it is a great way to live life. But for me, it was something that I decided wasn't my path. And from that moment on, I said, all right, I've really got to get back into what I want to do. And I think during that journey, I realized that
sales was a lot more than selling stuff. ⁓ It was very much about, and for me the best experiences I'd had in selling was when you'd been able to build good relationships, some of them lasting, some of them not, but also learn how to create value for two sides of the equation and sometimes three or four or more than that side of the equation. So I think for me, when I realized that it was about creating value and good relationships and partnerships and
and just having engagement with people that actually changed that that dial for me around how I approach sales. And I'd say I've done some really rapid, you know, movements and changes in how I how I lead sales teams since that period.
Sam Penny (03:58)
So is this a point then where you pretty much realize that sales isn't necessarily a skills problem, it's a behavior problem?
Ben Wright (04:07)
Well, most skills can be taught. Some of them take a very long amount of time, but in my experience, particularly in scales, in sales, the skills required can be taught and generally built on over time. They're not skills you can necessarily pick up immediately and be first rate from day one, but the behaviors are the pieces that are harder to teach. Genuinely caring, listening, wanting to know,
want to know more about what your customers are doing. They're the hard pieces to teach. So for me, think skills and behaviors are both incredibly important in the sales landscape. But I think behaviors are the ones that are a lot more difficult to not only teach, but also move the dial on. I live a lot by the 1 % better every day on a theme, on a tagline. think behavior is a lot harder to change. So for me, what that means is that focusing on behaviors will
generally give you greater rewards if you can move the dial because they're so hard to do.
Sam Penny (05:07)
So looking back now, Ben, was there a moment where you realized that you noticed something in the way sales teams operate and the people within them that others just weren't seeing?
Ben Wright (05:21)
I think that probably crept up on me over time and I was able to look back at a point in time and say, I've been building towards this for a long period. So yeah, there was absolutely the moment where I said, hey, I now get what I've been building to. But over a period of probably five or six years, what I realized was that everything I'd learned as a kid, as a teenager, as an early adult around sales is a numbers game. And look to an extent, there's some...
some truth in that, but it's only it's one part of a number of bricks that build the house around sales and the around being a numbers game and ⁓ focusing on features and benefits and how you outperform the competition and, it's a hustle and all the things that I was taught as a child and early adult that there was more to it than just that. And I think the realisation was that it is absolutely about creating value features and benefits and not necessarily creating value, but it's
translating them into value. And it's at that moment, and it probably took me three years of teaching of just pure teaching sales strategy before I realized that I'm in sales, I was late 30s. By the time I got to that point, I was almost 20 years in sales by then. You you wish you had known it earlier, maybe, maybe not. But I think at that point in time, that's when I realized there's not enough people that are focused on creating value. And too many people focused on all the traditional approaches to selling.
Sam Penny (06:46)
It's interesting, I've owned my own companies for about 25 years and they've all been B2C companies and I've never been one to sell the features and benefits of something. I've always approached sales of trying to create an emotion in someone and sell that emotion and how they connect with that. Now, if I asked most business owners why their sales team aren't performing, if I ran a poll,
What do you reckon they would say is their number one thing why their sales team isn't performing?
Ben Wright (07:18)
You know what, there's only a few answers I ever get to this. ⁓ For the sales leader that's not involved in marketing, they'll often say bad leads. For the sales leader that has some engagement around sales and marketing, they'll say lazy sales team. I don't have the right people. And for the sales leader that runs their own business, occasionally...
here we don't have the right approach. But I think the number one that I normally get is poor performing sales people.
Sam Penny (07:53)
So then why is that necessarily wrong?
Ben Wright (07:56)
Well, performance is relative to a number of things. The process that you have around you, how you execute that as an individual, and then how hard you work. So I'll often talk around strategy, talent, and energy. This is a concept that's been around for a little while. In my early days, was strategy, talent, and effort was what I learned. But when you get those three combinations right,
that's when you can generally see a powerful sales team. But very rarely, if you don't have those three right, do I see that happening? it's not always about the individual, but the environment that they're in, the process that's been created, the strategy that the business has built for them. Yes, it's about how hard they work, but also what they focus on. ⁓ And then on top of that, it's around the training that they have and how they learn and grow because sales is absolutely a dynamic environment. Things change and how
teams are selling or engaging or building relationships now is different to what it was at the end of COVID and it's different to what it was at the start of COVID. So, you know, there are a number of factors going in there and it's absolutely not just about the individual, but it is a subset of it.
