Why you need to embrace two-faced strategies in the new era of buying

0:06Welcome to Mastering Sales and Negotiations, the podcast for ambitious professionals who want to sharpen their skills, transform their conversations and deliver lasting commercial impact. I'm your host, Rachel Massey, and in this episode, we're joined by Rebecca Bromwich, Global Account Director at Vodafone. We're going to explore why the best salespeople need to be two-faced. And no, we don't mean being dishonest. We're talking about the ability to adapt, to balance the language of the customer with the language of your own organisation and to navigate the tensions that come with both. So let's hear what Rebecca has to say.

0:50Rebecca, welcome to the Master in Sales Negotiations podcast. Thank you. Can you just tell us a little bit about your role at Vodafone and the kind of clients that you manage at the moment? Yeah, absolutely. So I am a global account director. I manage two of the largest global companies. One is in the security space and one is in the professional services space. So they're very, very different clients, which I love because they have completely different challenges. So I like the fact that they're completely different from each other, makes life more interesting. But I manage the teams around the world as well.

1:26So I manage the strategy for these companies on a global basis. And then I have teams in different countries who manage it. They implement that strategy on a local basis. So yeah, that's me in a nutshell. Just on that then, how do you find managing those teams in different countries? Is that quite a challenge in itself? It can be. It's very interesting that there's a lot of different. I'm going to go on to some cultural stereotypes now, which perhaps I shouldn't. But I did learn quite early on that the people that I deal with in Germany do not like small talk. So and it was quite interesting because I'd be chatting away, asking them various different and they just get questions about the weekend.

2:11Yes, quieter and quieter. And I thought they're really not interested. So now I go in straight in there. Right. What's happening this week? And, you know, so. So, yeah, there are some some some cultural nuances, which I find really interesting. But it's difficult. I tell you what's difficult, because you're not they're not in the same country. So you're not managing. I'm not their manager. I manage that team. so some people are more let's say keen than others some you really have to work to to bring on board so um so yeah there's a there's a lot of different nuances let's say keeps it interesting it keeps it very interesting Rachel yeah so the title of today's episode then is about being two-faced in sales yeah controversial possibly um but it's in the best possible sense so can you explain what we mean by that and why you think that's a critical skill for salespeople today?

3:09I think it's probably one of the most critical skills. I think particularly the higher you move into sales. So maybe not at the sort of appointment making end of things, early on in your career, let's say. But the higher you move within an organisation in sales, it is probably one of the most critical skills, I would say, because the way I look at it is that you almost, which ties in quite nicely with what I do in our global base as well, you almost have to be, I wouldn't even say bilingual, I think you have to be multilingual. I think you need to understand from your own company's perspective, because they've got KPIs, they've got forecasts, they've got, you know, forecast pipeline, all that type of thing.

3:56So you need to be able to understand and work that language. But then from a customer perspective, you need to be able to understand their world as well. So they've got completely, they don't care about your sales process. They've got their own challenges. They've got their own ambitions. They've got their own, you know, why they're talking to you in the first place. So they don't care that you've got quarter ends and FY ends and all the rest of it. So you have to learn to how to juggle those two and and almost make it seamless. So you've got to, so the way I look at it is that you advocate for your company with the customer and you advocate for your customer with the company.

4:35So you're almost like that mediator.

4:39Robin Hoyle:Absolutely. And you, you talked in your blog, the sales roast blog that you talked about the idea of the trusted advisor. And you had a bit of an issue with, with that terminology. What, what, Because it feels like that's part of what you've just described. So what's your concern about that terminology? So I think it's becoming almost a cliche now. I think it's the gold standard of what everybody's trying to achieve, which is great and absolutely should be as well, particularly when you're getting to these larger type of sales. The trusty advisor is almost like the holy grail of what every salesperson wants to be.

5:19it's also the holy grail of whatever every company wants to attract to come and sell for them which is brilliant and if that's what we were allowed to be then fantastic but where i find that it often falls short and i'm not just talking about places that i've worked obviously i've got you know people move around you keep in touch so you know what goes on in other companies you know quite well versed in in what goes on there's often a real disconnect between what you are trying to be as a trusted advisor versus the internal pressure that you're getting in terms of... The way I look at it is that you've got people who are saying, yeah, we want you to be a trusted advisor.

