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	<title>Let&#39;s Talk Sales</title>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/the-emerald-manifesto-the-ultimate-guide-to-authentic-selling_117s51</link>
<title><![CDATA[The Emerald Manifesto: The ultimate guide to authentic selling]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[This article is my manifesto on authentic selling.
No ick, or sleaze.
Just grace and ease.

That&#39;s what Authentic Selling is.
This guide is authentic selling for non-salespeople.

Table of Contents


	The Great Sales Mirage: Why You Hate Selling (And Why You&rsquo;re Wrong)
	The Trust Equation: The Mathematical Secret to Human Connection
	The Sisterhood of Success: Why Marketing Can&rsquo;t Save a Bad Sales Process
	The Yellow Brick Road Strategy: Mapping the Client&rsquo;s Technicolor Journey
	The Rule of Thirds: Mastering the Numbers Without Losing Your Soul
	Meetings That Rock: The &quot;You, Me, and Next Step&quot; Framework
	Crunchy Conversations: Finding the &quot;Lean-In Factor&quot;
	The Fortune is in the Follow-Up: Graceful Persistence
	Shut the Back Door: Why Referrals are Your Only True Currency
	Conclusion: You&rsquo;ve Always Had the Power

]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[This article is my manifesto on authentic selling.
No ick, or sleaze.
Just grace and ease.

That&#39;s what Authentic Selling is.
This guide is authentic selling for non-salespeople.

Table of Contents


	The Great Sales Mirage: Why You Hate Selling (And Why You&rsquo;re Wrong)
	The Trust Equation: The Mathematical Secret to Human Connection
	The Sisterhood of Success: Why Marketing Can&rsquo;t Save a Bad Sales Process
	The Yellow Brick Road Strategy: Mapping the Client&rsquo;s Technicolor Journey
	The Rule of Thirds: Mastering the Numbers Without Losing Your Soul
	Meetings That Rock: The &quot;You, Me, and Next Step&quot; Framework
	Crunchy Conversations: Finding the &quot;Lean-In Factor&quot;
	The Fortune is in the Follow-Up: Graceful Persistence
	Shut the Back Door: Why Referrals are Your Only True Currency
	Conclusion: You&rsquo;ve Always Had the Power


Chapter 1. The Great Sales Mirage: Why You Hate Selling

Authentic Selling (noun): A values-aligned sales approach focused on helping people make better decisions, rather than manipulating them into purchases. Authentic Selling replaces pressure and persuasion with service, trust, and human connection.

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me they hated selling, I&rsquo;d be a millionaire!

For many purpose-led business owners and technical experts, selling feels uncomfortable, ego-driven, and entirely misaligned with their core values. When you think of sales, your mind likely conjures up an image of the dodgiest, slimiest salesperson in the world (a master of &quot;crocodile selling&quot; - who manipulates people into buying things they neither need nor want). 

You fear being perceived as pushy or &quot;salesy,&quot; you hide your humanity behind awkward tactics or avoid selling altogether. You suffer from the illusion that good people shouldn&#39;t have to sell, and that if you do meaningful work, it should simply speak for itself.

Let&rsquo;s be real: most business owners would rather clean a grout line with a toothbrush than &quot;sell.&quot; We&rsquo;ve been conditioned to view sales as a &quot;crocodile&quot; sport&mdash;predatory, slimy, and purely interested in the wallet. This is what I call Bad Selling, and it&rsquo;s why you cringe.

This is the Great Sales Mirage. You hate selling because you are doing it the wrong way

But here is the &quot;Technicolor&quot; truth: Authentic Selling is just helping people buy.

In the modern era, the &quot;Hard Sell&quot; is officially dead. According to Harvard Business Review, the shift toward &quot;Subscription-based&quot; and &quot;Relationship-based&quot; models means that a pushy sale is actually a financial liability.


	Source: HBR: The New Science of Customer Emotions (PDF/Article) &ndash; Research shows that emotionally connected customers are 52% more valuable than those who are just &quot;highly satisfied.&quot;


The truth is, authentic selling isn&rsquo;t something you do to others; it is something you do with others. Selling is not about manipulation or reciting the &quot;Shamsters Book of Sales Techniques&quot;. Authentic selling is simply helping people buy. It is about helping someone who has a problem fix that problem or fulfill a need. When you reframe sales as an act of service rather than servitude, your entire posture changes. You stop focusing on your own quota and start focusing on the client&#39;s journey.

To break free from this mirage, you must embrace the Two Golden Rules of Authentic Selling: Be Yourself and Get Over Yourself. You do not need to adopt an artificial persona to succeed; whether you are an introvert, an analyst, or a storyteller, you must be authentic.



However, being yourself does not excuse inaction. You must get over your fear of rejection, step into your authority, and give yourself permission to be great at sales.

Write down all the slimy, &quot;yucky&quot; things you hate about sales and throw them away. Then, visualize your inner &quot;shining sales goddess&quot; (or champion) and step confidently into your role as a guide. When your intention shifts to genuinely helping people make better decisions, selling stops feeling like a manipulative chore and starts feeling like a deeply human connection.

If you have a solution to a problem that&rsquo;s keeping someone up at night, staying silent isn&#39;t being polite&mdash;it&rsquo;s being unhelpful. You aren&#39;t a predator; you&rsquo;re Glinda, showing them the path they already have the power to walk.

Chapter 2. The Trust Equation: The Mathematical Formula for human Connection and relationship

The Trust Equation (noun): A formula for professional trust, defined as: Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) &divide; Self-Orientation. Developed by Maister, Green, and Galford, and taught at Harvard and INSEAD.

Trust isn&#39;t just a &quot;vibe&quot;; it&rsquo;s a quantifiable metric. Based on the work of Maister, Green, and Galford, and central to the Metisan philosophy, we use the Trust Equation. This formula is taught at Harvard and INSEAD as the gold standard for professional services.

The things that build trust:


	Credibility: Your qualifications (The &quot;Rational&quot; part).
	Reliability: Doing what you say you&rsquo;ll do.
	Intimacy: The safety a client feels sharing sensitive &quot;pain&quot; with you.


The thing that destroys trust.


	Self-Orientation: This is the denominator. If your focus is on yourself (your commission, your targets, your ego), trust plummets.


In the dance of sales, trust is everything. If a prospective client does not trust you, your product, or your company, they simply will not buy from you, regardless of how brilliant your solution might be.

Fortunately, trust is not an elusive, magical aura; it is a mathematical formula that you can actively build into your sales process. Based on David H. Maister&#39;s work, the Trust Equation is: Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation.

Credibility is the rational and emotional belief that you are an expert who tells the complete truth. While technical experts naturally possess rational credibility (qualifications, case studies, and letters after their names), emotional credibility is harder to earn.

Credibility requires you to address the client&#39;s hidden fears directly, tell the truth even when it&#39;s uncomfortable, and admit when you do not know the answer.

Reliability is straightforward but often fumbled: say what you do, and do what you say. Reliability is built slowly over time through consistent, positive interactions.

Reliability means sending the follow-up email you promised, honoring your meeting times, and uncovering the client&rsquo;s unspoken expectations; such as whether they prefer a morning or afternoon phone call.

Intimacy is the most critical element on the top of the equation. Intimacy is achieved when a client feels safe enough to share sensitive issues, deep fears, or emotional connections to their business problems.

Building intimacy requires you to take a risk and show your emotional hand first. By asking probing, &quot;feeling&quot; questions and giving the client a safe space to answer or avoid them, you invite deep, authentic partnership.

However, all of these positive elements can be instantly destroyed by the denominator: Self-Orientation (or Conflict of Interest). If a client senses that you are more interested in your own quota, ego, or brilliant pitch than in solving their problem, trust evaporates.

To master the Trust Equation, you must lower your self-orientation by listening intently, acting transparently, and focusing entirely on the best interests of the client.

Recent studies from the University of Melbourne on &quot;Trust in Australian Business&quot; highlight that &quot;Self-Orientation&quot; is the #1 reason for consumer cynicism in the B2B sector.


	Source: The Australian Trust Index (Research Summary) &ndash; Explore the data on why low self-interest is the key driver of corporate trust.


Chapter 3. The Sisterhood of Success: Why Marketing Can&rsquo;t Save You

Journey Friction (noun): The disconnect that occurs when a marketing promise is not matched by the sales experience, causing a prospective client to disengage. Journey Friction is eliminated when marketing, sales, and customer success are fully aligned.

Marketing and Selling are sisters, not twins.

Many business owners operate under the delusion that if they just get their marketing right, the sales will naturally follow. They pour money into lead generation, websites, and advertising, assuming that marketing can mask a broken or non-existent sales process.

The sisters of marketing and sales must work in tandem; marketing cannot save a bad sales process because marketing brings people to the door, but sales is the human interaction that invites them inside and helps them make a decision.

A successful business model relies on the seamless integration of Brand Experience (BX), Customer Experience (CX), and User Experience (UX). Marketing generates awareness, but consumers are not just deciding if they want to buy your product; they are deciding if they buy into your brand experience, your identity, and your community.

When a marketing campaign promises a deeply caring, expert-led solution, but the subsequent sales conversation is disjointed, self-centered, or pushy, the client experiences immediate dissonance.

This is what we call &quot;Journey Friction&quot;; when the buying and onboarding process feels harder than it should.

For service-based businesses, you must extend beyond the traditional 4 P&#39;s of marketing and embrace the 3 extra P&#39;s of Services Marketing: People, Process, and Physical Evidence.

Your People are how the client experiences your company; they must be trained to consistently deliver on your brand promise with confidence and empathy.

Your Process is the transparent system you use to onboard and manage clients, showing them exactly how you operate so they feel safe.

Your Physical Evidence (reports, case studies, brand environments) provides tangible proof of your intangible value.



If your messaging is unclear, you suffer from &quot;Value Friction,&quot; where 66% of founders admit their value simply isn&#39;t landing.

You cannot fix this by shouting louder with more marketing. You must align marketing, sales, and customer success around shared goals and a consistent, human-centric revenue culture.

When the &quot;sisterhood&quot; of marketing and sales is truly aligned, you stop relying on ad-hoc transactions and start building a robust, relationship-led growth engine.

Chapter 4. The Yellow Brick Road Strategy: Mapping the Client&#39;s Journey

The Yellow Brick Road Strategy (noun): A client-centred sales framework that maps each stage of the buying journey as a transparent, step-by-step roadmap. Modelled on the Wizard of Oz, it positions the salesperson as guide (Glinda), not hero.

Selling is profoundly misunderstood. Part art form, part science. It is not a transaction, but a sacred journey. To sell authentically, you must shift your perspective and view the sales process through the eyes of your client.

Think of your client as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. When they first realize they need help, they have experienced some sort of turmoil or &quot;storm&quot;. Suddenly, they are thrust out of their comfortable, predictable black-and-white reality and into the daunting, unknown world of Technicolor.

In this foreign place, your client is afraid and looking for guidance. They do not want you to be the hero who swoops in and solves everything for them; they want you to be Glinda the Good Witch. Glinda knows that Dorothy has the power to get home, but she doesn&#39;t push her or carry her. Instead, Glinda addresses Dorothy&#39;s fears, provides a credible pathway (the Yellow Brick Road) and allows her to take her own journey of discovery

Your clients; just like Dorothy land in Oz: overwhelmed, frightened, and unsure of the first step. A Sales Roadmap is your most powerful tool to lead them through the woods.

Your Sales Process is your Yellow Brick Road. It is a transparent, step-by-step &quot;Client Roadmap&quot; that shows prospective clients exactly how they will engage with your company, from pre-engagement to delivery and post-delivery review.

By presenting this roadmap early, you start by showing them you understand their fear of the unknown and prove that you have a safe, tested system for solving their problems.

You must also align your roadmap with the client&#39;s internal buying cycle. This cycle moves from Determining Needs (what are they looking for?), to Evaluating Alternatives (who is involved in the decision?), to Evaluating Risks (what if this all goes pear-shaped?), to Selection/Negotiation, and finally Implementation.

At each stage, the client is asking different questions and feeling different emotions. Your job is not to rush them to the Emerald City, but to walk alongside them, providing the exact tools, stories, and reassurance they need to confidently take the next step on their journey.

The Three Phases of the Client Journey are:


	Pre-engagement: Building trust and finding the &quot;fit.&quot;
	Delivery: Walking the talk.
	Post-delivery: Ensuring they never want to leave.


Source: INSEAD: Customer Journey Mapping Research &ndash; Research into why transparency in the &quot;journey&quot; leads to higher retention.

