2244 - Practical Strategies for Entrepreneurs and Salespeople from The UK's Most Hated Sales Trainer Benjamin Dennehy

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, it's Benjamin Dennehy, a.k.a. the UK's most hated sales trainer. Oh, dear God. We'll get into that. Benjamin, your website is salesmatrixcourses.com. Benjamin, thank you for joining us. Thank you very much for having me, Josh. It's a pleasure. Yes. Before we get into your superpowers, who you serve, what you do, what have you been into lately? What are you doing for fun lately? uh well i'll tell you one thing uh most people that know me is i'm a i'm a big camper i love camping any opportunity to take the pickup truck and go and go out into nature and take my daughter a lot of the times or the family and you can just sleep in the trailer and just cook pancakes on the um you know the fire that you build uh just enjoy the nature i love i love lakes and mountains um So there's not a lot of those in the UK, but you've got them in Europe.

2:05And obviously, I'm from New Zealand originally. So whenever we go back home, we always go down to a place called like Queenstown, which is famous for its skiing and its lakes and its mountains. Beautiful. I believe Bill Gates owns a place down there as well. A lot of wealthy people own property down there, but it's a beautiful part of the country. So camping is my big thing. And the other one will be reading Jack Reacher novels. and i've always uh like it's what is it it's child didn't it his name's child andrew childs or his son's andrew anyway i forget the name of the author but um i love his books and i've been watching the tv series yeah how does the tv series compare to the books well compared to the movie where they where they cast tom cruise as jack reacher which i think but he's a midget this guy's like meant to be six foot five and built like a brick yeah so they who are the guy i don't remember the actor's name but the gentleman that they have cast it's the bill it's it's yeah it's like yep that's exactly what i would have imagined jack region maybe slightly rougher looking because he looks a bit pretty because he's american slightly maybe slightly rougher looking um but otherwise yeah so it's been um it's been pretty good actually so i have enjoyed um those the first three seasons actually so uh so that's what i do in my spare time go camping and read jack reacher novels well so you're you're based in um around like bournemouth bournemouth it's on the southwest coast yeah of the uk it's around the coast and just across the channels france so uh so you have you have some some beautiful landscapes around you dorset national cranbourne Dorset is a very pretty place if any of your viewers are familiar with the famous five books written by Enid Blyton they're all set sort of down in that sort of way so yeah it's beautiful, there's a castle from 1066 down the road it's just England, you can't escape it's rich and wonderful history, it's a beautiful country if you love history and old architecture I love it, love it, love it we have some beautiful beaches there too So let's talk about, Benjamin, the work that you do.

4:21Yes. And what has made you the UK's most hated sales trainer? I suppose because I hold up the ugly mirror and I expose salespeople for what they are. Yeah. And I suppose the biggest thing I point out, and if salespeople are honest, most will admit this, 95 % of people in sales, If you ask them, why are you here? How did you get into this? The honest answer is, I fell into it. I needed a job. Very few people, when they're growing up and they're at school and their teacher says, so what do you want to be when you grow up? Very few go, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I want to be in sales. They want to be doctors, lawyers, accountants, astronauts, something interesting.

5:08But what happens? You go to university, you maybe study English lit or women's studies and you suddenly realize no one's going to pay you for this information, right? So you need a job. You're educated. You can string a sentence together. You look good in a suit and you don't dribble during interviews. So you're now technically qualified to be a salesperson. And so you fall into it. And there are two types then. You get those that fall into it and get stuck. You see, after about two years in sales, it hits you very quickly. I have no transferable skill set. No one is ever advertising wanted ex-salesmen.

5:43You know, where have you seen that wanted? Yeah, you know, were you in sales? We got the job for you. Doesn't exist. And so you realize they're trapped. And what happens is they tend to bounce from job to job or they stay in the one job pretty mediocre. They make enough to get by. And they're what I call at leasters. They operate the seven out of 10. At least I just hit target. At least I just missed target. At least I can afford to do what I want this month. And they travel. And then you get the small percentage that excel. They have some natural ability and they go out of their way to figure out what to become good.

6:17And so I point this out. And most people, if they're honest, it's true. Most entrepreneurs, they wanted to create something. They didn't want to be salesmen. Yeah, they had an idea of something that worked. Yeah, but now you've got to sell it. You've got to sell it. And no one tells you that. Lawyers, I qualified as what you'd call an attorney. We call them barristers. I qualified as a... No one tells you at law school. you have to sell legal services. You just assume you sit at a desk and people walk in with their problems and say, can you take my money and help me? It doesn't work like that.

