John Tyreman 0:19

Welcome back to breaking biz dev. If this is your first time here, thanks for joining us on this podcast where we'd like to beat up and break down topics related to business development. My name is John Tyerman. I'm joined as always by my trusted cohost, Mark Wainwright. And today we're going to break down six sales competencies for professionals because, well, let's face it, being a technical expert really isn't enough to lead or to grow a firm. At some point, experts need to contribute to this nebulous topic. We know as business development. And Mark, you've written an article titled six sales competencies for professionals. We'll link that in the show notes here. and I think this is a great framework for individuals who want to increase their sales skills.

Mark Wainwright 1:05

Yes. These six sales competencies. And I know all our friends in business development, just when we say that word sales, John, they're there, they're the skin, just that their hair just stands up on the back of their neck. This is important stuff. in order to really find sales competencies, you know, how the world views competent salespeople, the types of behaviors. that they exhibit when they are learning and becoming better and better salespeople is actually much, much longer than this. Most professionals have a, you know, an exhaustive list of competencies related to their profession. I've taken a number of those competencies and kind of boiled them down. a little bit to six different areas. And within those areas, there are more detailed competencies, but this is stuff that's really important for our business development professionals and When I walk through these competencies, I am picturing firm owners, firm leaders, the doer sellers, the people who are balancing the service delivery with finding and winning new work. I have those people in mind. these competencies are critical for success In professional services, some individuals who undertake sales in those firms will be more proficient in certain areas and maybe less others. The hope is that a successful professional services firm can have, broad Capabilities, and excellence, across all of these areas, likely across multiple individuals so that you can be running a good, efficient sales organization, a good sales function. So these six are, are just a few among many, but these are important ones. And yes, I wrote about this a while ago, and we will link to that. article so people can review that. So I'm well, how are, how are you today?

John Tyreman 3:20

That's great. Well, I, I am, I'm doing pretty good myself. Good. And, so Mark, you said that when we mentioned sales, the hairs on the back of maybe some of our listeners next are starting to stand up. And I think let's take a relaxed approach. Let's liken sales to something that's, that's, we can all enjoy, fishing. And in your article, you say sales is like fishing. Can you describe that? Like, why is sales like fishing?

Mark Wainwright 3:49

Well, it's, it's, the, the image that I have in the article is, is a, a, a fishing image. And I thought that, that image or that concept actually plays two roles. One is the obvious connection, the obvious analogy of, you know, fishing for opportunities in, your profession. Sure. that's fairly obvious. and in the work that I do, I teach people to fish right. As a part time sales manager for part time salespeople like architects, engineers, and others. That is the role I play. I am not, the rainmaker. I am not the, the hired sales or business development individual. And I really believe that's, that's important. I think that, that technical professionals and all, all different types of professional services firms need to learn how to, you know, air quotes fish, right?

John Tyreman 4:48

Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach a man a fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Sure.

Mark Wainwright 4:52

That one. That one. Right. Exactly. So there we go. That's, that's the one. the other part of that image, the thing that really, that really, caught me. Was, this image of, an older, an older person, likely a grandfather, sitting next to possibly, a grandson, you know, at the edge of the water, fishing together, you know, that's a, that's a wonderful image to kind of picture in, in your, in your mind. And what we're going to talk about today ties into, ties into that, not specifically the competencies. But how people develop mastery over time. So, that's the other part of this, of that image, that analogy, that really struck me and, and, and, Yeah, sure, let's, let's, let's talk a little bit about fishing.

John Tyreman 5:47

Forgive me for jumping the gun on that. that adage there, Mark, you developed a, like this tool or a framework, let's say that can help individuals elevate their sales competence. You call it the sales competence matrix, and there's really two dimensions to this matrix. Think about this, on the vertical axis, you have these sales competencies, which we're going to get into. And on the horizontal axis, you have these five different levels of mastery. Let's start there. So the five levels are knowing, understanding, practicing, improving, and teaching others. Can you unpack those five different levels of mastery?

