Lessons Learned from our Sales Careers - Team Reflections

In this episode of The Luxury Choice podcast, hosts Steve Vaughan, Jayne Green, and Pru Layton reflect on their personal journeys into sales, sharing insights and lessons learned throughout their careers. They discuss the importance of preparation, the value of sales training, and the significance of building strong customer relationships. The conversation also touches on the challenges of rejection and the necessity of persistence in sales. Finally, they offer sage advice for new salespeople entering the field, emphasizing the importance of prospecting and understanding the dynamics of customer interactions.

Steve Vaughan, Jonathan Cooper, Pru Layton, Christian Walter, Pascal le Floche,  Jayne Green  and Jonathan Slasinski are Sales Trainers from george james ltd.  You can email the show at:  Podcast@georgejames-training.com

 The trainers on LinkedIn:

 Steve Vaughan https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-vaughan-salestrainer/
Jonathan Cooper https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-cooper-18716b1/
Pru Layton https://www.linkedin.com/in/pru-layton-b46a3528/
Christian Walter https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-walter-a1857b1/
Jayne Green https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayne-green-salestrainer/
Pascal Le Floch-Riche https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-le-floch-220ba46/

Jonathan Slasinski https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-slasinski-449a655/

george james training website https://georgejames-training.com/

Transcript

Steve Vaughan (00:01)
Hello again and welcome to the Luxury Choice, a B2B Sales and Business podcast brought to you by the training team of George James Limited. My name is Steve Vaughan. I'm a Senior Sales Trainer at George James and I'm also the host and producer of this podcast. And I'm joined by my colleagues and also Senior Sales Trainers, Prue Layton and Jane Green with me today. And we're going somewhere a little bit different today with our podcast. This is going to be a bit more of a personal...

reflection on our respective sales careers. It might imply how old some of us are on this podcast as well. Perhaps we won't go there and see which detail on that part of it. But what we thought we'd do as part of our sort of wind down towards the end of our series, for our second series of the podcast, is really looking back on things that we wished we'd known before we started our sales career, or perhaps we'd wished somebody had told us.

before we started our sales career, which in certainly in my case was a long time ago. So sales is a great job and it's a lot of fun most of the time. But there's also things that we perhaps could have known before we actually signed on the dotted line for our first sales job. So let's start with you, Jay, on this one. So looking back on your sales career, when you first got into sales, I guess you were like most of us, you were in the lab to start with and then got a sales job. that your?

I know yours was slightly different wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, no yours was slightly different. Yeah, that's right, of you were, yeah.

Jayne Green (01:16)
Hey me, no, I'm the dark side basically. I did

business management, so that was like, everybody's like boo. So I worked for a company internally to start with and then thought, I don't think I want to do this. I'm seeing all these really exciting reps in suits coming in and out of this place.

Steve Vaughan (01:25)
You

Jayne Green (01:42)
And I'm really excited because I was all about the idea of strategy and making business and you know what this looked like. And so I very, very soon got the opportunity and I was given a, I mean, I think they took a real risk on me. It's what I think, because I think I was quite young and naive and I got an opportunity. I went and asked, of course, to say, this is what I really want to do. What are the options? A few days later, I got a message to go and see one of the sales managers and he offered me a job.

selling in London and I'm like, oh, winner. And you get a car. What is this? Cause we didn't get a phone in those days. Going back. But I loved it. But so for me it was just like, know, this is really exciting. Cause I'd seen all of these other people having a great, what I thought were a great time. They seemed very professional. They seemed to know what they were talking about. They were out, not stuck in an office. They were seeing people all the time and having some

Steve Vaughan (02:12)
Wow. Wow.

No, no.

Jayne Green (02:41)
obviously what were some great conversations. And I thought I'd like a bit of that life, you know, and so you got a car and it was a win. You know, for me, it meant I, my battered up old car, I could actually get rid of.

Steve Vaughan (02:53)
And

your first sales territory you saying before we started was in London, yeah? Same here, yeah.

Jayne Green (02:57)
London, yes. it was a

complete, one of the things that I wish I'd have known would have been how to drive effectively whilst holding a map of London. Normally like balance it on the steering wheel as you did. If I'd have known that before and practiced it then I wouldn't have had quite so many bumps in that company car.