6:02We want you to be a strategic partner to your customers. And then... To a point. To a point, yeah. And the next time you're on a call with them, it's getting near quarter end. When's it going to close? When's it coming in? All that sort of... So they don't trust you. as much as...

6:17Robin Hoyle:They want you to be trusted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's the same thing. I used to talk a lot at conferences and events and things about the idea that every organisation's glossy corporate year-end report has got something in there which says people are our most important asset. And I used to just kind of stroke my beard and go, really? Is that the way you act? And it's that same thing. I think that idea of it becoming a kind of cliche is sort of sad in a way because I think that idea of actually having genuine trust on both sides and the point that you were making earlier about speaking internally, what are the challenges there about bridging what the company is trying to do, the corporate entity that you work for is trying to do, versus satisfying what your client has, well, thinks they've bought, or thinks that they might want to buy.

7:19Robin Hoyle:Where does that communication or that process break down for the person in the middle who happens to be the kind of account director or salesperson or whatever they are? So I think there's a number of areas. I mean, first of all, I think that it starts at the top. But I think in terms of managing that relationship between the two, because you very much are the middleman in this. So the way that I've looked at it is that you need to be really, really crystal clear on what your strategy is and also crystal clear on what the customer's strategy is. So like I say, they don't care about your internal processes and sales process and everything else.

8:01It is not on their radar. They'll be aware of it, but it's not what they're looking at. so you almost need to to bridge that and i think the way that i've found is the best way to navigate this is to understand the buyer and their company and their needs completely so i'm talking about not just um you know their challenges and their their ambitions and what they're trying to achieve with buying your solution i'm talking about who is involved from their from their side who are the stakeholders at what point will they come in and what interest do they have in this you know what is their governance process so who's gonna who is likely to appear from the wings that you didn't even know existed because that does happen often you know who is procurement sets yeah yeah yeah exactly or somebody that just pops in and you're like hello you know there's um and quite often on a call as well yeah may i introduce you to yes yeah exactly so um if you're I think the more you can understand that, because what it is for the company is that they're having to rely and trust their salespeople to be able to manage this process.

9:14And I think from a manager, when you step back and you're not directly involved, it's quite difficult to them because they've then got a feedback who they have to feed back and so on and so forth. if they don't understand it or they don't feel comfortable that you understand it yeah that's where the difficulty lies you're going to get loads of questions you're going to get loads of people asking you why isn't it coming why isn't it moving why we stalled at this bit yeah um or this this type of conversation so if you can be able to say i understand their process i understand their governance i understand who's involved at what stage etc it just gives them that level of comfort.

9:53And the other thing I would say as well is to communicate that regularly, even when you've got nothing to say, because the amount of times you get, and it still happens, no matter how fastidious you are with updating, you know, you can send up daily updates to the key stakeholders in your own organisation, you'll still get them pinging saying, what's going on with this? But you start to get braver and say, it was in yesterday's report, just have a look at that, because you can't be fielding these conversations all the time. But I think that over-communicate is what I would say, just a daily briefing, doesn't need to be much, but this is what's happened today.

10:31If there's nothing to report, tell them there's nothing to report. It just gives them that sense of that comfort feeling rather than going, I don't know what's going on with this. But you have considered it and you understand where you are. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

10:43Robin Hoyle:And that idea of kind of being able to play back the customer's perspective, the client's perspective, when you're talking about very large organizations and you're working with very large organizations on a daily, hourly basis, that idea of being able to say, yes, but it's different in country X or the process has been slowed because of this other thing that's going on, which doesn't mean that we we're not going to land this deal or we're not going to progress here it just means that it's going to take slightly longer yeah is is there a challenge in almost gaining the resource that you need to really build that intelligence about the customer about about their various departments functions territories etc is is does that become a challenge for a person in your role kind of managing those global accounts?

11:42Robin Hoyle:And how do you bridge that gap? So that's a good question, actually. And I think it depends. I think you need to be really careful about how you manage this internally as well. So my two clients not only have nuances globally, but they're polar opposites from each other as well. You know, professional services have a certain set of challenges and ambitions. The global security company that I manage, they're margin squeezed. And they're going through a massive transformation trying to get from manned guards to, you know, a more digital approach. So they have completely different needs, completely different set of restrictions and governance and all the rest of it and goals that they're trying to achieve.