Mark Wainwright 6:29

I had first, quite honestly, John, I had first come across this when my young children were, were moving through school and they, there were some assessments, that weren't necessarily tied to, tied to grades. There were assessments that were, you know, at grade level, below grade level, and then there was, uh, there was, a, a kind of, a high level of mastery or proficiency that was associated with, with being able to, to teach others. you know, whether it was mathematics or writing or whatever it was. So this was introduced to me a long time ago. my children are older now. so I, I wanted to find the roots of that. So I went searching and it could have come from a number of different places, but one source that I found that I thought was very interesting was these five levels. The five you just mentioned have roots in the Toyota way. Right. And the, and the Toyota way, was developed by the organization, Toyota, the company Toyota over in Japan and Toyota is famous for, process improvements, lean manufacturing, all of these, right. Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Six Sigma is associated more with Westinghouse, but it, it six Sigma does have its roots in the, in the Toyota, in, in the, the Toyota system. but I, I dug and I found, some, some information in a, in, in, in a book that was all about the Toyota way. And it went through these five levels of mastery, and it struck me that these were really, really useful and really a great way to look at mastery. like you said, the first level of mastery is to know or have heard the concepts. So that's knowing. The second is to know and really understand the concepts. That's understanding. The third is to be able to do on your own very well, and I refer to that as practicing. The fourth is to do continuously very well over time and then show improvement. That's improving. And then the fifth is to be able to do and then to teach others how to do it well. the furthest expression of mastery, I believe is that whole teaching others things. So, so right, that's our horizontal axis across this competency matrix. And I think it's really, really appropriate. And I have. Reframed the work that I do with individuals when I am working through a process, of, of, you know, taking technical professionals who have maybe some exposure to developing new business and sales and how I can start to, to, you know, reframe or, or bucket the work I, the work I, I do with, I do with them. And we move through those, those different five levels of, of mastery.

John Tyreman 9:25

Okay, I see how teaching others that that is the highest form of mastery because that you understand it you've practiced it You can lean on experience in your ability to teach it to others and that shows that you can convey Maybe some of the intricacies of some of these competencies in a simple way. so, so let's get into these six sales competencies for professionals. I'm going to list them off and then Mark, let's go kind of like dig a little bit deeper into each one. Does that sound good?

Mark Wainwright 9:57

Great.

John Tyreman 9:58

Let's do it. Okay. So the six sales competencies are number one. Behaviors and mindset. Number two, the sales process. Number three, sales planning. Number four, practice industry and client knowledge. Number five, prospecting, and then number six, pricing and value. So let's start with behaviors and mindset. Mark, can you just kind of give our listeners a little bit of a layer deeper into that one?

Mark Wainwright 10:27

Sure. These areas are among many. But in order to kind of reduce complexity, simplify these areas of focus for what I feel are really important competencies related to sales for professionals. These are a handful. And the first one is that behaviors and attitude. And again, with all these competencies, and as we look at them, as we're building this matrix, right, we've got a vertical. axis. We've got a horizontal axis as we're building this. All, all of these competencies need to be something that can be observed, measured and assessed. Right. So, so this first one's a tricky one to start off with because sometimes this is a little bit more nebulous or a little bit, maybe more intangible than, than some of the, some of the others, but nevertheless still very important. So the first one, like you said, behaviors and attitude. A few of the sort of sub competencies or components of that larger category are an individual, you know, brings energy, to sales conversations. they are intrinsically motivated that motivation and that energy is, is observable. It is something that they share with their teammates internally. And. With their prospective clients that they're, that they're working with, these are people who are eager to learn, eager to build sales skills and competencies, you know, in this, in this list, they are coachable and they value coaching. They have a very good sense of curiosity with their prospects that they're starting to gain and understand the need to be responsible and accountable for eventual new business development for revenue generation. And they have, they have great sort of general instincts, right? They know when to bring in. Team members when when necessary, they know when to bring in subject matter experts when necessary, they have very good follow through, very good, you know, timely follow up those types of those types of of behaviors where you see a real good sense of. energy, momentum, enthusiasm, et cetera. And we won't do this for, for all of these buckets, but just for, for this, you can see how they start to hopefully map across these, these five areas. One is sort of the knowing part. And when I refer to knowing, and I'm talking about competencies, knowing is about being introduced to ideas. So knowing typically in my role, It's