Steve Vaughan (03:15)
Please don't drive that way dear listener, if you're listening to us. We didn't know. Yeah, it's amazing how you rely on it. So what was your first sales job? What was your route to sales?

Jayne Green (03:16)
We didn't have sat-navs then, so just saying.

Pru (03:26)
out of the lab, I was just thinking, Jane, maybe you should have done the knowledge. The London taxi drivers test about how to get anywhere in London. If you'd done the knowledge as part of your sales training, you'd have been like lethal, would have been great. I came the classic route, So I went into sales, not because I wanted to, because I wanted to run away from the lab. So I wish.

Jayne Green (03:29)
I should have done the knowledge.

Steve Vaughan (03:30)
yeah, yeah.

Jayne Green (03:34)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

Steve Vaughan (03:41)
Or driving a taxi, yeah.

Pru (03:48)
What I wish I'd known before I came into sales was what a fabulous job it was going to be. Because I would love to say it was a positive choice like Jane's and it wasn't at all. It was the idea of spending another five years in the lab. Filled me with horror to be perfectly honest. I thought I'd be breaking the frontiers of science on a regular basis. And basically I was doing the same old thing and then washing up my glassware.

And I was just like, is this what life holds for me? So I was lucky enough that a job came up on the board where I worked. worked for a company that sells laboratory reagents and consumables so you can work it out, dear listener, which one that might've been was my first job. And yeah, I just applied for it, not from a positive, but from a totally negative point of view. I can't believe my first sales manager actually gave me the job.

Jayne Green (04:29)
you

Pru (04:39)
I don't know what answers I gave. They wouldn't have been good ones, but a bit like you, Jane, he took a risk on me. And from the very start, I thought, wow, this was fabulous. It was like being my own boss. And I was in my twenties, pretty naive. And suddenly I had all this responsibility and I loved it. I loved the control.

Jayne Green (04:41)
You

Steve Vaughan (04:46)
Hmm.

Mm.

Pru (05:04)
realised, you know, knew just how much you're in charge of your own destiny was brilliant.

Steve Vaughan (05:10)
Fabulous. And so mine was very similar, really. I was in the lab. I was a research chemist. I was working on novel fungicides, which sounds really exciting, but when you'd done the same reaction like a hundred times with a slightly different starting material, got a bit sort of routine really. yeah, like both of you really, these people were coming into the lab in suits and trying to sell us things. And I thought I could do that. And I had a role model in all seriousness. I still have an uncle who's,

you know, well in retirement age now, but at the time was quite a senior business manager within the company I work for. And in fact, I shared with you both recently a advert that was in Farmers Weekly that showed him, was 1970 I think it was, you know, with his customers really. so he, you know, his route was in sales through the same company, my sales job meant I had to leave that company. But yeah, I think it was knowing the

Jayne Green (05:48)
Yeah.

Brilliant.

Steve Vaughan (06:05)
The lack of structure, looking back on it now, was terrifying at the time because you're used to sort of turning up in the lab and you turn on your fume cupboard, go and get a cup of coffee, sit down, do your work, go home and forget about it. Whereas sales is nothing like that. is entirely what you put into it is what you get out of it really. So for that first year of my first sort of job was more of a sales support role. So I was providing application support, technical support for existing customers in a water treatment company in central London.

So I was exactly the same, trying to find my way around central London. I'd been driving for a year, I think. And I think I had six bumps in my first year in London. But I mean, looking back on it now, I wish I'd perhaps have embraced a little bit more. was quite nervous of the whole sort of lack of structure, really. You know, I can see it as a big opportunity, but I also was a bit frightened and a bit orally at the time, And I had some advice.

from one of the existing salespeople who took me under his wing and said, you know, what do you think is the most important thing to do? Make sure your customers are happy all the time or make sure your company is happy all the time. And I thought, well, the right answer has got to be the customer. And reflecting on that now, I probably wouldn't have said that, I'd have said both. Because, you know, there's the old phrase, the customer is always right.

Pru (07:14)
Mmm.

Ha ha ha ha.

Steve Vaughan (07:25)
Sometimes they aren't quite as right as they think they are, but that's perhaps another topic for another day. So yeah, I think we're all very similar. know, we've got our first sales job, we all felt empowered. Without getting into specifics of our careers details, unless you want to go into that, but would there be anything you would have done differently looking back on that time or anything you would have, you know, perhaps gone a different way of doing the things that you did at the time? What were your thoughts on that, Jane?