12:32So one of the things that I do when I look at my, and it's not possible for the professional services to look at an annual report, but, you know, they do have things out there that you can do your research on. So I think you need to be really, really well prepared and having a strategy is part of that preparation. So really understanding the customer themselves. I don't think you can be over prepared in this. I think the more you understand about the customer themselves and not in relation to your solution. I mean, take that out of it completely. It needs to be about what are they being measured on?

13:09What are they're having to, you know, appeal to their own shareholders? And a lot of it comes from that direction as well. So I think the more you understand them as a company, the more you can go back in. So one of the things that I really advocate for is having, you can call them what you will, deal clinics is one of the words, but it really is just a gathering of people with different experiences around the company. So, for example, with the security company, then I've had a conversation with our head of security. I've had a conversation with our head of facilities because I want to understand what their world looks like.

13:50And actually they can offer information and things that you never would have thought of, you know, what type of things that they're up against, what their KPIs are. Yeah, because why would you know? You've got to really, you've got to investigate this stuff, haven't you? Absolutely. And I think that's where you can get a lot of really gold information and nuggets from your own organization to really understand their world and what actually might, what might be on their radar or what they might be struggling with, for example. So it's just about bringing, the way I look to look at my role is, and I do say this quite a lot, is that I'm almost like the conductor of an orchestra.

14:27So you need to know who to bring in and when. So when does the woodwind come in? When do the strings, when does the, you know, the drums start playing or whatever? And actually, when do you tell them to shut up as well and move on to the next bit? So it really is managing lots of different strings, if you like. and I think that's what the clearer you can be on your understanding of the customer so the more you know of them so present to them and say this is what I know about the customer now tell me anything and one thing and I think I learned this over my career as well and I've seen a lot of people do this and I always say do not worry about the gaps in fact the more gaps you have the better because don't assume that you're ever going to understand everything you don't have to know the answer to every question.

15:14You don't have to know, understand every part of their business. Bring in people that can help you fill those gaps. Yeah, exactly. So that's the information gathering part of being a really great two-faced salesperson. But what do you feel are the real skill sets as well that you need to bring in? What skills do those people need to have as two? So I think that you need to be able to have what I call organizational empathy. So to understand how your own internal company works, navigates what their own purpose is. And I think people can lose sight of that as well, because if you actually go back and say, what is your own company's purpose?

16:03I reckon there's quite a lot of people that wouldn't be able to answer that. Absolutely. So it goes back to that. And I think having sort of organisational empathy, so understanding the different parts. So how does finance work? What do they care about? How does IT work? How does, I don't know, pre-sales, you know, all the different people, because there are, particularly in a large organisation like Vodafone and other companies, you know, similar-sized companies. I've always worked for pretty big companies. they all have their you know their own set of challenges let's just say and I think the the larger the organization is the less agile the more processes the more red tape all the rest of it trying to navigate that is often more is harder than getting the customer to buy into it in the

16:57Robin Hoyle:first place and recognizing that for some people you know I remember I remember having a conversation with somebody once who's telling me that um she had to do a desk assessment ergonomic assessment of her workspace and all the rest of it and there's a questionnaire which went on for about 20 pages and it's like basically the guy who's responsible for the ergonomic assessment thought that was what the point of the organization was whereas actually you know we were doing a whole host of other stuff and time was limited and resources were on the within on the ground and all that that that idea of of being able to see the wood for the trees even about your own organization is challenging yeah to be able to understand that for the client organization particularly if you've got a number of different clients and in your case they're very very different yeah keeping that all in your head is kind of tricky so what what are the what are the challenges then of navigating both so that you are speaking to you know we we have this idea of speaking to the right people at the right time about the right stuff you know it it's how how are you able to navigate that and choose where you're going to focus your time and where you're asking your teams in those different territories to focus their time how are you how are you kind of guiding that process i suppose that is an interesting question an interesting question it's actually the answer is multifaceted because in the role that i do specifically then the the team of a of local account managers or national account managers we call them within their different countries this my account is not the only account they manage yeah at all i mean some of them have only have a few um some of them can have a list of like 200 on there yeah because yeah because Because if it's not a very active region, for example, or it might be a huge global company, but their local market, it is small fry.

