How to Leverage Your Skills and Sell to Corporate Clients with Jessica Lorimer

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Success Story Podcast. Today, we'll be breaking down how to leverage your skills and sell to corporate clients. To drop these value bombs, I brought Jessica Lorimer into EO Fire Studios. Jess is a leading B2B sales coach teaching entrepreneurs how to leverage their skills and sell their services to corporate clients. In today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about who can sell their services to corporate companies, the types of services that we can sell, how to start the process of generating B2B leads, and so much more.

0:42And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Jessica and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.

1:16Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. Jessica, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, hey, hey, Fire Nation. I am so excited to be here. And I think the biggest thing that I feel about being successful that other people generally don't agree with is that getting outside in nature is one of the things that makes me the most money.

2:02Every time I go for a walk, every time I go outside, do some kind of physical exercise, that is where revenue tends to come from. And I think it's that being outside, being disciplined with exercise and who you are makes you disciplined in your sales activities too. I have a four-year-old golden doodle and And every morning, I'm on a three-mile walk with him outdoors. And every evening, I'm on a three-mile walk with him outdoors. And I swear to you, Fire Nation, it's during those walks that I have all of my best ideas, thoughts, aha moments. I'm also listening to podcasts and audiobooks. But of course, my eyes and my mind's wandering around and I'm thinking.

2:44And I love that. I mean, that's a great way to start the episode. that's all about how to leverage your skills, Fire Nation, and sell to corporate clients. Now, a lot of people in Fire Nation, Jessica, they're focused on starting their own companies, but you're suggesting that we should consider selling our services to other companies. Why is that and what does that look like? I think it's important because most people who listen to Fire Nation, I'm sure, will be so fired up by having a podcast and building their own personal brand, which you should absolutely be doing. You know, the impact that people can make selling to other individuals or business owners is huge.

3:24But the economy changes quite regularly. And most people who go into starting their own business, realize that there's a really steep learning curve to selling to other individuals, you have to get on board with being involved in social media marketing, potentially paying for a lot of ad traffic and those things are time consuming and expensive and so actually selling to corporate organizations is much simpler I know we're going to cover off a lot of that today and it also pays at a very premium price point so for example most people who sell to corporate companies will actually see that the average b2b sale is worth 10 000 pounds in the UK.

4:09And the average B2C, so selling to another individual, is worth$1 ,500. So it's actually most likely to pay you five times more with a lot less work and a lot less reliance on other platforms that aren't owned by you. I honestly thought the B2C would even be lower than that because it does not surprise me when people are talking about, you know, hey, I'm selling B2C, but it's like a$97 sale or$197 sale. But Fire Nation, when you're dealing with legitimate companies, I mean, you can be talking about legitimate paydays when you're offering the right service. So let's get specific, Jessica, who can sell their services to corporate companies?

4:54So the most common categories that we see people selling to corporates are coaches, consultants, speakers, trainers, and done-for-you service providers. So people who are in podcast production or videography, for example. And those people are selling in a huge variety of areas. So health and wellness is a super popular area at the moment and has been for the last two years, will probably be for the next five to eight years. So we see lots of nutritionists, mental health professionals, menopause or female health consultants and specialists selling really well into corporate companies but also people in talent development, leadership consulting, executive coaching or graphic design.

5:41Those things are also really popular alongside motivational speakers, people just like you and I in sales or marketing, delivering talks, workshops, lunch and learn sessions and a whole lot more. So there's a real breadth and depth now to the skills that are being sold to corporate companies than there were five years ago. I think people always think, oh, you can only sell to corporates if you're selling like HR services or marketing. But actually, we see some really interesting, I would call them the weird and wonderful skills now being sold to corporate organisations, because they're really prioritising people who have different perspectives and what they can bring to their employees and how they can change the overall company impact, reputation, or profitability.

6:24One thing I want to move into is getting really detailed and specific about the types of services that we can sell to corporate companies. I mean, we've talked about this a little bit, but let's really dive into the types. And then what I would love you to do after we kind of get into that for a little bit, Jessica, is take a step back and give a couple examples of either yourself or a client of yours who has done this successfully? Because I love those real world examples. Me too. And I've got, I keep telling people I've got an A4 document that is just repeating itself in my Google Docs with about 2000 testimonials from the last two years.

