E122 - Corinne Thomas from Ethical Sales

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Welcome back to the Green Element Podcast, where we feature business leaders and innovators transforming their operations to be more environmentally and socially sustainable. I'm your host, Will Richardson, and I can't wait to meet our guest today and help you on your journey of sustainability. Corinne, welcome to the Green Element Podcast. Thank you so much for coming on today. So To introduce you, you're Corinne Thomas from Ethical Sales, and you are managing director. And I'm really looking forward to today's podcast because you help organizations with marketing and sales, but specifically within the environmental/sustainability industry.

Yeah.

I guess if it's an industry, it's not really an industry, is it? But with more of a kind of push towards sustainability in the environment.

Yeah, definitely. Yes. Yes. So, of course. Yes. Well, thanks very much for having me. I've been looking forward to this. I know it's taken a while to organize. So, yeah. So Ethical Sales, we're on a mission really to take the sting out of sales for our purpose-driven clients. We understand that our clients, and there's lots of businesses out there that want to change the world one customer at a time, but that they find the sales and/or marketing element of what they do a real challenge. Because let's face it, if you're the founder of an ethical business, whether that be a product-based, organic product-based company, Or a sustainability consultancy, or even an accountancy firm that wants to do things differently. You didn't go into it thinking that you were going to be ruthlessly selling your services. You were going into it thinking that you had a purpose and a mission and a passion for what you do, and you would hope that you could bring people along with you. to make that a reality. And so, we found that our clients really love working with us on our mission, because they do find it painful. They do find the sales side a challenge to what they do. But they also want to grow, and they want to reach more people, and they want to make more of a difference. And so, it's about helping them to do that in the right way, in a way that sits well with their values as well. So that's why we call ourselves Ethical Sales because it's a twofold thing. Not only do we have clients that are purpose-driven and operate in that space, in that green space or natural and organic product space, but they also want to be able to come across and to sell their products or services in a way that's authentic to them. And in a way that's meaningful.

And do you think that the people that do come to you, we all have this image of a, without being derogatory, and it is, a secondhand car salesman kind of selling. And we all have that image. And I know that we definitely fit into that. Probably your kind of customer profile because of what we do and how I relate to what you've just said. Do you think it's that historical image of what a salesperson looks like for us?

Absolutely, it is. It's like sales is almost seen as a dirty word, as something that you shouldn't aspire to be a salesperson because we've all had those experiences, haven't we? unsolicited, unwelcome calls at a certain time of day by a robot, or a knock on the door, or somebody just trying to aggressively sell something to you in a way that isn't comfortable. And so, I think when we think about selling, we draw upon those memories and that image of a salesperson. And it means that we can shy away from that that sharp end. And I had a really good comment from a contact I spoke to last week who said, Corinne, the challenge is how we move from marketing into sales. And I think that's something we could talk a bit about, but it's that the sales side is the bit that I think businesses particularly struggle with. So, they're happy to market their services. They've got a clear mission. They've got a vision. They've got, ways in which to reach out on a one-to-many approach, but when it actually comes to making the proactive approach, closing the deal, picking up the phone, having those more challenging closing conversations, that's when it starts to become more of a challenge. So, I think that one of the things that I spend quite a lot of my time doing, coming on podcasts like this, but also in our communications and in the way in which we provide advice and guidance to our community is to try and break down some of those myths when it comes to sales and selling. So, one of the sort of myths I talk about is that you don't close a deal in a 5-minute phone conversation. That's just not how it works. Sales is essentially about building meaningful relationships with people. And if you can approach it in that way, and think then about how you do that with your customer base, with your clients, with your community, How do you build a relationship with them? Then that's where the sort of magic happens, really.

And they talk about touchpoints, don't they? They talk about, I don't know how many touchpoints, but it's actually remarkably a lot more than you, I remember thinking that it was.

