42. Overcoming the Fear of Selling: Insights from Frances Pratt

All right, everybody. Welcome to the Gilder Spotlight podcast. This week we have a very special guest. Her name is Frances Pratt, the founder and CEO of Medicine. She's also currently a Gilder member based in Melbourne, Australia. But Frances, if you want to give our listeners a quick intro of who you are, that'd be fantastic.

Yeah. So thank you so much. For doing this spotlight with me. Uh, yeah, so my name is Frances Pratt. I've been selling for more than 30 years. And I, for the last 15 years, I've been helping people get over their fear of selling and helping people build high-performing sales teams. So, um, yeah, I live in Melbourne, as, as Tiger said, and I have 2 kids, 3 bonus kids, 1 husband, 1 big dog.

Wow. Excellent intro, Frances. Well, I want to kind of take, um, typically with Spotlight, we like to understand kind of your whole story. So starting when you were younger growing up, did you always want to become a sales specialist turned entrepreneur, or what were your goals and ambitions when you were younger?

Oh, I've got no idea. I don't really remember. And I don't know, I don't, I still don't know. I'm 54 and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. So, um, I think that's, that's an entrepreneurial thing, right? Like you're never quite sure, you're always creating. And so I was one of 5 kids, 3 older brothers and a twin sister. And I come from a family that I affectionately call high nerd introverts. And, and so then there was me and I was not introverted. So whilst all my brothers and sister were really happy to have their nose in a book and, you know, doing their own thing, I really wanted to experience the world. I wanted to get out there. out there and meet people. And so I remember when I was 11, my twin sister said to me, Fran, you're dangerous. And I went, ooh, that's exciting. I love being dangerous. I said, tell me, tell me what, why, why? She said, well, I know what you know, but when you're talking to someone else, you don't lie. But you deliver it with so much confidence that they think that you know more than you do. And I'm like, aha. So even back then, I suppose I had that gift of being able to confidently talk about a subject in a way that gave other people confidence. And I think, you know, kind of that's the art of selling. And I think the other thing is both my mom and dad, um, My mum was a lawyer and was partner, so she was kind of running her own business. And my dad was an entrepreneur and he, back in 1979, his idea was to, if you think about the modern idea of pasture to plate, right? Well, he started doing that in 1979. So all grass-fed beef. Yeah. Beef.

Oh, farm to fork type of thing.

Right. Right. So, and one of the gifts I suppose my dad was able to give me was that every time I came home from uni or learned something new, I was able to apply that to his business. So I'd come home and go, right, dad, you need a mission statement, right? You need a targeted marketing plan, you know, whatever, whatever it was. So I've always been applying, no matter what I was learning, I was always applying that. And I think that's a little bit different.

Yeah. There's a lot to unpack with kind of your upbringing. And so it sounds like, are you, you and your twin are the younger of the 5 siblings? Okay.

Yeah. I say to my mom that I've got 3, that she had 3 horrible boys and then 2 beautiful girls. So.

Are you the youngest of the twins?

No. Well, it depends, Tiger. It depends why you ask. So if, if the youngest gets to open their Christmas presents first, then I'm the same age as my twin. If the oldest gets to sit in the front seat of the car, then I'm 9 minutes older.

I see.

Okay. Yeah.

So whatever. Right.

All right. Right.

Absolutely. Um, and so you come from it, obviously your dad started doing business entrepreneurship, but you mentioned that you come from a family of introverts and kind of one of your special talents was your confidence and how you can explain maybe more mundane or difficult things with a lot of confidence. So where does that confidence come from?

No, I, I've done lots of, you know, psychographic blah, blah, blah studies on myself and other people, but I think the key thing that I know about me is that I want to be able to actively influence people. So I want to be able to really see that what I'm suggesting is being put into action. And I think if you think about the sales role, using those powers for good only, um, That, that great selling is a function of, of change management, of being able to see a future state for your client with a, with a product that's going to help them be better. And then your job is to help them understand that. And I think the second thing that my family helped me hone was the ability to very quickly assess and describe where people were at either emotionally or intellectually, and then be able to bridge that gap. So I can very quickly assess where things are not landing and then modify that so that I can help people understand better.