7:00So you'll have to stop me if I get too excited. So in terms of the types of services that people sell to corporate companies, we have a lot of people who are making multi-six figures with about five to eight corporate clients in their revenue stream. And these are people who may or may not also be running B2C businesses alongside it. And those people might be selling three-month coaching packages to corporate organizations to support senior leaders in being onboarded into new positions. Equally, we had one person who actually quadrupled their revenue as a podcast producer in 12 months with selling to corporates and they are now selling to some of the world's biggest not-for-profit organizations and helping them to create podcasts that are generating awareness about their not-for-profit organizations helping to raise funds for specific diseases illnesses and causes and we've even had people who are in the speaker coaching world or in presenting coaching so people who know PowerPoint really really well go into organizations and train employees on how to use those things develop those skills so that they can go out into real world situations hold meetings better be more confident get promoted quicker get more visible and even build their own personal brand inside organizations.

8:32So there's really a huge breadth and depth to what you can be selling to organizations in terms of coaching and consulting. And then we see a lot of great speakers who talk on a huge variety of health, wellness, leadership, mental health, workshop culture, performance culture type topics. And they'll go in and deliver to teams of, you know, 15, right through to teams of 1 ,500 and deliver huge motivational and actionable keynote talks that will range anywhere from 5 ,000 pounds to upwards of 25 ,000 pounds per talk. Fire Nation, if you weren't excited before, I hope you're getting excited now because this is the type of opportunity where you can take what you're doing and say, hey, with a little twist, with a little tweak, I'm able to do something of what I'm already doing on another level to another customer, to another client, to a B2B opportunity.

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12:11Join Taylor to learn exactly what TEDx organizers are looking for in their speakers, how to write a talk that goes viral once it goes online, and more. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire. Join Taylor for this free training and get your message out of your head, out of your heart, and out into the world where it belongs. That's thought-leader.com slash fire. Jessica, we're back, and I want to talk about starting because with Fire Nation, I love giving them that first step so they can really understand what that process would look like if they wanted to, let's just say, start going forward. So how do we start the process of actually generating B2B leads?

12:53That's business to business. It's a really great question. And actually, I love the point that you made just before the break about the fact that people can make small tweaks where they are or to the services they already offer and take them into corporate companies because it's completely true. And actually generating corporate leads is simpler than people think. So I think a lot of the time we can all get a bit caught up as B2C business owners with social media. And that means that when we think about selling to corporates, people automatically assume they're going to have to go and hang out on LinkedIn and post three or four times a day.

13:26And I don't know about you, but how many HR directors or senior stakeholders in corporate businesses are hanging out on LinkedIn all day thinking, oh, I wish we could find an executive coach, right? They're just not. Actually, B2B lead generation is targeted and proactive. And so what that means is deciding on the top three stakeholders or decision makers in businesses. Usually they are going to be involved with HR or talent management or operations and just approaching them directly through email to say, hey this is my area of specialism this is the transformation that I provide to organizations and I would love to talk to you about what your company is doing in this area so for example if I was going to reach out I teach b2b sales to sports companies I would reach out and say hey I am a sales coach and expert and I work with sports teams to help their sales team members overcome objections more consultatively so that they can save more corporate sponsorship, partnership and hospitality opportunities.

14:40And I'd love to chat to you about what your sales team is currently doing to handle those objections. Does that make sense? So it's super, super simple, super, super clear. And for those of you who are thinking, but Jess, you know, what if I can do loads of things and I can't pinpoint it down to one, my advice is stay specific because if they come back and say, we've already got that topic covered. You can be like, oh, great. Well, what about this other area that I can help you with? Much better to start the conversation than it is to, you know, be too vague in the beginning and not get a response at all.

15:16I love that idea of having the door being opened. And I hope Fire Nation, you can realize the importance of saying, hey, this is a micro niche, or this is something that I uniquely focus on that I can really help you. So you're being specific, you're not being broad or vague and trying to resonate with everybody. Because Fire Nation, when you try to resonate with everybody and everything, you resonate with nobody and nothing. So be the master of one domain. Let it open that door and let it start that conversation. But let's be honest, Jess, a sales call with a company is vastly different to a discovery call with an individual.

15:53So talk to us about that. It really is different to a call with an individual. And you know, one of the biggest differences that I think is that company decision makers are so much happier to talk about money. When we're selling to individuals, it's really difficult to talk about budgets and things because we're always conscious that that person is spending their disposable income. You know, they are looking at making a decision to purchase based on not only how their business might move forward, but also, you know, how their bills might be paid that month. Whereas corporate decision makers are focused on how can we make the best decisions on solutions that are going to get the company a result?