18:59So it's barely on their radar. So trying to compete for their attention, and also you get the type of salespeople as well, that they'll be a best mate if you go to them with something saying, I've got you a contact, I know the contract's coming up for renewal, or some piece of information, and then they'll really want to know. but trying to get them to be proactive is often a completely different story. And that is challenging. And I get the fact that they have other accounts. So trying to make it interesting for them from this perspective, while we're looking at this side of things, trying to make it interesting.

19:30So I write a quarterly newsletter for each account and I send that out. And it has static pages that have links to their LinkedIn, Twitter accounts, Instagram, whatever they've got, all this type of thing. the latest link to their latest annual report or investors report, whatever might be on there. And then I do updates of what salesperson has, is what conversations they're having. You know, if I've been out to that particular market with them, you know, I'll talk about the visit there, what we talked about. So the different types of conversation, just trying to build that interest and also understanding and make it a little bit more exciting.

20:11So it sort stands out and, you know, on their radar. So that's one of the things. But also then, in terms of, let's say, where I'm managing stakeholders on a particular deal, and it's not salespeople, it's going to be people like pre-sales or delivery or finance, commercial, you know, all the different types of people that get involved. And there are lots of them trying to make sure it's a case of just checking in, having regular calls. I think on some of the contracts that I'm working on, we'll have twice weekly updates. So call them steer co. So you'll have these calls and you'll bring everybody on.

20:52Not everybody can join everyone, but I do try and ask, you know, if you can make yourself available. And even again, if we've got not much to report, at least everybody is kept up to date. You need to keep at the forefront of people's minds because they've got so much going on with other stuff. The minute that momentum is lost then then the whole thing will slow down so just keeping it at the forefront this is what we're talking about um has anyone spoken to the customer this week has anyone you know got anything to report back any challenges we've got new challenges from these departments exactly yeah so just gathering that intel and then it'll quite often spark um conversation or at least people are aware of what stage we're at and it's at the front of their mind as well and i think one of the things

21:37Robin Hoyle:that I see organizations do is not paying that attention to the existing customer base. You know, we are frequently having conversations with people who are talking about hunters and farmers as though they are kind of different headed beasts in some ways. And actually, it comes with a side issue of contempt, which is in the side dish of contempt is, well, of course, the farmers are just the ones that are not very good salespeople. Heard this so many times. And I just go, honestly, have you got any idea why incumbent suppliers lose deals? It's because they think like that. It's because they don't put that time and effort and focus into how do I keep this alive, not only for the client, but also for my people so that they're prepared to go the extra mile.

22:27Robin Hoyle:I want to come back to that issue of trust. So where does that trust lie? Is that a trust between the national account manager and their local equivalent within your client? Is that a trust between the organisation in that territory and the service that they get? Is that about a trust between them and Vodafone 3? Where does that trust lie and where do you want it to lie when you're talking about people being proper trusted advisors? so i think the trust has to lie with management they have you have to be but you you can't i mean don't get me wrong you can't invite somebody into an organization and then you need to earn your trust right you've got to earn your strides um and you've got to show people that you're and i'm not talking about hitting the ground running and you know getting 150 in month three or something like that's ridiculous.

23:23But earning the right to gain that trust, I think is really, really important because the more successful I've been is when I've had people that I've been able to bring with me on that journey. So I'll give you an example. So this was, God, how many years ago now? We're talking over 10 years ago now. And there was a specific deal that was on the table. So, right, let me go back to the beginning. So what happened was I had sold a contract to quite a large, easy for me to say, large organization. And I had sold into that company and that had a set of challenges and that was an acquisition. And then one of the buyers, procurement people, moved companies.

24:14And he moved to another very, very large organization, contacted me and said, are you still at X company? Will you come out and quote for us? So I said, absolutely. He brought, he'd sought me out. He brought me back in. But this particular company that he'd moved to, the company that I worked at had had, every time they came up for renewal, it just went through the motions with RFP after RFP after RFP. The company never won it. There was never any feedback. There was never anything from the customer and it got to the stage where they said no we're not bidding for this zero interest in zero interest in and it was a large one as well so it would have it needed a lot of resource um and I I said yeah I know but that I trust the person that I've worked with he's sought me out he's come in he's new and I got so much pushback on this and the way that I navigated that was I actually went I thought you know no I really trust you really believe that I believe in this because I believe in the person I've built that relationship with.