Jayne Green (07:49)
So I was thinking about this earlier and if I had understood back then that preparation was so important and planning, I'd have saved myself so much hassle. know, charging around London, not knowing where I'm going, trying to think. I kind of thought that I was, I don't know, trying to win the world. You know, it was like this. It was an exciting moment. It was exhilarating.

Steve Vaughan (08:11)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (08:16)
but I didn't have much of a plan, you know, and I was starting to tear around and didn't quite know how to get and see people and, you know, and all of that. So I did actually, I had to take a step back, was living it and just asked them a team that I was on and the team of people within a company that was probably a competitor to the company that Prud worked for. So we were probably competing against each other and...

Steve Vaughan (08:39)
You

Jayne Green (08:43)
There were some really mature salespeople on there and I just said, how do you get everything done? And one of the guys that was on there that retired actually in my time there was just like, you've got to have a plan. You've got to have a plan and you've got to spend some time, you know, in your week planning out what that week's going to look for. And I hadn't realised that because I was just so excited to be driving around everywhere and seeing people. And that was...

Steve Vaughan (09:03)
Hmm.

Jayne Green (09:10)
I hadn't realised that at the beginning. If I'd have understood that preparation is the key to pretty much everything you do, that would have been really helpful.

Steve Vaughan (09:19)
Great point, of course we talked about that on our last episode with regards to managing your territory. Pru, anything that you would have done differently at that time with hindsight?

Pru (09:27)
I unlike you Jane, I might have listened to some of the more mature salespeople instead of thinking that I knew better because I was probably a bit bolshy, whatever the word is. I've never, Lippard never changes its spots. Yeah, think, I think, you know, I probably did not listen and spend time.

Jayne Green (09:30)
You

You

Steve Vaughan (09:38)
No, perish of thought proof. I can't imagine that.

Jayne Green (09:43)
Hahaha

Pru (09:50)
with those people who'd covered the territory for longer. I mean, we had a lot of coverage because it was a catalog company. And so I think we had something like 30 or 40 salespeople covering the UK. And so there was a lot of massive experience. And I remember looking at the people who were in their 40s and thinking, what do they know? So I think, think seeking...

Jayne Green (09:58)
Hmm

Steve Vaughan (10:05)
Gosh.

Jayne Green (10:06)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (10:13)
You ⁓

Pru (10:17)
best practice inside my own organization and having an open mind, I should have done differently because I genuinely thought they didn't know what they were doing. And because I come out of a lab, I felt I was probably more, my experience was more relevant than theirs and it was not true. So yeah, being a bit of a know it all might still be a bit like that now, who knows.

Steve Vaughan (10:39)
No, no, not at all. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I remember thinking a couple of times early in my sales career, because it was, you know, all chemicals really. I was in boiler houses and, you know, air conditioning systems and all that. mean, I think I'm a chemist. What am I doing all this kind of stuff for? You know, I'm more important than this. I should be doing something a bit more academic. But the thing is nobody would give me a job in lab sales because I had no experience. So I had to get my first job to get the, know, the sort of the...

the knowledge, if you like, of doing the job really. So, and one of the things I look back on now and I realize how important it was at the time. And I'm not just saying this because we work in training, but the importance of sales training, because I hadn't got a clue.

what selling meant really, I thought, this was perhaps the culture of the organisation I worked for, and this was the 80s Dear Listener, so it was a slightly different time, but it was very much a culture of getting, get the order number and get out again. That was what it was, kind of mentality really. Whereas what I learned when I had some professional sales training is that selling isn't trying to convince people to buy things they don't want or trick people or to trap people or some kind of underhand technique. It's all about helping people.

It's all about helping people do what they want to achieve with their careers and their jobs really. And that was a massive learning point for me quite early on in my career and hopefully one that I've stuck to ever since really. you, did, what was your training background with that? Again, naming companies. What was your personal sales training? Jane, did you get sales training quite early?

Jayne Green (11:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes, in that

company they used to have internal training and internal trainers that were there for a period of time and then that obviously moved away and they brought other people in and you know for me actually within those first three to four years I realised I loved training and so for me that kind of started a little spark in, yeah receiving training.

Steve Vaughan (12:28)
What receiving training you mean? Being given training. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, me too.

