Benjamin Ard (00:55)
Welcome back to another episode of Content to Close. And today I'm joined by Claire. Claire, welcome to the show.
Claire (01:02)
Thank you for having me, I'm excited to be with you, Benjamin.
Benjamin Ard (01:04)
Yeah, Claire, this is going to be exciting. I am really fascinated by everything we're going to cover today. It's going to be a ton of fun. But Claire, before we dive into that, let's get to know you. Tell us about yourself. Let us get to know your background, work history. That way the audience gets to know you a little bit before we dive into the subject for the day.
Claire (01:23)
Happy to introduce myself. So my history is very much from a commercial and a delivery perspective. I've been in and around sales all of my life. And I think I can qualify all of my life as well, not just my working life. My dad was an expert seller in his heyday. So I grew up in a sales environment, learning from one of the best. And that's been one of the consistence in my career as well.
More recently, I've been focusing on business transformation very much through a commercial and a delivery lens. So sales, project delivery, client engagement, commercial operations, partnering with marketing as well as two sides of the same coin from a sales and marketing perspective. Also, I've spent some time
as a sales enabler or in rev ops, depending on the label and the boundaries of how that proliferates in an organisation. And more recently, I'm in the process of launching my own business, which is auto consultants. I'm taking my business transformation, programmatic leadership out into the ecosystem, into the network.
and looking forward to working with lots of different organisations who are looking to implement change, transformation, maybe course correct something from a change perspective that isn't quite working for them and need somebody to either help them from planning right through to execution and sort of take on that programme leadership role. So very excited that New Year, New Beginnings.
This is when auto consultants is going to get launched and hopefully we'll work with some great teams and some great organizations.
Benjamin Ard (03:10)
I love it. And the auto consultants, it has, it's an acronym. And what does that stand for? I thought that was such a clever thing, especially as a business owner, like naming is the worst part of everything. So I was curious that you came up with a name and what it stands for just for the audience.
Claire (03:26)
So, Ordo comes from Ordo Ab Caio, which is Latin. And the phrase itself, when you translate it, means order out of chaos. So, it's all about the structure, the ordering, the simplification, bringing clarity to any disorder of complexity.
or a mist or murk that exists for an organisation, either they're looking to simplify, they don't know how to get started, they're sitting in noodle soup. So it's all about providing that support, that enablement and that advice and guidance to an organisation. And not many people know this, there's a very simple story as to how it came about as a name as well. We were just talking earlier about telling stories and stories being
one of the great things from a selling perspective and set great sellers apart, of course, is the art of storytelling. So I'll share this one with everybody. There is the most fantastic police drama series here in the UK. It's on our BBC channel and it's called Blue Lights. And it's actually set in and around Belfast within Northern Ireland, which is where I'm located.
So it has extra special connection and meaning. And the phrase auto ab KO actually was used by one of the characters and instantly it just struck me because we were looking up what it translated to be. And I just thought that's perfect. That is absolutely perfect for explaining what auto consultants can do to help folks.
Benjamin Ard (05:00)
I love that. Inspiration can come from literally anywhere. I think that's amazing. So Claire, let's dive into the subject for the day. I think it's going to be a ton of fun and exciting. I am so excited to learn from you. Today we're talking really about curiosity. And so what we're going to talk about is seller curiosity and how it correlates to winning business. So what's that connection there? How a seller having curiosity
Claire (05:05)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Benjamin Ard (05:27)
actually can increase winning deals and closing business.
Claire (05:31)
I think we've all worked with great salespeople. And one of the common traits we see from great salespeople is curiosity. They are naturally interested in the prospect, the client, the customer, the account that they're working with. And I don't think there's any coincidence that the more curious they are, the more they learn, the more they research the industry, the client organization.
the client themselves and the surrounding personas, the more they're curious, the more they ask, the luckier they are, if you like, it becomes part of their preparation. And therefore I think curiosity shows up in a number of different ways. mean, it shows up to help the seller learn about the client they're working with. It helps them make connection points to their product, their service, their solution.
but it also in the process of asking questions and being curious with the prospect, with the client allows them to actually think themselves about, actually what is our problem? What is our challenge? What's going on in our organisation? And therefore the client or the prospects making those connection points as well. And the more that is discussed and the curious, the seller is, and the client by return, the more of those connection points are made.
And actually then in theory, as long as that curiosity continues across the sales cycle and is revalidated, which I know is something we'll discuss, the higher I would suggest the propensity of that opportunity closing and that work being won. And therefore I think the more successful sellers remain curious, they remain hungry for information. And of course, at the end of it, they see their target and they see their commission.
Benjamin Ard (07:13)
I love that. That's amazing. Very cool. So there are these natural frameworks that I believe are kind of put in place to do exactly what you're talking about. Increase the curiosity. It's almost a forced way of doing it. Some of them, you know, early stages are banned. Then you went over to ski pap. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but there are different frameworks and it all happens during the proposal stage.
How do those help out? How does that transition? How does that help on the curiosity side of things?