Wow. And so do you think that, you know, was there anything that you practiced or was there anything that you did in order for you to understand People's emotional, I mean, just to basically heighten your own emotional intelligence, right? Kind of understanding where people are coming from, what they need takes a lot of emotional intelligence and then understanding who a person is also takes a lot of emotional intelligence. So what, what—

So I think, yeah, I think, okay. So I think the other thing, it's one thing to have high emotional intelligence and be able to read all of that, right? I think the other thing is you need, some may call it stupidity and others may call To actually name that to the other person. So you might see something, but do you have the courage or the ability to name that with them and call that out in such a way that doesn't, depending on what it is, obviously, does that encourage them? Does it turn them away? Does it make them angry? So just having the ability to read people is one thing, but the ability to then have the, not ability, the courage. I come back to that word because I think you've really got to be courageous. In order to call that out and say what you see. Um, and that, that I was able to do that, not always successfully, which I think is the point, right? I think that I've honed that skill over the years by being unsuccessful at it, by trying and failing, because that's how you hone a gift, right? You don't hone a gift by only being successful.

Um, What was your, what was your first failure? Um, and what was the biggest thing that you learned from it?

Well, interestingly, even though I'm an extrovert and when I first went to primary school, I didn't really have any many friends or any friends. And I remember my twin sister had, um, had another set of twins actually that were friends. And, and we went over to their place and they chased me out of the house with a carving knife. Like literally, like chasing me out of the house.

Right.

It is the Wild West here in Australia. You must understand. So, so I think that, and then when we, we moved, like moved to a new town and a new, and I think the thing that I have learned from that all each time was that you get to re— not reinvent yourself, but you get to demonstrate The new person that you are and what you've learned, right? Because I think, if you think about it in a workplace, you learn something and you, you change how you develop, how you interact with the world. But because people first experienced you like this, this person, they don't really see the change. So when you go into a new environment, a new workplace or a new school or whatever it is, Suddenly you've got these people around you who get to witness the new you, right? And there's no reverb or hangover, I suppose, of the old person that they are assuming that you are.

I think a lot of people also fixate. I mean, that's kind of what depression is, is worrying about the past, right? And so a lot of people do some type of action or something like that when they're in school and a lot of their friends remember it and they think that their friends remember that one action or thing. their whole time. And then suddenly they go from middle school to high school, totally different, you know, school. And now they can kind of renew and, you know, and I 100% see that with traveling. I mean, I'm fairly nomadic, right? And I go to a new place, especially if you're a solo traveler, you can kind of enjoy and be present and just whatever you're experiencing is 100% what you're experiencing. You don't have to worry about the past.

Yeah.

we've done in the past.

So yeah. And I, yeah. And it's so interesting. And I think I was just thinking about this the other day, actually. I think the flip side of that is when I was living in Sydney last century, I love saying that. So when I was living in Sydney last century, um, millennium. Oh, right. I know it was like forever ago. I, uh, did a meditation course and the person who was teaching that said to us, whenever you see somebody, Always look for the change. Always look for the difference. Because whether it's been 5 seconds, 5 minutes, 5 years, whatever, you don't know what's happened to them in that interim period. So look for the change. And I think it's such good advice because we all default to looking to what we think we know. Whereas if we look into the face of our friends, our family, you know, our acquaintances, And look for the difference, I think that gives us the ability to help them encourage that, that change to come through into real life.

100%. Um, it sounds like you're extroverted. You have a lot of confidence. You have brevity when you speak, but what got you into sales initially? It seems like another thing kind of to preface this is it seems like sales is a very male saturated occupation. Like it's mostly men that are leading sales teams. A lot of, a lot of guys graduate college with a business degree, get into sales.

Right.

And one of them included. So what got you into SAFe initially?