6:47So most people are no good at selling. They've never studied it. They've never worked out how to do it. They've just been thrown into it and they've just cobbled together some stuff. They've listened to people and everyone says, it's a gift of the gab. Just get out there. It's a numbers game. Know your product. Know how to answer questions. You'll be fine, but you've got to do enough of it. So there's no skill, there's no strategy, there's no plan. It literally is show up, throw up and hope like hell you did enough. And when you point that out, most people would admit that that's to be true about themselves.

7:20And so I expose that and, well, I go even further. But yeah, that's sort of the top line reason. Yeah, you're right. And I think what you just shared too, and I'm thinking about this, For those of us who are entrepreneurs, again, I think that if an aspiring entrepreneur knew that if you're going to start a company in many regards, you're going to likely spend 70 % to 80 % of your time, particularly in the early days, being a salesperson, I'm not sure they would want to start that company. But that's the reality of it. If you want to grow and you want to be able to have food on the table, unless you can hire that out successfully and good luck with that at the beginning, because then you got to have, you know, decent budget for that.

8:11It is, it's quite a, it's quite a catch 22. So what is someone to do if they find themselves, and I'm particularly empathic to our friends that are listening to this conversation, who maybe feel trapped in founder-led sales, and they can't break out of it because maybe they've experimented with trying to outsource. That didn't work, so then they kind of came back into it, and here they are stuck being, you know, not CEO, but chief salesman. Yeah, so most people never study this as a craft. So I trained as a lawyer, took four years of law school. Then you've got to do your professional exams and you're at the bottom of the rung.

8:56Same with a doctor, seven years study. And then you're at the bottom of the rung. Accountant, three years study at the bottom of the rung. What does it take to become a salesperson? It's three days product knowledge training and you suit in a car and you are one. So one of the biggest things I tell people, they have to learn their craft. And this is one of the reasons why people stay where they are, particularly find it particularly negative, is because deep down, they don't want to be in sales. So if deep down you're doing something that you don't want to actually be doing, why would you ever spend any real time or money figuring out how to get good at it?

9:30And this is a problem that most founder owners have and most salespeople have is they're in a job. And then they think, well, it's not my job to get better. It's my employer's job to teach me how to do this better. This is inbuilt. It's not my responsibility. hold up you go to a party and you meet a lawyer or a doctor and you ask them why did they become a doctor why'd you been a lawyer they'll give you some great story i've always wanted to be a lawyer i've always wanted to be a doctor my grandpa they have this story why'd you go into sales i needed a job or or you know and so yeah because they don't want to actually be doing it they never try to be founders you know founders i would argue like they want to do what their company does Like that's the, I mean, that's, if that's their passion, if they're, I love widgets.

10:13I want to build widgets. I want to design widgets. I want to modify widgets, but I want to sell widgets. Yeah. Leadership consultants, fractional CFOs, like they all again, spend a majority of their time in most cases doing sales. All right. So what happens is a lot of people, when they fall into sales, initially you have some success because it's not overly complicated in some ways. If you go out and get in front of enough people and you're extremely passionate about it, this is why founder owners, in some ways, it's an oxymoron. They don't know how to sell. But because this is their baby, this is their firstborn child, this is the thing they cherish and love the most.

10:52So they can be passionate. And because they're passionate about this, they win people. They get people over the line. They get people on board. And also, because they just want people to try it, they'll offer discounts and incentives. They just need to get it. And eventually, you build up some critical mass. And then you get to a point where you go, well, I've got to hire people now because I can't keep doing this. I've got to run my business. The problem is they don't know actually what to look for in salespeople because they don't know how to sell. So all they think is, well, I've just got to find someone like me, someone who comes across as energetic and passionate.

11:23But the problem is it's not their baby. It's not their passion. They can present that in an infuse. So you hire. So if you don't know how to sell, you end up hiring people that don't know how to sell. And you hire them for the wrong reasons. They looked good. They interviewed well. I quite like to be out of good personality. And then you end with that fateful line, let's give them a shot. Yeah? And some work out, some don't. And you can't figure out why. And it's because if you ask good salespeople, I've done this, why are you so good? A lot of them say, I don't really know. All I know is I'm very consistent in what I do.

