Boyd Parker

‘Goals are dreams with deadlines. To turn your dream into a reality, you must set goals,’declared the business owner as he opened a company-wide virtual workshop this past week in Kent.

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When chaos and uncertainty strike on a global level, it is more important than ever to practice positive thinking. It’s something I practice not only in my personal life but also in my business. 

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Being a business owner is tough. There are often times when I, Boyd Parker, needed to admit to myself that I needed help in getting to the next stage of my business. But there’s one thing that, no matter the stage of business you’re at, you need to understand inside and out: sales!

On the surface hiring a sales consultant seems like the easy solution to all your problems. You’ve heard the sales consultant’s pitch, you’re sold, and they appear like they can sort out every challenge that you’re currently facing. T

he first day everything seems great but as the weeks drag on and on you’re not seeing any changes, and still paying (what seems like an exorbitant amount) for seemingly nothing.

So what went wrong?

Today, we’re going to look at how you can save time and money hiring the right sales consultant by revealing what most “sales consultants” will never admit. 

1. Sales Consultants are Only Guessing about What Will Work

As a sales consultant, I, Boyd Parker, needed to make a judgement about my business based on the knowledge I had in front of me. It’s important to think of a business as a machine, full of moving parts that all need to work together in order to create the results you’re looking for.

The best results are found through experimentation, figuring out what works best for you and your team, your market, and your company culture. It’s worth noting that the sales consultant that you choose to hire should have experience:

• In your market 
• With your business model (e.g. subscription, service, product)
• With companies of a similar size

However, at the end of the day any strategy that they suggest is just a guess based on the information that you’ve given them. The best sales consultants will constantly test different techniques, strategies, and tactics and then double-down on the one that gets the best results.

For example, the way you stand out in your market may be a unique approach to how your business sells itself. Take Apple as an example, their sales strategy primarily comes down to them selling their products as luxury fashion accessories rather than a handheld computer. Now other brands are trying to copy that strategy.

That wouldn’t have happened if Apple hadn’t experimented with their sales strategy and asked better questions about their market and what would make them stand out.

Beware of hiring a sales consultant that appears to know exactly what your business needs instantly. Consultancy isn’t about a one-size-fits-all approach. It needs to provide an effective solution that is simple to implement within your specific organisation.

2. Sales Consultancy ISN’T about Sales (sometimes)

Sales is the driving force of a business. Without an effective sales strategy, I, Boyd Parker, didn’t have a business. However, sales is just one aspect of a business that all the others feed into. Great sales consultants need to understand how all aspects of a business works in order to do their job effectively. 

For example, if hiring a sales consultant increased sales by 24% could the business fulfil the increase in orders? Similarly, what would happen if the margins on the “Cost of Goods Sold” (COGS) increased due to the changes you would need to make based on that increase in orders?

In reality, you’re probably reading this to increase profit and there is a multitude of ways of doing that. 

A great sales consultant will be able to spot a number of strategies that will increase the profit of your business. One of my mentees was struggling with their business and not getting the revenue that they were looking for. They told me, “We need to get more leads so that we can sell more products”. 

However, when I looked at their business I found that they had all the leads that they needed; their biggest problem was converting those leads into paying customers. What it boiled down to was my mentee not spending enough time training his team on converting the leads into paying customers. So instead of working with him on his sales strategy, we worked together on improving the quality of the training he provided to his team.

Whilst I market myself as a “Sales Consultant,” in that business I was more of a “Training Consultant”. My mentee got the results he was looking for, just not in the way he was expecting.

Even if your objective is “sell more” there are a load of strategies you can use that may seem unrelated to sales. When hiring a sales consultant we need to figure out what else they can bring to the table, other than being a great sales person.

3. Sales is just one piece of the puzzle

So we come to the hardest confession that I need to make as a Sales Consultant…sales is just one part of the business. Having a load of sales does not mean that your business is going to be successful. 

When I, Boyd Parker, talk about “sales” what I am actually talking about is the whole sales process:

1. Finding people that want to buy what we sell
2. Selling that thing to them
3. Delivering on what we’ve sold them
4. Up-selling or re-selling to them 

Typically sales consultants will focus primarily on step 2 of the process but that might not be what your business needs. Whilst it feels glitzy and glamourous to focus on on-boarding new clients, you’re going to see far more profit from people that have already bought from you. This is why some many of my business mentors talk about focussing on “value”.

Not “growth,” not “scalability,” and not “profit,” but value. 

Giving your clients or customers value again and again and again will lead to growth, scalability (through necessity) and profit. This is why you need to hire someone that focuses on how to provide your clients and customers more value.

A great sales consultant will be able to analyse which of the 4 steps your business needs to focus on and give you a clear, simple, and actionable strategy that will take your business in the direction you need it to go.

The Truth about Sales Consultants

Whilst we’ve looked and some truths about sales consultancy that you need to know before hiring a sales consultant, most sales consultants are trying to make a difference with your company and business. The problem is that most of them are so focussed on sales that they don’t look at the bigger picture of your business and your goals.

When hiring a sales consultant, I, Boyd Parker, had to make sure that I:

• Set clear expectations about what your business goals are and be prepared to try different approaches to reach those goals
• Understand that how you get to reach those goals may not be what you originally expected. A huge part of the value a sales consultant provides is being able to see things that you haven’t
• Ask them questions about what other skillsets they have and what they’d do in certain situations. For example, if you’re already great at getting new customers but don’t have good client retention rates

Thanks for reading, I hope that my confessions were beneficial.

Being a great leader is one of the hardest things we as entrepreneurs need to do. It takes guts, grit, and a huge amount of work to build your business to where you want it to be.