So I think it's interesting. So when I went to uni, I did a business degree majoring in hospitality. And then I went and worked at the Ritz-Carlton here in Australia, which was such a— I love the Ritz-Carlton and their brand. And there's a whole story about that. But after 4 years of working there and, you know, it's not great pay. It's not great hours. You know, when you're in your 20s, you're giving up your weekends, those sort of things. So I thought, I'm going to find something new. So I was, you know, these are the days when ads were published in a newspaper. So for those young ones who've never seen that, it's like a big piece of paper with stuff on it, with news on it, but also job ads. So if you're looking for a job in the last century, what you did, when I talk to my kids about last century, I say in black and white and newspapers are black and white, right? So you'd go and get the job section and it was like this massive section on a Saturday and you'd go and you'd grab a red pen or something and circle the things that interested you. Anyway, sorry, just history for people who are too young to remember. So I saw this ad for a sales position and it said you have to have, you know, this experience and that experience, which I had none of. Not none of, but not what they were asking for. And then I went for that job and I think one of the things that I know about Um, the psyche of, of women in, in, in business is they often don't do that. They often don't wait till they're 100% qualified before they, you know, they've got to tick all the boxes, which I think is a really interesting dynamic. Anyway, so I went for the job and I got the job. So, um, so that was, so it was still in hospitality, but it was in hospitality IT. So yeah, so that's perfect for your background, it sounds like. Right, right. No, it was really great. And I remember the, in the first year that I was there, Zig Ziglar was traveling to Australia. And so my boss took me to see Zig Ziglar, which still is a massive memory. Oh my God. He's, he's an American sales guru. He's, he's since passed.

I, that's probably why he passed away 2012. That makes sense why I haven't heard of Zig Ziglar. I mean, I feel like I've heard that name before.

Yeah, there's still, his son still carries on his name, but I suppose the biggest takeaway that I got from Zig Ziglar was that you can achieve everything that you want to achieve if you just help others do the same. So he very much had sales as a service type of mentality. Which I think, you know, the modern iteration of that would be probably Bob Burg's book on the— called The Go-Giver rather than The Go-Getter. So what can we be doing that's giving, giving to the world in order to receive rather than the other way around?

I love that. When you— and actually just another question, why did you want to study hospitality and tourism?

Well, that's a funny answer. So when I So back to my family, my siblings all like finished in the top 3% of the nation. So they're leaving, right? Yeah, they're all super smart. And I didn't do so well at high school because I was a bit bored, really. And so I was sitting next to a friend of mine, Danielle, and she was filling out her university form and I just copied hers because I had no idea what I want. And I still don't have any idea what I want to be. But that kind of sounded like fun. So I thought, oh, why not?

Well, that's, that's a very interesting— I like how you went all the way through with the degree and everything. I think hospitality and tourism, I think, is much like a business degree where if you understand how to be with people and communicate and learn, I mean, that's all what I think. That's what a lot of employers look for is as long as you're right, you can speak, you're present, you can learn fast. And you're good with people. Business and hospitality kind of have a lot of parallels in that sense because hospitality is a business. I mean, hotels and tourism is a huge business. It's just a very—

Absolutely. And I think, you know, I love the grounding that I had after my degree in the Ritz-Carlton, you know, that whole idea of we are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. So it is service, but it's not servitude. It's not that you are the master as the guest, and I am the servant. It's that I'm here to help you. And I love that distinction. And I think the Ritz-Carlton have and do a lot in order to empower their employees to be the best that they can. And interestingly, kind of as a nod to what happened to future Fran, actually, whilst I was at the Ritz-Carlton, it was— they won the Deming Award. You know, so Deming is the father of continuous improvement. So they were the first service business to win a Deming Award. Yeah. So thinking about continuous improvement and, and all of those elements and what we would today call agile, that was all put in place by Deming. Yeah.

Going back to Ritz-Carlton, I'm, you know, world-renowned hotel being your first job. I'm assuming it maybe projected an image on what you think business and what careers look like. Maybe it's very formal, very strict. How did working at the Ritz-Carlton— I mean, because I don't know if you've ever worked at startups, but it's very laid back. It's very, you know, you have to do a lot of different things, but as long as the ball's rolling, it's great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Ritz-Carlton, how did that shape your career in business?

Well, I have to go backwards in time again. I feel like we're never going to end this interview. So my first job was actually at a chocolate shop. In town and, uh, Sydney, the man who owned the chocolate shop, paid me $5 an hour plus as much chocolate as I could eat. So I think I was like 12 or something. And then when I was older, my dad was a, um, a beef exporter. So he used to pay us to herd cattle up to the abattoir. And then whilst I was still at uni, I convinced my dad to let me take over the accounts and books for him while his secretary went on holidays. And, and so I did that as well. So she didn't trust— she was so funny, Vicki. She didn't trust computers. So we had a computerized system. So we had computers at home from the '80s. So because dad was running his own business. But the funny thing was she didn't trust computers. So as well as putting it into the computer. I had to manually run it on a card system as well. So I got to understand how to do accounting in a computer and to double-check that it's right by doing it on my card system.

