S1E12 CEO Actions for Sales Success with Kurt Newman

CEOs must take an active involvement in supporting the sales effort of their organisations.  

In this episode, Kurt Newman, Principal of Sales Consultants, a specialist sales capability development company,  offers 3 key actions that CEOs can take to actively support their organisations' sales efforts to enable strategic advantage with excellent results.  

Kurt outlines the 3 key actions, providing real examples of these actions that he has tailored and implemented with his client CEOs that applied them to achieve outstanding results for their organisations.

If you are a CEO who is serious about driving business performance, this is a 'must listen'.

For more information relating to the podcast and how you can gain access to advisory services to assist you with your business, see www.lseconsulting.net.au

Transcript

CEO Thinking Episode 12.  

CEO Actions for Sales Success with Kurt Newman

Welcome to the CEO Thinking Podcast. I’m Philip Belcher, successful CEO and CEO, Mentor Advisor and business consultant. On this podcast, I provide ideas for CEO's, directors, and senior managers to use as they lead their businesses to achieve outstanding results. 

I've applied these ideas to start grow, turn around, and successfully exit businesses as well as to mentor my clients that have achieved great results. 

If I can use these ideas successfully, you can use them too. 

Today I’m honoured to have Kurt Newman join me on CEO Thinking.  Kurt is someone that I've worked with over many years, been in front of customers with Kurt, and know for a fact that you're going to gain a lot out of this today, particularly with regards to improving the sales of your organisations. 

So thanks for joining me, Kurt.

Kurt

Thank you. It’s great to be with you, Phil.

Philip

Thanks, Kurt. 

Kurt is a sales practitioner who won major sales awards and created sales records in 5 industries. The products and services include newly released consultative relationship and the competitive field of retail. He’s a recognised sales expert, successful author and respected sales and personal development coach who has guided organisations and salespeople to vastly improve sales performance and profitability.

In March 2000. Kurt founded Sales Consultants; an organisation dedicated to improving sales performance. His professional journey spans continents and industries with a proven record of delivering outstanding results. Clients of Kurt include small enterprises through to multinational organisations across Australia, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. 

Kurt has written more than 80 sales articles that resonate with his social media followers and readers of traditional media publications. Kurt is the author of ‘21 Timeless Insights for Sales Success’ and separately, ‘The Most Unlikely Salesperson’, which I recently read and thought was a great publication. A third publication, ‘50 Inspirational Sales Articles’ will be released around July 2024. 

Kurt was the founding director and chair of the Southern Highlands Chamber of Commerce and Industry Ltd. Under his visionary leadership, the organisation achieved the prestigious state Chamber of the Year award in 2015, outperforming 270 chambers. The Southern Highlands Chamber of Commerce set a new benchmark by being the first business chamber in 189 years to achieve the award in less than two years. Kurt’s commitment to lifelong learning is evident through his ongoing studies and research into business dynamics and human behaviour. 

Kurt, that's a very extensive CV and I have to say that it's spot on. Today, we'll be talking about your perspectives as to what CEOs should be thinking about from the sales perspective, so very much looking forward to hearing it, Kurt.

Kurt

Yeah, I'm looking forward to sharing some stories and I'm sure it will be a pleasant surprise for the CEOs listening to this podcast.

Philip

Excellent. So, Kurt, as is the practise on CEO Thinking, we limit the ideas that we talk about to three, mainly because once you get beyond that, it gets a little bit difficult to recall them. Would you like to let us know what the three things are that you want to highlight for CEO's?

Kurt

Yeah, the three are:

·       The first one is that CEO's need to educate themselves on sales and sales strategies. 

·       The second one I'd like to talk about is to schedule regular time with individual salespeople and attend joint sales meetings with key clients. 

·       And third and finally, to ensure support for the salespeople and I'll be covering 2 areas - one is the internal backup, and the second one has to do with technology, particularly with CRM.

Philip

Excellent. In our preparation for talking today, Kurt, I looked at those three and thought how pertinent they are. They are driven down the path of the CEO not just having the sales team, but joining and participating with the sales team. Is that the way you see it?

