#221 Rebecca Veksler - The Science of Selling to Entrepreneurs

Rebecca Veksler: 0:00

I negotiated with my manufacturer that I'd pay a 30% deposit upfront. That was my personal investment that I had to, you know, forgo. That was the risk, the skin in the game. And then I had eight weeks before it landed to cover the remainder of the cost of the goods. So I had eight weeks to sell. I did it in two and a half weeks. Why I think we were successful is because we grew so fast in such a small amount of time. But I was so well prepared and I invested so much energy into the preparation of this growth that I personally anticipated through like blind beliefs.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 0:35

Welcome to another episode of the How to Sell podcast. I am your host. I'm the reason why you turned up, not my co-host, Dave Fistuca. But thank you for showing up. Ratings have gone up.

Dave Fastuca: 0:49

Louis Review the soaring, since I'm drawing the podcast, so let's take all that one.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 0:55

Well, thank you for showing up. If you're a first time listener, we're very grateful that you've decided to jump in and hear our podcast, and if you're a longtime listener, thank you very much for always showing up. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button, because this is a podcast. Yes, it's called how to Sell, but we help you achieve that by looking at things from the buyer's perspective, because we talk to buyers and find out how they buy. So we're really pumped about this week's guest. We have a guest who's been in the hot seat for a number of years, kind of born into business, and she's going to talk a bit about that and how that's impacted the way that she's been buying. But before we jump in there, Dave, what's been happening in your world?

Dave Fastuca: 1:38

My world's been quite crazy. It's just ticked over another year in Earth years. So one young, 38. Kids make me very, very old.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 1:52

How is that A lot ? Why is it that you were 38, but you look older than me, man, and I'm 41.?

Dave Fastuca: 2:00

Yeah, it's a great question, Louis. Maybe it's been either married to a multi's wife or three kids, or a combination of both. Hopefully she doesn't listen to this.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 2:10

Well, happy birthday, man. If you know, yes, it was your birthday and you got your birthday message yesterday. So, yeah, I know you forgot. So yeah, I did forget. My partner had to remind me that it was your birthday. I'm like OK, but yes, let's, let's you know, people don't come up, come to this episode to hear you talk. Dave Rebecca, welcome to the how to Sell podcast.

Rebecca Veksler: 2:31

Thank you. I'm very happy to be with you guys today.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 2:35

Well, it's good, because it's good to hear that we have somebody that loves banter and loves giving it to Dave because Dave's calling.

Rebecca Veksler: 2:44

Yeah, I'll be nice. It was my birthday, it's fine.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 2:50

Well, thank you. Obviously, I did mention your background, that you were born into a business, and for our listeners who might not have heard of you, do you mind just giving him a quick snapshot of, yeah, where do you come from? You did mention that you. I mentioned that you're born into a business. You want to maybe talk a bit about that and how that's impacted your entrepreneurial journey.

Rebecca Veksler: 3:09

Yeah, I've a pretty, pretty fun story. I think the first business I ever started was when I was eight years old. I was in grade three, and it was because. So my parents had a promotional products company. They owned their own factories, were manufacturing all the incredible accessories for companies like Roxy Quiksilver, all the surfing brands, and in the basement of the factory would be all the samples, and I used to take these samples and bring them to school and sell them in the playground. But quite a substantial discount as well, and it lasted for about six months. I ended up hiring friends to walk around different parts of the playground and sell for me because there was such a demand. And then one day I got pulled into the principal's office and I thought, like that's it. I'm going to be suspended, I'm going to be in so much trouble. I've got Eastern European parents, they're going to like to belt me. When I got up on her, lo and behold, the principal was trying to negotiate to see if she could buy some herself for her daughter. So it was a great boost of ego and confidence to sort of start me on my entrepreneurial journey at Essence. But really, yeah, my family had their own background in business and entrepreneurial sort of endeavours. They immigrated when they were young. So they came with nothing, worked hard, showed their children how to set something up from nothing and bootstrap and work their butt off in a very smart way and built an incredible business. But when I was 17, I actually got handed the keys to a gym. So I essentially became my own gym manager and personal trainer at about 17, 18 years old. I was a trainer at about 17, 18, 19. And that's when I really learned how to make shit happen, because I was given empty gym doors, zero members, and built it to essentially 200 members and under about four months, and it was such an incredible, humbling experience to also deal with my own clients, building up classes, building up community and experiencing that sort of world from nothing. So I started my first company when I was 21, which was SoulCup, which became a global empire, became one of the top four reusable companies in the world, and it's been almost a decade. So I'm going to turn 30 this year and we actually decided to close the doors and finish that business after almost a decade. And now I'm starting a new health tech company which is a completely different industry. But yeah, that's a little bit of a snapshot.