Sam Penny (09:09)
Then what do you think is probably the biggest lie that we tell ourselves about sales performance?
Ben Wright (09:14)
The one I probably, it's funny, when I get asked the biggest lie, I get asked the questions the biggest, the most important, what happens, you know, the most frequently. And I will often answer those questions to say it's really just one thing. There's rarely one silver bullet that changes the performance of a sales team, which is why you me pause at times when I answer these questions. But what comes up really, really frequently is that it's all just about numbers. Leads in, quotes out the door, know, follow-ups had, phone calls made.
I have seen so many hardworking underperforming salespeople across my time that I couldn't possibly count them. But I've also seen, and please, for everyone listening, take this the right way, I've seen a number of lazy salespeople who actually don't work that hard drive terrific numbers. And so for me, that attitude around numbers, numbers, numbers, how many leads you get out to, right, I think we've got to be really careful that we tell ourselves that you get your numbers up and you will succeed in sales.
Sam Penny (10:11)
So obviously the marketing team and the sales team need to be in a very symbiotic relationship. The quality of the leads coming through from marketing doesn't need to be a huge number, but there must be a lot of cases where you see where it's all about how many leads are we getting in and it's almost where the marketing team is driven and their KPIs, how many leads are we getting in as opposed to the quality of those leads. You must see that a lot.
Ben Wright (10:41)
It's not often enough that I see a sales and marketing team get together and say, right, what are the type of leads we want? What's ideal customer profile, our ICP look like? What are the type of people we want to be targeting? And what's driving their decision? Where do they live? How many people are in the family? What size is the business? What are their goals looking like? It is so rare that I see the teams get together and do that. And the same goes if you have an external marketing team or if you have an agency doing that work for you.
I just don't often enough see that. And then what comes as a result of that is that people fall back to defaults, which is what's the number of leads we're getting. And look, I should equally say I then don't see enough sales teams once the marketing leads have come in, actually work with the marketing team to say, right, this is how we're to qualify our leads. And both of those, if you get that right, ⁓ it has two impacts. One is it will generally decrease your marketing spend.
right, because you're getting better leads in and you're not burning. But the really important one is your close rates rise. And I remember working with a business, they had a 9 % close rate, they had heaps of leads coming in, big multinational business, billions and billions of dollar balance sheet, 9 % close rate. And we did a couple of things to tweak how they were qualifying their leads and how they were first entertaining those leads that came in the door. And then in six weeks, they jumped to 16%. So we took a plus 7 % on their close rate. Numbers were still low.
But we added 75 % to their revenue line in six weeks just by tweaking how we approach that qualifying and that focus, that early focus on whether or not the leads were the ones we want to deal with.
Sam Penny (12:23)
So give me an example then of two or three tweaks that you made to have such huge results and fast.
Ben Wright (12:31)
Yeah, well, the first one speed, speed to lead is absolutely critical. And a good lead isn't always about the type of person you're talking to, like the demographics around that person or the socioeconomic profile, whatever it may be. Often a good lead is around mirroring where they're at in their journey with your energy. So if a lead comes in the door, I'll use myself as an example.
just had some fencing contractors come around. got a big, need 50 meters of fence out the back of our house. And the fencing contractors that got the best from me were the ones that when the request went out, they were straight back on the phone with me. Cause I had a, I don't know if you'd call it a level of excitement about putting a fence in, but there was a level of engagement, right? That I wouldn't have had a day later. So by lining up speed to lead with the engagement levels or the excitement levels of your customer,
What you're doing is pairing yourself along that journey to have the relationship with the customer that kind of closely ⁓ replicated their feelings at the time. So the first fence contractor to me is going to get the job because they had my engagement. So speed to lead, really, really important. Number two is types of qualifying questions. And I think my favorite qualifying question that I see teams ask is, are you looking to do whatever you're to do? Are you looking to build your fence now?