Kurt

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And I'd love to share some examples. Most of the CEOs that I deal with either have an operations, or an accounting or legal background. So, some of these examples were really surprising. Some of these CEOs, in terms of the changes that have happened within their organisations because they've based those three key areas, we're going to talk about.

Philip

That's great. So, can we start off with your first point, educate yourself on sales and sales strategy as a CEO?

Kurt

Yeah, absolutely, Phil. The first example is the CEO had a background in operations and for close to several decades now, this person has headed up large multinational organisations. One of the first companies he was a CEO. I suggested he participate in a four-day sales and sales strategy programme I had designed and I was about to facilitate. To my surprise, Phil, he did not hesitate. 

He said it'd give him an opportunity to get to know every salesperson because they work in different countries. So this is what happened. When he walked into the room, the sales management and sales team reacted with, can I say, shock? They were actually shocked to see the CEO come in. He actively participated and did not shy away from any of the development activities such as role plays. It did not take him long before the sales team, were in awe of the example he set, and Phil, it was his courage to ‘have a go’, to be vulnerable, and make mistakes that I believe was what the sales team admired and respected. He set an incredible example just being himself, being human. 

Since that experience, we've had many one-on-one conversations about sales, sales strategies, personal development and sales confidence levels of individual salespeople within the organisations he has led. His innate strength is still in operations, and you would assume whenever he takes over as a new CEO he would be reviewing things like operations and administration, but he doesn’t. He actually focuses on the front end of the business, the sales and revenue, because this is his priority and because he's developed a solid understanding of sales, he really knows what to look for and then, to be quite frank, Phil, he phones me. 

So, anybody who's a sales director in an organisation that he heads, they would be quite silly to try and pull the wool over his eyes. Right. But he's very, very astute. So, I have seen repeatedly this particular CEO, how he impacts on the people that he works with and the results he's achieved and to make a point, he was recently offered one of three CEO roles.

Philip

Well, so it sounds like he took the attitude that he wasn't merely running the company, which is huge in its own right, he took an attitude to say if we're going to be successful, we have to make sales and I need to understand what it is that we are demonstrating to our customers and I need to understand the methods that we're using and the people that we have got in our organisation that are facing those customers and ultimately we're all responsible for bringing in the revenues for the company.

Kurt

Ohh absolutely Phil. Absolutely. And as I said from experience, the connection that he has with people I think is really special because he shows his vulnerability. He's not perfect in every way. He's gone out of his comfort zone quite often and it's a credit to him. It really is. And that's why he is as popular as he is with his, with his staff and of course, he then achieves the results accordingly because people are totally dedicated and committed to him personally.

Philip

That's excellent. So, taking that approach, that company has gone on to success in sales.

Kurt

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Every single time. There have been situations where salespeople thought that they could only sell at a certain price point and because of what we did, they are actually able to sell at a much higher rate. It depends what industry that we're talking about, but there’s been situations where they thought they couldn't break into a certain market niche and  they did, competency levels generally gone up from levels 2 and 3 when we started up to fours and fives? So, and that has a tremendous impact on outcomes.

Philip

That is really great. I talk to people and only last Thursday I was running a strategy session for a general managers course and I highlight a quote from Peter Drucker, who's a management guru who was a consultant to many of the major organisations, particularly in America, back in the 50s all the way through till his work is still current today, and he maintained that the purpose of the business is to create customers. 

Now the reason they exist, of course, is to provide a return to their owners, the owners of. businesses, but he maintained the purpose of a business is to create customers and as a CEO, this individual clearly demonstrated that that CEO understood that the purpose of the organisation he was running was to create customers and that the sales approach and the salespeople were absolutely critical to doing that.

Kurt

Absolutely Phil, absolutely.

Philip

Excellent. Well, that's just a great example, Kurt. So, to your first point there, that CEO reinforced your contention and that is CEO's need to educate themselves on sales and the sales strategies.