Dave Fastuca: 5:56

Man, what a journey, Crazy huh. I love that, especially starting in primary school. That's the best.

Rebecca Veksler: 6:01

Oh yeah.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 6:05

Mate you're born into. You know you're a hustler, you're born right, you're born like that. That's what I love about it. I actually love that story, yeah, so this is really interesting and do you mind just sharing with our audience? Cause, obviously, 10 years I know this is probably your topic, but what sort of emotion do you have when you look back and go? 10 years I'm shutting a business that you probably be very passionate about. I could only imagine it's probably triggered by some. Have you been feeling about that whole process?

Rebecca Veksler: 6:34

It's a grief. It was a genuine loss and I went into a very dark place. I was very, very depressed for probably about three months of that process and it was very challenging because I still had a big team and I had to fire everyone and that whole experience of having to walk in. Obviously there was transparency along the way. It's not like it was just a shock and it was an overnight decision. It was a process, obviously, but yeah, it's just an unforgettable experience of grief and loss and I went through those waves of failure and disappointment and ego and everything you can imagine, Because being 21 when you start, and then getting to that sort of next phase of your life into your 30s, it's such I basically grew up. My entire adulthood was developing this business and growing with this business. So as it died and it closed, it felt like a part of me also went with it and I had to then reinvent myself and relearn who I am, what kind of mark I wanna leave on the world next and outside of Seoul because everybody knew me as the Seoul Cups lady and who actually am I and what do I believe in and what are my values outside of that business. So it was a huge discovery and a huge honest death and rebirth at the same time.

Dave Fastuca: 8:02

Yeah, your identity becomes attached to the business right, especially when you're there for so long.

Rebecca Veksler: 8:10

And also it's your first success, right, and also as a young woman, I made all those cliche mistakes of becoming my business. I was the face of the brand. I was that big profile that was being interviewed every three times a week on a plane, every two weeks, travelling around the world. Like it felt quite large in your own bubble of your universe and then to have that burst and go okay, well, now no one really gives a shit about you as an ego, from an ego perspective, it was a huge, monumental smack to the face to kind of go well, if no one really gives a shit about you now, because the brand's over, well, what now? Who are you?

Dave Fastuca: 8:56

Yeah, so it's a tough transition, right? Like you said. You summed it up really well that it's a grief. It is a process to go through and you've come out the other side obviously amazing, like you always knew you would, but still had to go through those challenging times building something completely different from you go from glass cups to now health tech, something you're really passionate about. Even from when we met I think it's close to a year ago you were always talking about the health side. You even helped me personally, direct me to someone to help with when I was feeling lethargic and things like that, so you could tell that that was a burning passion of yours. So it's awesome to see that you're now turning that into a career. Yeah, awesome.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 9:47

Well, we might have to get some more advice. If you're a background, things are gonna help, Dave.

Rebecca Veksler: 9:52

All right, we can do it by hacking sessions.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 9:56

I don't think there's certain things that we can help Deal with. Yeah, we're just joking around, really, in Costa, if you're listening, he could hear that Dave doesn't have to get dressed up at Halloween. He can just go. I'm sorry.

Dave Fastuca: 10:12

I've just got a Luigi mask here. Oh, it's bad. Actually it's bad, that's enough.