That's awesome.

So I suppose, so I suppose I, um, I always, so whilst there is structure, one of the things about me is even though I'm aware of structures and hierarchies, I always kind of ignored them. Because I figured that I'm a human being, you're a human being, and whether you have a title of, you know, teacher, manager, whatever, it's a relationship of mutual respect.

And so going into the Ritz-Carlton, I'm assuming, you know, they probably want everyone to be punctual, respectful, kind of that philosophy that you say that we're gentlemen and ladies serving other What was the quote you said exactly? Yeah.

Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.

Good job.

Yeah.

So going from, you know, that unstructured, maybe working with your family, kind of doing, you know, side jobs here and there throughout university, and then starting your time at Ritz-Carlton, which is very structured, how did you adapt?

I think I'm, I'm, I don't know, adaption. Adapting to new environments for me has never been a problem. So I don't see that as a big hurdle. I've always, I'm a really, like, I've always been able to read the situation and people and work out what I need to be, um, in that environment. So a bit of, I suppose, acting, but I never saw it as a, as a challenge. It was just a new thing. And so I, yeah, I don't know. I think, I think I've always been quite independent because I was always on my own as a kid and different to my siblings. I never felt like I had to be a certain way. I could always be just whatever I wanted. I've never thought about that before.

I mean, in Japanese philosophy, it's kind of, I don't know if you ever, I forgot the exact term, but it's along the lines where You wear multiple masks throughout the day. One mask is with your family. One mask is with your friends. And then the other mask is with your coworkers and how you are around work. And so it sounds like you're 100% true to yourself no matter where you are, or when you're with your family, when you're professionally doing work professionally, when you're out with your friends, it sounds like you're 100% true to yourself. And I think that's probably why you're so good at sales is because salespeople, when you're getting sold to, they can kind of read if you're genuine or not. And I think that probably will help. So how, so with all this being said, going back to your sales career, what, what initially got you actually creating your business into sales, like starting your own sales business?

Yeah, no, that's a good question. So I had my first job, um, which I was only there for like a year because then I was headhunted by another hospitality IT business. In Melbourne, um, and they offered me better money, blah, blah, blah. So I moved to Melbourne and then I spent about 17 years in and out of different businesses, not big IT businesses, more small business focused where I was dealing directly with the owner of the business and I was selling into, it was all B2B. And I was selling to, you know, smaller businesses and multinationals. So I kind of had to use that chameleon to be, because it's a different sale, right? If you're selling to a mom and dad business versus Lion Nathan, who, who are now owned by the Japanese, I'm going to forget their name.

Suisei Momomo?

Asahi.

Asahi. Okay. Got it. That's the beer, that's the beer company.

Right.

Right. So they're all interconnected, all the government.

Yes.

Yes. All interconnected.