Jayne Green (12:31)
receiving it, I thought this is brilliant. And you saw

the good, bad and the ugly of it, didn't you? I remember being in some training that I just thought, gosh, that wasn't, I'm not quite sure what that was about. But then really starting to embrace actually, how could I improve? And I think of it like proof. Sometimes we think when we get that confidence burst and that rush that we've sort of got with the enthusiasm and excitement, I felt like I was unstoppable, but I realized I actually knew very little.

Steve Vaughan (12:56)
Hmm.

Jayne Green (12:57)
So getting, remember my first round of training and thinking, wow, there's a lot, there's a lot to this. There's more to this than I actually thought about. I love that. I think one of the things for me, so that I remember early on, they were talking about, you know, finding the right people. But also it's not about, so I went into selling and I remember somebody saying, because used to talk a lot, still do.

They said, you'll be okay in selling. You've got the gift of the gab, Jane. And I'm like, that's a really weird saying. And I wish I realized it wasn't about that. You know, when I first started, you know, we talk about talking a lot, actually, it's so much more about being curious and listening to be effective. I didn't understand that right at the beginning. So I wish I'd known that.

Steve Vaughan (13:30)
great point.

Absolutely.

Same here.

Same here. Yeah. I remember going to see customers when I did get a job eventually in lab sales, again, with a catalog type business, almost going in to see the customer and say, here's a catalog. And on page one, we have this product. And on page two, we have this product. And on page three, and by page 10, the customers' eyes are rolling. yeah, I've been slightly facetious, but I think you get the point. So, Prue, your thoughts on this, about training and the importance of training?

Jayne Green (13:53)
Yes.

you

Yeah.

Pru (14:05)
Yeah, it's

so much the same. honestly thought that sales, I mean, I was lucky to get sales training. I think when you joined an organization with a big sales team in a very competitive space where actually, you know, there was very little differentiation and it was about the salespeople as to how you won the business because you could get as good a service from anybody else with products.

Jayne Green (14:23)
Mm-hmm.

Pru (14:30)
sometimes even the same products from a different supplier, but you you had to make the difference. So I, within two months of joining, I had a sales training course and I was amazed. I was thinking, I just thought it was talking people into submission genuinely. I thought that's what you did. I thought if you just keep, and I have to say occasionally that did work. can recall some of the looks where they thought I'll just buy something to make her go away.

Jayne Green (14:32)
Yes, yeah, true.

Yes.

Yeah.

Pru (14:57)
I wouldn't say it's great for a long-term relationship, but...

Jayne Green (14:59)
Hahaha

Steve Vaughan (15:00)
Probably

not, no, not for repeat business,

Pru (15:02)
But you know,

it took me a decade or so to work out. I'm sad to say that what I really had to work on was listening better. I was always curious and never had a problem with being curious, but it was always about jumping in rather than really giving, particularly some of the quieter customers, that space to speak their minds, getting comfortable with a bit of silence while...

Jayne Green (15:10)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (15:10)
Hmm.

Jayne Green (15:13)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (15:13)
⁓

Same here.

Jayne Green (15:21)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (15:28)
Yeah.

Pru (15:28)
You know, like reading the, that being comfortable enough in yourself that you give the customer the space to be themselves. And I recall one of my early visits to this, this customer in a medical research institute in London. And he was a very shy, quietly spoken customer. And we went up to his office and I was loud, jumpy.

Steve Vaughan (15:36)
Hmm.

Jayne Green (15:37)
Yeah.

Pru (15:55)
throwing my arms around. And I have this image of him curling up into a ball until I left. I must have terrified him. really wasn't reading the clues. wasn't giving him space. wasn't. Yeah. So I wish I'd realized what a sort of job there is in sales of being an actor. I think you have to, it is a bit of a show.

Jayne Green (15:56)
Ha

Yeah.

Mm.

Steve Vaughan (16:13)
That's

a great way looking at it. Yeah.

Pru (16:18)
You can't just say, is me and that's the way I am. That's not okay in sales. You know, being able to, to read the person, read the room, read the situation and adapt who you are, is, is so important in sales. I wish I'd realized that instead of just talking people into submission and getting an order so that I'd leave the room and never come back.

Jayne Green (16:37)
Yeah.

It's the same, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (16:40)
That's a great point. I

usually think it was like loading programs. I'm going to load this program now before I go into the customer. And this customer, need to be quiet, reflective. For this customer, I need to be a bit more bubbly and whatever. And it's having a bit of emotional intelligence, guess, as well, really, in recognizing the person on the other side of the table. Any...