Rebecca Veksler: 10:20

All right, I wanna ask Friday play night, Friday Friday.

Dave Fastuca: 10:24

I wanna ask good luck, you've been so young and saw the cups were big and you're buying quite a lot of products. Now how were they? Can you talk us through? How did you make these buying decisions? Obviously, let's just call it like you were fortunate. Yet he would have had some connections because of the family's business which did a lot of importing, exporting. What role did that play? What role did you play in making decisions and how did you decide when to put a trigger and make a buying decision?

Rebecca Veksler: 11:00

Yeah, it's a great question because it's so circumstantial to the kind of business you run. So education is the key here. It doesn't matter whether you are. You know, initially I was so fortunate to have that background and that knowledge and watch my family make decisions and make many mistakes. By the way, they all almost went bankrupt. That's where I was born and it's like a whole other fun story there. But the reality was when we started the business, the decisions in terms of purchasing stock, for example, were very much based on demand and supply rules. I needed to build a community and I needed to ensure that this stock was gonna be sold before it landed in the country. So I went and made that happen. So my decision to purchase stock was triggered on how quickly I could pre-sell the stock. So we bootstrapped the business. I didn't have the luxury of money to back it and build it. You know, even though my parents were entrepreneurial and had their own business, I didn't say they were successful. So I learned a lot from them and a lot from their mistakes and I actually love my mother. We ended up being business partners and she worked with me and Sol for the whole time, but father not as much in terms of understanding how to operate and actually build and how to monetize and create and, like you know, build an empire. So I learned a lot from his fuckups, basically, excuse the French. So when we make buying decisions, it was very much strategic, it was very much data-driven and it was very much action-orientated. So I went and I made sure I sold 8,000 cups before the eight week mark of its arrival. So I negotiated with my manufacturer that I'd pay a 30% deposit upfront. That was my personal investment that I had to, you know, forgo. That was the risk, the skin in the game. And then I had eight weeks before it landed to cover the remainder of the cost of the goods. So I had eight weeks to sell. I did it in two and a half weeks. They gave us a lot of confidence and immediately after those two weeks we placed the second order for a container double the size. So that's essentially how the pattern began in terms of cash flow and buying our business.

Dave Fastuca: 13:16

Pardon the interruption, but I have to let you know about this free resource. The Grow Forum newsletter has over 10,000 subscribers that are learning how to sell. Each and every week we send you tips, strategies and also some tools and tech on how to achieve the most out of your sales pipeline. If you're ready to level up, sign up for free at growforumio forward slash newsletter and get the first issue this week.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 13:41

So that's really actually, it's really typical entrepreneur right Finding a way to issue that process, but from the flip side, right when, obviously when you were buying, you were really considering cash flow. We'd love to understand and if you think about you know that was early in your days, as you built the business and you moved into sort of year four or five was there a time where you were purchasing a tech platform or purchasing I don't know vehicle, whatever else Like? Was there a time that you were purchasing something where cash flow wasn't necessarily the main driver? What were some of the other drivers that were influencing your decision making process, or was cash flow always the key?

Rebecca Veksler: 14:30

Look, it's a very specific industry. When you're in a product, cash flow is always the key, like that is the golden rule. You can't really step outside that and if you do, it's generally because you've got a lot of cash to play with and you're not scared that it's going to eat into any buying behaviour. Because it's a very especially in the industry I was in, we were heavy focused on wholesale, making sure that we were stuck everywhere, but also into corporate, which meant that there was less risk in the corporate side of the B2B business Because you didn't have to bring stock in and then ship it out again and hold it and there was no risk in that regard. So the way I structured our decisions and buying were really irrelevant to which industry was like we were focusing on more. So when we were buying things like a company car or office spaces or we did an astronomical amount of trade shows, for example internationally, I think we did like maybe 25 per trade show cycle on a global scale. So that's like three months, 25 shows.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 15:40

Really it's crazy In vain yeah.