16:35And it's not their money. So they're always happy to talk about cash, which is great and takes away a lot of the awkwardness. But the actual call itself has four key stages. So the first stage of a corporate sales call, because we do refer to them as business development or sales calls, is setting the agenda. It's letting them know outright on the call what you're going to discuss that day, rather than opening with, hey, how are you? Because that's awkward. And if they're having a bad day, you could end up on a 25-minute rant about why their dog is not behaving and not actually get anywhere. So a simple agenda that says, hey, you know, I'm so glad that we've connected today.

17:15I'm really looking forward to talking to you about. And then insert the topic from your lead generation messaging. then we've got our situational fluency questions so this is where we sense check that we're on the phone to the right lead the most qualified lead and that means the person who is most interested in our area of specialism and has responsibility for the budget that's going to pay us okay so situational fluency questions just help establish who that person is what their responsibility is in the company, what kind of team size they manage. Okay. And then we move on to the things that probably feel more familiar to a B2C sales call, pain questions.

17:58So we want to focus on open-ended questions that help identify areas that they might be struggling with. In my niche, for example, that would be about, hey, you know, how are your sales team performing right now? Or how are they managing changes to the market? What things do they find difficult? and once you've established pain areas that they want to explore more you can start talking about the final section of your business development call and that's all about impact questions because I don't know about you but when I sit on a sales call with anybody who tells me that I must change something or they start pitching me something it doesn't really matter even if you need it, you start to get a bit defensive.

18:44You start to feel a bit like, no, I just want to be contrary. Impact questions remove that defensiveness because their job is to help the stakeholder or decision maker self-identify, yeah, we do have that problem and it is causing commercial issues. So impact questions are things like, what would be the consequence of not training your sales team to handle more objections? Or what would be the consequence if you had two or more people go off on long-term sick in your team at once? Who else would be doing that work? What would be the practical consequence of having those people absent? Yeah, those impact questions make the stakeholders play through in their mind, okay, well, are there genuine consequences or impacts or painful things that might happen if we don't fix a problem.

19:40And that is what makes a stakeholder turn around and say to you, hey, we do have this problem. How can you help us fix it? So you're not even having to pitch, oh, do you want to hear about my thing? Do you want to hear about my solution? Instead, they're actively asking you, oh my goodness, you've helped us identify we have this issue. Now help us fix it and let us pay you. Fire Nation, a lot of value bombs coming from Jessica. I mean, one thing that I really think is cool to think about is realizing that, hey, a lot of these companies have budgets that have to be spent. I mean, I know I used to work for a company that if we didn't spend our marketing budget on a month to month basis, then we would lose a percentage of it.

20:22Like it would go down. So like we had objectives and goals of reaching that spend on a month to month basis. And we did because we didn't want to lose that marketing spend going forward. So you can think about it in a different way, like Jessica's mentioned, and there's a lot of cool ways to approach it. Now, Jessica, before we end, I want to just have you take a step back and give us the one key takeaway that you really want to make sure our listeners get from our conversation today. If I could give you one key takeaway, it would be that anyone can create a corporate revenue stream, but everyone should be creating a corporate revenue stream.

20:58In this economy where we are facing cost of living crises and recessions, it's very easy to, as a B2C seller, start seeing a dip in revenue. You know, people don't even want to be investing in small or lower ticket offers because it's really eating into their available income each month. But companies can provide that stable, predictable income that you can use to fund your B2C business while you're waiting for the economy to change. So everyone can set up a corporate revenue stream. Some people won't, but the people who do genuinely will outlive, survive and thrive in difficult economical times.

21:44Jessica, if Fire Nation is fired up about this, what's the next step? How do they get started? Well, we created a page just for you. You can actually if you are a member of Fire Nation you can go to selling to corporate.com forward slash EOF and you can download our proven b2b sales blueprint so if you want to grab the exact framework that my clients are using to successfully sell their services into corporates you can go and download that and really explore what offers are the most successful and profitable to sell to corporate clients, what a corporate client actually is, and all of the different types of case studies that you can see from people who've made the system work for them and learn from their breakthroughs too.

22:31And one more time, what was that URL? Selling to corporate.com forward slash EOF. Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with JL and JLD today. So keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Jessica in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Jessica, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Jessica for sponsoring today's episode.

23:08And Fire Nation, are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free, freepodcastcourse.com. I will catch you there or on the flippity-flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business, and the media landscape is fragmented.

23:43The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. Thank you.