Yeah, it is. I think in terms of online digital marketing, I think it's something like 7 to 10 times that you have to have had an interaction, a positive interaction with a potential customer. And I think this is again something I talk quite a lot about in the sense that digital marketing has had a real heyday in the last 5 to 10 years. And a lot of businesses have focused on that way of building their lead funnels and kind of building their lists, their newsletter lists, or going out and doing things like podcasts. And that's all really, really helpful. But there also comes a point where you have to be the one to be proactive. So it's about taking that newsletter list and saying, okay, so who's on that list that we really want to talk to? Who's on that list that could be a really juicy client for us who really align with our values? And then how do we go out and make that approach? And one of the ways that we advocate and that we do a lot of work for our clients is telephone-based sales campaigns. And so that's actually taking the step to call somebody, not always planned, and actually have a conversation with them and to start building relationship over the phone on a one-to-one basis, which is obviously different when you're trying to do your online marketing and you're trying to speak to lots of different people all at the same time. There's only so much you can achieve with that. with that way of working. So yeah, that's something that we're doing a lot of, and I think that it's not new. It's nothing new. Telephone-based selling has been around for an awful long time, a lot longer than online digital marketing agencies have, but I don't think that they have been something that an ethical business has been able to benefit from until now, because there isn't another kind of service that we offer, which is all about working with our networks and with our clients and our contacts to really help them to grow in that way.

So you're saying that you could actually look at your newsletter. So I mean, most organizations could have up to, I mean, smaller organizations up to 100, around about 100 people on their newsletter, which, yes, in the whole grand scheme of things isn't enormous, but actually it is quite big, I think, used correctly. And so you could start to phone your newsletter people and actually engage more with the people that have already engaged with you.

Definitely. And I did a masterclass, and I'm happy to send the link out after this podcast so that people can access it for free. But I did a masterclass about how to make a confident sales call. And one of the things that I talked about on there was a campaign that we ran over the summer, which was exactly that. So, we had a newsletter list. It's not huge, but we had enough on there to make some make some phone calls and to have those conversations. And it worked really, really well. I mean, I had meetings all the way through the end of August, which would normally be a quiet time. And we secured new business to take us through till Christmas. So, what it enables you to do is it enables you to make things happen more quickly for your business if you're prepared to get on the phone. Because what—

Mm-hmm.

Otherwise, you might have somebody that sat on a newsletter list, or you know at the moment let's talk about the fact that there aren't any B2B conferences or trade shows going on. So you might have an old list that you've been sitting on that you haven't been able to do anything with, and it you're what you're doing is you're waiting for someone to come to you. And as we know, if somebody's coming to you, then it's probably a really good sign because it means that they're in a lot of pain and they need some help quickly. And so, they are in a good buying position then, but then you're leaving all those other potential prospects out there that might just be on the edge, but you haven't— but they need to be taken over the line. You need to take their hand and you need to show them what a difference your services will make or your products will make to them. And one of the ways in which you can do that is by reaching out proactively. And it is a very brave thing to do and not always a comfortable thing to do. I appreciate that. which is why some clients end up working with us, but we can take them over the line. So, it's a way of finding out more about them and their problems, what's going on in their business. It's about building a relationship, being able to demonstrate what it is that you can offer to them in a way that you wouldn't be able to do on an email marketing campaign or on a series of free classes. You can go some way, but you can't actually relate to them on a one-to-one level unless you get in front of them on a phone call or in a meeting.

So when you say that you would do this for, so say, let's pretend we want, we're going to go and do this and we want to do it and we're too stretched or we don't want to do it, we could come to Ethical Sales and say, Corin, is it possible if you reach out to— this is our newsletter list, would you segment that list and then reach out to them? And if that's the case, how do you know what to say? Because I think that's always the thing, isn't it? Even if you are the business—

Oh, yeah.

Phoning up these companies, What is it, you know, what do I say?

You know? Yeah, absolutely.

And if you aren't, you're not going to be Green Element. So therefore, the fact that you're willing to do it must mean that you have certain things that you say in mind.