Rebecca Veksler: 15:44

So you're having to obviously invest in a lot of additional things, but you weigh that up to what's the win, what's the outcome and what's the return on investment. If you talk about technology, I wasted so much money on technology and made so many mistakes and still, to the last day of Sol existing, we still had the shitest website, but this barely worked and I don't think I ever had a successful experience from like ad spend and marketing just because of yeah, yeah.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 16:20

So sorry, daryl, I don't know, but I'll just go back because this is really I think this is a really important topic. So you mentioned that your website didn't have a great experience and didn't have a great experience with AdWords. Do you mind sharing? Was that something that you did internally or did you outsource that?

Rebecca Veksler: 16:39

We outsourced and it's very again. When we launched it was the end of 2015, 2016,. Right, it wasn't the same world now. So there was very little sort of awareness and understanding and it was just the baby beginning of Instagram and social media and advertising and everybody was promising you the world, and no one really understood because there wasn't enough data literally to have context of what's going to work. What's not going to work was all the testing, right. So there was so much money thrown down the drain, everything was agencies, everything was outsourced. We never, ever, had an internal marketing person until basically last year as the last hope to see if we could try and change something. And we did an internal, like we hired someone internally, and it was still such a fuck up, like it was just nothing worked for us in the end.

Dave Fastuca: 17:34

Yeah. So when deciding the agency side? Right, because a lot of businesses use external resourcing to help fill the gaps, or even just because they don't want the headcount in the business. Did they, you know? Were you sold to like? Did they come to your coal? Did you do outreach? How did you do? What did that process look like? You know, if you pick maybe one scenario where you found them, you had hunted an agency of sorts and one where I'm sure you would have got hammered every day, being an e-commerce brand. You know you were about 20, you know cult-y, you know, plus hitting your inbox, you know, was any of them?

Rebecca Veksler: 18:14

did any of them work when you have so many stories, let's go one horror and one yeah, okay. The horror is the one time I went out to look and outsourced and researched and tried to find someone. Fuck, it's such a bad story. We ended up losing like $15,000 straight away. So they invested $15,000 into them to build our website and to sort of begin something and to build the site and to also do some marketing, and it turns out that one of the business partners ended up stealing all the money, clearing the back account and scamming the other business partner. So we lost everything, didn't have a website as a fucking nightmare. And I put a post out onto social media basically saying like I'm desperate for some help. Can anyone know anyone who can actually help me right now tonight? Desperate. And through that outreach I met this amazing New Zealand guy who literally was just a soul contractor. He was like I'm living it up in Bali and he saw the post, responded to me and basically said I feel so horrible to see what has happened to you. I'm going to build your website for free. Just have it, give it to me and if you want to work with me, of course, but no obligation. I just like literally cannot handle the fact that this was done to you. It sounds terrible, and I worked with Steve for two years. That was when we launched SoulCups. That was like the first thing we ever did, so he was amazing. But we launched it on WordPress Like this is how far back we're going and it was still a shit show. It was amazing what he did, but it was like a terrible website and it couldn't handle the load of sales either because we were actually going through a boom. So it was. It was just one episode like that after the other basically just got worse and worse.

Dave Fastuca: 20:14

OK, well, that's, I didn't expect that type of horror story, but that's, that's pretty heavy.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 20:19

Yeah, yeah, I was going to say we probably should. We could probably do an episode of all the things that you learn and you know what you probably that's kind of like a great it's probably a great university degree for you in building your next startup, right, because you're through so many different challenges. At least now you've kind of got a bit of a blueprint of what not to do. Yeah, and I think we've all been. We all make mistakes. I mean, I'm constantly Dave and I am in business and I've been involved in other businesses and I think some of the best learnings, even though we're in that, in that moment you don't want to learn, you're like you're wishing that you're not going through it.

Rebecca Veksler: 20:57

Yeah.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 20:57

They call the ones that really help build your capability to help elevate scores. Yeah, who you are.