Yeah. So I, um, and so whilst I was working, I then realized that I wanted to study some more. So back to my comment before about sales being about change management, I found this postgrad degree in change management. And I was really fascinated by that. So I went and did that and I loved that. And I suppose, um, that set me off on, on looking at education and looking at learning, not in order to frame the world, I suppose. So people like Chris Argyris and Peter Senge, and they give you great models of how to think about change. And how to think about organizational culture. And I was always fascinated with why people act in a certain way in a certain environment and how do we get to change that. And then after I did that, I decided I want more study. So I went and did MBA at Melbourne Business School. So this was while I was working full-time and studying part-time. So, um, I was doing like 50, 60 hours a week at work and then studying part-time. It was mad. But, um, in the While I was still studying, I got tapped on the shoulder by these guys who wanted me to come and run their sales team. And I said, okay, well, and I was kind of a bit sick of working with organizations who want you in, they want your skills, they want you, your magic to be able to create this beautiful sales system that runs beautifully. And then they go, why are we paying you so much? I'm like, because I just created all of that that makes you a lot of money. And, um, so I was sick of that. roundabout that I had experienced a number of times. And so I said to them, yep, I'm happy to come, but there's got to be equity. So that was in our first meeting. So they fell off their chairs and I went, well, that's the deal. So we kept talking and we agreed that I would come and work with them for 6 months. And then, and we agreed on what the parameters were around them getting some equity. So that all happened. And so then I was part owner of an IT business. And, you know, sales is, is male dominated and IT sales is even more male dominated. So I kind of spent 17 years doing all of that. But the interesting thing was, um, one of the lecturers I had at uni, um, on entrepreneurship. Um, I introduced him to the other, uh, shareholders in my, in my business. And we started on this journey, which I now know, um, is, uh, you know, Verne Harnish's book about called Scaling Up. So we were working to the one-page business plan, which is kind of the culmination of what Verne Harnish does in his Scaling Up book. But we started working with that in I want to say 2008, 2007, 2008, something like that. And so we were recrafting our business and this business was, um, uh, cloud computing. It was desktop as a service, which is something that if I say that to you and if to the people listening, you guys know what I mean, right? But I started selling that into organizations when the term cloud computing wasn't even, people didn't understand what that was. So, um, so then we were, we were really thinking about where we wanted to go and what were the rocks that would drive us forward. Anyway, so we got this turnover up to about $6 million a year. And one of, we had a massive client who was worth $2 million. But the problem, yeah, the problem was that they really were drawing us away from where we wanted to go, like our strategic direction. And they were being a bully, really. And so I remember the day that we was, it had kind of come to a head where we needed to call them, call them on their behavior, which we'd kind of been doing, but we made the decision that we were going to sack them as a client. So taking out $2 million of revenue from a company is pretty, like a third of your revenue gone. So, and we had multiple services with them. So we had infrastructure, they like the, um, internet infrastructure. We had servers in our data center. We had applica— like the whole, the whole enchilada. Mm-hmm. Anyway, so when we told the CTO that we were sacking them, you could have heard a pin drop. It was, they were not expecting that. So then we were in a position that, well, what do we do with a business when you rip out a third of the revenue? So, um, I really led that process where Where we looked at, we didn't start with our people or who we had. We started with the customer and we started with who's our customer and how do we serve them? And so what are the roles that we need to serve our existing client base or our leftover client base? And then what do we need to advance the technology and what do we need to advance growth in sales? And so in that process, so we put all the positions in, but really in that process, it became evident that I didn't have a role anymore, which kind of suited me in that what I love doing is going in and remodeling sales systems and making things work really beautifully. And then I get a bit bored, so I want to go on to the next thing. So I think given that, that I had that, that self-knowledge around that. It made perfect sense to me and I'd finished my MBA and all of those sort of things. It made sense to me that I should become a consultant. So that's what I did. Yeah.

Makes sense. And when you come in and see a business or you talk to a founder, typically just in general, how do you, what's like the best way to restructure their sales process?

That's easy. So, um, There's no one sales system, but there's a sales process that is the best. And the best way to find your sales process is to deeply understand how your clients buy from you, but not just how, like what is that logical, tactical, and emotional journey that they take in buying from you and enjoying your product and/or service and re-engaging with that over time. And then once you understand that Buying journey, then you can craft your sales system to help them buy. Because selling isn't— selling is service. Selling is helping someone make a great buying decision for them. So how do we get a beautiful, efficient way of helping people on that journey? In my book that I published last year called More Sales, Less Marketing, I use the analogy of The Wizard of Oz. So I encourage people to think of their client as Dorothy. So when you first encounter Dorothy, she doesn't have it all together. She's just killed someone. She's a bit frightened. She's in Technicolor for the first time. She's just like, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, right? So our first job with Dorothy isn't to tell her about flying monkeys or tell her that there's another witch that wants to kill her or that the, or that the Wizards are fraud, et cetera, et cetera. Even though we know all those things, right? Our first job is just to get her off the porch, introduce her to the idea of the yellow brick road, and then give her, um, the ability to travel that and learn from that. And so our role isn't to take over her journey. It's to allow her her journey and allow her to learn that she had the power inside her all along.

I love that. I love that analogy. I think it's, uh, I can't hear you. You can't hear me? Testing 1, 2. Can you hear me? You can't hear me?