Or are you working out if you want to do it? All right, and there's subtle differences. One is I'm ready to go. Okay, great. I'm ready to go. Let's go full steam ahead. We double down, we go as fast as we can to help them and everything that follows us and the right questions, creating value and so forth. Whereas those that are just looking and still trying to make their decision up, well, then your process changes to, what do we need to do to take you from I'm just looking to yes, I'm going to do this, and then I've got to pick my provider. And of course, we don't ask it like that. But that
but that's the mindset that different teams have from a really good qualifying question. And then you run them into different streams around how you run your sales process. So certainly those two approaches are ones that I use really commonly with teams to try and move the dial. And it's funny, right? Like I talk about 1 % better every day. I'm an atomic habits fan. I've got this guy sitting here. I've got hats and socks and everything we give to teams. And for me, they are 1 % better changes, but when you do them again,
Sam Penny (14:45)
He
Ben Wright (14:51)
And again, and again, every single day, they add up to really significant impacts on your team.
Sam Penny (14:57)
Yeah, they certainly do. And you focus very heavily on, and I mentioned it early on, ⁓ how you believe that behavior is greater than skill. You focus heavily on behavior over techniques, but what does that actually mean in reality?
Ben Wright (15:13)
So I use an example to explain this. I've worked with hundreds, I'd be close to thousands of salespeople now. And the number of salespeople that I've had come through my programs that are really experienced, but get significant gains from it has really surprised me. And what I mean by that is normally I'd expect the really significant gains to come from.
perhaps salespeople with ⁓ less knowledge about sales. may be earlier in their careers or they may be earlier in the sales landscape. But however, with so much goodness coming from people who are experienced, what it got me thinking was, well, why are these people who know so much and have had so much experience in sales getting such value out of this? And what it came down to for me was that, and I line behaviors and process up really closely, was that
These people, these salespeople, these talented, these energetic, these ⁓ driven salespeople know so much about selling, but not necessarily when to deploy what they know. So they have this huge head of knowledge of sales skills and relationship building skills, but they're deploying it at random. Like I'm ex-Melbourne, like Melbourne's weather, it's on and off and changes. must say, Sunshine Coast's weather's up and down.
a crazy amount as well, right? But they're not deploying these skills with any ⁓ repeat behaviors or any repeat process. So for me, the piece where behavior is just so important is to be able to sit down and say, here's the process that we're going to run through, right? And I might have a ⁓ short one page or a small one page on this, but I'm going to repeat this process. My behaviors around this process are going to be super consistent. So I'm going to do what works again and again and again.
And what leads into that behavioral piece is that, you know, we know with most behaviors, once you do them and you get some positive recognition in return, know, Tommy Cabot says quite a few thoughts around that, but when you have positive information come from that behavior, you do it again and again and again. ⁓ So by setting up that process and building that behavior, what we end up having is the right use of that terrific knowledge you have at the right time.
Sam Penny (17:29)
So Ben, if we look at some of the top sales performance you've worked with and your average ones, are there any hidden behaviors that really separate them?
Ben Wright (17:38)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm smiling because I'd love to say his name, but I've never actually asked him if I could say his name, but a gentleman that I worked with, he was a really big part of his business. I still speak to him today. He's Melbourne based. Never worked as hard as any of the other salespeople. ⁓ Still was honest, still toiled, still did the right thing, right? Was working his to 45 hour week, but was never one of those guys hitting 50 to 60 hours.
never had as many leads as anyone else, but had this terrific ability to bring in a closed sale. And what it came down to, and I'm just using him as an example, but this example I think exemplifies the best salespeople that I've worked with, is he had this ability to sit with a customer, make them feel comfortable. He was very good at when you walk into that first meeting, having that discussion that says, hey,
you know, let's build this relationship, what do you need? But he was able to sit with them, work out what was creating value for them, and then align up what we had against what that value creation was. So he was able to really build a great working relationship quickly with these customers, understand what they need, and then deliver that in a fashion that felt really personalised. And as a result, his sales results were just exceptional. He's still in it, he's a career salesperson and he's...
firing along at whatever he does.
Sam Penny (19:05)
So then why do you think, because a lot of these salespeople will be put through training courses by the company and obviously this is gonna be a bit of a plug for you, but why is it that most training programs, they fail to create any lasting change?
Ben Wright (19:14)
I'm stressed out.
Yeah, I think there's some structural reasons that that's not really the fault of any sales trainer. And I talk about impact and execution events, where most sales training is focused on impact. You go in, you do your training one day, even up to a week, and then tomorrow gets in the way of today. So everything you learn gets watered down because you go straight back onto the hamster wheel.
you're chasing leads, you might remember a few great quotes, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, 1 % better every day, two ears, one mouth, right? I could roll these out for hours. ⁓ But you don't have that environment, that structured environment that actually keeps you honest in implementation. Because for most people, having someone keep you honest to growth is a positive if it's done in the right way. So I think structurally, lot of sales programs have that against them, whereby in the corporate fashion they're in, they do their thing and they disappear.
