Transcript for Rob Taylor’s chat with Danny Matthews of Danny&Co.

Rob Taylor 0:00
[There] is a very powerful line that we use – never sell to suspects. And it’s tends to be what 90% of businesses are doing. So many people just think they’ve connected with me on LinkedIn, they’ve registered on my website, we had a conversation, that means they’re definitely a customer and I’m going to do everything possible to flog them something that they may not even need or want. We don’t identify what a customer is…

Danny Matthews 0:34
Welcome everyone, this would be a really good chat, around sales. Sales is kind of something which we will shy away from or shied away from at some point in our careers. A lot of us still do so. But I do understand that, you know, knowing who you’re selling to, and the process, and that kind of thing is, is a really valuable part of that. So we’re going to take it a little bit back to basics back to the beginning today. And we’re going to talk to talk to Plan. Grow. Do. So hi, Rob. A little bit about yourself, what got you to Plan. Grow. Do. and then we’ll maybe dig into some topics around?

Rob Taylor 1:10
First of all, thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here, I appreciate the invite to be on. It’s good to be here. My name is Rob, Rob Taylor. From Plan. Grow. Do. We help businesses and sales teams find the confidence process and structure in sales.

More so and more perhaps more relevant in what is a changed world, isn’t it every everything’s changed since March 2020. [But] our habits, and our ways of doing things perhaps, hasn’t changed. And we find a lot of people stuck in traditional ways, or perhaps even a sense of overwhelm or inertia, they don’t know where to [go] because there’s so many places they can turn, they don’t know what to do. And as part of our support for businesses and business owners, we really help people guide through a process and a methodology that gives people that confidence that I mentioned to, I guess, get over the “I can’t be salesy” mentality, “sales is a dirty word”. There’s a certain stigma about sales. When really, as long as you’ve got excellent products that you truly believe in, and a group of people that you think you can truly benefit. Why would you not want to help them? By selling your product?

Danny Matthews 2:48
Where does that that like? I’ve said, I’ve seen it can be called like an icky feeling? Where does that? Where does that feeling come from about being salesy. shy away from it?

Rob Taylor
It’s a strange one, isn’t it? And I guess it’s because perhaps this isn’t science based, perhaps we have so much pride as a business owner, or when we’re in employment as into our product and service. That to assume we have to ask someone to give us some money to use it and benefit, it feels a bit awkward, perhaps and is always. So many of the people that come through what we’ve all conversations that we have, is always people that they just struggle to ask for the sale. “I’m not a sales person”, “I’m not a sales person”, “I can’t ask that” “I’m not a sales person at all”.

But as the business owner, you are responsible for the development of the business and, or as the employee or you’re part of the team that’s responsible for hitting targets to help pay your bills. So at some point, we’ve got to try and move forward and get and get over that. And if that’s, you know, more of an understanding of You know what, I know I need to do that, but I don’t know how to. I know I need to do that. But I don’t know where my customers are. I know I need to do that. But I just don’t know the steps to doing those are all things that can be solved. What if we just sit back and go, “sales is horrible, it’s dirty”, then we need to get over ourselves a little bit.

Danny Matthews 4:19
Yeah, I think there’s, we normally judge things by our bad experiences rather than the good ones that way so like no one ever says, Yeah, I quite like sales because one day this guy called me and he was really he sold me this sold me this car and I was like I was so up for it. Because he was such a nice, we’d never hear that we always hear like a bloody eight the sales calls or I hate these people in shops or we always hear the bad experiences. So maybe that shapes the view…

Rob Taylor 4:49
[It’s a good] point and I think we can all name bad shopping experiences. But it comes down to the fact that the business doesn’t have a clue who you are. So they just hit in the phone. Hitting the numbers waiting for you to walk in the shop and assume that you’re just there ready to part with loads of cash? That is not it’s not the case.

Danny Matthews 5:08
So I’ve got a question because something that just popped into my mind and the thought I see because that’s, that can be quite an interesting topic is, is there in your mind a bad type of sales process? I guess that just is outdated and doesn’t work anymore. And I can probably give you an example of what I think might be.

