[E167] Always Make It Personal with Roxana Radulescu – Part 4 of 4

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name is Jason Cutter. So glad that you’re here. You are at a great point in the show where this is part four of my conversation with Roxanna Radulescu and we are just going to finish off the chat and then we’ve been having that went everything from her experience and doing a Ted talk and that kind of sidebar all the way through her mantra with her podcast, which is all about it is personal. It’s not just business and everything in life is personal at some point. And really this final section of our conversation together, this part four, we talk a lot about business and you know, having a vision and focusing on that. How you treat your customers is how you will treat your employees. If you want to be successful, it’s gotta be in alignment. It always will be, right?

Jason: Here’s the punchline is it always will be in alignment. How you treat your employees, how you treat yourself, how you treat other people, how you treat your customers will always be the same and you can’t avoid that. And the question is, is that a positive thing? Do you view the world positively or do you view the world negatively? And everyone is out to get you. And so that will dictate a lot of your success in sales, in business and with your customers. So here is part four. Enjoy this final part with Roxanna and 

Jason: I think that’s so important is that balance because the natural reaction, like I said of most salespeople, is I don’t like scripts. Scripts are terrible. They make me sound robotic. I hate when anyone uses a script, but that’s you. That’s not the script, right? You can even read a script and make the script sound amazing. Even if you were to read it word for word, you can still make it sound conversational, but you’re right. It’s the ones who call script or no script and they don’t believe in what they’re doing and they’re going through the motions. Just kind of like life. You can feel it.

Roxana: Totally. I mean, come on and that’s why we’re people. We’re not robots. Going back to the making, it makes me sound robotic. Well, well we’ll do it for me. You know what? How do you expect me to buy something that you’re offering to me in your capacity as a robot instead of a person? And I liked what you said about the journey as well because yes, I need two paths. That feeling that you’re taking me on a journey here and that you’re at least trying to understand if I need that or not or if I’m the least interested in that and why I should be interested in that. It’s the same thing with presentations where you do presentations, you do have a script, but then you make it sound like you and you do them with a purpose. You want people to buy the idea.

Roxana: You want them to start working on a new project that you’re presenting, so you need to sell that concept to them. Do you need to make that worse? You need to give it your voice. You need to give a little bit of your, of how you feel about it and what if you don’t believe in it, you’re just going to say that, okay, look, I know it’s going to be painful. We really have to do it because it’s the only way out and that’s fair. But again, give it your voice. If you’re not going to feel comfortable saying it, then the odds of actually selling something are going to be really reduced.

Jason: Yeah and I, and I think really to tie this back around once again is at the end of the day, if you’re in sales, even as a manager, any of it is to make it personal for the other person with the goal of helping them get to where they could should or want to be. Right? Like whether you’re solving a problem or you’re selling something that will just make somebody happy or feel better. I mean it’s, there’s no right or wrong, right? It’s, you know, some people go to the gym let’s say, and they hire a personal trainer cause they just want to feel better. Some people need to be healthier or lose weight, whatever that might be. There’s no right or wrong way for like, okay you have to sell this way, but you always got to make it personal for where they want to go on their destination.

Jason: And then as a true sales professional is identify that. And then if you see a fit and you know that you can help them, then, and this is where like I push a lot of sales people who kind of tend to be more order-takers where they make it personal and they explain a lot and they ask them questions and then they leave it up to the prospect of decide, well, a lot of prospects, a lot of customers won’t decide because if they were going to decide they would have already done it and they wouldn’t take that kind of like your example. Like you know, you being called and somebody says, Hey, here’s what we have. Do you want to buy it? If I wanted to buy it, I would’ve already bought it. Right? That’s the way it works. And so as a sales professional thinking longterm, it’s making it personal for your prospect. And then once you know it’s going to be a good fit is to help steer them and push them in that direction with the right intention, with helping them and not leaving it up to them to decide, well, should I buy from you? Should I join the gym and should I do this? Well, I don’t know. That seems like a lot of work. Yes it is, but here’s how it’s going to help you. Here’s what we’re going to get to. Now let’s go into, and you signed up.

Roxana: Exactly. It’s the difference between, and it’s the same thing with asking for help or asking for help specifically with something. It’s the same thing when you offer help or when you offer a service or a product specifically, what is it? What can I help you with? It’s not like, yeah, I can help you. Let me know if you need my help. Well, with what exactly . Right. I mean, using the gym example. Yeah. Okay. I might want to go to the gym, but then I think about maybe I, I, I’d rather buy a pink pizza every night. Right. Okay. Let me, yeah, let me thinking about the gym, but then if I come and tell you, okay, so you can work on these muscles and these muscles and these muscles and what I think would work for you would be three times a week. This, um, followed by, I don’t know, twice a week that and I have these subscription that you can use and we have a promotion that you can use on the first month and then you see if it works for you.

Roxana: It doesn’t, we can tweak it and see what works for you best that’s most specific because people might not know what they need help with. Going back to my example here, do you do communication skills training, but what exactly is it about communication that you want to improve? It’s the same thing. If you offer help, be specific and tailor it as much as you can. Okay. Even if you have a script, you do have a product that you’re selling, let them know what that is going to be useful for them. What’s that gonna do for them? Because you’ve talked to them. Right? Right. So, okay, I can help you with this. So what this product does for you is this and it gives you these results in that much time. That’s specific.