No.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Fine. Yeah, I can hear you. When did that go out? I don't think anything has changed. Can you look at your input?

Yeah, no, there's still, maybe I could, I don't, I can't change it.

So you can't hear me through your AirPods or no? Shoot. I don't know what happened. Cause I still have my audio. It's still working fine.

We can play charades. It's a movie.

Shoot. Um, yeah, I don't, this has never happened to me before. Let me pause it real quick. All right. And we're back. All right, Frances, I was going to ask you, your book is called Less Marketing, More Sales.

More Sales, Less Marketing.

More Sales, Less Marketing. And I know, I know, I know the answer to this, but just for people that are listening, I know a lot of people kind of blend the two together. They blend sales and marketing together. But from your words, what are like the key differences between sales and marketing?

So I think there's two, there's two things to think about when you compare sales and marketing. Um, so firstly, I think actually there's three things. One, it's sales and marketing. And it's in that order. So I just encourage people that if you're new or if you've got a new product or if you don't know what your value proposition is, that's not a marketing problem. That's a sales problem. Because actually what you need, you need to understand who your client is, what they will buy, not what they will be interested in, but what they will actually buy and what value they get out of that. And so very, in the first instance, I think that it's, it's essential that you go through and, and actually talk to customers. And I don't care whether it's an online thing or a blah, blah, go and talk to customers. I remember years ago, I was part of Launch 48 here in Australia where they were launching a new business in 48 hours, right? So the whole group of people came together pitching, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was on the, um, I was on the, during the 48 hours, I think they had 3 board meetings or something like that. Anyway, my first question to all of them, so they've got 48 hours to launch a business, right? My first question was always, how many clients have you spoken to? And they're like, we don't have time. We don't have time. And I go, no, you don't have time not to. Right? So the world, you can invent the most beautiful mousetrap. in the whole wide world, that is completely amazing. But if everyone's got a cockroach problem, you do not have a business. So understanding what it is that people want. So, and probably marketing people are gonna disagree with me, but I suppose the difference is that in the very first, in that very first nascent stage of the business, you wanna know that people have the problem. You wanna know that your solution is viable and you wanna know that they're gonna pay for it. So they're the questions you've gotta ask and Is that that's a sales methodology. So that's one. The second thing is then based on that information, the marketing mindset is about herding a group of people, you know, down a funnel, up a mountain, whatever way you want to call it through that, you know, attraction, interest, consideration, et cetera, et cetera, right? Until they're a marketing qualified lead and then passing them on to sales. And I think, and. So whilst marketing is hurting, selling is sitting in front of someone and saying, that's a gazelle. I know how to hunt that. Yeah. And I think the third thing is that the marketing mindset says, let me get everything perfect. Let me get an amazing website, business cards, whatever it happens to be, the thing, let me get that perfect and looking beautiful. And then let me launch that. Right? And that's great. But the sales mindset says, let me take whatever it is that I have, whether that's a, you know, a scruffy piece of paper with a, like a napkin, back of a napkin idea. Let me take whatever it is that I have and go and ask the market. So I think they're the 3 key ways that I see the difference between marketing and sales.

Well, we have a couple more questions with you, Frances. I want to be conscious on time. What would you tell a founder? Most of our listeners are founders. They don't like sales. What would you tell them to like sales and get more into it and be better at sales?