Jayne Green (16:45)
you

Steve Vaughan (17:00)
Any sort of examples of things that perhaps she would have done differently in terms of a particular customer or a particular call. And again, obviously don't name the situation, but any sort of big learning point from a particular sales call. I'll perhaps should have given you a chance to think about that before I drop the question on you. But can you think back on anything that with hindsight was a big learning point?

Pru (17:21)
I was lucky enough to have a great manager called Robert. He'll know who he was. He was my first manager and I remember going to see one of my really important customers. got an appointment with the head of procurement guy. I had this appointment and he was well known. I didn't realize that at the time.

to give you like a really early appointment. So he knew that you had to set out at the crack of dawn. And when, when you got there, he would then make you wait outside his office. while he did other things and I'd got up at five o'clock in the morning, driven for two hours, got in to see him and he kept me waiting. And I got in to see him eventually and he just.

He kept on taking calls while I was trying to speak to him. I'd been waiting. I'd got this appointment. It'd been like six weeks out. I'd driven for miles. I was really pleased with myself. I prepped really well because people said he was very tough. And frankly, when I got in front of him, he was just rude and I took it on the chin, which was not okay. And eventually I got to the stage actually where he was just constantly taking calls. So I stood up.

Steve Vaughan (18:21)
Yes, absolutely.

Pru (18:30)
with my heart racing and I said, look, it seems that you're super busy today. So I'm just going to leave you to it and we'll book another time. And I walked out and I thought, I think I've just ruined one of our biggest accounts. was, I've, so I went to a phone box cause we didn't have mobile phones. So I got to a phone box and I rang my boss and I went, Robert, I think I've just done an awful thing. And, and actually I wish I'd realized that I'd just done the right thing because

Jayne Green (18:55)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (18:55)
Yeah.

Pru (18:56)
I actually earned this guy's respect. So the next time I went there, he remembered me and he actually gave me his full attention. I I think I, I wish I'd realized that you're not there. You talked about the customer always being right and, and is that right? I think it's driving for that peer to peer relationship that if you're with the right customer, you can help them and they can help you. It's this mutual relationship, not a

Jayne Green (18:59)
Yeah.

.

Steve Vaughan (19:15)
great point.

Pru (19:23)
The customer says, I want this and you run around and try and make it happen, even though it's not ideal. And I wish I'd understood that earlier. I think I would have had better conversations and I'd have been a more value to the customers as well as them being of more value to me if I worked that out.

Steve Vaughan (19:36)
Yeah.

think that's such an important point because we've often had the same academic background as our customer, same qualifications possibly even, possibly even similar experience. We've just gone a different route in our career. We've gone down a commercial route, they've gone down a more technical route and we are there equal really. we should never fear or feel that as salesperson that we're some, don't know, use the words of vitally, but we're not sort of some...

underhand role or whatever, you we've got a very important role and our job is generally there to help our customers do their work quicker, faster, more efficiently, whatever. So just recognizing that we have that sort of, not right, I mean, it's too strong a word, but we have a relationship, you described Prue, mutual respect, mutual understanding, mutual tolerance is something.

Pru (20:05)
No.

Jayne Green (20:05)
You

Steve Vaughan (20:24)
should go on really we're not doing anything on time or anything sneaky because we're in sales really. Anything from you Jane on this one?

Jayne Green (20:32)
Yeah, I think, you know, I look back into some of those early, very early years and I, with some key accounts and important customers, I think they had me running around in circles after them and I didn't apply what, what Pree did. I wish I'd understood that, that actually I could have had that confidence to say, you're really busy now, you know, or I need to schedule that in at a time that works. And I didn't have that.

Steve Vaughan (20:44)
Same here, yeah. Yeah.

Jayne Green (20:59)
maybe that confidence or that understanding. And it's that part we, you know, taking that ownership and control within your area to actually manage your customers and what you're doing and your job really well. I didn't understand. I think I went out, I think I went, from my first day, went out running, charging, excitedly, and then, you know, realized that you trip over and then you need to work out. But there is that.