John Tyreman 13:07

like awareness of the idea,

Mark Wainwright 13:09

right? I would be introducing concepts and ideas to people where, you know, whether it's, it's whether I'm relating to them one on one or in a group session where I'm presenting information. Okay, got it. They start to see the, the nomenclature, the concepts and the ideas. So there you go. When they start to understand them is when they're starting to practice them because inevitably we start to understand things more as we start to practice it. Oh, I see how that works now. Great. Mm hmm. So then they, they, they transition to, to practicing where they're using this skill, you know, week in, week out, whatever it is, and then they see opportunities, both, both, you know, sort of looking in the mirror, seeing opportunities for improvement. Or they start to get more and more feedback and input from, you know, mentors, coaches, et cetera, about how to, how to improve. Maybe they start changing some approaches in their, their sales activities, that sort of thing. And then ultimately with time, and I really think this whole process takes time. Then when they reach this teaching others stage, they've practiced, they've improved, and they have enough experience and perspective. To be able to start sharing their experiences, start guiding others, start making recommendations and providing feedback and, and sort of constructive criticism to others in, you know, who are still sort of walking through these, walking through these steps. So, and, you know, quite honestly, John, we have five steps here. I don't think people ever truly arrive at sort of this ultimate level of mastery, you know, but. I, if, if you are a true lifetime learner, I think the more and more that you uncover, the more you discover, the more you realize, an opportunity to learn and improve, et cetera. But I do think at some point people reach a level where they're comfortable and confident enough to, to be able to teach others. So that's, that's behaviors and attitude. And we, you know, checked a few of those sort of subtasks underneath that.

John Tyreman 15:07

Sure. Before we move on to a sales process, I just have a couple questions about, about this. So you mentioned, I think there was like eight or nine different kind of like sub buckets underneath of that behaviors and attitude competency. When you're working with your clients, do you recommend they rate each one of those sub buckets on a, on a certain scale? Like what, what's the scale in which you use? Is it like one to five, one to 10?

Mark Wainwright 15:36

Yeah, the, the five levels of, improvement, the knowing, understanding, practicing, improving, and teaching others are basically our one to five. Okay. So if we have a observable behaviors, relative to, someone who is, bringing energy to sales conversations with prospects, if they have been introduced to a particular concept check, great. Number one, knowing is done, right? The number two, Understanding level, relative to that thing I just pointed out, brings energy to sales conversations with prospects. If there's an observable behavior there, if you saw that, oh, they get it, they understand the importance, they start making the connection between, I need to bring energy to sales conversations and interactions with prospects because it's infectious. Because it creates a good momentum for both of us because sales is hard and buying is hard. So if I'm the individual in these conversations that's bringing good, good sense of energy, focus, momentum, then that leads us to that next step. Right? So these are observable behaviors that we can just start checking off. Great. Knowing. Got it. Understanding. Got it. now we're practicing. So yeah, so this is, steps on a staircase where they're, where they're walking their way up. Got it. Okay.

John Tyreman 16:49

Yeah. And I can see how you can have snapshots in time every quarter or so, where you look at maybe there's an average score for behaviors and attitude, an average score for some of these other competencies and use that as a coaching tool. kind of there. So let's, let's move on to, A sales process. So can you break that one down for us?

Mark Wainwright 17:09

I often refer to the sales process as, as a series of conversations as the sales conversations. So some of the elements that fall within this, this bucket is, individuals understand and embrace the fact that selling needs to be a process. It needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end. And there's a logic and a rationale to the various steps when we break it down. Individuals are able to lead successful qualification conversations where they're able to qualify or disqualify prospective clients early on. Making really, really effective use of the organization's time. You know, they're able to say no, they're able to refer a prospective client to someone else who might be able to help them better, or they're able to confidently qualify a prospective client and just, establish next steps. Great. This looks like a fantastic fit. Let's let's move on. Move to move to step two, right following that initial qualification conversation, they're able to develop and then reflect back to the client a really clear understanding of their situation, their needs, the desired outcomes that they would like to see from any, any work that they would do together. It's an engineering firm. They're able to really clearly articulate, what the client is really attempting to achieve here. So they are able to walk through all of these steps. They're, they're able to have a really successful and thorough discovery conversation. They're able to manage sort of the proposal and then the negotiations. steps and do that well. So this is definitely kind of an umbrella category and we break it down in further competencies because others, other categories sort of warrant more details. But sales process in general is, you know, there are steps. I'm able to, to navigate all those steps and do that successfully. And then, you know, obviously this whole teaching others thing, I'm able to walk alongside the up and comers. And teach them what the sales process is all about. You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman 19:16

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright 19:31

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman 19:40

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright 19:46

and now back to the show.