Chapter 5. The Rule of Thirds: Mastering the Numbers

The Rule of Thirds (noun): A sales pipeline principle stating that of any qualified prospects, one-third will say yes, one-third will delay, and one-third will say no. Coined by Frances Pratt of Metisan, it requires a pipeline at least three times the size of your target new clients.

According to ASBFEO (Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman), nearly 60% of startups fail within five years. Why? Because they don&#39;t treat sales as a numbers game.


	Source: ASBFEO Small Business Data Portal (Live Stats) &ndash; The latest data on Australian small business survival and growth trends.


While sales is deeply rooted in human connection, it is fundamentally a numbers game. However, mastering the numbers does not mean losing your soul or treating clients like mere data points.

It does mean creating a structural reality where your effort directly translates into predictable, sustainable revenue. If you set a massive revenue goal without defining the daily, weekly, and monthly activity inputs required to reach it, you create a &quot;Vague Road Map&quot;. This fog bank allows underperformance to hide behind &quot;busy work,&quot; where salespeople spend hours prepping but only 28% of their week actually selling.

To master the numbers, you must break them down into actionable steps. For each type of sale, calculate exactly how many networking contacts lead to phone calls, how many calls lead to discovery meetings, how many meetings lead to proposals, and how many proposals convert into paying clients. Once you know your conversion ratios, selling simply becomes a matter of discipline and &quot;eating your greens&quot;&mdash;setting aside protected time in your diary every week to execute these activities.

This requires establishing strong Sales Rhythms. You need Daily Habits (15-30 minutes of setting intentions and sending thoughtful reconnect messages), Weekly Rhythms (30-90 minutes of reviewing your pipeline, practicing your pitch, and putting on your &quot;client goggles&quot;), and Monthly Habits (resetting your mindset and reviewing your offer alignment).

Furthermore, you must embrace the &quot;Measure &ndash; Do &ndash; Measure&quot; philosophy. As Peter Drucker famously said, &quot;Don&#39;t expect what you don&#39;t inspect&quot;. By tracking your success rates with both warm leads (existing clients) and cold leads (new clients), you gain invaluable data on where potential clients are falling out of your funnel. This data allows you to diagnose structural weaknesses in your business, adapt your approach, and provide courageous success coaching to your team. When you master the numbers through clear inputs and consistent rhythms, sales stops feeling like a chaotic hustle and becomes a calm, confident, and deliberate engine for growth.

And if you want to grow - then you need to have enough fuel in the pipeline to fund that growth. This is where the sales numbers are your friend and knowing your sales numbers is essential to being able to deliver calmly and with grace. Too often I see frazzled business owners or sales people - not because they aren&#39;t good at what they do - but simply because they aren&#39;t playing the sales numbers game to their advantage.

This is where this sales rule comes in.

Fran&#39;s &quot;Rule of Thirds&quot;:


	One-third will say yes.
	One-third will delay.
	One-third will say no.




If you need three new clients this month, you need at least nine high-quality potentials in your pipeline. Desperation is the &quot;Flying Monkey&quot; of sales&mdash;it ruins everything.

So having the right kind of and numbers of opportunities in your sales pipeline allows you to walk with ease and grace with each client, without watching over your shoulder for the flying monkeys. Or cringing at each hesitation or no.

Chapter 6. Meetings That Rock: The 80/10/10 Rule

The You, Me &amp; Next Step Framework (noun): A sales meeting structure developed by Frances Pratt, allocating 80% of meeting time to understanding the client, 10% to contextualising your solution, and 10% to agreeing a clear next action.

Stop winging your sales meetings. Authentic selling requires a structure that honors the client&#39;s time.


	YOU (80%): Focus entirely on them. Use the 7-38-55 rule (Mehrabian&rsquo;s Principle).

	
		Source: The 7-38-55 Rule of Communication (Summary PDF) &ndash; Understand why 55% of your message is body language.
	
	
	ME (10%): Relate your solution to their specific problem.
	NEXT STEP (10%): Never leave a meeting without a firm date and time for the next interaction.


A successful sales meeting is never a monologue; it is a carefully choreographed dance. When business owners enter a discovery call feeling nervous or needy, they often fall into the trap of talking endlessly about themselves, their achievements, and their company history.

This self-centered approach alienates the buyer immediately. To run meetings that genuinely rock, you must ditch the pitch and adopt the simple, elegant &quot;You, Me, &amp; The Next Step&quot; framework that was developed by Frances Pratt.

Sales Framework Part One: YOU (80% of the meeting).

The vast majority of your initial conversation must be entirely about the client. You must act like an investigative journalist, using open-ended questions to uncover their logical needs, their emotional fears, and their hidden business drivers.

Start with what you already know from your research, but allow them to guide the narrative. Your goal is to listen deeply with your ears, eyes, body, and brain to understand the exact nature of their &quot;storm&quot; before you ever offer a solution.

When you spend 80% of the time exploring their world, you earn their respect and trust. You earn the right to go onto the second key step in the successful sales meeting created by Frances Pratt.

Sales Framework Part Two: ME (10% of the meeting).

Only once you fully understand the client&rsquo;s problem do you earn the right to talk about yourself. This is where you summarize what you have heard to prove you were listening, and then contextualize your expertise.

You do not recite a laundry list of features or things that you are great at. Instead, you share highly relevant Sales Stories. Ideas and concepts that are relevant to what you have just heard from your new potential client.

By explaining how you helped a similar client navigate a similar problem, you provide credible proof of your value without ever sounding boastful or pushy.

By continuing to focus on and around them and their problem, you give them the best possible reason to listen well and to consider working with you.

Sales Framework Part Three:
THE NEXT STEP (10% of the meeting).

Authentic selling and this Sales Framework requires you to confidently lead the dance. Do not leave the client hanging in a state of ambiguity.

At the end of the meeting, you must be direct about the next logical actions. Whether it is scheduling a follow-up call, sending a proposal, or signing a contract, you must clearly define who is doing what and by when.

If you don&#39;t ask for the next step, they cannot say yes.

Getting into the habit of asking is another element of Authentic Selling. In my community hub at Accelerate Sales has spent one whole month focusing on ASKING.

So if getting better at sales is something that you would love to master - then Accelerate Sales and Metisan are key to helping you with this.

 



Chapter 7. Crunchy Conversations: Finding Your Lean-In Factor

Getting Crunchy (verb): The practice of replacing vague value statements with specific, quantifiable outcomes &mdash; such as revenue increases, cost reductions, or risk controls. A term coined by Frances Pratt of Metisan. A crunchy value proposition uses Promise, Proof, and Picture to make value tangible to the buyer.

Vague talk is the death of sales. You need to get &quot;Crunchy&quot;.

Imprecision leads to paralysis. If your value proposition is vague or full of industry jargon, it becomes invisible to your buyer.

To capture attention and drive decisions, your sales conversations must get &quot;Crunchy&quot;.

Getting crunchy is another term coined by Frances Pratt from Metisan and Accelerate Sales. This means moving beyond fluffy blanket statements and speaking in specific, quantifiable, and deeply resonant terms to your buyer.

Getting &quot;crunchy&quot; means moving away from vague, fluffy blanket statements and getting highly specific and quantifiable about the value you provide. To do this, you must clearly articulate the &quot;hard benefits&quot; or Return on Investment (ROI) your solution delivers to a client&#39;s business, such as exactly how you will increase their revenue, decrease their costs, or control their risks.

Where possible, use actual figures; for instance, stating that you can improve their bottom line by 19%, is far more influential than a general promise.

Don&#39;t forget the soft benefits of your product or service too. Listing the things that people have said and felt about working with you can help stop sales fears in their tracks and make your offering and value more relatable to your potential client.

A crunchy value proposition is built on three key ingredients:


	the promise of what changes
	the proof of why it works
	A clear picture of exactly what success looks like for the client.


Everyone in the world listens to only one radio station: WIIFM (What&rsquo;s In It For Me). Clients do not care about your product&#39;s features; they care about what those features mean for their business and their lives.

To communicate this effectively, you must translate your expertise into commercial language. Instead of saying, &quot;We provide risk management,&quot; you must explain the specific financial, emotional, and tactical impact of your service. Build your statements around Promise, Prove, and Picture: Tell them what you do, prove it with a story, and help them picture exactly what success looks like for them.

As you deliver your crunchy value proposition, you must actively watch for the &quot;Lean-In Factor&quot;. When you are speaking, look at the client&#39;s body language. Are they nodding? Are they asking follow-up questions? Are they leaning forward?. This physical engagement tells you which specific part of your solution has struck a nerve.

When it comes time to discuss price, getting crunchy is essential. Value always beats price. Do not wait until the end of a meeting to awkwardly blurt out your fees. Signpost the pricing conversation early, keep your pricing structures simple, and avoid confusing the client with too many options. When you confidently articulate a crunchy, specific Return on Investment&mdash;detailing how your solution will increase revenue, decrease costs, or control risks&mdash;the client will see that your value far outweighs your fee.

Getting Crunchy with Referrals.

You also need to get crunchy when asking for referrals by defining your exact target client. Instead of broadly asking your network for &quot;anyone who needs help,&quot; you should create a highly detailed persona.

Give them a name like &quot;Bob&quot; and outline their specific age, industry, likes, dislikes, and exact pain points. By sharing this extremely precise description with everyone in your business and network, you make it much easier for people to know exactly who you are looking for and who they should recommend to you.

Chapter 8. The Fortune is in the Follow-Up

Graceful Persistence (noun): A structured follow-up approach based on pre-agreed contact points and a deliberate outreach cadence, ending with a &quot;Goodbye Call&quot; if the prospect goes dark. It eliminates follow-up anxiety by replacing guesswork with a mutual professional contract.

The biggest mistake non-salespeople make is failing to follow up because they don&#39;t want to be &quot;annoying&quot;.

Source: Salesforce: The State of Sales Report (PDF) &ndash; Data shows it takes an average of 8 touches to close a deal, yet 44% of salespeople give up after one &quot;no&quot;.

The Graceful Follow-Up:

If you&rsquo;ve done the work to find a fit, the client is waiting for you to lead. Use the &quot;Goodbye Message&quot; as your final touch&mdash;it often triggers a &quot;Yes&quot; because people don&#39;t want to be off the hook.

One of the most common traps business owners fall into is executing a brilliant initial meeting, only to let the relationship wither because they are terrified of following up. You leave the client hanging because you fear that calling them makes you a &quot;pest&quot; or seems overly aggressive. But the brutal truth is: you hate following up because you failed to organize the next contact point during your previous interaction.

The secret to graceful persistence is Permission. Before you end any meeting or call, you must explicitly ask for agreement on the date and time of your next conversation. When you establish this mutual contract, you are no longer intruding; you are simply fulfilling a professional promise. This simple shift takes the anxiety out of the follow-up and puts you firmly in the driver&#39;s seat of the sales process.

To execute this effectively, you must utilize a structured Follow-Up Series. This is a deliberate cadence of outreach designed to keep momentum alive without applying undue pressure.


	The First Call/Voicemail: Use the &quot;You, Me, and Next Step&quot; format. Remind them of their goals, reiterate how you can help, and clearly state the next action.
	The Middle Voicemails: If they don&#39;t answer, leave polite, concise messages acknowledging their busy schedule, and send an email offering alternative times to connect. I typically recommend leaving 6 to 7 voicemails alongside a couple of emails.
	The Goodbye Call: If the client goes completely dark, you must end the series with a &quot;Goodbye Call&quot;. Leave a final voicemail thanking them for their time, acknowledging that this is clearly not a priority for them right now, and letting them know you are closing your outreach.


Graceful persistence is not about badgering someone into submission; it is about demonstrating immense reliability and leading the dance until the client is ready to make a definitive choice.

Chapter 9. Shut the Back Door: Why Referrals are Gold

Referral Engine (noun): A systematised process for generating client referrals by defining a precise ideal client persona, educating your network, and building referral requests into regular client review meetings.

It is 5x cheaper to keep an existing client than to hunt a new one. Yet, we often treat our current clients like old news.


	Source: Bain &amp; Company: Prescription for Cutting Costs (PDF) &ndash; The classic study proving that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95%.


Referrals are your only true currency. They come with pre-packaged trust and convert at 3x the rate of cold leads.

If you want to grow a sustainable, highly profitable business, you must stop relying entirely on the exhausting grind of cold outreach and start shutting the back door. The most valuable currency in your business is not a cold lead; it is a referral from a delighted client. Sales generated through referrals are cheaper, easier, and faster to close because the new prospect enters the relationship already armed with a high level of transferred trust.

However, many businesses fail to generate referrals because they assume clients will naturally spread the word, or they ask for referrals in a vague, unhelpful way. To build a referral engine, you must systematize the process and &quot;Get Crunchy&quot;.

