The SALES Expert: Turn cold calls into cash with Tash Rebuck

14:12Tash Rebuck:I'm going to pitch slap you. Should I do on the first call, right? Like if they do answer, I'm here to be honest about what I want.

14:21Stephanie Melodia:So what you want to do is you want to give almost like a really short segment. And then you ask that big question, that big open question. so you want to go you know look be totally honest i'm calling actually live on podcast right now um i would love to steal five minutes of your time if that's okay okay and then they say yeah and then you go look the reason i'm calling is i'm currently recording a sales podcast we're looking for sponsors obviously you fit the bill our founders are looking for solutions like yours but look i'm on i'm on camera right now i'd love to know is it too crazy to try and put something in the diary for next week okay let's see how much of that i remember yeah that was a

15:09Tash Rebuck:lot that was gonna get that word for word let's go again yeah is that as in like actually fantastic

15:15Stephanie Melodia:yeah that's that's the tool i use i love yeah this is already kind of an ad for all these tools that

15:22Tash Rebuck:we're trying to pitch pitch for to sponsor well no tell you what we're gonna bleep them out like

15:26Stephanie Melodia:swear words unless they sponsor yes love it love it so this is an american number so we've got

15:35Tash Rebuck:timing on our side because it should be about midday maybe for these guys i'm not i have i've already forgotten half of what you said so i'm just gonna give it my best my best go here okay all we want is a pickup

15:51Stephanie Melodia:your call has been forwarded to voice now ah bastard okay hang on we're gonna send a text message okay easy to respond to let's do it now in case we get a response oh yeah absolutely hey Tim yeah was just calling you live from I genuinely think that's so interesting was just calling you live from a podcast yeah specifically for founders looking to grow yes and as a founder that loves i'd love to chat about sponsorship hang on you're talking to us i've just put

16:30Tash Rebuck:i love it hey just try calling you live from the air from my podcast studio specifically for entrepreneurs looking for tools to help grow their business looking for tools like a p*** leap

16:51Tash Rebuck:hey Tim just tried calling you live on the air from my podcast studio specifically for entrepreneurs looking for tools like a p***

16:58Stephanie Melodia:would love to chat about potential sponsorship opportunities

17:01Tash Rebuck:oh so we're being clear about that yeah absolutely

17:04Stephanie Melodia:we're not going to waste these people's time okay opportunities i'll try you again next week yeah oh no no ask say would it be crazy to have a chat next week would it be impossible to have a chat next week okay can i schedule a yeah would be would it be impossible uh is there no way that if you pose it as an impossibility it's uh it's really hard to say no to it it's a small psychological trick i love yeah right yeah I love that.

17:36Tash Rebuck:Love that. Would it be impossible to find a time next week? Yeah. To talk about sponsorship opportunities. Next week. Okay. Hey, let's try calling you live on the air from my podcast, specifically for entrepreneurs looking for tools like would love to chat about podcast sponsorship opportunities. Would it be impossible to find a time next week? Is that okay? All right. Listen, we're hitting send. So if we get a response, that was also me calling from my UK. over to an american number this is my dedication um so they've got an i message which i know is a bigger thing in the u.s but that's excellent that means it's gone through you'll see if he reads it

18:15Stephanie Melodia:i love how this is two birds with one's how i'm doing my sales but this is what working with me is like you know not not to not to do a sales pitch but i can't

18:25Tash Rebuck:help myself this is what you just do it you know the show don't tell what how how much less interesting would this be we were just talking people doing it for real life exactly okay i've got two more calls to make should we keep going with us i'm having fun with this let's do it i'm loving this fantastic all right so um i've got another uk number here should i tell you who it is if you want to give me some pointers um so it is kind of like a it is a sales tool it's it's more like data intelligence yeah yeah and it's actually this has been being a bit sneaky as well it's actually an account executive who reached out to me this week and his number's in the signature so i was like oh returning your email yeah perfect yeah all right because this

19:14Stephanie Melodia:would be a like so with every cold call you're always thinking what do i want to get out of this same with any approach with anyone right now for this person it wouldn't necessarily be that they'd be the right decision maker so what you want is not a meeting with them you want an introduction to the right person exactly okay all right fantastic love this all right let's call and if they're a good salesperson they should pick up the phone

19:39Tash Rebuck:even if it's 24 minutes past four on a friday i failed oh oh because i've lost signal Spanner in the works tech letting us down

19:52Stephanie Melodia:and this is why cold calling really isn't that scary

19:54Tash Rebuck:I've got signal again exactly you get yourself all pumped up yeah and then I don't even bloody answer exactly oh I've lost signal what's going on that failed as well it might be that he's on another call someone else that I've got is apparently oh I've just had a message from Vodafone I've now spent over one pound on calls to international numbers. So that was my commitment. I've spent a quid on...

20:23Stephanie Melodia:Okay, but think about what's your average... My ROI? No, what's your average contract value for sponsorship? That was worth a pound. You get that. It's a fantastic ROI.

20:34Tash Rebuck:Gang, I'm hoping that for entertainment value, that was worth a pound. Someone sponsor, please. If you had fun doing that. All right, I'm not going to call... I'm going to call this other one. This is unfortunately, this isn't their direct number. So this speaks, yeah, yeah. Each one of these, all these different scenarios. Honestly, you planned this really, really well. You didn't. I love how it's all falling into place. Just admit that. But this does also speak to the quality of the data in the first place, which you touched on, the lead sourcing, the lead generation, before we even kind of pluck up the courage to actually speak to them.