Claire (07:42)
Hmm. Bant, SkiPab, SciPab, you know, depending on how you say it. think Bant, can only say one way. So both are great frameworks because they allow a common language and a common go-to. So as an individual seller or seller-doer, as part of a selling team, a selling organization, the first thing there is everybody's talking the same language and coming from the same understanding internally.
Benjamin Ard (07:49)
Yeah.
Claire (08:08)
That also helps in other internal conversations, whether it's with a sales manager, whether it's part of a forecast conversation as part of a weekly pipeline discussion. But the point is that they're common frameworks that everybody can embrace. And in that moment, when you're trying to think, right, what is it I need to discuss with the client? What is it I need to remember to ask them? What's that thing that I just, haven't thought about?
framework is an easy go-to, particularly if you're early in your sales career and particularly if you're early in a sales conversation and you're trying to get as much information as possible, you can mentally tick off the areas of qualification as to whether you've got an opportunity and how mature the opportunity is. So if we look at Bant as our first framework, typically it's
probably quite simplistic in its approach, could be used early on in discovery conversations, could be used by an SDR or BDR who might then be qualifying if there's an opportunity to pass across to an account exec or an account manager. So Bant itself, I'm sure everybody's heard of it, but just in case they haven't, and for the avoidance of absolute doubt, budget, authority, need and timeline.
The more of those you have in an early conversation with a prospect or a client, the more of those that you can take the box on, know that you have the information and the readiness of the budget or the authority or the need or the timeline, the greater propensity for that opportunity to move ahead. So that's why that one is incredibly useful, just mentally ticking off in any conversation. The next one then as a sci-pab or ski-pab, I've seen show up
in a lot of consulting organizations, but also starting to proliferate out into other product and service organizations, just because it's such a great framework and a go-to. And I think the other thing with SciPath as well is that it can be introduced to the client and you can have a great conversation around it with the client and be intentional about
the language and the wording and the questions. So, SciPath itself then, situation, complication, implication, position, action, and benefit. And of course, everybody can go and Google these and they can go and see what they look like, how to use them, some common questions that might show up. But if you're talking with a client and helping them pull their business case together as well.
SIPAB can be a great element to use with them. And the other thing I found with SIPAB is that it isn't just an internal tool for client conversation. It can be used to create collateral that can be used as part of prospecting, as part of thought leadership, as part of customer reference material. So if you're going to interview somebody that you've worked with and have it up on your company website, you can use the SIPAB framework.
as well. So again, the further you get into an opportunity, the more detail you want to pull out, the greater you're building out your proposal, the clients building out their business case, the two should be quite tightly knitted. SIPAP can be a very useful framework as well.
Benjamin Ard (11:29)
I love that. And like you started to talk about content obviously plays a role in everything going on here. How do we really capitalize on content with these frameworks in these validation stages? What are your recommendations in general about content's role in that process?
Claire (11:49)
Content is king really across a selling process. It's there to help educate, it's there to help remind, it's there to lean on, to use in conversation. And when I say this, I don't just mean internally, I mean externally as well, and with the client as we were just talking about. So there are different tracks with it, internal and external, but if you're going to be using frameworks like Bounce, like SciPub,
Others, of course, are available depending on what your preference is, as a sales methodology, so on and so forth. I would recommend building them in from the get-go right from when a seller or a seller-doer joins the organisation as part of their onboarding experience and then ramped productivity. Why? Because as we've said, we want to be intentional with it. We want it to be a common language, a common framework.
that every seller's using that can be used in sales meetings, that can be used in broadcast conversations, deal reviews, opportunity reviews, so on and so forth. So content devised that can be quite simple and clean and easy to use, but as part of onboarding, part of that event or 30, 60, 90 day curriculum, that's where I've seen it used the best. And then creating on demand resources as well. So,
I know I'm about to go and meet with a client. We've stalled on some of the information that we thought we had. We want to maybe revalidate what we thought we had because we think we're seeing some gaps and a slowdown in the opportunity progression. I'm going to go to the enablement resource. I'm going to go and pull down some collateral that has actually some standard questions. So what might be those standard questions that you would use for each of the elements of SIPAM?
for example, great resource, great flashcards that sellers and seller doers can use. The other thing then as well is making sure there's some progression of those conversations too. So we've talked about revalidation, reconfirmation. What we knew a week ago, a month ago, a quarter ago in some cases around opportunities isn't necessarily the same today because things move quickly.
in the economy, in an industry with regulation, and in a client's organization, people come and go, budgets change. So that element of that continuous discovery, and then providing those reconfirmation type questions as part of the collateral as well, I think is really important for sellers. And then as we've said as well, the ability to connect it back to the client, show them
worked business cases as well using that framework that they can go and take and use internally, structure customer references, recommendations on the website, thought leadership articles that are published as well. So the same can be used with and for clients as well as it can internally, but having it across the stages of the sales cycle, starting from early qualification and validation.
right through to reconfirmation and maturity of discovery questions is really important.
Benjamin Ard (15:01)
I love that. That's so cool. And I love your concept of reconfirming the information, the discovery data, reconfirming, like you said, everything moves so quickly, things can change. How does that data set of reconfirming actually increase your forecast? It has to play a role. So how does that actually even make things better if you're encouraging reps to reconfirm their discovery data?