So I think that the second area where I think sales programs really struggle is that they try and throw too much theory in rather than focusing on, so really upskilling to a high level rather than focusing on getting the basics right. Because if you get those basics right, I've certainly never had a team that nailed all the basics ever in the hundreds, if not thousands of salespeople I've now worked with, never had one that had all the basics right. So I think they'll probably skip over those.
and a little bit of that house of cards theory where you don't have a strong enough base to really drive forward.
Sam Penny (20:49)
Then what about identity? Does identity play a role in sales performance?
Ben Wright (20:57)
Identity is interesting because you can talk about business identities, team identities, individual identities, and definitely have sat with teams and built behaviors, right? What will we be known for? What will our team stand up for? What are some of the values that we work with? For me, I think where identity plays its role is in recognizing as a salesperson that in the most part, you will perform better.
if you have systems and structures set up for you and you're prepared to hold yourself accountable to those. I don't think identities as important in terms of how you, you know, of how you, you wave the flag in terms of sales. We all have very different personalities and I think they're super important in the sales environment, but having a strong sense of identity around being prepared to follow some structure and some process in what can be a hugely unstructured environment.
that plays a really significant role and I think more so than probably any of the other, you know, identity cards that I could pull out from personality profiles.
Sam Penny (22:05)
Then does fear show up anywhere in a sales team, even though no one may call it fear? Do you see that happening?
Ben Wright (22:13)
Yeah, that's that old saying which I hate. What is it? Commission breath. ⁓ Where fear plays a part. had a great example of this yesterday was one of my customers in commercial real estate. And he said to me, look, I've got a property for this customer that would be okay, but maybe not perfect. But it'll get the job done and it'll keep them moving. Versus we go back to market and we wait. Right. And in many instances like that, the salesperson will push for the deal.
A, because they don't want to lose the customer, but B, mean, they're fearful of losing their job. They're fearful of their livelihoods. They want to make sure that they're continuing to be able to do what they do. So yes, it absolutely can play a part. But I think where salespeople can overcome that fear and just throw that hat back on that says, hang on, what's the best result for the customer? The fear tends to get overridden by results.
Right? They just sometimes take a little bit longer than you want, but as you build that pipeline, the results flow through. And I think that the, because I, you whenever I'm asked these questions, I like to try and throw the positive angle too, but the best salespeople overcome that fear piece of getting sales by making sure they just say, right, what's the best thing for the customer? Let's follow that and I'll get the result and we'll back that in.
Sam Penny (23:32)
I want to shift gear a little bit, Ben, to enterprise value. Because obviously we're not in business to just turn up and take a paycheck. Ultimately, it's all about trying to increase the value of the business. How does a sales team ⁓ impact the value of a business?
Ben Wright (23:52)
Sales teams, they're often the lifeblood of businesses. They're not always, but certainly in my experience, more often than not, they are. And often in difficult times, right? They're the first area to come under the most pressure. But I think for me, when we're talking about enterprise value for sales teams, and I'll use an example of the solar industry. So I had a huge amount of experience in the solar industry, which is very classically typified by jobbing.
go to site, commercial, residential, win a job, do job, move on to the next. Very common across a lot of industries globally. And for me, where sales teams can step in here to create enterprise value is when they learn how to really drive that customer lifecycle value. So that's CLV, right, the letters you're often hear. To be not just about one job, but about
a series of relationships along a journey. So if it's solar, you do solar and then you know, it's storage down the track, it's maintenance of that solar, it's solar window film, which I keep talking about, it's coming, but I haven't seen it yet. Solar tiles, hot water heat pumps and a large number of activities and engagements that you can do with your customer to be with them across their renewable journey, if you like. So absolutely where sales can learn how to create reoccurring income.
or increased customer lifecycle value, I think that's really fundamental in growing enterprise value.
Sam Penny (25:25)
I've been in the e-commerce world for about the last 15 years, I think, and, you know, it's lifetime value, ⁓ it's recurring revenue, they're all the holy grail of what e-commerce is. And, you know, there's nothing new about the metrics of e-commerce, we just tend to put acronyms to things. ⁓ But at what point then do these things like the LTV, the lifetime value of a customer, recurring revenue, at what
Are they a marketing function as opposed to a sales team function?