21:16Tash Rebuck:So there's that as well. So this number, so it is a generic office number, not someone's individual number. I don't know the name of the person. I can find that out, though, pretty quickly. Would it be better to get their name? Absolutely. Okay, all right. Chat to the listeners while I get their name.

21:36Stephanie Melodia:Oh, my God.

21:40Stephanie Melodia:Okay, actually, this is a great opportunity to talk about lead generation because one of the things that I find most frustrating and I think is like disappointing for a lot of business owners is that they'll spend a huge amount of money on lead generation yeah so if you look in your spam at any given time there's going to be people being like oh someone paid me 40 ,000 pounds to get this list of global marketing directors I'll sell it to you for 5 ,000 pounds they've used one of these tools that we've just talked about for a low monthly cost and they've generated this list please don't do that please don't spend lots of money on lead generation find a good tool that can do it for you or use google google is free and there are so many ways that you can build lists without paying for it and there you go

22:27Tash Rebuck:that is my advice thank you love that and that gave me time to find the name of the right contacts here so calling up and asking for the specific individual yes okay and then if i get through to them use your first name calling their first name the destination mailbox is full wow it's

22:52Stephanie Melodia:genuinely genuine i know it seems really frustrating but i actually think that this is such a good lesson in why sales is about perseverance and number games you know you sit here and the first thing i say is gosh this is so scary like so nerve-wracking to do a gorgeous and then actually you don't get through to anyone yeah exactly if we were sat here for the full hour and you called around 20 people you would probably actually speak to one person and that one person i reckon you'd be able to get a meeting with potentially but that's why you spend an entire a day to make two or three meetings yeah okay that's the reality perspective isn't it all right at the same time one day to get two or three meetings for any business that's fantastic

23:43Tash Rebuck:yeah yeah just goes to show what you need to put in right i'm gonna try again and i am also going to this is gonna be music to your ears tash another idea that's just come to me i'm going to follow up with somebody that I called earlier this week and they were like yeah cool send over

24:02Stephanie Melodia:the media kit and I haven't heard back since okay fantastic so we're doing a term choice yeah let me

24:06Tash Rebuck:do them first to give this other guy enough time if he was on another call yeah so this other guy

24:10Stephanie Melodia:called was out curiosity if you get this contract do I get 10 % commission 10 % Jesus come on we need

24:19Tash Rebuck:to talk about negotiation afterwards as well um did I even save his number oh well you're about

24:26Stephanie Melodia:to have your first telling off by a sales coach.

24:29Tash Rebuck:Okay. Let me find this guy's number. I know his name was... Oh, God.

24:40Stephanie Melodia:Is that a CRM on a spreadsheet I'm spying?

24:44Tash Rebuck:Is that making your skin crawl?

24:47Stephanie Melodia:Just really, CRMs are really useful.

24:50Tash Rebuck:But this is just so straightforward.

24:52Stephanie Melodia:I know. I understand that.

24:55Tash Rebuck:oh here we go I found him uh okay what's wrong with a spreadsheet when I get the number

25:02Stephanie Melodia:oh it's just that with a CRM it's just so much easier to manage and you get the reporting which is really amazing but I'm a big data nerd so when I join startups I always get all into the roots of the CRM to build all their reporting what CRM do you use so I will sort of I switch around a little bit like to shop around i really like and not many people use it is big in okay i don't quite like it okay but i am considering moving over to okay so they were one of the targets that i was also going to call as well so i do like and they've just introduced their email sequencing and it is quite good okay maybe let's try and call them afterwards this is not meant to be an advert for these companies exactly exactly not yet

25:52Tash Rebuck:oh put it on speaker because if this goes through it also shows that was on another call

26:03Tash Rebuck:do you know what we're getting closer and closer to 5 p.m on a friday so this is not working well unfortunately not let's try again oh here we go and then let's move on because I could keep going but for the sake of our listeners here we go

26:25Tash Rebuck:I don't have the name ah that failed listeners we're done we hope you enjoyed that we hope you learnt lots along the way alright your review what's your score it's grade me could you tell I was a teacher's pet at school do I get a gold star

26:41Stephanie Melodia:you know what you get gold star for effort for the bravery for the bravery that's a 10 out of 10 in my books I cannot grade you on cold calling because you did not did not do a cold call

26:53Tash Rebuck:someone's calling me back who's calling me back gotta be hi Stephanie speaking

26:59Stephanie Melodia:hi Stephanie's here from a PR agency I just missed a call hey

27:03Tash Rebuck:and I called you briefly earlier this week about the podcast advertising did you get a chance to check the media kit I emailed over

27:10Stephanie Melodia:I did I did receive it let me respond to you I will respond to you in the next hour or so, Stephanie. What would you spell it today?

27:17Tash Rebuck:No worries at all. I look forward to hearing back from you.

27:20Stephanie Melodia:Perfect. Thanks very much.

27:22Tash Rebuck:Thanks a lot. Take care. Bye. The excitement of getting a call back. How was that? I'm sure you've got notes. I do. I'm so sorry.

27:30Stephanie Melodia:Don't be sorry. I would have asked him what he's going to email you saying. He knows that he's going to have it in an hour. I'd be like, go on. I can't wait. You're so good. Tell me now. Because if he's going to say no, then you can ask why and get the objection.