First, you must clearly define your exact ideal client&mdash;give this persona a name, like &quot;Bob&quot;. You must know Bob&#39;s age, industry, exact pain points, and the specific language he uses.

Second, you must Shout it Out. Educate everyone in your network&mdash;your staff, your partners, your existing clients, and your accountants&mdash;about exactly what a &quot;Bob&quot; looks like. If you ask your network for &quot;anyone who needs help,&quot; they won&#39;t know who to look for. If you ask them specifically for &quot;a professional services founder with 10 staff whose sales deals are stalling,&quot; their brain will immediately lock onto the right person.

Finally, you must Systematize It. Do not leave referrals to chance. Make asking for referrals a mandatory, documented step on your Client Roadmap. Build it into your regular quarterly or annual Client Review Meetings. Once you have successfully delivered value and the client is thrilled with the results, look them in the eye and say, &quot;We are actively growing our business this year. Who do you know who is exactly like you that could benefit from this solution?&quot;. When you proactively cultivate this ecosystem, your happy clients become your most powerful sales force.

Chapter 10. Conclusion: You&rsquo;ve Always Had the Power

You don&rsquo;t need a new personality to be great at sales. You don&rsquo;t need to be an extrovert or a &quot;shark&quot;. You just need to be yourself and get over yourself.

As the Wizard said to the Lion: &quot;True courage is facing danger when you are afraid&quot;. Go out there and be the Sales Champion your business deserves.

For too long, you have been conditioned to believe that sales is a dark art, a domain reserved for loud, extroverted &quot;wizards&quot; who possess a magical gift for manipulation. You have hidden behind your technical expertise, hoping that if you just do good work, the revenue will magically appear. But the truth is, the magic isn&#39;t in a script, and it isn&#39;t in crocodile tactics. The magic is in your humanity.

As Charlie Chaplin said, &quot;More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness&quot;. Authentic selling is the ultimate expression of that humanity. It is a profoundly values-aligned practice of identifying someone in a storm and offering them a safe, credible pathway out.

You are Glinda the Good Witch. You possess deep, transformative knowledge, and your clients are waiting for you to step forward and guide them. It is not your job to force them down the Yellow Brick Road; it is your job to show them the path, address their fears, and empower them to make the best decision for their own journey.

You do not need to change who you are to be magnificent at sales; you simply need to change your posture. Give yourself permission to lead the dance. Give yourself permission to ask the crunchy questions, to follow up with graceful persistence, and to proudly declare the value you bring to the world.

When you stand fully in your truth, divorced from the desperation of the outcome, and focus entirely on serving the person in front of you, sales ceases to be a burden. It becomes a joyful, natural extension of your purpose.

You don&#39;t need a wizard to give you a brain, a heart, or courage. You have always had the power, my dear. Now, step onto the road and lead the way.

If you would like to learn how to be a true sales champion then this guide was built for you. A guide to Authentic Selling.
If becoming more Authentic in your Sales is for you - then join me at the Accelerate Sales Hub.

Authentic Selling Glossary

Authentic Selling (noun): A values-aligned sales approach focused on helping people make better decisions, rather than manipulating them into purchases. Authentic Selling replaces pressure and persuasion with service, trust, and human connection. Developed by Frances Pratt, Metisan.

Credibility (noun): The rational and emotional belief that a salesperson is a truthful expert. Credibility is built through qualifications, case studies, and the willingness to tell the truth even when uncomfortable. A component of the Trust Equation.

Getting Crunchy (verb): The practice of replacing vague value statements with specific, quantifiable outcomes &mdash; such as revenue increases, cost reductions, or risk controls. A crunchy value proposition uses Promise, Proof, and Picture to make value tangible to the buyer. Coined by Frances Pratt, Metisan.

Graceful Persistence (noun): A structured follow-up approach based on pre-agreed contact points and a deliberate outreach cadence, ending with a &quot;Goodbye Call&quot; if a prospect goes dark. Eliminates follow-up anxiety by replacing guesswork with a mutual professional contract.

Intimacy (noun): The degree to which a client feels safe enough to share sensitive issues, fears, or emotional connections to their business problem. The most critical positive component of the Trust Equation.

Journey Friction (noun): The disconnect that occurs when a marketing promise is not matched by the sales experience, causing a prospective client to disengage. Eliminated when marketing, sales, and customer success are fully aligned.

Lean-In Factor (noun): The observable moment during a sales conversation when a prospect&#39;s body language &mdash; nodding, leaning forward, asking follow-up questions &mdash; signals that a specific part of your solution has resonated. Coined by Frances Pratt, Metisan.

Referral Engine (noun): A systematised process for generating client referrals by defining a precise ideal client persona, educating your network, and embedding referral requests into regular client review meetings.

Reliability (noun): Consistent follow-through on commitments &mdash; sending promised emails, honouring meeting times, and meeting unspoken expectations. A component of the Trust Equation built slowly through repeated positive interactions.

Rule of Thirds (noun): A sales pipeline principle stating that of any qualified prospects, one-third will say yes, one-third will delay, and one-third will say no. Requires a pipeline at least three times the size of your target number of new clients. Coined by Frances Pratt, Metisan.

Self-Orientation (noun): The degree to which a salesperson&#39;s focus is on their own interests &mdash; commission, targets, or ego &mdash; rather than the client&#39;s needs. The denominator of the Trust Equation; the single greatest destroyer of professional trust.

Trust Equation, The (noun): A formula for professional trust: Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) &divide; Self-Orientation. Developed by Maister, Green, and Galford. Taught at Harvard and INSEAD as the gold standard for trust in professional services.

Value Friction (noun): The failure of a business&#39;s value proposition to land clearly with its target audience, resulting in lost sales despite strong marketing spend. Resolved through aligned messaging across marketing, sales, and customer success.

Yellow Brick Road Strategy, The (noun): A client-centred sales framework that maps each stage of the buying journey as a transparent, step-by-step roadmap. Positions the salesperson as guide rather than hero, allowing the client to move at their own pace toward a confident decision. Coined by Frances Pratt, Metisan.

You, Me &amp; Next Step Framework, The (noun): A sales meeting structure allocating 80% of meeting time to understanding the client, 10% to contextualising your solution, and 10% to agreeing a clear next action. Ensures no meeting ends without a firm commitment to the next step. Developed by Frances Pratt, Metisan.

 
]]></content>
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<pubDate>22 Mar 2026 22:31:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/beyond-the-rainmaker-why-planting-a-salesperson-is-not-a-strategy_117s50</link>
<title><![CDATA[Beyond the Rainmaker: Why Planting a Salesperson Is not a Strategy]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[You&rsquo;ve built a powerhouse professional services firm on the back of your own &quot;Heroic Selling.&quot; You are the Rainmaker. You sense the client&#39;s needs, offer a powerful solution that makes sense to them, and you close the deal.

The Blueprint for your First Sales Hire:


	
	Soil: A documented client journey.
	
	
	Nutrients: Daily activity metrics.
	
	
	Trellis: A 90-day onboarding plan.
	
	
	Water: Courageous coaching.
	

]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[You&rsquo;ve built a powerhouse professional services firm on the back of your own &quot;Heroic Selling.&quot; You are the Rainmaker. You sense the client&#39;s needs, offer a powerful solution that makes sense to them, and you close the deal.

The Blueprint for your First Sales Hire:


	
	Soil: A documented client journey.
	
	
	Nutrients: Daily activity metrics.
	
	
	Trellis: A 90-day onboarding plan.
	
	
	Water: Courageous coaching.
	


But here is the cold, strategic truth: You cannot scale a hero.

In business school terms, you are currently the &quot;Single Point of Failure.&quot;

Harvard Business Review calls this the &quot;Founder&rsquo;s Trap&quot;, where the very brilliance that got you to this level becomes the bottleneck that prevents you from reaching the next.

You think the solution is to hire your first salesperson, and maybe that&rsquo;s a great plan. To &quot;plant&quot; a new hire in the office so you can finally step back.

But as any Master Gardener (or CEO) knows:

Just because you plant it, doesn&#39;t mean it will grow.

The Science of the Scaling Gap

Research from INSEAD on high-growth firms suggests that the transition from Founder-led to System-led is the most dangerous phase in a company&rsquo;s lifecycle. 

Why? Because most founders try to hire a &quot;Mini-Me&quot; instead of building a Sales Ecosystem.

The Three Strategic Paths to Architecture:

To scale beyond your own rainmaking, you must move from being the Chief Doer to the Chief Architect. You have three proven paths:


	Path 1: The Team-Led Engine (The Matrix Model).
	You codify your intuition into a Client-Centric Process. You train your delivery experts to spot opportunities, so the &quot;rain&quot; is a result of the system, not just your presence.



	Path 2: The Founding AE (The Individual Contributor). 
	You hire a senior pro. But, per the Wharton school of thought; they must be plugged into a &quot;Plug-and-Play&quot; infrastructure. If they have to &quot;invent&quot; your sales process while trying to hit a quota, the friction will kill the hire.



	Path 3: The Fractional CSO (The Strategic Architect). 
	This is the lowest-risk move. You bring in a partner to design the ecosystem before the hire arrives. We build the trellis, prep the soil, and define the exact &quot;species&quot; of salesperson your specific culture needs.


A seed won&rsquo;t grow on a concrete floor. It needs Soil, Water, and a Trellis. If you haven&#39;t prepared the environment, you aren&#39;t hiring a saviour; you&rsquo;re just watching an expensive investment wither in real-time.

Here is a LinkedIn article I wrote on that.

What makes a Sales Person Work? The 4 Essentials for Growth 

A salesperson is like a seedling. Even a &quot;prize-winning&quot; hire will wither if you plonk them onto a concrete floor. To reach &quot;fruit&quot; (revenue) quickly, you must provide the ecosystem they need to thrive:


	
	What are they selling? The Soil
	(Pillar 1: Client-Centric Process):
	


You cannot tell a new hire to &ldquo;just go sell.&rdquo; They need to know why your clients buy. If you haven&#39;t documented the journey from &quot;First introduction&quot; to &quot;Yes,&quot; your hire is just guessing.


	
	What do sales people do? The Nutrients (Pillar 2: Crunchy Metrics):
	


&quot;Just do your best&quot; is not a management strategy. They need the nutrients of clear, daily activity inputs. Without defined success ingredients, they&rsquo;ll get lost in a &quot;fog bank&quot; of busy work.

Knowing what you are asking them to do and &#39;how&#39; is imperative. They need to know the cultural norms and ways of working so they can fit in.


	
	Sales People Success Plan. The Trellis (Pillar 3: 90-Day Scaling Plan):
	


This is the structure they lean on. A 30/60/90-day framework grounds them in your culture and gives them the &quot;boost&quot; to reach the sunlight.

They need to know what they are doing and see that success is possible within your business so that they will start strong and in the right direction.


	
	Sales Coaching: The Water
	(Pillar 4: Courageous Coaching):
	


Sales success requires constant hydration. If you avoid the difficult conversations about performance and alignment, you&rsquo;re letting your investment dry out.

Sometimes this is about helping the founder and organisation understand the sales person, as well as the other way around.

Sales Success Reality

What if your sales success was a repeatable formula rather than a personal miracle? Sales Success = Client-Centric Process + The Right Activity + Courageous Coaching.

When you move from Rainmaker to Architect, you stop &quot;doing&quot; sales and start &quot;leading&quot; a sales culture. This is how you reach the next level of growth without losing the soul of the business.

The Alternative? You stay the Rainmaker.

You keep carrying the whole burden. And in 12 months, you&rsquo;re still the only one making it rain, while your expensive new hire is just getting wet.

As David Sanza from Friday Media found, having the right insight to turn a deal around is the difference between a collapse and a win.

If you&rsquo;re tired of being the only spark plug in your engine, let&rsquo;s look at your architecture. I help founders move from &quot;The Only One Who Can Sell&quot; to &quot;The Leader of a Scaling Machine.&quot;

Is your business built on Heroics of Architecture?

I&rsquo;d love to have a conversation and learn more about you and how I might be able to help.

Let&#39;s talk Sales Architecture

Download more on Sales Person Success


 
]]></content>
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<pubDate>03 Mar 2026 21:05:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/less-machinery-more-messiah-why-selling-is-your-new-ministry_117s49</link>
<title><![CDATA[Less Machinery, More Messiah: Why Selling is Your New Ministry]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Let&rsquo;s be honest: for most of us, &quot;Sales&quot; feels like a dirty word&mdash;the kind you&rsquo;d apologize for using in church. We&rsquo;ve spent years hiring &quot;Business Development&quot; guns only to watch them misfire because they lacked the one thing that actually moves the needle: Humanity. Simple right?