Danny Matthews 5:33
An example and what we’re using that will be interested in shopping centres. I just think do they actually get did I actually get anything from that? Because all I I just feel like people hate them.

Rob Taylor
Like, the amount of insurance brands I’m with just, I’m already with you. I don’t need that I’m already with you. It’s what as I guess, on a more traditional side of what we talk about, and there is still a place for traditional I guess, but for me, that sort of thing is just revert into a very old fashioned way. It must cost a fortune as well. I mean, Sheffield, and we’ve got Meadowhall shopping centre, and you see him there, and it must cost 1000s of pounds. To have that and how many subscriptions that they need for this.

It’s just fishing just anyone’s a customer, anyone’s a customer. And it’s just a very dangerous approach.

Danny Matthews 6:41
I have this. So I have this thought or theory that some of the really old methods of marketing or sales could would probably work now if you tried them just because the world is so different to what it was. I think we’re not when I first left school, I had about six months working for NPower knocking doors right and we used to I lived in Coventry at the time, and we used to get in like many buses or taxis and go to like Nuneaton or Kenilworth, or somewhere. And we’d spend all day knocking till like the evening, knocking doors and trying to sell a door to door only lasted about six months. I hated every minute of it. But it was really good money. Left having not spent any money but aren’t at all. So I was like the richest kid in Coventry. And and I think now, if someone came to my door and tried to sell something, I wonder if I’d be more open to it, because I’m not used to it. Because I live in a little village. And like we don’t we just don’t The only people that knock on doors is every four years or whatever, when they want to do something political or get you to vote from other than that we just don’t get it. So I wonder if someone did I’d be more open to speaking to them, because it’s just not done anymore. It’s

Rob Taylor 7:58
it’s an interesting sort of perspective. I think, what if someone knocks on my door saying ‘buy my stuff’ bothers me? I’ve got three kids, oh, it’s chaos. I don’t need you. He doesn’t even know who I am.

But I do think there is elements. Again, it’s what we always advocate is more of a blend of traditional and modern. Whereas I think a lot of people we see are trying to detach from what they feel uncomfortable doing, perhaps getting on a phone or having a real conversation. But leaning more towards just putting stuff on LinkedIn and Facebook and thinking that that’s everything.

Likewise, we get more traditional leaning people where they’re just waiting to go back to normal. [They think] we’re just on pause this whole year since March 2020 has been a big pause button and just waiting to go back. And it’s not going back. It’s changed. It’s changing. Going back. I struggle with the word going back to normal. Yeah, we have evolved and we have changed and it’s accelerated that change rather than forced something to happen that otherwise wouldn’t have.

Yeah, the migration to digital the amount of new new starters, all millennials in sales positions, marketing positions, business positions. It’s huge now and of those Millennials are all using some form of digital. Yeah, if as those responsible for sales or business development, just ignore that or neglect that because we feel uncomfortable learning new skills. What are we missing out on this is such a risk that we’re ever detaching from traditional because we don’t like it or scared to develop digital. Because that’s not what we’ve done. We do what we do, because that’s how we’ve always done it and sort of mentality.

Danny Matthews 9:50
Yeah, I know that there’s a part of the business that is focused around kind of modern sales if you like. So we’ll dig into that in a minute. And then we’ll go into the The kind of way back to the beginning, right from the start about identifying people? Well, it’s interesting what you say no, I think we’ve had a lot of this talk about working from home. And it being an it now being a viable option. I don’t think people realise that we haven’t really been working from home, because we’ve been forced to do it.

So it’s it hasn’t been like it would have been if you made the decision three years ago, for example, you know, we have there’s, there’s like working from home and and just working remotely where you can work anywhere, doesn’t matter. Like we run a remote remote workforce of 10 people there in Manchester can chip in on, you know, all over the place? And and everyone’s saying, shall we work from the office or work from home? And I’m like, Well, you can’t compare working from home in a pandemic to work in wherever you’re like in the not in, like back to normal world sort of thing. So I don’t think we haven’t really been working from home. I don’t think because it just the circumstances haven’t been the same.

