Espresso: William Kendall from Green & Blacks, How To Improve Your Sales Technique to 5x Results

0:06My dad would, you know, every time you picked a net of peas, depending on what the market price was, you'd get a ticket or a brass counter. then you cash those in at the end of the week my dad would sit there in his farm truck and so I mean all of you know I sort of grew up with this sort of culture of of ingredients not really of not of cooking but I mean I don't think that I um I don't think I've I don't think I was obsessed with food I think I was I don't think I was upset that was just what it was and I think probably it was it was separation from that that made me more and more interested in it I loved selling things so that probably tells you more about why I've got involved in in food businesses I set up a stall at the end of our family farm drive and we're very close to the A1 and so there were quite a lot of cars driving by even in those days and you know I remember selling I think I was selling something like rhubarb which was surplus on the farm and my dad who was an amazing lovely guy but probably didn't like people selling food at the end of their farm drives for you know because he felt that we'd moved on from that he sort of discouraged me from doing it but i just remember loving the fact that people would stop their cars and buy stuff off me not just because they were being nice but because they really wanted it and it was fresh it was farm fresh so i remember that but i kind of forgotten it and then i think i got back into food because um i learned to cook um my wife inherited the farm that we now live on and there were and her parents didn't live here.

1:35She inherited it from another relative. So there was no one to cook here, no parents, which was, so I had to learn to cook, to sort of cook for us and for our friends visiting. So I learned to cook and I, you know, there's a garden here. And so I sort of learned to, I got, you know, I became interested that way. I sort of self-taught cook, had a few, you know, help from friends and then, you know, one thing led to another. where do you think the the desire to sell came from i don't know i mean i think i think i think i was born with that i'm very interested in what you know because i talked to a lot i've had quite an unconventional career and and and so quite a lot of my friends who've you know gone into the city or gone into the law or whatever will will will ask if i talk to their children who are struggling to work out what they want to do in life and and they somehow think that I'm going to you know they're probably they're probably three years into a career in in something that their dad's done and they go back to throw it all in and so in desperation their dad says but you go you go and talk to this guy because he's sort of you know my career dosh jotted all over the place in my 20s and I'm always interested in trying to find out what people what what what people what really got people excited in their childhood because so often we're told to you know what are you going to be i'm going to be a doctor i'm going to be a fireman i'm going to be a policeman but actually rather than say well what really interests you because you could you know you could actually do what interests you i mean let's take the police you know the police force has got so many different jobs in it that that but instead you know we're encouraged to decide we want to be a policeman but actually what if you want to you know it's much better so i i like selling things and um i i look back the reason i remember that incident of my father saying i don't think we should be need to be selling stuff at the end of the drive anymore me being disappointed it reminds me of you know my me realizing i just love selling things and loves i love selling things that people turn out that they want i mean i don't i'm not a kind of i'm not a very good salesperson selling to people who don't want stuff so i'm you know call it a virtuous a salesperson i mean i sold vacuum cleaners once but they were amazing vacuum cleaners and they were expensive and i didn't sell very many of them because it was a bit embarrassing they were so expensive but i mean when i found somebody who really needed one of these vacuum cleaners you know i was really good at selling it and i'm i love selling other people with someone you know i meet somebody and they've got a new product i'm i'm i've become their best salesperson i mean i you know might later find it's got a few flaws but i get very excited about selling things quick one guys, Espresso's got a brand new sponsor, Unleashed.

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6:34I remember thinking, I introduced them three years ago. That's my sale. Of course it's not. I mean, it's taken three years of hard slog of, you know, filling in forms, of working out. You know, I just opened the door. I spoke to one of the founders of it. They said, that sounds amazing. I must put you in contact. You know, my version of selling is the easy bit of selling i just say you know this is what's great but selling is also about getting under the bonnet of the customer and working out why they absolutely do need you especially in our world of food and drink where there's so much choice and it's so tough you know just saying i've got a great product it tastes lovely it's not but but i think you've and also selling is i also think selling is not just the the the transaction like alex ferguson is selling a dreams back in the day to the united team like you know there's selling isn't just that i think it's quite myopic to look through the lens of like it's just selling you know that one traffic transaction that car or that piece of rhubarb like sales are such a it's a transference of feeling i think and obviously you've done it you've done it multiple times in your in your career with new common garden soup with green and blacks we're going to explore these shortly you've been able to pull people in in to these um businesses to join the mission per se what would you say are your principles which could help listeners of selling like your one two three do you think if you could boil it down i for me it's it's it's all around you know having a strong narrative having a story i mean that's you know i i'm not i'm not into i'm just not good at selling anything if there if there isn't a strong purpose behind it.

8:19I mean, you know, purpose has sort of acquired a new kind of, I suppose, sort of professional definition. But, you know, I need to, I suppose, you know, I'm quite a campaigner. I'm, you know, an environmentalist. I grew up on a farm. I've always felt very strongly that, you know, modern farming isn't good for the planet. I'm a supporter of wider nature. And so I suppose I come from that background and my mum was one of those people as well. So I kind of, I've chosen to go into business. I'm very interested in politics. I always thought as a younger person, I would go into politics. And I think I am in politics in a way.

9:03I think being involved in business, particularly involved in earlier stage businesses, you know that i think that you can change the world for better through through enterprise and so that to me what that's what interests me most now it always sort of has done i mean i'm interested in business per se but i'm interested in why why are we doing this because we're not you know if we're not making the world a better place i mean there's absolutely no justification for existing You know, we operate under a license for society. So I guess that's where my stories start. You know, that's where I come from.

9:40Why are we doing? Why do you need this? Why does the world need this product? And, you know, then you do need to get into a bit more detail as to why this particular customer needs this product when they seem to have got a lot of other people's products already. But I still think that, you know, increasingly it turns out that lots of people think like me. I mean, I've been thinking like that for all of my adult life, if not longer. But, you know, now you find some of the most commercial organisations are saying, well, you know, how's this going to help us on our journey to net zero? How's this going to help us on our journey towards, you know, improving biodiversity?

10:19How's this going to help on our, you know, journey on engaging with the wider community? those sorts of things well that's kind of always been my interest i mean i don't want to make myself sound too virtuous because then you switch everybody off and including myself i mean you know it's got to be fun it's got to be you know it's got to taste good it's got to be all those things as well but to me it's got to have it's got to have a wider purpose you see yeah you said you said you said why and why and story are probably the other two legs of purpose or the things that prop up purpose let's go into this why in this story so so you as you said your career kind of dotted around you were in the army in barrister investment banker then you went to uh in how do i say in sead yeah so you see describe what you're feeling at that point in your life and then what was what was the why and the story that made you rekindle that love with food from your from your childhood and the rhubarb feelings that made you think right because because as you said like you've just done a a master's degree at one of the best schools in europe yeah and and i think just just to give listeners a bit of context like we talked about this with mark is right now it's very in vogue and a bit rock star to launch a food and drink brand yeah back then it was not right even from what mark has told me thank you so so much for listening it honestly means the world to me I hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and go and have an amazing day let's be having ya if you want the full episode it will be in the show notes a link will be in the show notes for the full episode thank you so much please say friends as well it means the world to me