‘Who are you?’ Sarah winced when I asked her that question. She had built her business for over twenty years and was the country’s leading expert in procurement strategies. Yet every single day she found herself having to explain who she was and what she did. Over and over again, she had to prove her expertise. Sarah focused so much on her knowledge and on delivering a world-class experience to the customers she already had, that she forgot an essential element in growing a business: there’s a whole world out there full of possible clients. But to become your client, they first need to know about you. And nobody knew about Sarah.
Of course, that’s not entirely true. Sarah was well-known within her niche industry. She lined up project after project. She’d even been on a stage once or twice, talking business to her peers. Within this local empire, she was queen. But she wanted to break out and offer her services beyond the borders of her country and her industry. She wanted to get rid of the stress of having to find a new project, fast, as another was ending. She wanted a steady stream of leads. She wanted to get past the meetings where she was scrutinized and vetted to see if she actually had what it takes to get the job done. She wanted to be challenged by projects that dared her to dig deep and think hard about new solutions. She wanted to be recognised for what she was capable of.
She and I were scrolling through her social feeds, reading what other businesses were posting and looking for inspiration to solve her issue. The screen was screaming ‘buy this’, ‘buy that’, ‘look how fantastic I am’, ‘we won a prize’, ‘our new product has seven USPs’.
‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘That’s not me. I don’t think this even works.’ She was right. This cannot work and it never will. I learned that the hard way.
After an eighteen-year sales leadership career – I collected all the titles, from Sales Director to Vice President of Sales to Head of Global Sales and Chief Revenue officer–I got tired.
I was spending more time on internal discussions than on winning deals and growing our customer base. I was stuck in a blame game, wedged in between heads of sales and heads of marketing. On top of that, I was travelling for days on end, being stranded in airports more often than not. I missed my family. This was not what I’d signed up for.
In truth, I felt like an imposter. While I started out doing what I felt was right and logical, sales started to feel like something dirty to me. Closing, winning, fighting. Increasing margins. Increasing them some more. Walking the minefield of company politics.
I felt guilty. I felt it was time I restored the balance. Time to find other ways. After another delayed flight, I stopped.
There was no plan. There were calls and invitations. And then Start it @KBC, Belgium’s leading incubator, invited me to coach start-ups and teach them how to sell. All of them wanted to grow fast and scale their business. All of them were in dire need of proper sales and marketing advice. So there I was, with all my experience and titles.
They didn’t care about those, though. They just wanted something that worked, that wouldn’t cost them an arm and a leg and that went beyond the traditional stuff. They’d already read the books. So I swallowed my pride, sat down in my office and put up a sign that said ‘free sales advice’. This was what I’d wanted, right? Day one, two people sat down and asked a few questions, which ended with me negotiating a contract for them. Day two, four people sat down and tried to get me to do cold calling. Day three, I had more questions than I had the time for and we had to put a schedule in place.
That got me thinking about how I could scale my help. How could I teach them more about sales and marketing, and how I could teach more of them at the same time–a path that seemed more interesting than doing the cold calling for them. One way was to climb on stage and share what I’d learned with an auditorium instead of an office. So I took the stage, sharing advice. But the start-up mind only cares to see things that have proven their worth, so I had to find a way to practise what I preached.
I did all the things I’d been telling my pupils. I set out to help and share my knowledge. I launched a YouTube channel under my own name and started The Sales Acceleration Show. I scaled my own LinkedIn network–big time. Before I knew it, several large investors hired me to help their scale-ups do the same. Almost four years and 250 customers later, I help founders, business owners and freelancers to grow and scale their business at a ridiculous speed.
‘But, Michael, I’m no classic sales person.’ Of course not. Neither are my clients, who tell me the same thing in every meeting and workshop. I love it when they do, because it makes them genuine and trustworthy. And that, in the end, is what it’s about if you’re looking for a way to scale your business: what you want is to establish a bond of trust between you and your prospect. Sales talk doesn’t do that. Sincerely sharing the knowledge you’ve gathered over the years, does–and massively so. It’s a way to offer potential customers valuable material that helps them solve their problems. This, right here, is the crux. The golden nugget. The one tiny piece of advice that will make it possible for you to scale your business without selling your soul: SHARE.
So how do we scale that knowledge of yours, or that of your company? By helping you become a thought leader. An expert in your field. The go-to person in your field of expertise. Someone who shares their knowledge in live talks, books and online.
Along these pages, we’ll find ways to dig up all the wisdom you have in you, distil it in formats that are tailor-made for your prospective audience and spread it at a large scale. Because just like the startups didn’t care about my titles, others don’t know you and therefore don’t care about you or your business.
Unless…
Unless you’re offering something valuable. Something that hits a nerve. Something that soothes your prospects’ aching. Something that solves their problem. Something that matters to them.