So it’s interesting, actually, it’s a, it’s the same conversation with traditional sales. Don’t think the way that we communicate now and behave different is very different. So I guess we have to start thinking about what sales looks like in this world now. And under that plangrid? Do there’s a modern sales approach? So can you talk a little bit about what modern sales is? And how you kind of approach it?

Rob Taylor 11:28
Yeah, of course. Yeah. And I think you’ve got a very valid point about the work from home, and how that differs from the work from working remotely. It used to be a case of if you’re working from home, you were deemed to be skiving a day off. Now, it’s a magical thing that saving businesses 1000s of pounds, but you’re right, if we get forced into this corner, is not working the best it can, while it’s going to have a place it needs to be slotted in some way, doesn’t it?

And our approach to that it is the is the joining open appreciation of how your buyer buys has changed in a moment, but how we then talk to our buyers and our customers needs to change as well.

Think about the last purchases in terms of the customer and you as a buyer. If you want to go to a restaurant, buy a car, television, new phone, what do you do, you don’t just walk into a high street shop, name them at any high street shop and ask the retail person to fill you in because they just read the ticket.

What you do is you probably go online, and you’ll probably say, which firms best for me. I’ve seen about this new Sony television, I’ll go and read everything possibly about it. I’ll go and identify and look at this restaurant that I’ve heard.

And I’ll see what everyone else is saying about it. So we get it from a customer point of view and understand that that’s how we behave. But when it comes to us in our business shoes, we get afraid to ask for reviews, we get afraid to ask for testimonials, we get afraid to build this reputation and this brand, based on third party refer on recommendation. And for me, it comes down to the fact that all we do is basically just say, I don’t know who you are, but you’re going to buy something from me.

Whereas what we could be doing is understanding how our customer is researching about what they need, and show up. I know you’ve got a problem. Let me help you identify some solutions that might help you. Let me give you some insights into your into your problem that you’ve identified. And then once you’ve appreciated the fact of what what issues there might be, let’s have a conversation about that. And see how we can work together to solve it. And I think that’s more of a modern sales approach is not just bombarding people just shouting at them to buy something from you. But it’s helping them in the first place at a very early point where ultimately you might not be paid for solution for them. But you’re offering value, you’re helping with a very genuine approach to that group of people.

Danny Matthews 14:24
And I think this probably leads into a little bit deeper into our conversation about understanding who the people are. Because it used to be that I guess sales, from your perspective as well. Sales used to be like, Let’s stand outside a service station and see who wants car servicing. Because that because it was relevant. And you would just you would throw it out there and just hope that they capture someone’s attention and that they want to talk to you.

But now we have to understand much more deeply who we’re talking to. And I know that you do a lot of this at the very beginning of your process.

So What is it that we need to do? Right from the beginning to understand who we’re trying to sell to?

Rob Taylor 15:08
Often times I’ll ask groups of people or network events; who’s your customer? And often they’ll look like you’ve asked them a trick question or something, they’ll go “Well, yeah, well, everyone, everyone is a customer or any, and they’ll stand proudly, anyone that wants my product or services is my customer, anyone that needs me, is my customer. No job too small for all your needs”, and all that sort of stuff.

You know, I just think we spend all our time, I guess, just thinking from ourselves, just shouting at people about buy something, buy something. But we’re not actually talking to anyone. And we often say that if you try and talk to everyone, you’re going to speak to no one. And I think if we can get our heads around that and think not everyone is your customer. And that’s absolutely fine. But if you spend your days trying to shout at them to shout at everyone, you’re not going to connect with anybody. So I think we have to from an early modern sales approach, you know, because it takes more time.

And customers are looking for people and brands that they can know, like trust, which I’m sure we’ve all heard before. But we don’t do anything to get known, to get liked, don’t get trusted, we just shout buy something from me.