Ben Wright (25:57)
Well, I think they're always a function for both departments. I mentioned to you earlier, it's very rare. think it's one thing that makes growth tick. The businesses that are really good at creating enterprise value will recognize that in lifetime value, for example, a marketing team has a role to play around keeping customers engaged, nurturing programs, relevant content, staying in touch with those customers. A sales team has a responsibility to add the personal touch.
to those nurturing campaigns, the phone calls, ⁓ the sharing of relevant information, the ⁓ speaking to those customers about even referrals, right? Checking in how their product or service is going. And when either does one on its own, it can be a little bit haphazard because the personal touch from the sales team can come at the wrong time. You can just simply miss that window with a customer. And it's also prone to human error. The nurturing programs from the marketing team can be a little bit sterile.
right? At no fault of the marketing team, they do the best they can to market to a large audience. And it's getting easier and easier to personalize, of course, with a lot of the tech advancements that we have at the moment. But when you put them both together, you get to run the advantages of both. And I think it's that instance where one plus one equals more than two. You really get to catapult off the work that you both do. And enterprise value can really ramp from there.
Sam Penny (27:20)
Ben, most of my listeners are all business founders. Now, for those who are listening and they know that their sales team really isn't performing, what do you think is the first thing they should start looking at?
Ben Wright (27:34)
So the first thing I would be doing is get your team together. What people build, they tend to implement. And I think it gets overlooked less so than it used to. Engagement of sales teams is so much more important now. Good sales people, I think are hotter commodities than they've been in a long time. I still haven't put my finger on why, but we did a research project a couple of years ago and it was the number one worry for sales leaders globally was keeping their sales team engaged. But I'd be bringing your team together.
Right. So bring in, if you've got 10 people, if you've got 50 people, doesn't matter, bring them in and, and tap into that cumulative wealth of knowledge. run a training session for 48 salespeople. have about, you know, 48, 50 in that team. Right. And they turn up each and every four at night. And I love tapping into their brains, but, bring them in, tap into those brains and define what your process looks like. Because what normally comes out of that is Isaiah process, which is great to follow.
But more importantly is the gaps. You really quickly get to say, oh yeah, our speed to lead's a little bit slow or, gee, know what, our quotes not great or, gee, we're taking a long time to get these quotes out or, you know, why aren't we quoting people face to face? You really quickly see these gaps, they become quite evident and that gets you to start working on them. So not only do get the process driven, right, the process driven approach, but you also get some gaps that you get to get out and work on.
Sam Penny (29:04)
So then when you go in and work with an organization, what are the first three things that you'd probably assess?
Ben Wright (29:10)
Well, look, the very first thing I say is where they want to get to, because it's irrelevant what I think, unless you know exactly what a business is thinking. Are they gearing to sell? Do they want to step back out of the business? ⁓ Do they need to move away from a founder model into a sales team? Is the sales team not performing? So that's the first thing I do. Second thing I look at is their sales process. It is absolutely what we sit down, we rip through, we find that process, and then we find gaps within that.
And then the third piece I look at is the lead through to close. It's a little bit more condensed than a sales process, but I look at some really specific levers around lead to close. There's some really integral points across the sales process, like speed to lead is one that we've spoken about, where I assess the performance at those moments in time. So.
It's an extension of the sales process, but it's a much more focused area on some of the really impactful things that teams need to do to be getting successful deals.
Sam Penny (30:13)
So these organizations then, ⁓ what is the fastest way to diagnose whether it's a people problem, process problem, or maybe a leadership problem?
Ben Wright (30:23)
So generally, it's a slightly different approach depending on company size. So let's look at your small to medium enterprises. The fastest way to work that out is to sit down with and review your sales process and find out where those gaps are. Because what immediately comes out is you have a small group of knowledge in the room and you can generally get to the bottom of your issues really, really quickly because everyone tends to contribute.
