Afternoon guys,
Today mark’s my 4th session with Max Newton getting sales coaching from him:
Here’s us on our final call discussing some of the areas that I’m currently struggling with.
I got to know Max around 5 of 6 months ago through a mutual client of ours:
Max was their sales consultant and we (Pearl Lemon) were brought on as the actual cold calling team.
At that stage, I had no idea who Max was and treated him as part of the client’s embedded team.
It would only be a couple of weeks later I’d discover that that was not the case and in fact, Max ran a sales company in his own right.
Business Developer – the name of the sales company that Max runs.
To his credit – Max took some time to check out what Pearl Lemon did as a company as well as myself.
It’s really nice to be able to meet another agency owner along the way and discover you have mutual respect for each other.
I’m still relatively speaking – early on in my journey of building a sales organisation – and Max was someone who came from a background of careers sales having come from Foxton’s as a top sales performer who’d ultimately left to start his own shop.
He’s someone whose dedicated to sales, and building a sales organisation – and so has much more in-depth experience than myself. Whilst I’ve naturally got sales ability, Max has it also in spades but combines that with education and intent which made me realise there’d be lots of benefit from getting his perspective on how to build a sales team to be reckoned with
We hit it off, and after a couple of meetings, I proposed Max could give me some much-needed advice on sales management and advice.
Historically I’d ask Ion, my head of new business to actually give me some direct sales skills training itself in the past – but Max had experiences that I felt were somewhat lacking in my arsenal.
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How to run and grow a sales team.
I’d been trusting my gut and intuition – but as I’d take the time to get to know Max, I decided to take the plunge and to book in some sales training with him.
So as we had some food in Ealing Broadway, I asked him, several beers in if he’d give me some coaching, what his fees were, and wired him across the money whilst we were there eating.
And so our journey began!
We’ve had 4 sessions in total lasting around 45-55 minutes each but I can’t for some reason find the other two.
The main idea with these sessions was that it was an AMA with Max whereby I’d have an opportunity to ask him about particular issues I was facing within Pearl Lemon and to get insights from Max based upon his experience and insights.
Here are the notes just from today’s training session which proved to be invaluable.
We walked through how Max run’s sales meetings, questions to ask some of my current team, the importance of mutually building KPI’s as well as expanding my sales team.
Max walked through the number of meetings he has per week, what they are for, and what is covered.
He then gave me specific insights into videos I could ask of the team as well as some general advice on how to manage salespeople.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the advice he has given me.
There have been book recommendations (several of which I’ve purchased) that I need to get through, as well as (as you can see above) further recommendations of people to follow and things to watch.
The AMA style of this type of coaching is invaluable to me. There’s no fluff, no niceties, and I can focus exclusively on the questions that I have.
I’m not looking to develop a complete sales system – but more I’m continually looking for the quick wins that can lead to outsized results.
And that’s the value of what Max has been walking me through.
I’ve hired a dedicated BDR to run outreach after Max’s advice, I’ve developed a sounder interview strategy when hiring salespeople with specific questions to ask and things to look for, and now have a framework for running a sales team – more specifically meeting cadence, building accountability and how to drive internal competition.
I’m grateful that I’ve been able to turn to Max and draw upon his sales experience to help build a more robust sales team.
And of course – it’s nice to work with someone who’s damn good at what they do – and more than happy to help me on my way.
Cheers mate!