27:42Tash Rebuck:Tash, you're so good.

27:43Stephanie Melodia:Otherwise, you're always in a back and forth chasing with these people.

27:46Tash Rebuck:Do you know what? There's such a... I don't want to make this like a gendered thing, but there's such a good girl, in air quotes, problem here. And it goes back to like, don't want to be a pest. I don't want to bother you. I don't want... I'm almost like, I don't even know what I'm afraid of. But it's like, because it's not even rude, but it still feels very brave. it still feels like that didn't even cross my mind to even ask him

28:16Stephanie Melodia:it's it's really difficult so I work with a lot of female founders because a lot of what I do isn't just about like strategy and training it's the coaching side of like the emotional blockers that you get with sales yeah and as women we are often brought up to be told we're not allowed to take up space yeah we're not allowed to be annoying and we're not allowed to ask for what we want yeah There is nothing more sales than those three things. And so it's overcoming that. And it isn't exclusive to women, but it definitely is something that I think that we struggle with more. Yeah. So sometimes I ask myself, you know, well, I ask, would a straight man be afraid of this?

28:54Stephanie Melodia:And if the answer is no, then I bloody well go ahead and do it. So also, it's one of those things that I'm just like, I think it's about your mindset. Yeah. And it's about always looking for an opportunity and it takes practice. But once you get into it, you start to pick them up like little bits of gold dust. He says he has an answer. For me, I'm so I'm like, oh, what's your answer? I want to know.

29:18Tash Rebuck:I want to know why that thought didn't even cross my mind. And I want to know how you know about that.

29:25Stephanie Melodia:That's a good question. Two in one. Yeah, that is a good question. So I think that for me, so like it's all about practice. so one thing that I do a lot is try and help people learn about their prospect better so sales used to always be about interrogating questions yeah and then like I said before pitch slapping just giving all your information but that's not how we want to be sold to anymore that's not how we enjoy being sold to yeah and so it's about getting to know people and sort of picking up what they put down so learning asking the right questions and the more you do that the more you start to hear what actually matters so if you have happy ears you're like oh my gosh okay i'm getting an answer great yeah but if you dig underneath it if you sort of go to that second layer and you question the answer that's what i always recommend you get an answer question it and if you just start doing that instinctively yeah they'll always be that next question ask

30:27Tash Rebuck:did you ever I presume you struggled with this to begin with like practice makes perfect so in those earlier days for you what helped you overcome like those emotional mental blockers so when I started

30:45Stephanie Melodia:out I was uh off the back of being an actor and I always said you know I've got I've got no shame I left the dignity at the door when I did a Sims 4 advert and I am I'm born for sales you know it really it really works for me and so I don't think that I personally had those blockers but I've always tried to be a really empathetic person and for me realizing that look there's always going to be sales things that you don't do well I was awful at listening I used to always be waiting to say the thing oh you've got this problem I can solve it this way yeah and so that was my really big issue but I was I was never afraid of getting in front of people and asking the stupid questions

31:32Tash Rebuck:yeah yeah yeah and it really does it thickens up your skin the more the more times that you do that absolutely okay I'm excited to hopefully get a response from one of these guys while we're still on the air but let's continue with your with your story Tash so talk us through like your experience So you've mentioned that you come from the world of acting, failed stand-up comedian. You were on this incredible rocket ship growth journey with a unicorn. So I'm sure that taught you so much. What in particular around like biopsychology can you share with our listeners as well?

32:04Stephanie Melodia:So what was really interesting in my journey is that I started out very traditionally working for Monopoly, making board games. And then I moved into the really exciting startup world. And it was a completely different environment. but the buyers still had the same problems. They still had very long processes. They still had to tick every single box. It is the same problem, the same process, but just talking about different things. And with every single one of them, and I sound like a broken record here, but they just want to be heard. Everyone has different issues that they're facing or challenges, and it's just about taking the time to understand them so that you could then offer the right kind of solution to them.

32:52Stephanie Melodia:And what I found when I was working at the startup, one of the biggest things is day by day, the people you're pitching to, they're going to change. One day I was pitching to, because it was a logistics company, like on-demand delivery. One day I was pitching to the corner shop, fish and chip shop, and the next day we were pitching to Superdrug. So it was a real change and it was just, you've got to adapt. you've got to understand they have different pain points but you've got to respect them and treat them the same because ultimately they're your buyer so be respectful and you'll get amazing

33:26Tash Rebuck:results this is where your acting career comes in very handy right being able to kind of shape shift from that but I mean so many like huge benefits you can bring to the table here same as me nothing we've got in common right but being able to like shape shift and almost play a character on that note actually what are your views on kind of like channeling almost like an or to ego to be a successful salesperson?

33:50Stephanie Melodia:I think that it's almost impossible to be the perfect salesperson without bringing a little bit extra to your personality. And I don't mean that you need to be extroverted or loud. I think that there are some very quiet, soft-spoken people that are unbelievable salespeople. For me, the difference you need to make is you need to be more positive. Any single person who sells is talking about their business, is talking about anything that is sort of trying to encourage growth. You've got to bring a really positive energy. And that can be hard for people to do, especially if you've had a tough day, something's going on in your personal life.