Rebecca Veksler: 21:04

Look, we're generally solutions driven people right. As entrepreneurs, we happen, we make decisions quite quickly and we move forward. We don't sit in the mud and the thing about fuck ups and mistakes is that it just ignites that energy even more. Right, you're just going to go all in and go, ok, let's fix this, let's solve it, and that lateral sinking happens. And that's when the good stuff really comes out, because you don't have the choice.

Dave Fastuca: 21:31

Yeah, it's. A great, that's a great story here.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 21:33

Yeah, let's go Louie, Sorry, OK, I keep cutting up, but this is the last one. I'm actually not the last one, Dave, you just mentioned something. I think that's important because, again, this podcast is about teaching people how to sell and obviously you know you are one of many entrepreneurs and business owners that we're talking to to help people who are selling to entrepreneurs and business owners understand them a bit better. And you just mentioned something that I think is really important: that you are generally solutions focused as an individual, you make decisions quickly and you're essentially a fast paced operator. Right? Are there some good ways to describe your type of personality profile?

Rebecca Veksler: 22:15

Absolutely yeah. Yeah to a T. That is an A type classic. Like I am multitasking all the time, I'm operating at a very high level of output. My decision making is very fast. I don't second guess myself. I'm very connected to my gut and I just move forward. Everything's about moving the needle forward.

Dave Fastuca: 22:42

Interesting, so that's good luck. Almost a typical persona of a founder entrepreneur. But you're nearly days low cash, need to push forward, make decisions fast, you know, to get that revenue ticking up right. And then, before Lori cuts me off again, let's jump into, like a good scenario where either someone you know called outreach to you or you've found a good vendor you know you would have probably had like an ERP or CRM of sorts, which you know is in their thousands of dollars. So you want to take a step back and think about whether you know that investment. Walk us through that sort of buying process and what played out in your head because, being the founder, you don't need to report to anyone unless you had an external CFO of sorts. But you know you're making the decision. How did you make that?

Rebecca Veksler: 23:38

I think I want to talk about an example in terms of systems and processes. So it's a big part of why I think we were successful is because we grew so fast in such a small amount of time. But I was so well prepared and I invested so much energy into the preparation of this growth that I personally anticipated through like blind beliefs. But because I had that, I was able to do all of that research and development in purchasing the right CRM tools, the right software tools, the right solutions from a technology perspective to be able to ramp up and grow and deal with that influx of demand without any kind of stress or overwhelm. Because I literally went from at working at a cafe on my laptop by myself, picking packing things in mom's garage, like literally, because we did a lot of co-branding. That was our biggest part of our business was co-branding on the sleeves, but I was the one who physically liked taking the sleeve off the cup, sending it to the printer, and re-sleeving it. Like my fingernails are bleeding by the end of the day, you know, and I realised that well, overnight I went from you know one or two orders like that to working with companies like Microsoft and HP ordering like 10,000 at a time. We had to grow. We had to deal with this, so I hired eight people in under a month and had to, you know, expand the team. And hiring people means technology, it means onboarding, it means training, it means sales CRM, it means, you know, operational security and data, like the whole shebang from zero to nothing. So, buying that technology or investing in those purchases very much decisions were based on how optimised can it get, how functional is it? Is it going to meet my needs as a founder because I'm neurotic and sisters and I really love organisations Like, is it going to meet my requirements? And in terms of an investment, I think about my team and what their need for. Like, how can I make their lives as easy and as functional and productive as possible so that they can sell more and they can do a better job at customer service and those things that matter? So those are my buying pattern decisions: do the research, do all the compare and contrast, make sure my needs are being met? Negotiate, even with technology, like I worked with the amazing CRM from the US and I literally just if you don't ask, the answer is always going to be no. I would always negotiate because why not, you know? And they gave us amazing deals and amazing opportunities where it would be like six months for free, you know, or 50% off for the next three months, just like. How incredible is that? Just from asking?