Kurt

Absolutely, absolutely. I've done it time and time again and the level of confidence that that builds up within the CEO's, they just have a completely different focus on their business. They tend to be more focused on the front end. They ask different questions than they normally would. The result it really is worth taking the time and energy to, for a CEO, to educate him or herself on sales and sales strategies, and also Phil, gives them greater empathy for the sales team.

Philip

So, Kurt, I'm hearing that this individual, and you've seen this in other organisations, you've just picked one example here, and I don't need to trivialise it by saying just, but you've picked one example. This has become part of the culture of that organisation. You mentioned when the CEO arrived at that training session, the salespeople were somewhat shocked. But then over the period of that sales training, they began to understand that the organisation at the highest level, at the CEO level, was building sales and therefore customers and customer engagement into the culture of the organisation. Did you, in working with that organisation and that CEO, perceive that change of culture?

Kurt

Absolutely Phil. If I can describe it this way, from being a very operations driven organisation they became more of a, what I term, a sales and customer service culture and was led by him. So the sales side had to do with going out and finding new business and getting repeat business, and the customer service side, which also worked with internal backup people, they really looked after their customers to a point that the combination of the sales and customer service culture really gave them quite a strategic advantage over competitors, and therefore they also resulted in sales.

Philip

So this wasn't merely the CEO wanting to get their fingers involved and understand, for almost Machiavellian reasons, what the sales force was doing. This was strategic in the way that the organisation was going to compete in the marketplace and the CEO, therefore saw themselves as part of the team and operating strategically, then, the salespeople picked up on that strategic intent. Is that how it worked?

Kurt

Yes, you've summarised it perfectly, Phil, absolutely, perfectly. He did have an interest. He wanted to really understand his sales point. He wanted to understand what sales is all about. But then we took that to that level of becoming part of the strategy of the organisation and as I said, it became then what I term part of the sales and customer service culture and then one that everybody embraced and people on the operations and administration side were then backing the salespeople, working in incredible harmony, and it had an impact on the whole organisation.

Philip

That's great. Well, Kurt, that leads us on now onto your second point, which is scheduling where your time with individual salespeople and attending joint sales meetings with key clients. Could you tell us what that's all about from your perspective?

Kurt

Yeah, absolutely, Phil. A different organisation, different industry. This particular person is an ex CPA, Certified Practicing Accountant. He was the owner and CEO of the branch of network businesses in NSW. He had a small sales team inside it and the best way of describing his personality was that he was very highly analytical and very introverted. So after working with his sales team for a number of months, a clear focus there was to lift their sales confidence and of course sales. I suggested to this CEO that he spend time with his individual salespeople and sales team doing customer sales calls. Well, of course you can imagine his reaction was instant resistance, but I expected that, then he used the excuse, of course, that he's way too busy. But me being me, I persisted, and it took some convincing, including some one-on-one coaching and then asked him to allocate half a day with one of his salespeople. And quite surprised it worked. He did it. I met with him the day after the time he spent with his salesperson to see how it turned out. And Phil, when I walked into the office, he looked up and he had this enormous grin on his face. He sat back, relaxed in his chair, and said he was so surprised and could not believe how warmly he was received by key customers.

Philip

Wow.

Kurt

He said they told him, and this is a real key thing, they told him that they had never had a visit from a competitor CEO supplier.

Speaker

Well.

Kurt

And my point to him was, you've created an incredible differentiator.

Philip

Fantastic.

Kurt

Yeah. So he went on to say that customers shared personal information about themselves and their businesses in great detail. And there are times he told me that he found it difficult to leave because the customers just wanted to continue to talk with him. So that was from a customer's point of view. But he also mentioned about the salesperson. He said that the person had been with the organisation for 15 years and he thought he knew him, but he said I was going out with him for that half day. It showed him other traits he never had, no idea actually how half the salesperson were and he was not aware of all of these traits. An over a period of time, Phil, this some CEO's confidence grew to the point where he asked me to join him on a sales meeting with one of his largest customers because he wanted my feedback on how he handled the meeting. So it was great to see another part of this CEO's personality start to evolve and develop. But from a business point of view, Phil, four months after his first experience, he told me that revenues had grown by 20%.