So while that might take a bit of effort, I think as a business and as a salesperson, or as those responsible for developing your business, you’ve got to think, what group of people do I want to be known for? To what group of people do I want to be liked? In what community do I want to be liked? And which group of people are going to trust me the most? Because then everything we do moving forward? Is with that in mind that it becomes different to try to shout at everyone, and just start to build that to that group of people.

Danny Matthews 17:05
Well, what do you think stops people from being specific?

Rob Taylor 17:11
I think we’re awash with platforms that make it easy to in theory, get your message out to everyone. So I think there might be like, almost like an inherent risk or a feeling of risk, that if I try to be specific, this person over here, won’t won’t know it for them. So I’ll be as general as I can possibly be, because then everyone will join their own dots up and see that I’m the right fit for that real challenge thing. But if we can flip from our sellers, shoes and our business shoes to our consumer shoes, that happens to us every day, we connect and engage with brands, who are like ghosts, they look sound smell talk, like it’s it’s absolute wonder how we can see it and absorb it from a consumer side. But what as soon as we hop into our business perspective, we try to shout out to everyone.

Danny Matthews 18:19
Yeah, I know, I’ve experienced a bit of that myself. And I’ve struggled in the past to get really specific as well. And it’s sometimes scary, because you think you’re gonna put off everyone else by speaking to one type of person. And it was only I think, when I started to get really specific, for a short period of time, even just to test it out about HR consultants, that I’ve really enjoyed working with just we have some great conversations, we talk about similar things like culture, and leadership, and all those things that are a bit of a crossover in HR and branding. We have really good conversations. So I started just talking to HR consultants, all of a sudden, I get an accountant that buys one of my pro like the brand confidence programme I have. And I asked them, like, What attracted you to doing this? Because I was talking about HR. Again, I know my business is similar. So it makes sense for me to do the same thing. And I remember thinking, that’s it, I think, what else it because

Rob Taylor 19:19
you’ll be so laser focused on one group, you’ll have got to such depth and clarity about how you really help that group. Yeah, and accountant can look at that and say, Well, if I just replace a counter with HR, that’s me, so I can I can see how they’re going to help me.

Danny Matthews 19:35
This is kind of my argument with when people talk about like niching or being very specific about about someone you know, you don’t have to necessarily always target demographics and ages and genders and all those things. If you can just talk about a common problem, but speak to one industry for example, the other industries I have the same problem will come to you as well. And that’s certainly what I’ve experienced,

Rob Taylor 20:05
they will, they will. And that’s the if we can reverse engineer that, you know, here’s my whole universe of people that might one day possibly, but probably never be my customer. Yeah, we get them look for that group, because the other ones will look from the outside in and come to you anyway, like you mentioned in your accountancy example. If we can aim to be a specialised solution for a defined group of people, it’s going to put us in a good place as business owners and teams moving forward. And it’s not saying we only need one, you can have 2, 3, 5 groups of people. But until you can look back at your existing customers or work forwards by building more relevant networks online, we won’t be able to identify them. And I think it’s a challenge that we need to need to address.

That’s why we’re so inherent to put the customer first. In all we talk about, you got to be able to know who your customers are. Going back to my days in clubs and venues. It wasn’t a case of, I’m gonna put a gig on and everyone’s gonna come is I’m going to put a rock indie or dance gig, we can see the genres super clear. So it’s easy in that respect. And this is one of the things I guess that came from my b2c background into b2b, the principles are the same. You just have to identify your own indie gig, you know, hip hop gig, r&b gig, what is that for you. And that could be an accountancy, it could be HR, whatever, but differences are there. And it’s what people sort of adopt and connect with.

Danny Matthews 21:46
So let’s, let’s get a bit more specific than so on. I’m a business that is struggling with sales, you take me right back to the beginning to say like, we need to figure out who we’re targeting here, we need to get a little bit more specific. Can you talk us through a few steps we can do to figure out who that is?