Whereas from the large organizations, so the more salespeople, the more heads that you have in the room, the sales process exercise is still really impactful, but it takes a little bit of time to unravel who's following that process. It's a lot harder to get that closed loop feedback. So we tend to need to dive a little bit more into metrics, right? Number of meetings, number of quotes, pipeline size, before we can see where those issues are. And generally once we get to that,
that stage. So beyond processing to metrics, you start to work out if it's, if it's a lead problem or a quality lead problem, you start to work out if it's a, if it's a behavioral issue, right, how hard are the teams working, you start to work out if it's a strategy issues, the business got the right strategy. So you generally just need to add an extra layer in the bigger the business gets. But certainly the smaller businesses, you can work through this pretty quickly. In fact, I generally work it out in about half an hour within sitting with with smaller mid cap businesses around where a lot of those those issues are.
Sam Penny (31:49)
Man, that must be so invaluable. Look, you've mentioned speed to lead quite a few times. Is that the one thing that ⁓ you can put in place, change, and have an immediate lift in the performance?
Ben Wright (32:03)
Speed to lead is absolutely one of those. For businesses that have inbound leads, if you're not answering those leads when they come in the door, the first question I ask is why? What's getting in the way of you being able to do that? The smaller the business, the harder it is to answer them as they're coming in the door. ⁓ But for the most part, we're generally able to find a solution that gets leads answered when the phone rings. And then for leads that come in via a digital version, emails ⁓ or website leads as a classic example,
Same thing, right? You're back to those within two hours. It's an old, the Jim's group, Jim's Mowing, right? A lot of them will know them. I learned that from Jim Penman along the journey was that two hours, that's the golden time to be getting back to customers. So, yes, speed delete is absolutely one. There's pieces around first impressions. There's pieces around what you uncover at your site inspection or your phone conversation. And then there's pieces around how you deliver the quote. But certainly that is one of the key areas, yeah.
Sam Penny (32:58)
I actually interviewed Jim Penman last year on this podcast and my other one called Why Do Think You Can Do That? Absolutely fascinating guy. He has, think, 5,000 franchisees right across Australia. If you're Australian, you know who Jim's Mowing is. But his focus on that speed to lead is so critical and why he's been able to dominate such a competitive market.
Ben Wright (33:24)
Yeah, absolutely. And look, I certainly don't agree with ⁓ all of his business practices. But one thing that he absolutely nails is a focus on exceptional customer service. He is second to none on that. ⁓ And I think you're right. It's one of the key reasons he's been able to build such a strong empire.
Sam Penny (33:41)
and
I want to shift course now into a bit more of the leadership and the culture and also the accountability. So what role does leadership play in sales performance really?
Ben Wright (33:53)
Look, there's so many examples of where good leadership can drive really great teams. I think the best lesson I learned about leadership in general was that understanding that whatever you do as a leader echoes out well beyond you. As an individual contributor, what you do can echo for yourself and maybe those directly around you and perhaps your customers. But once you get into leadership, every time you say anything, that message is taken.
across many more minds and hearts and sets of ears than just your own mouth. So I think for me, good leadership in sales is really prevalent. Setting the example is a classic one that paste setting example around what great engagement with customers look like. I think that's a really impactful part of good leadership. But I think the most important part of really good sales leadership
is to still lead by example around the importance of generating customer value. It's far too infrequent that I see a really genuinely focus on delivering that great value. And it's far too frequent when I see a leader say something like, you know, the customer is at the center of whatever we do, we're customer centric, we're obsessed by meeting customer needs and demands. see that so often, most businesses say,
But it's really rare that I actually see leaders walk the walk and speak to their customers and ask their customers what they can do better and talk to their sales team about what we're doing well and not so well. So for me, that's the number one role that sales leadership can play is to actually have a look around how you generate that value. Because when you get that right, things tend to flow in sales teams.
Sam Penny (35:38)
So you must really see then some leadership that is weakening the whole sales process in the team.
Ben Wright (35:45)
Yeah, you're really right. And it's sad because I very rarely see it done deliberately. I very rarely see a with a significant sales leader in particular with a significant shortfall in skill. But where I do see the shortfall is around perspective, is around being able to slow down and say, okay, hang what are we trying to do here? Well, of course we're trying to grow our business, but how do we grow our business? Well, we grow our business through great products or services.
that create great value for our customers who then talk about it to their friends or leave us great reviews or have a great experience in their life from all their business from using the product. And we do it by having a really engaged sales team who believe in what we're selling. cause passion, can't fake passion. You can't fake it long-term. You can fake it for a moment, but you certainly can't turn up day in day out and not show your real true colors around your products and services. So.