Right. So I don't want you to like sales. I want you to love it. Okay. First of all, and that's my, my promise. I take people from hating selling to loving it. And how I do that is, you know, I work on 3 key areas. The first thing is mindset. The reason people hate selling is they have that picture in the back of their mind of that greasy used car salesman, and apologies to anyone to do with cars that's listening. You know, that whole idea that, that we're pushing and sleazy and telling people what to do and all of those sort of things, right? That's the picture we have in our head of what selling is. And we do not want to be like that. There is no way that I'm going to be that sleazy, pushy salesperson. So what we do instead is get apologetic. Oh, I'm really sorry. Would you like to buy from me? But we don't even, it's not even that bold, right? Oh, I'm really sorry. When you're ready, let me know. Like we don't ask, we don't have a sales process. We don't understand and help our Dorothy on that journey. So, so that's the first thing we've got to correct the mindset. So actually great selling isn't being salesy or pushy. It's actually helping someone make a good buying decision for them, whether that's yes or no. So a great sales process allows people to beautifully come in, assess and make a decision, and then either buy or not buy. That's elegance, right? It's a dance. The second thing that comes out of that mindset is that the activities. So suddenly if we're helping someone, we can't start by telling. This whole idea that selling is telling is that sleazy side of selling. So instead, if we're gonna help someone, how do we do that first? Well, we've gotta understand them. What's their version of the problem? What have they tried before? What's going to work, not work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So actually great selling starts with listening and understanding. And then, and only once you've understood, then applying what you know and testing that with the person who's sitting in front of you. So, and what that sounds like is something like, hey, thank you so much. You've shared a lot with me. It sounds to me like that your problem is this, this, and this. And it sounds to me like your experience of that and what that's stopping you doing is this, this, and this. Have I got that right? And they go, yes, or no, or yes, that bit's right, but I want to add this bit here. You say, great. Okay. Now that we've got that right, would you, would it be okay if I shared with you some of the ways that I might be able to help you? And they go, yes. So see, What we're doing in that activity isn't me ramming it down their throats. It's actually me dancing with them. But here's the thing in a dance, right? I've put on the music. I've told them it's a waltz. And while the music is going and we're dancing, I can't just stop with the music still going and walk away. You know, and that's what people do. They forget that they're in charge of the dance or in charge of the sale, and they forget to ask. So, so this activity needs to be graceful and beautiful and have a sequence. And then the last thing that I help people think about, which is kind of related to the first 2, is that a great result in selling isn't a sale. I mean, that's one result, but it's not the only result. So if you and I have a great conversation and you understand what I'm talking about and I get to know you better, that's a result. If you then inquire about my product or service, that's a result. If I learn something more about how I might be able to help you, that's a result. Every step of the way, there's a result. Dorothy doesn't turn from being this timid little girl to a witch killer, ferocious witch, overnight, right? She goes on this journey of discovery. And our clients do exactly the same thing. Um, so that's, that's how I work with people around those 3 key areas.

That's great advice. I think understanding those 3 components will truly help people close more deals. I guess, okay, and I apologize, I have 2 more questions. The other question was, what, well, so sales is like the uncomfortable conversation. How do you make the uncomfortable, uncomfortable conversation more comfortable?

Easy. So, The reason we think it's uncomfortable is because we make it about us, but we're not there to talk about us. We're there to tell their story. So the easiest way to make it more comfortable is to make the invitation and the way that we're talking about our business deeply rooted in our clients. So what are the client stories, the success stories, the wins, the losses? What have you learned from failures? So if you think about my story with this big client, what did it, you know, by cutting a third of revenue out of our business, what did that mean? Well, at the end of the day, it meant that we were able to, we got bought out and with cash and IPO shares, it was worth about $18 million. So when we address a client, if we can tell the story of them, if we tell the story about The clients that we've helped, if we tell the story of their successes, if we tell the story of how we've learned to be better, then that doesn't feel so pushy and icky. We're not telling our story, we're telling the client's story. And that's what clients want to hear. They don't want to hear that I am great and buy from me, buy from me. They want to hear that I have worked with people just like them to solve a problem just like they have. And I've learned things over that process and I've had successes. That's what they want to hear. So that's what we deliver. And suddenly when we're telling the story of the successes we've had with our clients, suddenly we are, we can sit taller, right? And we are saying things more confidently and we actually changes the timbre in our voice, which in and of itself displays more confidence. It's not a bad conversation anymore. It's suddenly a conversation of pride and achievement that's rooted in your customer.

Got it. And last question, closing out question, if you can give any words of advice or wisdom, what would those be?

So I think, I think I just want to say that whether it's in selling or whether it's in any other part of your life, just be honest. We all make mistakes. People don't resonate with people who, who put across a perfect, I know everything. You know, if you think about those, those kids in your childhood, you just say, there they go again, right? Adults are no different to children. They're just less good at, you know, hiding their truth. So, um, I just think that be honest, be real, share your stories of winning, failing, and everything in between.

Awesome, Frances. Really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for being a guest on the Gilder Spotlight podcast.

You're welcome.