Philip

That's fantastic.

Kurt

Yeah, the significance of the statement is he said normally when sales increase, they only increased by single digits, so he was a total convert, spending regular time out with his salespeople and getting to know customers and also getting to know his salespeople.

Philip

That's excellent, Kurt. I've been in similar circumstances where customers, particularly large business to business customers, but all the way through to small to medium enterprises, customers like to believe that there is some support for them through the organisation that's beyond the salesperson. They get to see the salesperson, they understand, and they feel that if the salesperson's doing a good job, that they've got a relationship there. But if the CEO gets involved and talks to the customer, it demonstrates, it's not just some statement in in a corporate magazine, it demonstrates that that CEO thinks enough of customers, and in particular that customer, that they have a depth of support in the organisation that's deeper than the salesperson that's in front of them.

Kurt

Absolutely Phil. The emotional impression that I got from him, he was absolutely over the moon. I've never seen him smile and be so happy. He was just… Look, and the customers just feel special because it is the CEO of an organisation that has taken the time and the trouble to get to know the customers in a face-to-face situation. And the fact that the competitors just, they never did it, well, when they did it gave him quite an advantage then because the customer felt well they could not only deal with the salesperson at any time, but they could also contact the CEO if there was something that they needed to talk to him about and he was open to that.

Philip

And I assume that that particular CEO that went out and visited those customers would have gained another perspective on the market, the strategy, the applicability of their offering to the customs etcetera, that if they only read the internal reports, they would never have been exposed to.

Kurt

Absolutely. There is an impact also on their product range that they kept because of the feedback he’s getting from customers he actually changed different manufacturers as well. So it has quite an impact on the business all around.

Philip

That's excellent. Very good, very good indeed. Well, let's move on to the Third Point, Kurt, which was ensure support for salespeople in two vital areas being internal backup support and technology. Could you explain a little bit about that?

Kurt

Yeah. Certainly this particular business was a national network of businesses with 145 salespeople. I was dealing with the CEO and the national sales manager and then after the infield sales review it highlighted a number of issues that needed to be addressed urgently. And these were and,by no means limited to the following:

The first one is that the salespeople had no backup support within the branch, So what they did was they travelled from their sales territory to the branch and in some cases this was over an hour. Now they did what they had to do in the branch and not surprisingly they stayed in the branch. So, most of the time is actually spent in the branch instead of going out, seeing potential customers and existing customers. 

The people, the salespeople, also delivered products and services. Sorry, the salespeople delivered products to customers that were classified as urgent. 

Another point was that the branch managers summoned their salespeople to return to the branch whenever there was a staff shortage. 

The maximum number of sales calls per salesperson was four and the average number of new accounts opened per month was two, so that was the tip of the iceberg, the most urgent things. 

Now what we implemented is this.

As senior salesperson was appointed within each branch and responsible for carrying out the tasks on behalf of the salesperson. 

Now the second one caused a little bit of pushback initially. Sales people were barred from their branch and only allowed to attend their sales meetings on a weekly basis. And, by the way, this was also changed from a Friday to a Monday morning, and the reason being again having a sales meeting on a Friday, they used to just stay in the branch all day and then if there were certain new strategies that would have to be implemented the following week, of course they were forgotten over the weekend, so it was really quite a waste of time and productivity having the sales meetings on a Friday. So they were changed to a Monday morning. 

A National Labour hire company was approached to handle staff shortages and salespeople's time was focused on business development in the morning and in the afternoon they had to do account management. And we also did regular infield sales coaching that was provided to lift sales confidence. 

Now the outcomes Phil, this will this was absolutely amazing. The average number of accounts open per month rose from 2 to 15 and the top performer was a lady in Queensland and she did a staggering 43 new accounts.

Philip

That's brilliant.