As Charlie Chaplin famously whispered in The Great Dictator, &quot;More than machinery, we need humanity.&quot;

If you&rsquo;re a Christian in business, you&rsquo;ve likely felt the tension between &quot;The Pitch&quot; and &quot;The Pews.&quot; You&rsquo;ve been told to &quot;Always Be Closing,&quot; while your gut tells you to &quot;Always Be Serving.&quot;

Guess what? Your gut is right. And so is Charlie.
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[Less Machinery, More Messiah: Why Selling is Your New Ministry

Let&rsquo;s be honest: for most of us, &quot;Sales&quot; feels like a dirty word&mdash;the kind you&rsquo;d apologize for using in church. We&rsquo;ve spent years hiring &quot;Business Development&quot; guns only to watch them misfire because they lacked the one thing that actually moves the needle: Humanity. Simple right?

As Charlie Chaplin famously whispered in The Great Dictator, &quot;More than machinery, we need humanity.&quot;

If you&rsquo;re a Christian in business, you&rsquo;ve likely felt the tension between &quot;The Pitch&quot; and &quot;The Pews.&quot; You&rsquo;ve been told to &quot;Always Be Closing,&quot; while your gut tells you to &quot;Always Be Serving.&quot;

Guess what? Your gut is right. And so is Charlie.

The Problem: We&rsquo;ve Built a Sales Machine (And It&rsquo;s Broken)

Here is the problem in a nutshell. We&rsquo;ve turned sales into a mechanical process of extraction. We are asked to treat prospects like data points and run conversations with scripts.

Here is the good news! The world&rsquo;s leading business schools are finally catching up to what the Carpenter from Nazareth knew 2,000 years ago: Transparency and consent are the ultimate commercial drivers.


	
	Harvard Business School (2024) research confirms that &quot;Socially Responsible Selling&quot;&mdash;where transparency is the priority&mdash;significantly reduces buyer friction.
	
	
	INSEAD (2025) studies on &quot;Ethical Influence&quot; suggest that &quot;Consent-Based Selling&quot;&mdash;giving the other person the room to say &#39;No&#39;&mdash;actually speeds up the sales cycle by roughly 22%.
	


When we treat sales as &quot;machinery,&quot; we lose the people on both sides of the desk or Zoom. We become the &quot;cracked pot&quot; that tries to hide its leaks, forgetting that it&rsquo;s those very cracks that water the flowers on our path.

The &quot;Coach Jesus&quot; Approach: Truth Over Transaction

If Jesus were your sales coach, the first thing he&rsquo;d do is flip the tables on your &quot;yuck&quot; mentality. He didn&rsquo;t manipulate; he invited. He didn&rsquo;t &quot;pitch&quot;; he asked questions that exposed the heart of the need.

At Riskcom, we worked with a team of technical experts who viewed sales as a &quot;dirty word&quot;. They were brilliant specialists, but they had a negative perception of selling that killed their confidence.

By shifting their focus from selling to serving and aligning their personal values with business goals; they didn&#39;t just feel better. They tripled their sales in a single quarter.

The Stats Don&#39;t Lie (Even if Salespeople Sometimes Do)

If you think &quot;soulful selling&quot; is just fluffy theology, look at the numbers. Recent 2025 academic data shows that firms adopting a &quot;Relational Posture&quot; saw a 40% higher referral rate than those focused on transaction-heavy tactics.

Our own results at Riskcom prove that &quot;Humanity &gt; Machinery&quot;:


	
	The Stretch is Possible: By building a &quot;Sales Success Blueprint,&quot; the team blasted through their ultimate stretch goals by 69%.
	
	Performance vs. Purpose: When experts &quot;flex their sales muscles&quot; without the artifice, they can exceed initial targets by 202%.
	 
	
	The Attitude Shift: One team member who was strongly instructed to attend the sales training ended up exclaiming, &quot;Who would have thought that selling was fun!&quot;.
	 
	


Challenging the Status Quo

Are you hiding your &quot;machinery&quot; behind a suit, or are you bringing your humanity to the table? Charlie Chaplin knew that silence and presence could say more than a thousand loud advertisements. Jesus knew that serving one person deeply was more valuable than &quot;closing&quot; a thousand who didn&#39;t need the product.

It&rsquo;s time to stop seeing sales as a necessary evil and start seeing it as a Sales Blueprint for Service. As Anthony Masciangioli, Director at Riskcom, noted, the change in the team&#39;s confidence was like &quot;chalk and cheese&quot;.

Is your sales process a machine, or is it a ministry of help? If you&rsquo;re ready to move from &quot;yuck&quot; to &quot;yes,&quot; let&rsquo;s talk about building your client and values aligned sales roadmap.

Sources:

Academic &amp; Historical Sources


	
	Harvard Business School (Socially Responsible Selling): HBS Research - Transparency and Buyer Friction (Note: This is a foundational study on collaborative, transparent selling often cited in 2024-25 curricula).
	
	
	INSEAD (Ethical Influence &amp; Consent): INSEAD Knowledge - The Power of &#39;No&#39; in Sales
	
	
	Charlie Chaplin (The Great Dictator Speech): The Official Chaplin Archive - &quot;More than machinery, we need humanity&quot;
	
	
	Trust Statistics (Buyer Sentiment): LinkedIn State of Sales Report (The industry standard for the &quot;18% trust&quot; metric).
	

]]></content>
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<pubDate>17 Feb 2026 20:42:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/from-fear-to-freedom-mindset-shifts-for-sales-success_117s48</link>
<title><![CDATA[From Fear To Freedom: Mindset Shifts For Sales Success]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Unlock the secrets to achieving sales success by transforming your mindset!
In this powerful video, we&#39;ll dive into the mindset shifts that will take you from fear to freedom, helping you overcome self-doubt, build confidence, and close more deals.
From embracing a growth mindset to reframing rejection, discover the essential strategies to rewire your thinking and unlock your full sales potential. Get ready to break free from fear and achieve the success you&#39;ve always dreamed of!
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[Unlock the secrets to achieving sales success by transforming your mindset!
In this powerful video, we&#39;ll dive into the mindset shifts that will take you from fear to freedom, helping you overcome self-doubt, build confidence, and close more deals.
From embracing a growth mindset to reframing rejection, discover the essential strategies to rewire your thinking and unlock your full sales potential. Get ready to break free from fear and achieve the success you&#39;ve always dreamed of!

 

 
]]></content>
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<pubDate>28 Aug 2025 01:21:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/the-dance-of-sales-how-to-build-better-sales-relationships-metisan_117s47</link>
<title><![CDATA[The Dance of Sales : How to Build Better Sales Relationships - Metisan]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Great Selling is less about persuasion and more about partnership. And what better metaphor for partnership than dance!

Today, on International Dance Day, let&rsquo;s explore how sales, like dance, is about rhythm, trust, confidence &mdash; and most importantly, connection. How to sell with confidence and build a client-centric sales approach.

So, let&rsquo;s lace up our dancing shoes and revisit the steps of the perfect Sales Dance &mdash; reimagined for today&rsquo;s relationship-driven business environment.
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[Selling Confidence - How to Build Better Sales Relationships.

Great Selling is less about persuasion and more about seeing your sales relationships as partnership. And what better metaphor for partnership than dance!

Today, on International Dance Day, let&rsquo;s explore how sales, like dance, is about rhythm, trust, confidence &mdash; and most importantly, connection.

As business owners, we know that in our world, success hinges on the strength of your relationships. As bestselling author Daniel Pink reminds us, &quot;To sell is human.&quot; In his research, Pink found that the most effective salespeople aren&#39;t pushy or manipulative &mdash; they are agile, attuned, and genuinely connected to the needs of their customers. They are, in essence, skilled dancers.

So, let&rsquo;s lace up our dancing shoes and revisit the steps of the perfect Sales Dance &mdash; reimagined for today&rsquo;s relationship-driven business environment.

Step One: It Starts with You

Before you can invite a client onto the dancefloor, you must be clear about the music you&rsquo;re playing.

In sales, this means knowing yourself: your strengths, your style, your unique value. This gives you both confidence and clarity on how to move forward and ask. Just like a dancer standing tall before the first note, your presence &mdash; your posture, tone, and intention &mdash; sets the tone for your business interactions.

Research from Harvard Business Review shows that buyers are far more likely to engage with salespeople who demonstrate authentic enthusiasm and confidence without arrogance. 

It&#39;s not about forcing a sale &mdash; it&rsquo;s about inviting someone into a shared experience, a dance.

We love working with clients to show them that their sales &ldquo;invitation&rdquo; should feel natural, not rehearsed. When you can approach each prospect with the mindset that what you offer is valuable and that partnering with you would be a benefit &mdash; for both parties. Then this style of asking (and dancing) becomes more about balance and less about posturing.

Quick Tip:

Before each client interaction, check your &ldquo;dance posture&rdquo;: Are you standing (or sitting) with confidence? Are you smiling, engaged, and fully present? Energy matters more than you might think.

Step Two: Work with Your Partner

Once you&rsquo;ve taken the first step, the next phase is about matching to your partner&#39;s rhythm.

In dance, mismatched tempos lead to tripping and awkwardness. In sales, mismatched conversations &mdash; where one party dominates or misunderstands &mdash; can lead to lost opportunities.

The key difference? Attunement.

&quot;Attunement,&quot; writes Daniel Pink, &quot;is the ability to bring one&#39;s actions and outlook into harmony with other people.&quot; In practical terms, it means active listening, adjusting your pace, and responding to the unique signals your client is sending you &mdash; both spoken and unspoken.

Think of each client conversation as a rehearsal: you&#39;re learning their needs, concerns, and aspirations. It&#39;s not about perfect choreography from the start &mdash; it&#39;s about responding and adjusting together.

Mistakes will happen &mdash; maybe you misstep or misunderstand. That&rsquo;s okay. As every great dancer knows, the best recoveries are graceful. Apologise when needed, recalibrate, and invite them to keep moving together.

Quick Tip: 

Practice reflective listening &mdash; remember that the last step in great listening is using your mouth. Repeating back what you have heard from the client shows understanding and checks you&rsquo;re on the same page. 

This builds trust and keeps the dance flowing smoothly.

Step Three: Take the Lead (Gracefully)

In every dance, someone must guide the flow.

Similarly, in sales, it&#39;s your role to gently and confidently lead the process. Clients want to feel safe, seen, and supported &mdash; not pushed or pressured. Having a roadmap can really help create this safety and give your sales a continuity across the business.

According to a study by the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research, top-performing salespeople drive conversations by bringing insights and ideas that help clients see new possibilities. They lead with value.

Your job is not just to follow their steps; it&rsquo;s to choreograph a path forward that is compelling and inspiring. It&rsquo;s about creating a shared vision of success &mdash; and moving toward it together.

Remember: the best dancers make their partners look amazing. The best salespeople do the same.

Quick Tip:

Always end each interaction with a clear next steps. Whether it&rsquo;s booking a follow-up call or sending more information, lead with clarity so your client feels confident about moving forward.

Dancing into the Future

As you celebrate International Dance Day today, take a moment to reflect: How aligned is your Sales Dance?

Are you inviting with confidence, connecting with empathy, and leading with purpose?

At Metisan, we believe that sales is not a transaction &mdash; it&#39;s a transformational relationship. When you dance with your clients, you create a rhythm of trust, creativity, and success.

So step up, smile, and cha-cha-cha your way into deeper client relationships and bigger business opportunities.

To your sales success &mdash; and your best moves yet!

Want to dance with me?
Accelerate Sales Program designed for women-led businesses ready to reimagine selling.

References


	Pink, D. H. (2012). To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others. Riverhead Books.
	Harvard Business Review (2017). &quot;The New Science of Customer Emotions.&quot; Retrieved from hbr.org.
	RAIN Group Center for Sales Research (2021). &quot;Top Performance in Sales Prospecting Research Report.&quot; Retrieved from raingroup.com.

]]></content>
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<pubDate>29 Apr 2025 03:28:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/tis39-the-season-to-be-thankful_117s46</link>
<title><![CDATA[Tis&#39; the Season - to be Thankful]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[I am seeing a pattern - that I don&#39;t like.

It&#39;s the end of the year and we are surrounded by merchandise and themes for All Hallows Day (Halloween) but not All Saints Day (the following day).

We are bombarded with Black Friday and Cyber Monday but we don&#39;t take part in the Thanksgiving.

We focus on dollar outcomes - but not on how we get there. I think this needs to change.

What are you thankful for? How have you been kind in your business this week?
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[I am seeing a pattern - that I don&#39;t like.