34:28Stephanie Melodia:But from the very first job I had, it was very much instilled. Bring the right energy every single day. Be positive. Be the kind of person people want to work with and you know what in a way that is putting on a bit of a character because am I that person every day absolutely not sometimes I'll have 10 calls and I just shut down my laptop and I also power down like a robot and that's absolutely fine as long as I just bring

34:55Tash Rebuck:the energy when you need to on the call on the pitch easier said than done especially if you have had rejection after rejection and honestly I don't know about you and listeners if anyone else has picked up on this but I've picked up on how much my energy's dipped since the start of this when I was so pumped and so excited and I haven't even had anyone answer me and you giving me fantastic constructive criticism and I'm feeling a bit glum already I'm like ah bugger so that times a hundred over and over and over any practical tips to help exercise that resilience muscle to bring that positivity back again absolutely so the first is fake it till you

35:33Stephanie Melodia:make it yeah like at any given point it's a Friday it's very warm in here you know I'm tired but I know that if I can bring my energy right now I can just completely shut down on the train home and I will because I'm going on the Bakerloo line and that is a sauna and it's just like you know what I can do it yeah and it's often I think that's how you overcome the difficult tasks when it comes to sales a client will say to me I really don't want to call this person I really don't want to send an extra message and I go can I ask what's your average contract value what have you quoted that person can you get over that discomfort can you lift yourself for that value of money yeah the answer is almost always yes and if the answer is no then that's not the right activity for you to be doing at that moment yeah it helps put things back into perspective

36:28Tash Rebuck:doesn't it the other thing on the fake it till you make it is the science the weird sort of like brain hacking with like even if you just like smile like i'm very smiley and you laugh and how that kind of tricks the brain as well right so getting into it all right um any other like key lessons from this crazy unicorn journey getting back to that so you talked about adapting you had different client from super drug to fish and chip shop on the corner what else specifically like growth because I'm also bearing in mind if we've got like tech entrepreneurs listening they want to scale up their startups what were the growth levers that worked for you so the first

37:03Stephanie Melodia:thing that was really important was diversification yeah because if you're a business when 95 % of your revenue comes from one client you're in a huge amount of a level and so making sure that you're putting focus on both the big clients and the small and of course the medium just to make sure if you lose any of them you've always got a safety net that's the most important thing when it comes to growth for a startup in sales and so don't get distracted and lost on the big boys and ignore your little friends because they will be your absolute lifesavers one day yeah amazing and the other thing is diversify how you're reaching out to people when it was um when we were at stewart we did everything we did cold calling we did field sales we did email outreach we did networking trade shows linkedin everything yeah we did direct mail one day we sent about a 300 mini donuts out to prospective buyers through our couriers it was a hell day anyone trying to order food in east london that day no chance it was just donuts what comes to mind for me is i'm aware

38:10Tash Rebuck:from more of a marketing background around like the multiplier effect and being in you know a few places at once what does cross my mind is cash trap startups so those who can't afford to do like the trade show to be visible to have a team of people cold calling like all of these things all at once how can how would you approach like prioritizing when you've got limited budgets So cold calling, free field sales, free emails, free LinkedIn, free as long as you don't get sales navigator.

38:41Stephanie Melodia:A bit pricey. Cost of living crisis. Saw that go up, didn't it? Anyway. Do you use that? Yeah, I do. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah. For my LinkedIn outreach. Do you actually rate it? Look, I only use LinkedIn sales navigator because I connect with so many people every single week. Because again, sales is a numbers game. so that's pretty much what I use it for I don't use in mails if there's any advice anyone takes from me don't send in mails yeah oh my god they're so annoying and you know you can just ignore them you just decline without a message excuse me decline me with a message please anyway that's my little segue on on that what else is wrong with in mails uh so they are I think the spam email of LinkedIn yeah the moment you get one you know you're not connected you know they're only doing a sale to you and every time show me an in mail that isn't a full sales pitch yeah bullet points of why you should work with them it's all about them and what they do mind such a huge mistake yeah yeah that makes complete sense okay so getting back to what cash strap startups can do so there's so many things they can do but one big thing that i say to especially founders when they're having to do sales themselves they can't outsource it yet and they can't hire someone make very hard decisions on how you structure your day because at a certain point you should really only be working on things that is bringing in revenue or will bring you in revenue and if you find yourself getting distracted with other things building pretty decks uh spending three hours to make one social media post you are procrastinating you should just be revenue building that's it and so i have a rule with some of my clients if they feel like they're getting distracted they'll be like Tash is this BD and I'm like you know it's not BD it's what Daniel

40:29Tash Rebuck:Priestley calls anything but sales like the ABS that anything but sales have you picked up the phone and called someone what me in life no no just you know that question back to like anything but sales I find myself doing like like you said like polishing a pitch deck updating your website um even maybe like tweaking your messaging and all these things exactly there's no such thing

40:52Stephanie Melodia:of a perfect message there's no such thing as the perfect time yeah it's just as good as you can make it as personalized as you can make it and then reach out to as many people as you can and follow

41:04Tash Rebuck:up and i think that speaks to a wider thing that will relate will resonate to so many people as well is that like the block is from taking like any sort of action right let alone this is why i think so many struggle with sales in general anyway right because you've got this fear factor you've got this bravery there's you know a lot of us have to come out of our comfort zone for it but even besides that like I work with so many incredible people that they're so smart they've got these ideas and you've got whether it's perfectionism or fear of judgment like all these other things in the way so you just definitely speaks to this broader issue of not taking action um you talked about sort of the financial motivation kind of reminding people like the value of a contract is there anything else maybe for I'm sure everyone's financially motivated but is there anything else that you've seen exactly okay all right so no what else helps people take