Dave Fastuca: 26:31

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Rebecca Veksler: 28:33

It's one of those things where you can sort of be creative about how you hire as well, like I mean, you can even consider that in the wages of the package and have that as a calculation when you're doing your projections if you know something that. So when I told you about mom being in my business, she was the bookkeeper, her background is accounting and you know sort of financial support. So whenever we go into a really busy period, we'd know we'd need to start hiring people. We'd sit and we'd do these projections based on exactly what you just discussed. What's the tech stack and the cost per head? You know what extra costs we are going to incur and how many cups do we need to sell to cover that employee. Basically, if we're going to hire this person, this is what our sales need to look like. You know and this is that you know the balance of that and being really transparent about that with those employees as well.

Dave Fastuca: 29:24

I got one last question before we head towards wrapping up but then going into our Louie and I do then do a spill towards the end and we talk about how we would sell to Beck? So with your mother, as you know, cfo in the business and this is the case with many founders they got into business with a friend, a family member. You know a lot of times. You know tour free, whatnot you know. Did you have to run things past mom right before making a buying decision? You know, and how? If you did, what was that conversation like? Because emotions come into play during those processes, right, and because you're friendly or family, things can get quite heated.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 30:10

Yeah.

Rebecca Veksler: 30:11

Yeah, it's a great question. There were many situations where we were at each other's throats about arguing about how we should do things. And when you work with family, I find it much harder than working with safe friends or acquaintances, because it's easier to set boundaries and it's easier to set those rules in the beginning, whereas a family is forgotten very quickly. I'll tell you, I grew up. I already grew up very fast. I didn't really have a childhood and my mother and I's relationship is not mother-daughter, it's very much friends. But at the same time, this experience working with her taught me an entirely new level of sort of personal development and keeping my shit together, because, no, I did not have to run past her and I'm deeply grateful for the trust and the independence that I was given in this business, because I was the director, it was my business, but at the same time, her talent and her skillset was so incredible that there wasn't a time where I didn't have a conversation with her, even as a soundboard, because doing everything alone is not going to get you the best result. I believe that together we go further, whether it's having a community or having friends or a circle or a business partner or whatever it is, you just are going to make better decisions through diversified feedback and through soundboarding, so I didn't need her permission ever to make decisions, but I definitely loved and valued sharing and having feedback and opinions, and from my team as well. That was definitely a big part of our growth. Is that transparency with the team as well?

Luigi Prestinenzi: 32:01

This has been amazing and I've actually, like always, a good good, a very good guest. I get a lot of notes and I've been typing away because I've taken a number of things away from this conversation. I just want to say thank you so much for sharing. I know that it's probably. It's not always people who think that businesses can be something. It's always fun, there's always the upside, but there's actually a lot of downside to it as well, right? Not just the fact that, regardless, even if a business is performing well, in some cases people can still go through that emotional challenge and that distress and the unknown and you know, but it takes a particular person to be able to go through that. I have to say this to some people and it's no right or wrong that they're suited to work in a company where they don't have to worry about cash flow, they don't have to worry about where their pay is coming from. Every month they get money into their bank account and they can go and do what they need to do. And you need people like that, right? You need people working just like that. So it takes somebody really special, it takes somebody really unique to be able to do what you do. So I just want to say thank you very much for showing up on our podcast and sharing your story with us. We've taken a lot away and we are very excited. I can't even see this new business yet, so you'll have to let us know when you launch HealthTech, so that we can start being cheerleaders and cheering for something.

Rebecca Veksler: 33:26

Thank you. Yeah, it's super exciting and you know what. Just to sort of add on that really quickly. Like you're so right, there are definitely two types of people in the world: those that don't care about the weekly paycheck and those that do. And those that don't are the ones that are blindly and curiously charging forward and making decisions and just taking the risk because there's no other way to live. And it's either you get that or you don't get that. And yeah, it's for anyone thinking about starting a business or going down that journey. It's, it's fucked up at times. There's no nice way to say it. There's just some moments you're going to be sitting there like, holy shit, why am I doing this to myself? But there's so much reward and there's so much fulfilment in achieving your dreams and goals and hopefully leaving an impact on the world around you.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 34:28

Well, it's been great. Thank you for getting our podcast changed and its ratings from PG. That's all right. Yeah, it's been great. It's something that swears more than me, so thank you very much.