John Tyreman 19:50

Yeah. I think the key point that you made is making efficient use of firm time, because that's the whole goal of a process is so that you can make efficient use of that time and, and standardize that process across all of the different prospects or opportunities that you're managing in a pipeline. Right. Um, so I guess let's, let's move on to the next one. Sales planning. How is that different from a sales process?

Mark Wainwright 20:15

Sales planning. Is all about being, frankly, a step or two out in front of your prospective clients. You know, most folks don't associate planning with sort of the whole world of sales. Most folks think that, a really competent good salesperson is just going to show up at the meeting and shoot from the hip. Right. I have found the opposite to be true, particularly with technical professionals who need to have more, Comfort and confidence in these conversations. They can get a little uncomfortable there. So the more planning they can do, the better off they are. So again, in when we talk about sales planning, one of the competencies is kind of understanding, the need and the importance of. Being more planful and more deliberate and more intentional about selling and your sales activities. One of the things that I coach my clients on are how to develop call plans and call plans. It's a, it's a funny term, but call plans are a universal term that are very simple plans, created for important interactions and specifically when sales, you know, a sales call plan is, is a plan around, you know, Setting up and then executing a really, really successful sales call, whether it's an early qualification call or whether it's, it's a, it's a proposal conversation. So just creating a, this little micro plan around that whole interaction. And it can be a,, a face-to-face interaction. It could be a, a zoom call, it could be a telephone call, whatever it is. whatever type of interaction, just being able to create and then execute on that plan. And you can see how that moves through those, five steps, why that is so important. Other parts of sales planning are opportunity plans. when an organization is going to pursue a particular opportunity, that they're able to structure, a client centric plan around winning that, that opportunity. There's account development plans. Account development plans are are the way that organizations can develop trust and revenue with their most important client accounts. So that's a focused effort on your most important clients. Clients. then there's segment development plans that help you, grow in a very focused way in specific industries, markets, et cetera. So all those are elements of sales planning all the way from the micro, you know, call plans, these little interactions all the way up to the big sort of how do we grow in a particular market or industry and how do we do that in a planned way. So. That's sales planning.

John Tyreman 22:52

Excellent. And I can see how, firms, the marketing function within firms can really help with those segment plans and even the account plans as well.

Mark Wainwright 23:01

You're absolutely right.

John Tyreman 23:02

we've created a lot of content recently on this podcast around our next sales competency. is prospecting. let's, let's dive into some of the different elements of prospecting as a sales competency.

Mark Wainwright 23:19

Yeah. So prospecting is individual proactive outreach in a one to one fashion to very, very targeted customers. Perspective, perspective clients,

John Tyreman 23:29

creating your own business,

Mark Wainwright 23:30

creating your own business rather than just kind of waiting for it to come to you. Some individuals just intuitively or inherently have, this, this ability of this desire. I believe just about everybody out there can learn to do it in a, very structured way. Um, referrals are, part of prospecting approaching in a proactive way. Individuals that, you know, contacts that, you know, well, and asking them for connections and introductions to people that they know who you could help prospecting is, being, you know, part of, part of, one of the competencies related to prospecting is being able to develop and define a target list and then being able to pursue those specific prospects, those specific targets, in a, in a focused way with various channels. social media, email, face to face meetings, whatever it is. So being able to maintain a list and constantly be, you know, building that, that muscle using that, that prospecting muscle again, and again, people who I believe are, are, you know, really, really successful with prospecting just have this Have this built into their week in week out behaviors, you know, they are constantly, they're constantly looking for new opportunities with existing, you know, connections through referrals, or they're constantly doing research, for, for new perspective. Clients, because, you know, we mentioned it just earlier, John, they understand the power of creating new opportunities rather than having them just sort of, you know, show up in their inbox as a request for proposals or, or something else. So yeah, prospecting is really, really important.