Yes, yes. So that's absolutely what we do. Uh, we, we, we run, um, sales campaigns, for want of a better word, for our, for our clients, and, and we'll do that outreach for them. But we actually do do it Because of how we like to work and because we believe that sales is all about building trusted, honest, open relationships, we become part of our client's team for the duration of the campaign. So we would be Green Element, we would be the sales team within Green Element. We would spend a lot of time with you before the campaign getting to know your business. So whether it's products that we need to try or whether it's services we need to get our heads around, we would spend time with you doing that. And the consultants working on your campaign would make sure that they have got everything available to them, sales scripts, questions. And we do that by getting to know the right people in the business first. And then we'd obviously have to talk about what you would want to get out of the campaign, whether that would be a meeting with you or whether it would be, if a product-based business, it might actually be product sales. It might be signing heads of terms for partnership agreement. It could be anything, but obviously we need to look at the objectives. And then we would work with the business to look at their lists, whether that would be building one from scratch or whether that would be actually using, as you say, a warm list that you've already got. And so, we would We would be— we'd become you for the duration of the campaign. In terms of what you say, I mean, that's the perennial challenge, and you do need to have a good reason to call, you know, so we'd want to talk to you about what, you know, what are your key services, what problems are your customers coming to you with, have you got any insights or intelligence that you can share that would that would enable us to open that door and connect. And so, we would want to have a really good reason for why we were calling. And that might simply be as simple as saying, we work with businesses like yours, and we help them to do X, and we'd really like to find out more about whether that's something that you need help with next year, because we know from working with our clients that they have these problems. So, it's about trying to relate it back to them and showing them that they've been chosen for a reason. The last thing you want to do is to have a list of 500 contacts and just whittle your way through them without any preparation. We tend to work off quite small lists because we're very strategic and very targeted about who we recommend that you approach, because you get much better results that way. You know, if you're called up by someone and, you know, they actually talk to you about who you are and what your business is, and they demonstrate a deep understanding of that, you're going to be responding to them whether or not you're interested in their services. You're going to be— that's going to be a good position to come from.

And surely the fact that you what you've just highlighted goes back to the original kind of relationship building, purpose-driven. And so therefore it kind of emphasizes what you were initially talking about as well, because you're not just phoning up and whittling down a list, as it were.

No, exactly. I mean, obviously you have to have a database and you have to have some data to work with, but it doesn't have to be huge. We don't like to use underhanded and ways of getting to that data. So, there are quite a lot of ways in which you can data scrape on the internet, and we don't like doing that. We would rather play the detective game and actually go about it in a roundabout way in order to get that phone number and to make sure that the interaction is comfortable and it's not pushy. overly salesy. There's a reason for calling. We have a very highly skilled team. So all the people that I have in the team are older and they have 20+ years experience of sales in various different guises. So they're professionals. They're not just, you know, people that you might get on the phone for other agencies might use very young people or people that aren't really very committed to what they're calling about. And then, we also work with clients. So, if they say, look, actually, we're quite happy with doing that part ourselves, but actually what we need the help with is putting the processes in place to actually make the most of that, of the sales. So, it might be that we help them with training their team, or that we look at a certain way of running a campaign, or we look at what's missing. We do an audit of everything that they're doing and we'll give recommendations about, okay, well, all these marketing funnels look really good, but have you thought about this area? What are your competitors doing? It's amazing how many clients we work with who haven't got a clue what their competitors are doing in the market. And you can learn so much from good examples of good practice or maybe not good practice, but you can learn from that.

And how do you find out what your competitors are doing? I mean, for us, we've hired a marketing director that's worked for our competitors. So that's how we got around it, but not many, not everyone has can afford to do that. So if you were a small, what do you, what do you do?

Well, I mean, for product-based businesses, I think it's relatively straightforward in the sense that most product-based businesses will be selling online and you can easily find out how your competitors are interacting online and what they're, what, you know, what keywords they're ranking for, where, where their, you know, news articles are being shown. How many visits they get and all that sort of thing. So for product-based businesses, that's a key piece of the puzzle. And then you can just do wider research just to get a sense of what's the founder up to? What are they doing on LinkedIn? What do their social channels say about them? You can learn quite a lot by just doing various online market research, to be honest. You can, a service-based business, it might be a little bit trickier because their website isn't going to tell you as much, but it'll probably still tell you a fair bit in terms of using tools that will give you an insight into their backend and how they're running their website and what keywords they're trying to rank for, what blogs they're writing, which blogs are doing well. It's amazing also how many clients or competitors you'll see and they'll They'll list all their retailers that they're listed with, or they'll list all their clients. And, you know, that will give you an insight as well into what they're doing.

And right at the beginning, you brought marketing in as well. And, um, you said that they need to work together. Um, I know from experience listening to people, marketing and sales don't always work together, do they? But have to, from what I can see. And it makes no sense at all for them to be too separate because they're almost, it's almost the same. It is sales and marketing, isn't it? It's because they work in synergy with each other.