Kurt

Which is unbelievable. The other thing that was really great, there was an incredible banter went on right throughout the whole sales team, that if anybody opened up less than 15 accounts per month they in a jovial way, had a dig at them.

Philip

So they set up their own competitive circumstances to compete with each other. Is that what happened?

Kurt

Absolutely, absolutely. It was done in a fun way. It wasn't done, you know, in an adversarial way, it was done in a fun way.  So it was, it was really had a lot of fun and good hearted. 

The second category was they had a category of award called product expansion and what that meant that every time a salesperson called a customer and may sell an additional product or product range, they call that product expansion, and they measured it.  Now the highest performer did 2.1 sales calls to an order for new product or new product range over a 12 month period. Now that is an amazing effort. That is an amazing effort and from time to time we also initiated sales drives and with the very last one that I was aware of, 16 salespeople created 58 new accounts, and by the way, to open up a new account, the customer had to spend a minimum amount of money. It wasn't a matter of just opening up an account and there was no sale. 

So that just turned the whole culture, and they became, they were, a very sales and customer service culture. We also worked with their backup support people and the organisation did some incredible things.

Philip

That's amazing, Kurt. With those sort of results that must have created a huge dint in the competition in the competitors that that organisation was dealing with.

Kurt

Oh, absolutely. Really. Absolutely. We thought we had to do those comparisons as well. So that person might say that that I can buy X or Y part from this organisation for less than yours and they’d say “That's fine. Let's do a product comparison”. They'd look at a, if you like, a basket of products and then compare that basket with their current supplier and it all worked out to be less, even though individual products within this clients product range may have been dearer. So they started, the sales people started, to think more strategically and tactically rather than ‘they need to go and sell some products’.

Philip

Fantastic. Kurt, that example that you're giving there and talking about ensuring that there's support for the salespeople in the areas of backup support and technology. Again, I'm hearing come through your example there, that it wasn't a point of restructuring what the salespeople did on a day-by-day basis. It also then, by giving the salespeople some direction, giving them the support where they weren't called back into the branch if there wasn't enough people there to do the operational side of things, by doing that, the sales team then got into a sales culture. And as you said, they were even in their own right being a bit competitive against each other because they were setting their own metrics of new accounts they were going to pick up. And no doubt in support of that, they were also looking at the revenues that they were creating, so they created their own sales culture and that wasn't driven or directed at them, it was enabling them to get on with doing what they did well.

Kurt

Absolutely. And it wasn't just all that looking at numbers, it was the process they went through, the games that they played with each other, the fun that they had and the numbers basically took care of themselves. They really did.

Philip

That's. Fantastic and the role of the CEO in that was, that you mentioned there, that there was some investment, there was requirement to use an outsourced organisation to pick up where there was a lack of resource in the offices. There was probably some investment required in technologies, CRM systems etcetera. So, the CEO needed to understand that this was very important for the overall health of the organisation because by providing that support and enabling the sales team, they were, as CEO, really supporting the sales team in a very direct manner, albeit that it wasn't them at the coal face driving the sales team because no doubt these initiatives that you were talking about were under the direction of sales management, but the CEO obviously took a position to say, “Yeah, well, these initiatives sound fine, give it a go and I'll support what you're doing”. Did that work that way?

Kurt

Absolutely. The CEO was very, very proactive in supporting it. He was involved in meetings quite regularly. He showed tremendous amount of leadership that he was supporting the whole process. In fact, we ended up developing a Sales Academy for the organisation because they had 145 salespeople. So the CEO is an integral part of supporting and driving this.

Philip

That's excellent. So it's not just support in terms of “Oh, help me with these documents or help me with the marketing collateral etcetera”, it even extended to setting up a sales Academy within the organisation.

Kurt

Absolutely. And then that transcended into a whole range of other training and development that we did so that the company had a very holistic way of selling and managing clients. In fact, they sold so much in the right products and services out of all their branch network that it created quite a challenge in the back end of the operation including logistics, distribution side that we had to also look at that and get that happening so that the sales and the distribution side all worked in harmony. It was a good problem to have Phil, a good problem to have.