Rob Taylor 22:04
Yeah. Ultimately, it starts with well, who are they tell me about them? What sector are they? What level of the business? Are there and of every decision maker? What’s their challenges at work? Or? Or what are the clues they need you as a solution? Because I guess from your perspective, no one wakes up wanting branding, right?

Because for a lot of industries, not usually, you don’t wake up in the morning, say, I really want a new brand. There’s a purpose underneath that as to what our brand is achieving. If you can keep why things you like to do is just to keep probing why why did why does someone want a new brand?

Why else does someone need a new brand? Why is that then important. And very soon, you’ll start to uncover an emotional driver. That is your hook to then start to position yourself in terms of messaging, because then if you get an emotional driver that goes into, well, we know that HR companies want branding, because it’s renowned as a bland industry.

And Sarah, the HR specialist is on a mission to improve and inspire smaller businesses to have an outsourced HR solution. So she can better the workforce for all. Great, that sounds better than she wants a new brand. So she looks nice. And now our messaging as a branding specialist in the HR space, can be all about how brand effectively inspires workforce, how it creates loyalty out of workforce, how people connect with branding, to help their businesses grow, and expand and outsource their teams. So when Sarah, hey, HR person is online, and we’re actively connecting with people like Sarah, and she sees something that aligns with her values, she is more intrigued. And she’s more likely to connect and want to read the earlier insights that you’ve got doesn’t mean she’s a customer yet. But she’s more likely to want to connect to see what it is you’ve got to say on a regular basis. Whereas if you just shout at Sarah Johnson branding, no, because I’m not really wanting branding. I’ve woke up wanting to have a solution to a problem.

Danny Matthews 24:32
Tell me about that. Not the branding.

Rob Taylor 24:35
Yeah, you’re you’re really you’re really resonate with this than when I started out as a, as a designer. I know. I know. Many designers still go through this where they will say someone will come and ask them how much is a logo and that basically goes through the standard.

What I depends on what it is let’s jump on a call, let’s discuss what you want. I’ll give you a price etc. And they do they go through that process. SAS never really understanding what the problem is. And they still quote, and they still get the job. And they still do it. And that’s great. But nothing really happens from there. There’s no problem being solved. It’s a very face value thing. So when, when I, because I came from business rather than education when I started in design, and I remember people saying how much isn’t like they literally jump in my inbox on Facebook Messenger or LinkedIn, and they would say, oh, we’re looking at doing a logo, but how much would it be? And I realised very quickly that the way that I increase the perception, at least of the value of what we do in design, is by seeing what the problem is.

So people would say, which is a logo? And I’ve replied, what’s the problem? And it throws them off completely? They’d be like, ah, because like you said, they don’t wake up one in a brand. But they do sometimes wake up and go, do you know, it’s not going well, maybe it’s maybe we could rebrand maybe we could do the logo, and we’d feel a little bit better about connecting with our audience or whatever it might be. So I started digging, and that what you mentioned, there is something I learned in software development called the five why’s, and kind of Why is that a problem? Why? Why don’t you like your logo? I just don’t think it’s attracting the right people. Now we’ve got it now we’re getting there. Why don’t you think it’s attracting the right people? Oh, but because it kind of looks old and stuffy. And a lot of the companies we deal with, like modern technology type by T companies. Okay. So why is it important that you attract these tech IT companies to the business? Well, because they pay really well. And they’re the most profitable in our different types of clients. Thank you. Now we’ve got a problem that we can solve more of those people and less of the people that are not profitable. Now we have something to go on. And we can design a brand that actually works towards that. But I think a lot of people realise that you can solve a problem in that way.

So it’s good, it’s really good actually, to hear the exact same thing used in a different industry in sales, the same same kind of processes. It’s great to hear that that important and that foundational to what you do as well. Yeah,

Danny Matthews 27:13
I think it has to be just, it’s, it’s never been easier just to talk to as many people yeah. But it doesn’t mean we’re engaging or connecting with anyone. It’s just I use the analogy of your walk into a busy Hall, full of strangers and just shout about I sell windows or something, it just wouldn’t work. But what might get you a conversation is I’ve been in the area of fixing windows, and I’ve got three great ways that you can make save 100 quid on your bill, on your energy bills. This week, john, drop this, this little leaflet I can give you about it. It’s gonna get you much more early awareness. Because you’re helping people that from a genuine position.