Steve Vaughan (21:12)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Jayne Green (21:25)
you've got a greater element of control and ownership than you think you have, you know, and I wish I'd understood that. But I did have, and again, not mentioning any customers, some customers had me running in circles around them because as a company, you know, I remember people saying these are really important, it's a really important customer, we look after them. And because I was the new person that felt I'd been given a great chance,

Steve Vaughan (21:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jayne Green (21:52)
I needed to prove myself in there. So of course I ended up running in circles around some of these customers and then really not looking after everything that I needed to be doing. So I think it happens and it can happen very easily and we can get then very overwhelmed.

Pru (22:06)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (22:06)
Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's that recognition that, we're professional people. We've got a very important role. It's a highly valued role really. And we talked about this on our last episode. you said at the start, Jane, about the importance of planning and being organized and stuff really. One of the things I, and I may upset some people now with this comment, one of the things I hate as a customer, so, you know, we all get people trying to sell to us, of course. One of the things I personally hate is

Jayne Green (22:12)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (22:35)
Can I come and basically sell to you is what the message is. Here's my calendly invite. Please book a slot when I'm free. And I found that so patronizing. It's not about when it suits Sam, it's about when it suits me as well as a customer really. So I think it's having that balance between being organized and structured, but not being so arrogant almost to say that the customers can come to me really. We've got to have a little bit of a give and take around that really.

Jayne Green (22:54)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (22:59)
Yeah, structure planning, super important. think looking back on my own career as well, think if I my time again, I'd have slowed down a bit. And I don't just mean with the customers, I mean in my own career, was, and probably you'll know this because you remember, you know, we worked together at some stages, but as a younger person, I was so ambitious, so driven, so desperate to get the next job, the big job, you know, to get promoted, to get the bigger car, the bigger salary, the bigger bonus. So sometimes I was

Jayne Green (23:18)
you

Steve Vaughan (23:28)
perhaps a little bit too fixated on that and not fixated enough on my colleagues and my organization. And of course, as you get older, your priorities change, they? Things that motivate you when you're in your 30s and 40s, don't make debate mean that I'm a little bit older than that really. So perhaps the importance of just, you know, take the stock of where we are and thinking, yes, have a plan for your career, but perhaps not jumping at the first thing that came along like I did too often as people know me, we'll be able to tell you. Yeah.

Pru (23:52)
Me too. Yeah. I

wrote, I wrote down as thinking about this, the one we're going to talk about is I wish I'd done more thinking and less doing. Yeah. I was always quick to, you know, I'm sure that part of the reason I got the job was my kind of ability to, to be a little bit impatient and want to make things happen. But, know, looking back, I think I'd wish I'd carved a bit more time out to think.

Steve Vaughan (24:02)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (24:02)
Yeah, very

good.

Steve Vaughan (24:18)
Yeah.

Pru (24:18)
You know,

I was really good at doing, which meant that sometimes I repeated the good things, but it also meant because I didn't do enough thinking that I repeated the bad things too, the things that were less optimum. And if I'd just had been able to catch my breath occasionally and just think about things, I'd have been dangerous, I'm pretty sure. And I'd have been less stressed. You know, there are moments when I look back on my sales career.

Steve Vaughan (24:29)
super point.

Jayne Green (24:31)
Yeah.

Pru (24:46)
that were just so stressful for me. So stressful. that, you know, they were always balanced out by the times that were much more exciting. But if I just thought a bit, it would have been better for sure.

Steve Vaughan (24:59)
Great points.

Pru (25:00)
fun fact as well at the end was that the other thing I wished I'd realize is that for every year in sales, you put on two pounds in weight. If someone had told me that at beginning, I may have got a bit more control over where I stopped for my lunch or grabbed a sandwich because honestly, I know very few salespeople that that hasn't happened to.

Jayne Green (25:07)
Ha

Steve Vaughan (25:08)
OK, how do we all? ⁓

Jayne Green (25:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, think those, sadly, mean drive-throughs never were existing, but it was that moment of eating. wish I'd realised how many suits that I used to wear that I would ruin by trying to eat whilst driving with my sandwiches and a drink balanced on my lap.

Steve Vaughan (25:39)
So yeah, great, great examples. And, and for me, you know, the importance of having a radio, show in my age, but having a radio with long wave on so you can listen to the test match when you're driving. Cause the test match was always on long wave. then now of course you've got dab radio. It's not a problem, but if you hadn't got long wave, you couldn't listen to the test matches. That was one of the benefits of being on the road in my experience.