11:58But they can't tell you. And this is what set me on my journey to become a trainer, is how can you create something that's repeatable, that consistently delivers predictable outcomes because that's the definition of having a successful process. You know, anyone who's a professional does the basics really, really well and then the sophisticated stuff they've mastered. But that's not what it's like in sales. You ask a salesman, why did we win? And they'll give you, well, it's a great product and they need it. No, no, seriously, why did they buy from us? Well, does it matter? Well, actually, it kind of does.

12:29Because if we know why people are buying from us exactly their reasons, Maybe we can start figuring out, well, maybe that's why other people's buy. How do we tap into that, create a process around that? So, yeah, the challenge I have is most people don't want to get good at this. And so they're stuck. And it's a shame because it's a miserable place to be stuck. Sales is a very lonely place when it's not going your way. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's hard. Yeah. Very lonely place. Very hard. And there's no one you can. I know what it's like to be a founder owner because I am one. There's no one to talk to.

13:01You can't tell your friends how badly you're doing because you feel bad. You can't tell them how well you're doing, conversely, because people get very jealous. Yeah, you can't talk to them. But when you're dealing in business, talking about money is every day to you. You have to do it so you don't have a problem with it. But most people have been raised, it's rude to talk about money. Don't ask someone how much they earn. Don't ask what that costs, all this stuff. So it's very lonely at the top. So if things are going well, you can only share it with your closest, probably your wife or your husband, your closest people, maybe some family, but the rest you have to keep to yourself.

13:35So I get it. And then hiring salespeople is tough because if you hire ones that lose, you're at fault as well. Where do you go for help? You can only, you know, it's tough. It is very tough. And salespeople will string you along and it takes about three to six months to figure out someone's useless. But by then you've invested a small mortgage in them. What with wages and healthcare and days off and all of this stuff, six months in, and they've sold nothing. And a lot of businesses can't afford to take that hit, and it hurts. And now you're six months behind where you're meant to be, so you've got the catch-up.

14:15So it's tough. I get it. And I know what it's like to be a small business owner, you know, and most companies I work with are small, and they're really struggling. And it's not because they don't have a good product or a brand. And it's, they've got salespeople that just won't do their job. Yeah. Well, so Benjamin, you have a platform. I see you have a membership and you provide a lot of training. Outside of that, do you work with individuals as well or do you just provide the platform? No, no, I do. Most of my businesses, obviously I get through the platform, but I do one-to-one coaching and I do team training.

14:53I used to, again, in my vanity, see vanity, sales is a lot of vanity. And then in my early days, I wanted to chase the big corporates, get in there and do the training session, be the center of attention. But what I discovered very quickly is the bigger the business, the less they want to change. And when it comes to sales training, I'm going to be brutally honest with you, most people like to say we have an ethical and honest approach to selling and we do all these things. But the reality is, is they don't really care what their salespeople do in order to get something over the line. and that sort of culture encourages the worst sort of sales behavior it is just do what it takes hit your number hit your target and they measure the wrong things they measure all things that look good in a spreadsheet and sound good in a board meeting but underlying they mean nothing so how many proposals did we get out this month we got out 30 great what's the average order value of each one about a hundred thousand okay so now we've got in our pipeline three million pounds worth of potential.

15:49No. 85 % to 90 % of those proposals are a waste of time. We spend pointless time setting up to people that weren't properly qualified. Why aren't they properly qualified? Well, because if we qualified them hard, we wouldn't have as many meetings. If we don't have any meetings, we don't hit the meetings target. So we don't care about the behaviour that hits the target. And so the bigger the company, the less they want to change that. So I get most of my success comes from individuals who use their own money and say, Benjamin, but I want to get good at selling and they learn how to do it. Or you get a small business owner who says, look, Benjamin, we can't go on like this.

16:22We have to fundamentally change how we do things. This isn't working. We're willing to invest time and money in. But like I say, of the thousands, hundreds of thousands, it's very few want to do this because deep down, everyone thinks sales is a numbers game. And if you throw enough crap at the wall, something sticks. And do that, but never call yourself a sales professional because you're not. You're just an order taker. that's all you are yeah yeah an order taker that throws crap yeah um so for our friends that are listening um let's let's give them a because they may be listening because they're researching you and they've come across this podcast and um can you explain um how someone works with you individually and and of course uh you know we mentioned uh your your website where you have the course or the program or the membership the platform that's salesmatrixcourses.com For this audience, I think there's going to be some potential interest in maybe higher level help.