Claire (15:26)
There's a couple of parts to that. One of it is around that sort of gut feel that every seller has, every sales manager has, that level of confidence that you feel about the opportunity because you know more and you know you've revalidated it. And that's the seller and the management judge as part of the probability and the likelihood. But then when you want to come down to something black and white or scientific as well, it's actually having something that you can tick off.
So as part of a sales cycle, working through the different stages, one of the things I've seen again, work successfully across a number of organisations is the introduction of CVOs. So customer verifiable outcomes attached to each stage of the sales cycle, each set of probabilities that goes alongside a stage. And so part of the CVOs is having that
black and white confirmation from the client that something exists. So reconfirmation of the paper procurement process, reconfirmation of has any of the people involved in that from an approval perspective changed? And actually the further that you get into that sales cycle, the closer to you get to negotiation and in verbal commitment, the more you're going to want to reconfirm and tick off that you know these things exist.
So actually reconfirming and knowing those critical pieces that contribute to an opportunity being ready to be closed and won actually then can increase the confidence, can increase the likelihood and therefore cement it as part of the commit in a sales forecast.
Benjamin Ard (17:04)
I love that. That's amazing. Okay. We're running out of time. Well, this is going to be the final question because we need to wrap things up and let everyone get back to their daily activities. We all have jobs to do things to do lives. try to keep these episodes short. Claire. This has been amazing so far. So when it comes to actual performance, the actual closing of deals, how does closed loss
Claire (17:23)
Mm.
Benjamin Ard (17:28)
How has that impacted by poor discovery? And let's just wrap everything else up as well, but how does that all kind of work together? One final thing here to help the audience learn a little bit here today would be great.
Claire (17:31)
Mm.
Look, I think there can be a myriad of reasons as to why somebody loses an opportunity. And we're not going to have time to cover all of those different scenarios. But if we look at it specifically from that discovery perspective and continuous discovery, I remember one specific opportunity in a software organization I was working in some time ago. And the seller was working with an account
that they'd work with time and time again, repeat business, repeat client. And they felt they knew the client, they knew the business, and that there was a high probability this was going to close because of the relationship. So they have the early stage conversations. What's the challenge? What's the implication? What benefits are you looking for? How can we help? Etc, etc. Take the boxes. Then of course,
the weeks, the quarter progresses. There's the odd email back and forth. Hey, how are you doing? Yeah, great. Super brilliant. They might get a bit more sporadic, but yeah, great. Okay. And then the seller commits it into their forecast. And at crunch point, the opportunity is lost because the client comes back and says something's moved and changed.
We don't have the budget. We can't move ahead at this time. Now, this was a big deal for this seller. They committed in their forecast. It was coming, you know, end of quarter, end of fiscal year. So, you know, the stakes are high. The tension is high. The business is putting a lot of pressure to get this one. And it's part of the business forecast. And when there was some after action review, if you like, for want of a better term, into
why the opportunity was lost, it came down to the lack of continuous discovery and reconfirmation. What was a conversation at the start of the opportunity? Yes, tick, tick, tick, tick, odd email, how are you Fred? Yeah, I'm great, thanks very much. Isn't reconfirmation, isn't revalidation, isn't continuous discovery, it's just saying Fred's okay and yeah, yeah, yeah, we're good. Meanwhile, Fred's got a lot of pressure behind him and doesn't want to let.
you know, the seller he's working with down and jeopardize the relationship and doesn't quite know how to deal with it. So continuous discovery important because nobody wants to be that seller where they've committed that opportunity, where the stakes are high for them, for the forecast, for the business, and actually they lose it because they just didn't take more time to revisit discovery, to revalidate and know that they could tick off their CVOs.
Benjamin Ard (20:14)
Amazing stuff. I love the curiosity, the discovery, the frameworks. So many things are going on in my mind right now. This is so cool. Every now and then there's a really cool episode where I'm like, wow, I need to reevaluate everything. This is so cool. Claire, this has been amazing. For anyone who has listened to this episode, how and where can they connect with you online and reach out and say hi, thank you for the episode, or just connect with you?
Claire (20:41)
LinkedIn is absolutely one of the best places to go. You can find me as me, Claire Skull. You can search for auto consultants and find me that way as well. I'd love to connect with anybody who's listened to the episode. Talk about anything that's top of mind for them, answer any questions they've got, just kind of shoot the breeze on some topics. If anybody would like any help with any of what we've talked about, then of course, you know, that's...
a different conversation and shoot me a note there as well and we can equally discuss and work out what it is I can do to help them. But yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn, I'd love to hear from folks.
Benjamin Ard (21:16)
love it. For anyone listening, you scroll down to the show notes on whatever platform you're listening on, Claire's information will be linked there right in the show notes. Click on the LinkedIn profile or the website and you can connect with Claire there. Again, Claire, thank you so much for the time, the information and sharing your insights. It's been wonderful.
Claire (21:35)
Benjamin, thank you for having me.