Yeah. I mean, your marketing has to get you in front of the right people. It has to, it has to get you in front of your ideal customer. So that's the first thing is you can have the best website in the world and the most amazing products, but if no one's seeing them, then you may as well not bother because you haven't got a business if you can't get to those people. So to me, marketing is all about how do you get in front of the customer or the client that you want to sell to and how do you do that? in a way that works for your business. I think a lot of mistakes that I see businesses make is that they're just not niche enough. And so, they try and market themselves too widely and they think that anybody could be their customer. And actually, I think the opposite is true. I think you need to be really clear about who you're selling to. Your existing client base will tell you who is responding. And if you don't know, then you need to go out to your customers and you need to ask them. I can't believe how many clients I've worked with have never done a customer survey and they don't know why their customers are buying from them. So that's, to me, that's the marketing piece. It's about getting in front of the right customer with the right messages in a niche way.

Yeah.

And then the sales is how do you take them over the line? How do you get them to sign the deal? How do you get them to put their hand in their pocket and to put their credit card numbers into your website? That's the more tricky bit for people to get their heads around, that sometimes you need to step across the line and hold somebody's hand and pull them across. And that's the sales bit. Exactly.

That niche part is so interesting, isn't it? Because as a small business, it's so easy if a client or a new person comes in, do you do this? And of course you go, yes, of course we can.

Yeah.

And it's such an easy thing to fall into, and it's actually really bad. And I've Now, we do not fall into it. We do carbon footprint reporting and environmental management, full stop. That's it. But I have done in the past, said, oh, of course we can do that, and then scrabbled behind the scenes going, oh, how are we going to do this? Okay, we'll do that. And it's not to say we do a bad job at it, but the amount of energy that we spent putting into something that probably wasn't even that profitable because we were learning how to do it properly at the time Because it just kind of accentuates why you shouldn't be doing it at all.

Yeah. I think it's mission creep. I think the challenge of that as a purpose-driven business is that you're potentially at risk of creeping away from why you came into existence in the first place. That will take you further from your mission and your vision. And so, it's always really important to go back to that and say, as you say, is this going to help me? Is this going to help me to grow in the way that I want to grow? And sometimes it can be scary because you end up having to turn down work that you know would pay and would possibly pay the bills or pay one of your team for that period. But as you say, it just leaves you with a big headache at the end of it because it's not getting you anywhere. So I think, and I have done work with clients, we do do work with clients on their mission and their vision because it's something that can easily get lost along the way, I think, as well. So you find yourself 5 years down the line and you're thinking, how did I get here? And it actually needs a big overview and it needs a review. What are we doing now? And are we on the right path, or are we just, you know, not listening to what's going on out around us? So, yeah.

And I mean, surely what you're teaching and helping and how you're helping people is really A, um, it's kind of common sense and it's, it, it's, it is, it is doing what you should be doing, as it were.

Yeah. I think it's not rocket science. I've always said this, you know, a client came to me the other day and they had this huge list of things that they wanted help with. And I said, look guys, this is not, you don't need to overcomplicate this. This is quite simple. You know, we need to set you up with some sales processes. We need to get you a pipeline list, build it, built, and, you know, we need to give you a bit of guidance about how to conduct these meetings, but actually, it's not complicated. And anybody that wants to try and put in complicated things is just not going to be taking you down the right path. Ultimately, it's about getting in front of your target customer in the right way, and then it's about how do you build that relationship authentically and honestly. And so that, you know, you're giving something of value to them, you're getting something back. And that's what it's about. I also really like this concept. And I think this works really well for the types of businesses that we're talking to today and our clients is that this concept of reciprocity. You know, so as a mission-led business, You've got so much to offer your community. You've got so much knowledge, whether some niche knowledge or you've got a niche product or you've got a mission, and there's a chance for you to share. And I'm a real fan of oversharing. I think we should be, just like you do with these podcasts, I think we should be putting all our knowledge out there. it's fine to do that. It's absolutely fine to do that. You will still win business even if you do that, because there's always the customers out there that just want that little bit more. They'll pay to have you in front of them for what, for some one-to-one time, or they've seen, you've opened their eyes to what a transformation it could be in their business if they work with you. And I don't think that that I see businesses in this space, in the sort of green tech or sustainability, or I don't see them doing this enough. And I think it should be done more, just sharing their knowledge and what it is that they can bring to their community.

That's something the Americans do very well. I've listened to a lot of American podcasts and We have a lot of ebooks out there and a lot of people comment all the time, wow, you pretty much give away everything that you have. And I would say categorically, it's probably what's enabled us to grow the way we have, interestingly. And it's such a weird thing to say, isn't it? You give away loads, you grow more. That doesn't—

Yeah.