Philip

Yeah. Excellent. 

Kurt, in your book, in your most recent book, which I read and thoroughly enjoyed, in a way, we've been through some parallel paths, if you like. But you mentioned in your book that you as a salesperson took initiatives and were engaging with your customers in a creative way and that in the end, because what you were doing was seen to be not the way that organisation did things, they stopped you doing some of the creative things that you did, and you mentioned in your book that that was enough to make you leave that organisation. 

I see in this area here where you say ensure support for your sales people, I perceive out of that example that you gave in your book, which anyone listening to this podcast has to get a copy of, I would suggest that that support that you didn't get, in other words, you were discouraged from doing your creative approach, was to the detriment not only of you staying with the company, because you were a high achiever, but also it was to the detriment of the company because you were engaging customers and creating referrals who were then coming and buying from you, and these were substantial purchases, so, the support is not just providing backup and etcetera, it's also that moral support, isn't it?

Kurt

Oh, absolutely. And the CEO has sales personnel, salespeople, that have got creative and different ideas and need to actively listen. And based those ideas, and in my case, I just felt that the organisation is operating in dogma, and if you come up with the creative idea, it was just knocked on the head. I had this person saying “We’ve always done it this way and we’ll always do it this way!”. Well, you know what happened to dinosaurs! 

So we really need to listen to some ideas that might initially sound way out and different, but it's what keeps expansion happening. It's what keeps growth happening. Sometimes what may initially appear like a wacky idea ends up being one of the best ideas and becomes the ‘norm’.

Philip

And I've experienced many times in the different companies that I've run that the ideas that come from the people who are closest to the customer generally are well worth pursuing, and in many instances have made a significant difference to the companies that I've run. 

And I'm speaking about your book, The Most Unlikely Salesperson, which is where that example is. And when I read that I thought, well, it just reminded me of instances where I had had people come to me as the CEO and make suggestions, and we'd ended up implementing those suggestions and they had worked beautifully. And not only did they work beautifully in terms of the revenues for the company and the customer satisfaction, they worked extremely well for the people in the organisation because they could see that they didn't just come to work to do their job, they came to work and got satisfaction out of contributing.

Kurt

Ohh absolutely. That they buy into it to the point where they work extra hours to make things happen. They take total ownership and that is really a wonderful, wonderful way to work. It's difficult to say that you're stressed when you're enjoying what you’re doing.

Philip

Exactly. And getting that satisfaction out of being at work, it also means that, we don't talk about this anywhere near enough in management and leadership, and that is people like to have some fun.

Kurt

Absolutely. And a lot, you know, that they can contribute and they're being listened to and that things will be implemented or will be done or if it's the timing’s out, they need to be upfront and just tell them. But I what I've experienced, as a salesperson, maybe some organisations that I've approached, there's too much dogma still. We've got to get away from that because it's... Being creative and innovative is really the way forward, and it's also a fantastic way of differentiating a CEO's products and services from competitors.

Philip

Yes, yes. And that example where you gave that the sales team, in their own right ,created a metric, if you like, of 15 new accounts, and then in a fun way, and you mentioned that in a fun way they had this method of having a joke with their friends, and who were their compatriots, about how it was all going. So, that created for them, they'd created their own game, if you like, and they were enjoying participating in that game.

Kurt

Exactly, exactly. They set their own bar, if you like. And with one person, and then she said “Ohh, remember the days when Andy did two?”. And I said, “What?” It was a completely different mindset. 15 was the minimum bar waking up new accounts and that, in such a fun way, it really energised everybody. Everybody felt really great and that sort of an energy really is…It's something special, it really is.

Philip

That's amazing. And then you said that before it was an average of two a month and they'd gone to competing with each other about getting 15. That's just not a 1% improvement. That's a huge improvement.

Kurt

Yeah. And could you imagine, could you imagine the dollars that that would bring in about 145 sales figures? So we never ever focused just on the dollars to say “This is what you've got to achieve”, it had to do with measured activity. Dollars will always take care of themselves. So by saying let's, you know, go from two… I've thought initially that this would build up over a period of time, but it only took them something like about four or five months to go from 2 to 15.