It&#39;s the end of the year and we are surrounded by merchandise and themes for All Hallows Day (Halloween) but not All Saints Day (the following day).

We are bombarded with Black Friday and Cyber Monday but we don&#39;t take part in the Thanksgiving.

We focus on dollar outcomes - but not on how we get there. I think this needs to change.

What are you thankful for? How have you been kind in your business this week?

Listen to this video I recorded on this:



 

 

 
]]></content>
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<pubDate>03 Dec 2024 05:23:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/what-charlie-chaplin-can-teach-us-about-selling_117s45</link>
<title><![CDATA[What Charlie Chaplin Can Teach Us About Selling]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[&ldquo;We think too much and feel too little.   More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness&rdquo;

Charlie Chaplin

Is it too harsh to say that what is stifling you and your business right now is that you think too much?


The reality is that how you feel about what you are doing and what you are choosing dictates what you do and how you choose to do it and so how people perceive and react and even how you interpret their responses.

Let&rsquo;s break down how this works (or doesn&rsquo;t work) and then look at how to do it differently.

]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[&ldquo;We think too much and feel too little.   More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness&rdquo;

Charlie Chaplin

Is it too harsh to say that what is stifling you and your business right now is that you think too much?


The reality is that how you feel about what you are doing and what you are choosing dictates what you do and how you choose to do it and so how people perceive and react and even how you interpret their responses.

Let&rsquo;s break down how this works (or doesn&rsquo;t work) and then look at how to do it differently.

Less thinking, more feeling

You think you are no good at sales &hellip; this makes you feel bad about going approaching people and you then go and act on this &hellip;. you feel awkward and like you are bad at selling and connecting. You choose not to be super positive about your business, you choose not to ask all the questions you know you should or to ask people to take the next step with you &hellip;. the people listening to you pick up on this and then respond accordingly. You see the response (which isn&rsquo;t what you wanted) as confirmation you are no good at selling. And so the cycle continues.

People connect with your heart and how you feel about what you do in your business.  Talking about what we do with our heart, with our passion allows others to understand and connect.  Better than that we can invite other people to engage with our business and buy from us.  To do this, we start with the inspiration and know the client journey and then allow and help them to take that journey.

When we stand in our heart truth and then get out of our own way, we can truly make this about our clients and allowing them to engage with us and our business.

ACTION:  Write a few lines about how you first felt about starting your business. Why did you start your business? What was it that ignited your passion and got you to take that leap?

Less machinery, more humanity

Often when people first meet me they will say that they have been taught all the sales tricks and tactics &hellip; and none of the work. I agree completely and let me tell you why.

The machinery of sales (the tactics and strategies) is important. But (and it&#39;s a big but) what is more important is to put that machinery to use in a way that benefits humanity.  

Too often we (badly) employ the tactics we have learned and then blame the tactics.  We use the machinery of sales without connecting it to the human we are speaking to and then wonder why it doesn&rsquo;t work. 

We do this because we are fearful of sales, fearful of being ourselves, fearful of being rejected.  We hide our humanity behind the tactics.  When we choose to do that, we are stopping people from connecting with us and stopping the flow of opportunity that may arise from the connection.

ACTION:  Please forget all the sales tactics you have ever learned. Don&rsquo;t try to use them, just try to connect and be open and allow the conversation to happen. When you see an opportunity to ask more questions &ndash; do that. When you see an opportunity where you can help someone &ndash; offer that.

Less Cleverness, More Kindness and Gentleness

We think that when we are out talking to prospective clients that what we are supposed to do or what they want to see is how clever we are how we have mastered our art, how we are perfect. We act clever. We talk about ourselves and our achievements. We talk up everything.

The truth is that people, all people, just want to be heard and understood. They want to know first that you understand who they are and what they are trying to achieve and what their problems are.  In order to get people to share this information we have to be gentle; we have to listen and probe.  Only once we understand the other person should we engage and think about talking about ourselves and what we do.

In fact, prospective clients want to know, above all else, if we can help them &hellip; and that only happens when we first understand where they are and what they want to do and not do.  More than that they want to get to know us and believe in us, and that only happens when we are transparent and real.  To be more real we need to be kind and gentle with ourselves and expose our mistakes and our wins. We need to be honest about how we approach and work with our clients.

ACTION: Think about what questions you should be asking your prospective clients to find out more about them and then some stories you can share where you made a mistake and what you learned from that.
 
Can&#39;t wait to hear what you do with this ! Let me know how you go!
 

]]></content>
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<pubDate>10 May 2023 03:59:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/more-sales-less-marketing_117s44</link>
<title><![CDATA[More Sales - Less Marketing]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[I think the very first thing that I have to tell you is that I LOVE marketing.  It is a great discipline and an essential part of building an awesome business.  Some of my best friends are marketers  ....

And you know there has to be a but &hellip; So here it is.

The problem that I see is that lots of businesses spend too much time and money on marketing when they don&rsquo;t really understand their customers and why they buy from them. 

Let me explain... 
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[I think the very first thing that I have to tell you is that I LOVE marketing.  It is a great discipline and an essential part of building an awesome business.  Some of my best friends are marketers  ....

And you know there has to be a but &hellip; So here it is.

The problem that I see is that lots of businesses spend too much time and money on marketing when they don&rsquo;t really understand their customers and why they buy from them. 

Let me explain... 

The truth is that until you understand why it is that people buy from you and what real value you provide from your customer perspective, you are in fact wasting your time and money. 

This marketing is ineffective, not because there is anything wrong with marketing, but because it doesn&rsquo;t &lsquo;speak&rsquo; to the client and what they really want, need and will listen to.  

Let&#39;s start at the beginning...

The premise is this:

Your first job in business is to intimately get to know your best customers.  The customer you love to work with and who love to buy from you.

You don&rsquo;t have to believe me.  Some of the greatest business icons of our time agree with me.

&ldquo;The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits them and sells itself.&rdquo;  Peter Drucker

Amen to that Peter! 

What&#39;s wrong with marketing?

The problem with some modern marketing is that for the last 10 years small to medium businesses have been told that if they &lsquo;market&rsquo; well that they won&rsquo;t have to sell.  Some marketing companies have sold the idea that if you get enough visitors to your website or facebook page or clicks on a lead magnet; that you will win business.

This just isn&rsquo;t true.

Great marketing is great.  But the truth is that great marketing is based on deep customer insights.  If you don&#39;t have these insights then you can&#39;t do great marketing.

These insights come from customer conversations, from getting to know what motivates them.  Getting to know what the emotional, logical and tactical journey of discovery your client has taken to say yes to you and to stay working with and buying from you.

For all businesses - this has to be your primary ambition.  These insights can then drive your customer conversations and yes your marketing.

You can&rsquo;t do sales or marketing.  You have to do both.  my concern is just that we have it the wrong way around.

The problem with business is that people have put the cart before the horse.  The cart that promises clients but can&rsquo;t move because the horse is on the wrong end.

So I encourage you - put the horse back in the front of the cart.  It&rsquo;s about the steps we have to take in business in order to reacquaint ourselves with our most loved customers.  To get to deeply understand their motives and what they value and then to deliver that.

Why do businesses choose marketing?

We love the idea of marketing first, becuase we hate the idea of selling.

The primary reason for this is that selling has a bad name and we &#39;think&#39; about it the wrong way.

For more on this ... see this article: 
Hate Selling?  You are doing it the wrong way.

I would love to continue this conversation with you.  If this makes sense (or not) get in touch.
]]></content>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/more-sales-less-marketing_117s44</guid>
<pubDate>18 Oct 2022 00:55:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/hate-selling-you-are-doing-it-the-wrong-way_117s43</link>
<title><![CDATA[Hate Selling?  You are doing it the Wrong Way !]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[If I had a dollar for every time someone told me, they hated selling &hellip; I&rsquo;d be a millionaire! 

I work with teams to help them reframe their ideas and actions around how they sell and interact with clients.  Here is what I have learned.
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[If I had a dollar for every time someone told me, they hated selling &hellip; I&rsquo;d be a millionaire! 

I work with teams to help them reframe their ideas and actions around how they sell and interact with clients.  Here is what I have learned.

1.    People hate to sell because they think it is about manipulating others into buying something &hellip; something that they don&rsquo;t need / can&rsquo;t afford and don&rsquo;t want.  
They they conjure up a picture of the dodgiest, slimiest salesperson in the world &hellip; and then try everything through their words, actions and intentions for people NOT to think of them in that way.  

2.    People hate to sell because they don&rsquo;t like the idea of &lsquo;No!&rsquo; or questions that might interfere with their perception of the value they deliver to their customers. 
The truth is that people are often so scared that others might see them as pushy and salesy, that this fear both stops them selling in the right way and in fact creates exactly the perceptions they are trying to avoid.  

There is bad selling and great selling.  Let&rsquo;s explore how to reframe and create a great selling process.

Helping people buy

When starting my work with teams, I often ask them to tell me about a great sales experience.  And very often &ndash; they can&rsquo;t.  The main reason for this is that when you are the recipient of a great sales experience, it simply feels like someone has helped you to buy something you need or want and helps you understand how it helps you.  

The essence of great selling isn&rsquo;t pushy, or self-orientated, it&rsquo;s focused on helping the other person to solve a problem or fulfill a need.  It is focused on them and their buying process, helping them make a good buying decision for them, irrespective of the outcome.

Once our sales mindset and focus is on helping people buy, this focus manifests in improved sales activities and results.  

Here&rsquo;s what great selling activities look like.

Step One:  Listening

You can only help someone once you first understand their problem, what they want and don&rsquo;t want.  

People buy something because they have a problem or a need. Your role in the sales process is to help them uncover and understand that need and that has to start with listening.

When your potential customer knows their mind and needs, this can be relatively straight forward.  Your role is to help them in their process of discovery and help them build out a solution by educating them and working through their actions and reactions. 

Listening involves all your senses and is the vital first step in the sales process.  It isn&rsquo;t just your ears but your whole body, senses and mind that are involved in listening.  Once you have actively listened, then the next step is interpreting these inputs until you truly understand the person and their needs and desires.

The result of great listening is that you now understand your customer and their problem, needs and desires.

Step Two:  Find Fit

The next step is to understand if your solution fits with your new understanding of their problem and need.  

First a word of warning.  Sometimes it is obvious after listening that your solution doesn&rsquo;t fit.  Now is the time to tell them and to help them look for an alternative.  This is often where people go wrong &hellip; trying to fit their big foot into the tiny glass slipper.  

If you do see a fit, then start the process of working through this with the client.  Working together to explain and build out the solution that meets their need and solves their problem.  

There is never going to be one tool or story that encapsulates this clients&rsquo; needs and motivations exactly and so it is important to explore different areas until you are sure you are on the right track.

Knowing you are on the right track involves more listening! Listening involves asking questions and seeing, hearing and interpreting the responses to ascertain where you are in their buying process and how you can help them take their next step. 

Step Three:  Activley Look for Objections

Yes!  Look for objections.  They are there lurking! It is better to get on the front foot with your customer and help to bring objections to the fore so they can be answered.  

If there are common objections that are relevant to this client, try to bring this up first.  Here&rsquo;s what that might sound like:

&ldquo;I have worked with several clients that have a similar business and initially they were worried about _____________.  Once we had been through the solution and they had spoken to some of our clients, they were happy that this wouldn&rsquo;t happen with our solution.&rdquo;

Once you have one objection out in the open, it is much easier to ask for the next one and work your way through until they are all answered.

Step Four: Create Value

There is an &lsquo;old&rsquo; ABC of sales.  Always Be Closing.
In great selling, it changes to Always Be Creating (value) 

In great selling, value is created for all players in the dance of sales.  It is a true win:win:win.

Your goal in this step is to have both you and your client clear on how your solution adds value to all players.  That&rsquo;s the key sign that you are working well and participating in a great selling and buying process.  

If you take the view &ldquo;Always Be Creating value&rdquo;, then the whole great selling process makes perfect sense. 

When you sell like this, it doesn&rsquo;t feel like &lsquo;selling&rsquo; at all.

 

My mission is to help people and organisations learn more about how their customers buy and how to use this information to architect a great solution sales process.  
If this is something  you would like to explore for your business, then get in touch.
 
]]></content>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/hate-selling-you-are-doing-it-the-wrong-way_117s43</guid>
<pubDate>03 Oct 2022 01:57:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/jesus-your-ultimate-sales-coach_117s42</link>
<title><![CDATA[Jesus:  Your ultimate Sales Coach]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[His 5 Rules for Selling.