41:52Stephanie Melodia:action then so there's an unbelievable amount of people out there who are undercharging themselves interesting and I find especially in the consulting and coaching world um it's really quite shocking when you meet people and you hear what they're building and they are just pricing themselves so low or they've created a product or a service there's no onboarding fee there's no implementation there's no management fees they just will charge an incredibly low cost and go well I'm lucky to be given that but actually their value is so much more and I think that a lot of business owners when they start going out and they give their original pricing their dream pricing they get knocked back and instead of going well you know what someone else's budget does not define my value they go let me reduce my value let me not even reduce my value but reduce my my asking price and all they're doing is just letting themselves down because if they just kept going being resilient kept picking themselves up despite the rejections someone would have said yes yeah and that one person that says yes validates your pricing yeah so honestly most people listening here could afford to put their pricing up pretty significantly and it would not stop the number of clients they had it would just increase their revenue yeah incredible and it makes you think

43:14Tash Rebuck:how many of us lower our prices if we're pitching versus upping the budget the other way around right it's like oh we can't afford this let's just up the budget versus they can't afford it let me

43:25Stephanie Melodia:lower my prices exactly exactly and there's a lot of power in if you give a price and someone says can you love it to just go no yeah I can't not possible it is so infuriating I mean uh listeners

43:38Tash Rebuck:if you're still with us hope you've already got that value from like upping your prices and got a good ROI from this already but it's so incredibly infuriating when all these other walks of life you know on this kind of negotiation and flexibility on pricing where it's like if you went to Pratt and got a sandwich the price of that sandwich is the price of the sandwich you take it to the till you ring it up you pay that like when there's no haggling here why is this culture of haggling it applies in some situations but not others I think it's a really

44:10Stephanie Melodia:good question and look I love to haggle I'll always do a little bit of a haggle because you should it's good it keeps your negotiation skills you know warm and practiced but I do think look it worries me if people don't haggle with me if people just say yes that makes me think my prices are too low i have a rule did they have more if three people in a row accept my pricing and don't negotiate at all needs up i put it up yeah great and that's my rule for anyone yeah because there should be a piting point you should negotiate i think it's a fantastic thing i agree and it's the fear of it that holds us back from closing and getting confirmation on deals because if you ask someone how they feel about pricing if they want to move forward if it fits into their budget that's when you get people saying no and that's scary yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense yeah

45:01Tash Rebuck:super interesting yeah i mean the price of anything is whatever anyone's willing to pay for it right and i think there is exactly to your point there is that kind of biting point um there's a really great framework i'm sure you've heard of called the van verstendorp pricing where it's like it's I guess it's more of like a marketing strategy, customer research thing where you, if you imagine kind of a quadrant, like X and Y axes and you've got, what is it? You've got kind of like, basically like at one end is like so cheap. It's like too good to be true. And I question its value. You've got astronomically priced.

45:42Tash Rebuck:And basically the idea is to find that sweet spot in the middle. and then what's really interesting is overlaying it with your brand positioning so bringing kind of brand marketing into the mix here with sales is if you want a premium or luxury brand positioning you want to be nudging that up to the the the highest sort of limit within that sweet spot of

46:04Stephanie Melodia:an acceptable price point for people yeah then pretty much yeah exactly that what is wrong with

46:10Tash Rebuck:Any questions?

46:12Stephanie Melodia:Oh, any questions is so broad. And look, it's a closed question, which you should never really ask a closed question unless it is a closing question. Do you want to work together? The problem with any questions is that you can just go, no, it's unspecific. It's vague. What you want to do is say, look, do you see a way we can work together? Do you see this fitting in that way? does this solve that problem and if you're not asking those kind of open questions then you're just getting one word answers and you're going to get blown off really easily love that so on the

46:49Tash Rebuck:start makes complete sense uh love that you provide some alternative examples as well there because it's one thing to be like don't do this but sometimes like okay what do i do instead on the subject of closing questions i wanted to try another fun exercise here with you live in the studio we are going to call a friend and see if they pick up the phone and what we're going to do is now it's Tash's turn to call this person and what we're going to do is we're going to try and close them on a call right why not let's do it we've been flirting about this for a while so it's time perfect perfect so I did give Tash a heads up that we would be doing this when she asked which friend it was she was like yes perfect and I would like it noted the heads up is about 10 minutes before I arrived here.

47:32Stephanie Melodia:I've only got enough time.

47:33Tash Rebuck:I've only got enough time. Do you need? You've got the information. Let's go. I will let you... Thank you so much. ...dial. I'll give you that much.

47:41Stephanie Melodia:I have to tell him that he's live on air so he doesn't say something inappropriate.

47:49Tash Rebuck:Oh! Oh, this is so annoying. Oh, man. Do you see how my... You see how that only comes out when we try calling? is he on another call do you reckon?

