[E165] Always Make It Personal with Roxana Radulescu – Part 2 of 4

Jason: Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. Welcome to the continuation of the conversation that Roxana Radulescu and I had together. My name is Jason Cutter. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate that you’re here, especially for what I hope it means that you want to create for yourself or your sales team or your business in the kind of sales experience that will help you be successful as well as moving more clients through their journey in your sales process, from prospect to customer to raving fan, all of that for their benefit, for your benefit. This conversation is really an interesting one that Roxana and I have where we talk about communication. We talk about continuing the conversation where it’s not just about business, it’s also personal and it’s all personal and how you are who you are in any realm, right? So we’re continuing that conversation yesterday, so make sure to check this out and I will see you at the end.

Roxana: Right now when we speak. I will still keep my beliefs and my values in place and talk to you coming from that place, right? I’m not gonna try to be somebody that I’m not because it does take and honestly I do appreciate people who can do it because it does take a lot of effort to do that. It’s just that on the long run it doesn’t work because it, it just gets you exhausted.

Jason: Yeah, it’s tough to, it’s tough to totally separate your work, your work person and your work personality with your personal person and personality longterm and be able to do that. And the people that I’ve seen the most success, you know, have the most success in any role is really the one who is authentically them and they make it work. And again, like you said, there’s different relationships. So my goal with, you know, when you have a boss or your goal with an employee or a goal with a customer or a goal with a coaching client are going to be different goals. The relationships and who you are should pretty much always be the person who you are and make it work.

Jason: So if we’re talking about the, the personal, you know, versus the business, where do you see that show up with your clients, let’s say within sales organizations or with teams that are dealing with customers? You know, let’s talk about that part.

Roxana: You know what the thing is and it comes more and more, especially in teams that work together or in customers. So restoring people who need to sell something. It’s all about how you talk to the other person and how you ask them some of those questions that they need to hear from you as maybe a business owner or a manager. How do you ask those questions so that you understand where they are come from and what they need help with. For me, this is the maybe one of the, the things that was also very interesting for me when I, when I realized how much we need people to understand what we need in and that in the conversation, in a conversation where we talk and I say yes, that’s exactly it. Rather than, no, that’s not what I meant. So that comes with a lot of questioning, especially from the side that maybe wants to sell something or from the manager who wants to manage their team better.

Roxana: To be able to do that, you have to understand what’s the issues, what the problem is. So asking questions and saying, okay, so what’s the situation right now? What have you tried, what works, what doesn’t work? And then say, okay, so I think I might be able to help you with this, this and that. And then that’s clear and that you know, that’s not going to be a sale anymore. It’s going to be okay. I listened to you. I understand what you mean. I understand some of the needs that you have and this is how I think I can help you and then it’s going to be very clear to you what I can do for you and if you need it then or if you need it in. I dunno among from them, but that is crucial. I think a crucial element of that is just people talking to each other, trying to understand what one another.

Roxana: So not trying to felt right off the bat, trying to understand what you mean by something and get you there because that builds trust. Right? That is going to help you understand that, Hey, so she really knows what I’m saying here. She really knows what I’m talking about. She really knows my pain and she said she can help with this, this and that specifically. So this is one of them, one of the biggest skills that we forget when we talk about communication, we forget about listening. When we talk about communication, we usually refer two public speaking presentations or you know Kelly, your team something, okay you’re supposed to do this, this and that. But a law of communication means listening and that’s a skill that is so underused and that is absolutely amazing. It gives me amazing results when managers or leaders, especially sales people use it.

Jason: Yeah. And I think if we unpack all the stuff that you’ve talked about, which anybody who’s listened to me or my podcasts or knows me at all, and those, I believe in all of that, like what you said, which is, you know, building trust based on asking questions and getting to know what the other person wants or needs or who they are. And then focusing on solving that or helping them get to a better place. Kind of in your example and kind of what your business focus is, like I said, is similar to a personal trainer at the gym. It’s what are your goals and where can I get you? Not me telling everybody they all need to be, you know, be able to lift this weight or do this or do that. It’s like everybody is different. So what is your goal? What do you want?