The failure rate of new businesses is astounding and whilst there are a large amount of factors that go into a successful business, there’s one that stands above all:

Leadership.

It’s your job as a leader to be like the captain of a ship, steering your crew toward the end-goal. This is why so many businesses fail. Not because of a lack of money, not because a lack of talent, but because we as leaders fail.

In my [insert number here] years of building businesses, I’ve made a lot of mistakes and had more than my fair share of failures. Here are the five truths of business that these mistakes and failures have taught me, Boyd Parker.

1. We Don’t Give Enough Responsibility to Our Team

When I was a younger man, I saw my role as a leader as a way to control everything. I needed things to be done MY way, and if they weren’t…well I suggested that they find someone other than Boyd Parker to work with.

This approach cost me a lot in terms of time, money, and emotional energy.

The whole reason we create teams is because we can’t do everything ourselves, and we need to delegate responsibilities to others in order to grow and scale our businesses. In order to do that we need to build our businesses processes and systems, and adapt those as the situation changes.

This means giving your team the responsibilities. In “On the Meaning of Work,” Brent D. Rosso, PhD and his team found that people are more likely to stay in, and work harder, on projects that gave them meaning. In this case it increased motivation, empowerment, and engagement.

By making your team responsible for the tasks they have and giving them freedom to work how they want within your processes (as long as they’re getting results) you and your business are going to see more success.

2. We’re Not Consistent with Our Communication Style

There are a lot of traits that make a great leader but the most important one that I, Boyd Parker, have found is communication.

If we can’t communicate properly with our team we’re not going to see the results from all the graft that we put into our businesses. A key aspect of communication is making sure that whoever is on the receiving end trusts us.

Trust is built from consistency and doing what you’ll say you’ll do.

When it comes to consistency in our communication a lot of “leaders” seem to have two sides; the nurturing mother and the authoritarian father. If your team don’t know which one to expect, it leads to a lack of trust and a decrease in motivation. This means your team is less likely to back you up when you most need them.

Imagine you’re in a relationship where every day you come home and have no idea if your partner is going to be the kindest, sweetest, most loving person or a hate-filled, rage-addled maniac. Does that give you faith in the relationship? Are you going to trust them to make good decisions? Are you going to pull out all the stops to make sure that their needs are met?

The difference between a great leader and a bad one is the same.

We need to cultivate and build great relationships with our team so that they have faith in us and the business, that they trust our decision-making process, and that they ensure all the business’s needs are met.

It doesn’t matter which communication style that you choose or comes most naturally to you. What matters is that once the expectations of your team have been set, you keep up with those expectations.

3. We’re Don’t Spend Enough Time on Really Getting to Know People

Great leaders want to get to know who they’re working with so that they can help them get to the goal that they’re working towards. You need to have focussed conversations with your team to understand exactly what they want, and (more importantly) how you’re going to get them there.

Poor leaders are lazy in how they incentivise their teams and make assumptions that everyone’s looking for the same thing. This is why you see so many bosses trying – and failing – to get their teams motivated by offering larger and larger bonuses. However, not everyone is money-motivated, myself included.

In my experience, there are loads of different ways to incentivise people, for me, Boyd Parker, I need more than just money:

• Some want more recognition
• Some want to learn more skills
• Some want to operate more independently

By figuring out exactly what your team wants and is driven by, providing incentives that are in-line with those desires, and coaching them on their journey, you’re going to see a huge jump in motivation, productivity, and loyalty.

4. We Don’t Communicate Effectively

If your team don’t consistently do things in the way that they need to be done…it’s time to look in the mirror. Question yourself: “Boyd Parker, as a leader, you need to accept responsibility for our team not doing the tasks correctly and figure out why they haven’t done the task properly.”

In the majority of cases it’s down to us not having communicated properly with our team. As a leader we have a huge number of responsibilities and need to communicate what needs to be done with our team quickly. However, this often leads to sloppy, vague, and confusing communication.

We need to be able to succinctly tell our team what needs to be done to avoid wasting time with back-and-forth emails, calls, and chats. Most of the leaders that I’ve mentored are worried about coming across as patronising by laying out everything they need from their team. When I talk to their teams, they enjoy how straight-forward and easy it is to understand what their boss wants.

Next time you send an email, text, or communicate in any way, take a moment and ask yourself “have I said this in the clearest way possible?”

5. We Make it About Us

No one is going to care as much about your business as you do? I understood that no one is going to work harder than Boyd Parker, and no one is going to put the same amount of emotional energy into your business as you.

And that’s the trap.

When we work hard on building something amazing we run the risk of making our business about US. We forget that what we’ve worked so hard to build can come crashing down around us if we fail our team.

Without a great team we don’t have a great business and in order to have a great team we need to be a great leader.

Being a great leader is a selfless (often thankless) task. We as leaders need to realise that being “the boss” is about finding a solution that gives our team what they want and directing them toward a common goal.

Once we stop making being a “leader” about us and focussing more on having a great team everything else will fall into place.

What’s Next?

By honing in on your team’s wants and communicating better, you’ll get more out of your team. By building others dreams, we build our own. In order to do that, start doing these things:

1. Give your team more responsibilities, set your expectations for what results they should be getting and a framework to operate from
2. Think objectively about how you communicate with others and be consistent with that style. Understand what works for both you and your team by looking at different communication styles and talking to your team
3. Figure out what motivates your team and help them get to where they want to be
4. Be concise and make every communication you have as effective as possible. Nine times out of ten this means asking yourself “Is this the best way to communicate this?” before clicking that “send” button
5. Make the success of your business about the success of your team

Thanks for reading,