God loves selling (and sales people) and we can see many of the greatest sales techniques chosen by Jesus during his ministry on earth.

To celebrate Easter and focus on Him, I have put together the 5 Sales Rules everyone can learn from Jesus.

 
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[His 5 Rules for Selling.

God loves selling (and sales people) and we can see many of the greatest sales techniques chosen by Jesus during his ministry on earth.

To celebrate Easter and focus on Him, I have put together the 5 Sales Rules everyone can learn from Jesus.

Rule 1:  The sale is NOT everything

Dan Pink in his book &lsquo;To Sell is Human&rsquo; found that the #1 word associated with &rdquo;sales&rdquo; is pushy!  With 20 words in the top 25 having negative connotations.

From my experience, this is because many sales people focus on the sale above all things.  Have you ever seen that &lsquo;look&rsquo; in a salesperson eye &hellip; when you feel like they are assessing the size of your wallet?  

This is NOT great selling.  Great selling is when both the experience and the outcome are positive for all players in the game. 

Jesus&rsquo;s first great commandment was &ldquo;Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.&quot;  Matthew 22:37  (Put Him first)

The second commandment.  Love your neighbour as yourself.   asks us to put others first.  Their needs, their buying process.  It asks us to put these above our needs and our sales process.

Rule 2:  Know your stuff &amp; Stick to the truth

Jesus was tempted to sin by the devil.  When he encountered the devil, the devil tempted him with verses from the BIble.  Words that are God&#39;s Truth. 

Each time, Jesus knew what he was trying to do and answered with truer verse from the Bible.  Each time he was able to overcome the temptations of the devil because he knew his stuff.  He knew each verse in the Bible and what God meant by them.  He was able to use this deep knowledge to redirect the devil and also to teach his disciples and the other people he encountered to do the same.

He was jabbed and mocked by the Jewish Leaders of his time to see if he would stumble and make a mistake.  He overcame all these trials through knowing and using the truth of the scriptures.  He was even prepared to say things that people didn&rsquo;t want to hear.  He turned the tables in the temple and was firm but fair with Thomas, reassuring and yet rebuking him for his doubt.  He was at times gentle ... (...bring the children to me)  and sometimes more forthright (...you nest of vipers..).   
Through his trails he clung onto his truth and maintained this no matter what other people thought, said or did.

Rule 3:  Tell the story to take people with you

Jesus was a great storyteller.  He often used parables to explain to those listening what to focus on and how to understand his teachings.
All His stories have three key components that we can learn from:
1.    What&rsquo;s the story so far
2.    How to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity
3.    A vision for the future with a first step for how to move toward the solution.

When we use stories to sell, we take those who are listening on a journey.  We help them understand and most importantly we help them make a good decision, for them.  Stories are emotive, instructive and easy to remember. 
Read here for more tips on Sales Storytelling.

Rule 4:  Be a servant leader

Jesus is known as the Servant Leader.  He said &ldquo;&hellip; whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. Matthew 20:26 &quot;  This was a radical thought in this time (and perhaps now), at a time when rulers were fierce and strong.  Leaders took control, through force of will, might and power.  Jesus showed and asked people to lead from a position of service, to put others before them.

He calls us to serve our customers, to understand their problem.  Do you what motivates your clients?  To use your skills to help to understand what they need (even when they don&rsquo;t).  

Once we know their problems and motivations, He asks us to bring this to them, help them understand how they can be doing better with our product or service.  He asks us to be strong and humble.

Rule 5:  Faith it until you make it!

You have to have faith that you are in the right place, time and job.

I have two rules for selling.  First, be yourself!  Second, get over yourself.  

Sales don&rsquo;t happen in a void, they happen in front of your clients.  Wake up, take your faith and go out boldly to seek understanding, offer solutions and accept that not everyone will say yes.  
There will be times when you feel alone, lost, poor of spirit.   That is ok and it is part of the sales journey.

Remember that first people buy you and how you present yourself.  Then, they buy your company.  Lastly, they buy their understanding of your product or service and how this might help them.

There is always more to learn from Jesus in sales and life.

Here&#39;s to being a servant to our clients.


Image source:  https://www.heartlight.org/wjd/matthew/1024-wjd.html
]]></content>
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<pubDate>18 Apr 2022 01:08:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/metisan-the-catalyst-story_117s41</link>
<title><![CDATA[Metisan: The Catalyst Story ]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[We all start businesses for different reasons, but the catalyst for me was making myself redundant from a job where I was an owner in the business. It sounds strange, I know. Normally when you are an owner, your position as an employee is secure. But when you truly believe that businesses are there to meet the needs of their clients then there is a higher priority at play - and that priority is how to best serve your customers.

So, I suppose you are wondering how I found myself in that position &hellip; well let me tell you the story.
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[We all start businesses for different reasons, but the catalyst for me was making myself redundant from a job where I was an owner in the business.  It sounds strange, I know.  Normally when you are an owner, your position as an employee is secure.  But when you truly believe that businesses are there to meet the needs of their clients then there is a higher priority at play - and that priority is how to best serve your customers.

So, I suppose you are wondering how I found myself in that position &hellip; well let me tell you the story.

After many years of my partners and I building a strong, client-centric, business from the ground up I realised the organisation could not only continue but actually thrive without me there every day. I had put in place a successful sales strategy and team, the sales processes I had created were delivering results, and our clients were going from strength to strength.

The truth was I had been thinking about starting my own business for some time. I had spent 17 years working for and with others. I had learned so much about business and myself and, additionally, during that period I had gained new skills through my Change Management studies at AGSM (Australian Graduate School of Management) and my Masters in Business (MBA) at Melbourne Business School. Combining my experience and knowledge with my desire to demystify the sales process for others provided the inspiration and drive to step out on my own. 
When it did happen, it happened much faster than I thought it would &ndash; there were so many businesses with the desire to become more client-centric, more true to their purpose, and who wanted to make the changes that would drive them forward. Thankfully I thrive in risky environments and, having been in sales for the majority of my professional life, I knew how to sell and how to manage risk and uncertainty.

What I now know is that I had all the jigsaw pieces, but I didn&#39;t know what the completed puzzle would look like, or even that it was a puzzle that I needed to put together. These pieces, I discovered, were about making the client the centre of business. They were about how you help a business deeply understand what their clients REALLY want and how to adapt in order to best meet those needs and deliver solutions, which enable growth and ongoing success for all.

I created Metisan to help other businesses put those pieces together - to demystify success for your organisation and your sales team, to help you understand what your clients are looking for and to understand what they need, and to work with you in designing a client-centric sales process which you can rely on every time.

I am passionate about helping people by releasing their fears around selling and salespeople. There is a process to finding your purpose in business or in discovering what your clients really want and how to best meet that need. It starts with experimenting and discovery before you can grow and mature into success &ndash; Metisan is here to help you grow.
]]></content>
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<pubDate>25 Jun 2021 03:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/actioning-know-like-and-trust-in-your-business_117s40</link>
<title><![CDATA[Actioning Know, Like, and Trust in your Business]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[People buy from people they know, like, and trust.

This is one of those sayings that everyone knows and uses &hellip; and we all agree it&#39;s true ... but do you know how to apply it to your business? Just saying it isn&#39;t enough. In order to use this valuable tool, we have to action it. It has to be what your current and potential clients experience.

Building trust in your business goes far deeper and wider than understanding what people want and having some social proof. Trust is built over time and through consistent interactions that are clearly targeted to meet your client&rsquo;s logical and emotional needs.
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[People buy from people they know, like and trust.

This is one of those sayings that everyone knows and uses &hellip; and we all agree it&#39;s true ... but do you know how to apply it to your business? Just saying it isn&#39;t enough. In order to use this valuable tool, we have to action it. It has to be what your current and potential clients experience.

Building trust in your business goes far deeper and wider than understanding what people want and having some social proof. Trust is built over time and through consistent interactions that are clearly targeted to meet your client&rsquo;s logical and emotional needs.

Understanding your business

When we work with clients on understanding and building client trust, we like to pair it back to Simon Sinek&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Why of Business&rdquo;. In his TED TALK he uses three concentric circles that talk about business in this way:

&bull;    The outer circle is WHAT you do.
&bull;    The next circle is HOW you do it.
&bull;    Centrally, and most importantly, is WHY you do it.

We then use these to both understand and know how to build trust for your business. To do this we work on all three areas, but first, we have to start with the key relationship equation.


People buy from people.

The act of trading or selling and buying is a very human one that has been around since &hellip; well forever. The first thing to focus on is that people buy from people, not from computer screens or emails or from websites. 
There are two parts to this &hellip; someone has a product, service, or skill that is valuable to someone else. The other person has a need or a problem that they want fixed.

Buying is an interaction of products, services, or skills between two parties, who need to know they need it and where and how to find it. These people have to meet, to share ideas of what they have and how it suits that need and then agree to trade.


	ACTION:  Think about the words and emotions your clients use when they describe your business?
	ACTION:  How do people describe their need or problem?


People buy from people they KNOW

Knowing is most often associated with the WHAT of your business. Think of this as a doorway &hellip; if someone is searching, they might look at the door of a shop and make an instant assessment whether to go into the shop to find the solution they are looking for.

There is a trend to make the description of what we do elegant or interesting&hellip; let me give you an example. An accountant might describe themselves as a wealth manager. The problem with this is that when we first encounter a person, clients want to be able to easily understand what you do. So, keep it simple and clear.


	ACTION:  How easy do you make it for people to KNOW what you do?
	ACTION:  How can you simplify it?


 

People buy from people they LIKE

Have you ever entered a shop and the assistant doesn&rsquo;t even acknowledge you? How does that make you feel? It makes me feel like walking straight out again &ndash; and often that&rsquo;s exactly what I do.

People like us because of HOW we do our business. How you treat them, how you make them feel, how you help them. It follows then that to ask someone to like you and your business, you have to be open about the HOW of your business.

Not everyone is going to like you and how you work. The important thing is to know your ideal clients and how they like to interact and then build your business and your processes around them. You can&rsquo;t be everything to everyone, so knowing who you are serving allows you to build your HOW around them, and how they want to work with you is critical to your success.


	ACTION:  How do you get people to engage with you and get to know you?
	ACTION:  Get to deeply understand who your target client is and isn&rsquo;t.
	ACTION:  Get to know how your target client wants to buy from you and focus your business practices around that.


People buy from people they TRUST

This element is the hardest, the deepest and the most powerful. What is it that makes you trust someone and choose to invest in their business over someone else? It starts with the WHAT and HOW of your business &hellip; but there is something deeper, something more important.

There is a magnetic force that draws people to you &hellip; it&rsquo;s trust! People will trust you and be drawn to you when they understand and resonate with WHY you do what you do.
 
When you allow people to understand your motives and inspiration for your business, you allow them to build trust in you and your business. It is your WHY that draws people to you and allows you to inspire them to work with you and buy from you. 

In the end, transactions happen because your customers feel like they can understand and trust why you are doing this, how you do it, and finally what you do.


	ACTION:  Think about, what is it that gets you out of bed in the morning, what is it that drives and interests you about what you do?



	ACTION:  Practice how you describe this simply to people. You will know you have it right when you see the light in the other person&rsquo;s eye.



People buy from people they know, like, and trust.

If you want to put this into action in your business then you have to start connecting with people. To allow them to easily know what you do, how you do it, and most powerfully, why. 

People will buy from you when your why is persuasive, your how suits them, and you have what they need.


Now it&#39;s up to you to get out there and get into action!

Metisan has a program to help you uncover this insightful information and embed it in your business.

Call us today.
]]></content>
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<pubDate>08 Apr 2021 00:46:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/has-apple-lost-its-core_117s32</link>
<title><![CDATA[Has Apple Lost Its Core?]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[In 1997 Steve Jobs was back at Apple. He went back to basics with what Apple stood for, what they believed in, and where they fitted in the world.

Here is what Steve Jobs said:


	It&rsquo;s not to talk about speed and fees.
	It&rsquo;s not to talk about bits and megahertz.
	It&rsquo;s not to talk about why we are better.


&quot;Our customers want to know who is Apple and what do we stand for? Where do we fit in this world?&quot;

&quot;Apple at its core:  We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.&quot;

Brand &hellip; not product!
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[In 1997 Steve Jobs was back at Apple. He went back to basics with what Apple stood for, what they believed in, and where they fitted in the world.

Here is what Steve Jobs said:


	It&rsquo;s not to talk about speed and fees.
	It&rsquo;s not to talk about bits and megahertz.
	It&rsquo;s not to talk about why we are better.


&quot;Our customers want to know who is Apple and what do we stand for? Where do we fit in this world?&quot;

&quot;Apple at its core:  We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.&quot;

Brand &hellip; not product!