Rebecca Veksler: 34:45

We're going to jump it out, you know what I see, David and I's WhatsApp channel.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 34:50

If that ever gets leaked, we are one trope. We'll have to get a PR. We'll have to get Dan Andrews PR company. Wow.

Rebecca Veksler: 35:00

That's bad.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 35:05

Well, thank you so much. Yeah, this has been a good episode and we'll jump into the next segment of our episode. Thanks, Bec.

Rebecca Veksler: 35:13

Okay, see you.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 35:17

Dave, we could have kept going. I think we went a bit longer than what we anticipated, but I was great to hear from an entrepreneur that is in the driving seat and you can see she's now building another business, so I found I got a lot of A from that. I don't know about you.

Dave Fastuca: 35:33

Yeah, look, I really resonated a lot with Bec. We're founders ourselves in business, in this car and one and in past ones, and everything she said was pretty much on the money. You're making decisions thick and fast, you need to push hard. So it's growing. But she really highlighted a couple key areas that I would leverage when selling to her. So let me throw it back to you, Louis, you're selling let's pick at the CRM to her. You pick your poison on what you want to sell. How would you sell it to someone's persona like Rebecca?

Luigi Prestinenzi: 36:13

I think the first thing we need to think about right, like we've got to think about her social style, her behavioural style, right, and In her case she reeled it off Fast-paced, absolutely fast-paced. Problem solver, risk taker. If you get a picture of that type of person, they are moving forward, a fast decision-making process. They're not ones to sit there and ideate and look for the perfect scenario. To some extent, they're like the perfect person to sell to, because if you determine a need, their ability to move forward quickly is actually quite high. If you think they're not the ones that are going to take a long time in your pipeline, but in saying that, because they are so fast-paced, to some extent they're not always going to be considering certain things. I just think in her case and she had a couple of great examples of when she bought a website and it didn't work Even the marketing agency I think if I was in that position where I was selling to Rebecca, whether it be a CRM or even a marketing program, one of the things that I would probably consider and this is why we need to be doing our research is you'd want to do some research on her and the business You'd want to be actually looking at her and saying, hey, I'm noticing how your business is going to market, I'm noticing what you're doing over here. I'm not sure if you realise, but this is happening which could be impacting performance, sales, cashflow. Think about what she said. Even cash flow was king for her day one. Cashflow was king for her day last year. Cash Flow had never stopped. It never stopped being a priority for her. I think she's common with a lot of business owners, a lot of business owners. This is why they're very different. You've got to see them differently than, yes, a corporation, they're responsible, maybe to shareholders, whether it being enlisted or a small shareholder group. But the bigger companies, they got a lot of greater cash reserves. They've got a very different focus and if things don't go well, yeah, okay, it's not, it's bad, but for a small business owner, the small business owner potentially got their house connected to the business. There's family, they're not doing certain things with the money because they're allocating it to their businesses A different level of emotion. That's connected and I think it's really important again, as you're selling to these different audiences, you've got to be thinking about this, because emotion drives the decision making process. 92% of the decisions we make are driven by emotion first, and we justify it with logic. So in her point she mentioned cash flow was absolutely key. She's multitasking, so how would I sell to her? I would really be looking at finding a way to show her a gap. That's probably impacting one of those things. It's impacting cash flow, it's impacting sales, it's impacting her ability to grow her business. If that's the way that I would approach her first and I would also, knowing that she's such a fast paced decision maker I would also help in that sales process, building that business case. And it came up with the true impact of adding tech, like it wasn't just hey, I've got to buy this for one person. What about all the other aspects that it impacts? And helping her go. Hey, during this? You might not be aware, but when you do X, this is how it impacts B and this is how it impacts C. This is the wider impact Giving her that knowledge, because you could tell the type of person that she is. She wants that education, she wants that knowledge. That would only improve your status in her eyes, and so that's what I would do. So, first and foremost, going back a step, do a bit of research, find some gaps, develop a message that talks to the gaps, that are aligned to the things that are important to her. Like I said, cash flow and growth right, the two key things yeah. Then, once I'm into that conversation, making sure and she mentioned her sales process making sure it's aligned to her needs, allowing her the space to negotiate, because she said it, ask, give her that space. Her social style wants to be in control of the decision making process. Yeah. So give her options as you progress. These are the options that can help you achieve your outcome. Help with your needs. That way she's got control of the buying process. Yeah, and once you've gone through that, also give her an understanding of what the business case looks like and how it impacts the wider business, and connect those to the options. So, say, give an X. These are some of the options. Which option did you want? Because by providing that she's got control, she's a driver. Yeah, she feels like yes. And also you've created value in her eyes because you've helped her not just with the need, but you've helped her potentially identify and unrecognize the need. So that's the exact way that I would go about selling anything to her CRM marketing tool, onboarding, training. You'd be looking at that, at the gap in her business, because you're the expert and able to educate and in a way how would I approach her now as she's embarking on the next stage of her entrepreneurial journey, and she mentioned she's building a health tech business. Before you even reach out, you want to do this research? She's on a podcast. She's probably you could jump out there and look at some of her content and you'd go. You know what she's just gone through 10 years in this business. She's mentioned some pain. You would also potentially use that in the next message. Yeah, you would read some of that and that would start the new conversation.