Jason: And it’s, and it’s funny because you know, maybe we laugh at that example of the gym cause I’m thinking, okay, well you know, any personal at the gym you walk in, they’re going to say, okay, well here’s what you need to do. You need to be able to bench press 300 pounds, you need to be able to do this many squats. We need to be able to do is kind of run. I need you to have this kind of body fat percentage and weigh this much. If they did that it would be terrible because no, nobody’s the same. Like everybody is different and yet sales people do that all the time where they think, okay, I have a solution. I think I know the answer and so I’m going to fit every single person into my square peg hole even if I have to force it.

Jason: I’m going to try that instead of figuring out, you know, listening, asking questions and you know the punchline with all of this again where it started with your focus of your podcast and, and the way that I believe to which is it is personal. So you have to make it personal about that other person about your prospect at the sales level because you have to know how to help that person instead of making it about you. Like that’s the best way to shift it from manipulation. And, and going after your stuff to persuasion and helping somebody else is you’re making it personal

Roxana: and it’s a different kind of persuasion. I mean for me and for me it actually helped also because I come from Europe or regionally and I used to work in international law firms face with head headquartered in the, in the UK. So though they were not aggressively selling in any way cause they didn’t do right. So they were big and we don’t have to sell. People know who we are. And usually it would be like people asking them for some services and their numbers and hoping they wouldn’t be as expensive than they thought they were. But then seeing the quality that they would be offering, they would take those services rather than somebody else’s. So I come from that culture. Not having to be aggressive with the sales, but have a huge drive and a huge focus on quality on what kind of services you’re offering.

Roxana: You have to be very clear about that. And what’s your quality, what’s your standard of quality that you’re offering. And obviously that comes with making it, personalizing it for all. And each of your clients that you work with because their needs are going to be different. They’re going to be at different stages of development. They’re going to be asking you for different things. So you have to be able, you have to have the capacity to personalize your services depending on what they need. It’s like for me, and then it was very useful for me because designing and delivering training sessions, that’s what I need to do. They will ask me, do you do, okay, so let’s do a communication skills training. No communication skills. Imagine how broad that is, right? It can be anything. So I have to talk to them and say, okay, so what’s going on right now?

Roxana: Well, what’s the situation now? What do you want to change? What do you want to make happen? What’s your goal? What do you want to achieve? And watching so that I can see, well we can work on right away. What are your priorities? Cause it may be a sort of communication, maybe feedback and maybe listening. It may be teamwork. Whatever it is, it needs to be filtered. That’s the same thing. I know when people try to sell me something, I never buy it. When somebody just calls me out of the blue and said, ah, I’m here from this company and I’m selling this and a thought, you might need it. Well I don’t.

Jason: Right. Because if you needed it right, like you would have called them. Because if you, if you know what the problem you have and you know what the solution is, you’ll reach out. So as a salesperson, if you’re reaching out to other people and making those calls, you know, expect that they weren’t thinking about it unless they had started the conversation. And then you’ve got to do more discovery.

Roxana: Exactly. Do more to discovery and ask a question. Ask them if they ever had trouble with bass, bass, bass, or if they would ever think about purchasing this and why or why not in stuff like that. You know, patience, we all expect results yesterday. That’s not really some people. And even if what I found about me even is I am not, I thought I was a patient person and I’m not a patient when it comes through wanting results from my business. But what I found out is just putting myself out there. I go out and I talk. I give speeches to events where my ideal clients might be or associations that I want to be associated with. I put a lot of content out there. I offer open workshops and stuff like that. But it’s genuinely because I want people to become more aware what they can do for themselves and how they can grow themselves personally and professionally.

Roxana: How would they can work out their skills muscles. Right. And then there will always be some people who will meet me then or not meet my surfaces. Right. Cause that’s another mistake that we make, especially as business owners within God. They don’t, they don’t want me now. They don’t need me now. It’s not you what you’re offering. They don’t need it now. They might need it. I don’t know, two weeks later, 2 years later, you never know. Right. You know, keep your message out there and whoever needs to work on something, they will know that they need to talk to you or they will choose to talk to you. Just that for me, but it took a lot of time for me to, to learn that as well and to start being more patient.

Jason: Alright. That’s it for part two of the conversation with Roxana Radulescu and myself and make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com you can find the show notes, transcription. All of Roxana has links. If you don’t want to wait for the final part where she talks about them, spoiler alert, they’re already on my website where you’ve got them there. You can find her, follow her, reach out to her and check out all of her great content, everything that she has on her website to help you or your team or you as an individual. And I’ll leave you as I always do. Keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.