48:02Stephanie Melodia:I think it might be your I think it might be your signal but but this last message it doesn't quite go through and yeah it's not actually connecting no I don't think you really have signal

48:14Tash Rebuck:oh no well now it says I've got 5G oh my god but it keeps doing it

48:28the tension

48:31Tash Rebuck:it says that it's calling mobile by the way guys if you can't see we're just waiting is it going to go through i see the 5g's disappeared yeah it's gone oh should we try with your phone oh yeah let me give it a go are you which network are you with

48:49Stephanie Melodia:I actually can't remember that's so bad isn't it

48:54Tash Rebuck:doesn't speak to their brand

48:56Stephanie Melodia:equity no that's very bad isn't it alright let's see I put it on do not disturb because my mum was calling at the beginning of this very important alright let's see if we can do it this is in his Ash Rebel in my phone

49:13Tash Rebuck:nice I'm going to try and connect to the wifi in the meantime

49:25Tash Rebuck:Oh well yours is going through I need to switch to your network. I'm calling on 5G I'm with you. I've never even heard of you.

49:34Stephanie Melodia:I shouldn't do an advert for them but they're really fantastic they do my gas, my electric, my phone and I've saved so much money. Pitch to that. It's genuinely genuinely so funny. he still doesn't see my message so it you know what it doesn't matter and this is this is the positive mental attitude right it doesn't matter it doesn't matter you know I haven't been able to connect with him but what has happened is I've laid a little bit of groundwork you were telling him that he should be chatting with me I'm telling him he needs to chat with me I'm going to message him after this being like look it was a bit of silliness we couldn't get hold of you but in all seriousness i would like to talk about maybe xyz because we've seen some really good results from the free free support you are so good i'm gonna do it anyway you've given me the idea i want the blooming contract and i'm going to buy on the table just in case he might call back in case all right and i want and i won't put it on do not disturb in case well my mum might call again and I could always try and do a sales thing to her.

50:41Tash Rebuck:This is brilliant. Nobody's called me back from any of my attempts. Spit out her drink there. It was a wrong moment to say that. All right. I do have a few more questions before we wrap. The art of the follow up.

50:56Stephanie Melodia:Talk to us about that. Most important part of any sales process. I would put money on anyone who's listening to this going, oh, well, none of this helps because I get all my meetings, but I never get a contract afterwards, it comes down to the follow up. 80 % of deals get signed after five follow ups. So if you pitch someone and you send a follow up email straight away being like, this is the info, let's catch up in the future. The likelihood of you getting that is so slim. You have got to send another message. I don't expect people to be as persistent as I am. If someone has a pitch with me, I'll follow up with you 10 times.

51:33Stephanie Melodia:I'll follow, I'll find your house I'll be there no that's maybe a little bit too far but I've not had a single restraining order and so I think that's a testament to my over exaggeration but I will keep responding because if we've sat down and had a meeting if I've given you my time if you've given me your time the least that we can do is let each other know if we're going to work together or not and I think sometimes worry people worry that following up makes them rude I actually switch that on its head it's rude to not give an answer when you've been pitched to by someone yeah so don't feel held back it's not going to damage your reputation my reputation's fine I'm here you know people are listening to me speak I follow up all the time so just do it I love that and you

52:17Tash Rebuck:know what this has also helped me even just mentally um yeah this is very validating as well for me as well right because I've always felt so deeply I like not like not not closing that loop like not getting an answer I'm just like I just want to know I can't stand it I've got a friend who we got cut she was telling me this incredible story and she got cut off and we had to rush and I still don't know the rest of this story and it is bothering me enough that I bring it up in the conversation now she started telling me months ago Tash and I'm like I am not

52:58Stephanie Melodia:letting you go until you finish this your follow-up makes me better every week you need to tell her you

53:03Tash Rebuck:want a voice I need the end of the story so that just goes to show I'm like I just need to know I need to know the end which speaks to kind of the curiosity gap that you can create with people in marketing again as well with that um so when I actually another idea popped into my head I love you're filling my mind with all these great ideas I want to read out so we're not doing the live cold calling anymore but I want to read out live a follow-up email that I'd already sent to somebody I'll give the background and I want you again to grade me I'm fully leaning into the teacher's pet

53:35Stephanie Melodia:am I going to get paid for my hour of sales inside to see that I've been providing you here I see what this is about here I am thinking you're you're fluffing me up with all the promise coming on a podcast I see it's an hour of free sales advice I love it ask me I'm in for Tasha

53:54Tash Rebuck:services what's your number get in touch this is I need to earn I'm I'm earning this free all this free fantastic free advice it's pretty I love it like the specific I mean even you saying before Or was it like 80 % convert after five follow-ups? So all those specifics and things. So I'm just giving another specific in the mix here. All right. So as context, this was again for a podcast sponsorship. And they were super keen, which is again, part of the, you're like, wait, you were so, it's like dating, isn't it? You're like, but I thought the date went so well. And, and they were like, yeah, we love it.

54:30Tash Rebuck:We're really interested. This is a top priority for us. perfect match just everything was like stars are aligning this is fantastic we've got the budget everything everything followed up with the proposal after the call and then ghosted me and this is the follow-up okay hey bleep hope you're doing well since my last email all our shows have continued to grow so this was actually a network proposal since my last email all our shows have continued to grow with updated stats for so-and-so attached i also have studio availability this thursday on the off chance so-and-so is already in town because part of the package was to get them on the show as well or can find a time xyz to get the campaign up and running in time for september in the post-holiday back to school season were you still interested in moving ahead look forward to hearing from you thank you steph okay so i think it's a very nice

55:27Stephanie Melodia:follow up.

55:28Tash Rebuck:I put so much effort into that. Yeah.