Dave Fastuca: 42:34

How would you frame that, Because that could be quite touchy yeah absolutely.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 42:39

I think, first and foremost, you'd be if I was referencing this podcast. I'd actually leverage that in my first line. I really thank you for sharing your story. It really resonated with me because of A, B and C. After sharing your story and the fact that you're now going and building another business, I've got some insight that I think would add value to what you're doing in this next stage of your journey or something like that. I know we're coming quickly, but you want to reference that, you want to recognize that, you want to show her that hey, I've actually really heard what you've got to say. She's a fantastic advocate for entrepreneurs. She's out there, she's a board member, she's an entrepreneur, a resident. She's got a lot of. She really loves that fact that she's giving back. I think you could flip that. I can say you're giving a lot of value to other people and I would love to give that baby back. She mentioned that. The guy that reached out to her and said I'll help you with your website, just like. She's open to that type of conversation. This is why, for people listening to this and our audience, it's really important in a world of automation and you've heard me talk about this time and time again. In a world of technology, the best thing you can do is use the technology to do your research, but spend the time to really customise your outreach message, because the one-to-one message that you can create will help you build your relationship funnel. That, for me, is probably the best way to mic drop this episode, dave. People want somebody that is focused on them and they're not part of a message of one-to-a-thousand. We've seen this this week. We won't name names, but the message you got and the message one of our friends got was exactly the same message. People know that's happening. The value from the buyer's side is like hey, I know that you're just blasting this out. This isn't personal, this isn't just sent to me, it's sent to a whole bunch of people. Sure, it works when you're doing it at massive volume, but it's a lot of work to do that anyway. That's the way that I would wrap this up. This is great because we're going to be talking to other entrepreneurs, other business owners, about this exact topic. As part of this process, an audience will be able to get a real feel for the social style that they're talking to, to what's driving them, the key things that are important to them and how they should sell to them.

Dave Fastuca: 45:08

Right, great summary and perfect way to wrap up another how to Sell episode. As Louis mentioned at the start, feel free to subscribe to wherever you're watching or listening to this episode and keep an eye out for next week's one. It's going to be another brilliant episode.

Luigi Prestinenzi: 45:26

If you do want to get in touch, just send Dave a message and say happy 40th birthday. Don't add a couple more years to him. Dave knows that you do like, even though you don't turn up to listen to him. Just let him know that you are grateful for him being a co-hunter.

Dave Fastuca: 45:48

So send me some love and support to deal with Louis. We'll see you on the next show.

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