I have been watching the latest ads from Apple and I am positive Steve is rolling his eyes in heaven. Honestly, it could have been a Samsung ad. It was all about the product. The brand and what they stand for has gone MIA. All the core of the creativity; the possibility and dare I say it, the passion &hellip;. gone!

I open the official website for the iPhone 12 and the first thing it says &hellip; is nothing about being crazy and cool. Welcome to 5G!  

Steve Job said &hellip; don&rsquo;t talk about the bits and megahertz. Don&rsquo;t talk about the product!

Apple site: 5G speed.1 A14 Bionic, the fastest chip in a smartphone.

A company with innovation at its core. 

When Jobs rejoined Apple in 1997 (having left in 1985), he took a company from the brink of bankruptcy to one of the biggest brands in the world. How did he do this? By focusing on new ideas that had little to do with his competition. He used his insights and intuition to guide the company to release products that others followed. Jobs was a visionary leader because he had a knack for understanding what people wanted before they knew it themselves.

The brand was his focus. So, as well as innovative marketing and products, he also took charge of the Apple in-store experience, creating new Apple stores, and driving how people were looked after. Elevating the experience of purchasing Apple.

If you think about why an Apple store is ALWAYS busier than other retail outlets &hellip; it is because people can go in and play, tinker, and get a real feel for the products and the services. In an Apple store, they have thought about how people touch / see / hear / taste / smell and feel in their experience. This focus makes it more memorable and differentiated.

Give customers an amazing experience, something that is special and memorable. All of this is centred around the customer &hellip; not the product or the service. Steve Jobs won because he made these things secondary to the customer experience.

Competing on product

With the latest iPhone release, all we hear about is the product, the features. Fastest, camera improvements. This is doubling down on product improvements. This isn&rsquo;t innovation. 

Having spent 17 years in the IT world, ask any IT boffin and most will agree that Apple has never had the best anything. It didn&rsquo;t try to compete on product features. So why is it doing that now?

One of Job&rsquo;s keys to success was that he was very focused on the user experience. Indeed, Apple didn&rsquo;t create products for the benefit of the product. They were always geared to the user. So, do users really want speed and display improvements? Maybe, but I&#39;m pretty sure that isn&rsquo;t their burning desire!

Intuitive

I have been an Apple user for many years. But I have to say that with the iPhone X, I was a little annoyed that I had to now hold it only one way to make it work. In the past, the screen had flipped whichever way you changed it. Maybe I am just a whinger. But this is less intuitive and more asking the person to learn how to use the product the &ldquo;right way&rdquo;.

Only one model

When Jobs died in 2011 there was only one iPhone on the market at any one time. This made everything to do with customers easier. The support, the sales, and the marketing. It was simple. With the release of the iPhone 12, there are currently four models.

People are not that tech-savvy. And so, keeping it simple makes life easier. Apple has never been seen as a tech company&hellip; so why now are we seeing a proliferation of models and focus on the product rather than on the customer and what the Apple brand stands for?

Has Apple lost its Core?

One of the hallmarks of Apple&rsquo;s success has been its ability to keep and stay ahead in the marketplace. Not with technology but by deeply understanding who their customers were. They used these insights to create products that were simple, elegant, and fashionable.

Perhaps I am getting too old to be at the centre of the Apple target market. But I don&rsquo;t need a phone with all the features of the Apple 12. It doesn&rsquo;t wow me &ndash; it is predictable. 

The new Apple focus on product doesn&#39;t inspire me to strive, to be different and to change the world. They have lost their core!

So will Apple survive post Jobs, or are they careering towards another demise, as they did when Jobs left the first time? This time, he can&rsquo;t come back.

Here is the video of Steve Jobs 
]]></content>
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<pubDate>26 Oct 2020 08:22:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/three-steps-to-improving-covid-client-connections_117s31</link>
<title><![CDATA[Three Steps to Improving COVID Client Connections]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Retaining and attracting loyal customers has never been so important, with the coronavirus outbreak and responses really testing the sustainability, agility and adaptability of many companies.

It is not simply for now, our post-COVID reality is one where customer loyalty will be of prime importance. The American Express&rsquo; Shop Small campaign and survey found that 2/3 of businesses listed returning customers as key to their recovery.

So how do we do this?
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[Communicating with our customers has recently become more challenging. The pandemic and our responses to it have created fundamental shifts in how we do business, both now and as we move into the &quot;new normal&quot; post lockdown. 

As business owners, we cannot afford to go quiet as we may risk losing customers. But more importantly, we miss out on opportunities to find innovative ways to stay connected and be of service to our customers.

How do we do this?


	Use your connections with your customers to better understand them and their needs.
	Use this information to pivot quickly to address these and be at the forefront of their mind to help them with their problems.
	We often talk about the importance of customer experience and service, but what exactly are the secrets behind achieving it?


Three Steps to getting COVID Client Connections right

STEP ONE:  COVID Client Connection Mindset

How we think about something is fundamental in how we then perceive the experience of it. For example, can you remember a time when you weren&rsquo;t looking forward to a conversation? Our body prepares for the worst, with adrenaline racing and then our minds automatically pick up and interpret information to help us reinforce our perception. 

Much of this comes from assumptions we have made about ourselves and our customers. Before you connect, try to set your mind to be curious and open. This will help you to set the tone for the connection and ask for what they want, expect, or need right now.

Many people are feeling challenged by the isolation and changes to their lives. Think about how you can help them overcome this with timely updates, morale building, and trusted and real communications.

Now is the time for the highest levels of integrity and empathy, as we work closely with our clients to show how we can help them resolve their problems, and through this build better businesses.

STEP TWO:  COVID Client Connection Activity

Now we have our minds in the right place &ndash; what do we do?

DISCOVER: 

Your first step is to discover the needs, motivation, and reality of your clients. Replace your assumptions with knowledge and then centre this around how you can best help them fix the problems they have and meet their future aspirations.

DECIDE:  

Decide how best to adapt your business to take advantage of the opportunities. Think about what changes are necessary around how you deliver service and products to your customers.

DESIGN:  

Review your current delivery tools and see what needs to change. How can you make it easier to customers to work with you? How can you be clearer and more responsive? Based on these insights, you may need to create new tools and systems for communications and delivery.

DELIVER:  

Get started and refine your delivery models in and around your client and their experiences.

STEP THREE:  COVID Client Connection Results

Often when we think about the word &lsquo;results&rsquo; in business, we look at financials and the bottom line. But I would like to draw your attention to the important precursors to that end. These changing times challenge us to be more mindful of the processes in our business. To use our client connections to help us review, reframe, and succeed.

Here are four keys to measure success in client communications. They are:


	Listening:
	
		Have I actively listened?
		Do I understand who my client is and their current needs?
	
	
	Market awareness:
	
		How are my customers really feeling and thinking about their business reality now and in the next 6-12 months?
		Can I help them achieve any of these things?
	
	
	Action plan:
	
		Have I helped them set and work towards their goals?
		Have I communicated a clear roadmap?
		When is my next action and connection point?
	
	
	Market creation &amp; innovation:
	
		From my conversations is there a common thread or opportunity?
		Can I create something new that will help my clients?
	
	



Metisan specialises in helping businesses discover, decide, design, and deliver better business outcomes through deep and focused understanding of how they can better serve their customers.
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<pubDate>24 Aug 2020 08:22:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/getting-crunchy-with-your-client-value_117s30</link>
<title><![CDATA[Getting Crunchy with your Client Value]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[We often &lsquo;think&rsquo; that we know the value we provide to our clients. Inevitably this becomes a list of things that we &lsquo;think&rsquo; that we offer, of the products and services, of our interpretation of the features and benefits. I want to tell you why this misses the mark and what to do about it. 

There are two key problems with this:


	It is from our perspective, and we (as the expert) understand so much more about the work that goes into this delivery and what people &lsquo;should&rsquo; appreciate
	It uses our words and understanding


Let&#39;s look at how to fix that.
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[We often &lsquo;think&rsquo; that we know the value we provide to our clients. Inevitably this becomes a list of things that we &lsquo;think&rsquo; that we offer, of the products and services, of our interpretation of the features and benefits. I want to tell you why this misses the mark and what to do about it. 

There are two key problems with this:


	It is from our perspective, and we (as the expert) understand so much more about the work that goes into this delivery and what people &lsquo;should&rsquo; appreciate
	It uses our words and understanding


Let&#39;s look at how to fix that.

What do your clients value?

At the end of the day, value is what we provide to our clients, and it should therefore be understood and communicated from their point of reference. This is an important distinction because we are in business to attract more of these clients into our business and help them solve their problems.

This is more than just the logical journey that they take. We all know that everyone buys emotionally, and so we need to know this journey too. Once you know the logical, emotional, and tactical journey your clients took to start working with you - you can use this to engage, communicate, and convert more just like them.

Understanding your value

Here is an exercise to help you understand the value you provide in business in the eyes, minds, and hearts of your clients. In asking these questions I want you to uncover the logical, emotional, and tactical reasons that they bought from you and continue to work with you. 

Go and interview three existing clients and ask these questions:

Before working with us:


	What was the biggest problem you had before working with us (that we helped you with)?
	
		What impact did that problem have on your business?
		
			Financial?
			Emotional?
			What did it stop you doing?
		
		
		What had you tried before to fix that problem?
	
	
	What was it that convinced you to give our solution and us a go?


While working with us:


	What was it like working with us?
	
		What did you really like?
		What one thing would you change?
	
	
	How were we different to others you have worked with?
	How did we make you feel?
	Was working with us what you expected?
	
		What was what you expected?
		What was unexpected from this?
	
	


After working with us (or if they have been a returning or continual client):


	What outcomes did you get from working with us?
	
		Financial?
		Emotional?
		What is it now allowing you to do?
	
	
	Would you work with us again / continue to work with us?
	
		Why?
		Why not?
	
	
	If you could use one word to sum up working with us what would it be?
	If you could change one thing that we delivered or how we delivered it &ndash; what would that change be?


Remember that these questions are just the starting point. I want you to suspend your assumptions and get curious. I want you to ask follow-up questions and get crunchy and clarity on their view and where they experience the value.

This is an exercise I do for some clients because there are often insights that an &#39;outsider&#39; can gain. If this is something you are interested in - then get in touch. 

Photo by Susanne Jutzeler from Pexels
]]></content>
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<pubDate>21 Jun 2019 04:31:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/are-you-building-a-purplebrick-road-to-failure_117s33</link>
<title><![CDATA[Are you building a PurpleBrick road to failure?]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[We see businesses fail, and there are always lessons, but the failure of PurpleBricks in Australia has me intrigued! I am interested to know how a business that has been so successful in other markets can get it so wrong here. There s some great commentary from others in the property arena, but I wanted to take a broader look at what went wrong, and what established businesses and start-ups alike can learn from this.
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[We see businesses fail, and there are always lessons, but the failure of PurpleBricks in Australia has me intrigued! I am interested to know how a business that has been so successful in other markets can get it so wrong here. There s some great commentary from others in the property arena, but I wanted to take a broader look at what went wrong, and what established businesses and start-ups alike can learn from this.

Assumptions can hurt you.

As humans, our brains are wired to make sense of the world, make assumptions and then act on them. We make sense of the world by putting things together in groups and drawing conclusions about them. This is also true in business. One of the most important things in starting and building a business is to be aware of and test these assumptions. There is an old and wise saying &ldquo;when we assume we make an ass out of you and me&rdquo;.

It seems that PurpleBricks assumed that what had worked in the UK market would also work in Australia. Given their failure, I think it is safe to assume that they were wrong.  As astute business owners, one of our jobs is to SEE our assumptions and to create ways to test them.

Action:  I want you to think about your assumptions. What areas in your business are based on assumptions and are they right? How do you know? 

I have found that the best way to test them is to ask your customers and see how right (or wrong) your assumptions are.

This exercise of seeing assumptions, testing them, reviewing your business and changing, isn&rsquo;t something done once and then forgotten. It is an iterative process that, done well, allows businesses to continually learn from and ensure that we grow and change through serving the best interests of our customers.

It starts with listening

We have to start by listening. How do you know who your clients are and what they need, want and value if you don&rsquo;t listen? Listening involves asking great questions that open up your assumptions and ideas to review and insight from customers. As Tony Robbins says,  &ldquo;Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.&rdquo;  

Had PurpleBricks spent time getting to know the Australian Market by listening to experts, consumers, estate agents etc, they may have been able to modify their market launch to actually speak to benefits for Australian consumers. As it was, many of the things that their brand purported to be about just didn&rsquo;t fit with the Australian experience and resulted in low attraction rates of potential customers.