55:29Stephanie Melodia:It's a very nice follow up. Thank you. You're letting me down gently. I am letting you down gently. It's a compliment sandwich. No, no, no, no, no. It is. It is. So I have a piece of advice to get you to make that even easier. Okay. Which is book in a second meeting so you never have to send that follow up message. When I've already got them on the call. Yeah, you're on the call. They said they're interested. You say, look, I'm going to send you the proposal. Right. When will you have time to look at it? Next week on Wednesday. Great. Would it be impossible? again would it be impossible pop something in for friday have a good vibe have a little chat means i can answer your questions how does that sound yeah good we've got our diaries in front of us i'm sending it to you now it's locked in nice then you never have to send a follow-up great tip great tip because that was a great email it was a great email okay well what i did there my approach

56:17Tash Rebuck:was i'm not just following up which is another thing i wanted to kind of warn off to the list I'm not just bumping this back up to the top of your email.

56:27Stephanie Melodia:Or just being like, you know, have you reached a decision on this? No, you were adding more information.

56:33Tash Rebuck:Exactly.

56:33Stephanie Melodia:You were also recognising that they're coming into town. So there's that level of personalisation in there as well. Yeah.

56:39Tash Rebuck:And a bit of pressure creating as well with like, we've got studio availability at this point.

56:43Stephanie Melodia:Do you know what the only difference I would make? Your first line, it was throw away.

56:48Tash Rebuck:Yeah. I hope you're well. And that's why I specifically read it out for accuracy. Yeah.

56:53Stephanie Melodia:it's throw away yeah it doesn't need to be there either get rid of it yeah yeah or make it more specialized so if you know that they're visiting soon hey how are your plans to come down to london going yeah uh hope you know the nightmare of trains isn't impacting you i mean i actually

57:07Tash Rebuck:don't know if anything's happening with the trains i'm assuming yeah yeah i love it i love it i had that advice actually given to me a few years ago like stop the throat clearing was how they mentioned it how they phrased it they're like stop the throat clearing no hope you're doing well no

57:22Stephanie Melodia:did you have a good week at that is my bugbear i always start them and then i delete it i'm like

57:27Tash Rebuck:nope that's rubbish oh that's funny so you still actually like type it out absolutely feel nicer yeah and then it's like exclamation marks and removing all the exclamation marks no i put in

57:37Stephanie Melodia:so many exclamation marks exclamation marks and emojis that's me love it love it love it all right

57:44Tash Rebuck:unless there are any other obviously i have enjoyed so much top-notch free quality high quality advice here free quality oh dear low quality high price i'm joking i'm joking unless there are any other pearls of wisdom you'd like to share i uh cannot leave a sales expert leave

58:08Stephanie Melodia:this room without doing a sell me this pen oh my gosh yeah all right don't even have a pen do you

58:13Tash Rebuck:have a pen do you have a pen i have a lipstick do you want to sell me this lipstick i might

58:19Stephanie Melodia:actually have a pen okay i might have a pen in my bag um so can i ask you steph um you mentioned that you didn't have a pen yeah i was looking for one yeah do you ever find yourself

58:33Tash Rebuck:just getting run short on them yeah sometimes i've got a bunch from all these events and free conference free merch from conferences but i put them all in a pot and then when i need to grab one

58:42Stephanie Melodia:oh that's a nightmare do you not have a travel pen oh no i don't have a travel pen oh my gosh so best thing that's ever happened to me keeping a pen in my pocket because for one i love geocaching do you know about geocaching geocaching is like finding little treasures in the world and you get to sign your name onto them but my favorite geocache is sometimes someone will say to me we're sending you a contract can you sign it get it back to me straight away i'm bugged if I don't have a pen. Sorry, Steph, you said you didn't have a pen, right? That's true. Yeah. You did a bit of sales activity earlier, didn't you?

59:16Tash Rebuck:Yeah.

59:17Stephanie Melodia:How are you feeling about if someone asked you to sign a contract? I wouldn't be able to do it. Well, I've got some really good news for you. If I just have a little look inside my bag, it's a good one, actually. It's a good pen. It's from the unicorn I helped build. Stuart. Smooth. How much would you pay for a pen? A pound. How much is your average contract? A thousand pounds. Best investment you ever made, Steph. How do you feel about buying this pen? Well, a thousand X return on that. Let's buy that pen. Yeah. Fantastic.

59:55Tash Rebuck:But the problem is, I've already spent over a pound on calling America.

1:00:01Stephanie Melodia:Oh, well, that is your problem and not mine. And we've verbally agreed now at this point that you are buying this pen. don't you turn back on me at this point i love it i love it i think i made that too easy for you yeah you absolutely did that was i need to put some objections in there absolutely should have but it's too late the pen has been bought

1:00:24Tash Rebuck:i love that was that was incredible that was a master class in sell me this pen that was

1:00:30Stephanie Melodia:phenomenal a lot of questions and you just lead people to the end result that they really need like you don't really need a pen you want a contract and you want an easily signed contract

1:00:40Tash Rebuck:so you have to buy a pen love that love that love that this ties all into like the biopsychology as well right it's like who and actually sorry this was something that you said before i had a brain fart moment was the difference between cost and value something i recently come across like the price of some the cost of it and the value of it and i think that also not only helps with converting prospects but to your earlier points as well around raising your prices so someone might be like oh my god but it's only you know i do public speaking as well right and sometimes it's like i'll be on stage for half an hour and you could look at them be like that was half an hour of my time of course it wasn't there's so much more prep and everything else but that's a good example of the difference between cost versus value so actually the value that I'm delivering here is the knowledge, the entertainment, the expertise and whatever