John Tyreman 25:18

You can see how these competencies complement each other to without, you know, you need a structured process in order to do prospecting if that's efficiently and effectively, you need a good plan in order to know what where what prospects to go after and how to develop your lists. And so I think this kind of leads to our next sales competency, which is industry practice and client knowledge and how to develop a strong competency around that knowledge. So let's unpack this. What do we mean by each of these different ones? So industry knowledge, practice, knowledge, and client knowledge.

Mark Wainwright 25:54

Yeah, I'll, I'll often bucket them because a lot of this has to do with, internal research, organizational awareness, organizational knowledge, industry knowledge, that sort of thing. And for a lot of technical professionals, this is the easiest one to check off, right? industry knowledge is, is kind of understanding the bigger picture in the industry. Trends emerging areas of expertise, competition, different processes, structures, just the way the industry works, et cetera, maybe a little bit of the lingo, but maybe less so that just, just a really firm understanding of the industry. The second one is an, is a really deep understanding of your practice, your service offerings. How you work with clients, how you are, hopefully different and better than your, your competition through a, a, unique offer, or some, focused areas of expertise you developed over time. and then there's a little bit relative to, you, inside the practice knowledge, there's some, there's some financial. Stuff that's there, you know, understanding just the whole idea of revenue and profitability and service delivery and overhead costs and, and all of that, because eventually that all becomes an important component of how you price, you know, how you're positioned in the marketplace. That sort of stuff. The last one is, is client knowledge and client knowledge. You know, the observable behaviors and client knowledge, you know, related to, these proficiencies you're doing the research and being able to understand your specific client, understanding maybe what they're going through at a macro level, a big picture, or maybe even understanding from a micro level through some, Conversations or discovery about what their specific challenges and needs are and what, what opportunities exist for, for you to, to, to work together. you know, and client knowledge is also, associated with prospecting. You want to be able to. Identify articulate to be really clear about who your ideal clients are having really deep knowledge of what that is, and then leveraging that in that other competency we talked about, which is prospecting. So client knowledge is not just, you know, industry awareness, just looking at the competitive marketplace. It's also being hyper specific, understanding your specific Thanks, Mick. Clients, either the ones you're working with now or the ones that you may prospectively work with in the future. and just being really, really clear about that. You know, some people just aren't, some people are super vague about, yeah, we'll work with just about anybody, but having a really good sense of a focused specific client type or, you know, client profile. Very important.

John Tyreman 28:42

Okay. So we covered five of the six sales competencies so far. We've covered behaviors and attitude, sales process, sales planning, prospecting, knowledge of practice industry and the client. And now finally, the sixth sales competency that you have in your article mark is pricing and value. So let's talk about some competencies within pricing and value.

Mark Wainwright 29:06

One of the things I work on a lot with my clients is pricing and not just, Oh, architects are pricing their, their, the dollar amount is, is completely wrong. Right? I am not a subject matter expert in any of my clients business to the point where I am able to tell them that the specific price that they're presenting or developing is right on the mark or too high, too low, whatever else. Right. What I talk about with, with pricing is exploring different ways to arrive at price there's cost plus there's market based pricing, there's value pricing. So understanding those different areas of, of pricing. When you are ultimately presenting pricing to your clients, being able to do so in a way that is easy for them to understand in three option tables. being able to uncover what's most important with your prospective clients so that then you can price those things. Because when we start pricing things that aren't important or aren't valuable to our prospective clients, we find ourselves in a tricky spot. Because they're just not going to pay for stuff they don't care about. And I mentioned value and value pricing. Just understanding the basic tenets and concepts of, you know, how your clients perceive and assign value to things, and how you can then price those things. What value pricing is all about. And, having at your sort of ready, the ability in certain circumstances to be able to value price, your offerings and, we don't want to get too deep into the specifics of that, but value pricing has a lot to do with, being able to identify the specific outcomes that a client wants to achieve and then, assigning a price to that relative to their sort of ultimate financial goal. of, of the work to be, to be done. You can do 10, 000 worth of work for two different clients who have radically different perceptions on the ultimate financial value of the work that you're doing for them. Right? So hopefully you can see that. And then you can put into practice a way to price your services differently relative to the value that they. They perceive. So, you know, without getting too deep into the details of, of value pricing, that's a, that's a, it's an important component. And I talked about, tiered pricing, three option pricing, et cetera. A lot of that pulls from the world of, you know, SaaS software products and services. And there's a whole bunch of, of different examples that we can point to, where. software providers or even, you know, professional services firms now are starting to give their clients the choice and the context that those clients need in order to make decisions. Right? All too often, complex professional services are presented in a one price, take it or leave it fashion. This tiered pricing, you know, suddenly and wonderfully. Let's Go to Beadaholique. com for all of your beading supply needs! your clients choose how they will work with you, not if they will work with you. Right. So that's, that's really important. And you can clearly see how developing skills here and then starting to use those skills, when you are, you are pricing, are super important.