17:22I'll give you what I do. I've got a deal for your listeners then. So I don't normally do freebies, but seeing as these podcasts are good to attract people to me. I've got two crash courses. One's called 10 Reasons Why You're Prospecting Files, and the other one is how to bulldoze your way through objections. These will be very common things that your viewers are either dealing with or they're hearing their salespeople moan and complain about. So if they go to, if they DM me on, what do you call it, Instagram. I'm using Instagram now. It's just got to get more down with the youth sort of thing.

17:54If they Instagram me, we'll say Josh. If they Instagram the word Josh to me on, DM me on Instagram, they'll get an automated and it'll send them a link. And for free, normally I charge$197 for each of these. They can go and access these two crash courses for free. And I'll also give them the option of joining one of my live Q &A. So every month I do a live Q &A session for the members of my platform. Anyone can join that as a member. And you can ask me any sales question that you've got, and I will deal with it on the spot. So that's the deal. But then once people are in the platform, what they tend to do is, I don't like training people unless they've done some of the content.

18:30The reason being is everything that's in the content, we're going to go over just on a macro level. So most people will do the telephone prospecting course, and they'll say, this is great, but I don't know how to make this work for me. So that's when you can just book a one-to-one coaching session and we can go through it. You can book as many as you want. It's up to you. It's all through the platform. So I coach people all over the world. I got clients. There's not a continent I haven't worked with, I haven't sold to. The thing is selling, it doesn't matter what your culture is, we're all raised the same way to behave and act certain ways.

19:03And selling is a universal. And the reason why we suck at it is because we were all raised to be buyers, not sellers. So we're all taught the same things. We're all taught, this is why most people don't like prospecting. I'll give you some little quick tips here. So if you're a business owner and you're wondering why your guy's reluctant to pick up the phone, number one, what were you taught as a kid when it came to talking to strangers? Yeah, don't. Don't. Everyone was taught that, right? What were you taught about interrupting? Don't. It's rude. Don't interrupt. And secondly, if you were asked a question by anyone older in authority growing up, did you have the option of not answering?

19:42No. No. So now you take these three behaviours that were pumped into you as a kid. No one ever told you that none of these were all applied. You've now got a room full of grown-ups and you say, here's a list of busy strangers. Interrupt them. And they probably know more than you about what we do. So you better know how to answer their questions. This is why you have this inertia. This is why when you say, let's hit the phone, it takes 10 to 15 minutes for someone to make a dial. There's all this head trash. Their mum's screaming at them. What are you going to say to him when you get through? He's a stranger.

20:12You better answer his question. So they've got all this. They've already self-sabotaged before the call begins. This is what's going on. Every problem is in between the ears because of the way we've been programmed to behave. So my job is to show you that and give you some new behaviors, which eventually you can never eliminate these beliefs. You can stop them, though, but they'll always be there. It's like trying to lose weight. You can burn the carbs off, but if you don't stick to the program, they will come back. Yeah, because the program is designed to keep charging through. You could stop it, but you can never actually delete it.

20:48So my job is to help you stop it until you decide to get out of sales. And then it doesn't matter. You can go back to being a buyer. Benjamin Dennehy, your website, salesmatrixcourses.com. I appreciate your energy. Thank you, boy. Folks who think that I'm Mr. High Energy, no. That's why I loved it. I've just been sitting in the easy chair this whole interview. This is what it's like with me. Everyone says, how do you keep it? I do this for four, five hours at a time. I collapse afterwards, by the way. I have a pacemaker. I have an air machine. I've got everything. Well-earned. Well-earned. Benjamin, thank you so much for the conversation.

21:28Again, the website, salesmatrixcourses.com. You mentioned your Instagram, which is linked on that page. Then once you get to your Instagram, you send a message with the word Josh, and then you'll hook them up with those courses. Thank you so much, Benjamin. Appreciate it. Thank you, Josh. It's been a pleasure.

21:54Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

22:36I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm gonna share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed.

23:17I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening. And thank you for being a part of the thoughtful entrepreneur movement.