Action:  I like to start by asking customers to walk through their journey and explain their experiences with a company or brand.

Finding Fit

Listening and understanding is only the start of your excursion into building a client-centric business. Next, you have the opportunity to find fit with them. To consider how you are best suited (or not) to help this client, to meet their needs. This is about showing our existing and potential customers that you have listened. More than that, it is about testing your assumptions to see if you have understood their problem and the type of solution they might be interested in. This is your opportunity to explain to them how your product or service fits with them &ndash; or not. This is exactly the point where sometimes we are there to see the resulting Yes or No from a client. Sometimes, the truth is we are not the best fit to help them and there is nothing wrong with learning who your market isn&rsquo;t.

Action:  Understand which clients best suit you - and not how you add value and best fit with them.

Finding and loving objections

I know that PurpleBricks would have heard from customers, employees, and others that things weren&rsquo;t working. When you hear criticism or objections what do you do? In buying psychology, an objection simply means that people are thinking of buying from you. Particularly in the first phases of a business, it is imperative that we deeply understand the questions people ask and how to best answer them. When we are getting objections or questions, it is great to use these to review and listen again. To use this information to change what we are doing or how we do it. In fact, I encourage businesses who want to get up close and personal with their clients to actively look for objections. I am sure you have heard the term &lsquo;handling objections&rsquo;. I hate that and I&#39;ll tell you why. You handle a snake; you handle a problem. Objections and questions are an opportunity to learn more about what people think and feel about us.

Action:  Think about how you encourage and look for objections in your business.

It&#39;s all about Value!

The last piece in my simple client-centric process is all about value. The process of business has its foundations in the creation of value. First and foremost, there has to be value for you &ndash; otherwise why be in business. Then, value for your team, the client and finally the whole community. When you can truly see, understand, and feel the value: win:win:win:win - then you know you are onto a winner

 Action:  Do a value map so you understand where the value in your business ecosystem lies.

 

 



 

Metisan Simple Client Centric Process

If PurpleBricks had understood the Australian market and value proposition, they may well have had a different result. As I often say, there is no point spending all your money developing a mousetrap &ndash; when everyone has a cockroach problem.

So here is what I want you to think about:
&bull;    How well do you find out about your potential clients and your existing clients and how they feel about what you are doing and how you are doing it?
&bull;    How well do you know what value you create for you, your team, your clients, and the community?
&bull;    Are your business processes about finding fit and delivering this value and continually looking at going deeper on this?  

I challenge you to see your assumptions and mindfully use these to build a better, more client-centric business.

If getting more intentional and client-centric in your business is something you want to learn more about &ndash; then let&rsquo;s talk!
]]></content>
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<pubDate>04 Jun 2019 21:18:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/why-you-shouldnt-blame-commissions-for-bad-behaviour_117s34</link>
<title><![CDATA[Why you shouldn&#39;t blame commissions for bad behaviour]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[If I had a dollar for every time I have heard people blame commissions for bad sales practices, well, I&rsquo;d be living in the south of France right now. I have worked as a sales professional for most of my adult life and I can tell you one truth as a salesperson, sales manager, and business owner: the salespeople who focus on commissions never win.

Yes, they make sales, in the short term. But in the long term, they get caught out.

They get caught with their hand in the cookie jar because they don&rsquo;t show enough care for their clients and the businesses they are working with. This style of sales is slowly dying out. Why? Because it doesn&rsquo;t work.
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[If I had a dollar for every time I have heard people blame commissions for bad sales practices, well, I&rsquo;d be living in the south of France right now. I have worked as a sales professional for most of my adult life and I can tell you one truth as a salesperson, sales manager, and business owner: the salespeople who focus on commissions never win.

Yes, they make sales, in the short term. But in the long term, they get caught out.

They get caught with their hand in the cookie jar because they don&rsquo;t show enough care for their clients and the businesses they are working with. This style of sales is slowly dying out. Why? Because it doesn&rsquo;t work.

In our connected world, customers and clients are so educated. They can find information quickly and easily and they talk online about their experiences. But more than that, we are more attuned to being conned or getting half-truths from people. Whether it is politicians, hairdressers or salespeople, our truth-o-meter is finely tuned.

The truth is, more than ever, we are all craving truth and honesty in business and in life. I know we have all met salespeople that follow old-school manipulation, but the truth is, this just hasn&rsquo;t ever been great selling. It&rsquo;s lazy selling, focusing on what the salesperson wants and not on the client. Great selling is helping people make a great buying decision &mdash; for them.

The real problem

The real problem is short-term and self-focused thinking. Whether it is in big or small businesses, governments or institutions, these shortcomings are evident.

We smell them a mile off. And they have really been brought to light and exposed with both the royal commission into banking and the royal commission into child abuse. The problem is short-term, internally biased thinking.

Those in leadership roles in these businesses and institutions are too far removed from what their customers really want and what they really think. Worse than that, they don&rsquo;t care.

What I mean is they haven&rsquo;t taken the time and effort to deeply understand what people want. Now you can blame the employees on the front line, or the middle management, but the truth is, the short-term goals of the top executives, of those in charge, are paramount, and these are what we see playing out at the lower levels in the organisation.

If they wanted to, they could put in place practices that focused on long-term relationships with their customers. They could prioritise deep insights and information that would help them steer their organisation via feedback loops and continuous improvement. But they don&rsquo;t. They have chosen not to and now those choices are coming home to roost.

The truth is the people on the front line in the banking industry, and many other businesses, are on a short-term KPI merry-go-round. Where the KPI&rsquo;s are set each year, the new target, the new theme, and each September or October, people are cut from positions if they don&rsquo;t meet these targets. So, when we review the employees and what they are doing, we can see as this pattern repeats each year, these people weren&rsquo;t chasing commissions, they were acting to survive, to keep their jobs.

But it goes deeper than this.

The banks make short-term assumptions about their customers too. They assume customers will move every three years. So, they set up incentives that mirror their three-year expectation. To look after you for that period and then everything gets harder. It becomes more difficult to get loans. More difficult to get a better rate. Because you are now a statistical anomaly. You are a customer that defies their three-year model.

Let&rsquo;s build a new model

Here&rsquo;s an idea. What if instead of writing off the anomalies, we embraced them?

What if we took the time and effort to get to know why these customers stay and how we could make their lives easier?

What if through these insights we could understand and foster more long-term customers?

What difference would that make to a bottom line?

I tell you if we could get businesses, all businesses, to foster their existing clients and improve their lives, they would need to rely less on new leads and the ongoing churn from dissatisfied customers.

The banks are no different from other businesses, where they are wedded to getting new customers in the front door and focus almost exclusively on that. Meanwhile, they leave the back door open and unattended as customers leave.

It is foolish to overlook the great untapped resource of existing clients. It makes great business sense to keep existing clients. It&rsquo;s cheaper and easier for staff. These clients already know how your systems work, and more than that, they can help you grow through referrals and improving your brand name in the marketplace.

Our short-term focus feeds the lead-generation goliath that has gotten too big.

Our short-term thinking has ignored our best asset: our customers.

Our short-term thinking has divorced us from why we started our business in the first place: to help our clients.

Now is the time to pick up the phone, buy your existing clients a coffee, and spend some time re-establishing and setting a rhythm for an ongoing relationship with them.

 

Originally published 3rd May 2019 - Smart Company

Photo by Jan Prokes from Pexels
]]></content>
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<pubDate>15 May 2019 22:34:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/bank-culture-not-commission-to-blame_117s35</link>
<title><![CDATA[Bank Culture not Commission to Blame!]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[The Banking Royal Commission has brought into highlight the evil side of greed, both institutional and personal. The report stated that &ldquo;Providing a service to customers was relegated to second place. Sales became all important. &quot;

Sales is important. But only when the sale truly reflects a good decision for your customer. This has been proven in all successful small to medium businesses where the question of profit versus serving your customer&#39;s best interest is a constant. This proves that the right culture and leadership can and does overcome this obstacle.

This week I was able to comment on this on ABC Radio Melbourne with Raphael Epstein on the Drive Program.
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[The Banking Royal Commission has brought in to highlight the evil side of greed, both institutional and personal. The report stated that &ldquo;Providing a service to customers was relegated to second place. Sales became all-important. &quot;

Sales IS important. But only when the sale truly reflects a good decision for your customer. This has been proven in all successful small to medium businesses where the question of profit versus serving your customer&#39;s best interest is a constant. This proves that the right culture and leadership can and does overcome this obstacle.

This week I was able to comment on this on ABC Radio Melbourne with Raphael Epstein on the Drive Program.

Fran: I just think that the banks have been playing the game of customer experience. Those people who know CX or customer experience. Things like the Net Promoter Score that Westpac for example were using a number of years ago and other tools. So, they have been playing this game, but really they&rsquo;ve been playing the game of greed and internal focus. Incentivising their employees and representatives to do completely the wrong thing.

Raphael: The advice you were getting was completely compromised because they were selling you their products. It&rsquo;s something the Royal Commission was very clear about.

Fran: Well, you know, small businesses do this every day. And I don&rsquo;t believe that you have to completely compromise. Like, when you run your own business you are selling your own things every day, but you don&rsquo;t compromise your ethics. So why is it that big business is like that? And I think, you know, the further you get separated from your customer, the more corrupt it is. So, I don&rsquo;t think necessarily purely about the compensation, but it is about the leadership. And it is about losing that sight that good selling or good customer relationship is about helping them make a good decision for themselves. Even if that means they don&rsquo;t buy from you.

Rafael: Look Fran, I couldn&rsquo;t agree more. I want to make you head of ASIC.

Fran: Pardon?

Rafael: I want you to be head of ASIC.  I&rsquo;m so impressed with what you have to say. You make a really good point that small businesses manage to sell stuff without getting compromised all the time. Thank you, Fran. Really simple point. Really powerful point.

You can listen to the ABC Drive show here: 

I am not sure about being the head of ASIC. But I am open to the challenge if they would like my opinion on how to get a better customer experience - business alignment.
]]></content>
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<pubDate>06 Feb 2019 22:36:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<link>https://www.metisan.com.au/blog/why-sales-storytelling-works_117s36</link>
<title><![CDATA[Why Sales Storytelling Works]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Storytelling is a great way to get people to understand and engage with your business. It works because as well as telling the listener about your business, stories convey a deeper meaning about why you are in business and how you operate and treat your clients.

Find out why sales storytelling is so important and why they work.
]]></description>
<content><![CDATA[Storytelling is a great way to get people to understand and engage with your business. It works because as well as telling the listener about your business, stories convey a deeper meaning about why you are in business and how you operate and treat your clients.

Why is storytelling so important?

Being able to communicate, to get people to understand you and what your company does is an essential skill in business. I say that ... but so does Warren Buffet. Here&#39;s something he said recently:

&quot;The one easy way to become worth 50 percent more than you are now at least is to hone your communication skills--both written and verbal. If you can&#39;t communicate, it&#39;s like winking at a girl in the dark--nothing happens. You can have all the brainpower in the world, but you have to be able to transmit it. And the transmission is communication.&quot;

Why sales stories work for you: 

Have you ever felt boastful when you care about yourself and your business? Using sales storytelling makes it easier because it focuses on what has happened; the experiences that you have had in business. This tells people about you as a person and the inspiration for why you are in business and how you operate.

Your customer experience is another rich source of stories that show not only their experience but talks to how you work with your clients and what others can expect. This focuses on how you operate and this builds trust in you and your processes around customer care. 

These stories feel more natural and come across with more confidence simply because you feel more comfortable.

Why sales stories work for your client:

You tell stories that show so much more than the headline information about what you do. They go deeper into why you are in business and how you operate. For those of you, like me, who are keen on Simon Sinek and &#39;Start With Why&#39;, you will know the importance of telling the why and how of your business and how this builds trust and intimacy with your potential client.

If you haven&#39;t heard of Simon Sinek, then check out his  TED Talk

Stories work for your potential client because they tell them about things that have happened in your business, through your eyes or the eyes of a client or employee. A story focuses on someone&rsquo;s experience and is used to educate and teach people. If they have the same problem or situation, they may also be facing the same questions about how your business can help them.

We know that people buy from people they know, like, and trust. When people are considering buying they trust you more if they gain insights into how you have helped others like them with a similar problem. 

Stories educate and inform the listener. Stories can also be used to teach clients about what is expected of them and how we want them to engage so that they can enjoy similar outcomes. 

So now it&#39;s your turn ... think about the stories that you need to tell so that people can learn to know, like, and trust you.

If you would like some help ... find out more about how I can help you Craft Your Story.
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