Philip

Is that right? That was that quick?.

Kurt

It it happened very, very rapidly. Yeah, very rapidly.

Philip

That is fantastic. That is fantastic. So, Kurt, those three points - succinct and clear. 

·       So educate yourself on sales and sales strategies as CEO.

·       Schedule regular time with individual salespeople and attend joint sales meetings with key clients. 

·       Then ensure support for your salespeople in two vital areas, internal backup support and technology. 

So Kurt, those three points. I think everyone listening to these podcasts, and the interesting thing is in this podcast, I know that there are CEO's that listen to the podcast, but I also know there are people right throughout the organisations that listen to these podcasts because they also want to understand what CEO's are thinking. And for you to articulate these three key points, I would have to say if any sales leaders listen to this podcast, they're probably sitting there right now saying. “Kurt, you are right on!”

Kurt

Thank you. Thank you. It works Phil, that's the bottom line, it works.

Philip

Fantastic. Now, Kurt, you consult and help people to implement these sort of things?

Kurt

Absolutely, absolutely. And it's not a ‘one does all’ because I work across industries and I also work globally. It's a matter of seeing what is really needed and we then start off with what we call an infield sales review. 

So, I'll spend time in the field with salespeople and learn what they're doing, how they're doing, their frustrations, etcetera, learn about competitors, competitor activity etcetera. We then write a report about that which is presented to the CEO and oftentimes senior management as well and when that's approved we then do the implementation, which is what we call. Group structured competency-based training and it’s tailored to suit that organisation. It's not a generic course, which means that when you're talking specifics about that company, that industry salespeople really embrace it very, very rapidly. And then the third area to lock it down, Phil, we do infill sales coaching where once we've rated a person at a particular competency level, we then work with them in the field in a practical hands-on situation and get their competency level up. 

If I could make a brief statement about this Competency levels, the competency levels are briefly; level one is a beginner and level 6 is a professional, but the mean in every industry that we have worked in is 3. So if we're going to work with an organisation and get the sales team to a 4, they will automatically have a strategic advantage over their competitors.

Philip

That's excellent. And Kurt, you talk about those competency levels in your books. So it's definitely worth anyone that wants to know more about them getting hold of the books. But we're getting to the end of the podcast. So how do people get in touch with you, and how do they get hold of your books?.

Kurt

They get in touch with me by either an email which is:

Kurt@salesconsultants.com.au

Or I'm very happy to take a phone call. My mobile is:

+61 412 252 236

And also, in the interim, have a look at the website:

www.saleconsultants.com.au

Regarding the book that is available on the website. It's available on Amazon. It's available in paperback or an ebook version and there's many, many other organisations both physical buildings and online that do sell The Most Unlikely Salesperson book.

Philip

Excellent, excellent. Well, I, as I say, having read both those books, they're definitely worthwhile, and if anyone's got any need, which most organisations do, to improve their sales I strongly recommend they talk to you, Kurt.

Kurt

Thank you. Thank you, Phil.

Philip

We'll we'll close the conversation there. Thank you so much for sharing your insights on CEO Thinking and I’ll look forward to talking to you in the near future.

Kurt

Well, thank you, Phil. Thank you for the opportunity of sharing these experiences and it's been an absolute pleasure.

Philip

Thanks, Kurt. All the best.

Kurt

Thank you, Phil. All best bye for now.

Philip

Cheers. 

Thanks for joining me this week on the CEO Thinking Podcast. 

If you're gained value from this episode, here are three actions for you to take.

·       First click subscribe on Apple Podcast or on the app you use to listen to this podcast so you don't miss future episodes. 

·       Next please leave me a review in your podcast app so that other listeners can learn how you'll gain value 

·       And finally, to help you use the ideas to drive your business, go to:

·       www.lseconsulting.net.au for the show notes and other resources you can use.

I'm Philip Belcher and I'll look forward to talking with you next week.