John Tyreman 32:22

Yeah. And we've, we've recorded a few different episodes on this topic, pricing and choice architecture. is one. The statement of understanding is another one that kind of flows into this same topic. using cognitive biases. so there's a lot that goes into pricing and value. and so we've got other resources that if you're listening to this, or if you're watching this on YouTube, you can go check that out. Good. John, I have one

Mark Wainwright 32:47

more bonus competency. Oh, a bonus one. All right. So this is something and frankly, this could be tied to the very first category that we talked about, which is the behaviors and an attitude. But in a lot of cases, I find that it is important enough to kind of call out separately. And I call it organization and getting things done and GTD getting things done is a process out there. David Allen has a great book on it. I recommend anybody look at it and there's a methodology to getting things done all too often. even specifically when it comes to finding new work and sales business development, that this stuff is hard. So it gets pushed to the back burner or, completely off the stove all altogether. So being organized and getting things done is critical to success in sales, critical to success in a lot of things, but specifically I would say in, in sales, particularly if people just aren't really excited about it. So this has to do with, Task management, managing your um, using time blocking for sales related activities, using technology, maybe CRM systems for prospecting, for, opportunity management, staying up to date with your pipeline opportunities, that sort of thing. So I think that that last competency is really, really important because frankly, I mentioned earlier that people just think that, that salespeople are just, shoot from the hip, just get me in the room and I'll close the deal kind of people, but I have found the individuals who seem to excel the most at. Finding and winning new work are the people who are super organized and the people who are just able to get stuff done

John Tyreman 34:42

That is so true and it's easier to time block You know for your prospecting research, right? And then you're in the zone for doing research You're you've got that curious mindset and then another block is completely for outreach And then you're in that in you're in that mind of of outreach and I think that that's really important Totally. Well, Mark, these are, great sales competencies. I think we touched a little bit earlier on how firms can put these into practice, by scoring each one of these different little components. And I'd assume that these would look different, you know, depending on your firm and how you want to prioritize these different competencies, right?

Mark Wainwright 35:21

Absolutely. I think there are some universals here, but I do think that, any firm who wants to assess, current competencies and then have a roadmap for individuals when they want to learn and improve, I think that they can, edit and Push and pull and consider different competencies that may be more or less important, to their firm. But yeah, these are, this is a good place to start. I would think that most firms have, some type of a competency matrix relative to, the performance of an engineer or an analyst or someone like that, some expert as part of their professional practice. This says. If you do have people in your organization who are, do or sellers responsible for revenue generation, you should look at those skills as well and assign some competencies to that, not just for the health of your in the success of your organization, but for the success of those individuals, giving them the road map they need to improve and then hopefully giving them the tools they need to walk through those five levels of mastery that we've talked about today. Excellent.

John Tyreman 36:29

Well, if folks that are listening to this want to learn more, go check out Mark's article at wainwrightinsight. com. The link will be in the show notes of this podcast episode. So go check that out. Mark, I think this was a great overview of those six sales competencies. I think we dived pretty deep in there and I think from this podcast episode and from your article, firms should be able to create a matrix that they can put into practice right away.

Mark Wainwright 36:55

Yeah, I hope so. Thanks, John. This has been a good conversation. Until next time. Until next time.