Jayne Green (25:52)
Ha ⁓

Pru (25:58)
Right. I remember

that too. used to, I used to almost like, I was very cross when they changed, when the Arches was broadcast, the Arches shows my age. They used to, they used to broadcast it at quarter to two and most of your point afternoon appointments started at two o'clock. So you get there early and have 15 minutes, but they've moved it. Talking of which I am off to the cricket next week, Steve. So thank you for reminding me of that. I'm off to a one day international, looking forward to it.

Jayne Green (26:07)
Hahaha ⁓

Steve Vaughan (26:16)
never got into the arches.

Okay, don't rub it in. Yeah. That

should be nice. One final recommendation from both of you and from me perhaps for a new salesperson starting out on their career listening to this, if they're still with us for as long as they, to the episode, one recommendation, one bit of sage advice that you'd like to give to a salesperson starting their career right now. Who'd like to go first?

Jayne Green (26:45)
Yeah, it's still in my head. ⁓ You're going to win some and you're going to lose some. I thought I was going to win everything. And I think I went out and that was what happened, you know, that enthusiasm. Then you move into different roles and you might be up against greater competitors or more complexity in the sale. And all of a sudden, I realized that you might get some level of no or a rejection.

Steve Vaughan (26:48)
You

Yeah.

Jayne Green (27:12)
be aware that that is part of the job. You win some and you lose some, you know, and that's part of the joy and part of the journey of selling and learn how to pick yourself up if you do lose or if you get a rejection. They don't come as often as the wins in my experience, but they do happen.

Steve Vaughan (27:24)
Great point.

Well, if we won everything, we wouldn't need salespeople, we, guess, really? And of course, we learn from the nos, don't we? We learn from the failures, don't we? So, yeah, one from you, Prou.

Jayne Green (27:32)
Yeah, true.

We do, yeah.

Pru (27:39)
I think it's on the rejection. Rejection is what happens in sales and we just have to learn to deal with it. And it's never personal either, rarely personal. But I think it's the idea that when a customer says no, they rarely, if ever, mean no, never. I think I got kind of turned away or turned down or lacked success and I would almost kind of write them off. I'd go, they don't like us.

Steve Vaughan (28:04)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Pru (28:05)
And that's

just not true. You know, it's just not true. So if I'd realized, I think, early on that it was just, got my timing wrong. And sales is the art of timing, making it the right place at the right time in front of the right person. And I think I would have had the right kind of persistence instead of the wrong kind of persistence.

Jayne Green (28:07)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (28:26)
Love that. Yeah. And for me, think, and probably I did do this, but I'd do more if I started again. The importance of always be.

prospecting really always be looking for the next opportunity. The importance of just keeping my eyes open, asking some questions and the customer, know, who else uses these? Who else might want one of those? Anybody else you think I should be talking to the importance of doing that really, because there are times in my career when, you know, the sales funnel wasn't clean and healthy, let's put it that way. And the importance of always be looking for your next sale, your next opportunity, even if things are going fantastically well at the moment, it's super important. I think for me, that would be.

Pru (28:36)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (28:38)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (29:03)
the best advice I'd give to anybody starting their sales career right now. And if you are, good luck, it's a great job. And I wish you a long and successful career. So ProJane, thanks so much for your personal thoughts on that one. you know, was a slightly different theme for our podcast today, but I hope, dear listener, you found that one useful. We're going to do something different for our next podcast. So we're coming towards the summer holidays now, and we're not going to be producing any shows over August.

For our last show in July, what we're going to try and do, if we can get everybody available, is to get the whole team on. So that's going to be a logistical challenge with the software that we use remotely. Prusa holding her heads in her hands right now. But what we thought we would do, again, in a retrospective way, is to look back on the two years that we've been doing this podcast now. So we've made, getting on for 50 episodes and many thousands of people have downloaded the show, which we thank you all for doing so. We thought we'd look back on what we've learned.

from podcasting times. Some of us, you know, who's new to us, some of us have done this a bit more often. What we've learned from podcasting and also what we want to do with the podcast moving forward. And of course we'd welcome your thoughts and input on that over the next couple of weeks. And if you have enjoyed the show, don't forget to subscribe to it in your favorite podcast app. And we'd love you to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify if they have the opportunity. As I said, we'll be back in July with another podcast. Until then, happy selling and we'll talk to you soon.