Danny Matthews 27:56
Yeah. Okay, so so I understand who my ideal customer, as I understand, you know, what it is about the problem that we’re solving and those things, if we’re going to look at getting more sales into the business, what’s the next step after that, that we need to start thinking about?

Rob Taylor 28:12
We looked at, you got to look at your customer profile, then you’ve got to understand, I guess, their customer journey, and we’ve touched on it a little bit, but we think a customer goes through four distinct phases of their journey and think about it from your own consumer perspective, you’ll do this the same.

First off is unaware they haven’t got a clue who you are. You might think one day, they might be the best customer for you. But currently, they don’t realise you. So what can you do at this early stage to simply make them aware of you? That’s the second stage. I’m aware of you I’ve not signalled any intent that I need or want anything that you’ve got. So what are you doing here to talk? It’s simple, but there are key differences in how you start to communicate there.

Then there’s the consideration phase, I know I’ve got an issue. And I’m doing my own research, to find out which TV is best for me to find out which service provider is best for me, I’m researching that. If you’ve done the work early on, to build up your personal branding your business brand, you should be part of that consideration. And now you can start to use perhaps more traditional elements. So you might be on the phone you might have face to face, you might have a good follow up.

And then there’s the fourth, the fourth stage, which is decision. So a customer goes through this all the time. It doesn’t really deviate from that. I don’t know I’ve got a problem.

I know I’ve got a problem. I’m considering some solutions. I’m going to decide what to do about it. No matter what we buy. It’s not. But we seem to think that just because someone connect on LinkedIn, that’s our cue to go and say buy my stuff. Yeah. And we don’t appreciate so hang on. You’ve profiled this customer. They’ve seen you they want to connect When was the invitation to say, Come and buy my stuff? It wasn’t. So what can you do instead? That simply gets them into what we call a holding pattern, build your professional network, but make it relevant. Don’t just take on vanity numbers on LinkedIn, which I think a lot of people tend to do.

It’s about keeping it lean and efficient. It’s a process after all, to know who the customer are, know how they buy. And then the third part is why you? So we know who we know how, why? Why are they going to come to you? And it goes back to that know, like, trust piece. What do you do to show up to get, you know, what do you show up to get trusted, and then hopefully liked with that group of people. Because it’s challenging, we’re not gonna be liked by everyone. I used to feel uncomfortable when I was last to be picked on footy team in school or something. People must not like me, that’s uncomfortable. But we can’t be liked and known by everyone. It’s just impossible. Our time is limited. We’ve got platforms that are times limited on them. So make it count. And make sure you get in there. Who’s the how’s, and the whys in place. I think that’s a very good start to building a more modern sales process.

Danny Matthews 31:26
Yeah, I when, when you talk about kind of the what and the how, and the why I get that. I often, you know, people people have got, especially in the marketing space, I think mostly, they have this urge to define what sales and marketing is separately. And there’s so much crossover in it. And even in branding now, I often refer to branding as the why, as to why people buy from you, you know, it’s that thing that that allows you to come up with something unique, I guess about your allows you to at least identify it, so you can tell people about it. And sales is a sales and marketing thing with the what and the how kinds of things. But you have people have this obsession with defining things. It seems like even though you’re in sales, training, and you help people with the confidence and and those kinds of things for sales, there’s a there’s quite a bit of crossover. So is there within the sales process? Do you have to consider marketing and branding and all the all these other things as well as part of that?