Kind of intrinsically doesn't make sense. But you hear it time and time again, which is what listening to those American podcasts, I kept on hearing. I went, you know what, you've got to trust with what? You've got to trust the people that have been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

It's so true. And what you're doing is, you know, if you use the concept of reciprocity in your marketing, then what you're doing is you're building a real loyal community of people that really know you on a deeper level. They know your products, your services, your mission, and at some point they may well buy from you just because they feel like you've given them so much value, just because they feel like they owe you something, and it's time to do it. And I think the other aspect of marketing that I think, again, in this sector, the mission-led business, if you're an organic product-based company or you're a food and drink healthy eating business, we're doing a lot of work in that space at the moment. What you've got as a benefit to you is that often you've got a real passionate founder or a passionate CEO or managing director who's at the front of the business, who has set it up for a reason. And I think we've seen a lot in the last few years of the growth of this kind of purpose-driven founder and becoming a personality. in their own right. And I actually think that's really good because I think it makes business really human. I think that at the end of the day, people buy from people. And so, if you're able to become that visible founder, if you're able to be brave enough to put yourself out there and don't mind seeing your face on Zoom and videos and hearing yourself on podcasts, then you'll be Again, bringing people into your world and your mission purely by doing that. And I think that, well, I mean, one of the reasons why we're talking today is because I've seen you on a number of occasions, listened to your podcast, and really respect what you do. So it does work. It does work. And I know it's really, really scary.

Yeah.

And there are a lot of people out there that really struggle with that. Being that visible founder. But I think that's another thing that can really help you to take people over the line with you.

It becomes easier and easier over time.

Sorry?

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think it becomes easier and easier over time, doesn't it?

Yeah, it does.

And I remember the first time I— I mean, if you listen back to the first podcast we did, oh my word, I was so nervous. and be self-conscious. And they were also, I think, awful. I mean, they probably weren't as bad as that, but I listen back to them. But then equally, I look back at some of the reports I wrote when I first started doing this. You learn. As long as you learn, learn, learn, and you always try and strive to be better, you strive to be better with everything you do, then—

I don't think that matters. I think we are our own worst critics and we will always pull apart, to shreds what we've put out there, but actually the rest of the world doesn't notice or doesn't really care. What they will take away is probably one key message, one thing that really resonated with them, and that's what they will remember. That's what they will remember. And I think the other thing about being an expert as well in whatever it is that you are, we have to remember that Everybody else, it's that thing about when you have to stand up and do a presentation and someone will say to you, look, don't worry because you know 100% more about this subject than they do. And that's so true. That's so true for a lot of your clients and people who are working in niche specialist sustainability spaces. You know so much. And so actually, you can afford to take it down a few notches and talk at the right level. The amount of times I've had to take clients' words and just say, I need this in plain English. This doesn't make any sense to me. And if it doesn't make any sense to me, it's not going to make any sense to the person who's trying to buy that product, or, you know, or who's trying to get alongside your services. So, how can you translate what you do into, you know, a really simple way? So, that's one of the reasons why, you know, I talk about how to make a confident sales call, because I think that it's simple. I think that it's about confidence. It's about the types of things that you can say when you're on the phone. I'm not talking about theory or certain formulas for sales success. I'm just talking about how to talk confidently on the phone.

Yeah. Brilliant. I'm conscious of the time, but I actually could carry on talking. to you for ages. I'm learning so much, and I really hope our listeners are as well. And I'm taking away so much to dwell on and think about. But as a final kind of note, what is it? What's one thing you would like people to, our listeners to go off and do on the back of this podcast?

What I would love them to do is to get a list of 5 people, stakeholders in their business, whether that's clients or potential clients or people they haven't spoken to for a while, somebody they admire, and just put the time aside to pick the phone up to them over a period of a couple of weeks and just notice what happens. Just notice what happens when they take the time to step forward and pick up the phone and have a one-to-one conversation. That's what I would love them to do.

Brilliant.

Brilliant.

Thank you so much. On that note, thank you very much for coming on today.

Thank you.

It'd be great to hear how everyone gets on. And if you can email us, it would be lovely to hear and we'll pass it on to Corinne or get in contact with Corinne herself to say how you've got on with that. Brilliant. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. Really enjoyed it.

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