25:17So I sought out people from around the business, commercial bid management, various different people within the business that I worked with before and I knew trusted me because we got that relationship and I went to them and I said, will you work on it with me? And I said, these are the reasons why I think we should go after it. The reasons why I think we can win it. And they bought into me. So I wasn't just somebody that said, oh please I just want to bid for something they they bought into me and I actually ended up we had a bit of a a rogue group between us but um I mean don't get me wrong because the company got very interested when it started looking like it was going in the right direction and all of a sudden oh yeah all of a sudden there was all this resource being thrown at it but you know but I had to I had to fight for that really to fight for that but that was about um there was a lot of trust there I think from different directions, there was trust in the original procurement person, in me.

26:15There was trust in me with him because we'd worked together before. And I actually sat. I remember sitting on a table and saying to him, if we are going through the motions and you need to get three supplier quotes, tell me. Because I know you will. I'll give you a quote that you can use. But don't make me go through this because it's going to take me this long to do. This is what the process needs to go through. And he said, I promise you we are not going through the motions. It wasn't a done deal, don't get me wrong. But he said, you know, I want to look. I'm new into this. I want to look at this, and I want to assess.

26:47And then me bringing people. So there was trust in all different types. There wasn't trust in the organization in me, interestingly enough, until it started to look like, ooh, I've got a sniff of something here.

26:59Robin Hoyle:And that idea, I mean, coming back to that thing about the trusted advisories, it does happen at those different levels. What Rackham, who was our founder and obviously wrote the original Spin Selling book, about 20 years after the Spin Selling book, wrote a different book where he talks about different levels of trust specifically. So he talks about transactional trust. I trust that this solution is going to work. He talks about consultative trust, which I think is where you were at with your procurement professional, which is to say we have a relationship which has been built up over years so we can actually talk turkey.

27:34Robin Hoyle:We can be honest with each other and go, is this just me going through the motions? And then there's that idea of enterprise trust. And where good incumbents are at is at the enterprise trust, where the two organizations trust each other. It's not about personalities. It's not when Fred moves, you're in trouble. It's actually about a much deeper set of relationships, multi-level, different stakeholders, different contacts at different levels and all those. and actually I see so many organizations where they think they've got a level of trust at that level but actually it's very personality driven yeah it's about the relationship between person a and person b from the two parties yeah and and that is inherently weak because as you said earlier people move around they do absolutely and and suddenly you're no longer building on that that relationship and and organizations seems to me ignore that at their peril yeah they do Is that something that you've seen within your previous roles?

28:36Robin Hoyle:Is that something where you've looked at an organization and said, actually, you're not working hard enough to build that enterprise trust? And what kind of alerted you to that? So I think you can tell because it's very much about it becomes transactional. So I can give you an example as well as, again, not going to mention where I was working, what the customer was, anything like this. But I had somebody once say to me that, you know, when we were looking at moving over to you and going through the contracts and everything, and we were not sold the dream in terms of like I'd given them a load of bullshit because I absolutely hadn't.

29:22But what happened was is that it was going very nicely. We had, you know, advocating for each other. The relationship was there or so we thought. And then one of the execs swooped in and asked about, can we bring it forward for this quarter? Because that would really help us out. And with nobody's knowledge, by the way. And then the company came back and said, that was the first time, the first time in all the time we've been speaking that this felt transactional to me. so it just ruined it well it didn't fortunately because you had to pull it back we had to pull it back and we had to manage that um and we had to talk about you know the sort of the reasons why that that was done but it could be a it could have been a car crash um i mean it wasn't fortunately um and i think that you know to give them their credit that they were really really pragmatic about it and sort of got it but there was a there was a moment where i just thought no no this this takes it back to the the um the the trusting your people until you don't yeah you know the the yes they say they trust you they trust you to bring in these these deals and they leave you alone and bring it in and then all of a sudden fy hit end hits yeah and all of a sudden it's no we know we need it now yeah yeah you know so it seems then there's there needs to be a real cultural shift then with organizations to understand this and just where does that come from does that i mean that is a really hard thing to do isn't it does it come from the lead does a leadership have to lead that the sales leadership have to lead that and say you've got to trust us where where where do you where does it where do you where does that come from i mean i guess i guess in some respects