Rob Taylor 32:38
I think so. Absolutely. My background is, is more marketing, but like I mentioned, as I moved from a b2c to a b2b marketplace, the principles for b2c a wholly applicable in b2b and my business partner, he’s got the sales background at some global leadership level. And we shared an office and we’re thinking, Well, I’m marketing your sales, we’re having pretty much the same conversation, just have a different, different approach. So if we could merge these two together, that’s going to be able to help a lot of people. And that’s that’s kind of what we did. And there’s a lot of job snobbery around.

People don’t think that they work in sales, they don’t think that they work in marketing, I was at a networking event, this must be 18 months ago, perhaps sponsored by a quite a large accountancy firm. And someone asked a question, and it was marketing related in this respect.

And the guy when, oh, I’m just I’m the accountant, I’ll hand you over to marketing who can deal with that, as if like belittling this marketing role and as marketing function. And I knew then I can never go to you to be my accountant. Just because they don’t appreciate the fact that they are the go to person in that respect there front and centre at that event. And if they think they’re not marketing and selling at that point, then they’ve got a problem. Because no one’s there just to listen about bookkeeping. Yeah, that’s a buy into you as a brand and as a person that’s representing your business.

And I think a lot of us hide behind business branding, when there has to be an element of personal branding. And we’ve mentioned that before about the early stages of how how we shop, and a lot of that is on reputation, it’s on reviews. It’s on case studies. And those responsible for sales, I think often forget that it’s not my job. marketing’s job, okay, but cart marketing, make your job easier by you telling them what it is that you need. And then you use these assets to talk to people at a more meaningful level when they’re unaware or aware of you can see how it all fits together. I think if we if we stick in this silo, of I’m sales Marketing. It’s it’s a long term danger, I think it’s not talking to a customer how they want to be spoke to.

Danny Matthews 35:09
Interesting, I think we could probably talk forever. On this whole process, I know that you’ve got a load of resources and stuff on the website that people could use, through, you know, the plant, grow, do kind of phases, and so much training and learning that we could go through. But it’s been, it’s been really good to get to know, a little bit of the early stage of the process, because I think what now that we’re, hopefully and probably coming out of lockdown this month, people can start to get excited again about business, they can start to get excited about doing sales again, you know, whether they like it or not, they’re gonna do it in some form. So why not do it? Well, as we get to that, it’s, it’s a really important thing to make sure we’re understanding who we’re selling to and how to connect with them. So can you give us some final thoughts final tips on on maybe sales in in the in kind of a post pandemic world and some important points?

Rob Taylor 36:09
I wrote an article it is on our website and perhaps show share on the show notes as it bleeds then it’s about how the environments change and my other dog bless her.

She’s not with us anymore, but we used to get in the car and drive to the beach from Sheffield, we used to get to Bridlington is that two hour drive, so it’s quite a stretch, and she was in the boot of the car, eager, raring to go, she wouldn’t know where we’re going now pulled up at the edge of the beach, we open the boot booth straight into the sea. She didn’t like it. She didn’t know where she was.

She’d been sat pent up for so long that when we were released, she just ran off knowing to do what she does. But it wasn’t the right thing to do. She needed to take a step back and think where am I? This isn’t my back garden, things have changed?

How do I tread on this beach to avoid that see that I hate. And I think if we can, if we can use that loose analogy of that to say, well, ultimately, we’ve been stuck in the boot of a car for a long time. And there might be a real temptation to just charge off. like nothing’s changed. But in reality, I guess what we have done is we’ve left our back garden behind and we’re on the sea. And if you’re not ready to go and run into the sea, you need to adjust what you’re doing. And think that things have changed a little bit. So who is your customer? Really? Who is it? How are they buying them? What are you doing to show up in this new environment that talks to the so yeah, hope that makes sense. I’d love to get my old dog Shelby into into the

Danny Matthews 37:58
nice thing. Great. Thanks very much Rob. The link the article, I’ll put some stuff from the website in the show notes as well as I know there’s a bunch of free resources and stuff that you have so so people can go and download or do what you need to do to get prepared for this next, next stage of I don’t even know what to call it anymore.

Rob Taylor 38:30
Cheers. Thank you