So I think there's just it's it's a training pace, but it's very much a behavioral pace here, around setting leaders up to, to not just show the skill needed to lead their business, but to have the right behaviors every single day to turn up smiling to be to be focused on that customer to be thinking about how you can and can create that value. That is where great leadership in a sales arena really shines.
Sam Penny (37:06)
Then Ben, if you think of some of the most, the highest performing sales teams you've worked with, how does accountability show up then?
Ben Wright (37:14)
accountability is integral. And often when you say that word accountability, people think, it's holding everyone to account is often the response or the general rhetoric we have. it's actually self accountability rather than, you know, so self driven. So having a fire within rather than the fire lit beneath your toes. That's what I see drive really successful teams.
And that then steps through to those teams being able to sit down and say, okay, we missed, we missed in this instance. We didn't get it right in this instance. How do we improve? How do we do better next time without feeling the consequences? Cause let's be honest, salespeople, are often professional influencers and relationship builders and there's often, you know, healthy egos that come with that. So being challenged by your peers can be really difficult, but the healthiest teams will actually sit down and go, yeah, we didn't get that right.
What are we going to do? And they all buy into getting better without being worried that this person is going to do better than me or I'm going to lose my job or you know, what's the business going to think of me? That's really healthy accountability. And the same goes at a leader's level for smaller businesses where they're prepared to sit down and sit with someone like me and say, yeah, I didn't get that right. And for me to say, all right, well, what are we going to do about it? How are we going to be better next time? How do we stop making those same mistakes and make sure we are 1 % better each and every day?
Sam Penny (38:38)
How have you changed your mind on sales over time?
Ben Wright (38:41)
Well, I'm 25 years in sales. There's a bit changed. I think in the early days, I really did think sales was about being persuasive, about being able to put forward the best argument around why your product or service was better. And look, I don't think it's a shame that that's what I thought at first, but you have to start somewhere. Everyone's got to start their journey. You're never going to start your journey with perfection.
But if you start with a focus on progress, then hopefully you get closer to perfection than those around you. So I think in those days it was very much about that. But as it's certainly then evolved into relationships, I think my second stage was building good relationships. ⁓ But I don't think that really focused on building good relationships around value. I think it focused more on
people liking and respecting me or respecting me. If you can't get both, go for one or the other. Look, I still go for respect over being liked today. But I think where it really evolved was that it was about building good relationships that focus on creating value, solving a problem or taking advantage of an opportunity that someone either can't do themselves or isn't prepared to do themselves. And it was at that point that I think
I became most comfortable with my role as a sales strategist and a sales leader and have the most confidence to sit down with someone and say this will work.
Sam Penny (40:10)
You've been in sales, Ben, for 25 years. What's the difference then between someone who lasts and someone who burns out?
Ben Wright (40:13)
Yeah.
Yeah, the shooting star versus the diesel engine that just keeps going and going. ⁓ Look, I think it's in a piece that what you do really does ⁓ create better results for people, going over the days of really being able to influence. But I think those that have the mindset, and I use an example that I learned from one of the salespeople that I worked with a long time ago was that, and her comment to me was,
And if someone says no to me, I don't get upset, but I thank them because it's given me an opportunity to go and help someone else sooner. And you you can throw all sorts of one-liners around drinking the Kool-Aid and that's just slapstick. But when you, when you slow down and think about it right now, that doesn't drive every day for someone. you said, no, great. I'm to go help somebody else. But I think the, the concept and that, you know, the general feeling that comes from that is I'm here to help people. If I can do it, let's make it happen.
If I can't, there are lots of other people that I can do it with. Right. And that creates a really, it's a long-term behavioural mentality that can get you turning up to work each and every day versus someone that's in there. Those that are in there to just chase the money, they end up being more the lone wolves in sales teams. I see a lot succeeding that.
but they don't often get the fulfillment, I think, that people that are out there with a bit more. Now, the money's important, right? It's always a combination of, like I've said a few times, but those that recognize that they're in this for some great reasons, to help people and build good relationships, even the hardest of commission-driven salespeople will normally acknowledge that they've come to peace with that, and that's helped them along their journey.
Sam Penny (42:02)
Then if we look at a great sales leader, what is it that they believe in that others don't?