1:01:36Stephanie Melodia:that outcome is that you're going to get from this. Exactly. And you'll notice that when I was talking to you about my pen, I asked you how much you'd pay for a pen. I asked what your budget was. Now, what's interesting is at the beginning of our chat, you told me that you've got loads and loads of free pens. And yet two minutes later, because I've made you realise the value a pen could be, you're saying you'd pay a pound for it. I can tell you right now that pen is not worth a pound it's at least six years old and again it's a little psychological thing you don't even realise it's happening yeah you went from saying you'd only take a free pen to paying a pound for it funny

1:02:16Tash Rebuck:do you know what we're so aware of all these psychological hacks but then when it's happening to us

1:02:23Stephanie Melodia:I'm so easy to be sold to honestly I'm the easiest sell in the world I get excited because I use my own positivity. I get wrapped up in it myself.

1:02:33Tash Rebuck:And I'm like, oh, bye. Do you think that applies to other salespeople? Like are salespeople also easy to, or do they have like a higher standard?

1:02:40Stephanie Melodia:I think that it really depends. As salespeople, one of the worst things that happens is you get into a call and someone goes, I'm a salesperson. So this had better be good. Oh, that's funny. And you're like, oh God, just get off your high horse. But that's also the breed of salesperson that I'm really hoping will sort of disappear. This new relationship building, understanding, empathy and all of that jazz. Yeah, yeah.

1:03:03Tash Rebuck:Same. Absolutely. Same. I wish for that future of salesperson as well. Amazing. All right. I wrap all of my interviews with the traditional closing question of one tragedy that's taught you an unforgettable lesson, Tash. Yeah.

1:03:19Stephanie Melodia:So this is actually how I started my consultancy. So when my last full time role was the head of commercial for a volunteering and charity platform. And what we did was paired really brilliant people with organisations that needed their help. So if you're a lawyer, why are you painting a charity's walls? You should be helping them with their contracts kind of thing. so we were at this incredible point where we I'd hired uh and trained up these amazing sales people we had 20 month on month growth I just sat down with the founder and said so this is my three month plan for us to make our first million in revenue couldn't be more exciting we just signed another enterprise client it was amazing and then suddenly she'd brought in a commercial advisor a consultant whose background was in recruitment.

1:04:14Stephanie Melodia:Now, you really can't have two things that are more different, recruitment and positive impact and volunteering and charity. Very different world. And it was unbelievable, the changes that got brought in. And I was rallying against every single one of them. But our prices were not just quadrupling, they were going 10x up. Suddenly, we had onboarding fees that were more than our yearly contracts. And as you can imagine, every single deal ground to a halt. We went from eight new deals a month, 20 % growth, to literally for an entire month, nothing. And at the end of that month, the founder came into our stand-up in the morning and just let me and my whole team go.

1:05:04Stephanie Melodia:No warning. and that was hands down the worst day of my life to be honest because I loved what I did I loved my team and I just saw every single one of their hearts break and mine too and I had to keep it together because they're my team and I couldn't believe that the irresponsible advice and unbelievable price tag this guy was like 26k for four days to hire the consultant in which funny

1:05:39Tash Rebuck:kind of leads back into pricing and undercharging and everything right so clearly this guy wasn't

1:05:44Stephanie Melodia:but that wasn't that match exactly okay and it was a complete eye-opener for me because i was already considering opening up a consultancy because i'd done it for a few charities and really seen the value in it and it just made me realize you know what there are some truly awful consultants out there that are in it for the money and will tear down a business just to get their paycheck and it made me know this is the kind of consultant I want to be I want to work with people I can help I want to bring value if I can bring value and people can be really taken advantage So founders don't know what they don't know.

1:06:26Stephanie Melodia:And so they need to understand sales so that they aren't taken advantage of, whether that's by a consultant or whether that's by their first sales hire. It's an incredibly important decision to make. And it was a horrible lesson to learn. I managed to help every single person in my team get their next job, which is wholesome. That's incredible. And I still catch up with them. They're like lovely human beings. Wow, amazing. And yeah, it was a massive learning. But by the end of that day, I'd already created my website, bought the domain and decided on the business name and everything. So it ended up being the best thing that's ever happened to me.

1:07:05Stephanie Melodia:But it was absolutely in that moment, worst day.

1:07:08Tash Rebuck:I can absolutely imagine like a phoenix rising from the ashes. You definitely turned lemons into lemonade. So perfect note to end this interview on as well. where can people go to get some of your phenomenal sales training Tash?

1:07:21Stephanie Melodia:So first thing I would recommend coming and adding me on LinkedIn I'm Tash Rebuck I am the only Tash Rebuck on LinkedIn so I'm very easy to find but also they can find me on my website TR Sales Consultancy I've just had it zhuzhed up so please do go visit it looks very nice if you ask me and yeah you can find me there I'm often doing talks and panels so hopefully there's a lot of content available

1:07:48Tash Rebuck:for anyone who comes and finds me amazing Tash thank you so much not only for all the amazing free sales training that I've had and feedback live here on the show but for coming on and sharing your wisdom this has been awesome such a pleasure thank you for having me thank you so much thank you for listening if you learned something new from this one thing you have absolutely no excuse when it comes to hitting that like and follow button at the very least you can do that for us so thank you so so much and hopefully see you next time