Jason: Yeah. Speaking of scripts and plans, I have bunch of questions I wanted to ask. As anybody who’s been listening to the season two they know I keep just diving into conversations and having fun instead of like a lot of plan stuff. We’ve talked about what the good, great sales experience looks like and communicating on a different topic cause I want to address this real quick. When we’re talking about managers, so leaders, managers within an organization, you know specifically communication, making it personal, kind of what your focus is. What’s the biggest thing that you see that would help a manager within an organization, whether they’re dealing with salespeople or anything like that, like what is it that would help them with that personal slash business kind of line that people struggle with?

Roxana: The best thing that gives the best results is treat your people the way you treat your clients. Because if there is a disconnect between who you are with your clients and who you are with your team, that’s not going to work on a longterm. If you treat your team badly, just it’s for Europe, your client, well that’s not going to work because in the long run what you want is your team dealing with as many clients as possible as well. You want them to grow in their roles too. So what they’re gonna learn from you is, well I can be, I can become a manager and I’m going to do the same thing with my team. I’m going to treat my team badly and my clients well, but the thing is it has a very direct impact on your reputation because your reputation is going to proceed you everywhere you go.

Roxana: And clients will find out from, you never know from home because it’s a small world after all. And they will find out how you behave in one context or another. And when people in your teams start believing you as a manager or your team, that’s going to have a direct impact on your reputation on the market. So what do you want to do is apply the same values that you work towards with your clients, with your team, and basically, again, we go back to making it all personal and not just business and having this unified approach of how you do business because you want to do business from your stamp having your own brand. How do you build your own brand? You have to have some values that you’re building your brand around. You can have different kinds of brands, right? You can think of the big brands, they have the same values.

Roxana: So that’s one of the main things, and this is actually one of the points that I make when I work with small businesses, for instance, who want to grow their teams. First thing I ask, do you have your values set? Oh yeah, we want you to, but we didn’t have time cause we’re going in. You know how it is. We’re doing everything. Yeah. I know you want to bring more people on your team, you better know what your values are, your values, the values that you’re going to hire and fire on. Well, ideally not prior, but retain, even if it comes to to firing how you do that, how you part ways that’s going to be super important on your reputation on the market.

Jason: Yeah. And how, how do you even know who’s a good fit or not a good fit once in their role unless it comes down to that. And I think that’s a valid, very valid point. And I, I think a lot of times for small really small organizations, they’re not at a point yet where they have values because the owner’s involved, it’s a small, it’s a family thing, they’re driving it, they’re setting that framework as you grow a, you’re a few years in and then you’re the owner who’s the founder who said it and started it all is getting more separated from the team, then that’s when it’s important. You know, having them right away isn’t always effective. But as you’re saying like before you grow or you’re trying to expand your team at any level, right. Whether it’s adding a few more people or it’s adding 20 more people.

Jason: And then I think that framework, like you said from the top down and what do you believe, how do you want to treat your customers, you know, treat your employees like you treat your customers. And then I think, you know, as an interesting side note is that also your view of people will also be the same. So if you view, let’s say your employees as people you need to control or else they might try to rip you off or they might try to, you know, skirt their responsibilities, then you’re probably going to treat your customers that same way and always be looking out for your customers. You know, how in a negative way versus if you just fundamentally believe you’re going to attract the right people and get the right people on board and then you’ll get the right clients, you know, whatever that perspective is.

Jason: And it’s interesting cause I can always tell the perspective of a manager or an owner or any kind of leader, even a salesperson based on down the line how everyone acts or feels about them and the comments they make. And you know, because again, if you’re a salesperson and you think all of your customers are just there to make you money and it doesn’t really matter and you don’t care about them, when that person becomes a manager, if somebody promotes that person, they’re going to think of their team as somebody who just makes them money and they don’t care about them either.

Roxana: Exactly. And you know what it’s like when you don’t care, it will show no matter how much you try to hide it, I will know when you care and really you don’t care to I left and special. I think we can tell, especially if we have more than just one interaction, I will know.

Jason: Yeah, for sure. So, uh, you know, I really enjoyed this. This was super fun. Thank you for being the show where I’m going to put everything. Yeah. I’m going to put all your information in the show notes so people have all your links. But for right now, when people are listening, what is the best way for people to find you, your projects, everything that you’re working on.

Roxana: Okay. So I’m everywhere. So my, my hub though is my website, personalskillscoach.com or on LinkedIn. I’m there, Roxana Radulescu or all personal. I also have the company page and Instagram, Facebook. So yeah. But I have all of these links on my website, which by the way it’s in, I’m revamping it right now because, because it was hacked. One of the joys. Yes. One of the joys of owning a business and having a website is that these things can happen too. So yeah. But uh, yeah, it’s still so right now it’s a very simple version of it, but you still have the links and you can find me there.

Jason: And what’s great is I saw that about your website. It seemed very simple, but I’m glad to know that story and I’m glad that you shared that with everyone in case they go and there’s still so much value and videos and links and articles on there. I saw it and I was like, well it’s not a very great website but there’s still so much good stuff on there. Like it doesn’t matter to me cause I appreciate the value. And the content more than, you know, the outside. But yes, that is good for people to know anything on when you listen to this.

Roxana: Yeah. It will also look better than it looks now. Now it looks like a word document or something.

Jason: When in doubt find you on like LinkedIn, which is where I found you. And uh, you’ll see all the good stuff. So, yeah, once again, thank you for being on the show. I appreciate it so much.

Roxana: Thank you, Jason.

Jason: Alright, and for everyone listening in, make sure you go to cutterconsultinggroup.com you can find this episode with the transcripts. All of Roxana has links on there. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people will remember the experience you gave them.