Ben Wright (42:08)
I've touched on that, I actually touched on that quite a few times today around progress over perfection. I think a great sales leader recognises that it's a journey and you're always evolving, always moving forward, trying to find better ways to do things versus this is how we've always done it. And I must say, I work with a lot of sales leaders who say, I've been doing this for 25 years, I know exactly what I'm doing. This has always worked, we're gonna keep doing it. The best sales leaders though, are the ones that are saying,
I want to evolve. I want to find new ways every day to learn. I want to be that 1 % better. I want to make sure that my teams are learning. And I'm not afraid if someone in my team, as a business leader or a sales leader, knocks on my door and steps up to take my job. Because that then means I've done a terrific, a really terrific job myself of training them up. So yeah, those that are looking for progress.
They're the ones that I see last and they're the ones that I see build really engaged teams as well.
Sam Penny (43:08)
Ben, we're coming towards the end of this amazing conversation about sales. And I want to turn the focus back to the listener and giving them some things that they can immediately implement. Now, if you could leave the listener, the founder, with one shift in how they think about sales, what do you think that would be?
Ben Wright (43:29)
I'm 25 years in sales and I get asked all the time around one thing you could improve but I don't know if I've ever been asked one thing around a shift in your focus. Look, for me I think that any leader I work with, and it's the first question I ask any leader I work with, particularly businesses where founders are carrying the bag and doing the sales, is are you prepared to be challenged?
So I think if a founder could shift their mindset, because often as founders you feel the responsibility to be the man or woman in charge and that everyone leads, you lead and everyone follows and you've got to really have a great run ship, great run operation to grow. But I think the best founders and leaders that grow their sales are the ones that say, I'm prepared to be challenged. I'm prepared to grow. Let's make this even better than what it was.
And it takes away that fear of this is what we're doing. I don't want to lose business and replaces it with, ⁓ Hey, I want to be the best I can. And, look, I have so many examples of this, but I'll leave it with one is, ⁓ work with a terrific, they're in the kind of the broader landscaping business. I worked with them and it was about two years ago and their sales were really struggling. I mean, really down like more than 50 % down and we sat down and I asked them to make.
quite a significant change. I actually asked them to combine two meetings into one that they'd normally have with their customer. So really condense it in. And it took a huge amount of courage from this business to say, we're going to change what we've always done. Let's build a really good business. And we're going to take that advice and we're going to bring out, you know, bring those two meetings that we normally run. I want to be careful. I don't want to give away any of their IP. You know, there are two meetings into one, right? And make it happen. Nine months later,
they hit, so they were midway through a year or they were three months into a year, nine months later, they not only turned around that significant decline, but they had their best year on record. And it was because they had the courage to be challenged, but then the courage to go out and make those changes. Right now, they were significant. They're not always like that. In fact, most of the time they're not. But I have so much respect for the leader of that business. And anytime he calls me, whether I'm engaged with him or not, you know, he's got my ear.
because he had that courage to be challenged and go and do something different.
Sam Penny (45:56)
That's bloody brilliant, Ben. Well done.
Ben Wright, this has been a great conversation. What stands out is how you've really reframed sales, not as a process, but as behavior. Because when that's right, performance follows. And when it's not,
Well, it quietly limits what a business can become, including what it's worth. For anybody listening, the real takeaway is simple. Sales isn't just about closing deals, it's about building a system that can perform without you, because that's what makes a business scalable and ultimately sellable. Now Ben, before we wrap up, where can people connect with you and learn more about your work?
Ben Wright (46:34)
That was a great wrap up. Thank you, Sam. I think the best way to get in touch with me is it'll be in the show notes is a link where I provide a little bit of value to you. We have a look at a couple of parts of your sales process. It's a 20 minute meeting. And I've never ever had one of these meetings where we didn't find some really strong value for a customer. So I definitely suggest you have a look at that. If you're wanting to get in touch with me in a different way, Stronger Sales Teams, www.
strongersalesteams.com, but I'm not hard to find or LinkedIn, Coach Ben Wright is the end of my LinkedIn profile, but any of those three ways you get me, look, if you type in Ben Wright, Stronger Sales Team, you're come straight to me. So I'm always happy to talk with people and help wherever I can.
Sam Penny (47:19)
Fantastic, and I'll definitely put all of those links into the show notes. Ben, I really appreciate you coming on. And to everyone listening, if this episode shifted something on how you think about the sales function, share it with a founder or a leader who needs to hear it. But before we close, here's the question to sit with. Is your sales function something your business depends on, or is it something your business could survive without? I'm Sam Penny, and this is Built To Sell, Built To Buy. I'll see you next time.
